Forward-Facing® ME Group for Toxic Religion Recovery

Religious trauma is a group-inflicted wound.

Getting support from a group can make healing happen that much faster.

If you’ve survived a toxic religious environment, you may feel like an imposter. Like the pain isn’t real. Like what happened to you wasn’t that bad.

I can validate the hell out of you in our one-on-one sessions, and it can absolutely help, but looking at a screen of faces nodding along with you, clasping their hands to their hearts, feeling your pain with you because they’ve been through toxic religion themselves, that’s potent shame-reducing stuff. 

That’s why I offer Forward-Facing® ME groups specifically for people recovering from toxic religion. 

What’s Forward-Facing® ME? 

Forward-Facing® My Experience is a 7-week group process, developed by traumatologist Dr. Eric Gentry, in which we practice self-regulation skills in our everyday lives and meet weekly to check in. This is a skill-building process, focused on making your present and future life better despite what happened in the past.

There are 3 main parts: 

Education

Learning how your autonomic nervous system works can change your life.

With the right information, you can go from being compelled and controlled by an overactive threat response to befriending your nervous system and living life on your own terms.

You get a series of educational videos that weave Forward-Facing principles into religious trauma recovery as part of this group.

Skill Building

 Even if you know everything there is to know about trauma and religion, it won’t help you much unless you put it into practice.

Working on skill-building with a group can often make things feel more real than just doing the work one-on-one.

We check in on your skill-building weekly in this group.

Intentionality

As part of the Forward-Facing® process, we dig into the question, “why bother healing at all?”

What life are you missing out on because of all the leftover anxiety from toxic religion?

Let’s define it and speak it to others. Again, sometimes naming things in a group makes them feel more real.

Forward-Facing® is about making the life you want after surviving adversity a real thing.

Here’s what you get as part of this group work: 

 

– 7 weekly group sessions that last up to 90 minutes each 

– 3 hours of educational videos to help you understand and befriend your nervous system

 – Several helpful worksheets to help you apply concepts in everyday life

 – 5 new acute relaxation skills that you can use anywhere anytime – not just when you can scavenge an hour for yourself

 – Companionship as you practice, learn and grow into the life you survived for. 

The next group begins on
Monday, May 13, 2024 at 8pm EST
and meets weekly for 7 Tuesdays total.
Cost: $250

 

Are you in?

I want this!

FAQs

What's the difference between this support group and other religious trauma support groups I've seen on the internet?

A lot of support groups are about processing. This group is for education and skill-building with others who get it. That means you’ll have some homework and you’ll learn some things to practice in everyday life between group sessions. The best part is that we get to cheer each other on just as much as we validate each other’s experiences.

Is this therapy? Can it heal my trauma?

This is not therapy. But it doesn’t have to be therapy to be therapeutic.
Technically, as a coach, I help you optimize for life rather than process the past. However, the way our past affects us plays directly into how we can live well in the present and the future. 
 
What we do in this group involves skill-building that helps you lessen any kind of stress in your life. I happen to focus my content on stress that intrudes from painful past learning in toxic religious environments and that comes through in who shows up and what we talk about.
 
 Knowing how to deal with any kind of stress is a quality of life improvement. That’s what I do as as coach. If you happen to resolve some religious trauma with the tools I offer you, that’s a perk of the skillbuilding… and not unheard of.

What does a session look like?

Each group session is 90 minutes and, with some education-oriented tweaks in the first two sessions, look the same:
 
– We share our successes at using the skills we’ve learned
 – We share moments in which we went over threshold and were therefore unable to use the skills we’ve learned (failure while learning something is to be expected and sharing about it can be cathartic).
 – We spend the rest of our time in open forum. I’ll answer your questions and you get to respond to each other within the boundaries we set in session one.
Want even more details? Download the schedule here!

Is there homework?

Yep, but not too much. You’ll have some educational videos to watch before our first session (so sign up early!!!) as well as some journaling to do before our second session. The most important homework will be practicing skills, and that’s an everyday any moment event, so don’t worry about scheduling that.

How much does this cost?

$250 for all 7 weeks and educational materials!