Note: I’ve written about religious trauma, cult dynamics, and deconstruction for over a decade. This piece looks at why Amanda Frances calling her former church a cult matters, and why mainstream religious abuse still gets minimized. Twelve years. Twelve goddamn years of writing about high-control religion and cult dynamics and the very specific kind of damage that happens when you hand a human brain to an authority figure with a persecution complex and a collection plate, a

You left the pews, burned the prayer journals, and kicked God out of your head, so why does the shame still hit like a truck? In Part 1 of The Phantom Pew, Courtney Heard digs into Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS), fear conditioning, and why your body can still panic long after your beliefs are gone.