Spring can be complicated.

It’s a season full of resurrection, renewal, divine love—and also the weight of holy days that many of us associate with deep harm. For queer clients who grew up in religious environments, Easter, Passover, and Ramadan don’t just bring spiritual reflection. They stir grief, anger, and a longing to reconnect with something sacred without returning to what caused the trauma in the first place.

Many clinicians still miss this. In fact, a 2023 survey found that nearly 70% of therapists reported feeling “underprepared” to address religious or spiritual issues in LGBTQIA+ clients, and over half admitted to avoiding the topic altogether. That’s a huge gap—especially when we know that spirituality, for some clients, isn’t just part of their trauma history. It’s part of what they’re trying to reclaim.

Healing from religious trauma doesn’t always mean walking away from faith. Sometimes it means queering it. Sometimes it means finding language and practices that feel honest, not sanitized. Sometimes it means building an altar at home, because you never felt safe in a sanctuary. Sometimes it means holding both the desire to pray and the fear of what prayer once represented.

Let’s be honest: most clients weren’t given a queer-affirming version of scripture. What they were handed was already filtered through white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. But when we go back with a trauma-informed lens, we find something else entirely. Ruth’s vow to Naomi was more than familial. David and Jonathan’s bond was more than brotherhood. The eunuchs, the prophets, the ones who lived outside gender norms and social status—they were part of the story all along. Our clients were taught not to see them.

That matters. Because not all clients want to deconstruct everything. Some want to reframe. They’re not looking to abandon their spirituality. They’re looking to survive it—and maybe even rebuild it.

There’s space for that in the work.

Antonio Pagliarulo’s essay, “I asked God for acceptance, but these queer deities answered,” is a beautiful example of what spiritual reimagination can look like. He writes about finding the sacred in figures like Santa Muerte, Bahuchara Mata, and Hermaphroditus—queer deities who don’t demand assimilation. They offer presence. They affirm the parts institutional religion cast out.

His framing is powerful: “These aren’t just symbols. They’re lifelines.”

And he’s right. For some, finding a new pantheon is liberating. For others, that’s not the goal. Some clients miss the God they used to talk to at night. They just want that God to stop hurting them. They want to know if there’s a version of their old faith that can stay—without the shame.

This is where clinical nuance matters. As therapists, our job isn’t to steer people away from religion, and it’s definitely not to force spiritual bypassing. Our job is to make space for exploration, grief, complexity, and choice.

I’ve seen clients write letters to the God who harmed them—and then write new prayers to the divine they wish they’d known. I’ve worked with clients who build personal rituals that blend old traditions with new autonomy. Who reinterpret scripture. Who talk back to their trauma in spiritual language, not despite it.

The Religious Trauma Treatment Model (RTTM) supports this kind of integration. It works with the psychology of fear-based conditioning and helps clients name where spiritual beliefs were built on control rather than connection. It blends narrative therapy, cognitive work, identity reconstruction, and consent-based spiritual exploration. It’s not about imposing a belief system. It’s about giving clients full permission to figure out what’s true for them now.

Not everyone leaves. Some do, and that’s a valid choice. But some stay. They return to church in drag. They become queer clergy. They hold communion in queer community spaces. They make the sacred theirs again.

This isn’t a contradiction. It’s a reclamation.

And for many, it’s the first time they’ve felt truly seen by something bigger than themselves—not because they hid who they were, but because they finally brought their whole self to the altar.

The question isn’t “Does God accept me?” The deeper question is often, “Which version of the divine was I taught to fear—and is there one I can trust instead?”

That’s where the work begins.