For me, religion is a worldview that relates humanity to life’s transcendental elements. My definition does not necessarily include or exclude an omnipotent deity. It includes all the religious traditions I have encountered in my life so far; including varities of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as well as atheism.

For the therapist, when listening to a patient express their religious faith or lack thereof, the issue to consider is what enables this particular victim of horrendous repeated abuse to undertake the hard journey necessary for healing and restoration? Something is enabling them, or trying to enable them, or they would not be seeking help in therapy.

We know that resilience is the single most valuable attribute required in healing and recovery from past trauma. Accessing that source of resilience and protecting it from attacks is critical to successful therapy.

So, what is it that gives survivors the strength to persevere? For those who believe they have a personal connection to God, or an unnamed higher power, that connection can be used to their advantage in healing and recovery. Prayer can be extremely helpful and sustaining for those who believe that they can rely on that for their healing.

In such cases, irrespective of the therapist’s personal belief, it is only appropriate that the patient be supported and encouraged to continue in their spiritual path so they can benefit from that faith. I have seen survivors in religious communitie that are separate from where the abuse occurred. They have experienced a sense of sisterhood and brotherhood in those new comunities that gives them powerful support in an otherwise lonely individual struggle.

For those taking a path separated from religion on their healing journey, their motivating force might be the need to bear witness as a survivor. This is why I often spoke to angry alters about how important they were to the survival of the system. I encouraged them to see that their rage could be turned into fuel for the journey of bearing witness as a survivor.

This idea of bearing witness is a traditional element in many religious traditions but is clearly something that exists beyond any religious structure. The founder of the logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, was a Viennese psychiatrist who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II. He was trapped in a terrifying place specially designed to crush the human spirit, subjecting prisoners to a completely dehumanized environment. However, he had and held on to his reason to survive. That reason was for him to survive so as to bear witness to the fact that a people or “race” had been assigned for elimination through modern assembly-line methods. He believed it was necessary to bear witness that common people would lose their minds and individual will to participate in that elimination, and that they would obey orders to carry it out. Based on his experience in the camps, he indeed bore withness and used his experience to develop logotherapy, as discussed in his book Man’s Search for Meaning.

There are therapists who decry religion within and outside of therapy. Those therapists should consider the success of Alcoholic Anonymous, which focuses on connecting alcoholics to a “higher power” in order to heal from addiction. It would probably be more appropriate to use the word spirituality than religion to describe that program, which brings hope to those helplessly addicted to alcohol. Comparing AA to both conventional psychotherapy and drug therapy in helping people with alcohol dependency problems, AA’s encouragement of working with a higher power has a well recognized success rate which is higher than either psychotherapy or medication. So therapists should not denigrate the power of spirituality of any kind in healing.

In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, St. Paul brought up Faith, Hope and Charity (agape or love) together, likening them to a three legged stool. With three legs, it is stable even on uneven ground. Most Christians believe that being grounded in faith, hope, and charity, allows them to remain on solid footing even when the ground beneath them is bumpy. I point out that this view is consistent with the path of any successful trauma therapy. The healing journey is certainly traversed over uneven and bumpy ground. Having the patient’s own connection to those three legs, within or outside of the Christian or any other religious tradition, is a most powerful resource.

Faith generates hope, and hope sustains us at difficult times. This is true whether you see faith through a religious lens or otherwise. Charity, again whether through a religious lens or otherwise, can be interpreted as being generous with love to those injured – including generosity to ourselves. Within the DID system, charity can be seen in some alters being generous to other frightened as well as hostile alters. This is something to be encouraged whenever it arises.

For those patients who disparage religion, therapists can focus on the spirituality of a beautiful sunset, the earthiness of a moss covered rock, the intricacy of a bird’s song, the nourishment of breathing in the forest after a brief rain. Regardless of the therapist’s own belief system, you must be open to the possible paths of faith your patients can access – even if that faith is limited to confidence that the earth will hold you up, that the sun will warm you.

In short, and this is the whole point: Abused individuals all have to be helped to give themselves a reason to wake up in the morning, to have a meaningful task to accomplish. Recovery from abuse is a deeply meaningful task.

This is something therapists can continue to remind their patients about. Begin with keeping the meaningful task of recovery split into quite small steps, like breathing in a warm sense of goodness even just once each day. In the context of patients who are religious, it is appropriate to encourage them to apply the tenets of their religious views of kindness and compassion to and between their alters. In the context of patients who wish to avoid religion, it is appropriate to remind them to be grounded in faith, hope, and love, and again to apply those qualities to and between their alters.