How to Rebuild Trust in Relationships After Religious Trauma or Narcissistic Abuse
When you’ve grown up in a high-control religion or been entangled with a narcissistic partner, parent, or community, the concept of trust can feel like a cruel joke.
You may ask yourself:
How do I know who’s safe?
How do I open up without being manipulated again?
How can I even trust myself after everything I missed or ignored?
These are not small questions. They’re survival questions—born out of betrayal, gaslighting, and years of being told your instincts were wrong. And while trust can be shattered in an instant, rebuilding it takes time, intention, and practice.
Let’s talk about how that healing can happen.
A Story of Trust Lost—and Slowly Found
Meet “Anna” (a fictional composite of many clients I’ve worked with).
Anna grew up in a restrictive religious environment where obedience was demanded, questioning was punished, and leaders held absolute power. She learned early on that “trust” meant compliance—that to be loved, she had to silence her doubts and ignore her gut feelings.
Later, Anna married someone who mirrored the same dynamics: charming in public, controlling behind closed doors. Over time, her sense of self withered. When she finally found the courage to leave both her marriage and her faith community, she felt a mixture of relief and terror.
Alone in her apartment one evening, Anna journaled:
“I don’t know if I can ever trust again. I don’t even know if I can trust me.”
That sentence is one I hear often from survivors of religious trauma and narcissistic abuse.
But here’s what Anna didn’t yet know: trust is not gone forever. It’s damaged, yes—but it can be rebuilt. And it starts with small, steady steps.
Why Trust Gets Shattered in High-Control Systems
To understand how to rebuild trust, we first need to look at why it breaks in the first place.
Religious trauma and narcissistic abuse have something in common: both teach you that your instincts are dangerous.
In religious trauma, leaders often claim divine authority, telling you what to believe, who to love, and how to live. If you question, you’re shamed or exiled.
In narcissistic abuse, the abuser gaslights you, flips blame, and rewards your compliance while punishing independence.
Both environments condition you to distrust your own body, your emotions, and even your memories. That’s why rebuilding trust feels so disorienting—it’s not just about others. It’s about learning to trust yourself again.
Step 1: Start with Self-Trust
If you’ve been told your whole life that your feelings are wrong or sinful, listening to yourself can feel foreign. But this is where true rebuilding begins.
Try these practices:
Notice your body signals. Does your chest tighten when someone talks over you? Does your stomach drop when a friend ignores your boundary? These cues are your body’s way of telling you the truth.
Validate your emotions. Instead of thinking, I shouldn’t feel this way, try saying, It makes sense that I feel this way, given my history.
Take small risks. Trust yourself with little decisions—what to eat, what show to watch, which friend to text. Build the muscle slowly.
As you strengthen self-trust, you’ll find it easier to gauge who is safe in your outer world.
Step 2: Redefine What Trust Means
For many survivors, “trust” used to mean blind obedience. But healthy trust looks different. It has nuance. It has boundaries. It has choice.
Here’s a reframe:
Trust is not all-or-nothing. You don’t have to hand over every part of yourself to someone at once. You can trust a friend with your movie preferences before trusting them with your deepest fears.
Trust is earned, not demanded. Anyone who insists you “just trust them” without showing consistent care is waving a red flag.
Trust and boundaries go hand in hand. Saying “no” is not a betrayal of trust—it’s the foundation of it.
Think of trust as a dimmer switch, not an on/off button. You get to decide how much light to let in and when.
Step 3: Practice Safe Experimentation
Healing requires exposure to safety, but not all at once. Here’s how survivors like Anna begin experimenting:
Share something small. Tell a safe person a minor detail about your day and notice how they respond. Do they listen? Dismiss? Use it against you?
Check for consistency. Real trust is built over time, not grand gestures. Watch whether someone’s actions align with their words.
Use “pause power.” You don’t have to respond to requests immediately. Taking time to think is a way of trusting yourself first.
Each of these small experiments rewires your nervous system to recognize safety again.
Step 4: Build a Community of Survivors
One of the hardest parts of leaving a high-control environment is the isolation. Many survivors feel like no one could possibly understand. But the truth is—you’re not alone.
Whether through support groups, therapy, or online communities, connecting with others who share your experience can be profoundly healing.
Anna, for example, joined a virtual group for survivors of religious trauma. At first, she barely spoke. But listening to others say, “I thought I was the only one,” cracked something open inside her. Slowly, she started contributing. That community reminded her that trust is not only possible—it’s worth it.
Step 5: Integrate Trauma-Informed Healing
Because betrayal wounds are stored in the body, healing is not just an intellectual process—it’s somatic. Approaches like Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and other trauma-informed therapies can help you release the frozen fear and shame that keep you stuck.
In Anna’s case, Brainspotting helped her reconnect with the younger version of herself who had been silenced in church. She practiced offering compassion to that inner child and slowly, her nervous system learned that she could be both safe and connected.
Step 6: Rebuild at Your Own Pace
The hardest truth for many survivors: there is no shortcut. Rebuilding trust takes time. You will likely stumble. You may misplace trust again, or hesitate too long before giving it.
That’s okay. Every attempt is part of the process.
The key is giving yourself permission to move slowly. Unlike your past environment, there is no rush, no punishment for going at your own pace.
What Rebuilding Trust Can Look Like
Fast forward two years: Anna has a few close friends she trusts deeply. She still feels cautious at times, but she no longer blames herself for that. Instead, she sees it as wisdom.
She’s dating again—not recklessly, but with curiosity. She’s learning that love doesn’t have to come with conditions.
Most importantly, she trusts herself to walk away if something feels wrong.
That’s the ultimate marker of healing: not the absence of fear, but the presence of self-trust guiding you forward.
Recommended Reading
If this post resonates with you, you may also want to explore:
“The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk – Understanding how trauma lives in the body.
“Trauma and Recovery” by Judith Herman – A foundational book on healing from abuse.
“Leaving the Fold” by Marlene Winell – Focused on recovery after leaving religion.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve survived religious trauma or narcissistic abuse, your trust has been misused. You did nothing to deserve that. And yet—you still have the capacity to trust again.
Not blindly. Not recklessly. But wisely, intentionally, and at a pace that honors your healing.
Like Anna, you may never go back to the kind of trust you once had—and that’s a good thing. Because what you build now will be real, mutual, and rooted in freedom.
Call to Action
If you’re ready to begin your own journey of rebuilding trust, I’d love to walk alongside you. At Firestorm Counseling, I help survivors of religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and narcissistic relationships heal from the inside out using Brainspotting and Internal Family Systems.
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
👉 Click here to schedule a consultation and take your first step toward trust, safety, and connection.
