Enrollment for the Spiritual Direction and Certification Course is October 20. The training equips and certifies people to do faith transition coaching, deconstruction and reconstruction guidance, religious trauma recovery work, and spiritual mentoring in the space of non-religious spirituality. Find out more and enroll in the course at this link. Join the online community for the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality at this link The Fun Fact book I referred to: The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) occurs in response to two-fold trauma: first the prolonged abuse of indoctrination by a controlling religious community, and second the act of leaving the controlling religious community. RTS has developed its own heuristic collection of symptoms informed by psychological theories of trauma originating in PTSD, C-PTSD and betrayal trauma theory, taking relational and social context into account when approaching further research and treatment. Deconstruction is a process of rethinking one's religious faith or belief system as well as discarding previously held beliefs, sometimes to the point of no identifying with that religious or belief system. It often includes the process of systematically dissecting and often rejecting the beliefs one grew up with. Deconstruction is more than just changing our beliefs. It’s the experience of being able to notice and name our existential paradigm, and question whether it is still sufficient for our lives. This process of deconstruction provides the raw materials for cultivating a meaningful, authentic and liberating post-religion spirituality. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nonreligiousspirituality/support