My guest is Laura Anderson. We discuss religious abuse, religious trauma and the difference between them. Abuse is the thing that happened to you. Trauma is the experience that your body or nervous system has as a response to the thing that happened to you. Laura is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the State of Tennessee, a Professor of Psychology and an Approved Supervisor through the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT). She has a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy and is in the final stages of completing my completing her Ph.D. in Mind-BodyMedicine at Saybrook University. Laura specializes in complex trauma, religious trauma, religious abuse, and purity culture. Laura has developed a manual for mental health professionals on Adverse Religious Experiences and Religious Trauma which is available on her website. This is a resource for both mental health professionals and those who have experienced adverse religious experiences themselves. Use the discount code: RELIGIOUSTRAUMA15 for $15 off the price of the manual. Links Website: https://www.lauraandersontherapy.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ms_elleanderson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ms_elleanderson/ Interact On the show, I mention my writing on the steps of deconversion and “doubling down” that can be found here: https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/ Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/