involve shrinking the inner critic, the role of grieving, and the need to be able to stay self-compassionately present to dysphoric affect. in medicine, "trauma-informed" care is defined as practices that promote a culture of safety, empowerment, and healing. group support appears to be an effective treatment for recovery from religious trauma and numerous services have developed to offer this, including professional recovery groups, peer support groups, and online forums. these may be effective because 1) those in recovery have lost primary support systems of family and church, 2) social support is a primary human need and relevant in understanding the physiology of trauma, and the social context of treatment helps people feel less alone or at fault. while some liberal churches offer therapy, professional therapists take the view that treatment should be in a neutral environment, and not in a religious context. tasks of recovery recovery involves assessing each symptom area for growth and exploration: cognitive tasks: developing critical thinking skills providing psychoeducation about rts offering decision-making frameworks fostering good mental hygiene (e.g. avoiding black and white thinking or judgmentalism) re-establishing a sense of personal identity affective tasks: exploring coping skills for emotional dysregulation habitual steps for dealing with emotional flashbacks. functional tasks: establishing healthy sleeping and eating patterns providing sex education in an effort to promote healthy sexuality reconnecting with the body through somatic techniques. social/cultural tasks: discovering and/or establishing a social network outside of the controlling faith community cultivating financial stability learning how to acculturate into society developing interpersonal skills such as perspective-taking. many developmental tasks overlap with cognitive, affective, functional, and social/cultural tasks. developmental tasks of recovery focus on recognizing developmental delay and providing necessary education in critical thinking, sexual health, mental hygiene, and socialization to allow natural human development to continue. growing awareness discussion about religious trauma syndrome is becoming more widespread in the media, including major, mainstream outlets. and internet sources of news. awareness is becoming global, in terms of people seeking help and in the news. while much of the work on religious trauma has centered on fundamentalist christianity, applications have been made to other groups such as mormonism, jehovah's witnesses, children of god, orthodox judaism, the unification church, and some fundamentalist groups in islam. personal journeys out of fundamentalist religion have been the subject of numerous films in addition to previously mentioned books and memoirs. further research to recognize rts, it is not necessary to say that all religion and spirituality is harmful. it appears that certain kinds of religion, typically fundamentalist and patriarchal, have both toxic teachings and toxic practices. the damage done is through these mechanisms. of course any religious group can also have healthy teachings and healthy practices. rather than deciding whether religion in general is toxic or healthy, a more productive pursuit would be to study the mechanisms that cause damage. in 2019, the religious trauma institute was founded by therapists laura anderson and brian peck. currently, the institute is conducting a survey on what they are calling adverse religious experiences. while this will provide a point of comparison to the research on adverse childhood experiences, there is a need for longitudinal studies to examine actual patterns of causation.