"God Doesn't Even like Me": Attachment to God and Religious Trauma Among Women and Gender-Diverse Individuals—a Mixed-Methods Study

Background and Purpose: Religion and spirituality can provide meaning, belonging, and psychological support; however, religious environments can also function as contexts of harm. Religious trauma refers to the enduring emotional, relational, and spiritual consequences of exposure to coercive, fear-based, or controlling religious beliefs, practices, and institutions (Panchuk, 2019; Stone, 2013; Winell, 2011). Attachment theory provides a useful framework for understanding how individuals internalize experiences with God, conceptualizing God as an attachment figure whose perceived responsiveness or rejection may shape psychological well-being (Granqvist et al., 2010). Importantly, attachment to God is often formed within gendered religious contexts that regulate women’s roles, bodies, and moral responsibilities (Griffith, 1997). Insecure attachment to God has been linked to distress, shame, and negative self-concept (Homan & Boyatzis, 2010), yet its relationship to religious trauma remains underexplored. This mixed-methods study examines how attachment styles to God relate to religious trauma among cisgender, transgender, and gender-diverse women. The study asks: (1) To what extent do anxious and avoidant attachment styles to God predict differences in religious trauma? and (2) How do women and gender-diverse individuals describe their lived experiences of attachment to God following religious harm?

Methods: This study employed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design integrating quantitative survey data with qualitative photovoice methods (Padgett, 2016; Wang & Burris, 1997). In Phase 1, a national cross-sectional survey was administered online to 312 adults in the United States who identified as cisgender women, transgender women, or gender-diverse individuals femme-identified individuals. Participants were recruited through a survey panel using quota sampling. Independent samples t-tests examined differences in religious trauma scores between high and low attachment to God groups. Phase 2 employed photovoice and utilized purposive sampling to recruit 18 participants who documented their experiences through photographs and discussed these images in focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Qualitative data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Results: Quantitative analyses revealed statistically significant differences in religious trauma across attachment styles to God. Participants with high anxious attachment to God reported significantly higher religious trauma scores than those with lower anxious attachment (t(154) = 5.54, p < .001), with a large effect size (d = 0.89). Participants with high avoidant attachment reported significantly higher religious trauma scores than those with lower avoidant attachment (t(110) = 6.24, p < .001), with a larger effect size (d = 1.18). Qualitative findings contextualized these results through three themes: God as a Conditional Presence, Inability to Connect with God, and Spiritualizing Distress. Participants described internalizing gendered religious teachings that framed divine care as conditional upon obedience, experiencing God as distant or silent during distress, and encountering religious messages that spiritualized emotional suffering as evidence of insufficient faith or moral failure.

Conclusions and Implications: By centering the experiences of cisgender, transgender, and gender-diverse women or femme-identified individuals, this study advances social work research on gender, religion, and trauma. Implications highlight the importance of assessing religious and spiritual experiences in trauma-informed practice and recognizing religious trauma as a form of gendered relational and institutional harm.