Religious Freedom Includes the Freedom to Leave Religion

"You are standing in front of a door with no lock, no guard, and no chain. You desperately want to leave, and yet every cell in your body screams that walking out will bring catastrophe. This is the lived reality of millions of people in highly controlling religions, cults, and coercive situations worldwide. Individuals in such situations are physically free to leave and yet feel psychologically trapped."

"Psychological entrapment, rather than physical confinement, is the common method used by destructive cult groups to keep people in a group they want to leave. Entrapment serves as an emotional prison: Someone who has thoughts of exiting becomes so emotionally overwhelmed by those thoughts that leaving becomes nearly impossible to consider."

"The legal protection has always applied to beliefs, not necessarily to behaviors carried out in the name of those beliefs. And so, the question I pose is not whether a person is legally free to believe, but whether they are psychologically able to stop believing, and whether they can walk away without being consumed by terror."

Religious freedom protections in the United States legally safeguard beliefs but not necessarily behaviors performed in their name. However, legal freedom differs fundamentally from psychological freedom. Millions in highly controlling religions and cults face psychological entrapment despite having no physical barriers to leaving. Cults install irrational fears and cognitive dissonance that operate below conscious awareness, creating emotional prisons where members feel unable to depart without catastrophic consequences. Clinicians must distinguish between religious phobias and organic anxiety disorders to avoid misdiagnosis. True religious freedom requires both legal protection and the genuine psychological capacity to question beliefs and leave without overwhelming terror.

Read at Psychology Today