When Healing Hurts: Choosing the Discomfort That Leads to Freedom After Religious Trauma

Yesterday I had a massage.

I’ve been trying to take better care of my physical body lately — which, for me, is part of healing too.

At one point, the massage therapist started working on a muscle that had a massive knot. I could feel the tension deep in my shoulder, and when she pressed into it, it definitely hurt — but in a way that felt necessary.

I told her she was right in the problem area, and that even though it was uncomfortable, to keep going.

She responded, “Ah — productive discomfort.”

That phrase stuck with me. Because she’s right — there is such a thing as productive discomfort. The kind that doesn’t feel good in the moment but ultimately leads to growth, healing, and freedom.

And that concept applies far beyond our muscles.

It’s true in emotional healing. It’s true in therapy. It’s true in religious trauma recovery.

Not All Pain Means Progress

When you’ve spent years in a high-control religion, you’re often taught that suffering is automatically good. That pain is holy. That discomfort is proof of devotion — and that ease means you’re doing something wrong.

You might have learned to tolerate pain — emotional, physical, spiritual — as proof of your faith. You might have been told that obedience mattered more than authenticity, that submission was godliness, and that wanting ease or joy was selfish.

But that kind of pain doesn’t heal us. It’s unproductive suffering: the kind that erodes self-trust, reinforces shame, and teaches us to confuse suffering with holiness.

Not all pain is productive. Sometimes, pain just keeps us stuck. There’s a huge difference between discomfort that moves you forward and discomfort that keeps you trapped in old patterns.

Healing — real healing — has its own kind of pain. It’s just a different kind.

The Doctrine of Original Sin: A Case of Unproductive Discomfort

One example that comes up often in my work with clients is the doctrine of original sin — the belief that you are inherently bad, broken, and in need of saving.

For many survivors of religious trauma, this teaching created a lifelong ache of shame and self-loathing. You might have been told that your thoughts, emotions, or desires were sinful. That your body was dangerous. That even your goodness wasn’t really yours — it was borrowed, conditional, dependent on obedience.

Living under that kind of belief system hurts. Deeply.

But that pain isn’t productive. It doesn’t lead anywhere new. It doesn’t open or soften or heal.

Instead, it keeps you in a cycle of fear and self-rejection — an unproductive discomfort that reinforces shame without ever offering relief.

You can spend decades trying to pray your way out of that pain — trying to be good enough, pure enough, or faithful enough to quiet the voice that says, “You’re bad.”

But because that voice was built into the very structure of your belief system, the harder you try, the more it hurts.

That’s the pain that keeps you stuck.

The Pain That Moves Us Forward

Healing from religious trauma often means learning to tell the difference between the pain that keeps you small and the pain that helps you grow.

Productive discomfort is the soreness of rebuilding trust in yourself. It’s the vulnerability of setting a boundary for the first time. It’s the sting of saying, “That hurt me,” after a lifetime of minimizing your feelings.

It’s the trembling moment when you tell the truth out loud — not the “right” answer you were taught to give, but your truth.

It’s sitting in the ache of doubt or letting yourself feel the anger that once terrified you. It’s the kind of discomfort that invites you to move, to stretch, and to grow into something freer and truer.

In therapy, I see this all the time. When survivors of spiritual abuse and high-control religion start naming what happened to them, it often feels worse before it feels better.

They might notice grief they didn’t realize was there.
They might feel guilt for setting boundaries or for saying no.
They might even feel disoriented without the rigid structure that once told them exactly who to be.

It’s the soreness that comes after using muscles you haven’t moved in years — the tenderness that signals something is releasing that has been held for too long.

That’s productive discomfort.

It’s not a sign of selfishness or punishment. It’s progress.

Choosing Your Discomfort

In therapy, I often tell clients: healing doesn’t mean choosing between comfort and discomfort — it means choosing between the types of discomfort available to you.

There’s the discomfort of staying in a harmful environment (you keep getting hurt, but you stay because it is familiar). And there’s the discomfort of leaving, grieving, and rebuilding.

There’s the ache of silencing yourself to keep the peace.
And there’s the ache of finally speaking up and risking disappointment or rejection.

There’s the pain of holding everything in until it hardens into shame.
And there’s the pain of finally letting it out and letting it be witnessed.

One kind keeps you in survival mode. The other kind makes space for freedom.

My own therapist once told me, “You can choose the pain of stagnation or the pain of growth.”

Both hurt, but only one moves you forward.

When you’ve grown up equating suffering with virtue, choosing the discomfort that leads to freedom can feel wrong at first. You might even hear that old voice whispering, “You’re selfish,” or “You’re straying,” or “You deserve to suffer because you are bad.”

But healing from religious trauma means choosing, again and again, the kind of discomfort that opens something new.

How This Shows Up in Religious Trauma Recovery

In religious trauma recovery, productive discomfort might look like:

• Letting yourself feel anger toward the systems and people who hurt you — even if you were taught that anger is sin.

• Grieving the loss of certainty, community, or identity that came with leaving your faith.

• Allowing yourself to rest instead of constantly performing or serving.

• Reclaiming your body as something that belongs to you — not something to be controlled, covered, or shamed.

Each of these things can feel uncomfortable, even painful, at first. But they’re the kind of pain that opens space for healing.

In contrast, unproductive discomfort might look like:

• Staying in environments that constantly re-trigger your shame.

• Silencing your emotions because they make others uncomfortable.

• Continuing to mentally punish yourself when you make mistakes.

• Clinging to old beliefs about your unworthiness because they feel familiar.

One of the hardest parts of recovery is realizing that the pain you’re used to might be the very thing keeping you from healing.

The Healing Power of Productive Discomfort

Productive discomfort is the pain of loosening, stretching, and expanding — the emotional equivalent of working out a knot in a muscle.

It doesn’t feel good. But it’s necessary.

Healing from religious trauma can feel like that, too. It can hurt. It can be disorienting. But it’s a productive kind of discomfort — the kind that creates freedom, not fear.

It’s what happens when you stop accepting pain as proof of holiness or refinement and start allowing it to be information instead — information about what you need and what you deserve.

Pain that says, I’m hurting and need care and support.

You deserve that kind of healing. You deserve a life that feels spacious, peaceful, and yours.

If any of this resonates, you’re not alone.

This is the kind of work I help clients with every day — learning to tell the difference between the pain that keeps you stuck and the pain that helps you heal.

I offer therapy for survivors of religious trauma, spiritual abuse, purity culture, and high-control religion in California, Florida, and Missouri, and I’m currently accepting new clients.

You can learn more about me here or request a free consultation below when you’re ready.