The Religious Trauma Treatment Model™ (RTTM)
The Book and Its Clinical Applications
Religious trauma is real. It is not a misinterpretation of faith, a crisis of meaning, or a failure of resilience. It is a form of identity-level harm created by high-control religious systems that condition fear, obedience, and self-surveillance into the nervous system. For decades, this harm has been misunderstood or misdiagnosed in clinical settings. Clients are often treated for anxiety, depression, shame, or relational difficulty without addressing the religious conditioning that produced those symptoms. Neutrality toward religion, theological illiteracy, and spiritual bypass have allowed that harm to persist inside therapy itself.
RTTM is a clinical framework created by psychotherapist and theologian Ann Russo, LCSW, to treat the psychological, relational, and somatic impacts of religious trauma. The model addresses how coercive faith environments shape nervous system regulation, identity formation, attachment patterns, and moral threat responses. RTTM integrates trauma science with clinical practice and theological literacy in order to interrupt harm rather than reinforce it.
RTTM in Practice and Education
- Ann Russo provides psychotherapy informed by the Religious Trauma Treatment Model™ for adults impacted by religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and faith-based harm. Treatment focuses on how religious control has trained the body, constrained identity, and distorted relational safety. Services are provided through licensed clinical practice and grounded in trauma-informed, evidence-based care.
- The Religious Trauma Treatment Model™ is also taught to mental health professionals through professional training and educational programs. These trainings equip clinicians to recognize religious trauma, understand its mechanisms, and avoid reenacting religious control dynamics within the therapeutic relationship.
- Training supports ethical integration of RTTM principles into independent clinical practice. Completion of training does not grant certification, endorsement, or authority to teach the model.
- The forthcoming book, Religious Trauma Treatment Model, published by PESI Publishing, introduces the clinical foundations of RTTM and situates religious trauma as a legitimate and treatable form of harm. The book is an orienting text. It supports clinical services and those harmed from religion. The Religious Trauma Treatment Model™ (RTTM™) is developed and taught by Ann Russo and offered through licensed clinical services and authorized training contexts.
If you’ve ever felt alone in the therapy room—or unsure how to help a client whose wounds are wrapped in religion—this book is your guide.
Healing from religious trauma shouldn’t feel like heresy.
Religious Trauma Treatment Model™ presents a clinical framework grounded in years of therapeutic work with people shaped by high control religious systems. The book defines religious harm and religious trauma and traces how moral injury and loss of autonomy organize the nervous system, identity, and relational life. These injuries continue to shape experience long after belief shifts.
The book introduces the Religious Trauma Treatment Model as a sequenced model of care. It explains six clinical domains Regulate, Educate, Clarify, Align, Practice, and Sustain and shows how pacing, consent, and restraint protect agency during treatment. Clinical narratives demonstrate how guilt, shame, fear, sexual repression, and moral pressure function as organizing themes rather than isolated symptoms.
This book serves clinicians who need clear language and structure to recognize religious trauma in practice. It also serves people impacted by religious harm who want to understand what happened to them while maintaining authorship over belief, meaning, and identity. The work centers agency.
Information about the book’s release and related professional resources is available through the waitlist.