Deconstruct
your inner
critic
Therapy for Religious Trauma & Faith Deconstruction (Online Across Tennessee)
Make sense of the voice in your head that still tells you you’re not enough.
For adults navigating anxiety, identity, and relationships after leaving or questioning faith
You’ve been “fine” for a while now.
You’ve put some safe distance between yourself and the conservative religious environment you grew up in.
But the anxiety in the back of your mind persists, telling you you’re not good enough, that you’ll never be good enough.
Your relationships feel tense and confusing, and your life feels … stuck.
Maybe the tension with conservative family members has gotten more unmanageable.
Maybe you’re starting to figure out that your sexuality or gender is more expansive than what would have been safe for younger you.
It’s hard to make decisions, let alone progress in your career,
because you’re not really sure what you want or if you’re allowed to want it.
You’ve been to therapy before, or at least read some self-help books,
but no one’s ever really named the impact of religious trauma on your adult life.
You thought leaving that church would be enough.
But between family members who didn’t leave,
the shaming voice in the back of your mind,
and the state of the world,
you’re starting to feel haunted by your past religious experiences.
And it’s hard to explain to others.
This is more common than you think—and it makes sense.
You may love being an overachieving problem-solver, but your mental health isn’t a problem you have to solve on your own.
I offer online therapy to clients anywhere in Tennessee. Read about my approach to online therapy here: Online Therapy in Tennessee
You might be experiencing religious trauma if…
You feel intense guilt or shame for normal thoughts or desires
You struggle to trust yourself after leaving religion
You’re afraid of being wrong, punished, or rejected
You feel responsible for other people’s emotions
You don’t know what you actually want—just what you “should” want
You feel stuck between who you were taught to be and who you are now
If this sounds familiar, you’re not broken—your environment shaped you this way.
Hi there. I’m Karen Chambless (she/her), a licensed therapist based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I specialize in working with adults processing the lasting impact of religious trauma and faith deconstruction.
Growing up in a religious environment impacts you for the rest of your life, whether in positive or negative ways. For most of us raised in the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, there was at least some harm mixed in with the good.
I bring both clinical training and lived experience to this work. I understand the psychological, emotional, relational, and even financial impact of control-based religion.
I speak the language of Christianity including the evangelical and fundamentalist “dialects.” I’ve wrestled with embracing my identity that doesn’t look anything like who my parents raised me to be. And I’ve shouted into the void until some answers came back.
In our work together, we might grieve, rage, laugh, cry, and rebuild. We’ll find the pieces of yourself that survived the repression, denial, gaslighting, abandonment, and punishment. We’ll reclaim some form of spirituality, if you want.
No platitudes. No forced forgiveness. No shaming. Just a space where you can be fully seen, understood, and supported as you untangle the knots in your nervous system that you didn't ask to be put there.
I promise that you and I are smarter and stronger together than any pastor, parent, or deity of your childhood.
We’ll work together to help you trust your own voice more than the ones that once defined you.
What working with me feels like
Therapy with me isn’t about fixing you or convincing you to think differently.
It’s a space where you don’t have to perform, explain, or translate your experience into something more acceptable.
You can bring the anger, the grief, the doubt, the “this is all bullshit” thoughts, the fear that you might be wrong, the part of you that still feels pulled back toward what you were taught.
We’ll slow things down enough to actually make sense of what you’ve been through—not just intellectually, but in your body, your relationships, and your sense of self.
Some days that looks like untangling shame or getting out of mental loops.
Some days it looks like reconnecting with parts of you that had to go quiet to survive.
No forced forgiveness. No spiritual bypassing. No pressure to land anywhere in particular.
Just space to figure out what’s true for you—and support while you do it.
You don’t have to have it all figured out before you start.
Need more than weekly therapy?
Some people don’t need more sessions—they need more time.
If you tend to think deeply, take a while to open up, or feel like therapy just gets going right as it ends, Deep Work sessions might be a better fit.
These are extended sessions (90 minutes to 3 hours) designed to help you go further, settle in, and actually work through what’s been feeling stuck.
You don’t have to keep doing this by yourself.
You’ve already tried pushing through it, figuring it out on your own, being the strong one.
And it’s not working the way you hoped.
That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
It means you weren’t meant to do this alone.
You don’t need to have a perfect explanation.
You don’t need to be 100% sure what’s going on.
You just need a place to start.
We’ll figure out together whether this feels like a good fit.
No pressure. No commitment required.