Religious Addiction

When I read this post by Bethany Faden on Facebook, I could tell immediately that she was onto something. Rather than link to the post, I’m copying it here in its entirety and giving her full credit for it. 

Addiction, at its core, isn’t about pleasure-seeking. It’s about attachment substitution.

Most people associate addiction with substance abuse. But addiction can form around anything that provides relief from chronic dysregulation.

Religious addiction is not a rejection of God. It’s the misuse of religious structure in place of divine relationship.

It forms when spirituality becomes fused with emotional survival—when rituals aren’t a path to communion, but a way to numb shame, anxiety, or internal chaos.

This usually starts early, in homes or communities where emotional needs were suppressed or called selfish.

Where religious language moralized behavior but failed to validate pain. So kids adapt: they become spiritually high-performing—but relationally fragmented.

Their nervous systems learn: approval = safety, compliance = worthiness, silence = peace.

So they cling to the architecture of religion—not because they lack belief, but because belief alone never earned them the love they needed.

We must distinguish religious addiction from real discipleship.

Addiction is rigid, anxious, and externalized.

Discipleship is grounded, transformative, integrated.

One demands perfection to feel secure.

The other invites wholeness through grace.

This isn’t a call to leave religion—it’s a call to disentangle it from the wounds that distort its purpose.

Healing doesn’t mean abandoning spiritual practice. It means stopping the escape from the vulnerability that allows real transformation.

True faith doesn’t punish your humanity—it redeems it.

True religion doesn’t require your disappearance—it requires your presence.

If you’re compulsively striving, emotionally numb, or afraid you’re never “enough,” even in your devotion—it’s not a weak testimony.

It’s a nervous system that never felt safe in love.

And that, too, can be healed.

You don’t need to abandon the sacred to become whole.

Just let God meet the parts your performance was protecting.

That’s not apostasy.

That’s restoration.

And it’s holy.