Meet the hosts

Laura Anderson

Dr. Laura Anderson is a licensed psychotherapist, trauma resolution coach, author, educator, and speaker from Nashville, TN. She grew up in a high control religion and was a part of a ministry family where she lived on-site at a fundamentalist Christian camp. Post-high school, Laura was hired to work at her church in an assistant role where she finished a bachelor’s degree in Christian Ministry to pass the time while she waited for her future husband to appear. As a teenager in the thick of purity culture, Laura believed that her sole purpose in life was to be a wife and mother but after becoming a spinster at the age of 25 opted to continue pursuing her education, eventually becoming a Marriage and Family Therapist. 

It was during her time in her master’s degree program that Laura began to feel free to ask questions (what we now call deconstruction) and adopt different ways of thinking, believing, acting, and viewing the world. This process eventually led her out of organized religion and into her own process of healing from religious trauma and the impact of high control religion. 

In 2016, Laura noticed a mass exodus of individuals from religion due to the political climate in the United States and began educating people in social media spaces about fundamentalism, high control religion, cults, dynamics of power and control, and religious trauma. This led her to co-create the Religious Trauma Institute in 2019 and in 2021 she opened the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery–a fully online trauma coaching company with practitioners who are trauma informed and trained to work with individuals coming out of cults, fundamentalism, and high control religion. 

Laura’s book, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High Control Religion comes out in October 2023

Laura’s Links

Website - www.drlauraeanderson.com
Instagram - @drlauraeanderson        
TikTok - @drlauraeanderson  
Twitter  - @lauraeanderson

Andrew Kerbs is a trauma resolution coach, writer, and former licensed psychotherapist from Wilmington, North Carolina. He grew up in Seventh-day Adventism as a 4th generation Adventis, and had never even attended a non-SDA school until community college. From an early age, Andrew always wanted to help people and had decided to go to seminary upon completing his bachelors degree at a state university. Due to financial constraints and the early murmurings of deconstruction (though he did not have that language at the time), Andrew ended up attending a local university to pursue his Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling instead. Andrew has since worked as a professional counselor in a number of settings including community mental health agencies, therapeutic wilderness programs, mobile crisis teams, and therapeutic day schools.

Andrew began focusing on trauma-informed therapy models and while simultaneously pulling further away from Seventh-day Adventism and even Christianity. He began hearing and listening to the stories of others who had left high-control religion, who had been harmed by it, and were now trying to heal. He realized two things: first, that many folks who were leaving these religions had symptoms of trauma, and second, that many clinicians and assessment tools were painfully inadequate at recognizing religious trauma as actual trauma.

This all culminated in Andrew pursuing trauma resolution coaching where he could focus full-time on religious trauma healing. Andrew has had the privilege of working with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery since it opened in May of 2021 and quit his full-time therapy job a few months later. The rest, as they say, is history.

Andrew’s Links

Instagram: @decontruct_everything
TikTok: @deconstruct_everything
Twitter: @deconstruct_et