In person in Wichita & online across Kansas
Therapy for Spiritual Harm
When things go wrong in your spiritual life, it can feel like the rug was just pulled out from under you. The places that felt like home, connection and belonging instead become places of confusion, anger and grief. You might not feel sure about what to believe, you may be grieving the loss of your community, and it may be hard to figure out how God fits into this mess.
Whether this experience feels more like religious trauma, church hurt, spiritual abuse, deconstruction, or something else - it can be incredibly painful. But you don’t have to experience this alone.
How Do You Know If You Have Experienced Spiritual Harm?
Perhaps you have experience with situations like:
watching a cover up or experiencing a betrayal in a faith community that rocked your world
controlling organizations and communities with broken promises that left you floundering and angry
being in ministry and financially dependent but also hurting, burnt-out, experiencing compassion fatigue, or having taboo struggles with mental health
looking like a good Christian family in public but in private….
Or maybe some of these phrases have begun to feel like they’re sticking in your throat:
“Just have faith”
“God hates divorce”
“Love keeps no record of wrong”
“The heart is deceitful”
“Touch not God's anointed”
And it has added up to some of these feelings:
Fearful, anxious, or angry
Trapped by failure and shame
Torn between faith and identity
Grieving the loss of community
Unsure what you believe and how to heal
Finding a Therapist for Religious Trauma
Have you wondered if therapy could be a safe place for you?
Perhaps you're just looking for a therapist who is already familiar with church leadership structures, Christian culture and scripture, so you don't spend sessions explaining things to a puzzled face - you want someone who instantly “gets it.” Or perhaps you're not sure if certain experiences have left you wanting to reimagine faith or walk away entirely and you need someone who can hold understanding space while you figure out. Perhaps you are looking for someone who can bring Jesus into therapy in a meaningful, healing manner.
I am a person of deep personal faith but I also know how to hold space for where you're at, no matter where that is. You can be done with faith yet still needing to heal the religious trauma, you can know you want to bring Jesus into healing from wounds, or you can just feel bewildered about how to make sense of what you experienced. Wherever you are is where we'll meet. You won't be rushed or forced here.
I offer free consultations to all new clients, so that you can figure out if this is the right fit. I want you to enter therapy confident that you’re in a place that will feel safe and bring the healing you’re looking for.
How To Treat Spiritual Trauma
You’re probably looking for a therapist who understands the dynamics of religious trauma, betrayal, shame, control, financial quandaries, deconstruction or the multitude of other ways that spirituality can become entangled with mental health struggles. You may be also looking for someone who can also hold space for deeply complicated spirituality where it intersects with trauma. We’ll work with that intersection, wherever it is for you right now.
But the brain and body are also deeply impacted by these kind of situations, so as we work on healing these experiences, we’ll also be doing brain and body work. Talking about spiritual experiences without also mending the experience of your whole self (or vice versa!) can lead to ongoing, unresolved distress. Trauma lives on in the body and reaches into the future of thought patterns. So we’ll bring healing to your whole self as we treat spiritual hurts. Some of the tools I use to help clients heal spiritual trauma include:
Somatic therapy holds space for the body’s experience. We won’t just talk about what happened; I’ll also ask what you’re noticing inside right now. We’ll listen to the cues held in emotions and sensations, then help that experience to move through your body. This isn’t a body treatment that involves touch (like a massage), but it does pay attention to how experiences have landed in your body and bring gentle healing there.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) processes trauma while also keeping your brain busy with the body-based tasks like eye movements or hand-held pulsators. Splitting your attention this way helps the sensations, emotions and beliefs that got stuck during that trauma, release, settle down and come to rest.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) explores the beliefs, guilt and shame that occupy your brain and dictate your behaviors, allowing you to restore a sense of agency and self, based on the values you hold.
There’s space here for you to sort out how spirituality, brain, and body were all impacted by your experiences, and space to bring them all into healing together. My goal for your therapy is simply that you find healing.
I offer a free consultation to all new clients because I want you to enter therapy with confidence that you’re in the right place, working with the person who feels right to you. Reach out today to schedule your free consultation and take the next step toward relief.