10 Steps to Healing from Spiritual Trauma

1. Name Your Experience

What you experienced is what you experienced. It is easy to dismiss, minimize, or deny difficult realities, but facing them is a critical element for growth. If you’ve experienced spiritual abuse, you’ve likely had your reality distorted, denied, dismissed, and minimized, which causes harm. Others may have caused you harm by trying to tell you what you’re experiencing. Yet, no one else can access the inner world from which define your experience. Your experience is your experience.

You can start undoing harm by naming elements of your experience, including the facts of what happened and how it impacted you. Putting words to your thoughts, feelings, body sensations, fears, doubts, confusions, and feelings of guilt, anger, sadness, and fear, can help you experience healing. It’s not always easy to describe our internal experiences due to how our brains react to trauma. There’s grace for that. Name what you can when you can.

2. Notice What You Notice

Part of naming your experience includes naming what you notice. At first, it’s common to notice details about events and situations that happened to you. If that’s where you need to start, start there. As you can, notice what happens in your body as you remember past events or wrestle through current challenges. Are your shoulders tight? Is your stomach upset? Where does tension show up in your face, neck, shoulders, back, or other body areas?

For now, just notice. Notice what your thoughts are. Notice the various emotions that surface or feel like they need to surface. Your brain may want to assign meaning that leads to shame. Notice that. Just notice what is as it shows up.

Some people find it helpful to journal what they notice. If you need structured support for naming and noticing, some find this tool helpful for the process. It’s OK if the noticing occurs gradually, a little here and a little there.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Fizkes

3. Allow Space for Honest Connection to Your Story

You may have been taught that your thoughts, feelings, insights, and choices were problematic. Maybe you were told they are sinful or need to be eliminated, or you’ll miss out on something with God if you don’t change them. When this happens, our brain and body’s natural defenses of flight, flight, or freeze kick in. Flight may look like heightened anger, quick and intense reactions to others, or verbally exploding in unhealthy ways. Flight may look like anxious energy or intense activities like working out. Freeze may look like shutting down, lacking energy, and isolating.

The above examples are simply depictions of what happens to some people. Only you can get honest about what happens inside you as you consider your story. Only you can honestly reflect on the experiences you’ve had and the pain you hold. Allow space to connect honestly with your story and how it’s impacted you. What has your response looked like? Notice it. Name it. Connect to it. It is what it is, and it won’t always be that way.

4. Find Others Who Provide Space for Your Story

Who can provide space for your story? A family member? A friend? Is someone there who’s been through something similar? A coach? A counselor? I can’t tell you who it will be, only you get to choose who is trustworthy enough to hold space for your story. They don’t have to agree with your assessment of your experiences to provide a comforting presence. Find others who can listen, ask questions, and help you feel seen, heard, and valued.

This step may feel extra challenging, particularly when pastors, leaders, counselors, or someone in authority is the cause of harm you’ve experienced. You may wonder if there is anyone you can trust. Some survivors of spiritual trauma are tentative with new people and skeptical of anyone in a position that reminds them of the source of their abuse. You may need to look in new places.

Photo Credit: Unsplash/Jack Sharp 

5. Allow Space for Emotions

Deep breaths. I can just hear a litany of commands from Christians who assert destructive authority over others by telling them they shouldn’t feel a certain way. Maybe you’ve been told fear is a liar, you can’t trust your feelings, or you just need to (pray, pray more, trust God, let it go).

My heart aches for all the ways we are taught to deny connection to ourselves and the reality of our inner world. God wants to connect to our true selves, as we are, where we are, and as we’re experiencing it. When we feel fear, anger, and sadness, there’s a reason. There’s also a path for healing and it comes through processing emotional experiences, especially with others who create space for them - and with God who feels with you.

If the feelings need to be felt, may you receive grace for yourself by creating space for them. 

6. Allow Healing in Layers

One of the frustrating things about healing is the time it takes. When our nervous systems have been on high alert because so much felt emotionally unsafe, it’s natural to want immediate relief. Because the process is slow and includes feelings we want to stop experiencing, it makes sense to want quick answers.

Healing occurs in layers. One step at a time. Some layers feel more significant than others, and every layer is essential to a future with freedom, peace, and joy. The healing process includes helping your brain, body, heart, mind, and nervous system recalibrate over time. Although it may be frustrating when you have reactions you don’t want to have, or anger or sadness feels never-ending, you are designed for beautiful, courageous growth - over time.

Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/KatarzynaBialasiewicz 

7. Recalibrate Step by Step

Spiritual abuse and harm affect your nervous system, your beliefs, your thought processes, and so much of your whole makeup. You may be on high alert, as mentioned above, and see situations as dangerous that aren’t because something reminds your body of what wasn’t safe before. It takes time to recalibrate what got upended in you.
 Notice what alarms you and what brings calm again. When you notice your body is on high alert when it doesn’t have to be, consider a phrase that reminds you you’re safe, or identify what about your current environment feels safe. Because safety signals get messed up, some people find it helpful to remind themselves they're safe now, or they cling to a helpful phrase, thought, or memory that centers them when everything else doesn’t make sense. It may be helpful to learn key attributes of safe people and notice them in others (like people you’ve known or fictional characters).

Like an oven being reset to perform how it was designed, your mind, body, and emotions can recalibrate so you feel calm and clear.

8. Grieve What Was Lost

Through your experiences of spiritual trauma, you will notice a number of losses. Losses may include relationships, communities, beliefs, a sense of self, a place to belong, and time. Multiple losses can lead to complicated or complex grief, which feels incredibly messy and overwhelming. You may feel good some days and suddenly grief floods in. On other days, it may feel like the losses are so stacked up that you’ll never escape from under them.

Grieving occurs in layers too. The process of grief requires feeling the feelings at times when you are alone and free to weep uncontrollably or scream if necessary. However, we’re not meant to grieve all alone. When others join us in grief, when we feel their presence with us through the messiness of it all, we are unburdened by the heaviness grief brings.

You’ve lost what you wished you had. Grief makes sense. Whatever time it takes, grieving what was lost will help you move into new physical, physiological, mental, emotional, and relational states.

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9. Celebrate What Is Good

You may have had damaging experiences from being told to focus on what seemed good to someone else. If so, their distorted view of good is not the focus here. You get to choose to celebrate what is good as an act of self-compassion and a gift for the healing journey you’re on.
 Celebrating what is good is not meant to negate the reality of what felt bad; rather, it is meant to help you live a fully integrated life with the reality of good and bad. When we learn to hold the two together, we are healing.

Your body and mind may fight against receiving good things (like acceptance from others, validation of your story, being seen & heard, or being told good things about you). Consider allowing short-term discomfort while you intentionally take in experiences of good. Multiple exchanges with God and others could be a critical piece of moving from stress beyond imagination to calm with clarity.

10. Find Something to Enjoy

In my healing journey, I learned I struggled to enjoy life. I performed so I wouldn’t be rejected, which led to taking on far more than my share of responsibility. In an EMDR session, God revealed he’d given me things to enjoy. My reaction was a panic attack. Maybe you’ve struggled to enjoy things too. Like playful activities, creative outlets, hobbies, and having fun with friends. If you need ideas, consider what you’ve enjoyed in the past. What would you like to enjoy today, this week, or in the future?

These steps for healing are a mere introduction to concepts I’ve experienced for myself and use with clients. Every step is rich with potential but far from all there is to glean in the recovery process.

One-size fits all approaches do not fit the bill for healing spiritual and emotional trauma. I hope you’ll use what feels helpful and glean from this article repeatedly.

For today, I take a deep breath as I think of the weariness you feel. I see your courage coming through.

If you’d like more resources on healing from spiritual trauma, I’m working on something for Growing A Cultivated Life newsletter subscribers. By signing up, you’ll be notified when it’s ready for you.

Note: If you’re an adult in Texas looking for a Christian trauma & abuse-informed therapist, you’re welcome to request a free consult so you can see if I’d be a good fit for you.

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