Spiritual Trauma: The Wound No One Talks About

Spiritual trauma happens when the very place you were told to seek love, truth, and safety becomes a source of fear, shame, or confusion. It’s the betrayal of the soul’s deepest longing — a longing for God, for belonging, for meaning.

And it’s not just confined to churches or religious institutions.

Let’s be clear — spiritual trauma doesn’t require a Bible or a church pew.
It can happen in yoga studios, energy healing sessions, plant medicine circles, or online courses cloaked in light.
Anytime the sacred is used to manipulate, gaslight, or bypass your lived experience — that’s spiritual trauma, too.

Spiritual trauma can also come from modern spiritual spaces — where false gurus manipulate, where hierarchy replaces humility, where devotion is distorted into dependence, and where your sovereignty is eroded in the name of awakening.

The harm doesn’t always come from traditional religion. Sometimes it’s the so-called “healer,” “teacher,” or “channel” who claims divine authority while bypassing real human care.

Wherever your trust in the sacred has been used against you — that’s spiritual trauma.

🔥 What Is Spiritual Trauma?

Spiritual trauma isn’t always obvious. It hides in the nervous system. It burrows into your sense of self. It shows up as unworthiness, fear of being wrong or punished, resistance to trust or surrender.

It can sound like:

  • “What if I go to hell?”

  • “Why do I feel so guilty when I try to leave the church?”

  • “How can I trust God when the people who claimed to speak for Him have caused so much harm?”

  • “Am I being deceived?”

  • “What if I’m wrong and I really do go to hell?”

  • “Why do I still feel afraid, even after I’ve left?”

  • “If God is love, why do I feel so much fear?”

That disconnect? That ache? That’s spiritual trauma.

And it’s time to name it. And it’s time to heal it.

🌀 Spiritual Trauma ≠ Religious Trauma (But They Often Overlap)

Religious trauma is often easier to name — it comes from the outer structures: dogma, doctrine, punishment, power abuse, exclusion, control.

Spiritual trauma is more subtle. It pierces the soul.

It’s what happens when your longing for connection with the Divine is met with distortion. When the sacred is used as a weapon. When you're told to deny your inner knowing, sever your trust, or abandon yourself — all in the name of God.

You can experience religious trauma without losing your spiritual trust. You can also carry deep spiritual trauma even after walking away from religion.

Often, they’re braided together. But the spiritual wound is what lingers — quietly shaping how safe you feel inside your own soul.

It can result from:

  • Being told you were born sinful

  • Hearing about hell before you could understand metaphor

  • Experiencing religious control, dogma, or manipulation

  • Being spiritually bypassed or shamed for your feelings

  • Witnessing hypocrisy, abuse, or exclusion in sacred spaces

  • Not being believed by spiritual leaders or institutions when harm is happening

Sometimes the deepest betrayal is when someone tries to speak up — to protect a child, to name a wrong, to say something doesn’t feel right — and is silenced or dismissed in the name of “faith,” “forgiveness,” or “God’s will.”

Like the father whose sons were sexually abused and who was told by the church, “Innocent until proven guilty.” Technically true. But spiritually? A devastating dismissal of a parent trying to protect his children — in the one place he should have been supported.

This, too, is spiritual trauma. And it must be named.

📖 My Story

I was raised in the church. I loved Jesus with my whole heart. But I also believed I was going to hell.

I walked away — not because I stopped loving Him, but because the shame, the unworthiness, the fear became too loud to ignore.

For a while, I wandered. Then I found a different current of truth — Sanātana Dharma, the eternal path. It offered something I’d never experienced: reverence without fear, discipline without punishment, and direct experience of the Divine that didn’t require a middleman or a performance.

It saved my life.

And when I found my way back to Jesus, I realized he had never left. He wasn’t confined to a pulpit or a church doctrine. He was still right there — alive in my practice, in my breath, in the inner altar of my being.

Spiritual reclamation is tender territory. You don’t have to walk it alone.

Whether you're freshly disentangling from religious conditioning or deep in a reckoning you never saw coming, I offer grounded, compassionate support rooted in truth, sovereignty, and soul integrity.

Here’s how we can work together:

✨ 1:1 Work

Private sessions and immersive containers for healing spiritual trauma, restoring inner trust, and reconnecting with the sacred — on your terms.
This is about reclamation, not repair. Liberation, not loyalty to a broken system.

📚 Suggested Reading

Start with these essential pieces to help name and navigate what’s rising:

💻 Digital Offerings

Accessible tools and teachings to help you reorient to truth, regulate your system, and reclaim your connection to the Divine.
Think of these as sacred breadcrumbs on your path.

🔥 Upcoming Ceremonies + Journeys

In-person gatherings and guided spaces for remembrance, release, and reconnection.
Ceremony speaks where words fall short.

If you’re in this reckoning, I see you.
If you’re trying to hold your love for Jesus while grieving the damage done in His name — I’ve been there.
And I’m here to walk beside you.