Description & Leaning Objectives

This 2-part clinical training for mental health professionals will provide attendees with the practical skills and clinical interventions they need to competently work with survivors of religious trauma and spiritual abuse. Facilitator, Anna Clark Miller, will examine the unique impacts of these experiences and apply a trauma-informed, client-centered approach to facilitate healing and growth. This 6-hour training will be split into two days and will include four sections focusing on (1) Clinical Competency, (2) Interviewing and Assessment Strategies, (3) Treatment Goals, and (4) Therapeutic Interventions and Modalities. The learning objectives for this training include:

1. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of the unique clinical competencies and cultural considerations essential for effective treatment of survivors of religious and spiritual trauma.

2. Participants will be equipped with formal and informal interviewing and assessment strategies for evaluation, conceptualization, and treatment planning for their religious and spiritual trauma clients.

3. Participants will learn about a variety of practical therapeutic interventions and evidence-based therapy modalities that are effective in the treatment of religious and spiritual trauma.

Training Agenda

• Part 1: Clinical Competency for Religious/Spiritual Trauma

  • Defining key terms, including spirituality, religion, spiritual abuse, religious trauma, and high control groups.

  • Exploring prevalence of religious trauma, co-occurrence with other traumas, and the primary impacts of religious trauma on survivors.

  • Identifying the clinical importance of addressing spirituality and religion in therapy and incorporating essential elements of trauma-informed care.

  • Exploring the importance of clinician self-awareness regarding personal experiences, biases, and self-disclosure.

  • Identifying risks in the therapeutic setting including client transference and reenactments, retraumatization in therapy, and ongoing safety risks.

• Part 2: Interviewing + Assessment Strategies

  • Reviewing formal and informal assessment tools for evaluating the importance/impact of clients' spirituality and past adverse religious or spiritual experiences.

  • Developing interviewing techniques to assess client symptoms and experiences related to fear and hypervigilance, shame, rigid thinking, identity impacts, suppression, dissociation, purity culture, and relationship templates.

• Part 3: Treatment Goals

  • Creating trauma-informed treatment goals for religious trauma survivors, including (1) establishing safety and autonomy, (2) remembering, naming, and grieving, (4) deconstructing damaging beliefs, (5) expanding sense of self, (6) redefining relationships.

  • Developing treatment plans for unique client experiences, including women and men in patriarchal groups, individuals born and raised in high-control groups, racial discrimination, LBGTQ+ conversion practices, spiritualization of illness, neurodivergence, and disability, interpersonal violence, sexual assault, and current and former leaders.

  • Recognizing unique considerations for survivors of groups with a specific emphasis on evangelism, mysticism, high-conformity, etc.

• Part 4: Therapeutic Interventions and Modalities

  • Empowering clients through the implementation of a variety of informal interventions.

  • Utilizing psychoeducation to empower clients with information about autonomy and consent, the cycle of abuse, trauma bonding, learned helplessness, spiritual bypassing, etc.

  • Exploring and implementing evidence-based theories and therapy modalities including Memory Reconsolidation, Cognitive Approaches (CBT), Therapeutic Deconstruction, Existential & Narrative Approaches, Psychodynamic Approaches, Attachment Theory, Somatic Approaches, Expressive Arts, Parts Work, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Group Therapy.

Presenter Qualifications

Anna Clark Miller, LPC-S, LMHC-S, NCC, is a licensed counselor and clinical supervisor practicing in Texas, Washington, and Oregon. She has a masters degree in counseling psychology and has worked in the counseling field since 2015. As a counseling graduate student, she learned about religious trauma and its impacts on people from high-control religious communities, igniting her interest in this specialty. Today she specializes in treating survivors of religious and spiritual trauma and training the mental health professionals who work with them. She is the author of the Religious Trauma Survival Guide: Education and Recovery for Survivors and Professionals, which offers a path to healing from high-control religious experiences. Through her company, Empathy Paradigm, Anna manages the Religious Trauma Therapist Directory and a library of other practical resources for religious trauma survivors and mental health professionals. Licensing: LPC (Texas) - 75728, LMHC (Washington) - LH61328702, NCC - 718936.

Additional Information

Intended Audience: Licensed counselors, psychologists, clinical social workers, and other mental health professionals.

Research sources for this presentation can be found here: www.empathyparadigm.com/sources.

Please send questions to info@empathyparadigm.com.