Religious/Spiritual Trauma: A Comprehensive Treatment Guide (December 2026)

Course Details

Thursday, December 10, 2026 - 8:00am - 3:00pm PT | 10:00am - 5:00pm CT | 11:00am - 6:00pm ET

Length: 7 hours total including a lunch break

Format: Live/recorded virtual training

Facilitator: Anna Clark Miller, LPC-S, LMHC-S

Intended Audience: Helping professionals including counselors, psychologists, social workers, and community leaders.

Description

Religious and spiritual trauma undermine a survivor's sense of self, autonomy, and connectedness in community, leaving lasting impacts on their psychological, physical, and social wellbeing. Despite recent research suggesting that a third of U.S. adults have had traumatic religious/spiritual experiences, many professionals feel ill-equipped to address these pervasive issues. Without adequate training, clinicians run the risk of inadvertently minimizing these experiences, imposing their biases onto clients, or recreating harmful dynamics in the therapeutic relationship. 

This full-day comprehensive training will equip mental health clinicians with the specialized knowledge and clinical competencies necessary to effectively assess and treat the complex trauma that can occur in spiritual communities—from cults to mainstream groups. 

Participants will explore core concepts—such as spiritual abuse, shame, high-control group dynamics, purity culture, and spiritual bypassing—while learning to recognize the multifaceted cognitive, emotional, relational, and somatic symptoms that clients experience. Across six detailed modules, this training addresses the therapeutic relationship, clinician biases, safety risks, and intersecting identities, alongside targeted assessment tools, psychoeducational strategies, and practical in-session interventions. Ultimately, the evidence-based treatment approaches covered in this training will provide clinicians with a roadmap to offer culturally competent care that promotes healing and autonomy for survivors of religious and spiritual trauma.

Learning Objectives

1. Conceptualization: Participants will identify the core concepts and multifaceted impacts of religious and spiritual trauma—including considerations for vulnerable populations and intersecting traumas.

2. Clinical Ethics: Participants will be equipped with an ethical framework for navigating the therapeutic relationship, power dynamics, and clinician biases while addressing sensitive spiritual topics.

3. Assessment & Treatment Planning: Participants will utilize tools to assess client experiences and construct culturally competent treatment plans that address complex religious and spiritual trauma.

4. Evidence-Based Interventions: Participants will acquire practical, evidence-based tools, exercises, and interventions to help clients process shame, rebuild autonomy, and heal holistically.

Training Agenda

• Part 1: Core Concepts of Religious and Spiritual Trauma

  • Prevalence of religious/spiritual trauma and its wide-reaching impact on clients cognitively, emotionally, socially, physically, and spiritually. 

  • Definition of key terms including religious/spiritual trauma, spiritual abuse, high-control groups, cults, etc.

  • Common signs and symptoms of religious/spiritual trauma including spiritual anxiety, shame, learned helplessness, rigid thinking, identity confusion, self-suppression, dissociation, sexual dysfunction, relationship struggles, complex grief, and more.

  • Foundational concepts including loss of autonomy, coercive control, spiritual bypassing, purity culture, deconstruction, etc.

• Part 2: Clinical Competencies

  • Importance of exploring positive and negative aspects of client spirituality

  • Common challenges in the therapeutic relationship including the recreation of teacher/disciple power dynamics

  • Conscious and unconscious clinician biases and the potential impacts of self-disclosure

  • Cultural competency considerations for unique group experiences that require a tailored approach

  • Client safety risks and retraumatization risks in therapy

• Part 3: Spiritual Abuse and Dysfunctional Group Dynamics

  • Group-normalized relationship dysfunction that clients may unknowingly recreate

  • Group structures, teachings, and practices that produce control and coercion

  • Multifaceted tactics of spiritual abuse depicted in the Group Power and Control Wheel 

  • Direct impacts of spiritual abuse on survivors (disempowerment, isolation, suppression, financial dependence, vulnerability to revictimization, etc.)

  • Specific group dynamics with unique impacts on clients (patriarchy and purity culture, evangelistic groups, high-mysticism, distrust of science/medical care, closed communities, etc.)

  • Trauma bonding and other community influences that may impact client readiness to change

• Part 4: Unique Populations and Intersecting Traumas

  • Unique client experiences and vulnerable populations that require a tailored approach (childhood experiences, women, LGBTQ+, BIPOC, people with disabilities, etc.) 

  • Navigating intersecting traumas such as sexual abuse, domestic abuse, or medical trauma while in a high-control group

  • Addressing unique impacts of purity culture and sex/gender control

  • Complex experiences of current or former leaders who may have perpetuated harm

• Part 5: Assessment and Treatment Planning

  • Formal and informal assessment tools for religious and spiritual trauma and abuse

  • Motivational interviewing techniques for drawing out client experiences

  • General treatment goals including establishing autonomy, developing spiritually-neutral coping, addressing shame, grieving complex loss, building curiosity, reimagining relationships, etc. 

  • Promoting body connection and memory reconsolidation for holistic trauma recovery.

  • Overview of the most researched therapy modalities for treatment of religious/spiritual trauma (CBT, EMDR, IFS, somatic, expressive arts, groups, etc.)

  • Potential risks and benefits of different treatment approaches and interventions.

• Part 6: Practical Therapeutic Interventions

  • Useful therapy tools and techniques for processing and healing from religious/spiritual trauma 

  • Psychoeducation tools aimed at raising client awareness and reducing risk of revictimization

  • Client exercises for exploring identity, reclaiming autonomy, combating shame, implementing boundaries, differentiation, etc. 

  • Strategies for supporting therapeutic deconstruction or spiritual reconnection (when appropriate) without imposing personal views.

Sources

Research sources that inform this presentation are cited here: www.empathyparadigm.com/sources.

Presenter Qualifications

Anna Clark Miller, LPC-S, LMHC-S, NCC, is a licensed counselor, supervisor, author, and clinical trainer living in Washington State. After earning a master's degree in counseling psychology in 2015, she gained clinical experience through private practice, crisis intervention, and community mental health. Her focus on religious and spiritual trauma is rooted in her own lived experience as a survivor who struggled to find culturally competent care. In addition to her direct work with clients, Anna's passion is equipping mental health professionals with the ethical framework needed to promote autonomy and healing for survivors of religious and spiritual harm. She is the author of For God's Sake: Recovering from Religious Trauma, a practical guide for healing from high-control religious experiences. Through her company, Empathy Paradigm, she manages a Religious Trauma Therapist Directory and a library of resources for survivors and mental health professionals. 

(Licensing: TX LPC #75728, OR LPC #C8578, WA LMHC #LH61328702, NCC #718936.)

Continuing Education Credits

This program offers 6.0 continuing education hours for attendees who register with CEUs included.

Empathy Paradigm has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7921. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Empathy Paradigm is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Additional Information

Please send questions or accommodation requests to info@empathyparadigm.com.