Psychotherapy
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What Religious Trauma Actually Does to the Nervous System
It is Thanksgiving, and a woman who left her childhood church eleven years ago is standing in her mother’s kitchen when an uncle asks, not unkindly, whether she has found her way back yet.She has an answer ready. She has had this conversation before. But her stomach drops before she can open her mouth, and…
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What Actually Makes Therapy Work
**What Actually Makes Therapy Work** Early in my career I kept having the same experience. I would learn a new approach, throw myself into it with genuine conviction, and find that it worked. Then I would move to another approach, bring the same conviction, and find that it worked too. CBT worked. Psychodynamic work worked.…
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Therapy After Leaving the Mormon Church
In much of the American West, leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not simply a religious transition. It is a reconfiguration of almost everything. The church does not just organize Sunday mornings. It organizes the neighborhood, the social calendar, the business relationships, the school friendships, the rhythms of the week and…
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Spiritual Direction for People Who’ve Left Religion
The word spiritual stops a lot of people before they get to the second word. If you have left a religion, you may have good reasons for that. The word carries freight. It can sound like a return to something you worked hard to leave, or a softer version of the same territory in more…
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Therapy After Leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses
Leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses is not like leaving most religious communities. In most traditions, leaving means drifting. Attending less often. Letting the connection thin out over time. The community may notice, may reach out, may eventually stop calling. But the separation is gradual and the door, if not exactly open, is at least not locked…
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Therapy After Leaving the Two by Twos
By now, most people who have left the Two by Twos, or who are somewhere in the process of leaving, know the broad outlines of what happened. The documented abuse. The workers who harmed children and vulnerable adults over decades. The cover-up that protected perpetrators and left survivors alone with what had been done to…
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Why Depth Therapy Moves Slowly, and Why That Matters
Most people come to therapy wanting relief. That is not a criticism. It is a completely understandable response to pain. Something is wrong, something has been wrong for long enough, and the reasonable hope is that a skilled person can help identify what it is and how to address it. The same logic that leads…
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Rebuilding Inner Authority After Spiritual Abuse
Spiritual abuse often damages a person’s relationship with their own inner authority. That is one of its deepest effects. The harm is not only in what was taught or done. It is also in what the person learned to distrust inside themselves. Their questions.Their perceptions.Their anger.Their body.Their desires.Their conscience.Their sense that something was wrong. In…
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The Problem with Constant Self-Optimization
People often arrive carrying the quiet exhaustion of trying to improve themselves all the time. There is a difference between growth and relentless self-management.
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Why Some Healing Cannot Be Rushed
Some wounds were formed slowly, over years of adaptation. They rarely soften through force. Depth-oriented work asks for patience.