Spiritual Wounds and Spiritual Dimensions in the Counselling Room
Spiritual wounds are injuries to a person’s meaning-system, relationship with God (or the sacred), moral framework, and/or spiritual community. They often arise through trauma, loss, coercion, betrayal, shame, or exclusion — and can have a shattering impact on identity, worldview, trust, and sense of belonging.
As counsellors, we may sit with clients for whom spiritual pain is central to their presenting issues, yet difficult to name. This training day will help us meet clients in a spiritually literate, ethically safe and non-preachy way, with sensitivity to both the potential resources and the potential harms of spirituality.
Rooted in Deep Release’s Christian ethos, the training will focus primarily on spiritual wounding within Christian contexts, while also engaging wider cultural dimensions of spirituality and the diverse ways spiritual experience may be understood across communities. With an awareness of how profoundly existential spiritual distress can be, the day will be facilitated gently and thoughtfully, making space for reflection as well as practical learning.
The training will include
- What “spiritual wounds” can look and feel like in the counselling room
- Spiritual trauma and spiritual abuse
- Attachment wounds and the shaping of God-image
- Guilt, shame and moral injury
- Grief, loss and spiritual disorientation (“dark nights” and spiritual struggle)
- Spiritual bypassing: when faith language becomes an avoidance strategy
- Red flags and safeguarding indicators
- Therapist stance: spiritual humility, ethical boundaries, and client-led integration
Come for yourself… come for your clients.
Pauline says:
“While finding faith a profound personal resource, I have also experienced my own ‘dark nights’. There is a particular quality to spiritual wounding: it touches the entirety of our sense of being and wellbeing. Having worked with many clients in deep trauma in this area over many years, I long for our work as counsellors to bring understanding, acceptance, hope and healing.”
