When Spiritual Healing Becomes Spiritual Harm
How my journey from sexual trauma to spiritual manipulation taught me to recognize the patterns that prey on women
She sits across from me, twenty-three years old, hands trembling as she describes what happened at the retreat. "He said my resistance to the ceremony was just my trauma talking," she whispers. "That if I really wanted to heal, I needed to surrender to what the medicine was showing me." Her voice cracks. "I kept saying no, but he told me that was my ego protecting the wound... That I needed to let go of my boundaries."
Her body tells the story her words can't quite capture.
Shoulders curved inward, protecting her heart. Breath shallow and quick, like she's still trying to outrun something and someone. Hands pressed against her legs, anchoring herself to this room, to this moment where someone might actually believe her.
What she doesn't know yet is that I see her so clearly because I've been her, not in the exact same circumstances, but in the felt sense of having your body based knowing systematically undermined by someone using spiritual language as coercion and manipulation.
I know what it's like to seek healing from sexual violation only to be spiritually violated by the very people promising to help.
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She was the third client that month who told me this type of story. No story is exactly the same, but the details are so similar that an uncomfortable feeling began to rise deep within my body. So deep that these words now exist for you to read.
There was the breathwork facilitator who "guided" one of my clients into a sexual healing that wasn't healing. A plant medicine shaman who explained that one of my clients' discomfort during his touch was just ancestral trauma leaving her body. A tantric teacher who reframed my client's frozen response as "divine feminine receptivity."
Three different women with three different "spiritual" men, but all of them had the same underlying pattern: spiritual language used as a weapon against a woman's embodied knowing. And all of them now carrying the additional weight of having sought spiritual healing for sexual trauma, only to have that seeking weaponized against them.
I understand this pattern so intimately because I lived it.
I know what it costs to override your nervous system's intelligence in service of someone else's definition of spiritual growth.
My journey into this terrain began when I was twenty-three, living with the leftover impacts of sexual trauma that traditional therapy hadn't been able to touch. I had tried talk therapy, cognitive behavioural approaches, mindfulness-based approaches, arts-based therapy and even some somatic work, but something essential remained frozen in my body. There were fragments of memories. Horrific flashbacks. A scream inside my mind at all times. There was body pain—a general sense of panic every moment of every day.
The sexual violations I had experienced as a child lived in my adult nervous system like undigested fragments, and no amount of understanding, meaning making, processing or reframing seemed to reach them.
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Because I grew up in what I call the spiritual bubble—raised by a mother who turned to Reiki, energy healing, crystals, and homeopathy when conventional medicine couldn't help—spirituality wasn't alternative to me, it was home. By the time I was twenty-three, these modalities had become an integral part of how I understood healing and the world itself. So when traditional therapy failed to touch my sexual trauma, returning to spiritual healing felt natural, familiar, and safe. But this time, I was desperate… desperate in the ways I imagine my mother had been when she was seeking healing for our family
This is why when a male therapist told me about psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, it felt like the answer I'd been searching for. Here was medicine that could reach the places talk therapy couldn't touch. Here were facilitators who understood trauma as more than just thoughts and memories… they understood trauma as energy, as spirit, as something that could be healed through transcendence rather than endless talking and processing.
At the last minute, something in my body made me pull back from working with him. I'm grateful I listened to that instinct, because he later tried to initiate a sexual relationship with me after our therapeutic work ended. I still wonder what would have happened if I had ignored my body's warning, if I had been even more vulnerable in a ceremony with someone who so clearly didn't understand boundaries. However, my backing away from him didn't protect me from the pattern. It just delayed my encounter with it.
If this piece stirred something in you, if your body remembers the places you weren’t believed, or longs to reclaim its truth, you’re not alone.
IINBODY is a 7-module online course designed to help you unravel the stories you’ve carried in silence, reconnect with the wisdom of your sensations, and begin the courageous work of rewriting your relationship with your body from the inside out. Through somatic practice, narrative healing, and trauma-informed ritual, Inbody offers a path not just back to yourself, but back to a form of belonging that doesn’t require you to abandon your knowing.
For three years, I was immersed in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and plant medicine work, convinced I was finally feeling and healing the sexual trauma that traditional therapy never seemed to allow me to access I found facilitators who spoke about trauma as trapped energy, who promised that the medicine could show me what my rational mind couldn't access, who offered healing that didn't require me to relive my violations through endless talking.
In ceremonies, I journeyed to incredible realms of consciousness and received life-changing insights about the nature of my trauma. I could feel my body as energy rather than flesh, experience myself as consciousness rather than form. For someone whose flesh had been violated, whose form had been harmed, this felt like the ultimate liberation. And it was healing—in ceremony.
But something else was happening that I didn't recognize at first. When my body contracted during certain practices, when I felt unsafe with particular facilitators, when something in my gut said "no," these responses were reframed as spiritual resistance. "Your body is holding old trauma," they'd say. "This discomfort is just the wounds leaving. You need to breathe through the resistance and trust the process."
This is how I learned to override my nervous system's intelligence in real time. My trauma-informed protective responses, the very wisdom that could detect danger, got pathologized as evidence of my spiritual immaturity and history of trauma.
Slowly, I began to recognize something uncomfortable within myself: I was becoming very good at leaving my body while my ordinary life remained essentially unchanged.
I could access profound states in ceremony, but the trauma still dictated how I moved through each day. The practitioners had been celebrating this disconnection as spiritual advancement. My ability to "go deep" was seen as progress. My capacity to “drink more” medicine was seen as an advancement. My willingness to surrender ordinary awareness was evidence of my commitment to healing.
But none of them questioned whether someone with sexual trauma should be encouraged to dissociate from their body, even in the service of spiritual growth. None of them seemed to understand that for trauma survivors, the ability to leave the body can be a survival skill disguised as spiritual advancement.
The wake-up call came through ordinary life.
Despite years of ceremonial experiences, I couldn't feel safe in my body during intimate moments. I still didn’t know how to use my voice, and my emotions would still take control of my reality. I also still didn’t know how to trust my boundaries with humans. The sexual trauma remained untouched, now compounded by profound disconnection from my embodied wisdom. I had learned to see my body's "no" as something to transcend rather than honour.
I had sought healing from sexual violation only to learn new ways to violate my own embodied knowing, and I had also become addicted to transcendence as an escape.
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This recognition led me to make a radical decision: I stepped away from the psychedelic world and entered classical psychoanalysis.
At least five times a week, I was with her doing the most boring, unglamorous work imaginable, feeling my feelings without trying to transform them, sitting with my defences without trying to transcend them, staying present with my patterns without trying to spiritualize them.
It was the least "spiritual" thing I had ever done.
And it was the most healing.
For the first time in my life, I was learning to be present with my body exactly as it was… traumatized, defended, intelligent. I wasn't trying to access higher states of consciousness or transcend my human experience. I was practicing the radical act of staying in my skin when things got uncomfortable.
This slow, embodied work didn't just teach me the difference between genuine healing and sophisticated dissociation. It helped me understand what had actually happened to my nervous system during both the original sexual violations and the subsequent spiritual manipulations. I could finally feel how my embodied knowing had been systematically undermined. First, by sexual predators who told me my body didn't matter, then by spiritual facilitators who told me my body's responses were obstacles to overcome.
In analysis, I learned that the sexual trauma had taught my nervous system that embodiment was dangerous. The spiritual bypassing had taught it that embodied responses were unreliable. Together, they had created a perfect storm of disconnection from my own protective intelligence.
But through the slow work of staying present with my analyst and engaging the power of my mind to create a connection with my body, I began to feel my responses without immediately trying to change them, and thus rebuild my capacity for embodied discernment. I learned to feel the difference between leaving my body to escape difficulty and staying present with discomfort. I developed actual nervous system resilience instead of just accessing temporary relief through transcendent states.
Most importantly, I learned to trust my embodied responses again. The contraction I felt when someone crossed my boundaries wasn't spiritual resistance; it was intelligence. The discomfort I experienced in certain spiritual spaces wasn't unhealed trauma blocking my growth; it was my nervous system doing its job.
As I rebuilt my relationship with my own embodied knowing, I began to see the spiritual communities I had been part of with new eyes.
The patterns I had lived became impossible to ignore when I witnessed them in others. And what I saw was deeply disturbing: communities that were unconsciously re-traumatizing trauma survivors while calling it healing.
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I saw how women with sexual trauma were particularly vulnerable to spiritual manipulation because their protective responses had already been compromised.
I recognized how the promise of transcending the body could become another form of dissociation for people whose survival had already depended on leaving their flesh behind.
Most heartbreaking, I saw how women would seek spiritual healing for sexual trauma only to be told that their protective responses to spiritual violation were evidence of their spiritual limitation.
I witnessed how facilitators would use the same language that sexual predators use, reframing resistance as pathology, boundaries as ego attachments, and embodied "no" as something to overcome. I understood how "divine feminine surrender" narratives could be weaponized against women who had already learned that their bodies were not their own. The perpetrators aren't operating outside these communities… they're often the leaders, the facilitators, the ones whose "advanced consciousness" makes them seem safe to trauma survivors seeking healing.
They've learned to use spiritual concepts to access what they want while bypassing consent, accountability, and basic human decency. And they've discovered that trauma survivors, particularly those with sexual trauma, are especially vulnerable to someone who promises healing through surrender, transcendence, and letting go of protective boundaries.
Now, when clients like the young woman in my office tell me their stories, I understand them from the inside.
When she describes having her "no" reframed as spiritual resistance, I feel the familiar contraction in my own body… the remembered experience of having my protective responses pathologized.
When she describes the confusion of seeking healing only to be re-traumatized, I don't just understand it intellectually… I feel it in my nervous system.
When she discusses losing trust in their own embodied responses, I recall the devastating isolation that accompanies that particular disconnection.
When she describes the shame of having participated in their own spiritual bypassing, I recognize the self-blame that comes with realizing you've been complicit in your harm.
But I also know something else: that the same embodied intelligence that was systematically undermined can be rebuilt. That the nervous system's capacity for discernment, no matter how compromised, can be restored.
I know that women who have learned to abandon their bodies in service of others' definitions of healing can learn to come home to themselves again.
This is the work I do now… helping trauma survivors to learn the difference between expansion that includes the body and expansion that abandons it.
If this piece stirred something in you, if your body remembers the places you weren’t believed, or longs to reclaim its truth, you’re not alone.
IINBODY is my 7-module online course designed to help you unravel the stories you’ve carried in silence, reconnect to the wisdom of your sensations, and begin the courageous work of rewriting your relationship with your body from the inside out. Through somatic practice, narrative healing, and trauma-informed ritual, Inbody offers a path not just back to yourself, but back to a form of belonging that doesn’t require you to abandon your knowing.
When I work with clients who have experienced both sexual trauma and spiritual manipulation, I start by helping them understand that their protective responses are not pathological. I support them to feel the difference between genuine spiritual expansion and dissociative bypassing in their bodies. The difference is that real spiritual healing grounds you more deeply in your felt sense, not less. It increases your capacity for embodied boundaries, not your willingness to override them. It makes you more present in your skin, not more skilled at leaving it behind.
I help them recognize that their bodies are not the problem; they are the solution. The flesh that was violated, the nervous system that was overwhelmed, the protective responses that were shamed… all of this was intelligence trying to keep them safe in impossible circumstances. And most importantly, I help them understand that reclaiming their embodied authority is not selfish or spiritually limited. It's the foundation of genuine healing.
They are the very capacities that make real spiritual growth possible.
If this piece stirred something in you, if your body remembers the places you weren’t believed, or longs to reclaim its truth, you’re not alone.
What I wish every woman knew, especially those carrying sexual trauma who are drawn to spiritual healing, is this: your body's protective responses are not obstacles to your enlightenment.
They are expressions of your most profound wisdom.
If someone tells you that your discomfort during spiritual practices is just trauma leaving your body, trust your discomfort over their interpretation. If someone reframes your "no" as spiritual resistance, honour your "no". If someone asks you to surrender your discernment in service of healing, that's the moment to trust your discernment completely.
True spiritual healing never asks trauma survivors to abandon their embodied intelligence. It asks them to refine it, to trust it more deeply, to let it guide them toward what truly serves their wholeness.
The goal is never to transcend your human experience or to rise above your trauma. The goal is to develop such a profound relationship with your own embodied knowing that you can distinguish between what serves your genuine healing and what serves someone else's agenda. To trust your body's intelligence so completely that no amount of spiritual bypassing can convince you to abandon it again.
That's what real healing looks like for trauma survivors: not the ability to leave your body behind, but the courage to come home to it.
Not the capacity to transcend your protective responses, but the wisdom to honour them. Because your nervous system is not broken. Your boundaries are not spiritual limitations. Your protective responses are not pathological. They are the very intelligence that survived what you survived, and they are the wisdom that will guide you toward genuine healing.
That is exactly what the slow work of analysis taught me: that coming home to my body was about finally trusting the intelligence in my body that had kept me alive through every single moment of trauma and violation my body had endured.
And when you do this work, when you rebuild that relationship with your body and your nervous system’s intelligence, you become someone who can recognize these patterns not just in yourself, but in the communities and relationships around you.
Now, when that young woman sits across from me, trembling as she describes what happened, I see her so clearly because I remember what it felt like to be in her body. And I hope for the moment when she discovers that her shaking hands and protective curl aren't signs of weakness but expressions of her deep body’s intelligence.
This is so beautiful! Spiritual gaslighting is so prevalent. It taught me to learn to use my jealousy and insecurity as weapons against myself- something to « release » and « feel into » and « heal. » I forced myself to feel the fullness of these negative emotions and sit with them and face them… telling myself it was my ego and anxious attachment that needed to be loved and let go. I couldn’t be controlling- you can only control how YOU respond to things, so you have to let go of trying to control your partner. You just need to trust her more. If you just open more, receive more, trust more, release more… I needed to open myself to feminine receptiveness and openness and trust- otherwise I’m just clinging to wounded masculine control. It didn’t occur to me that I was being betrayed by my partner and best friend and that my jealousy and insecurity were important signals that I was not in safe relationships. I thought all my negative emotions were meant to be healed instead of heard. It wasn’t until afterward that I realized how many people had tried to tell me I was being betrayed. I thought they just didn’t understand « open hearted love. » I still struggle with my relationship to the spiritual personal development community.
I felt this so deeply. Thank you for writing.