Exploring religious trauma in therapy Spiritual abuse and trauma is a growing area of study as we begin to take a critical look at the ways in which our relationship to organized religion and doctrinal faith impact our mental health. At Dallas Therapy Collective, we specialize in identifying and treating trauma, and we actively seek practitioners that already have a specialty in spiritual trauma or have a desire to learn.  Bethan Rothamel is one such practitioner. Bethany came to DTC for her postdoc fellowship in 2020 (what a year, right), and has been a valuable asset to the collective ..read more

Maybe you’re fascinated by The Bachelorette.  Maybe you love the drama.  Maybe you have never watched.  I fall into the fascinated category.  The more seasons I have seen, the more I anticipate manipulations behind the scenes and understand the ability for editing to alter narratives.  Even outside of the Bachelorette, I am fascinated by how media can have us rooting for relationships and actions that we might not root for in real life.  How quickly someone can change from a hero to a villain!  This show could write books on that alone.  Actually, a pre ..read more

  In a previous post, we explored some definitions of spiritual abuse. My own research upon writing my doctoral dissertation yielded the following conceptual characteristics of spiritual abuse: 1) Abuse of Power Abuse of power is when someone (or “someones” – could be family members, religious leaders, teachers, etc.) in a position of power or authority over another person inappropriately uses their power in a detrimental or exploitative way. The person being powered-over may or may not be aware of the abuse of power. In fact, often the abuse of power is so engrained in the culture of th ..read more

  We’ve all head of physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, and emotional abuse. Those terms tend to conjure up images in our minds: “battered women’s shelters,” the #metoo movement, self-defense classes, etc. If we haven’t survived one (or more) of them ourselves, we all know someone or know someone who knows someone who is an abuse survivor. Our heart goes out to the victims as we can imagine how painful it must be to have survived such horrible life experiences. We’ve heard of the statistic that it takes seven attempts to leave an abusive relationship. We’ve r ..read more