Healing the Wound: Treating Religious Trauma through a Christian Counseling Lens (Part 1)

Camille McDaniel (00:03.96)
Welcome back to another episode of Christ in Private Practice. If you happen to be new here, then welcome. I’m Camille McDaniel, your Christ in Private Practice host. And if you happen to have been on this journey for a little while now, even if it’s just an episode or two, then welcome back. It is good to have you. I thank you for your comments. I thank you for your listening.

Today we are going to have an episode that is kind of a…

an episode, but it’s also a bit of a training as well, as we’re going to be addressing for this episode, healing the wound treating religious trauma through a Christian counseling lens. And so a lot of us have heard about religious trauma. There are some of us who probably even work with religious trauma in our practice. And so what I want to be able to do is kind of go over what it is, talk about ethically being able to help people talk about

couple of different methods for actually helping treat religious trauma. And I want for this to flow so that if at some point in time, I get the approval, which I believe I will be able to but if at some point in time I get the approval, you can actually listen to this and get CE credit for it. So I think I’m going to do a few podcast episodes that will allow you to enjoy the topic but also

earn some continuing education that you need anyway and and that would be great. So I was able to get the continuing education for the summit that we’re having next month. I know that many of you all have heard about that already. Well, I want to also be able to do that for the podcast and that idea actually came from a colleague of mine.

Camille McDaniel (01:56.086)
She actually recommended that I think about that last year. She said, you know, you can also, you know, do this. There’s some other people who are doing that for their podcasts. And it was a concept that I did not know anything about. So I am happy to be able to start structuring some of my podcast episodes so that more mental health professionals who are trying to be Christ integrative with their approach can also get some much needed information. When we talk about religious trauma,

it is something that is actually kind of coming up a bit more and more and maybe what we hear in our counseling offices and and like I said before, and for some of us, it’s not new at all, because that’s something that you actually specialize in. But this is something that is happening not just with clients who have left the faith. But this is happening even with committed Christian clients, and they are really wrestling.

with their views of God or they’re having some chronic fear or they might even have spiritual shame that’s rooted in some early faith experiences. And as Christian counselors, we carry both clinical and spiritual knowledge and responsibility to walk with them in healing. So this training is gonna actually assume that your clients have.

consented to Christian counseling. So we’re going to be speaking openly, I’m going to be speaking openly about integrating biblical truth and therapeutic technique. So here’s what I’m going to be talking with you about today. We will cover together and define what religious trauma.

and spiritual abuse is we’re going to explore the emotional, the cognitive and physical symptoms. We’re going to talk about using cognitive behavior therapy and narrative therapy through a Christian lens to help clients reframe their distorted beliefs and to rewrite like a redemptive story. We will talk about and identify ethical safeguards.

Camille McDaniel (04:11.872)
when integrating faith and provide real life examples and scripture-based prompts to apply in the session. All right, so if all of that sounds good to you, then let’s move forward and dive right on in there. So we’re going to start with understanding what religious trauma is. We’ll just start with the top, okay? What is religious trauma and what is it not?

So a crisis of faith is not religious trauma. like you know people wrestle with like doubt or maybe feeling distant from God, feeling like they can’t hear from him, feeling like they can’t feel him, you know in different seasons of their life. So and this is often part of just a regular spiritual journey, a regular walk with God. Sometimes there are some dry seasons.

Sometimes there are some celebratory seasons. Sometimes there are some seasons that feel a lot of different ways, but those types of experiences are not the same as what we are talking about. So I just want to clarify that sometimes we might feel like we’re having a bit of a crisis when it comes to our faith. Like we are at a crossroads in our faith or we, again, like I said, we might feel like we’re going through a dry spell in our faith or we’re not understanding.

why something happened or didn’t happen, you know, and and sometimes we might have questions for the Lord. So that is that is not what we are talking about when we’re talking about religious trauma. So religious trauma is the emotional or the cognitive and sometimes physical harm that is caused by the involvement of coercion and authoritarian, you know,

type of style of behaving toward people or spiritually abusive environments. So spiritual abuse is specifically a form of trauma where someone in a spiritual authority is misusing their position to control somebody or to manipulate somebody to silence them or shame them. And this might be a any kind of figure. could be a

Camille McDaniel (06:36.876)
ministry leader, it can be a parent, it could be a Bible study leader, it could be someone in a community, a larger community. Let’s start by breaking down the five most common symptoms that go along with this religious or spiritual trauma. Number one is emotional dysregulation, where like a client might

break down crying every time they hear certain worship songs. They might begin like trembling when they even drive past a church, not from like conviction like I should be in church but no but from panic and and that might be because maybe that particular song was playing while a former

ministry leader publicly shamed them, you know, for like bringing a wrong spirit into the sanctuary. Or maybe there were certain things that happened while they were inside of the church sanctuary that causes them to really feel physically ill every time they even pass by a church.

So this would be an example of trauma, like the body is actually holding on to the emotional abuse or the physical abuse or any other type that might be tied to a place that should be considered sacred. The second one that we want to look at are cognitive distortions. So let’s say like the belief that

God is going to curse you if you don’t tithe exactly the percentage that you are told you need to tithe based on your income. Even if you’re unemployed, you need to find a way otherwise you will be cursed. So, you know, the client might say to you, if I don’t obey every single part of the law,

Camille McDaniel (09:00.344)
then I’ll be removed from God’s protection. You it’s very legalistic. this belief that if I don’t do everything perfectly, if I don’t do everything to the T, then I will lose my protection from God or I will lose my salvation and not be able to enter into heaven.

The next one, the third one is a somatic symptom. So, you know, where you actually see physical symptoms that somebody is experiencing. An example of that could be if, let’s say, you have a client that complains of severe stomach pain. They’re having gastrointestinal issues whenever someone happens to pray out loud or pray near your client. But when they go to the doctor,

The doctors find there is nothing wrong, right? And we learn through just educating ourselves, like asking more questions of the client, getting a better history and understanding of their experiences. We find out that maybe in a former church, there were deliverance sessions that were forced on this client as a young person because they had anxiety. And now their body associates prayer.

with like forced attack because maybe that experience for them was frightening and confusing and they didn’t know what was going on really or they weren’t able to fully comprehend what all was being done in these like deliverance sessions and in that way it was being used improperly. Number four would be behavioral patterns.

So if you have for example someone saying you know I used to love the Bible, now I can’t even look at the Bible, it feels contaminated. So avoidance of all things faith-based, all things you know associated with a walk with Christ. Not because they have like rejected Christ or rejected their faith.

Camille McDaniel (11:17.496)
but it’s literally associated with some type of emotional pain that they are experiencing because of how it was all misused to manipulate them or abuse them in some way. the fifth one and the final one that I’ll talk about right now is relational disruption. So,

For example, someone in your session might repeatedly ask you, is that the answer that you were looking for? Or does that sound about right? Or did I answer that properly? They are fearful of saying something wrong. Not just like, you know.

saying the wrong thing as in giving the wrong facts or giving the wrong figures right you know not not just information that might be like academic or intellectual in nature but they are they are afraid of being morally wrong because they were trained that questioning any kind of authority that that has some spiritual ties some like religious tie means rebellion and now they see you their counselor

someone that they must not disappoint. Alright so that may be something else that you notice that is a change in the way that they do relationship with other people and you happen to get looped into that. You now become the authority that you notice they are looking for your approval, they are looking for you to to validate that they are moral enough, that they are upstanding enough. So

It’s important here that we recognize that these are trauma responses. It’s not rebellion. It’s not, you know, they’re just being sinful or that they just don’t have enough like, you belief in their, in their religion. But as Christian counselors, we want to help clients like untangle what is the voice of God versus what was the religious control.

Camille McDaniel (13:32.306)
and manipulation and abuse that was used against them. So now let’s kind of look at like another side. Let’s transition now into how we can help. So what can we do to help? Well, like I said, there’s gonna be some strategies we’re gonna talk about. We’re gonna talk about examples of how we can help from a cognitive behavioral therapy perspective and some examples of how we can help from a narrative therapy perspective.

with faith, Christ-centered integration. But first, we’re going to talk about some of the ethical safeguards that we need to make sure that we are putting in place as Christian counselors, because we want to hold space for the Spirit of God to come into the room to help us facilitate this healing. And yet we also have committed to our various states or state

how many licenses you hold to uphold professionalism and ethics. And they all can come together just well. We just need to keep a few things in mind. So let’s go through four key principles. And the first principle is that we are going to really avoid dual roles. I know that there are a lot of our ethical, our code of ethics that talk to dual relationships and really

being mindful to try and avoid those at all costs, really whenever possible, try to absolutely avoid it. So we’re going to avoid dual relationships because we are not our client’s pastor. I know in a previous episode, I talked about studying to show ourselves approved, but not trying to become the pastor, right? So that, the role of pastor belongs to somebody else and we are in a role.

to help our clients find safety in exploring their religion, exploring their faith in God without controlling, without coercing them in any way. The second thing that we want to do is we are going to make sure that the client sets the pace. So we never push forgiveness. We’re not going to push any kind of

Camille McDaniel (15:59.116)
religious practices or push reconciliation. Again, this is a very personal process and if the client is not ready, we are going to respect that. Let’s use God as our template to follow. God is patient. He does not force himself on us in making us believe in him.

and we should not force anybody’s healing. We should also be patient with the process. And I think that goes without saying, but again, we want to make sure that we are ethically aligned while we’re doing this. And so with that, the third one is to respect the cultural context and respect that there are going to be just some slight shifts in denominations.

I remember someone even, you know, asking me about that. They were like, you know, I have a client, you know, who is this denomination and I’m this denomination and I really, I don’t know how we, you know, work together as far as Christian counseling. And it’s, well, you get more information. So you’re going to ask questions just to better understand, are you all on the same page? Are there some commonalities or are they totally different? So we’re going to start by asking.

You know, what traditions, what denominations, what practices did you grow up in? What teachings shaped your faith, your religious identity? We’re going to avoid assuming that everyone is going to interpret the scripture the way we do. So if we just show up kind of like a student, just being very curious and not like,

jumping to conclusions, not judging, then I think we can actually get a lot of good information from our clients that allows us to set the foundation, really lay the groundwork for how to move forward in helping this client and how to make sure that we’re on the same page of understanding what Christian counseling means in the therapy room as we are working through this together.

Camille McDaniel (18:24.258)
The fourth ethical consideration that we want to make sure to be aware of is if it harms, then stop. If the scripture that we’re using, if the use of prayer or even certain postures, know, if it is triggering the client in any way, then we want to slow down and come to a pause.

Because we can always return to what we are doing as the client allows us to help them get there. But we want to make sure that we are aware of how our client is responding at every turn. And we want to take a pause and slow down when we see that this is not helping but hurting. And we can then help them get to a place of returning to some grounding techniques.

so that they are okay, their stress levels or whatever type of reaction they are giving off is starting to calm down. We can talk about calming breaths, you know, we may just have to again take a pause in and take a couple of steps back. Again, the Holy Spirit never forces us and we are not going to either. So,

The strategies with now all of the ethics being said and with all of that in mind, informed consent, being aware of the different ethical things that might come up, we will now move into the different clinical strategies that we can use as we are trying to help clients move through toward healing. And so it’s a process. So because we are at

you know, an episode or we’re at a place where our episode is one hour. So what I mentioned here during this episode, I’m going to ask that you then take this as a foundation and then expand on this with additional research of your own so that you will be able to continue to work this and continue to get more guidance as things unfold.

Camille McDaniel (20:44.278)
in your own practice with the work that you’re doing with clients. But the first thing, so let’s begin with cognitive behavior therapy or CBT as we usually call it. So CBT is particularly helpful when it comes to religious trauma work because religious abuse often like embeds really harmful core beliefs.

and cognitive behavioral therapy is all about first identifying those core beliefs, those cognitions, and how those cognitions then impact the way we actually see the world around us, interpret the world around us, interpret ourselves within that world, and then how it impacts the way we actually make decisions, how we behave, how we speak.

how we do things in this world. And so if we’re able to get to those core beliefs, those cognitions, then we oftentimes with some change, a little bit of reframing, which we’ll talk about a little bit later, then we can oftentimes start to see some changes like a domino effect. So cognitive behavioral therapy can be really helpful with those core, those harmful core beliefs.

harmful beliefs about God, harmful beliefs about faith and religion, harmful beliefs about oneself and their worthiness, you know, and many other things that might be at the root of some of the challenges that are being experienced. So with CBT, you want to start to dismantle those harmful beliefs. And the first step,

is to identify what those harmful beliefs are. So we want to identify the distorted thinking. Some clients might come and some of their distorted thinking might be that God only loves me when I’m good. He only loves me if I am doing all things right. To do all things right is to be holy.

Camille McDaniel (23:05.562)
and the only way that you can earn God’s love is by being holy. Or if I don’t obey perfectly, I will be cursed. I will bring curses on myself. I will bring curses on my loved ones. Or I can’t trust myself. I can’t listen to any of the thoughts that I might have within my own mind because my thoughts are from the devil. So these are all

these thought patterns are all rooted in misused scriptures. So for example, one of the scriptures that might lend itself to saying you can’t trust yourself, your thoughts are all evil and you can’t trust yourself to actually, you know, make the proper decisions, to make decisions that are right in order with God. You have to trust someone else.

have to trust this leader, this parent, this pastor, this you know um this Bible study teacher, whomever right and that might come from the misuse of like Jeremiah 17 and 9 where it says the heart is deceitful above all things um you know that is often used to say don’t trust yourself but then scripture also says that i will write

my law on your heart and that’s from Jeremiah 31 33. So we then help clients to hold an understanding that while yes a heart that is turned over away from the Lord is deceitful and who could ever you know trust it but a redeemed heart a heart that has been turned over to the Lord.

It doesn’t, it doesn’t just, you know, desire all the bad things. but instead it is a transformed heart. Is it a, it’s a renewed heart. It’s a heart that the Lord has now imprinted his word in his spirit. And it’s transformed. It’s a transformed heart by Christ and it’s spirit led. So you start to look at

Camille McDaniel (25:27.29)
the different scriptures and how yes that scripture was true right when it was said and then let’s all look at the turn of events that occurred if we continue to look we will find that then there was change as the as the Lord God Almighty came with a new a new law and he then said this is what I will do for my people

So we just want to be careful when we notice that scriptures are being misused to again control people, justify abusing people, to try to shame people. And we notice then, okay, this is being taken out of context.

The next thing that we want to do after we figure where did this distorted belief come from, we want to then start to add a reframe. So reframe that that distortion with truth. And we want to gently do that. So we want to be careful how we introduce scripture. So before we recognize the distortion, like those are things that even in your

your private time as a clinician, you can just start documenting the distortions, which was step one. You can go back and do some of your own research to see, okay, what does the word of God say about that? Okay, seems like, you know, if if we would have kept on reading, then we would have seen that this is what was then said, this is the new the new law, this is, know, what the Lord says now. And then you can maybe come back

to your session the next time you see your client and start with step number two. And that’s where we start to gently reframe with truth with the client’s permission. So instead of just quoting the scripture and saying like the Bible says this, we want to ask clients for permission to share. Remember they’re coming from environments where oftentimes they weren’t

Camille McDaniel (27:46.434)
their opinion, they were just forced to do certain things or they were just told repeatedly over and over certain things without being able to have any thoughts of their own, any opinion of their own. So we don’t want to step into that role even though we may be really excited to tell them what the Word of God says and to you know to share that we do want to slow ourselves down.

And an example of how we might ask, it would be maybe something along the lines of, would it be okay if I offered a verse that paints a different picture of God? Or can we explore what scripture actually says and maybe compare it to what you were taught? Is that okay? Right? Okay, so that is a way to then help.

you know, to reintroduce with permission another way to look at the scriptures clearly and properly, not misusing. So one lie that you could use as an example, like you can use this as an example, because this sometimes comes up, is the lie that God only loves me when I behave. God only loves me when I am doing things perfectly.

It’s like, okay, all right, well, here’s something else for your consideration. Romans five and eight says, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So that would say we don’t actually have to be perfect for him.

to love us because when we were doing all the things wrong, he actually loved us and loved us so much that he gave his life for us so that we would not be eternally separated from him and we have a choice to choose him and to choose life. Now you don’t have to add that last part if you don’t want to but you can definitely

Camille McDaniel (30:05.144)
with their permission share that the scriptures actually do not indicate that you have to be righteous enough. You have to be perfect enough in order for you to gain his love. The next thing, the next step that we are going to talk about is the use of behavior and trauma kind of.

creates like this black and white fear, you know? And so what we want to do is we want to kind of gently reintroduce some faith-based practices, okay? So it’s just really kind of the trauma creates this all or nothing. I can no longer pray anymore because I’m not deserving, I can no longer listen to worship music.

anymore, it’s corrupted and it’s you know and it’s painful and it’s hurtful, it’s like it’s either one or the other. There is no way that a good loving God I can still associate with those things around him because this thing happened so I can’t listen to any of it. I can’t do any of it. I can’t be you know associated with any of it and it causes a a great conflict. So to gently start reintroducing faith in safe

and healthy ways, we want to first maybe take a look at inviting a moment of these are just examples but inviting a moment of silent prayer not out loud because it’s not about judgment, this is not about worthiness, it doesn’t matter what your prayer really is, it doesn’t matter how eloquent the words, this is between you and God. So we want to just invite maybe a moment of prayer so that

people can just kind of get comfortable even talking to God again. You sometimes the barrier that is put up between people and the pain that they have sustained within the faith has caused them to not even be comfortable around God, really. So that’s just one way, kind of a behavioral experiment, if you will, to see.

Camille McDaniel (32:22.83)
how we can start to shift behaviors from unsafe and scary to safer to safe. Something else that can be tried when we’re doing these kind of behavioral experiments is to read a short song in the session, again, with the client’s permission, and then check in on any physical reactions that the client might notice that they’re having.

You can also invite the client to write their own verse, their own psalm, if you will. Now, the Book of Psalms is a collection of prayers, collection of prayers, collection of poems, collection of hymns. They express a wide range of emotions of just human thought and human emotion. And it actually gives a bit of a template, kind of like a blueprint on how we as human beings can relate to

to God. Yeah. So the goal is not to push religion. This is about, this is all about offering safety in what should be able to be a a sacred space, really holding space for their healing journey in faith to continue. So this is not about pushing anything, we are definitely going at the client’s pace.

but we are wanting to create safe spaces where they can start to explore these things again and feel okay to stop, to pause, to start as they need to. All right, now with that, let’s move on to narrative therapy.

Camille McDaniel (34:18.574)
So with narrative therapy, we are going to be kind of rewriting, you will, rewriting with Christ at the center versus the current narrative that they have that has pain, shame, a lot of negative at the center. We move from

our cognitions to our story. And it tells clients essentially as we are helping them with this narrative therapy, it moves our clients who have a Christ centered approach to doing life that you are not broken because the trauma narrative that they were holding on to.

from all that religious trauma that they sustain says, you are broken. God is mad at you. Your story is one of shame, right? And narrative therapy helps them to discover that you are loved. God was with you. Your story is being redeemed. So this is where therapy and theology can really work together.

and clients who’ve been like religiously harmed often carry like a false story about who they are and who God is and so one of the things that we can do as clinicians helping them on this journey is to help them write a clearer more accurate story about who they are and who God is and who they are together.

So the first step in this, and just as I said with like CBT, this is going to just be, you know, some foundation, but because we are together for just this episode, although we are, this is going to be, I believe, part one of two parts. So I do believe that next episode is going to talk a little bit further about religious trauma and religious trauma at the hands of leaders.

Camille McDaniel (36:40.545)
Yeah, so either way, this right here will be a bit of a foundation and then you can continue to branch out to look more into narrative therapy and integrating that with a faith approach, a Christ-centered approach. So one of the first things with narrative therapy, we want to externalize the trauma, not externalize the faith.

So some of the things that might be said are things like the voice of legalism told you blank, not Jesus Christ. Or the culture of fear tried to define your faith by saying blank.

So if you notice when we talk about the voice of legalism, the culture of fear, we are then externalizing these experiences so that these experiences do not define the personhood of our client. But these experiences are things that they encountered on this journey of life as a person. Clients kind of learn that what happened to me,

does not define who I am or who God is. Okay? And we are reminded then of John 10, 10, where the thief does not come except to do what? Kill, steal, and destroy. But Christ has come that they may have life and have it more abundantly. Okay?

So we are encouraged as we continue to hold space for our clients as they are on this journey. And step two that we’re going to do is we’re going to dismantle the old story. We’re going to ask questions. Again, we want to know their experience. We want to get more information. So we’re going to ask, what were you taught?

Camille McDaniel (38:59.297)
What were you taught about God that brought fear instead of freedom? Or who first told you that you had to earn God’s love? And then we’re going to, after we get more information, we’re going to then, again, with their permission, gently introduce some tools to look at it from a different perspective. I guess if you will, like some reframing again. So for example,

If one of the lies that your client believed was that God only loved them when they performed perfectly, then you would share a truthful scripture. And the truth is that in Romans 8 and 38, it says, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life shall be able to separate us from the love of God. Now I actually truncated that a little bit. So,

please go to Romans 8, 38, and there’s like neither death nor life, nor power, no principality, nor things. Now, the word to come will separate me from the love of God. But the idea is that nothing can separate you. In the scriptures, nothing can separate you from the love of God. If that, if you want to be in relationship with God, if you want to follow God, then it is not true.

that God only loves you when you are performing perfectly because he has said on different occasions and shown in different ways that he loves you. You don’t have to be perfect. The next lie that a client might believe is that, you know, I am I am going to be cursed if I mess up, you know, and scripture says in the Book of Galatians.

chapter three and 13 that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it was written, and they were talking about like it was written in Old Testament, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree and Christ died, you know, on a cross made out of wood for our sins, right? And so,

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We don’t have to worry that, my goodness, if I mess up, I’m gonna bring curses. If I mess up, there’s no way out of this. He has already redeemed us. What we need to do is repent, and what we need to do is move forward in Him.

Another lie that your client may believe is that my thoughts are all evil. My thoughts are all evil. There’s nothing I can do about it. There’s no way that I can change it. out of, you know, I have no control over it at all. And while there are some things that literally can happen to our thinking, so you know, there are a multitude of things that can impact a person’s ability to think. And I’m not talking about any type of

brain disorders where literally a person is hallucinating, a person happens to be having all kinds of delusions and different challenges of that nature. Sometimes that even can happen from wrong prescriptions or things. I’m not going in that direction when I say it, but I’m talking about a person who might, for example, I encountered a…

online who was saying that they just couldn’t stop thinking angry thoughts about somebody and they’re like I keep on apologizing to God I keep on apologizing to God I just can’t stop it and I don’t know that I don’t want to get in trouble with God and so it’s like okay let’s first slow down and let’s first bring those thoughts to him you know when we think about my thoughts are evil and and they’re wrong and and I’ll never be able to stop

One of the scriptures in the book of Romans chapter 12, verse two says, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Well, how do we renew our mind? We renew our mind by allowing ourselves to ingest something much healthier, something much more healing.

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and we renew it regularly. So we ingest it regularly. Not just once or twice, but we are to be transformed. Transformation doesn’t always happen like a snap of the fingers. Transformation sometimes takes work. So if we are transforming and renewing our mind, then we are actively participating in practices.

and behaviors and ingesting things that are going to allow our minds to flourish with things that are healing, things that are right and in order and are good. And we can definitely use our faith and our scriptures and other things like prayer in order to get there. And so that’s a truth that you can share to help your client kind of reframe the narrative that is in their mind.

And then the third step is that you are going to be a part of like helping co-author this redemptive story. You’re just going to invite your clients to like create, you know, a renewed story as they are healing. invite, for example, you can start by inviting your clients to create a grace timeline. So marking moments where there was spiritual confusion.

but then also marking moments where they recognize that grace showed up, right? So, know, asking them, you know, if God was near during this season of your life, what might he been whispering to you? Where did you notice grace showing up? In what ways did it show up? Have them be able to take a different look at the whole picture.

The other thing that you can also do during this step of helping to, helping them to create their new story is encourage some journaling. And you can even give some faith-based journaling prompts along the way. So a couple of faith-based journaling prompts are like, if God could write a new chapter of your life, what would he title it? The next one would be, what?

Camille McDaniel (45:58.68)
Did spiritual abuse try to erase that God still sees in you? And the last one as an example would be describe who you are now as someone walking in truth and freedom.

So, you know, as you look at this, going from what we started talking about all the way through to the end, we are going to be left with a foundational framework of how to help our clients understand what religious trauma really is about, for them to also understand what it looks like, how it shows up.

because sometimes they don’t And then how we can start working through it, whether through cognitive behavioral therapy integrated with faith or through narrative therapy integrated with faith, or if you’re, you sometimes we are using more than one approach in order to help our clients get to where they need to go. So as we come to a close for this podcast segment, and again, like I said, this is part one.

of two parts, so we will have a part two next session. I want to leave you with some encouragement because this is a lot. It’s hard sometimes to step into dark spaces as we are holding space for other clients and helping them to be able to heal and to be able to see light in their life. And so I just want to leave you with this, that you are here to do a great work.

You’re not here to fix everyone’s theology, but you are here to help them heal so that they can then encounter truth for themselves. And you’re standing in a very special place, you know, a space where people bring their broken beliefs, their shame, religious shame, questions about God. And when they do that, our job is to just bring compassion.

Camille McDaniel (48:15.725)
to bring sound clinical care and a steady reminder that Jesus is not the one who abused them, but he is the one who heals them. And we are reminded through Psalm 34 and 18, it says, the Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves such that have a contrite spirit. Yeah. So thank you.

Thank you for spending time through this whole episode. Again, if you are not already on our email list, then I encourage you to get on that email list so you can be notified when this episode and other episodes to come qualify for CE credit so that not only can you listen to the podcast, but you can also…

Get something that you need because we are required to have a certain number of CE credits in order to fulfill our license requirements by the state that we are licensed in or states, depending on how many states you happen to be licensed in. I would also say if you happen to be considering the summit, we would love to see you there. The summit does have both general admission as well as CE credit and

CEs that are credentialed through NBCC usually are accepted for social workers, MFTs, psychologists. You can definitely check with your licensing board, but those are definitely usually acceptable as well. So again, thank you so much and until next time, God bless.