Responding Well to Spiritual Abuse: Practice Implications for Counselling and Psychotherapy

This paper presents the findings of a survey exploring people's understandings and experiences of Spiritual Abuse (SA) in a Christian faith context. The online survey was completed by 1591 individuals from the UK, 1002 of whom identified as having experienced SA. Inclusion criteria were: membership of the Christian faith, being or having been, a Church attender or member of a Christian organisation and having heard of the term SA. Participants detailed features of an effective response to disclosures of SA, many of these are directly relevant to counselling and psychotherapy practice. The findings echo calls in previous research for including discussions of religion and faith in training and CPD for counsellors and psychotherapists. Finally, the paper suggests the establishment of a network of counsellors with training and knowledge about SA.