Spiritual wounds have been described as having experienced harm at the deepest level or core of your being. These wounds can negatively impact your relationship with God, a greater power, or your spiritual connection. It is important to note that spiritual wounds do not only occur for people who identify with an organized religion or faith. Spiritual wounds most often occur when someone in a position of authority, such as a parent or religious leader utilizes spiritual teachings in a manipulative or self-serving way. Examples of this include only being made to feel welcome if you donate money to your church, being told by a parent that God would be unhappy with your behavior or being made to feel inferior to others for not attending church regularly. Spiritual wounds most commonly occur with organized religion but can also occur for those who do not identify with a specific faith. These spiritual wounds may occur similarly to the above examples, when a parent, friend, or member of the community weaponizes your spiritual values or morality in a way that causes you to feel shame.
The Impacts of Spiritual Wounds
Spiritual wounds often cause you to question your worth, and beyond this, may cause you to question if God believes you are worthy. In the examples given above, the indirect message that may be received from these interactions is that God’s love is transactional. This can be harmful for many reasons including maintaining the mindset that you are only worthy if you are consistently doing things for others which can lead to burnout, resentment, and lack of self-care. These wounds can lead to an unhealthy view of self, where your value is placed exclusively in appeasing these individuals in positions of authority.
Not only can these spiritual wounds impact your internal narrative and the way you view yourself, but they can affect the way that you may engage in your spiritual practices. For many, if a spiritual wound exists, the negative emotions surrounding this wound can resurface when engaging in these practices. Because of this, you may withdraw from spiritual engagement and isolate yourself from your spiritual community. For many, spirituality and religion provide a sense of meaning, belonging, and peace. When this wound occurs, it can become challenging to access this meaning making and some people may even begin to question what they believe. Therefore, spiritual wounds make look like:
- Loss of meaning or purpose
- Feeling lost and directionless
- Low view of self
- Inability to see your self-worth
- Isolation and loneliness
- Inability to participate in what once brought your joy or peace
- Shame or guilt
Spiritual Wounds and Shame
Experiencing shame has been found to have physical and cognitive effects. Shame can force your nervous system into survival mode – triggering the fight, flight, and freeze responses. In this state of survival, your ability to cognitively process becomes more difficult, and your thinking can become clouded. Shame can be described as a cycle including six stages that keep you locked into that shame maintenance cycle. The first stage is that initial feeling of shame or guilt, let’s say that this is triggered by a parent comparing you to other members of your faith organization saying how much they do to help out or how often they attend church services as a way to put down your effort. This causes you to feel guilt for your participation and engagement and shame surrounding what it means to be a practicing member of your faith. From here, you become secretive or perhaps even begin to lie to your parents about your participation and attendance. In the next stage, you begin to isolate yourself from others as you fear their judgement and feel as though you are losing your sense of belonging. You begin to feel like no one really understands you. In this stage of isolation, you experience triggers that remind you of your shame which cause humiliation, a feeling of wishing you could be what others want you to be, and guilt for lying to those who matter to you. This may then lead to acting out, perhaps saying nasty things to your parents about their dedication to their faith. This acting out then leads back into the repetition of the cycle.
How Can I heal a Spiritual Wound?
The first step to healing the spiritual wound is identifying what the wound is. Is it a mindset that you have adopted or a view of self that is ever present? Perhaps it is an internal narrative that relentlessly pervades. With this, it is also relevant to understand where this mindset, view of self, or internal narrative originated from. Is this something that someone has told you in the past? Identifying the source can help externalize the wound. Forgiveness too may be part of this healing process. If there are people in your life who have caused this pain, forgiveness may be a helpful step in moving past this hurt.
Finding a counselor who can help you navigate these challenges may help with this healing journey. Talking about these wounds and the shame that may accompany them can be an effective treatment for cleaning and healing the wound. From here, surrounding yourself with supports and resources can help to maintain a healthy mindset and prevent future spiritual wounds from occurring.
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