Unmasking Spiritual Malpractice

The Dark Side of Spirituality

Spirituality is sacred to me. It’s where I go to remember who I am, to reconnect with meaning, with Spirit, with peace. But I’ve learned that not everything wrapped in spiritual language is rooted in love or truth. Some teachings, some leaders, some communities—hide harm behind divinity.

This is spiritual malpractice. And I speak on it because I’ve lived it.

I once trusted a spiritual teacher who spoke the language of light—but moved through the world with deception, control, and coercion. At first, the wisdom felt powerful. I thought I had found someone who could see me. But over time, I realized I wasn’t being seen—I was being shaped into someone more manageable. More profitable. Easier to control.

This story is mine, but I’m not alone. Too many people have walked away from spiritual spaces with deep scars. What’s worse is the silence that often follows—silence born from shame, confusion, or fear that speaking out will somehow mean you’ve failed your path. Let me tell you this: you did not fail. The system failed you.

What is Spiritual Malpractice?

Spiritual malpractice is the misuse of power under the guise of spiritual leadership or guidance. It shows up in many forms—emotional manipulation, financial exploitation, spiritual gaslighting, sexual coercion, and even physical abuse. It’s not tied to one religion, one tradition, or one path. It lives wherever power is unchecked and sacred trust is broken.

Some leaders wrap control in charm. They use coded language and mystical terms to justify overreach. They redefine loyalty as silence, obedience as faith. They use your pain as proof that you need them. This is not the path of healing—it’s the path of harm.

The impact is real: loss of trust, inner fragmentation, spiritual disorientation. The very places meant to bring healing can become sources of deep pain.

When spiritual leadership demands blind obedience, isolates you from loved ones, pressures you financially, blames your pain on your lack of faith, or violates your body and boundaries—this is not spiritual guidance. It is spiritual abuse.

How to Recognize the Signs

Spiritual malpractice often wears the mask of enlightenment. But there are patterns. Here are signs to watch for:

• Demands for unquestioning obedience
• Discouragement of independent thought or spiritual exploration
• Pressure to give large sums of money, time, or labor in ways that drain you
• Guilt or fear tactics used to enforce compliance
• Coercive sexual dynamics, especially with leaders or elders
• Encouragement to cut off family or friends outside the community
• Teachings that position your suffering as evidence of your spiritual immaturity

These signs aren’t always obvious at first. Many of us stay longer than we want to admit. Many of us protect our abusers because we once believed in them. There is no shame in that. There is only a new moment—a chance to choose differently now.

What Fuels Spiritual Malpractice?

The roots of spiritual abuse are often buried beneath layers of tradition, hierarchy, and charisma. What I’ve come to understand is that it’s rarely just one person causing harm. It’s also the systems that protect them. The cultures that value image more than truth. The communities that mistake control for leadership—and silence for devotion.

Spiritual malpractice thrives when:

• Leadership is idolized instead of questioned
• Accountability structures are weak or nonexistent
• Faith becomes synonymous with silence
• Pain is spiritualized and reframed as purification without consent
• Boundaries are dismissed as ego, resistance, or lower vibration

When the structure of a space centers power over people, abuse isn’t just possible—it becomes inevitable. Control begins to replace connection. Dissent is silenced. Boundaries are treated as defiance. The energy tightens, restricts, and conditions everyone to either submit or disappear.

Healing After the Harm

The path to healing is not always clear, and it’s almost never linear. Some wounds live deep in the body. Others linger in the psyche—in the spaces where belief and betrayal meet. But healing is possible. I know this because I’m still healing, and I still believe in love. I still believe in Spirit.

Here’s what helped me—and what might help you:

• Acknowledge what happened. Speak it aloud. Write it down. Let it exist outside of you.
• Claim your experience. No one else has the right to redefine your truth.
• Find safe community. This might look like a trauma-informed therapist, trusted friends, or survivor networks.
• Rebuild your spiritual connection—on your terms. You get to choose what sacred looks like now.
• Set powerful boundaries. You don’t owe access to anyone who violated your trust, no matter how “highly ranked” they are spiritually.

Healing didn’t just mean tending to the wounds—I had to stretch my awareness beyond what I’d been taught to accept.

Spiritual malpractice clouds the mind and dulls the senses. It makes you second-guess what you feel, and disconnects you from your own knowing. Part of my recovery was expanding my awareness—of language, of power, of energy, of subtle cues I once ignored or rationalized.

Awareness expansion is sacred work. It’s what helped me stop internalizing the harm and start recognizing it. It’s what allowed me to name patterns, not just people. And it’s what continues to guide me now as I build my own path rooted in truth, clarity, and choice.

You don’t have to see it all at once. But the more you notice, the more power you reclaim. Your awareness is not a burden. It’s your liberation.

And above all—be gentle with yourself. If you’re grieving, that means your heart is still intact. If you’re angry, that means your body remembers what safety should feel like. Let your healing be nonlinear. Let your boundaries be bold. Let your wisdom expand beyond anyone who ever tried to shrink it.

Consent, Contracts and Cords

Part of my healing meant reclaiming something I didn’t know had been taken: my consent.

So much of spiritual harm begins with blurred or coerced consent—when power dynamics are masked as divine guidance, when saying no feels like spiritual failure, when your body says I’m not ready, and someone overrides that with doctrine or guilt. True consent isn’t just about agreement. It’s about feeling safe, informed, and empowered to choose—or to walk away.

Once I saw where consent had been broken, I began the work of cutting cords and breaking energetic contracts that had kept me entangled. These weren’t always dramatic rituals. Sometimes they were whispered prayers. Sometimes they were full-bodied sobs in the bath. Sometimes they were just me saying out loud: I release you. I call my power back.

If you feel bound to someone or something long after leaving, there may still be an energetic tether. You get to cut that cord. You get to break that soul contract—especially if it was formed under pressure, illusion, or false pretenses. Spirit doesn’t require you to stay loyal to pain.

Releasing these bonds doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It means freeing your energy so you can move forward with clarity, autonomy, and wholeness.

You are not obligated to remain energetically connected to anyone who distorted your trust. Consent is sacred. And reclaiming it is a spell all its own.

Spiritual Spaces Must Do Better

If you’re a spiritual leader, practitioner, or community facilitator, you hold power. And with that power comes responsibility—not just to protect others from harm, but to unlearn harmful patterns you may have inherited or replicated.

Healthy spiritual spaces must center:

• Ongoing education about spiritual abuse and trauma
• Clear and public accountability structures
• Consent-based practices that prioritize autonomy
• Encouragement of critical thinking and personal discernment
• Space for diverse spiritual expressions, not one-size-fits-all dogma

Safety is sacred. Transparency is sacred. Integrity is sacred. And none of it can be bypassed by sage smoke, white robes, or fancy credentials.

What Alignment Feels Like

For a long time, I mistook intensity for alignment. I confused charisma with wisdom. I believed that someone knowing the language of Spirit meant they knew how to hold space for mine.

Now I understand that alignment doesn’t demand my silence. It doesn’t shrink my light to make room for someone else’s. Being in alignment with someone feels like freedom, not fear. It feels like mutual respect, not power games. It feels like truth, even when it’s quiet.

Real alignment honors my boundaries, celebrates my autonomy, and invites me into deeper embodiment—not deeper dependence.

If you’ve ever felt that pull—that soul-tug of something being off, even when everything looked right—that was your inner knowing. Trust it now. Let it lead you to spaces, people, and practices that nourish instead of deplete. That co-create, instead of control.

Moving Forward with Sovereignty

After spiritual harm, it can be hard to trust again. To trust Spirit. To trust yourself. To trust that another way is possible. That another version of community exists. One where you can be held and free. Where your questions are honored, not punished. Where your story is safe.

There is no rush to find that place. You are allowed to take your time.

Ask yourself:

• What does spiritual safety feel like to me?
• What kind of space am I calling in now?
• What parts of myself am I reclaiming from those who tried to own them?

Your intuition will guide you. Your boundaries will protect you. And your truth will set you free.

If You’re Ready for Support

If any part of this speaks to you—if you’re holding pain from spiritual betrayal, confusion around your path, or simply seeking someone who can witness your truth—I’m here. Through Healing through Visions, I offer one-on-one Visionary Guidance and Energy Alignment sessions to support your healing and reclamation journey. These sessions are grounded, intuitive, and designed with care for your spirit and nervous system.

You can schedule a private session with me here: Book Your Session Now. You deserve to be safe. You deserve to be free. You deserve to be deeply, fully seen.