This blog challenges the popular image of cults as fringe, obvious, and easy to spot, arguing instead that high-control environments are defined not by their beliefs or appearance but by their structure and methods, and that those methods appear across religious communities, MLMs, wellness groups, political movements, and therapeutic contexts alike. It maps the core mechanics of coercive control; information management, identity reshaping, relationship restructuring, and the high cost of exit and explains why survivors typically couldn't see what they were inside from within it.

This blog talks about how survivor testimony is not merely personal or anecdotal; it is primary evidence of harm that would otherwise remain invisible, and it is how systemic change in response to religious trauma has historically been built. It holds the full complexity of speaking out, naming the real costs of disbelief, family fallout, and re-traumatisation alongside the significance of what testimony contributes. It broadens the definition of advocacy well beyond formal or public contexts, and offers a practical set of considerations for survivors weighing whether and how to share their story.

The forced closure of Divine Playhouse, a queer-led arts venue in a deconsecrated Sydney church, raises questions religious trauma practitioners work with every day. Drawing on clinical research and lived experience, this article explains why queer reclamation of religious space, language, and ritual is a recognised pathway of trauma recovery — and what it costs LGBTQIA+ survivors when that recovery is blocked, shamed, or shut down. It examines the evidence on religious exclusion and mental health, the theological scholarship, the plurality of Christian views, and the long history of deconsecrated churches in secular life — naming a pattern survivors know well: when objections shift from the correctable to the categorical, the objection is to the people.

This blog explores the particular loneliness of carrying an experience you don't have words for and what shifts when language finally arrives. It traces the practical consequences of namelessness for survivors of religious harm, unpacks the specific work done by terms like 'religious trauma', 'spiritual abuse', 'high-control group', and 'deconstruction', and addresses the common uncertainty about whether these words apply to one's own experience. A practical section guides readers through finding their way into the language, with the central argument that naming is not the whole of recovery but it is often what makes recovery possible to begin.

This blog explains that religious trauma is not primarily a psychological phenomenon but one that moves through the whole person; the nervous system and body, the relational self, the identity, and the sexual self. It maps three interconnected dimensions of harm that standard trauma frameworks often miss. Partial frameworks produce partial support, and that recovery requires an approach as wide as the wound. Practical takeaways are offered for both survivors and practitioners.