Group Therapy

Groups, Classes, Workshops and Retreats

Support Group for those Feeling Abused from a Spiritual Group or Cult Experience

8-week support group, 90 minutes per session.

 Beginning date will be determined once 8-10 people sign up and are ready to start, likely summer of 2025. Cost is $600.

The sessions will be structured as follows:

  • Session 1: Introductions. Group members share their stories about their spiritual group, what initially drew them to the spiritual group and their experiences in the group
  • Session 2: Continued sharing of above.
  • Session 3: Discussion about the process of leaving the group and where group members now find themselves.
  • Session 4: Continued discussion of above
  • Session 5: Processing emotions of anger, grief, shame, guilt — for the time spent at the spiritual organization and for the role that each played as a participant in the organization. (Deborah shares some tools for healing these difficult emotions and moving past them.)
  • Session 6: Continued emotional processing.
  • Session 7: Processing how participants’ spiritual paths were impacted by the spiritual group, and exploring each participant’s new path, moving forward.
  • Session 8: Group determines if they would like to continue with the group process or finish up. Closure occurs for those finishing up.  Otherwise, another round of sessions will occur.

Spiritual Community Group feedback written to Deborah

“Thanks from the bottom of my heart for all the love, intention and grace you gave our group.”
“We were so fortunate to have your guidance for this process. With gratitude.”
“You have made a huge difference in our lives and future as a community.  Forever grateful to you for holding the healing space.”
“I am so thankful for your commitment to creating this space and seeing this through.  Your kindness, temperament and humor were always so appreciated.”
“You gave me the courage to say things I’ve needed to say for a very long time. You helped make possible a huge, positive change in my life. Thank you!”
“Deb, thanks so much for helping me face the darkest corners I’ve hidden my pain in. It was difficult and still is but I am grateful you helped me navigate things I never thought I could.”
“The care and love you put into facilitating our community through this hard process has not gone unnoticed. Huge gratitude for your love and support of me and all of us.”
“Deb, you have brought us all closer as a community and I can finally integrate my formative years into my adult life., thanks to you. Your time with us has been gratefully appreciated.”
“Deb, I will miss you after two years of working together. Words don’t adequately communicate my gratitude for all the energy and heart you gave to us.”
“Deb, I don’t know that anyone else could have done your job.  We’re a tough group. But you somehow managed to hold all of us with a ton of grace and compassion.”

Questions? Contact me

stones laid in sand

Support for spiritual teachers

  • Have you lost followers and are not sure why or what to do about it?
  • Are you interested in preventing abusive behaviors in your community and want direction and guidance about how to go about this and see your potential blind spots?
  • When you are honest with yourself, do you feel you have abandoned some or all of the teachings that you have provided to your students?
  • Are you finding that you are living a double life — able to be and feel “spiritual” in your teacher’s seat yet falling into negative personality aspects in the rest of your life?
  • Has your ego acted out when you have been in your teacher’s seat in ways you are not feeling good about?

I offer group and individual shadow work for spiritual leaders and teachers to bring their shadow elements to conscious awareness. “Shadow” is the aspects of our personalities that are unconscious and projected onto others. Shadow work consists of working through projections onto students.

Free Consultation
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Online Workshops for Spiritual Communities and Spiritual Teachers

I am available to provide workshops for spiritual community leaders and students/ex-students that address the following:

  • Preventive psycho-spiritual principles and practices for avoiding power-related scandals and abuses
  • Somatic practices for integrating spiritual teachings into the body
  • Working with psychological and spiritual shadow within spiritual communities—a shadow that may be arising between teacher(s) and student(s) or among students. (Every spiritual community contains shadow elements.)

I have led yearlong shadow processing groups for eight years. I have offered group support for spiritual community leaders and followers for the past five years. I also spoke at international conferences on faith leaders and family violence prevention twenty-five years ago, while working as a Program Coordinator for the California Department of Health Services, Family Violence Prevention Program for thirteen years. Along with a colleague, I created a workbook for faith leaders to address their congregations about family violence prevention and intervention.

Free Consultation
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Soul Wisdom Group: Leading a Soul Filled Life

This online group will begin in fall of 2025. The purpose of the group will be to learn practices that will help you become deeply connected with your soul wisdom. You will become better able to live your life based in this deep inner wisdom.

Group members will give and receive helpful support and feedback.

The group will be very experiential and help you to:

  • Explore ways in which your personality-self projects onto others and onto the world aspects that feel shameful and unlovable. These projections interfere with living more fully from your soul’s wisdom.
  • Become more deeply aware of your unique blueprint for your life and its manifestation.
  • Learn how to tune into your intuition, which is your soul wisdom. And to learn how to communicate to others from it.
  • Learn about and explore your personality’s deepest core wounds and how they point to your more in-depth work on yourself in this lifetime.
Free Consultation
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