SPIRITUAL TERMINOLOGY AND MEANINGS
Browse spiritual terminology and meanings by letter:
Inner Child
What is the inner-child?
The term inner-child is used by many healers to describe the part of our identities which are innocent, wounded, or underdeveloped.Our inner-child may still be seeking the love, affection, or validation that we may have been denied when we were actual children. That part of us remains underdeveloped and mired in counterproductive coping mechanisms as it seeks an external parental figure in the form of relationships with partners who reflect aspects of our relationship with our parents.
The inner-child may still harbor residual fear or sadness from childhood traumas or neglected needs and it is often the part of us which suffers at the hands of our own inner-critic, which is frequently the internalized voice of an authority figure from our childhood.
Healing the Inner-Child
Reparenting is an avenue for healing the inner-child’s wounding, which involves becoming for yourself the parent that you needed when you were younger. This requires a great deal of self-awareness and self-compassion.
Many healers do inner-child work, but as with any type of childhood trauma, a trained professional familiar with trauma and trauma treatment is ideal, though a spiritual healer can be trained in trauma-informed care.
LEARN MORE
How Energy Workers Can Harm Clients When They Aren’t Trauma Informed
Even the most well-intentioned energy workers, coaches, and spiritual practitioners can harm their clients if they don’t understand trauma. Here’s a personal story about how an energy worker harmed me.
Sexism’s Feminine Rebrand: How Polarity Doctrine Sells Repackaged Patriarchy in the Form of Benevolent Sexism
Learn how New Age spirituality becomes anti-feminist and repositions sexism as a good thing by appealing to a very specific type sexism known as benevolent sexism.
How Patriarchy Shows up in Spirituality
You might think spirituality is supposed to be void of cultural programming. After all, it’s supposed to push us to question all of those things. But does it, really? Especially when it comes to the Divine Masculine and Feminine, patriarchy seeps in. Here’s how to identify it.
Do Crystals Really Work?
Question from a reader: “Do crystals really have properties that can be helpful for healing? I’m so skeptical of that and wonder if it’s a scam to get us to make some people wealthy. I don’t like spending money and won’t spend it unless I can see/validate it’s usefulness, but I’m still keen on your opinion on how and why they work.”
The End of Suffering
What if I told you that we don’t incarnate on earth to learn lessons, we don’t make contracts with other souls to experience abuse, and that we’re not here to suffer? How would you react?
How Toxic Spirituality Taught You To Gaslight yourself
Toxic spirituality is mired in spiritual narcissism. As such, many of us experience symptoms of narcissistic abuse under the guise of spiritual teachings. Gaslighting is a spiritual abuse tactic used to keep followers under the thumb of narcissistic cult leaders. Here’s how it’s subtly affected you.
Why Your Spiritual Practice Should be Trauma-Informed
Not all spirituality is helpful or healthy spirituality. Trauma-informed spirituality is where we need to go in our attempts to leave behind toxic spirituality. Here’s what that is, and how to identify it.
Abuse and The Law of Attraction
For a community that is supposed to be focused on love, light, and healing, New Agers have invented and contributed to some of the most toxic, harmful, bullshit ideologies on the planet, and nine times out of ten, the Law of Attraction is behind it. Here’s what everybody gets wrong about LOA.
The Shadow Self and Shadow Work’s Role In Spirituality
I talk about shadow work all the time on social media. I’ve had a few people ask me questions about what the shadow is, what shadow work involves, and express an interest in learning more, so I’ve revamped an old post to provide a better explanation, as well as make a connection between spirituality and psychology that I think is often overlooked or misunderstood in the spiritual community.
Do We Manifest Abusive Experiences?
It’s time to talk about toxic spiritual concepts and its contribution to victim shaming and the enabling of abusive dynamics.
Collective Feminine Rage
A larger collective theme that has been going on since this time last year when #MeToo first broke the silence is the core wounding of women and the feminine. Globally, for centuries, women have been violently raped, murdered, suppressed, controlled, burned as witches and enslaved as sex servants. Weβve never been truly safe, and we’re really pissed off about it.
The Healing Spiral
Healing is not a linear process, but rather, an upward spiral of sorts. You process things cyclically and each time it comes around, you peel back another layer and get closer to your core. Thatβs certainly been true for me over the last several months, and I do feel like Iβm starting to reach the pinnacle of it all. Finally.
Finding Your Emotional Mooring
There are days where you feel thoroughly tethered to reality. You’re solid. You’re secure. You’re centered. And then there are days where you feel like you’re floating away, hanging on to the last shred of sanity for dear life. As we enter into the midst of the August eclipses, many of you will find yourselves facing down some of your greatest self-sabotaging patterns in one final showdown. It’s do or die.
How Energy Workers Can Harm Clients When They Aren’t Trauma Informed
Even the most well-intentioned energy workers, coaches, and spiritual practitioners can harm their clients if they don’t understand trauma. Here’s a personal story about how an energy worker harmed me.
Sexism’s Feminine Rebrand: How Polarity Doctrine Sells Repackaged Patriarchy in the Form of Benevolent Sexism
Learn how New Age spirituality becomes anti-feminist and repositions sexism as a good thing by appealing to a very specific type sexism known as benevolent sexism.
How Patriarchy Shows up in Spirituality
You might think spirituality is supposed to be void of cultural programming. After all, it’s supposed to push us to question all of those things. But does it, really? Especially when it comes to the Divine Masculine and Feminine, patriarchy seeps in. Here’s how to identify it.
Do Crystals Really Work?
Question from a reader: “Do crystals really have properties that can be helpful for healing? I’m so skeptical of that and wonder if it’s a scam to get us to make some people wealthy. I don’t like spending money and won’t spend it unless I can see/validate it’s usefulness, but I’m still keen on your opinion on how and why they work.”
The End of Suffering
What if I told you that we don’t incarnate on earth to learn lessons, we don’t make contracts with other souls to experience abuse, and that we’re not here to suffer? How would you react?
How Toxic Spirituality Taught You To Gaslight yourself
Toxic spirituality is mired in spiritual narcissism. As such, many of us experience symptoms of narcissistic abuse under the guise of spiritual teachings. Gaslighting is a spiritual abuse tactic used to keep followers under the thumb of narcissistic cult leaders. Here’s how it’s subtly affected you.
Why Your Spiritual Practice Should be Trauma-Informed
Not all spirituality is helpful or healthy spirituality. Trauma-informed spirituality is where we need to go in our attempts to leave behind toxic spirituality. Here’s what that is, and how to identify it.
Abuse and The Law of Attraction
For a community that is supposed to be focused on love, light, and healing, New Agers have invented and contributed to some of the most toxic, harmful, bullshit ideologies on the planet, and nine times out of ten, the Law of Attraction is behind it. Here’s what everybody gets wrong about LOA.
The Shadow Self and Shadow Work’s Role In Spirituality
I talk about shadow work all the time on social media. I’ve had a few people ask me questions about what the shadow is, what shadow work involves, and express an interest in learning more, so I’ve revamped an old post to provide a better explanation, as well as make a connection between spirituality and psychology that I think is often overlooked or misunderstood in the spiritual community.
Do We Manifest Abusive Experiences?
It’s time to talk about toxic spiritual concepts and its contribution to victim shaming and the enabling of abusive dynamics.
Collective Feminine Rage
A larger collective theme that has been going on since this time last year when #MeToo first broke the silence is the core wounding of women and the feminine. Globally, for centuries, women have been violently raped, murdered, suppressed, controlled, burned as witches and enslaved as sex servants. Weβve never been truly safe, and we’re really pissed off about it.
The Healing Spiral
Healing is not a linear process, but rather, an upward spiral of sorts. You process things cyclically and each time it comes around, you peel back another layer and get closer to your core. Thatβs certainly been true for me over the last several months, and I do feel like Iβm starting to reach the pinnacle of it all. Finally.
Finding Your Emotional Mooring
There are days where you feel thoroughly tethered to reality. You’re solid. You’re secure. You’re centered. And then there are days where you feel like you’re floating away, hanging on to the last shred of sanity for dear life. As we enter into the midst of the August eclipses, many of you will find yourselves facing down some of your greatest self-sabotaging patterns in one final showdown. It’s do or die.
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