Hi, I’m Emma.
I’m a nurse, theological thinker, writer, and survivor of spiritual abuse. I hold a Bachelor of Nursing, a Graduate Certificate in Emergency Nursing, and a Master of Ministry (Biblical Theology)from Morling College – Australia’s foremost Baptist Theological College. I’ve spent years caring for people in crisis—emotionally, physically, and spiritually—and I’ve also been one of them.
I’m a cat lover, a creative at heart, and I have a dry sense of humour that occasionally leaks into serious conversations (often at inappropriate moments). I write because silence protects harm, and because language can be a form of care.
A quick but important note:
I am not a mental health clinician. This blog is not diagnostic, clinical, or a substitute for professional care. What I offer here is something different: theological reflection shaped by lived experience, nursing practice, and the long, messy work of recovering from spiritual and psychological trauma.
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What Is A Traumatised Faith?
A Traumatised Faith explores what happens when faith—something meant to bring us a secure attachment to God thus bringing meaning, safety, and hope—becomes a source of harm.
Spiritual trauma can be deeply personal, but it’s also often collective. It is a wound that most often arises from abuse of power within Christian or spiritual institutions and spaces including but not limited to Churches, schools, Christian workplaces, spiritual study groups, and even within mentoring relationships, marriages and families. The abuse takes many forms including coercive control, weaponised use of Scripture, silencing, public shaming, minimisation and denial of harm of harm, or institutional self-protection. Sometimes it looks like a single catastrophic rupture. Other times it’s a slow erosion of trust that leaves people questioning not just the church, but God, themselves, and reality.
The consequences are rarely “just spiritual.” They often include anxiety, PTSD, moral injury, loss of identity, fractured relationships, and profound spiritual crisis.
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Why I’m Writing This
This blog is part of my own wrestle toward recovery.
I write about the spiritual, emotional, relational, and embodied impacts of spiritual trauma, alongside my own attempts at healing—what has helped, what hasn’t, and what I wish someone had told me earlier.
I’m interested in honest faith, informed theology, and trauma-aware reflection. I’m not interested in platitudes, bypassing, or protecting systems at the expense of people.
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Calling the Church to Do Better
A Traumatised Faith names the causes of spiritual harm and calls the church—collectively—to do better.
That means:
- Naming abuse and coercive control when it happens
- Taking survivors seriously the first time
- Understanding trauma, not pathologising it
- Valuing truth over reputation
- Practising repentance that costs something
Silence, minimisation, and spiritual gaslighting are not neutral acts. They cause real harm.
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What You’ll Find Here:
Reflections on traumatised faith and spiritual injury
Theological critique shaped by lived experience
Calls to action
Language for things many survivors struggle to articulate
Traumatised faith 