Free workbook · PDF
Take Off Your Sandals
Religious trauma, the nine lenses and the abuse of conscience.
A companion to the keynote Separating the Wound from God, Transform Trauma Oxford 2026. This workbook walks you through one idea and asks you to put your own handwriting on it — alone, with a therapist, or in a small group.
One clear idea
Religious trauma is a lens someone else’s wound installed in your conscience. Healing means giving the conscience back to its owner.
Made to be written in
Every part explains one piece and then asks you to do something with it: write, rate, remember, decide.
Not for or against religion
The question is never what you believe. It is what was done to your conscience in the name of what you believe.
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What's inside
Six parts, in order
The parts build on each other, and the nine lenses only make sense once you have seen the window. One part a week is a good pace.
- One
The jar and the jam
Separating the container from what it was meant to hold.
- Two
The window
What a lens is, and the five steps a wound takes from a leader to your conscience.
- Three
The nine lenses
Three before God, three against yourself, three against everyone else.
- Four
Holy ground
Conscience, its abuse, the idols, and the test that never asks what a group believes.
- Five
Taking off the sandals
Safety before truth, the three relational vitamins, and telling the two voices apart.
- Six
For therapists
The model on one page, a listening guide, a ten-session map, and a case worksheet.
“We do not treat what people believe. We treat what was done to them in its name.”
A word about safety
These exercises ask you to look at things that were built to stay unseen. If you feel overwhelmed, pause and come back with someone beside you. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, put the workbook down and contact a crisis line or emergency services where you live. Nothing here is more important than that. This workbook is a guide for reflection and for clinical work; it is not therapy and does not replace it.