Some wounds don't come from the world. They come from the church.

Episode 5 of The Uplift is the most personal conversation in the series so far — a 74-minute expert-facilitated panel roundtable that goes into places most faith communities still refuse to name. The topic is spiritual abuse: how it gets taught to children, how it operates through scripture, how it entangles love with performance, how it leaves people either clinging to religion or walking away from it entirely — and how healing is even possible after that kind of damage.

The conversation is guided by Dr. David Sedlacek and Dr. Beverly Sedlacek, co-founders of Into His Rest Ministries — a pastoral heart, a clinical mind, and a Christ-centered mission. Dr. David is a retired professor, therapist, and pastor with over 40 years guiding people through trauma, family dysfunction, and spiritual restoration. Dr. Beverly is a doctorally prepared mental health clinician with a gift for speaking into the hardest rooms. Together, they bring what they call an "ebony and ivory" approach to ministry — and a combined 60+ years of clinical and pastoral experience to a conversation that badly needs both.

Around them, five panelists show up with real stories.

Ruth Dwyer, a Seventh-day Adventist, shares a memory from age five — her aunt telling her that Jesus was writing down every sin to punish her. She says she made two decisions that day. One was self-fulfilling. The other was not. She also names shame and guilt as the obstacles that nearly kept her from healing, and credits the Sedlaceks for pushing her toward therapy and a Christian coach.

Louise Calixte, a pastor's kid and ministry singer, talks about codependency with the church: the way service can hollow out a person when love is connected to usefulness rather than identity. Her father's death in 2018 cracked something open. She eventually took a year-long sabbatical from church before COVID.

Clifton, 22, left the church entirely. He identifies as a seeker, not a Christian, and he brings Kierkegaard and Hebrews 11 into a room of believers and asks the question most people are afraid to ask out loud: what's the difference between real faith and performative faith?

Caroline Adams, a pastor's wife who describes herself as "not the traditional first lady," carries her own history of church hurt — and shares what it cost her to stay, to serve, and eventually to meet people where they actually are.

The structure moves through three acts: defining what spiritual abuse actually is (and separating it from the broader terms "church hurt" and "religious trauma"), sharing the lived stories that sit underneath those definitions, and then — without rushing past the hard parts — turning toward what healing actually looks like.

Dr. David puts language around the psychology of certainty-seeking: why religious leaders and systems reach for control, what it costs the people under that control, and why "hurt people hurt people" is not just a slogan but a cycle with real victims. Dr. Beverly talks about what the church is meant to be — a safe community — and about a missionary chaplain she visited who said "I love you" every single day to a man who didn't need Bible verses. He just needed to know he was loved.

The episode closes with Dr. David's mirror exercise: look at yourself, say "I love you." Dr. Beverly's closing word: "Love always wins. Love always wins. Doesn't matter where you are on your journey. Love always wins."

This is a 74-minute conversation. It is not easy. It is worth every minute.

The Uplift is a podcast from Breath of Life Fellowship in Stamford, CT.

Keywords: spiritual abuse healing, religious trauma, church hurt, spiritual abuse in the church, Dr. David Sedlacek, Dr. Beverly Sedlacek, Into His Rest Ministries, trauma-informed faith, leaving the church, pastor's kid deconstruction, codependency and ministry, shame and guilt Christianity, unconditional love God, Seventh-day Adventist spiritual abuse