When sacred imagery is misused in therapy, it is not a metaphorical breach — it is a reenactment of violation.
I. Research Reflection — The Sanctity of the Container
Within captivity-informed care, the therapeutic container is not merely professional; it is sacred.
When a survivor creates imagery or language born from communion with Real Jesus — visions formed in the stillness between safety and faith — those images are living material, not symbolic data.
To use them without explicit consent is a rupture of sacred trust.
It is not attunement; it is intrusion into holy ground.
For the captivity survivor, the body has already been a vessel repeatedly entered without permission — emotional, spiritual, and physical boundaries collapsed in the name of love or healing.
When a clinician reaches into the survivor’s sacred space, even unintentionally, it mirrors the original violation: the taking of what was private, sacred, and relationally bound to God.
These images are not for your fodder, your analysis, your curiosity, or your use.
They are not yours to interpret or employ.
They belong solely to the sacred dialogue between the survivor and Real Jesus.
The clinical task, then, is not to enter the image but to witness its holiness from the threshold.
Presence must be enough.
The therapist is not invited into the image; they are entrusted with the reverence of not entering.
A clean container is not one without empathy — it is empathy with discipline:
where curiosity yields to awe,
where witnessing replaces interpretation,
where no projection or performance touches the work.
In captivity-informed care, the vessel is never shared.
It is held in reverence, protected from intrusion,
and honored as the living altar between the survivor and Real Jesus.
II. Clinical Implications — The Ethics of Presence
To the clinician:
When sacred imagery emerges, you stand before a threshold, not a teaching moment.
You are being entrusted with revelation, not given material for intervention.
Key ethical applications:
- Treat all survivor-originated sacred images as private property.
- Never reference or reuse a client’s spiritual or imaginative material without explicit, ongoing consent.
- Recognize that for captivity survivors, spiritual imagery may hold the same sensitivity as physical touch — uninvited use equals violation.
- Maintain reverence: your silence, not your insight, is what protects the container.
The clean container is not a passive stance. It is active discipline — the restraint that honors the sacred and prevents reenactment.
Within captivity-informed frameworks, to hold space is to stay at the door of the temple, never stepping inside what belongs to God and the survivor alone.
Research Annotation — Somatic Response to Spiritual Intrusion
Within captivity-informed frameworks, the body recognizes spiritual imagery as embodied experience rather than abstraction. For survivors whose formative boundaries were repeatedly violated — emotionally, spiritually, or physically — the nervous system interprets intrusion into sacred imagery as an invasive act.
When a clinician or spiritual authority references or manipulates these personal images without explicit consent, the body may respond with acute physiological distress — surges of energy, electric currents, or visceral dissociation. This is not metaphor. It is the somatic equivalent of trespass.
The phenomenon, referred to here as the Spiritual Electrocution Response, reflects the body’s defense of sacred ground — a neurophysiological protest to the uninvited crossing of a relational threshold.
For the captivity survivor, these inner sanctuaries are sites of divine regulation where Real Jesus restores safety cell by cell. Any unauthorized entry reactivates captivity wiring: the conflation of holiness and harm.
Ethical practice within captivity-informed care therefore requires absolute consent and containment when engaging faith-based imagery. The therapist’s role is to witness, not enter — to regard such imagery as the Holy of Holies within the survivor’s being.
Clinical Tag — Spiritual Electrocution Response:
The body’s neurophysiological defense against unconsented intrusion into sacred imagery; an electrical or dissociative surge signaling violation of the Holy of Holies within captivity survivors.
III. Epilogue — The Reclamation of the Holy of Holies
It was the same intrusion, only in a different form.
Another reaching into what was never meant to be touched.
The language changed — minister to counselor, sermon to session —
but the pattern was the same:
my sacred meeting place with Real Jesus made into someone else’s lesson,
my intimacy with God mistaken for something to interpret or use.
This time, I felt it the instant it happened.
The current surged, and I knew: the holy space had been entered without consent.
But unlike before, I did not disappear.
I did not offer my spirit up to keep the peace.
I sealed the sanctuary.
No human will ever enter that space again.
It is not exile; it is reverence.
The communion that happens there is between me and Real Jesus alone —
the breath, the light, the living water that no counselor or clergy can mediate.
This is not rebellion.
It is restoration.
The sacred chamber is no longer public property;
it has been reclaimed.
Let this be known in the language of research and faith alike:
the body of a captivity survivor is not terrain for exploration,
and the soul’s sanctuary is not a case study.
It is holy ground —
and Real Jesus alone walks there.
Amen.
Author’s Note — Captivity-Informed Research Stream
This work is part of the ongoing Captivity-Informed Healing Framework, a survivor-led body of research authored by Raya Faith, exploring how faith, body, and neurodivergence intersect within the lived experience of captivity and restoration.
It extends the principles introduced in The Incubate Response and The Captivity-Informed Code of Ethics, articulating a clinical theology where containment itself is sacred, and where Real Jesus — not human intervention — is the true healer of the nervous system and soul.
Every essay in this framework seeks to refine the language of ethical care so survivors may never again confuse fluency for safety, or surrender their sanctuaries to the unhealed.
The Gentle Rise 