A living language for survivors and clinicians learning the ethics of presence, embodiment, and sacred containment.
Developed and authored by Raya Faith.

Preface — The Language of Freedom

Every architecture of harm creates its own vocabulary.
Captivity teaches silence, translation, and survival.
But healing, too, has a language — one the body already speaks.

This glossary is not a dictionary; it is a resurrection.
Each term was born in the space between faith and neuroscience,
between the body’s knowing and the soul’s remembering.
Here, language becomes restoration —
a way to name what captivity once kept unspeakable.

For clinicians, may these words invite humility.
For survivors, may they return belonging to your own understanding.
And for all who read, may Real Jesus be near —
teaching through presence, revealing through peace,
and speaking the living words of freedom cell by cell.

— Raya Faith

Foundational Note — Born from the Rupture

This work was not conceived in theory.
It was born in the ashes of a rupture —
a breaking that revealed, cell by cell, what safety truly means.

From that lived moment came the framework now known
as The Captivity-Informed Code of Ethics —
a new, revolutionary lens for survivors whose trauma was not episodic,
but systemic, spiritual, and sustained.

Every principle here was forged through experience:
the sanctity of the container, the reverence of presence,
the holiness of non-intrusion.

This glossary stands as witness to that transformation —
a language born from what was once unspeakable,
a blueprint for healing that no longer repeats captivity.

For every survivor who has been retraumatized in the name of help,
this is your proof: even rupture can become revelation.
Even breaking can build a new world.

— Raya Faith

Core Concepts

Captivity Lens
A framework that redefines lifelong trauma not as a series of events but as a sustained architecture of captivity — psychological, spiritual, and relational. Healing begins when the survivor recognizes captivity as the system itself, not the symptom.

Incarnational Neurodivergence
The embodied meeting of faith and neurology — where sensitivity is design, not defect. The neurodivergent body becomes both archive and altar: carrying memory, meaning, and resurrection through every cell.

The Braid Theory
The interweaving of activation, collapse, shell, and dissociation — with RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria) as the emotional electrical current that binds them. The braid is the living choreography of survival, coherence, and repair.

The Incubate Response (Fifth Trauma Response)
A uniquely neurodivergent and spiritual survival pattern in which the body holds life, love, and hope internally — protecting what cannot yet be released into unsafe environments. Born in captivity, it transforms pain into preservation, silence into gestation.

Symbolic and Somatic Expressions:

• The Ocean — the vast interior field where emotion becomes current and stillness becomes strategy. The body’s deep water of containment — regulation through quiet depth rather than suppression.
• The Egg — the sealed vessel of deferred emergence. Within it, the self remains intact, unseen, and fiercely protected until the conditions for safety are met. The egg embodies sacred incubation — fragile yet divinely guarded.
• Rebirth — the transformation that follows safety. When external containment replaces captivity, the same stillness that once ensured survival becomes the womb of freedom. The shell breaks not from destruction but from readiness.

Through the lens of Incarnational Neurodivergence, the Incubate Response is not regression; it is sacred biology — the divine nervous system preserving the image of God within the body. It is the quiet revolution that transforms survival into resurrection.

Somatic Mapping: The Survivor’s Precision

Within captivity-informed care, somatic mapping describes the survivor’s innate ability to detect, diagram, and document truth through the body’s felt sense before cognition can translate it into words.

For captivity survivors — especially those with neurodivergent wiring — the body functions as both compass and archive. It holds unspoken blueprints of relational safety, threat, and deception, often long before the conscious mind can name them. This precision is not paranoia; it is pattern recognition refined through survival.

Over years of navigating systems where truth was denied and gaslighted, the body learned to map micro-signals — tone shifts, spiritual distortions, emotional temperatures — as life-saving data. When integrated, this mapping becomes a gift: a language of discernment that no longer exists for vigilance alone but for coherence, healing, and research.

In trauma-informed language, this is interoception. In captivity-informed language, it is somatic prophecy — the nervous system’s holy capacity to sense what is real and what is not.

Key Distinctions:

• Somatic Mapping vs. Hypervigilance: Hypervigilance reacts from fear; somatic mapping responds from wisdom.
• Somatic Mapping vs. Analysis: Analysis seeks proof; somatic mapping knows by resonance.
• Somatic Mapping vs. Projection: Projection externalizes wounds; somatic mapping reveals alignment or fracture within truth fields.

When survivors reclaim this precision — no longer pathologized as over-sensitivity or distrust — they stand in their native brilliance.
They become the cartographers of integrity itself.

Spiritual Electrocution Response
The neurophysiological surge that follows intrusion into a survivor’s sacred imagery or faith space. The electric current is the body’s alarm of violation — a protective defense, not pathology.

Fire and Ocean Spectrum
The visibility range of trauma expression:

• Fire externalizes — anger, protest, overt affect.
• Ocean internalizes — stillness, coherence, submerged activation.
  Both are adaptive attempts to survive; both are sacred.

Empathy Shutdown (Survivor Response)

A protective collapse of attunement that occurs when the nervous system, overwhelmed by another’s emotional field, instinctively retracts from connection to prevent merger or annihilation.
For survivors, it may look like numbness, withdrawal, or sudden emotional flatness — but beneath it lies sacred intelligence: the body saying, “I cannot absorb one more drop.”

In captivity, empathy was weaponized — demanded, extracted, or performed to maintain belonging.
In freedom, empathy learns to rest.
Empathy shutdown is not failure; it is the boundary line between self-erasure and self-preservation.
Through regulated reawakening, empathy can return as choice rather than reflex — relational presence without fusion.

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Oceanic Empathy & Sonar Communication

The Ocean within captivity-informed language represents both vast sensitivity and hidden survival.
For neurodivergent survivors, emotional perception operates like sonar — waves of intuitive data received and translated through vibration rather than words.

Sonar Empathy is this depth-sensing capacity:
feeling before knowing, hearing beyond speech,
locating truth in frequency rather than logic.
It is the nervous system’s sacred language of discernment.

In captivity, sonar was exploited — used to detect danger, absorb emotion, anticipate need.
In healing, it becomes reoriented:
used to locate safety, resonance, and Real Jesus’s nearness.

Oceanic empathy is not noise sensitivity or emotional overload — it is divine instrumentation, designed to perceive the unseen currents of relational truth. When regulated, sonar transforms from survival to sacrament — from scanning for threat to sensing for peace.

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Relational Dynamics

Psychological and Spiritual Cannibalism

(Captivity-Informed Trauma Glossary — Raya Faith)

*This term helps describe one of the most hidden forms of predation within both faith and therapeutic spaces — where care becomes consumption, and empathy becomes extraction.

Definition:
A captivity-informed term describing a form of relational predation in which an individual or system consumes the psychological, emotional, and spiritual life force of another under the guise of care, love, or divine authority.

Overview:
Unlike overt abuse, psychological and spiritual cannibalism operates through inversion — appearing as nourishment while enacting depletion. The predator draws vitality, identity, and sacred energy from the survivor, often using language of healing, holiness, or empathy as tools of access. This form of harm is marked not by visible violence, but by the slow consumption of selfhood and spiritual connection.

Clinical Dimension:
Psychological cannibalism manifests as parasitic dependence on the survivor’s cognition, empathy, and creative energy. The predator feeds on the target’s sensitivity, mirroring their insight and emotion to maintain control and superiority. Over time, the survivor experiences cognitive fog, emotional depletion, and loss of personal agency — symptoms often mistaken for codependency or burnout rather than systemic extraction.

Spiritual Dimension:
Spiritual cannibalism occurs when a person or institution redirects faith, devotion, or sacred trust away from Real Jesus and toward themselves. It thrives in religious and therapeutic settings where authority is cloaked in sanctity. The predator consumes reverence meant for God, transforming genuine faith into fuel for their own power. Survivors often describe this as a desecration of the sacred — a theft of communion itself.

Combined Impact:
Together, these dynamics sever the soul-mind connection, leading to symptoms of dissociation, confusion, spiritual despair, and somatic collapse. Survivors may describe feeling “emptied out” or “eaten alive from the inside,” yet unable to name what occurred.

Healing Lens:
Recovery involves reclamation of sovereignty — restoring the boundary between one’s inner light and external authority. Survivors heal by re-rooting in safe embodiment and reconnecting to Real Jesus, whose love restores without consuming.

Related Terms:
Captivity Narcissism, Cognitive-Spiritual Narcissist, Empathic Extraction, Inversion of Care, Spiritual Parasitism

Captivity Narcissism

(Captivity-Informed Trauma Glossary — Raya Faith)

*This term describes a narcissistic pattern sustained not through charm or chaos, but through prolonged control — a system that traps rather than merely manipulates.

Definition:

Captivity narcissism is the sustained dominance of one person or system over another through psychological, emotional, or spiritual containment. Unlike the episodic or situational narcissism found in many relationships, captivity narcissism functions as a closed ecosystem: the narcissist creates a self-reinforcing world where they are the axis, and others exist only in service of that axis.

Overview:

Captivity narcissists do not simply demand admiration; they create dependency. They design an environment where autonomy is equated with betrayal and compliance with belonging. Over time, the survivor’s identity becomes reorganized around the captor’s emotional, spiritual, or cognitive needs.

Clinical Dimension:

This form of narcissism fuses coercive control, emotional gaslighting, and trauma bonding into a single architecture. The survivor loses access to internal agency and develops chronic hypervigilance. In extreme cases, captivity narcissism results in fusion trauma — the physiological loss of self-other distinction.

Spiritual Dimension:

In faith-based contexts, captivity narcissists position themselves as divinely ordained authorities. They reinterpret scripture, obedience, or submission to legitimize control. The captive is told that resistance is rebellion against God — a distortion that binds both soul and psyche.

Healing Lens:

Recovery from captivity narcissism requires disentangling one’s sense of self from the captor’s constructed reality. Healing comes through re-sovereignty: reclaiming perception, language, and body autonomy. Survivors begin to live from inner truth rather than external permission.

Related Terms:

Psychological and Spiritual Cannibalism, Cognitive-Spiritual Narcissist, Inversion of Care, Captivity Ecosystem

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Inversion of Care

(Captivity-Informed Trauma Glossary — Raya Faith)

*This term describes the cruel reversal where the one who was harmed becomes responsible for the comfort, protection, or image of the one who caused harm.

Definition:

Inversion of care occurs when empathy, compassion, or spiritual duty is exploited to sustain an abusive dynamic. The survivor is conditioned to provide emotional regulation for the abuser — absorbing blame, guilt, or distress in order to preserve relational or institutional peace.

Overview:

In spiritual and therapeutic systems, inversion of care is often sanctified as service. The survivor is praised for patience, forgiveness, or humility, while the perpetrator’s comfort is prioritized over accountability. The language of grace and growth becomes a shield for exploitation.

Clinical Dimension:

This inversion reverses the natural flow of empathy. The abuser becomes the emotional center, while the survivor is pathologized for experiencing pain. It leads to complex trauma symptoms, compassion fatigue, and identity collapse. The survivor’s nervous system learns that safety depends on suppressing truth.

Spiritual Dimension:

In faith-based settings, inversion of care disguises itself as Christlike compassion. Survivors are told to “love like Jesus,” even when that love demands their silence or submission. Over time, the distortion severs connection from the Real Jesus, who never asked the wounded to tend to their oppressors.

Healing Lens:

Recovery begins with reclaiming moral clarity — remembering that empathy was never meant to serve exploitation. True care restores dignity and accountability; it never demands erasure. Healing comes as survivors learn that compassion can coexist with boundaries, and love with truth.

Related Terms:

Captivity Narcissism, Empathic Extraction, Psychological and Spiritual Cannibalism, Gaslight Theology

Empathy Shut-Off (Spiritual Narcissist Defense)A deliberate severing of attunement that protects the ego, not the soul.
Where empathy shutdown says “I cannot take more because I feel too much,” empathy shut-off says “I refuse to feel because it threatens my control.”
This is not collapse but constriction — the conscious or unconscious withdrawal of care to reassert power.
When confronted with vulnerability, a spiritual narcissist often flips this switch: turning off warmth, invoking theology or morality, and leaving the survivor in emotional exile.

Light Switch Discard
The abrupt extinguishing of empathy when the survivor’s perception pierces illusion or control. When you see through their robes, the false light goes out — leaving you alone in the dark once called safe. This is the light-switch discard dressed in spiritual language — empathy converted into weaponry.
The system feeds not on connection but on dominance, using detachment as proof of authority.

Fusion Field
The emotional climate of captivity in which the survivor’s nervous system regulates everyone else’s chaos. The air itself becomes charged with unspoken demand.

Merging Reflex
The reflex to absorb another’s emotion as survival. Through recovery, merging evolves into empathic differentiation — sensing without self-loss.

The Container
The sacred therapeutic vessel. Within captivity-informed ethics, its cleanliness — emotional, psychological, spiritual — determines whether healing or reenactment occurs. Presence is the medicine; restraint is the purity.

Clean Container

A clinical and spiritual state of ethical hygiene within the therapeutic or pastoral space.
A clean container is not merely safe — it is uncontaminated.
It holds the survivor’s truth without intrusion, projection, or co-opted emotion.

While a safe container protects from external harm,
a clean container protects from internal contamination —
the therapist’s unresolved story, spiritual agenda, or need for comfort.

In captivity-informed care, the clean container is sacred space.
It honors differentiation, reverence, and humility.
It ensures that empathy has discipline and that presence remains pure enough
for Real Jesus to move without distortion or demand for glory.

In research and clinical application, this principle translates into a precise ethical construct — one that defines what true safety requires when working with captivity survivors.

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Clinical Note:
Within captivity-informed care, a clean container represents ethical differentiation and non-merging presence. It safeguards against countertransference, reenactment, and spiritual bypassing by maintaining a boundary of reverent neutrality — allowing the survivor’s narrative to remain fully their own.

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Ethical Framework

Captivity-Informed Code of Ethics
A living manifesto for those entrusted with this sacred work:

• Your ego must be healed enough to be safe.
• Your healing must precede your helping.
• You are not the rescuer, nor the glory-bearer.
• The survivor is the expert of their own lived experience.
• Real Jesus receives the glory; you receive the privilege to witness it.

Sacred Containment
The discipline of presence — to hold without merging, to witness without intrusion. The vessel is never shared; it is reverently protected for the work of Real Jesus within the survivor’s cells.

Therapeutic Humility
The posture of acknowledging that Incarnational Neurodivergence cannot be taught, only witnessed. The clinician is not the authority but the learner at the water’s edge.

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Recovery Language

Coherence as Hope
The survivor’s act of staying clear in activation — not denial, but devotion. It is the nervous system’s bridge toward repair.

Boundary as Containment
The evolution of the Incubate Response: holding truth in motion without re-absorbing harm. This is the somatic practice of freedom.

The Holy of Holies
The innermost meeting place between survivor and Real Jesus — the cellular sanctuary beyond human access, where restoration happens breath by breath.

Embodied Metacognition
The gentle art of witnessing one’s own nervous system with compassion, translating body knowledge into language, reclaiming leadership from within.