2017-04-25 Recovery From Spiritual Abuse Conference

25 April 2017

This past weekend (April 21-22, 2017) ICSA conducted a conference in Fort Myers, Florida: Recovery From Spiritual Abuse. 

The program included the following sessions:

• The Varieties of Abuse (Michael Langone)

• Repressed and Distressed: Seventeen Years of Emotional Abuse in The Way International (Charlene Edge)

• Living on the Edge: My Fringe Church Experiences (Maureen Griffo)

• Coping with Triggers (Maureen Griffo)

• How to Benefit from Counseling (Ron Burks)

• Spiritual Issues in Counseling (Robert and Judy Pardon)

• Making Churches Safe Havens for Spiritual Abuse Victims (Ron Burks; Robert and Judy Pardon)

• Spiritual Abuse Victims Dialogue With Religious and Mental Health Professionals (Ron Burks; Charlene Edge; Maureen Griffo; Michael Langone; Judy Pardon; Robert Pardon)

The speakers - to whom we are indebted for their continued dedication to the cause of helping victims of psychological manipulation, cults, and spiritual abuse – gave thoughtful presentations. The attendees’ participation made for lively and interesting discussions. Because nearly all of the 34 attendees remained to the very end of the conference, we can conclude that this was indeed a good conference. 

As promised, we’ve posted the Power Points in a Google folder, which you can access here. 

Though Maureen Griffo did not use Power Points, the content of Carol Giambalvo’s talk on triggers (which Maureen gave for Carol, who could not make the conference) is here. 

Thanks to Bob Pardon, we have videos of all the talks, except for his and Judy’s talk on spiritually safe churches (which didn’t film because of a technical issue). We intend to post these on ICSA’s YouTube channel soon. 

We hope to see you at future ICSA conferences.