At Expanding Circles, Miriam Cornell provides therapy, supervision, consultation, and training.
The focus of Expanding Circles is on the human experiences of religious harm, neurodivergence, sexuality, gender, and their intersections.
Miriam has both personal and professional experience in these areas and feels deeply that each human should get the chance to explore any and all of these things in safe and expansive spaces.
You can find some information about religious harm here.
About Me.
Miriam (they/them) is a therapist currently based in Minneapolis. After leaving the religious cult in which they were raised, they spent time exploring their relationship to religion, rewriting the narrative of their life, and learning everything they could about religious harm (They are still learning!). Their experience of being raised in a cult, subsequent exploration of self and healing, and their continual exploration of this topic informs their work as a therapist. They primarily work with individuals and couples around experiences of religious harm, gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence often exploring the intersecting connections of all these things.
About Religious Trauma.
Religious harm happens in a variety of contexts and in a number of different ways and is any sort of harm that occurs in a religious or spiritual setting. As an umbrella term it can be used to describe a variety of painful and difficult religious experiences. The term includes things like adverse religious experiences, religious trauma, religious abuse, spiritual bypassing, etc. Sometimes folks are not sure what might be able to described as specifically trauma or abuse; utilizing the term religious harm can offer a path or container to describe experiences while exploring what language might fit better.
If there is anything I hope you remember from glancing at this site, it is the religious trauma is trauma. Trauma can be described as "feeling helpless, overpowered, and/or unsafe in the face of perceived danger, experiencing a sense of profound aloneness, disconnection and/or misattunement, and finding what has occurred to be incomprehensible or unspeakable" (Captari and Riggs, In Press). Religious trauma comes to be in spaces that rely on limiting autonomy, agency, connection, and curiosity to uphold their power structures. It also often has the added layer of ultimate consequences of some type of eternal suffering. The process of healing religious harm needs to intentionally and thoughtfully address the ways loss of autonomy, agency, connection, and identity have impacted a survivor's life and relationships.
If reconnecting with your sense of self and exploring how you want to and get to show up in the world as a survivor sounds like something you would like to do, email to set up a consult.
Services
Therapy
I provide individual therapy for those 13 and older. I typically work with queer, trans, and neurodivergent folks, as well as those who have experienced religious harm.
Read more here.
Supervision and Consultation
I provide supervision for those on the MFT and LPCC licensure track. I also offer consultations for those needing to explore working with religious harm in their therapy offices.
Read more here.
Training
I provide training in many areas of harmful religious experiences. I offer in-person and live video options.
Read more here and book your next training session.