4 Ways People Lose Their Grounding in Spiritual Work

Spiritual discernment is the ability to question what we are told in spiritual spaces and stay grounded in our own judgment.

This isn’t an attack on anyone’s beliefs or practices. It’s an invitation to check in with yourself, about what you believe, why you believe it, and whether the people guiding your spiritual path are leading you toward your own clarity or away from it.

Over the years, I’ve had conversations with people who were genuinely scared because someone told them something had been done to them spiritually. Sometimes they had been told they were cursed/hexed. Sometimes they had been told they were especially vulnerable or targeted. In many of those conversations, what people needed most wasn’t protection. It was their sense of agency back.

What stood out in those conversations wasn’t the belief itself. It was how quickly someone’s sense of agency had been replaced by fear and dependence on whoever was interpreting the situation for them.

Belief is not the problem.

Belief without discernment is where people get hurt.

In spiritual spaces, where so much is felt rather than seen and trust runs deep, spiritual discernment isn’t optional. It’s protection.

Over time, I’ve noticed that when people run into trouble around spiritual guidance or spiritual work, it tends to come from a few recurring places.

None of them require bad intentions.

But all of them deserve discernment.

1. Spiritual Authority and Personal Sovereignty

When spiritual guidance replaces your own inner authority.

Many spiritual systems teach that something external can override your well-being. Sometimes that belief comes with the idea that only someone else has the power to fix it.

But there is a difference between acknowledging that something is affecting you and being told that you are powerless without someone else’s intervention.

When fear enters the picture, it can become easy to hand authority over to whoever sounds confident, knowledgeable, or urgent. Especially if they present themselves as a protector or gatekeeper.

The crux of the situation is not belief itself, but whether someone is being supported in reconnecting with their own grounding or taught that they are powerless without intervention.

What I pay attention to is not whether a belief exists, but whether the process of working through it brings someone back into their own steadiness or pulls them further away from it.

I’m going to be super real: any practice that requires you to surrender your sense of agency deserves a pause. A grounded practitioner builds your capacity to trust yourself. They do not replace it.

2. When Fear Becomes the Primary Motivator

Fear. It can make anything feel immediate and overwhelming. It can also make people vulnerable to pressure.

I want to be very clear here. Feeling afraid does not always equate to someone doing something wrong. It means they are human. Fear is a real experience, and it deserves to be met with care.

The issue arises when fear is used as the engine of the work itself. When urgency replaces care. When solutions are framed as the only thing standing between you and harm.

Spiritual work rooted in genuine help tends to reduce fear over time, not intensify it.

If you find yourself more anxious, more dependent, or more convinced of your own vulnerability after working with someone, baby, that is worth paying attention to.

Discernment asks a simple question. Am I leaving this feeling more grounded in myself, or less?

3. Confusing Sensitivity With Vulnerability

Being intuitive or perceptive does not mean being fragile.

Some people are naturally sensitive, intuitive, or open. That does not make them weak. It does not make them targets. And it does not mean they are meant to absorb or carry everything around them.

Trouble often shows up when sensitivity is framed as fragility instead of awareness. When someone is taught that their openness makes them especially cursed, especially at risk, or especially in need of outside protection.

No.

Sensitivity, when properly supported, becomes information. It becomes discernment. It becomes one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal.

Grounding is not a one-time concept. It is an ongoing relationship with your body, your environment, and your sense of self. When that relationship is supported, sensitivity becomes information rather than exposure. I ground daily. Daily.

4. When Power Masquerades as Spiritual Authority

When spiritual work shifts from service toward influence or control.

Sometimes spiritual work shifts away from service and toward control. Not always intentionally. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes, subtly enough, that neither the practitioner nor the person they are working with notices it happening.

When the focus becomes influence, dominance, recognition, or financial extraction tied to fear, the work can move away from healing and toward something else entirely.

You have the right to ask questions. You have the right to know what is being done, why, and what outcome you can reasonably expect. You have the right to seek a second opinion. You have the right to say no.

Practices that truly support people tend to restore clarity and independence, not dependency. They hand you back to yourself.

A Closing Thought on Spiritual Discernment

Discernment and belief are not opposites. In fact, real discernment protects belief. It keeps your spiritual life yours, not something that can be leveraged against you by someone who knows how to speak your language.

Belief without discernment can leave a door open. Not because belief itself is wrong, but because belief alone cannot always tell the difference between someone who is genuinely helping and someone who has simply learned to mimic help.

This is not about declaring what is real or unreal. It is about paying attention to how people feel after spiritual interactions, and whether those experiences leave them steadier or more afraid.

My perspective is one way of understanding these experiences, not a demand that anyone abandon their beliefs. What matters to me is whether the work brings people back into their own clarity.

That is the lens I work from. And it is the lens I encourage others to trust when deciding whom to listen to and how to move forward.

In my own work with clients, helping people reconnect with their own discernment is often more valuable than providing answers.