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Digital Sanctuaries: Creating Safe Spaces in an Unsafe World with John Wilson

Breaking free from a religious community that prays daily for the execution of outsiders leaves...

Last updated 13 June 2025
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Breaking free from a religious community that prays daily for the execution of outsiders leaves lasting wounds. But what happens when that same person harnesses their pain to create spaces where genuine connection can flourish?

John Wilson, co-founder of Onlinevents, opens up about his journey growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness and the profound impact it had on his capacity for relationship. When his training as a therapist created unbearable tension with his religious upbringing, John eventually left the community, resulting in his excommunication and painful estrangement from family members.

With remarkable vulnerability, John reveals how childhood religious trauma manifests in his adult relationships: “The fear of being abandoned is just completely, incredibly huge for me.” Despite facilitating connection professionally, he shares how easily he can “spook” in intimate settings, imagining threats where none exist. His healing journey involves recognizing when a young, terrified part of himself takes over—sometimes as young as three or four years old—and finding ways to soothe that inner child.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when John connects his personal healing to the creation of Onlinevents. Together with his sister Sandra, he’s built a digital sanctuary where people can experience the very safety he lacked. Their platform considers how “the way we are welcomed into an environment impacts the states that we find each other in,” allowing transformative connection to emerge.

Perhaps most profound is John’s revelation about finding peace with his estrangement: “How I care and love for my parents is not to do with contact. That’s something that lives within me.” By slaying the dragon of institutional control, he discovered that meaningful relationship remains possible even without physical connection.

Join us for this deeply moving exploration of religious trauma, attachment healing, and the creation of sanctuaries—both internal and digital—where we can find our way back to authentic connection. Share your own experiences with religious upbringing or building communities of healing in the comments below.

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Digital Sanctuaries: Creating Safe Spaces in an Unsafe World with John Wilson
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Presenter

John Wilson

I am a co-founder and Director at Onlinevents, dedicated to democratising learning in the helping professions. We host the world’s first and largest video learning library akin to “Netflix” for these professions.

Additionally, I serve as a Director at Temenos Education and lead the Counselling & Psychotherapy Programme. Our focus is on nurturing students to become their most potent selves, both personally and professionally.

With over 20 years of experience, I currently manage a private practice as a Psychotherapist and Supervisor, offering services through video, text chat, and virtual environments.

I also facilitate groups and am involved in the Going Global and La Jolla programmes, rooted in Carl Rogers’ Encounter Group movement.

I am a past Chair and now an Honorary Fellow at the Association for Counselling & Therapy Online (ACTO). I have served on the board of the World Association for Person Centered & Experiential Psychotherapy & Counselling for 6 years.

Malcolm Stern

Malcolm Stern has worked as a group and individual psychotherapist for more than 30 years. He was a co-founder of Alternatives at St James’s Church in London and runs groups internationally.

He is the author of Falling in Love / Staying in Love (Piatkus 2004) and Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020). He co-presented Channel 4’s relationship series, ‘Made for Each Other’ in 2003 and 2004 and sailed on the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ with Greenpeace in the 1980s. The book he is currently writing is an exploration of the shadow and its necessity in our evolutionary development.

Slay Your Dragons Podcast

To become equal to the dream sewn within us, our heart must break open and usually must break more than once. That’s why they say that the only heart worth having is a broken heart. For only in breaking can it open fully and reveal what is hidden within.” – Michael Meade

This is a series of podcasts based on the premise explored in Malcolm Stern’s acclaimed book of the same name, that adversity provides us with the capacity to develop previously unexplored depths and is , in effect , a crucible for self reflection and awareness. Malcolm lost his daughter Melissa to suicide in 2014. It slowly dawned on him over the following few years that he was being educated and an opportunity was being presented where new insights helped him forge a path through his grief and despair. As part of that cathartic journey, he wrote “ Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020 ) where he was able to describe some of the practices that had helped him shed light on a way through the darkness.