Ep 131: When Church Hurts: Spiritual Abuse Explained
By Charlotte Cummings | Feel Better Podcast
If you've ever walked away from a church service, a religious group, or a faith community feeling like you weren't quite enough, you might have chalked it up to your own shortcomings.
But what if the problem wasn't you?
Spiritual abuse is one of the most under-recognised forms of harm out there. It hides in plain sight, wrapped in scripture and goodness and the language of love. And because it's attached to something that's meant to be sacred, it can take years, sometimes decades, for people to even name what happened.
This post is for anyone who has ever felt controlled, shamed, or diminished in a faith context. Or for anyone who loves someone who has.
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL ABUSE?
Spiritual abuse is abuse that happens within a religious or spiritual context, where scripture, religious authority, or group power is used to dominate or control individuals.
It can look dramatic, like the kind of thing we associate with cult documentaries. But it also shows up quietly, in everyday church environments, in small groups, in faith communities that, on the surface, look completely healthy.
At its core, spiritual abuse makes people feel less than. It takes control of their lives in ways that often feel like personal choice, but that, over time and with reflection, reveal significant power dynamics at play.
It can involve:
Shaming people for who they are or what they think
Controlling behaviour through religious authority or group expectations
Making people feel they are not good enough for God, or the group
Holding power over areas of life that go well beyond the role of a spiritual leader
Strong definitions of who is "in" and who is "out"
One of the most important questions I ask people when they're unpacking harmful faith experiences is this: who did you have to be in order to belong here? What did you have to think, look like, or trade in order to find that belonging?
That question often unlocks a lot.
HOW POWER WORKS IN SPIRITUAL ABUSE
One of the reasons spiritual abuse is so damaging is the nature of the power involved.
When people look up to religious leaders, they're often extending enormous trust. These are people they believe are representing their faith, their God. Over time, that leader's opinion of them can become indistinguishable from what they believe God thinks of them.
So if you're not good enough for the church, you start to feel like you're not good enough for God. That's a heavy thing to carry. And it's wrong.
What spiritual abuse often sounds like is authority wrapped in spiritual language. God told me this needs to happen. Scripture says you need to behave this way. If you question leadership, you're being rebellious or sinful.
Any questioning of leadership gets characterised as a moral failing. And so people find themselves walking a tightrope, trying to get everything right, trying to comply, because belonging is tied to obedience.
IT'S A SPECTRUM
It's important to understand that spiritual abuse exists on a spectrum.
At one end, you might have a Sunday church experience where there's a subtle pressure to conform, where certain people are consistently elevated and others are quietly made to feel lesser.
At the other end, you have high control or high demand groups, where finances are managed by the group, education is controlled, and even deeply personal decisions, like how many children to have, are made collectively. In these environments, leaving can feel almost impossible.
I know this end of the spectrum intimately from my PhD research, which looks at the experiences of women who have left Gloriavale, a closed fundamentalist Christian community on New Zealand's West Coast. These women were born into that life. The constraints on leaving are immense. The harm is real and ongoing.
But spiritual abuse doesn't require that level of control to cause damage. It can happen in a church down the road.
THE IMPACT ON MENTAL HEALTH
When someone has been subjected to a real power imbalance in a spiritual context, the mental health impacts are significant.
What I commonly see includes:
Hypervigilance and a constant need to stay on the right path
Persistent self-doubt, particularly around thoughts and feelings
High anxiety, especially around the fear of getting something wrong
Disconnection from the body and from gut instincts
Difficulty questioning authority, even when something clearly feels off
Fear of the consequences of stepping out of line
Because belonging is so tied to compliance in religious settings, leaving can feel catastrophic. The social cost is enormous. You can lose your community, your support network, your identity, sometimes all at once.
HEALING FROM SPIRITUAL ABUSE
If any of this is resonating, here's what the path forward can look like.
Rebuild agency
The starting point is getting back to a sense that you are the person who determines how your life goes. That you have authority over your own decisions, your own direction, your own thinking.
A lot of the work I do with people who've experienced spiritual abuse involves helping them reconnect with their own voice. They can readily tell me what the group thought about something. It takes much longer to get to what they actually think.
Reconnect with your feelings
There is often a profound disconnection from feelings after spiritual abuse. People know the thoughts they've been shaped to think, but they've lost touch with how they actually feel about things.
This work takes time and it needs to be taken slowly. But it is worth doing.
Separate God from leadership
This one is significant. The person standing at the front of a church is not necessarily an accurate reflection of the God or the faith that you believe in. Leaders are fallible humans operating within systems that are socially constructed. What you were told from the front is not the whole story.
Build your own theology
You are allowed to have a mishmash of beliefs. You're allowed to pick and choose what a particular faith means to you. You don't have to buy wholesale into one system of thinking in order to have a genuine, personal faith.
Give yourself permission to pause
You don't have to belong to a church. You don't have to have figured this out. You can put a moratorium on this whole area of your life and give yourself six months, a year, however long you need, to just be yourself without the noise.
Sunday mornings belong to you. Do with them what you will.
Get support
This might look like a trusted friend, someone who's had similar experiences, books or podcasts that help you make sense of what happened, spiritual direction, or therapy. Naming what happened is a significant step. You don't have to do it alone.
GREEN FLAGS IN SPIRITUAL COMMUNITIES
If you're at a point where you want to be part of a faith community again, here's what to look for.
Transparency around how decisions are made and who holds power. Is there a flat power structure or is it heavily hierarchical? How do you get a voice? What do you need to be or do in order to have influence?
Clear safeguarding policies. What does this group have in place to protect people? Do they understand spiritual abuse? What are their processes if something goes wrong?
No first and second class citizens. Every person belongs. Nobody needs to perform or comply at a particular level in order to be accepted or valued.
A culture of feedback and complaints. If someone raises something that doesn't sit right, how is that handled? Is there a genuine pathway for concerns to be heard and addressed?
A FINAL WORD
This is not what faith is supposed to look like.
If you've experienced harm in this part of your life, that harm is real and valid. And it doesn't have to be the end of the story. I've walked with a lot of people through incredibly difficult spiritual experiences, and there is peace on the other side of this, whether that means finding your way back to a faith that works for you, or finding a life that's full and meaningful entirely on your own terms.
Wherever you land, you're enough.
If this has raised something for you and you'd like to explore it further, you're welcome to reach out via charlottecummings.nz or submit an anonymous question through the Ask Charlotte series.
And if this felt helpful, share it with someone who might need it.
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Okay, so today we're going to talk about the topic of spiritual abuse. And I know that this is a heavy one.
I know that it is not for everyone, but I did a podcast episode last year on when faith gets messy. And it is one of my most downloaded episodes. I was pretty convinced that that was kind of niche.
And I didn't really know if people would be interested in me talking about that topic. And I thought some people might find it a little bit too much, but it turns out that a lot of you were here for it. So this episode, I'm going to dive into the topic of spiritual abuse, because I find there are a lot of people that need to have this defined in order to understand some of the harmful experiences they've been through.
Now, my background here, and I like to be really transparent about this, is that I have been raised within a Christian faith. I have, along the way, had my eyes opened to lots of different experiences. And the place that I'm at in my life at the moment has probably been characterized by a period of deconstruction, of giving myself some freedom to choose what I want to do going forward, where I've had times of really high commitment to church groups before, and then times where I've kind of been able to go out on my own and give myself some freedom.
I maintain that I am a really spiritual person. I have values and beliefs that are really strong and prominent in my life. But I recognize that this space, where we interface with other people when it comes to faith, can be a part of our lives where some harm occurs.
Now, I'm currently doing my PhD, looking at the experiences of women who have left Gloria Vale, which, for those of you who are not in New Zealand or not familiar with Gloria Vale, it is a community that is closed in a remote area on the west coast of New Zealand. And it is a fundamentalist Christian community. It also has really high control of its members, and there is a lot of abuse that happens within this community.
So as part of that research too, I'm looking at women who were born into life within this community. So they didn't choose to be there, and there are a lot of constraints, particularly around women leaving. So my PhD is in the area of sociology, and particularly in gender and religion.
I also do a lot of work in the space of institutional harm when it comes to spiritual abuse and other forms of abuse with the private investigators hat on. Now, I know that that intrigues many of you, but I am a licensed private investigator here in New Zealand where I work, and I work a lot on helping to put right cases where there has been harm that has occurred, either in the recent past or quite historically. Then back with the counselling hat on, I see a lot of people who are working through this form of trauma.
I guess all of that is to say that I get this issue from a lot of different angles. So today I'm going to talk about what spiritual abuse is, and I'm going to spend quite a bit of time in this definition, and in explaining what it looks and feels and sounds like, and some of the impacts on people who've experienced spiritual abuse. Then I'm going to talk about the next steps.
What do you do if this is something that you have faced? And what do you do going forward if you're looking for green flags for a community that you might like to be part of in the future? So firstly, what is spiritual abuse? Well, it's abuse that happens in a religious or spiritual context, where scripture, religious authority, power is used to dominate or control other people. One of the things that often happens with spiritual abuse is it makes people feel less than. It takes control of their lives in some way.
It coerces them into particular ways of behaving that often feel like they are the person's choice, but over time and with the benefit of reflection, people can see how there were significant dynamics of power around whatever occurred that meant that they weren't really in control of the decisions that they made. So spiritual abuse can include shaming people, controlling their behavior in some way, making them feel less than, or having authority over areas of people's lives that are really beyond that of a spiritual or religious leader. So often spiritual abuse happens when there is a lot of power with those in leadership roles, and particularly they hold power to determine who's in and who's out, who's accepted and who's not, who's shamed and who is praised, who feels good enough and who doesn't.
And there are tight definitions around what's acceptable, how your life should go, what it is that you should do to be a good person and to be accepted by the group. Now, often a lot of this doesn't have to particularly come from someone in a leadership role. There can be an element of groupthink here, where there is a way that a group of people are shaped to think, believe and act that helps control the behavior of other members of the group.
So there is this strong sense that in order to fit in here, I have to behave in these particular ways. Now, one of the questions that I often ask people when they're unpacking some of their unhelpful faith experiences is what did you have to do in order to belong? Who did you have to be in order to belong to that community? What did you have to think? What did you have to look like? How did you have to behave in order to belong? And what was it that you had to trade in order to find that belonging? What was the price that you paid for that? Where were you required to be obedient in order to have that sense of belonging returned to you? Now, this topic is really important because it has a huge impact on people's lives. People look up to those in positions of authority in religious or spiritual groups because they think they are good people, that they are representing the system of belief or what it is or who it is that they are believing in.
They are like the representative of whatever should happen within this faith. They kind of become like the representative of God to those people that are following along within this community. Now, because of the power that's involved in that dynamic, this can be where it gets really complex over time because people come to think that God's opinion of me is this just because the leader of this community's opinion is this.
So they really internalize beliefs about themselves and feel like those things have come from the deity that they believe in. So in a Christian setting, if you're not good enough for the leaders of church, then you feel like you are not good enough for God. And that is hugely damaging.
And I hate to say it, but it's outright wrong. What it often sounds like is things being wrapped up in a way where they're presented as if God told the person that this was what needed to happen, that there is a way that scripture is used, that teaching is used, that what the group is focusing on is used in order to control behavior and to try and shape people's thinking in a particular direction. Then there is the challenge of often certain behaviors being labeled as rebellious or not fitting the group.
So there's a clear definition of what isn't okay within the life of the group. And people get characterized as just being one of those rebellious people or being a dissenter or being someone who isn't good enough in some way. Any questions of leadership are characterized as being sinful and not acceptable.
This is where people's interactions are turned around to have a really strong moral judgment on them. And you start to feel like you're walking on a tightrope. You have to get everything right.
You have to comply with what the leaders believe. You have to fit the group's standards and norms or you're out. But where it gets complex is, of course, there are some really great benefits to being part of some kind of faith community.
It helps us to answer some of the questions that we have in life. We're faced with our mortality as we live out our human life. There is suffering.
There are things that are going wrong in the world. There is the context of evil and harm that happens in the world around us. And religion has been used over time as a way to answer people's questions.
So having some kind of religious belief is incredibly helpful in our lives. And it comes at a great cost to us when that is on the line. And that is some of the power that religious groups have over our lives.
Because we can end up in a place where not being part of the group is so devastating to us, where we lose our friends, our social connections, our supports. And so we want to stay part of this group. In the case of high demand or high control groups, that is right down the other end of the spectrum, where your finances might be completely controlled by the group, where your level of education has been controlled by the group, your lifestyle choices, like how many children you have had, have been controlled and decided to some extent by the group.
And then that makes it almost impossible or very, very difficult to leave. So what that coercion and control can look like is in fact on a spectrum. From what we might experience on a Sunday in one particular setting, right through to living in a religious community that is incredibly high in terms of its demands on people.
So there is a real power imbalance that happens. And people lose that sense of individual authority over their own lives. They lose being able to hear their own thoughts, reflect on their own feelings, be connected with their own body.
And it becomes really tough to discern their own views. So there's often a high level of pressure to conform. There becomes blurred consent, where we're not sure whether we actually did really agree to something or whether we felt coerced into it.
There's an isolation often from the outside world. And there's a strong sense of there being a fear of the consequences if we step out of line. Now, one of the things that I think is hardest about spiritual abuse is it can really creep up on people over time.
They sign up to something and they think, gosh, this is lovely. I'm finding belonging here. I'm really enjoying this.
These other people are really nice. My life feels better being part of this. And then over time, we can land in a place where slowly the thinking of the group has infiltrated our own thinking to a point that it becomes quite damaging in our own lives.
Now, my disclaimer here is that I think we are spiritual beings. I think we are meant to have a belief and a power that is higher than ourselves. I think it is a great thing to find belonging with other people who have similar values and beliefs to us and to try and do some of our lives together.
I don't think we're meant to be in a little bubble or huddle together, constantly thinking the same things and not interacting with other people. At least in my own sense of my values and my spirituality, I want to be alongside people from all different walks of life. I think that I'm called to show up and love other people, to be kind to them, to care for them, to give to them.
And that doesn't include being part of a little club that's quite separate from the rest of the world or spending so much of my time in that little club and a little portion of my time going out and serving other people. I want that to be flipped in reverse. So I fully recognize that there are great benefits to being part of a religious group of some kind, to having a spiritual faith, to having values, and to finding community in that.
But what I'm talking about here is when that goes wrong or goes too far and comes to a place where it ends up harming individuals. Now let's talk about that harm for a moment. When it comes to spiritual abuse, there are really strong impacts on people's mental health.
If they have been subjected to a real power imbalance that has warped their thinking, that has controlled their behavior for a period of time, that has meant they've lost control of their lives, that they're feeling shamed for being who they are, that has a really detrimental impact on their mental health. So what we can see is a real sense of hypervigilance, of wanting to stay on the right path, of doubting our own thoughts and our own feelings, of disconnection from our body, of high anxiety, of feeling like we're fearing doing the wrong thing and the consequences and punishment that we're going to be up for. There can be a sense that people are afraid to question, that they believe that it will be catastrophic if they question the authority of the leaders or the beliefs of the group.
And because belonging is tied to obedience in religious settings, often leaving can feel absolutely catastrophic. So I think if we are showing up in religious or spiritual environments or groups, it's really important to maintain that sense of connection back to ourselves. What do I think? What do I believe about this? And how does this fit with what this group is telling me, with how they are trying to shape my thinking and action? And I think that some of the best religious groups actually can allow freedom for people to have some of their own views and beliefs as well.
That there can be some things that we have commonality on, where we have some unity of belief on the basics, on the things that matter the most. And then we allow people the freedom, the independence of thought to form their own views on other topics and issues. So what are the fundamentals? What are the things that we think are most important that we want to live by? That shouldn't be a really, really long list.
That should be some very basics around being a good human, on what the beliefs themselves actually are and on how we should show up in the world around us. So I think it is possible for groups to do this well. But one of the questions that we want to ask is to what extent is the group or leadership trying to shape how many different parts of our life? I used to do this little bit of an activity with people who came to me for counselling for spiritual abuse, where I started with asking them some hard questions about the things that they thought that God had an opinion on.
Okay, so do you think that God has an opinion on what you do with your life? Yeah, they'd say. Then I'd ask, do you think that God has an opinion on who you should marry or whether you should become a parent or some of these big kind of life decision moments? Yeah, they would say. And then I would keep that going down till we were at the point about, do you think that God has an opinion on the clothes that you wear or what it is that you eat for breakfast, on how short you cut your nails? It was getting ridiculous where I was kind of going with these questions, but it was always interesting to work out where did people draw the line on what they thought that God or their religious group had opinions around in terms of what it is that they should do.
And in high control groups, there are controls on things like how you style your hair or how you wear that particular headscarf or the length of your dress or whether you wear pants. There are really set determinants of what it is to be a good person and live a good life. And really questioning where that line falls is quite an interesting point of reflection if you're wanting to think about spiritual abuse and understanding how your faith has been shaped.
So spiritual abuse is a hugely complex topic, but it is something that is ultimately quite clear. How is power used over individuals to control their lives? And is that something that goes too far at times or becomes damaging to the individual? Is authority and power and group thinking used in a way that actually turns around and harms people instead of helping them in their life? What is it that goes too far when it comes to the control that a group has around an individual's life? You know, so often in counseling, I'm sitting with people who are questioning should that thing have happened to me? Was that right that that occurred? Was it okay that that person said that thing to me or that that group made me feel this particular way? And it is really sad for me as a therapist to sit in those interactions and look at quite how internalized that sense of I'm a bad person is for so many people when the reality is that what was happening within the group that they were part of actually took things far too far. Okay, so let's talk about healing from spiritual abuse.
What do you do if you come to recognize that this is something that has happened within your life, that you've been harmed by your involvement with a religious group? Well, I think one of the first things we need to do is rebuild agency. So that sense that you are the person who determines how your life goes. You're in charge of your life.
You're in charge of your decisions. It is up to you to determine the direction you want to take, how you want to approach certain issues, and what you think of things so that there is that sense that the power to make decisions actually sits with you as an individual. One of the key elements of that is even reconnecting people with their own thoughts.
So, so often when I'm working with someone who's experienced spiritual abuse, we're really having to step through what do you think about that? And often they will be really able to trot out what the group that they have been part of thinks about that particular issue and it'll take them some time to be able to step back and reflect on in your heart, in your body, in your mind, what do you think of that? What have you read about that issue? What have you considered about that issue? What's your own thinking before you engage with the thinking of the group that you have been part of? So getting people reconnected with their own internal voice, with their own methods of decision-making, that we're beings that operate with our head, our heart, and our bodies, that there is often a gut feeling about something being wrong. Even if we're perhaps holding up a system where we're saying, yeah, this thing is right. This is how this needs to be.
There can still be a really strong sense of there being a gut feeling that's telling us that is not in fact the right thing to do. Sometimes we start to have our own thoughts and wonderings about, is this really the best way to do this? Or might there be some alternatives? Or we see something play out and it really hurts our heart. We think that just has to be wrong.
That doesn't feel right to watch that person be hurt in that way or treated in that way or disregarded or ostracized in some way, punished for something that they have done. That can't be right. So there's that sense that we need to reconnect with our own thoughts about our lives, about religion, about what it is that we believe.
Now a really significant part of that is reconnecting with our own feelings. And so often when I'm working with someone who's experienced spiritual abuse, there is a really strong disconnect from their feelings. They don't know what they feel about things.
They only know the thoughts that they have been indoctrinated with. So reconnecting with your feelings, asking what it is you feel about certain things is a really significant step and actually something that for a lot of people who've experienced spiritual abuse needs to be taken really slowly. There's also a need to separate God from leadership and authority.
So if we think about this, perhaps in a Christian setting, there is a sense that actually that person who has stood up the front, who has been the leader, who set the rules, who set the culture, who's been the authority on things is not necessarily actually an accurate reflection of the deity, the God that we believe in. Speaking from my sociology background, we know that there is so much about our lives that is socially constructed. We construct the meaning that we give to certain things.
There are concepts that we have all around us that shape our day-to-day lives that are profoundly socially constructed. That is that meaning is made by groups of people collectively where we understand what it is we should do, how it is our lives should work, what that thing is that is a social construct. So getting to that place where we recognize that the things that we have been told from the front or the things that this group has believed are not necessarily consistent or congruent with what it is that we want to believe in, that things might've been misrepresented to us along the way is important for us to hold.
And I know that I'm saying these things as if they are really simple, straightforward and easy to do, but getting that separation to happen where we go, actually the people who have led this group are not necessarily representing this faith that I want to have or representing what this faith even looks like in other settings is an important distinction to make and something that takes quite a bit of time to unravel. We also have to get back to questioning what our own beliefs are if we've left an environment where there's been spiritual abuse. So getting to a stage where we can actually put together our own theology, our own set of thinking and beliefs around issues is incredibly important.
So recognizing that actually there is not a story that goes in order to be a person who holds this faith, you have to believe absolutely all of these things. You can have a mishmash of different beliefs if you want to. You get to pick and choose what it is that it means for you to hold this particular faith.
That doesn't have to be wholly buying in to a particular system of thinking that belongs to a particular group. You're allowed to discern that for yourself. You're allowed to do your reading.
You're allowed to discern from a perspective of engaging your own feelings, talking to other people, hearing from people who have diverse and different views and then making decisions for yourself. Do that in whatever way works for you. Study, go and experience different ways of being, go and be part of different groups and see what it is that fits for you.
Also really valid is just cutting all the noise. Getting to a place where actually you step back from the things that you have been involved in and let yourself sit with what is it that emerges in a vacuum of other people's voices? What is it that I think and I believe if I shut out all of the other noise? So sometimes it's about that research experience, go and explore this from different perspectives, way of being and other times it's about allowing ourselves to turn down all the other noise. Now one of the things that can be really helpful if people have experienced spiritual abuse in certain settings is to have some safe exposure to safer spiritual places.
So if you've been part of a particularly high demand, high control group that's had a certain culture and way of believing, then it is helpful to explore perhaps groups that are more liberal or less controlling or don't have so much say over people's lives. Go and be part of a different faith tradition, go and see what it looks like to be accepted in other settings and that might allow you to hold up and make sense of what you've experienced in other places. I also think that something that is of profound importance is giving yourself total permission to pause this area of your life.
You don't have to belong to a church or religious group. You don't have to have beliefs about this part of your life. You can kind of put that moratorium on making decisions about this area of your life and go, I'm not going to think about this for the next year.
I'm going to give myself space and freedom and flexibility. I'm going to just be myself. I'm going to put this on hold.
The world around me isn't going to crumble. I can leave this for a period of time and actually giving yourself permission to not think about it, to not engage in these spaces, to completely defect and go out on your own and backslide and really enjoy it is a really nice thing to be able to do. And I think that giving yourself permission to land wherever you want to land is really important.
You know, for people who come from a Christian background, Sundays are a really significant day. And I once had a client say to me, wow, I've worked out that everybody else who isn't a Christian has Sunday mornings to themselves. And that can be a really lovely time.
I can go to brunch with a friend. I can go for a walk, get some exercise, do some things that I want to do, relax, enjoy the creation that is around me. And sometimes I feel just as spiritually nurtured by doing those things.
Well, that's a wonderful way to allow yourself permission to do what it is that you want to do, because spoiler alert, Sunday mornings are actually your own time and you get to decide whether you turn up and be part of a spiritual group if you want to do that, if that is working for you, if that is something that is bringing healing, bringing freedom, bringing a sense of community and belonging to your own life, then by all means go for it. But if it's something that's making you feel worse, that's making you feel like your life is on a tightrope and you're judged and you're not good enough and you're constantly falling short, then take back Sunday mornings, do with them what you will. Give yourself that permission for it to look however you want it to look.
Now, if you need that to feel a little safer, sometimes people need to put a time frame on that. So I've said to clients before, what about you take this next six months to just give yourself Sundays off and say, I'm not going to do this for a period of time. I'm going to see what my life looks like without this.
Give yourself that freedom and flexibility to determine where it is that you want to land. Now, I know that there are some people who've come from a religious background or who still hold particular religious beliefs right now are going to think that that is an abhorrent and completely unacceptable suggestion. But it is incredibly important, isn't it, that we own our own faith, that we own our decision making about what it is that we belong and we are part of.
And part of getting to a place where we own our own decisions is giving ourselves freedom that know is an answer that's available to us. We can choose not to do this. We can choose not to have these beliefs.
And if we want to have a faith that is genuine for us again, we do need to give ourselves that sense of choice, that sense of freedom and full flexibility that we're still enough, we're still OK, we're still loved and lovable wherever we land in this part of our lives. Also, it's very helpful if we can start to name what it is that happened. I know in my own journey, taking a bit of a step back from church involvement has meant that for both my husband and I, there are times where we talk about past experiences and go, oh, do you remember that thing? Or, wow, now I'm looking back on that and thinking, oh, that wasn't so great, was it? It is actually really helpful to have that space, to start to do some processing about what it was that happened, to look back retrospectively and hold up certain experiences and go, oh, what was going on there? That was really weird.
I didn't really like that. What did you think about that? Being able to name what happened, being able to unpack some of the dynamics about what was going on is something that often only happens with a bit of time and space. And a big plug here, it is so helpful to have someone else with you along this journey.
That can look like a friend who's happy to walk on the beach with you and chat through these things. That can look like someone who's had similar experiences that you can do some shared processing with. It can be reading or listening to podcasts, engaging in content material that helps you make sense of what's occurred for you.
Can also be spiritual direction or therapy or being part of groups that are debriefing religious experiences. But naming what happened is a significant step. So if you've listened to this episode and you've been thinking tick, tick, tick, tick as we've gone along and thinking about your own spiritual experiences, if your mind has been wandering and you're going, oh, this is naming some things that are really important to me, then I encourage you to think about what are the next steps that you need to take? Is that having your experience validated by someone else who understands? Is that trying to learn more about this issue or to seek support from people who are a little bit further down the journey than you? If this episode is connecting and you're thinking, gosh, this is something I have experienced, then I encourage you to think about what's the next one or two steps that I might want to take from here.
Now, I just want to talk for a moment at the end of this episode about green flags when it comes to religious groups, church environments, groups that have a spiritual aspect to them. The things that I think show you that you might in fact be a little bit safer in these settings than in other settings. Now, I always think that we need to keep our brains engaged.
We are not leaving them at the door when we engage and encounter a spiritual group. We're wanting to keep our critical thinking skills alive and awake so that we stay safe in these environments because we know that this is a space where things can easily go wrong. And they go wrong slowly and over time in a way that kind of creeps up on us.
So I think green flags when it comes to religious groups are transparency. What does the communication look like? How are decisions made? Who holds the power to make decisions? How do you influence those decisions? Who is it that gets a say in the decision making? And what kind of person do you have to be to have some kind of input? Is there a flat power structure or is it really hierarchical? Now, I actually think that there are some good things about some of the models of leadership that include some sort of hierarchy. But how do you speak to that hierarchy? How do you get to have a say in decisions that are being made? Do you know what decisions are being made? And how can you influence them? What are the patterns of who it is that does get to have influence over decisions? Also, what happens when it comes to safeguarding? So what is it that there is in place in order to keep people safe? So because we know that abuse can happen in spiritual settings, because we know that this is a setting where people can prey on other people, P-R-E-Y, not P-R-A-Y, where people can really kind of look for vulnerable people and try and infiltrate their lives and potentially use their power over them to abuse them in some way, what are the safeguards that exist? What is it that this group does to prevent abuse of all forms, but particularly abuse to vulnerable people? Now, I have a bit of a pet peeve in this space.
I think that everybody who engages in a spiritual group is a vulnerable person. I think we all have vulnerabilities. We all have areas of our lives where we are potentially open to other people influencing us in a way that isn't for our benefit.
So think about what does this group have in place that safeguards other people? And particularly with this question of spiritual abuse, what are the safeguards they have around that? Do they understand this issue? What do they do to protect the way that power is held in their church so that other people aren't harmed? Another thing I think is important to look for is, is there a sense of kind of first class and second class citizens? These are the people who are in. Now, a pet peeve of mine in religious settings was the way that certain people were profiled and held up and given a platform. Now, the key word that was often used here was the word legend.
Look at this person. Oh, they're such a legend. Now, if you continually hear about the same people being legends, or if every time a legend is held up, they happen to be a man, it is quite interesting to have a look and think about what it is that happens in the church when it comes to there being a sense of some people being better than others.
There is a sense we're on a plane here and some people are in business class and some people are sitting right at the back in economy. People do receive different treatment in spiritual groups depending on who they are, depending on how much power they have, and depending on what it is that they bring to the group and the extent to which they comply. Now, that is very sad, and I've said that in some very stark and honest terms.
But if you're part of a religious or spiritual group and you want to be safe, then you need to be thinking about is there a first and second class here? What do I need to do to belong and when is my belonging going to be on the line? Another thing I think is important to look at is what happens when there is feedback or when there are complaints. How do people get their voice heard when something's happened that doesn't sit right for them? When something is said from the front, where there's a dynamic that they're not so happy about, how do those things get stepped through in a way that is responsive, in a way that supports people and listens to them well? Now, I'm not talking about the kind of complaints where we don't like the coffee that we have or it's not hot enough, and I know that all of those things plague religious and spiritual groups quite consistently. I'm talking here about the meaningful complaints, the, I just feel like there's something funny going on with that person, or I consistently come away from speaking to this leader and I feel really bad.
I just always feel not good enough. What can we do about how it is that they're interpersonally interacting with others? Okay, so we've talked today about what spiritual abuse is. Using religion to harm people, using power, using scripture, using beliefs in a way that actually causes people harm and justifies that harm for religious reasons.
We're trying to ensure people's salvation. We're trying to make sure that people are good enough. We just want people's lives to be better and it has to look like this in order for it to be good.
We've talked about what spiritual abuse looks and sounds like and what the road to recovery can entail. Restoring agency, reconnecting with our own thoughts, our feelings, our body, getting that sense that we do have our own independent thoughts that we're wanting to follow and giving yourself permission to do what you want when it comes to faith. We've talked too about planning the next steps.
If you think that this is an area of your life where you need some healing and we've covered off some of the green flags because I think it is possible for religious and spiritual groups to operate in a way that safeguards people against harm and protects from those times when power goes awry. We know that human beings like to have power over other human beings. We have to be so careful in spiritual settings that spirituality doesn't become a justification for people being harmed.
Church, faith, spirituality, belonging in this part of our lives exists to help us and not to harm us and if it harms you, you can do better. You can find better. You can find freedom and healing from those harmful experiences.
Now, while it's not really my place to apologize for harm that's been perpetrated by other people, I do want to say from one human heart to another that I'm really sorry if you've experienced harm in this part of your life. It is not what we sign up for. It's not how things are meant to go and if it's been part of your story, I am really sorry.
I also want to give you hope that I've walked with a lot of people who've been through incredibly difficult experiences when it comes to the spiritual part of their lives and they have found a place of peace on the other side of this. Whether that has been being able to reconstruct their way back into some kind of faith and belief that works for them or whether that has been walking away and finding things that are life-giving in other parts of their life. I respect your decisions wherever you land when it comes to this topic.
Know that I think that this is really important, that if you've experienced difficulty in this space of your life, it is incredibly valid to need support around this and I encourage you to reach out and get whatever support it is that you need. Remember as well that if you've got particular questions on any of the topics that I raise on the Feel Better Podcast, I have the Ask Charlotte series which is a great space for you to be able to ask questions if there are things that I can help you with more specifically and anything that you would like more advice on from the topic we've covered today, feel free to head to my website and contact me or follow the link to be able to ask an anonymous question.
