Author: Melanie | Page 2 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse II

What is it like to be a child raised in a spiritually abusive environment? We have many books published that look at physical abuse and neglect from the eyes of the child, as well as other books that give an in depth look at sexual abuse or emotional abuse and how it feels to be the victim of such crimes.

More and more, I am hearing the stories of those who were raised in spiritually abusive environments. It is no shock to me to discover that many of these children also experienced other types of abuse while growing up. Abusive natures tend to not limit the tools of the abuse to one particular mode.

Many people may be familiar with the book “A Child Called It” and the sequels, where horrendous abuse is described from the viewpoint of Dave Pelzer, the victim, after he has grown up and finds himself in a safer environment. Although his mother’s primary choice of abuse was physical, she also heaped emotional and psychological abuse upon him. Severe neglect was part of her twisted behavior, and her physical abuse became more and more severe until it rivaled military torture in severity.

Much like this story, it is common in mental health care, when we encounter a child who has been the victim of abuse or neglect, to also discover other types of abuse the child experienced in that process. Knowing this, it is no surprise to discover that spiritual abuse often leads to physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, sporadic care or neglect, and even, in some cases, sexual abuse.

The viewpoints of these individuals is quite similar to children who have grown up with other kinds of abuse.

There is the feeling that they are unworthy or faulty in some deep internal way. There is guilt over things that they have no control over. Constant need to apologize is common. A severe need for reassurance is to be expected. Not being able to trust their own intuition or second guessing their perfectly logical thoughts is part of the symptomology. Fear of authority or inability to trust authority of any kind is to be expected. Much like victims of other types of abuse, PTSD symptoms are “par for the course”–hyper-vigilance, nightmares, triggers, startle reflexes, wariness, and extreme anxiety. It is also fairly common that they may experience suicidal ideation–urges to harm themselves.

Spiritual abuse is no joke. It can cause permanent harm, just like any other type of abuse. It tears down the individual, and creates the same anxieties found in other child abuse victims. Almost without fail, spiritually abusive environments will require physical abuse of children, often disguised as “biblical” corporal punishment, but seldom considered within the realm of “normal” developmentally appropriate corporal punishment.

In the next segment of this article, we will look at some of the stories of the abuse from the eyes and testimonies of the victims, as we preserve their privacy.

(To be continued)

Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse II
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse III
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse IV
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse V

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Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse

Many people I know were actually born into a spiritually abusive environment. While I’m unaware of any official studies done on the effects of spiritual abuse on children, I do have training about the effects of physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse on the growing child. I also have access to a wide variety of studies that have been done on the effects of neglect on children and their development.

When we think about a newborn infant, we often think of a “clean slate,” or an unmarred human being that is ready to take in any teaching or influence from the environment around it. Leaders in spiritually abusive environments are also aware of this. Many of them begin to mold children from birth, building a relationship with them that often makes them very sensitive to the control of the leaders in charge. This results in adults who are extremely loyal, will brook no ill word about the leadership, and will help to carry on the twisted ideas that they have been brainwashed to believe since birth.

Make no mistake, these spiritually abusive environments do not form in a vacuum. There are very powerful relationship dynamics that occur to keep these environments in play, and without forming the deep relationships, they could not continue to perpetuate the pain that they cause. The relationships have several dynamics of dysfunction that enable them to become the controlling factor in such environments.

First of all, the relationship is often built on deep feelings of sentiment and belonging. The leadership fully accepts and loves the child, for the infant is without choice and perfectly designed. It is a “blank canvas” that the leader is free to work with, and by wasting no time getting attachment going, further control is virtually ensured.

There are several types of attachment styles that infants form with their primary caregivers, but that is a subject for a different article. Here we are simply discussing the church leadership beginning to form a powerful attachment with the infants within their congregation.

If the parents remain in the group while the child is growing up, very quickly all parenting resources and advice come through the church leadership as well. In this way, the leadership of the church becomes the final say and the main authority in the child’s life, as well as forming the emotional attachment that brings the desire to please.

In addition, in many of these groups, the parents are encouraged to homeschool the children, or to place them in a private church school run by the group. In this way, the group is in complete control of all information that goes into this child’s mind as he or she is forming ideas and learning “facts” about how the world operates. For example, when the child learns that the world is round, he also learns that people who watch television are going to burn in hell forever. When she learns about how seeds sprout and grow, and when that experiment is done as part of her learning, she is also learning from that same source that women who trim their hair are going to be lost for eternity. The source that credibly teaches facts about the world is, at the same time, slipping in twisted teachings and claiming them to be as factual as learning how to read or solve a math problem.

Finally, once the child is born, the group begins to teach him or her that they are the only “safe” place in the entire world. The child is learning to fear the “other” in the world at the same time he is learning to depend on mom and dad to feed him his bottle. If he or she happens to have an “unsaved” grandparent or aunt outside of the group, that person is often not allowed to be alone with the child, so these children pick up the silent message that grandma or grandpa is not quite safe because they are not part of the group.

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Spiritual Abuse as Trauma (Part 2)

Defining the different types of abuse seems unnecessary, but there are many people who do not know what constitutes abuse of another.

The golden rule, “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” just doesn’t seem to be enough to enable human beings to learn how to treat one another. Although there are multiple reasons for this, the most simplistic response is to say that many people have been so misused themselves that they have little frame of reference as to how to treat themselves or one another. There is a saying I hear often, but do not know who to credit. It says “Hurt people hurt people.” In my line of work, I have observed that to be true. Usually, a cycle of abuse may be several generations long.

Since I work in the state of Arkansas, I have chosen to use some definitions that are handed out in that state. The Arkansas Legal Services Partnership defines emotional abuse as “behavior that undermines the other partner’s sense of self-worth.” It further defines psychological abuse as “isolating a partner from friends and family, and causing fear by intimidation and threats.”

As expected, there is no definition listed for spiritual abuse. However, many of the individuals who have experienced spiritual abuse could place their experiences quite literally in either of the above-mentioned definitions.

When a person leaves a spiritually abusive environment, it is often difficult to know how to act in the real world. The individual’s sense of self worth was so wrapped up in what they did for the church or in the identity of wearing certain clothing styles, that there is a transition period of time where they feel like they are a “nobody,” or completely irrelevant. A process of healing must begin, where they can begin to discover that they still have a lot to offer and that they are important just by being themselves.

Many abusive church groups isolate their members from friends and family who are “unsaved.” Oftentimes, members are forbidden from visiting other churches, going to ballgames, theaters, or other places of entertainment where one might normally spend time with family or friends. Not only that, many are told specifically that it doesn’t matter if their family drove across the United States to see them or not, they must tell visiting family members to either come to church with them, or they must leave the visiting family members at home alone, in order to not miss a single service at the church. There are specific things members are told not to discuss with family members, in some cases. In other cases, they are told to not talk to or associate with family members or friends who leave the group. If they have non-group members that are friends, the activities and the time they spend with those friends is limited. If members are spending time with non-members at all, it is expected that they will be endeavoring to convert them. This type of isolation has the effect of adding to the “brainwashing” effect of the group.

Fear and threats are levied to intimidate individuals to obey the rules of the group. Perhaps the greatest threat is being removed from any type of service or leadership for not “following the rules” or “toeing the line.” In some cases, this gets so extreme that a person is not allowed to be an usher because they watched a movie at a friend’s home, if movies are against the rules. In another case, it might be that they are not allowed to sing in the choir because they have a two inch split in their long skirt. Some pastors preach that young people have to have pastoral permission to date one another. Even when they start dating, they cannot ever go to a restaurant or to any venue alone, but always with a chaperone. In addition to these rules, they cannot hold hands, hug, or kiss at all until at their wedding. These rules are enforced by threats and intimidation. If you do not follow these guidelines, you will be “in rebellion” to the “man of God” placed over you, and you will go to a “devil’s hell” for your rebellious spirit. In the meantime, you will be shamed and shunned within the church group. If you are not a rule-follower, you will be banned from dating those who are rule-followers.

Do we need an additional title of “spiritual abuse” in order to recognize these behaviors for the abusiveness they are? I think not. The very fact that these methods are designed to control another person and limit their contact with those outside the group should be cause for concern.

In a nutshell, abuse is taking someone’s power away. Stepping into another person’s life to command it is not only controlling, but it is abusive.

Spiritual Abuse as Trauma (Part 1)

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Spiritual Abuse as Trauma (Part 1)

INTRODUCTION

Trauma is often thought to be any life threatening situation. It’s easy to imagine a tornado, war, armed robbery as trauma. Most people also recognize rape and sexual abuse as trauma, because it invades the most intimate parts of the body. Sexual trauma robs the individual of their power over their own body, and even permanently changes the structure of a person’s brain (Van Der Kolk, 2014).

Many people would readily agree that the above-mentioned situations describe abuse. Yet these same people would also deny the existence of spiritual abuse, much less acknowledge it as trauma.

However, just as sexual abuse affects an individual by invading the physical and emotional aspects of intimacy, spiritual abuse invades the intimacy of the very soul itself. Much like sexual abuse perverts what was intended to be beautiful about physical romantic intimacy, spiritual abuse perverts God’s intimacy with the soul of a human being.

Trauma occurs when an individual is harmed or threatened with harm, and they have no way to fight it off or flee from it (Van Der Kolk, 2014). Spiritual abuse is wrapped in a cloak of sanctimony that makes it difficult to identify at first. Then it threatens eternal damnation and separation from God–and how can the person fight or flee from this form of abuse? This insidious form of abuse leaves people just as broken as incest, rape, war, or violence. While other forms of abuse focus on the body and the mind, spiritual abuse scars the soul.

DYNAMICS

Working with clients who have been victims of sexual or physical abuse, I often find that their stories have a similar flair, in that the perpetrator of the abuse kept them separated from others so they wouldn’t realize the abuse for what it was. Maybe that uncle that raped him continually through his childhood told him it was “our special bond”. Or, maybe her dad told her “this is what dads and daughters do”. Trying to normalize the abnormal is a common key for abusers. Keeping the events secret perpetuates the crime, and keeps the child from knowing that what is happening is not okay. Because adults “know everything”, they assume they must put up with the treatment that is painful and confusing in most cases.

In this same way, we see that spiritual abuse usually involves an element of secrecy. The constituents are told that they are the only “right way” to be saved, and that other denominations or churches are “not right with God” or are “heresy”. They are encouraged to keep quiet about things that go on behind the scenes, and to not tell visitors of all of the rules and regulations until they are “part of us”. The leadership of such groups inundate the people with messages that lift themselves up to a place of authority over others. This is done to such a degree as to make people feel like they are not smart enough or close to God enough to make their own decisions and must go with what leadership says, regardless of their feelings about it, “in order to be saved”. These groups generally have entire services directed towards “rebellion” against the leadership being a sin, or they may include the comments often in their sermons. The constituents are taught that “this is what the New Testament church did”, even though there is no proof for that in the Bible. They often preach about how much they love the “saints” and it is acted out by preferential treatment to those who swallow it all and work the hardest to obey the leadership.

EFFECTS

So, what are the effects to the victims of the different types of abuse and trauma? Can spiritual abuse cause similar harm to that of physical or sexual abuse?

Working with sexual abuse victims and physical abuse victims, we often see a startle instinct that is overactive. Sometimes this is called a hyper-awareness. They are vigilant while in play, as their brains learned early that not every situation is safe. They often have nightmares. They may get very emotional at times, about things that make no sense to others. They may acquire social anxieties, regress in their development, or avoid others by curling into a ball under a desk at school. Triggers are everywhere for these individuals, and no one understands what that feels like except them.

Maybe he has anxiety attacks when he sees a red plaid shirt like the one uncle wore when he raped him. She may scream and cry or throw things when she smells the odor of a mechanic shop, because that smell triggers the memory of dad when he was molesting her. I’ve seen times where kids had to turn on every light they saw, all day long, and would get frantic if not allowed to do so, because something bad happened to them in the dark of night. Another adult client shared with me that she would hide in the closet to avoid her grandfather raping her, and that she still feels like the closet is her safe place when she is scared.

How does this apply to spiritual abuse?

Having spent some time talking to many victims of spiritual abuse, it is apparent that there are definite parallels. Symptoms of PTSD are very evident in these individuals. Panic attacks are common, sleepless nights where nightmares and fears reign, hyper awareness, and even social anxieties are present in the majority of these individuals. Paralyzing fear for no apparent reason is often a continual battle for those recovering from spiritual abuse. They learned in the most primitive parts of their brains that the place they were told was the safest in the world, church, turned out to be the most frightening for them. Triggers are present all around them in words spoken, actions taken, and faces they see on the street. However, the most frightening place of all has come to be a church building.

I’ve heard her describe getting up to leave during a sermon because she couldn’t breathe and was having a panic attack. He described being unable to sleep every single night. The odor of olive oil causes her to feel sick because it is what her abusive pastor used on her when he told her she was possessed of a demon. Seeing a white shirt and tie on someone carrying a Bible causes an instant heart rate increase and the urge to run in the opposite direction. Not going to church at all is often the only way to find peace and start healing.

References

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Viking.

Spiritual Abuse as Trauma (Part 2)

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