Category: recovery | Page 11 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Physical Stress Response and Preachers

Throughout my lifetime, there have been various times when I had to be in a court of law, either as a witness, a defendant, or a plaintiff in different situations. Obviously, in these cases, the judge is the final word (unless it is a criminal trial, which was not true in any of the cases I was involved in).

Due to his power over decisions that affect the lives of individuals in significant ways, it would be normal to have a level of fear or anxiety about making sure one was able to properly communicate the truth of one’s testimony to a judge.

However, thinking about this over the years, I’ve noted that my fear and anxiety in each of these cases was greatly enhanced and compounded by the presence of preachers in the courtroom. Interestingly, I found that their reactions to what was being said was the most frightening aspect of all.

My first few experiences of this type, I was still involved in the cult, and felt this fear was natural. After all, preachers are “God’s men” and whatever they think about you must be God’s opinion as well.

Down through the years, as events in and around my life have unfolded, I have come to realize that preachers are just human beings. If there were six preachers in the room at any given event, their opinions about what is going on would probably differ greatly and they would even contend with one another as to who was right or wrong.

Some time ago, I found myself in a similar legal situation, and it was interesting to note that, although I no longer believe that preachers are second only to God, I had the identical emotional reaction that I had in my youth, the first time I was in a court-like atmosphere with preachers present. Realizing that many others who had been taught about the infallible opinion of a preacher probably deal with similar emotions, I decided to delve into the science behind why this occurs.

First of all, one must understand the body’s physical stress response to a dangerous situation. The emotion involved is usually fear, and it activates the fight or flight response in the brain stem, or primitive area of the brain. When this area of the brain is activated, it temporarily shuts down the cognitive (thinking) area of the brain, which means the reactions of the individual become instinctive, and fueled by adrenaline. Adrenaline was designed to help the individual have extra strength to flee or to fight in times of danger. However, in situations where one can do neither (such as in a court room or in a church service), adrenaline floods the body and can cause various symptoms, such as sweating profusely, pounding heart beat, increased pulse rate, breathlessness, trembling, crying, instant headaches, or a host of other physical stress responses.

At the core of the area of the brain responsible for these stress responses, is an almond shaped part of the brain called the amygdala. This is where important memories are stored that are strongly linked with emotions. Without having to think about it, the individual will automatically react in certain ways to events that trigger these memories. Sometimes the memories are even so instinctive that the individual might be unaware of where the response is coming from.

So how does this relate to stress involving preachers?

When one has been raised in, or spent significant time in a cult, he or she has been inundated with powerful messages of fear involving ever crossing the will of the preacher. In a cult, a preacher or some type of leader will have all of the power, and the other members of the group learn to be in awe and fear of this leader. In the case of spiritual abuse, we were indoctrinated to believe that an angry preacher meant an angry God. When all was well between us and the preacher, all was well between us and God. The fear of displeasing this man was equal to the fear of hell and eternal damnation without God.

When a person comes out of this atmosphere, and begins to grow in their cognitive understanding of the fallacy of this teaching, it is helpful in one’s daily life to know that God’s relationship with the individual is personal and does not depend on the opinions of others. However, in times of stress and emotion, the cognitive area of the brain is shut off. So, even though one firmly believes that a preacher is just a human being, in those moments of stress, when disapproval will undoubtedly come in a fearful situation, that primitive physical stress response kicks in.

It does not mean that you are “back to square one’ in your recovery. It doesn’t mean anything at all, really, except that your primitive, early brain learned to respond in fear and stress to a negative response from a preacher. In these cases, I’ve learned to get through the stress response by using relaxation techniques, and just to know that my recovery is still on track, and that the response was nothing more than a primitive physical response of my body warning me of the danger of such individuals in my life.

In the true spiritual world, only God is my judge. The opinions of men…all men…and women…all women, are irrelevant. God alone will decide my case. He alone will hand out the decision of my final destination.

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Finding community after leaving a cult or toxic religious environment

After years or even decades of languishing in a highly controlling religious group, ex-cult survivors are finally able to express themselves freely and investigate whatever they choose.

This can also mean that they can be fairly fiery. They say what’s on their mind and don’t hold back. If they see that something is wrong, unjust, unfair or unethical, they want to speak out.

I include myself in this group. Sometimes, it does also mean that we can be unintentionally hurtful or even rude. After repressing our true thoughts and feelings for such a long time, they occasionally all come tumbling out uncontrollably… We don’t intend to be rude trolls, and most of us aren’t, but at times the anger, resentment and hurt that has built up inside us spill out when we are triggered, and we say things we shouldn’t.

When my husband and I came out of the Watchtower, we remained extremely critical of the Institutional Church. However, our faith in Jesus grew exponentially. If you leave a cult and then read the Gospel of John, you will see that Jesus was also AGAINST the institutionalized injustices of the religion of his day. He spoke out bravely against the cruel and hypocritical Pharisees, and as a result, he was silenced, tortured and hung up to die. He could have done his good deeds quietly or not chosen to heal people on the Sabbath; he could have been a people pleaser, afraid of their reaction and their power. But He was not!!!

Sometimes, we want to be brave and outspoken like Jesus, but we lack the wisdom or compassion that He had. We don’t always know exactly what to say, or who to say it to. And people can see us as a threat.

Coming out of any spiritually abusive environment is bound to affect our identity. We are not tied to our past, but to a certain extent, it does shape our outlook on the world. I am also convinced that experiencing such suffering, rejection and loss has widened our hearts, and made us more compassionate people. We cannot sit in judgment on others like the Pharisees and cult leaders, because we know how much that hurts, and we could never shun another human being.

It has also made us hyper-vigilant when it comes to identifying hypocrisy and manipulative behaviours in others. We avoid those people like the plague, and make no attempt to influence or “change” them, as we know it is fruitless. We can love them from a distance, and keep out of the line of fire.

Although my husband and I do attend a church now, we are still hungry for real, honest and sincere fellowship. At this point in time in my life, I am profoundly grateful for the precious friendships I’ve made online. People could say that an online contact isn’t a “real” friend, but I have experienced the exact opposite. At the click of a button, I can communicate with others, either in voice or video calls, via chat or in a group setting, and speak with other human beings who know what I’m going through. I thank God for this precious gift of modern technology, which despite all its downsides, has made it much easier to come out of a cult and find true friendship. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to join our online community: Faith after Deception Fellowship. [Group is no longer in operation and was not affiliated with spiritualabuse.org.]

If you’ve never been in a cult and haven’t experienced spiritual abuse, be prepared for the fire when you meet those who have. The fire is bright, it is hot, it can burn, but it can also kindle some of the most sincere and genuine friendships you will ever have. Don’t be afraid of us… we don’t bite!!!

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No Longer A Victim!

A close friend of mine was a victim of an armed robbery in a store she managed and was brutally beaten and left for dead. She survived the physical injuries but was kept a victim in her mind and developed many fears, anxieties, and PTSD. It took her many years to recover mentally and emotionally but she recovered because she refused to keep thinking like she was a victim.

She even managed to open a bridal store and ran the business for 5 or 6 years until she had to sell it to take care of her mother who had cancer. She is a survivor and a strong one.

Not only did she survive something so tragic as the robbery, she is also a spiritual abuse survivor. She came out of the United Pentecostal Church and is now a pastor of a Methodist church, director of a Women’s Center and State Rep for Celebrate Recovery. She is one busy woman.

This is her story of recovery from victim to victor!

Acting like you’re always a victim and complaining about the hurts that were done to you fuels your sense of victimization. Believing you’re a victim, makes it seem like you have no power over the direction of your life, and it will keep you stuck in the same grip of fear until you take control of your situation.

I suffered terrible trauma in my life and found the courage to turn it all around. When I remembered I had access to far more power, authority, and influence over my life than I ever believed. I stopped hiding, complaining, and refusing to see myself as a hapless victim, I found that I was more powerful than I realized, but only when I chose to accept this reality and I moved on.

It wasn’t easy but I had to stop blaming God and start believing in Him again. I had to find my faith, trust and strength in Him. He was the lover of my soul, my redeemer, my peace and only He could restore my life. He gave me a new outlook and a purpose.

I left the legalistic church and found freedom and healing through Celebrate Recovery and getting involved in another group of believers where there was no judgement and I could seek the solace that I needed. It took me a few years but I’m totally changed from the “victim” I thought I was, to the victor I am today.

Yes I still have triggers but I work through them and I have boundaries set up but I know if God can do this for me, he can do it for anybody if you are willing to try.

That’s her testimony and I wanted to share it because she has greatly helped me too. My friend is a wonderful and positive person to hang out with. I pray this will help you as much as it did me.

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Working With Other Abuse Victims

As I continue my walk with God after leaving the abusive church environment, I learn that I am definitely not alone. There are other groups and people who share common experiences despite differences in church doctrine and teaching.

Some of the people I meet are supportive. We become friends and share much information, seeing the kindred spirit that draws us together. We know our faith must be in Jesus, not just in a man or organization. This is a blessing for me and helps me hold fast the profession of faith, even when I don’t have a church home.

Has every former member I met been happy to see me? Sadly, no. This is especially true with two guys I actually invited to my former church. They saw through the smoke and mirrors and got out of Dodge before I did, and to this day refused all attempts to reach them. In their cases, the road to healing may have required a clean and total break from the past, including anyone from the previous church. I wish them well and pray peace will come to them.

Other former members in different groups can get dicey at times. One group I was active in for almost three years was fervent in reporting corruption in the organized church; I was a regular blogger and contributor to much of their success. It seemed like this was a good project, and we were marching forward like Christian soldiers against a corrupt system.

This particular group morphed into something I couldn’t support anymore and I had to leave. The group’s founder quit for personal reasons, possibly burnout. The people who succeeded him injected politics in the discussion, something I wished not to do. I felt the political discussions were divisive and detracted from the original vision of helping others see there is more to God than just inside churches.

The final straw happened following the presidential election in 2016. I hung on for a couple months following President Trump’s inauguration, but the political divide (I am a Republican, most of the other former church members were Democrats.) drove a wedge between us. I once again had to leave a group I invested time and energy in.

As we meet others who left abusive groups, we need to be careful not to inject elements from our past experiences that could cause division or open wounds in others. We especially need to be careful not to become what we left behind.

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A Dark Place After Spiritual Abuse

The following was taken from an older conversation in one of our private support groups. The initial post, along with the responses, have been shared with permission. The initial post and a follow-up are between the asterisks, followed by responses. Names have been omitted. Responses that were longer have been placed in quotes. I have added my own brief thoughts at the end.

There are those who don’t believe there is such a thing as spiritual abuse and some ridicule the thought, thinking it is about things like people being upset over not being allowed to hold some position or that they didn’t like a decision made by a pastor. Some feel people are simply bitter and just need to ‘get over it’ and move on. These individuals are clueless and ignorant as to the types of damage that being in an unhealthy church can cause. One of the most difficult things some grapple with is their trust and belief in God. Pastors, the very ones who should be encouraging and helping people in their relationship with God, have instead helped to destroy the faith of some and caused others to question it. Listen to ‘J’ as he shares the pain and aftermath of dealing with his unhealthy church experience.

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Possible trigger warning, I have been in a dark place recently but this week it has sort of come to a head.

Today in church, part of the sermon touched on Deuteronomy 31:6, about not being afraid because “he will never leave you or forsake you.”

However, inside a deep pit of empty despair formed because, simply put, that was not true. Having done my absolute best to follow him led me to years of abuse, loneliness, virtual slavery. All I can see there was that I was abandoned. I was in a place where I was abused and demeaned in his name, and was not helped. How can I count on him if I was torn apart in his name and was not helped? How can I trust when three years later things that were stolen in his name are not yet restored? How can I trust him ever again when I was abandoned? How can I trust when I see promises in his word turned on their head, when the exact opposite of what was promised occurs? Trust him to do what, exactly? He claims to be closer than a brother but I don’t ever even hear or feel him. I don’t see him doing anything that would merit trust. How can I claim relationship with someone who never even bothers to show up, especially when the one they claim to love is so utterly screwed over?

I tried to talk to someone I trust about this, how I feel and what I think and observe. Instead, I got met with a combination of fear and disdain. “How could you think like that?!” Even getting angry that I would not unquestioningly obey if God asked me to do it. I would in fact question.

I don’t see a reason to trust. Instead, I see promises that are empty; I see a past where I was left alone in the darkness.

…One of the hard points in all of this is, there is nothing I can truly point to and say “God absolutely did this.”

I came to my senses in the cult when the leaders royally screwed up and got a number of us wondering. It was us, together, who decided they were full of it, and us together who protected one another as we left. So by us supporting each other, and the leaders being way to ham-fisted for their own good is what sparked that.

In that, and in other things, I see other people helping me. I see lessons that I learned and applied to get me to better places. I don’t see supernatural help.

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Below are some of the responses to J.

L: All I can say is I know how you feel. I have had all the same questions and feelings. After many years, I was able to look back and I was actually able to see Him during those times. It was still hard to trust because I was thinking “Well, so You were there. But I didn’t feel You there. And that will probably happen again before my life is over. Fat lot of good it will do.” But then I had to weigh trusting vs not trusting and I felt trusting was better. It was healing. And freeing. I’m still on the journey. Jesus also felt forsaken when He said “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me.” I think God understands all these things. I think He understands all your feelings and I think He accepts them. I think part of the journey is embracing that it’s okay to feel like you do and you have a legitimate reason for feeling all of it. Here a hug and a pat on the back. You’re okay.

M: You’re describing a place that is very familiar to me, too, and that I don’t know what to do with either. I’ve gotten to a point where people’s reactions, either the one you describe or the prideful, “not Me! *I’ve* never been *there*. God is sooo good!” are both based in fear- either fear that it could happen to them or fear because they don’t want to admit that it has, even to themselves.

J: Yeah, I can see that fear. I don’t want to spark fear in others, but I DO want others to understand that it is not all sunshine and roses.

K: J, I feel the exact same way. I have lost my trust in God to protect or be with me and I am hanging onto a tiny bit of faith by a fraying thread. I prayed so many, many times at my old church for God to intervene or show me if I should leave the church, if what they were teaching was wrong. Instead, all I ever experienced was being told to submit, to trust the pastor’s discernment and not my own, and the threat that I would risk God’s judgment if I left. So much mental and spiritual abuse happened. I feel very betrayed. If my child asked me to intervene while she was being abused or led astray, I would. Why didn’t He?

I also question God’s protection and goodness after watching several wonderful people die horrible deaths, including a little 11-year-old girl. That girl was my daughter’s best friend and it crushed my daughter when she died. Her innocent faith was crushed when God did not answer her prayers to heal her friend. She was convinced He would. If I could heal someone that was dying, I would. Why didn’t he?

People credit God when someone is healed or avoids a tragedy. But according to that logic, wouldn’t that also mean we should credit Him when someone is not healed, when a family drowns in a hurricane, or when someone dies in a crash? If I had the power to prevent these tragedies, I would. Why didn’t He?

I have very rarely shared these doubts because almost everyone would chastise me. But they are not going away and I can’t get by with platitudes like “God’s ways are not our ways”, or “God uses all things for our good” or “Praise God anyway.” Platitudes do not help when the One who could have intervened, protected and healed people chose not to do so.

You are not alone with your doubts and hurts and it is OK to acknowledge them. Please keep talking here without fear of judgment.

J: I hear you. It frustrates me to no end when people say God took away their headache when they prayed (or something like that), yet others go through horrendous fates praying desperately for the help the bible promises yet are left alone.

J (written several weeks later): This hasn’t gone away. In fact, it gets worse as more and more things go badly and as no evidence of help comes forth. I honestly don’t see my prayers having any impact. My fear isn’t that there is no god. My fear is that he is malevolent, or at least indifferent.

K: I hear you and I empathize with you. I feel ripped up inside because I have these same thoughts and feelings. I am sorry you are experiencing the same.

M: I can’t think that if there is a God he would be malevolent. He may view things very differently than we do, he may not be as actively involved in ways that we were taught, but that wouldn’t make him malevolent. I’m not sure it would even make him indifferent, just with a very, very different perspective than we have.

I wonder if there is a God, why God would allow things he does, how to protect myself from this upside down, crazy life if there isn’t a God who will protect me. I’ve struggled with this for 17 years. I prayed and begged God in 2000 not to let me be thrown out of a church because the pastor falsely accused me of lusting after the pastor. Fasted for days. Did everything I could to repent of things I’d never done. And I found another church and ran to it. And at that church the pastor’s wife was in an accident. The pastor started inviting young women to his house to visit his wife, who was bedridden. The men would lay hands on me. I was so freaked out, so terrified that I would be falsely accused again. And I was trying to hide what had happened from my parents and others, trying to keep a ‘good witness’. So I moved to the next state and went back to college. I spent thousands before discovering that I couldn’t get the certificate I wanted without quitting work and going to school full time. So I dropped out. I hoped that at the church I was in at the time that I would finally get married, that I’d finally have the respect of the pastor, that I’d have a church. The pastor died. People in the church picked at me. A man stalked me. The new pastor was cruel. And I stayed, still hoping.

So I get it. Way too well. If those things hadn’t happened I would still be attending a UPC, blissfully ignorant of how far from faith in God I actually was, holding on to terribly false ideas about God and about what faith in him looked like. I was begging God to let me stay but was to the point that I was taking risks with the thought that maybe I’d just die and get out of the situation.

God didn’t answer my prayers. But in a weird way he did. Not that I can trust him yet. It’s frightening to trust an all powerful being who not only doesn’t do what you ask, but is so unpredictable that he doesn’t even do what you think he wants done, doesn’t even help you to do what you think he’s commanded. And it’s terrifying to think that we’re in his hands. It’s easier to think maybe he’s indifferent or even nonexistent than all that. It sure seems like it would be a safer, more sensible world at times. And yet I know that through all of it, better things happened by far than what I begged for — I got out. I left and I’m glad of it, and without dying to be rid of them.

It’s a slow, slow process. Friends like the one you mentioned don’t help. They just make me mad.

I picked up a book at Goodwill tonight. Not my typical read. It’s titled No One Cries the Wrong Way. It’s about grief, and the title itself is comforting somehow.

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It is impossible to know how much damage has been caused at spiritually abusive churches led by unhealthy pastors and other leaders. Thousands upon thousands of people have been harmed and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Some have great difficulty separating the distorted view of God instilled in them by these churches and what the Bible shows. As they try to recover and heal from their experiences, they may still view things through their former church teachings. There are things each of us have been taught that are not found within the Bible. Expecting that God will keep all believers from harm is one of those.

As to the question of ‘why does God allow this or that to happen,’ I liked how they touched on this in the movie, Love Comes Softly.

One of the central characters is a man who lost his wife and he is raising his young daughter. He made an arrangement with a woman whose husband died and they had a marriage of convenience. He needed someone to help him raise his daughter and she needed a place to stay for the winter until she could catch a wagon to take her home to the East. The scene I am quoting from happens after the man’s barn burns down.

The woman he has married asks him if he prayed for these bad things to happen and says, “I just don’t understand why the God that you pray to would let such unthinkable things happen to decent people.”

He replied, “Missy (his daughter) could fall down and hurt herself even if I’m walking right there beside her. That doesn’t mean that I allowed it to happen. She knows her father’s unconditional love. I’ll pick her up and I’ll carry her. I’ll try to heal her. I’ll cry when she cries. And I’ll rejoice when she is well. You know all the moments of my life, God has been right there beside me. The truth of God’s love is not that he allows bad things to happen, but it’s His promise that He’ll be there with us when they do.”

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