Tag: boundaries | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Outside the Box: Recovering from obsessive guilt

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 7, 2016 as part of a series.

Continued from What Is Joy?

“i am still learning that i am allowed to be human out here
inside it was not allowed
those things made a bad thing happen
so i still feel that. any tiny mistake… ” ~ anonymous friend

Obsessive guilt is no longer my religion.

But for many years, it was, and the scars left by it still linger for many of us. This post is for my friends whose wounds are still bleeding. This is for everyone who can’t find the words yet.

I’ve written before about my history of self-harm, prompted by years of being told when I was a small child that I murdered Jesus simply by being born, because of original sin.

Every breath I took, every time I threw a tantrum as a toddler, every time I didn’t obey my parents immediately without question, all these things drove nails into Jesus’ hands. Or so I was told.

This story on Homeschoolers Anonymous is very, very much like how I was raised. It’s like my mom is talking to me all over again.

“You are such a disappointment to God. He is sitting in heaven crying because of your sinfulness. Even if you were the only person who ever lived, Jesus would have had to die because of your sin! Your sin caused Jesus to be tortured and killed. It is just like you were there hammering the nails into him.”

Over and over, I was told that Jesus and the angels were always watching me, that they were disappointed in me when I talked back to my parents. That I made Jesus sad, that I hurt him.

Guilt for Jesus’ pain is why I self-harmed, starting at age 5. And none of the adults in my life then understood why.

We grew up with this mindset, believing that only guilt could dictate ethics. If you didn’t feel bad about yourself, you were prideful. If you weren’t thinking about Jesus’ suffering, you were ungrateful for his sacrifice.

And it’s not just those of us who were homeschooled in Christian fundamentalist households.

One of my Mormon friends told me she obsessively washed her hands when she felt sinful, because it made her feel less dirty. Later she found out it was part of her OCD diagnosis.

I’m also not the only one who thought I had to hurt myself because I caused Jesus pain. I have several friends who also did the same thing, for the same reason. The idea actually goes back to the middle ages and flagellantism, radicals in the Catholic church who beat themselves to mortify the flesh and identify with Christ in his suffering.

I used to dig my fingernails into my hands every time I referred to the divine without capital letters, because I believed I had disrespected the Almighty. Now I no longer believe my God is concerned with misspellings.

Those in the church probably don’t realize that the language they use often gives a very different idea than they are intending to, especially with children who take things literally.

A recent Relevant magazine article explains it like this (link removed as the article is no longer available):

“If you tell a 10-year-old that he should be washed in blood, he’s probably going to imagine something closer to the opening scene of Blade than a loving Jesus who wants him to be happy forever. I pictured Jesus standing next to a giant bathtub that He was bleeding into while trying to make me dive into it like a Steven Curtis Chapman song in ’99.”

When we talk about the crucifixion as penal substitution and say that we also have to take up our cross, when we tell young children to prepare for martydom or teenagers to stand up for Jesus like Cassie Bernall at Columbine, some of us take these ideas far more seriously than we probably intended.

We hate ourselves, we struggle with feeling unworthy, and we believe that we are undeserving of love. I have friends who can’t convince themselves to take medicine until their pain becomes unbearable because they believe they deserve suffering.

My friend Ash shared this song with me last year, and I cried because it is me. For so long, I couldn’t accept love because I thought I wasn’t worthy.

Before you came the days just passed
But now I so cannot reach seconds
Within me thousand suns rise
And I’m praying for them to never disappear
Tell me what have I done to deserve something this beautiful.

Tell me why I deserve you
Tell me why I deserve you
Tell me why I deserve you
Why is it me you love? – Lafee, Tell Me Why / Wer Bin Ich, Nightcore remix

It’s a process, we can’t just instantly rewire our brains. We don’t magically become healthier.

I’m still wrestling with my own theology, struggling to imagine that my God is pure light and love, a radical idea from a Graham Cooke video I watched years ago:

“You are the beloved. It is your job to be loved outrageously. It is why I chose you. That is why I set My love upon you; that you would live as one who is outrageously loved; that you would receive a radical love, so radical it will blow all your paradigms of what you think love is. I know I will love you outrageously all the days of your life because I don’t know how to be any different. This is who I am, and this is who I will always be. This is the “I am” that I promised you. I am He that loves you outrageously. And you may love Me back with the love that I give you.

“You may love Me back outrageously with the outrageous love that I bestow upon you. And know this, you can only love Me as much as you love yourself. So My love comes this evening to set you free from yourself. To set you free from how you see yourself. To set you free from the smallness of your own thinking about yourself. My love comes to set you free from rejection and from shame and from low self-esteem and from despair and from abuse because when I look at you, I see something that I love. I see someone that I can love outrageously.

[….]

“There is no fear where I am present because My love casts out fear.

“Beloved, you are My beloved. You are My beloved. And in my love, I want you to feel good about yourself.”

Unraveling all the gnarly threads woven through our souls takes months, years.

It’s like recovering from addiction or learning to drive a car. We’re learning how to love and be loved. Remembering that we are all made of stardust.

So when you meet a former box-dweller, please be gentle and patient with us. We’re still recovering. It takes time.

I hope you guys enjoyed this series and a glimpse into the souls of these lovely guest writers.

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Outside the Box: I wish I didn’t know

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 1, 2016 as part of a series.

Continued from Butterfly Support Group

Today’s post is from a friend who wishes to remain anonymous.

Content note: child abuse, domestic violence, marital rape

Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The memories of childhood often evoke feelings of longing for a time when happiness abounded.

For some, the wistful, longing feelings of youth give way to an all-consuming emptiness. The definition of a ‘lie’ is to tell something untruthful. The state of untruth, of chronic deceit, replaces any feelings of nostalgia from my past.

I had no uninhibited feelings of curiosity. I lived in constant fear of ‘rebellion.’ An older sibling was always on the verge of a ‘dangerous path’ for some indiscretion.

My youngest memories are of parents whose marriage was on the rocks. In an attempt to maintain the family unit, I was used as a human shield.

I have vivid flashbacks of my father trying to force himself on my mother. The innocence of youth was torn from me at an early age. Every sense was violated by the presence of inappropriate boundaries, or lack thereof, with my parents.

My mother would rarely sleep with my father and usually when she did, I was placed between them.

I was her safe haven. As far back as I can remember, I was her shield, both physically and emotionally. I was not allowed to interact with my other siblings, creating animosity between myself and my siblings.

I was rarely allowed out of my mother’s sight. I was 17 years old before I was allowed to stay at home even if she was only grocery shopping.

However, as with every child, I bonded with my mother. I remember the normal feelings of wanting to please her and gain her approval, which was always elusive. I never knew when she would praise me or attack my “rebelliousness.”

Throughout my childhood I was not allowed to have friends, but I was very close to my sister Faith. We were never separated, which was by my mother’s design. Faith was the other half of the human shield. Combined, we formed a human triangle. We were a unit, it was as though Faith and I were appendages of my mother.

As a child, I was unaware of the cage I was living in.

I was not aware that I was being used as a shield to save a failing marriage. In many ways, I was like any other child.

I loved life, I was curious, I loved my family. I loved my parents. I was sure they really cared for me more than anything. I ran wild on our five-acre plot. I loved the creek near our house and my stuffed animals. I loved my mother’s cooking. I loved to bake cookies and play silly games with Faith.

The young child in me loved life, happiness and wanted only a safe haven, a place to explore the world without fear. But cages are a result of fear.

Paranoia resided in my parents, causing them to isolate their children, allowing us little contact with the outside world. We lived in a cage of patriarchy, guided by an “umbrella” theory of God. The gist of this theory was that our father was the portal through which God gave his will to children, especially girls.

It was my father’s duty to make sure his daughters were “pure” before marriage. It was my father’s duty to give his daughter to a worthy man, meaning he felt entitled to be heavily involved in any dating relationships. Young girls were not allowed to have opinions, much to the dismay of my spunky nature. I wanted opinions, I wanted respect. But I was rarely allowed opinions, and I was often mocked.

Becoming an adult in such a cage was confusing and stressful. Conflict burned within me. I loved my parents, why did I have to choose between them and the world? Was God as rigid as they claimed? Did God think women had a voice? Were women only meant to have babies? Does God hate me if I sin? If I lose my virginity will I go to hell?

Growing up in a cage also makes the bars of the prison cell harder to see. When talking with people ‘outside,’ it was strange when their responses to my circumstances were not in agreement with my parents.

You mean it isn’t normal to sleep on the floor of my parents’ bedroom until I was 14-years-old? You mean God made men and women equal? It isn’t normal for children to be told they are half-aborted? There is such a thing as marital rape, that isn’t only possible if you are unmarried? How can a husband rape his wife, aren’t they supposed to have sex?

Coming out of the cage, realizing my childhood was merely a chess game, in which I was nothing more than a shield, was more than painful. Adequate words are not available to explain how I can no longer look back on my youth, frolicking in my backyard without thinking about the cage I was in.

I cannot think of my long talks with Faith at night, memories I formerly cherished, without remembering how we were really drowning out the screaming of my parents. We were the shields, my life was a lie.

I can no longer see the remnants of my former life without feeling the stabbing pain of the lie of childhood. I cannot look back at my young self without feeling pity.

Sometimes I long for the home I thought I had as a child. I long to be a child again because I realize I never really experienced childhood. I was never in a safe environment. Sometimes I feel starved of love, ill-equipped to handle adulthood because I was not nourished. Just as bones break when they lack protein, the heart breaks when it lacks love.

The phrase, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then” rings true for those who look back and see a dark past where once they saw a blooming meadow.

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Deprogramming: documentaries and movies about cults and fundamentalist Christian subculture

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on April 16, 2015.

Some people asked us what life was like after we left when I posted the UnBoxing Project series, how we handled leaving the sects of fundamentalist Christianity we were raised in.

My friends and I went through a period of deprogramming, which is still ongoing. We’d been told what to think our whole lives, what is good and what is evil, and then we found we’d been lied to.

Cults teach the people who want to leave the group that:

1) you’re the only one questioning

2) this is somehow your fault, because everyone else is compliant and does what they’re told.

This is how they maintain control, through isolation.

My best friend in college, Cynthia Barram, found some documentaries about cults and Christian fundamentalism that demonstrated nationwide trends and helped our little group of ex-fundamentalist homeschoolers realize that we weren’t alone in deconstructing from toxic religion.

Sons of Perdition (2010)

This documentary is about the teenage boys who get kicked out and the girls and women who leave Warren Jeff’s FLDS cult on the southern Utah / Arizona border.

Although our experiences in the Independent Fundamental Baptist or United Pentecostal Churches were different than the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints since our churches didn’t practice polygamy and didn’t have a prophet, we shared many similarities with their deconstruction process. Like the ex-FLDS young adults, we grieved the loss of family members who shunned us, struggled to find a sense of purpose when we no longer felt like we had been “chosen” to fulfill a divine mission like the cult taught us, and worked through unhealthy ways of coping with these losses and found a better way to live.

The “Sons of Perdition” struggled to support themselves and enroll in school. The daughters cut their hair for the first time and put on pants. We could identify with their stories because of our own experiences in fundamentalist cults.

Daddy, I Do (2010) and Cutting Edge: The Virgin Daughters (2008 TV Show)

These documentaries are about purity culture and the father-daughter virginity ball hosted at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs every year.

Daddy, I Do features a variety of perspectives: fraternity boys, churchgoing parents raising kids, abstinence-only program leaders, and progressive Christians like blogger Matthew Paul Turner. It addresses the problematic nature of a daughter promising her virginity to her father until marriage.

The Virgin Daughters focuses specifically on Colorado Springs and the father-daughter ball, interviewing the various families who attend and showing the pledge the fathers sign to protect their daughters’ chastity.

Both of these documentaries feature fundamentalist Christian parents who admit they actually were not virgins at marriage, but they want their children to be.

Jesus Camp (2006)

This documentary is mostly about an evangelical Pentecostal-style church camp gone wrong.

The charismatic camp director says in the opening scenes that America’s only hope for spiritual revival is through the hearts of malleable children. So she and the other leaders proceed to brainwash them and manipulate their emotions, telling the children that they are engaged in warfare for the good of the nation.

The film also shows the group of campers visiting New Life Church in Colorado Springs and meeting the pastor at the time, Ted Haggard.

Ted Haggard, who founded New Life Church in the mid 80s, was known for “waging spiritual war” in Colorado Springs and encouraging his church members to “anoint” streets and intersections with cooking oil, according to a Harpers’ Magazine article called “Soldiers of Christ” by Jeff Sharlet published in May 2005.

The neighbor family who lived across the street from my parents in Colorado Springs had attended New Life Church for years when we moved there. The husband and wife both worked at Focus on the Family while we were neighbors, and the wife often took a spray bottle of cooking oil on her walks around the neighborhood that she would use to “anoint” neighbor’s driveways if she felt that she sensed a demonic presence, in accordance with Haggard’s teachings.

Haggard resigned as senior pastor of New Life Church in the fall of 2006 after allegations surfaced that he used methamphetamine and had sex with a male escort in Denver. He and his wife left the city for several years, but he moved back to start another church in Colorado Springs in 2010, where he has been accused again of illegal drug use and inappropriate behavior with young men, according to a July 2022 article by the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Jesus Camp was a harrowing portrayal of spiritual abuse, but I needed this film to process what happened to me and my high school youth group in one of my fundamentalist churches, to realize how we had been radicalized for the culture wars.

God Loves Uganda (2013)

This documentary is about non-denominational evangelical churches like the International House of Prayer (IHOP) group (which has also been called a cult) that has emerged over the last 20 years increasing missionary efforts, reacting against established denominations leaning away from traditional theology and missions.

They look at what happens on the other side, at the financial impact of this church planting and aid on the countries receiving these missionaries.

The documentary makers point out that people end up depending on the monetary support from the missionaries and churches in Western countries, and the evangelical churches sending missionaries use their influence to pass laws, like the one in Uganda that advocated the death penalty for LGBTQ people.

Basically, this film demonstrates missionary work gone bad.

Waiting for Armageddon (2009)

I’ve given up on rapture theology. The whole philosophy is based on a handful of verses and wasn’t widely accepted until television preachers in the 1960s started it during the Cold War era. If Jesus actually comes back like that, great, but if not, I’m okay with that, too.

In the film, a group of somewhat clueless Texans tromp around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and their pastor threatens to cause an international incident by yelling that this is where Jesus will come back until security asks them to stop, reminding them that at least three different religions consider the Temple Mount to be sacred and each religion believes very different things about it.

Then they play the Star Spangled Banner while riding in a boat over the Sea of Galilee. Gotta love that American Christian exceptionalism. Lovely.

Jewish leaders who better understand the intricacies of the religious history of the area are also interviewed in the film, and it also covers the annual Tribulation Conference in Dallas, Texas.

On the lighter side, we also watched comedy movies and TV shows critiquing how we grew up.

Saved! (2004)

In this movie, a high school girl decides to “save” her boyfriend from being gay by giving him her virginity. Then she gets pregnant.

And did I mention she’s in a Christian high school?

Cue goth punk chick and dude in a wheelchair (the other “outcasts”) coming to her rescue.

We laughed so much watching this film, because many of the ridiculous plot lines would actually happen in evangelical and fundamentalist subculture.

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015)

In this Netflix-only series, Kimmy escapes an apocalyptic cult’s bunker after 15 years of captivity and reinvents herself and her identity in New York City.

The episode titles are hilarious from the obvious “Kimmy Goes Outside!” or “Kimmy Gets a Job!” and “Kimmy Goes on a Date!” to the more mundane, like “Kimmy Makes Waffles!”

The show received a positive review from an actual survivor of an apocalyptic cult.

I watched the first season during spring break of my last year of college and loved it, but I couldn’t watch too many episodes in one sitting because some of the comedy was too real.

When I first moved out, I was so very, very much like Kimmy, right down to her bottomless optimism. Laughing at her is like laughing at myself, which is both healing and painful.

Leaving is hard.

But for those of us who seek freedom, it’s worth it.

And we’re not alone, in this mess of deprogramming and making sense of what our lives were like and what our futures will be.

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Alecia Pennington, you are not alone

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on February 15, 2015.

Homeschool alumni Alecia Faith Pennington’s Help Me Prove It campaign went viral on social media this last week.

She explained that she can’t vote, can’t get a job and can’t get a driver’s license, all because she can’t prove that she was born in the United States.

Because she was born at home and her parents allegedly never filed for a birth certificate, she said she cannot prove her US citizenship. Her parents also never filed for a Social Security number and never took her to a hospital, and she has no school records because she was homeschooled, according to her now-viral YouTube video.

“This leaves me with nothing to prove my identity or citizenship,” Alecia said in the video. “I am now 19 years old and I’m unable to get a driver’s license, get a job, go to college, get on a plane, get a bank account, or vote.”

Her YouTube video was viewed over 500,000 times and reached Reddit’s front page within a week, according to Homeschoolers Anonymous.

But as the survey conducted by Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO) a few days ago demonstrates, she is not alone.

And the majority of survey respondents whose parents denied them their identifying documentation were also members of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which is an interesting correlation.

My parents were members of HSLDA.

They kept a card with HSLDA’s hotline number taped beside our front door when we first started homeschooling in the early 90s. (I’m the oldest child in my family.)

My parents told me if anyone from Child Protective Services showed up at the door, we needed to call that number right away and not answer any questions until we talked to their legal representatives. They taught me that our ungodly government was looking for reasons to persecute good Christian families who just wanted to raise their children according to Biblical teachings.

They said spanking wasn’t abuse, even if it left marks, because it was all part of the plan to raise children to fear God and obey authority. If anyone asked if my parents spanked, we were to lie and say they didn’t.

When my parents gave me an ultimatum between moving out and transferring colleges to Bob Jones University summer 2012, I left with only my driver’s license.

Earlier that year, my mom gave me a folder marked “Eleanor.” She kept one for me and each of my siblings that she planned to give to us when we turned 18.

This folder had everything from baby footprints and my birth certificate to my social security card and passport to x-rays and health records for my growth hormone treatment as a teenager.

But the one of the most destructive wildfires in Colorado’s history, the Waldo Canyon Fire, started one sleepy Saturday in June 2012. By the next Tuesday, the winds rolled it down the mountain into the city, destroying around 300 homes, and my family and neighbors were planning to evacuate.

My dad took the folder with all my identifying documents for safekeeping in a safe deposit box. I reminded him I would need it later.

I moved out on August 1, 2012. Before and after moving out, I asked for that folder and my documentation over and over.

I applied for jobs off-campus for additional income, but could only provide my drivers’ license for the I-9 documentation for employment to prove my US citizenship and ability to work legally, which wasn’t enough since the document requires two forms of identification.

My mom finally gave me a few copies of my social security card and passport. But not before I’d already been denied one tutoring job after an interview because I couldn’t produce proper identification.

They kept telling me they were holding my documentation in safekeeping for when I changed my mind and decided to go to Bob Jones University instead of “rebelling” and moving out on my own,

About six months after I left home, they finally gave me my social security card.

I continued asking them for my passport.

Text messages from 11/17/2013:
Me: May I please pretty please have my passport?
Mom: Passport applications are available at the post office. […] I will continue to pray for you. Goodbye.

Later, my dad said I had to repay large amounts of money that he claimed I owed him before he would give me my passport. As a college student with part-time employment, I didn’t have extra money to replace my passport or my other identifying documents.

I didn’t get my passport back until October 2014.

So this week, the Help Me Prove It campaign reminded me that I still don’t have my birth certificate or health records.

I emailed my parents again two days ago.

My dad replied the same day:

Have not seen your BC (birth certificate) for quite some time. Your best bet there is to contact Jefferson County in Texas. They can likely give you a copy. Very busy these days. Best regards, TS

Mom answered the next day:

Dad and I had to request birth certificates when we first applied for passports. It was not something that [your grandparents] had. We wrote Harris County and Duchess County for our birth certificates. You won’t need one to renew your driver’s license. Just proof of address and take the eye test. Mom.

No answer about my health records.

At least I’m registered in the county system, so I can get another birth certificate if I need to get a driver’s license in another state, and I can request copies of my health records from my doctors.

Alecia Pennington can’t.

So yes, some of us (story 1) (story 2) who moved out years ago are still fighting to get our documentation.

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Book Review: Spiritual Sobriety by Elizabeth Esther

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on June 2, 2017.

I love so much of Elizabeth Esther’s writing because what she says fits my experiences in unhealthy churches.

I preordered her book Spiritual Sobriety: Stumbling back to faith when good religion goes bad in spring of last year, around the same time that I interviewed her on my blog.

Recently I re-read my copy before sending it off to a couple of friends who are also unpacking unhealthy spiritual things they learned.

Elizabeth talks about how belief in God can become an addiction, and worship just another way to get a high–she calls this a “transactional use of God.”

She also doesn’t blame us, the religious addicts, for this.

“We didn’t make a conscious choice to treat religion this way. At whatever age we veered off track, we were just doing the best we could.” (p. 11)

“How were we supposed to know there were healthy ways of approaching God when the people we admired taught us that living intentionally with God looked like anything but freedom?” (p. 12)

She argues in the first few chapters that it’s basically a process addiction–an addiction to a behavior rather than a substance.

Elizabeth also says we should pay attention to that drained feeling, the letdown after religious services and events.

“This letdown is an important indicator that something is wrong. If we behaved in healthier ways, we wouldn’t feel the gnawing despair of having spent ourselves on a mirage.” (p. 8-9)

She says that a loving God will respect our boundaries (p. 61), and how she is learning to embrace a sense of mystery and be okay with not knowing everything. And she cautions us against buying into the American idea that our self-worth is tied to our productivity and how that leaks into our spiritual practices, too.

Religious addicts, according to her research, often have problems with excessive daydreaming and living in obsession, fantasy, and magical thinking.

This really resonated with me since I used to use fiction as my drug. Being a bookworm in an unhealthy household wasn’t just me being an adorable, academic kid, it was an escape when I felt like my home was a prison.

Elizabeth also writes about recovering from the shame of a legalistic upbringing, learning to acknowledge a mistake, and move on.

“When I feel myself saying ‘I am a bad person,’ that means I’m internalizing my mistakes,’ she says. ‘I have to remind myself to stop the Shame Brain.'” (p. 78)

“Shame tells us that we are lovable only when we are performing well. Admitting a mistake means admitting we aren’t worthy of love.” (p. 77)

Religious addicts also have the tendency to demand that others believe exactly the same way that they do and feel responsible for saving the world.

“Driven by fear, the religious addict feels responsible for the eternal salvation of every soul. Different beliefs must be confronted (and eradicated!) because they signal a hellish trajectory. In the pursuit of saving the world, the RA behaves as if the ends justify the means. Judgemental rhetoric is a small price to pay for snatching sinners from the fires of Hell, amen?” (p. 89)

We get drawn even further into religious extremism through this thinking.

“For Christians, being lukewarm is almost as bad as not believing at all. We’d rather burn out for Jesus than take the seemingly lazy road of moderation.” (p. 98)

She takes a similar approach to other addiction recovering programs, encouraging recovering religious addicts to avoid trying to fix everything all at once but and resist believing that we have to recover quickly to meet God’s approval.

She references Nadia Bolz Weber, who said, “the sacred rest that is yours never comes from being worthy.”

Once we learn to move away from relying on high intensity feelings and unstable extremes, we can learn healthier ways to cope. Sometimes too much structure is bad for us, too. Elizabeth says that she was raised with so much rigidity that her twelve step recovery program began to harm her (p. 106).

“Whenever we find ourselves slipping into extremes, we need to realize we’re headed toward an unstable state that could compromise our spiritual sobriety.” (p. 107)

These extremes, she explains, might manifest in our lives as

black and white thinking
catastrophic forecasts of the future
attacking tasks with a vengeance
trying to change things that are entirely out of our control
staying up too late because we need to get more done, not exercising (or overexercising)
starving ourselves, overeating
not letting ourselves reach out for help, not talking about what we’re going through
paranoia

Religious addicts may be especially prone to relapse when hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

Here’s some little pieces that resonated with me.

If you are recovering from a legalistic, cult-like church, I’d say read Elizabeth’s book. She’s been there herself and she understands that recovery is a journey.

Significant Quotes:

“I was consuming God. I didn’t have access to chemical substances – we were intensely devout, conservative Christians – so I used what was available: religious beliefs. I habitually “used” God and all things church to numb pain and feel good.” (p. 3)

“Maybe we identify so closely with our sick selves that we don’t think we even deserve merciful loving kindness. Maybe we agree with those who say we need to be punished (especially if we’ve begun to seek spiritual sobriety). Maybe we’re so tired of trying to stop our addictive behaviors that we figure we might as well go full speed ahead.” (p. 28-29)

“Accepting help for my depression was also the first step toward accepting my religious addiction.” (p. 29)

“I saw that my relationship with God wasn’t a partnership, but one based on fear of punishment. No wonder I’d felt abandoned by God: I couldn’t trust Him enough to let Him love me. No wonder I sought relief in secretive behaviors: when I couldn’t find the love I needed from God, I tried to find it elsewhere.” (p. 50)

“This idea–that a human being represents God for you–is a dangerous lie, because if someone controls your concept of God, he controls everything. But all the control and scrupulosity didn’t take away my deep, real need for love. Once out of the cult, I turned my focus to relationships: seeking friendships and romantic love that would fulfill, heal, and make me whole. My emotional intensity enabled me to become deeply intimate with people very quickly. But when someone got too close, I pulled away–true intimacy was terrifying. I was afraid everyone was abusive. Over time, I transferred my abusers’ traits to my concept of God.” (p. 51)

“We feel safe in the presence of nonjudgmental compassion.” (p. 54)

“If we are to achieve spiritual sobriety and live successful, productive lives, we need to meet a God who tells us we’re unconditionally loved and infinitely valued, no matter what we do, accomplish, or feel in one particular moment.” (p. 55)

“Now I know very little about what there is to know about the true God, and I’m learning to accept that reality. I no longer believe there are simple answers to complex questions, but I’m still sure that God is somehow good.” (p. 73)

“But if our mistakes are strong enough to compromise God’s acceptance of us, isn’t that the same as saying our mistakes are stronger than God? This is similar to believing we are born inherently evil. If that were true, then it would mean God created depravity. But just as it is impossible for God to create evil, so it is impossible that our mistakes are stronger than God’s hold on us.” (p. 78)

“Religious addicts are especially prone to self-neglect because Scripture texts are frequently misinterpreted to equate self-hatred with godliness. Calvinistic doctrines like ‘total depravity’ reinforce self-loathing. God intended for us to need Him because the beautiful plans he has for us to find their fulfillment in communion with Him—not because we’re bad.” (p. 104)

“Frankly addicts expend a lot of energy on not feeling their needs. RAs feel guilty for being human. We believe others are worthy of having their needs met but we aren’t.” (p. 108)

“We learn to hold relationships loosely, lightly. We discover that other people are not ours to manipulate or control—even when we think we know what’s best for them. A spiritually sober person respects the personal boundaries and inherent dignity of others. By unclenching our hands, we actually enjoy our relationships more.” (p. 115)

“We may feel really uncomfortable with the terms self-forgiveness and self-love because people in many religious circles mock those terms as empty pop-psychology.” (p. 116)

“Verses like Proverbs 3:5—“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”—were used to warn us that trusting ourselves would make us vulnerable prey to Satan. But usually, the people quoting these verses to us weren’t teaching us to put faith in the Lord, they were teaching us to trust our church leaders. Ironically, placing blind trust in other humans is exactly what made us vulnerable prey—not to Satan, but to addiction. These leaders didn’t have to earn our trust. We just had to believe in them because, well, they were the leaders.” (p. 117)

“If we are to recover trust in our gut instinct and our ability to sense truth, we must practice owning, honoring, and validating our experiences as true and real. We don’t have to wait for others to corroborate our experience before we trust what we experience.” (p. 118)

“And yes, learning to trust ourselves might mean making some mistakes in relationships but making mistakes is okay, too. It’s how we learn.” (p. 119)

“This is how we forgive abusers: we allow ourselves to see their humanity. I forgave my abusers because I realized that they weren’t evil; they were simply terribly sick people.” (p. 132)

“It seems that some Christians attend church meetings disproportionately to the amount of time that’s actually spent serving others—you know, being the church… Many have become keepers of the aquarium instead of fishers of men.” – Pastor Michael Helms (p. 138)

“This is because true religion and true spiritual sobriety, can never be bought or sold. Spiritual sobriety is the slow, difficult work of walking the narrow way.   Of course, the addict in us may want to make a grand, splashy gesture and commit everything to Jesus. But here’s the thing: Jesus doesn’t want our big, showy, public surrenders. In fact, emotionally fraught, stadium-style altar calls and gospel meetings can do more harm than good because they make a grand, public performance of what should be a private, inner transformation.” (p. 139)

“They simply shouldn’t have so much power that they are free to shame, threaten, and manipulate the flock. The greatest danger to a church’s spiritual health is a pastor-centric church model.” (p. 141)

“If you want to know whether a church is healthy, look at how it treats people who have little or nothing to offer. Are the homeless welcomed? Are the disabled offered a front-row seat? Do children look forward to going to church? Does the socially awkward college student get invited to coffee? Would members of the LGBT community feel safe attending services? If you’re looking for a spiritually sober church, look for grace.” (p. 141)

“The christian church’s ongoing obsession with sex and sexuality, the centrality it has put on controlling and forbidding sexuality in its message of sinfulness, is a suspicious sign that religious addiction and sexual addiction have been regularly reinforcing each other.” (p. 159) – Richard Minor

“It might seem wise to punish ourselves into sobriety; but as we’ve learned, punishment isn’t love. Punishment can teach us an important lesson about real life consequences, but it can’t rehabilitate our souls; that’s what grace is for.” (p. 166)

“Sobriety is about gentle self-examination and, most of all, a desire to stop living in pain.” (p. 158)

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