I grew up in fundamentalist churches, where my spiritual leaders fed me a binding script about God and the world. They continuously told me how to think and what to believe, punishing me when I raised questions or opposition. Anyone who did not follow the script was cut off from God’s love.  

It didn’t take me long as a child to learn to deny my real thoughts and feelings. Eventually, the script took hold of much of my inner life, crowding more and more space until there was no more room for me. I stopped discovering and interpreting my world. The nonconforming parts of me went into hiding.

On the surface, I was taught some of the same theology that my Christian friends were brought up with. But I didn’t feel the same things about Jesus and God that my friends said they felt. I thought for sure that something was wrong with me, because I couldn’t internalize God’s love the way my friends seemed to. The older I got, the love that I felt became fleeting.

One Sunday morning when I was 7 years old, my Children’s Church pastor lined up all of us kids together. We stood quietly, looking at three tall wooden crosses. One by one, we were picked up and forced to hang on one of the crosses. We were told to never forget how much Christ suffered.

The crucifixion has profound meaning to many people. The energy I felt surrounding the scene was the weight of guilt and shame. Those feelings gradually rooted themselves in me, and would weigh me down for a long time.

I inherited an image of God who would talk on the surface about unconditional love. But make no mistake, he wanted suffering and violence. I was told repeatedly that mankind’s primary purpose here on earth was to suffer.

Suffering is exactly what this image of God created in me. Under the rule of the script, I was okay until I did or believed something wrong – then I would be beaten down and cut off from love. It was hard to breathe. I was running and running on this hamster wheel of approval and hate, trying to be good enough to appease this image. There was nowhere I could rest or find peace, because this God wasn’t safe.  

Spiritual Abuse

Stories like mine happen in all religious and spiritual contexts. Spiritual abuse has many faces and is almost always rooted in fear, guilt and shame. It seeks to control a person by corrupting or manipulating their sacred beliefs. Tragically, spiritual abuse often overlaps with emotional, mental and sexual abuse, creating many layers of oppression. If we were raised in spiritually abusive faith communities, we may have been taught distorted images of God that mirror our abusers.

Like all abuse, spiritual abuse falls on a spectrum. On the extreme end, we find cult crimes like violent rituals, forbidding a person the medical treatment that they need, brainwashing and mind control. In everyday life, subtler forms of spiritual abuse happen, and they are harder to pin down.

We can find spiritual abuse latent in the culture of some faith and spiritual communities. In the undertones of words said on the surface, judgments and damaging core messages like these leave a mark that we internalize:

• Only an elite few can access God.
• There is only one way to connect with God, or to reach enlightenment.
• If your spiritual experiences are different, then something is wrong with you.
• If you question the prescribed spiritual beliefs, then something is wrong with you.
• It’s wrong to think for yourself.
• The problems in your life are here because you attracted them, or because you aren’t “spiritual” enough.
• You can just pray away your mental health struggles, or transcend them.
• Neglecting your needs is righteous.
• You are prideful if you don’t put yourself down.
• God wants you to be controlled.
• If you leave an abusive relationship, you are failing to forgive.
• God doesn’t accept you as you are.
• It’s not okay to love yourself.

If any of these messages have created blocks in your connection with your higher power or your authentic self, you have been spiritually wounded.

Many of us who have been through spiritual abuse have developed a deep distrust in ourselves. We may feel lost, because we have been taught or forced to suppress our intuition. Our spirits have been blocked. We carry the pain of being cut off from our source.

When you have been cut off from yourself, how do you begin to find your way home?

My spiritual journey changed when I became open to the idea that my beliefs could be wrong. I had a strong sense that God was bigger than the lens I was given. I stopped thinking that I was going a smooth, straight line, headed away from this earth, toward someone’s version of “perfection.” It became more important to deal honestly with what is happening now. 

I survived for many years on the hamster wheel of approval and hate, living as a “super-Christian.” As sincere as I had tried to be in my spirituality up until this point, many of the beliefs I was carrying were not really mine. I had always felt forced to believe them. To get off the wheel, I had to stop suppressing my questions and objections, and the feelings I was getting that were telling me something was off. It was important for me to distance myself from my abusers during this time, so that I could find the safety to start being real. (Read: Why we wear masks, and the power of safe people)

In the aftermath of spiritual abuse, honesty is an essential step toward healing. I give major kudos to anyone who is brave enough to tell the truth when they have been subjected to any form of brainwashing or mind control. When you stop conforming to the script, you are risking judgment, punishment, alienation, and depending on your spiritual tradition, an eternity in hell.

But being honest will set you free.

I had to be honest with myself that the roots of the religion I knew were bearing toxic fruit in my life. They were infecting my worldview with judgments and preventing me from loving myself and other people.

When I admitted the truth about I did and did not believe about God, I felt peace. It was relieving to discover that God wouldn’t rain hellfire down upon me for choosing not to believe certain things. Quite the opposite – I experienced a deeper level of acceptance than I had ever previously known.

My journey home is a path of unlearning the script and struggling to shed the layers of the things I am not – so that I can be who I am and authentically experience God.

When I was a young girl, before the script had taken hold, I used to spend time talking with this voice inside me who was spunky and loving and wise. She knew how to find the light. Connecting with her was like turning on all the lights in a dark room. The whole world was enchanted. I could feel her longing for me just as much as I was longing for her. Sometimes I would become part of a gushing river that felt like love, and I would flow in this dance of ripples that moved from my center.

Reconnecting with her is the beginning of healing.