What is Spiritual Abuse

Spiritual abuse is when someone uses spirituality to manipulate or control others. It can come with great harm to the victim. However, there are ways to heal from the wounds of spiritual abuse.

What is Spiritual Abuse?

Spiritual abuse is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. It is when people use one’s religious or spiritual beliefs to coerce, manipulate, or control them. Spiritual abuse can have a profoundly damaging impact on those who experience it.

Examples of Spiritual Abuse

Some examples of spiritual abuse include:

• Using scripture, sacred texts, or teaching to control, manipulate, or exploit.
• Requirements for secrecy and silence, conformation, obedience, and enforced accountability
• The suggestion that the abuser has a ‘divine’ position,
• Isolation as a means of punishment,
• A religious or spiritual leader leveraging their position of authority as a means of coercion
• Insulting or ridiculing one’s spiritual beliefs
• Insisting children have to be raised under one partner’s religion
• Rationalizing other forms of abuse through religious doctrines or teaching
• Using someone’s spiritual beliefs to create guilt or shame
• Preventing someone from practicing their beliefs or making someone perform spiritual practices against their will
• Denying education about bodily autonomy due to spiritual beliefs
• Using spiritual beliefs to withhold necessary medical care

Spiritual abuse can affect anyone of any age, gender, race, culture, or religion. It can create long-term mental health challenges that leave you confused and questioning your beliefs and values.

Spiritual Abuse in Marriage

Spiritual abuse can often happen in marriage, where one spouse uses scripture or other sacred texts to manipulate their spouse to fall in line with their version of spirituality. This can include:

• Overemphasizing their authority
• Express their version of spirituality in an unbalanced way. For example, a husband may demand their wife’s submission but ignore the instructions the Bible has for husbands.
• They are legalistic. They may focus on the rules of the Bible but ignore the components of love and grace.
• Have unfair standards. They require others to have a high standard of righteousness that they don’t subscribe to.
• Their relationship to spirituality is focused on their image rather than their heart being in their spirituality.

Types of Spiritual Abuse

Psychological/Emotional Abuse

Manipulation of Spiritual Truths or Texts

The use of spiritual truths or texts to harm is probably one of the most common forms of spiritual abuse. A lot of using spiritual texts to manipulate is about taking Bible verses or snippets of sacred text out of context, interpreting it to suit your purposes, or failing to compare the context of the segment to the context of the person’s life.

Using Spiritual Power Differential to Abuse

Some abuse happens because the abuser uses their position of spiritual authority to coerce or manipulate others to do what they want them to do. This type of abuse is often connected with other kinds of abuse, particularly sexual abuse. When pastors, priests, spiritual gurus, and other spiritual leaders use their position to get things from people who look to them for spiritual guidance, that is spiritual abuse.

Gaslighting and Toxic Positivity

The minimization of specific experiences because you wouldn’t have that problem if your faith was strong enough or you were good enough at this or that spiritual practice. The idea that your life will be exemplary if your spirituality is good enough is a toxic lie. Spirituality doesn’t prevent bad things from happening to you; praying about it does not make it disappear.

Emotional Neglect

Emotional neglect occurs when a person’s emotional well-being is not given adequate care. People who struggle need care, nurturing, attention, and love.

Too often, when difficult emotions (fear, doubt, depression, anxiety) come up, they are over-spiritualized with a quick fix, too simple an answer, or illogical spiritual tools. Their emotional experience is ignored, and the feeling that they are alone in their problems is reinforced. This communicates that spiritual leaders don’t care about your emotions and often that God doesn’t care about your feelings. It can stop people from reaching out to their spiritual leaders for help when needed.

Sexual and Physical Abuse with a Spiritual Connection

There have been too many stories of physical and sexual abuse being done by people in authority in a spiritual organization or context. This can happen in any form of spirituality where there are spiritual leaders. Some examples of these abuses include:

• Catholic priest sex abuse scandal
• Bikram Choudhury and Asaram Bapu
• Christian stories

Cults and Shared Psychosis

Cults are often a more extreme version of spiritual abuse. They are often led by a charismatic leader who tightly controls their members and requires unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices outside society’s norms. There are multiple examples of spiritual cults, sometimes with devastating consequences:

• Jim Jones and Jonestown
• Shakahola
• Heaven’s Gate
• Children of God
• Aum Shinrikyo
• Order of the Solar Temple
• Rajneesh Movement

Spiritual abuse can also exist in the form of shared psychosis. In the spiritual form of shared psychosis, there is a leader who may be overtly psychotic with religious and spiritual overtones, who draws followers who are vulnerable and suggestible with a predisposition to be interested in spirituality that shares the leader’s psychosis. The most famous example of this is Charles Manson’s cult.

How Can the Wounds of Spiritual Abuse Be Treated?

Validate the Wounds

Spiritual abuse causes both wounds to your emotional self and your spirituality. Pay attention to your wounds and how your experiences have affected you. Take the time to understand how the situation occurred and how that affected you. You may need help to see the many wounds from spiritual abuse, and a therapist experienced in spiritual abuse can help you with that.

Finding the Truth

When someone uses scripture or sacred texts to manipulate, control, or shame someone else, numerous injuries, lies, distortions, and exploitations result. It is crucial to gain an understanding of what is the truth compared to what you were told. This may involve comparing what you’ve been told to reading passages in context within the time they were written and the surrounding verses, along with the main themes of the Bible or other sacred text.

Creating Boundaries

You have the right to leave a situation of spiritual abuse and distance yourself from your abuser. This may include creating boundaries with friends and family that show patterns of spiritual abuse.

Healing Your Emotional Self

Long-term patterns of spiritual abuse can lower your self-esteem, make you doubt your spiritual path, or cause symptoms of trauma. You feel confused and stuck. You may need help from a mental health professional to help you heal.

Reconnecting with Spirituality

Spiritual abuse can disconnect you from your spirituality. It is crucial to find a way to reconnect with your spirituality. Do this at your own pace.

You can start by reading spiritual texts and connecting personally with your spirituality without pressure. For Christians, this may mean reading the Bible, praying, and watching sermons on YouTube. As you heal and gain confidence, you can expand how you practice your faith and eventually return to engaging in your faith at an organized church.

Conclusion

Spiritual abuse is when someone uses your spirituality to manipulate or control others. It can come with great harm to the victim. However, there are ways to heal the wounds of spiritual abuse.