Healing from Religious and Spiritual Abuse

A wolf in sheep’s clothing…

Religious and spiritual abuse occurs when a person of authority in your life, like a pastor, parent, or church leader, uses the Bible or spiritual language to manipulate and control you.

They may use God’s name and Bible verses to attempt to conform you to their will, although they may present it as “God’s will.” They might take verses out of context and use them to shame or persuade you to do something you normally wouldn’t do. The Bible becomes more of a weapon instead of a vessel for God to influence and shape your life.

As a part of this, you’ve been taught not to trust yourself – to turn off your doubts, questions, and intuition.

Now, you don’t know how to find your way anymore.

It takes time to come out of the shadow of this abuse.

Maybe you’re in the midst of deconstructing your faith and trying to determine what is true versus what was manipulation. Many people simply give up and turn away from God and their faith altogether because they don’t know how to separate God from the spiritual abuse they endured.

It can be hard to know and love God without all the old thoughts creeping back in and pulling you down… not to mention loving and forgiving yourself.

Counseling can help.

Because of my experience with previous clients and religious education training, I can relate to much of the spiritual language you’ve likely heard, and I can help you separate the abusive religious messages from the genuine encounters you’ve had with God. We would accomplish this goal by going over your spiritual history and examining where and from whom you learned the beliefs that shaped your life.

For example, if you grew up being taught that everything sexual is displeasing to God, you likely struggled with shame and felt sinful anytime you had a sexual feeling or desire. Where did that belief come from? Who taught you this? Maybe it came from a parent who had been sexually abused as a child, and they learned to cope with their pain by deeming anything sexual as dirty or bad. If they never resolved their pain, they likely transferred that belief/coping mechanism onto you.

Only when you get to the bottom of where the toxic spiritual beliefs came from can you begin to purge yourself of the unhealthiness and lies and replace them with healthy thinking and truth. Which beliefs do you need to get rid of, and which ones are worthy of being kept?

You can find your way back to a balanced and healthy relationship with God and even the church. But you have to be willing to examine what you experienced and believed to get rid of the toxic, unhealthy part while still holding onto what is true and good.

Or, maybe you have no desire to reconnect with God or the church. Perhaps you just need to sort through what you experienced and how it shaped your decisions, and where you are today in your life. Maybe your primary interest is healing and rebuilding rather than restoring lost faith.

No matter your ultimate goal, the pathway toward healing is the same. Together, we will look over your spiritual past, examine your beliefs, explore how these beliefs were adopted into your life, look at where they originated from, and how you felt about them throughout your life. Then we will begin to separate the toxic thinking from the beliefs we want to preserve.

As a result of this process, you will notice, over time, that you are slowly beginning to heal.