According to research, practicing healthy spirituality and participating as a member of a spiritual or religious community can increase both mental and physical health across a number of key indicators. Furthermore, it can provide an increased level of meaning and purpose leading to a greater sense of fulfillment and happiness studies have shown. Additional findings have shown experiencing a sense of being a part of something greater than oneself contributes to overall life satisfaction ratings and lowered anxiety and depressive symptoms. 

Life is often difficult and painful. Have social support and purpose are some of the key resources in metabolizing trauma and stress. As human beings, we are biologically hard-wired for connection. There is a plethora of research displaying the negative impact on longevity of isolation and a sense of aloneness. For hundreds of millions of individuals globally, being a member of a faith community is their primary means for coping with the challenges and demands of life. Moreover, many spiritual communities have contributed to a great deal of charitable and essential aid both locally and around the world. 

The Most Damaging Type of Abuse

However, there are another contingent of individuals who have experienced spiritual and religious abuse in unhealthy and toxic religious communities.  In my opinion as a practicing clinician, spiritual abuse is the most damaging type of abuse. Yes. Other forms of abuse such as emotional, physical, and sexual can be deeply wounding to a person for years and decades. But at some point your life on this planet will be over; the pain will end. But in regards to spiritual abuse, many have been taught to believe through intimidation, fear, or manipulation that their pain and suffering will be never ending. 

Now let me take a moment to clarify a few things prior to proceeding. I am not going to engage in a theological discussion or debate about different religious or spiritual views on the afterlife or lack thereof. This article does not have the space to examine these worldviews and point out the irrationality, the mythological or metaphorical nature of them, or the cultural contributors to how they developed. My intention in writing this article is to assist individuals in how to identify signs they are, or have been, spiritually or religiously abused and ways it has negatively impacted them. What I am referring to is individuals who use these belief systems to control, manipulate or abuse a person through fear and shame. 

The Signs Are Often Hidden

One of the challenges in identifying religious or spiritual abuse is the signs are often hidden until someone is able to aid you in seeing them, which makes it all the more insidious. Moreover, it can be even more difficult to gain awareness of the abuse due to the exploitation frequently being concealed in positive aspects of spirituality, such as humility, compassion, and love. The first step in extricating yourself and healing from the abuse is to realize you are being abused, which can be more challenging than you may think. Every year intelligent and caring individuals drain out their financial resources, allow treatment they would never tolerate outside of a religious community, and self-abandon important aspects of themselves as a result of spiritual abuse. 

Manipulation of Trust

Over the years of helping people recover from the spiritual trauma and abuse they have endured, I have come to recognize 9 Hidden Areas of Abuse. The first is MANIPULATION OF FAITH AND TRUST. Religious authority figures are typically seen as trustworthy and compassionate, and the majority of them are. However, in regards to abusive leaders, this often makes it challenging for victims to question their actions. Abusers manipulate this trust to engage in abusive behaviors in the name of spiritual guidance or their care for the victim. 

To avoid falling victim to this type of coercive influence, never lose your capacity to respectfully question things, particularly those that are causing your intuitive voice to go off like a fire alarm in a burning high rise building. Healthy leaders will welcome inquisitiveness and questioning. Toxic leaders will tend to shame, gaslight, and cause you to doubt yourself. We are all susceptible to programming. The only way to prevent this is to never stop asking WHY until it makes sense to us. 

Never allow someone’s reputation or title to cause you to fear challenging them. No one is right about everything. The older I get, and the more I mature, the more I respond with, “I don’t know,” or, “I’m not quite sure.” I strive to engage with non-judgmental curiosity to those things I don’t fully understand and welcome being respectfully challenged and questioned. 

Fear and Isolation As Weapons

The second marker of hidden religious abuse is the use of FEAR AND COERCION. Abusers use fear and coercion to silence individuals and prevent them from engaging in healthy skepticism and questioning. Victims of spiritual abuse are often threatened with disapproval or ostracization by the group or even worse divine punishment. The result of this is a person either feels guilt or shame for asking or even thinking of the question. A healthy spiritual environment welcomes inquiry and exploration and is open to new ideas and civil challenges to existing paradigms. It is an environment of safety created by empathy, compassion, and emotional attunement. 

The third sign of hidden religious abuse is the use of ISOLATION. Religious abusers often isolate their victims from external support and information. Without exposure to alternative views and perspectives, victims struggle to see things objectively and frequently experience self-doubt and confusion. These isolation tactics can range from physical isolation to emotional and psychological forms of segregation. 

Someone operating from a place of love and compassion would never use these tactics but would be inclusive, non-judgmentally curious and welcoming of questions or honest inquiry. Recognize these abusive strategies for what they are – narcissistic and controlling. Furthermore, engage in principles of critical thinking and explore divergent viewpoints. These toxic leaders and communities will often attempt to induce fear in doing so, such as you being ‘Led Away’ by false and dangerous philosophies or ‘The Enemy’, while simultaneously asserting God is love and is always present with you. 

Healthy Skepticism is Key

Maintain the principle of questioning everything and retaining what corresponds to truth in your experience. But don’t fear exploration. If you are trapped in a box, you cannot get out without first looking outside of the box. However, I know for you this may take a great deal of courage since you have been taught that looking outside of the box may put your immortal soul at risk. I would say your biggest resource in overcoming this fear is to speak with, watch a video, or read the story of someone who has escaped the box and found a healthy spirituality. Those who have escaped but have disowned their spirituality and are stuck in bitterness and resentment are not your best ally. 

Exploiting a Sense of Unworthiness

The fourth sign of hidden religious abuse is one of the abusers favorite weapons: the use of GUILT AND SHAME. One of the primary vulnerabilities to religious abuse is a deep seated sense of unworthiness of love and acceptance. Abusive religious leaders pray on this wound and promise that if you only adhere to certain behaviors and beliefs you can become worthy and accepted by God, themselves, and the community. Any deviation from these views or resistance to the leaders demands will result in explicit or implicit use of guilt and shame. Moreover, the individual will often develop a harsh inner-critic that will shame them for having any thoughts or feelings that are discrepant from the communities belief system. Leading to a further sense of unworthiness and fear of abandonment. 

Recognize that having questions and doubts is a healthy part of one’s spiritual journey and exhibits engagement. This is something for which you should be affirmed, not shamed. In addition, learn the distinction between guilt and shame. Healthy guilt is a resource developed over thousands of years that has adaptive value. If you begin engaging in behaviors outside of your core values, not those imposed externally, or negatively impact others whether intentional or unintentional it informs you of this through the felt sense of what we refer to as guilt. If you realign your behaviors and repair the injury with the other person, you no longer feel this feeling. It served its purpose. 

Our Innate Worth

Toxic shame makes you feel you are worthless and underserving of love. You now have to earn your way back to lovability. Since you are imperfect, this will be an endless game of running on a treadmill of attempted worthiness. There are countless stories of the originators of many of the world’s religions asserting our innate worth and value to the Divine. I often ask my clients who are parents when their child was born and they were holding them in the hospital, “What did your baby have to do to earn your love for them?” “Nothing,” they always assert. I then emphasize we are born with inherent worthiness, and then lose awareness of this due to being burdened with shame and emotional traumas. 

Despite the initiators of many of these belief systems espousing we are all worthy and acceptable as we are, these abusive leaders will attempt to find writings and then decontextualize them to justify their controlling and manipulative behaviors. See them for what they are. Always ask yourself is this leader coming from a place of love, compassion, humility, and non-judgment. In the case of toxic religion, the answer will be an unequivical no. 

Rationalized Abuse Through Religious Norms

The fifth sign of hidden religious abuse is CULTURAL and RELIGIOUS ACCEPTED NORMS. Many of these behaviors or views would never be tolerated by the individual in a secular setting. Things such as sexual activity with minors or allowing the leader to engage in inappropriate behaviors with their spouse or partner would never be tolerated outside of the religious setting. Moreover, many highly intelligent individuals willingly allow themselves to be taken advantage of financially out of a false sense of loyalty or fear of Divine punishment. These same people are too savvy to fall prey to a financial scam or sales strategy but will drain their finances in a religious setting. 

Listen to your gut; does this feel wrong or off? Ask yourself, “Would I do this outside of this setting?” Again, the majority of these world religions and spiritual belief systems all assert that God is love. Love would never guilt and shame or use fear and intimidation. These are manipulative schemes. Don’t lose your intelligence and common sense the minute you walk into the four walls of your faith community. If something is wrong, it is wrong everywhere. Many of these cherry picked interpretations were also from a different time in human history that are no longer relevant or healthy. 

In the Jewish Torah or Christian Old Testament, there were laws prohibiting women from being inside the city gates during their menstrual cycle. They could be stoned to death for doing so. Would anyone believe this is a part of our culture we should retain today? I would hope not. But at this time in history, they were attempting to get a handle on sanitation and the spread of disease. They did not have the scientific knowledge to understand how to prevent bacterial and viral infections from spreading and killing members of their community. Most religious communities would assert attempting to keep these outdated practices would be irrational and criminal in some cases. But abusive leaders will take similarly bizarre practices and teachings and use them to control and take advantage of others. I know this may be an extreme example, but I have witnessed no less absurd and abusive things within mainstream faith communities in our current culture by abusive leaders. 

Vulnerabilities to Manipulation

The sixth hidden sign is LACK of AWARENESS. You can’t see what you can’t see. If you are reading this article, that is a good step. Thankfully, with the Internet, Podcasts, Blogs, etc., it is becoming increasing challenging for these pernicious communities to perpetuate their worldview. Educate yourself! There are YouTube channels and Podcasts dedicated to issues of faith and recovering from religious abuse. Again, many of these signs are insidious and may not be recognized for years. The sooner you can develop awareness the sooner you can extricate yourself from the abuse and begin your journey towards recovery. 

The seventh hidden sign of abuse is one of the more challenging to recognize: the use of PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATION. Gaslighting is one of the more common and destructive tactics employed by religious abusers. The vulnerability to being a victim of gaslighting has its origins in childhood. If you were raised in an environment in which you were not allowed to have your own thoughts, feelings, and perspective, you were not able to develop the ability to trust your thoughts and feelings and use them as the resource they were meant to be for navigating life. Furthermore, you may not even believe you have the right to have them. 

Exploiting Unmet Emotional and Relational Needs

In other cases, you may not have experienced abuse but a lack of emotional regulation from caregivers due to deficits in their ability. This was not an incident of commission in the example of abuse but one of omission in coregulation. Either way you now don’t trust yourself. This is what the abuser will take advantage of to confuse or shame you. A healthy leader or member of your spiritual community would welcome inner exploration and guide you into how to listen to your intuitive voice and gain confidence in its guidance. 

Religiously abusive communities are rife with sexual abuse. Abusers use grooming and exploit unmet needs for acceptance and connection in children, adolescents and adults. Moreover, they will manipulatively use religious writings and shame and fear to obtain their narcissistic sexual and emotional needs and desires. If you don’t feel safe to speak with someone in your community, disclose your concerns or what has occurred to someone outside of your community, such as a friend, family member, therapist or law enforcement if necessary. You may have been threatened by repercussion of some manner if you disclose the abuse; this is why you need outside resources. Begin building a team of support. 

Abandonment and Confusion

This leads to the eighth hidden sign, which is FEAR of REPURCUSSIONS. These threats may have been expressed explicitly or implicitly, such as by verbally threatening you of ostracism or judgment from God or not being invited to events or included in other activities. I would reiterate the need to begin building supportive relationships with any likeminded individuals within your community, as well as with caring and compassionate people outside who have a clear understanding of what is happening to you. 

The ninth and last hidden sign of religious abuse is SPIRITUAL CONFUSION. The use of the abusive strategies creates a cognitive dissonance and spiritual confusion within a person that makes it more difficult to come forward or legitimatize what they are feeling. This also corresponds to what I was referring to earlier in discussing psychological manipulation. If you can’t trust what you feel, think or believe, it can complicate the ability to identify you are being abused or to come forward. 

The First Step

My first recommendation is to ‘stop the bleeding’ so to speak. Don’t approach the abusive individuals who are causing the confusion and self-doubt in the first place; it will only create more. Read books, watch videos, mediate and search within, identify and access safe people who will be non-directive and without an agenda. Lack of awareness and emotional and spiritual confusion are the primary vulnerabilities to abuse and the inability to extricate yourself. As I mentioned earlier, seek out stories and individuals who have made it out of religious abuse, recovered, and developed a healthier spirituality. This is your tribe. Find them. 

It is my hope that this article has increased your awareness of the hidden signs of religious abuse and will be a catalyst for you or your loved one to escape the abusive environment and begin a process of healing. If you would like to learn more about trauma or obtain trauma therapy or support to recover from religious abuse, please contact us at 561-316-6553