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Spirituality

Spiritual Abuse Harms Your Sexual and Mental Health

Unlike other forms of abuse, spiritual abuse is virtually invisible.

Key points

  • Spiritual abuse refers to someone using spiritual or religious beliefs to hurt, scare, or control others.
  • Abuse can cause trauma, which may lead to anxiety, depression, PTSD, and a variety of irrational beliefs.
  • Beware of people who claim to know the mind of God.
  • By reclaiming your autonomy, you can turn toward the truth within yourself.

Therapists, like me, want their clients to know how to recognize abuse because abuse can cause trauma, which may lead to anxiety, depression, PTSD, and a variety of irrational beliefs. Any of these disabling consequences of abuse creates needless misery and harm to ourselves and others we care about.

Spiritual Abuse Is the New Kid on the Block

The first form of abuse to show up in public consciousness was physical abuse. Years later, it was emotional abuse. And then, sexual abuse. Spiritual abuse is the new kid on the block.

Source: freepik

What Is Spiritual Abuse?

Spiritual abuse refers to someone using spiritual or religious beliefs to hurt, scare, or control others. Sources of spiritual abuse can include so-called “New Age” belief systems and all of the old-timey religions around the world.

What all kinds of spiritual abuse have in common is a profound belief in—and a vigorous defense of—the notion that the institution is more important than the people the institution is meant to serve.

The Invisible Abuser

Unlike other forms of abuse, spiritual abuse is virtually invisible. In fact, most people (perpetrators and victims) don’t realize it’s happening. This is because the abuse is often a normalized statement of the beliefs of the institution. For example, telling followers that premarital sex is a grave sin is a form of abuse (i.e., control), yet in some institutions, this is a common rule.

If this rule resulted in people having happy and healthy marriages, I could maybe see myself jumping on board, but after spending 35 years as a therapist, I can tell you, with confidence, it doesn’t. Instead, rules like this often result in the needless misery and harm to ourselves and others we care about.

Examples

To further explain the harm in spiritual abuse, here are five examples of what I’m talking about:

  1. We are sexual beings.

    We are all born into this world as sexual beings. Telling anyone otherwise, no matter your faith, is a form of control. If believers can be made to feel ashamed and guilty about their sexuality, those believers have to run for relief from their guilt back into the arms of the very people who abused them.

  2. Shame runs deep.

    Teasing or using a demeaning tone with someone who expresses a part of themselves that doesn’t align with certain religious institutions is enough to cause shame and embarrassment. Shame runs deep and holding on to it only eats away at our insides.

  3. “95% of all teenagers masturbate. The remaining 5% are liars.”

    These words were spoken by the famous evangelical leader and psychologist James Dobson in the 1970s. He explained that his father said these words to him when he was young; therefore, he was never tormented by any guilt about this universal sexual behavior. What is striking about this is that any universal behavior is, by definition, normal, but even the most liberal churches either condemn, demean, or avoid the topic altogether. Meanwhile, Dobson has stopped telling this story due to church pressure.

  4. Selective support for those outside the heteronormative.

    Homosexual partnerships and marriages are welcome in some liberal churches so long as they aren’t actually…sexual. This hiding spreads throughout the person’s life. They are not accepted for who they are and struggle to maintain an authentic self. One may have a sexual interest in the same sex, but so long as those urges are not acted upon, they are welcomed into the fold.

  5. Child sexual abuse.

    Child sexual abuse is found in various religions in staggering numbers. Those who betray the trust of their congregants are almost always male and those who are abused are more often boys rather than girls.

    Most experts emphasize that sexual orientation is less crucial than systemic factors like organizational culture, power dynamics, theological training, and institutional attitudes toward sexuality. The most destructive aspect of spiritual abuse is how it can inflict profound psychological trauma without requiring physical contact, revealing that sexual violation extends far beyond mere physical touch.

Beware of People Who Claim to Know the Mind of God

At this very moment, there are people coercing those around them into doing things they don’t want to do or manipulating others into feeling ashamed, intimidated, hateful, or scared—all while appealing to some sacred higher source of revealed truth. This “truth,” however, is based on the institution and not the individual. But it's not the institution who gets to decide how you live your life—it's you!

Trust Yourself

By reclaiming your autonomy, you can turn toward the truth within yourself. What are your own body and your own values telling you? When you understand yourself and your needs, you get clearer on each and every choice you make and you move closer and closer toward optimal sexual and mental health. In other words, you become free.

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