Some of devastating impacts of spiritual abuse

Just as the varietals of spiritual abuse are vast, so also are the impacts.  This is possibly the biggest part of what overwhelms survivors.  The deeper we go in exploring the caverns of devastation — in cooperation, paradoxically, of the process of healing — potentially the more hazardous the journey.

Just some of the impacts include:

1.         A doubting of your spiritual heritage.  A confusion occurs between the established doctrine of salvation and your own lived experience — a mismatch of the grace of God and a lack of grace in some humans; and this is particularly heinous when it’s Christian leaders

2.         A questioning of your worth.  Anyone who has suffered the denigration of one’s soul by others will question their worth, no matter how much they know their preciousness before God

3.         A deep sense of loss and regret for the traumas you’ve experienced.  Once the abuse has been done, and the trauma sticks, it’s there and it can’t be undone.  Grief for loss is a very real, tangible experience, for which there should only be a dignifying of that journey.  For such an impact there is the wise choice of a journey of healing

4.         An inability to control the triggers.  Directly outbound of trauma are triggers that involve certain autonomic-like responses.  Only those who have been traumatised, those who love the traumatised, and professionals in the area really have any grip on the undeniable reality of triggering for trauma.  It is traumatising when people say, “Snap out of it!”

5.         A confused sense of betrayal for what has been taken from you.  Spiritual abuse that remits trauma leaves us swinging between anger and guilt and self-condemnation.  We feel angry for being betrayed.  We feel guilty for feeling that.  And then we condemn ourselves.  And then we feel angry that these things have happened to us, and that we can’t seem to get over it

6.         Feelings of anger toward those who have gotten away with it scot-free.  There’s an ugliness about the injustice that keeps unfolding in a thousand different ways, which always seem to surprise us.  The only thing worse than the anger is the bargaining we do with ourselves in expecting justice to come.  Justice never comes the way we want it or on our timeframe

7.         An inability to escape from ‘words of condemnation’ spoken over you.  This one runs deep, and it’s like the enemy of God is empowered when so-called leaders spoke something of a curse over us.  These words of condemnation become like creepers through our lives, weaving their evil way into our disempowerment

8.         A truly deeper compassion for those who have suffered.  This is indeed one compensation for the suffering we’ve endured.  The eyes of our hearts are opened to any who are oppressed.  We are captivated by others’ stories and we’re encouraged to hear of others who have survived

9.         A loss of faith.  How many people who have suffered spiritual abuse have turned their backs on God?  I’m sure this is one reason Jesus mentioned millstones around a person’s neck as they’re thrown into the sea — it’s not just about children, though we’re all children.  This is the most devastating impact of spiritual abuse for those who have departed from God — and this breaks God’s heart to the maximum

10.      An enduring grieving bitterness.  Rebecca Davis writes about this form of biblical bitterness.  Those who grieve, though they may be bitter, are not sinfully bitter.  There is a big difference, and the only right response to grieving is support; words of correction are a further abuse

11.      An ongoing vulnerability to cliché and incorrect (harmful) Bible teaching.  This is indeed, in so many cases, a trigger.  In other cases, it is also a particularly a special form of discernment — a shrewdness of a serpent; once we see what snakes are capable of, we get to sense their very presence

These are just some of the devastating impacts of spiritual abuse on survivors.

Heavenly Father, may You provide survivors with a sense of Your peace amid their affliction, give them safety per their need, protect them from further abuse, and use their discernment for Your glory.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN.

Photo by Rafael Ishkhanyan on Unsplash