An abuse that messes with your spirit

The misuse of power, including by leaders, 
who use coercive control to harm,
including isolating, deflecting, manipulative, intimidating behaviours, 
within spiritual settings, is spiritual abuse.
It’s broader than we often think.
Much more than using Bible verses out of context.

Spiritual abuse is a far broader problem than any of us really contemplates.  It truly involves, or is the centrepiece, of every abuse done to the spirit in a human being.  This is the reason why spiritual leaders who wield their power for their own gain exercise an existential control as they tyrannise the unsuspecting souls they manipulate.

“Souls” (plural) is an operative word.  Nobody who abuses ever abuses one person; there is always a pattern of destruction, even if it feels like you’re the only one in the devastating path of that human typhoon.

“Spiritual settings” is particularly the realm of church and of piety and of anything sacred.  The worst thing of all is we feel most inherently protected in sacred spaces.  Sanctuaries are supposed to be free of risk of harm.

Yet the spiritual abuser has harm within their grasp, for the sanctuary of safety exists for them alone.  They use others for food as they devour spirits to become bigger and safer and more powerful themselves.  They don’t exist to serve but to be served, all the while projecting the image that they’re champion servants.

They come into our lives not so much to destroy us but to educate us, even if it feels they came simply to finish us off.

Their modus operandi is isolation, deflection, manipulation and intimidation, all brought about through coercive control.  They cannot help themselves.  This is why you’re experiencing it — to see it, to smell it, to feel it, to hear it.

Once you see it you cannot unsee it.
Once you smell it you cannot unsmell it.
Once you feel it you cannot unfeel it.
Once you hear it you cannot unhear it.

It will putrefy your senses until you see the purpose beyond you into the educative purpose held out to you in others’ lives.  You’re a beacon to the harms that are prevalent.  You’re God’s lighthouse, warning intrepid vessels before they crash aground on the rocky outcrops of harms that fly silently by in the name of spiritual abuse.

The main thing we need to recognise is spiritual abuse comes in many forms and is a foundation for many other more tangible abuses.

Photo by Külli Kittus on Unsplash