Religious Trauma + Emotional Manipulation
It’s sometimes hard to imagine how the church and religious communities that teach love and compassion can become abusive and harmful. But any institution, when power structures go unchecked and the “message” becomes more important than the people, is vulnerable to becoming harmful, rather than helpful. This typically happens slowly over time and can be hard to see when you are inside the community.
One of the most notable ways that we might be able to understand whether a church or religious organization is becoming harmful or cult-like is when there’s emotional manipulation. I’m going to walk you through some of the important ways you can detect and challenge moments of emotional manipulation in order to help you and your loved ones feel safe in the institutions that claim to be purposed with safety, compassion, and love.
Emotional manipulation can happen for any number of reasons: a problematic leader, a toxic positivity culture, an identity in more power, money or members, etc. Regardless of how these things happen, here’s the 𝘩𝘰𝘸 of emotional manipulation in religious communities.
Church and religious organizations become emotionally manipulative when:
Leadership and community members begin ignoring the personal experiences of the congregation to upkeep the church image. This can mean that when a painful experience is shared by one of the members, these experiences are ignored, explained away or the person is shamed for experiencing a negative emotion. Scripture, leadership, and “disappointment” from staff can all be used to shame a person.
Scripture and religious tests are used to skirt accountability. This usually means scripture is interpreted through a lens that is convenient to the manipulator and not the members. It can also give a leader too much power to be the “only interpreter” of the scripture, making the church community dependent upon their interpretations and shameful when their lived experience departs from how the leader is interpreting the scripture.
Repression of womxn, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC. When whole communities or “others” cannot contribute to the bigger conversation about ethics, leadership or theology, there’s a big problem going on. This can lead to many issues but mostly it leads to upholding old power structures that have been painful, repressive, and downright traumatizing for entire groups of people.
Next up, I’ll be writing about ways to challenge emotional manipulation within the dogmatic or rigid power structures of the church or religious communities. If you are interested in more support with recovering from religious trauma, we have trauma-informed therapists on staff who specialize in these experiences. You can book a free 30-minute consultation now and begin your journey toward healing.** (California residents only) We provide virtual online therapy and have therapists who are trained in EMDR therapy. We also offer many different types of trauma therapy groups and all of our therapists specialize in trauma-informed care, and informed trauma therapy.
Want to read more about religious trauma? You’ve come to the right place! Here are all of our blogs talking about religious trauma:
Four Things That May Surprise You About Religious Trauma
Religious Trauma + Emotional Manipulation
Religious Trauma + Sexual Repression
Religious Trauma and Delayed Sexual Development
All therapists at Woven Together Trauma Therapy are trauma-informed and specialize in treating all forms of trauma. We also offer EMDR, Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, and Brainspotting which has shown to be extremely effective in treating and healing trauma. Want to read more about our unique therapy options?
These blogs talk more about the basics of EMDR:
You can read more about Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy here:
If you would like to learn more about Brainspotting, check out our blog: What is Brainspotting?
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