When Your Husband Uses Spiritual Abuse – Coach Sharon’s Story

Betrayal Trauma Recovery - BTR.ORG

BTR.ORG Coach Sharon shares how spiritual abuse effected her. Although spiritual abuse can be subtle, Coach Sharon experienced intense spiritual abuse.

If you’re experiencing spiritual abuse, we’re here for you, check out our BTR.ORG Group Session Schedule.

Similarly, The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop helps women seeking to reclaim anything about themselves from their faith to their goals, gain autonomy after spiritual abuse.

Effects Of Spiritual Abuse

Anne: I’ve invited Coach Sharon, part of our BTR coaching team to come on today’s episode. Sharon and I have been sharing our innermost feelings about the work that we do. How it really feels so urgent to share the truth with women about spiritual abuse and what they may be facing. Welcome, Sharon.

Both of us have gone through quite a lot lately, and sometimes when we’re faced with this level of evil, really. I mean oppression and people really trying to harm other people, it gets a little overwhelming at times. As we share today, I want all of you to know that everyone is always welcome here.

We are interfaith no matter what religion you’re a part of, and no matter if you don’t have a religion, you are welcome here. Sharon and I are going to be sharing from our faith perspective today. This is our own personal experience, not necessarily to proselytize to you.

We hope that you find it helpful and just wanted to let you know that. Again, everybody’s welcome. One of the things Sharon and I talk about is that bringing the light in the light of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Well, Sharon and I are Christians, helps us do this work and sort of push out the darkness when we’re feeling overwhelmed. Sharon, in your experience being a BTR coach, she facilitates BTR Group Sessions as well as BTR Individual Sessions.

Emphasis On Interfaith Inclusivity When Talking About Spiritual Abuse

As you have the opportunity every day to help women. They’re in the darkness, they don’t really know what’s going on. Can you talk about that and how that feels?

Coach Sharon: Yeah, coming into light is important. I mean, when you’re living in darkness and you don’t know the truth, it’s a difficult place to be. When you don’t know what the truth is, when you don’t know what the diagnosis is, when you don’t know what the problem is.

Then you don’t know how to keep yourself safe. You need to know what the truth is in order to come to a place of safety. Women come into BTR not knowing what truth is, feeling like their truth, even though there’s something on the inside, I think you call it the internal warning system, that internal navigator, it will direct you.

It will show you that there’s something going on. But knowing to trust that internal truth is difficult, especially when you don’t have words for it, when you don’t know how to define it, when there’s been no basis forever making you aware that there could even be evil.

You feel crazy, you feel like this is just me. I must be alone. There must be something wrong with me. A lot of women come into BTR feeling that way, like I’m just in the dark and there’s no light. It’s hard to navigate in darkness. It’s hard to perform any task.

The Impact Of Light & Truth In Healing From Spiritual Abuse

Well, if you’re doing it in darkness. BTR turns a light on and exposes abuse. It exposes emotional harm and psychological harm and spiritual harm and so forth, and helps women to get to a place where they can actually get safe. The Living Free Workshop, you referenced that darkness in terms of living in that dark space, the workshop calls it the shadow and living in that shadow or living in that dark place or that cave.

It’s a hopeless existence. So coming into light, coming into truth helps you to bring your life into a better place.

I was thinking about that scripture that says men prefer darkness rather than light because their ways are evil. Now, I mean, I don’t think the Bible was specifically just referring to men, but at the same token, the principle is true. Darkness is the preferred way because evil can live in darkness, right?

There’s no evil in light where there’s light, there’s truth, and truth comes in a variety of different forms. But if we don’t expose ourselves to truth, then we stay in darkness.

For example, I think in scripture, but I was thinking about the text that says, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. But if you don’t access truth, financial truth or physical truth in terms of nutritional truth or there’s lots of different truth that we need to expose ourselves to, but my people perish for a lack of knowledge.

Truth Overcomes The Effects Of Spiritual Abuse

If you don’t have the knowledge, then you don’t have the truth. If you don’t have the truth, then you don’t have safety. So coming into truth is really important.

Anne: For women of faith. Truth is important in general, just like in their bones. My guess is truth is important to agnostics and atheists as well. Logic or just reality. I think for all of us, truth is important for women of faith. When we think about truth coming from God maybe or truth coming from scripture or something.

Can you talk about how so many abusers twist that so that it keeps the victims in the dark? They weaponize victims true desire to know truth or to know God in order to exploit them or harm them. It gets really confusing, I think for women to think like, well, I went to scripture or I went to my faith leader to get help.

It didn’t really help me and I was truly seeking help. It’s not because the word in and of itself is inaccurate or the word in and of itself is harmful, but it’s because so many of the evil interpretations of it or the evil applications of it have harmed victims. Can you talk about that for a bit?

Coach Sharon: Yeah. I love that you say that. That was my experience when you consider scripture was firmly rooted in my heart as a child. I grew up knowing that scripture was good. It was how we were taught to live our life.

The Power & Misinterpretation Of Scripture

Scripture being firmly rooted in my heart root, my thoughts governed my actions. It’s how I lived my life, but it cultivated not abuse, but a soil for faith like that foundation created in my life, a rich soil that was faith.

I had something planted in that good soil with something that was evil, it grew mindsets and strongholds and things in my life that God never intended to be there.

It’s not that the word was bad, the word was always good, the teaching was always good, but the seed was a negative seed. It produced negativity in my life opposed to what God intended to be able to grow in that part of my life.

I heard this quote I want to read. Can I read this really quickly? Yeah. It says the word is God and God is his word. The word of God, scripture is God. It’s who He’s, and God is his word. It’s his character. We come to know God by what is read in the Word, and if the word is poorly translated, then God is poorly known.

So it’s just we come to know who God is by his word. I mean, think about everything the Bible says in terms of God’s word.

Weaponizing Faith Against Victims

He said his word over everything. Proverbs says that a good name is of great riches and he has exalted his word over everything. So the word is who God is, right? So if you have a word that is poorly translated, then God can’t be correctly known.

I lost God when I said I do. I didn’t have a God because the God that was being portrayed to me was one where there was classes and I was in the second class seat.

In this new position that I was in, I didn’t have a voice in this space. I was expendable in this space. My thoughts, my feelings, my value were all secondary in this space. It made me feel as if I had no God, which was very damaging in terms of my life because it was the foundation in my faith. Those words can be really detrimental in terms of how women process.

Anne: Can you share what you thought back then? Because guessing back then you didn’t think, God doesn’t love me, I’m a second class citizen. I’m guessing that that type of articulated thought wasn’t there. Were there ways that you kind of did some mental gymnastics to kind of be in that space?

Coach Sharon: Yeah, so my thought process was this was part of the cross. This was suffering. It was the way of suffering. We’ve been called to suffer and sometimes suffering and marriage is what God calls us to, that we’re called to a life of suffering.

Mental Gymnastics In Spiritual Abuse

The suffering wasn’t extensive. It wasn’t like anyone was abusing me, especially since I had no definition of what abuse was. So this was just godly sorrow. This was my cross. That’s that song. Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free?

No, there’s a cross for everyone and there’s a cross. For me, that was my cross. I would submit to things that I knew were harmful and that were wrong, but I would justify them. This is what God wants for me, and I can show him my love through my obedience, through me not complaining, by me, forgiving by me overlooking.

In that I’m showing God my love. Because there are so many scriptures that speak to the truth of being obedient, which I think is a godly principle, is being obedient. Because everything is not rightly divided, when we are talking about scripture, we’ll take one scripture and that’s it.

Wives are to obey their husband in all things, and that covers everything. There’s never any more dialogue or anything that goes into unpacking that. Then those things can be used as a weapon against women to silence them or to make them believe that this is correct.

Anne: At the time when you silenced your own internal warning system, God’s telling you something’s not quite right here. You’re feeling it. Well, I want to say he’s kind of reframing it for you, right? Do you feel like the abuser reframed it in terms of this is your suffering, or because you had no other context for it and it wasn’t your fault, right?

The Challenge Of Recognizing Spiritual Abuse

Because you hadn’t been educated about abuse, the light had not been shined on it. Do you think you were the one that reframed it? Sorry, I don’t mean to blame the victim in that sense. None of it was your fault, but I’m just trying to figure out how we can help other women who might be grappling with this.

Women who are reframing it in a way because they have no light, they have no ability to reframe it any other way because there isn’t any other context for it. Do you know what I mean?

Coach Sharon: Absolutely. I think it was a combination of things. I mean, it was me preferring to stay in what was comfortable. It was easier. It was familiar. I wanted it with all of my being. It was easier for me to redefine it, reframe it, call it something different.

Then I didn’t have to move. It allowed me to stay where I was comfortable, even when I knew that there were things that there’s no way when I would think about concepts of grace. Isn’t God a God of grace, of compassion, of love? How are you reasoning this out? It was just like, ah, you can find a way.

You can find way to make anything fit if you really wanted to. I think a lot of it was me refining it and not wanting to really see it for what it was. Of course, I think that my husband at the time wanted me to believe that as well.

I think that it served a purpose for him, for me to believe that I was rebellious.

Internal Conflicts & Rationalization

That this was really me, that it was all me. He played a part in that, but I also just believe that evil is always there. Let’s take away the chuck. Let’s take away Sharon.

I think that there’s always that internal evil trying to speak voices that influence us to go in the wrong direction. I don’t think that that is always, it can come through the voice of a person, but I think that evil is always right there. You’re not good enough. You’re not this, you can’t do it. God doesn’t love you.

Those evil voices are always there. So I think it was a combination of things all working together as a perfect storm to keep me stuck.

Anne: It’s interesting when you said I was comfortable, I was stuck. Guess what else it came from? You are really, really good character and your pure nature, because the thing you really wanted wasn’t to be comfortable in abuse, but the thing you really wanted was a peaceful family.

It was coming from this place of goodness, and I think all victims who are trying to figure this out. It’s not like we hear every day victims being like, oh, my family and marriage doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care. I’m just comfortable here. I like my pillow and I really like my couch, so I’m not doing anything.

No, no, no, no, no. That’s not where they’re coming from. They’re like, this is hard and I’m suffering, but my family is important to me. The unity that I feel, the kind of life that I want is a life of wholeness and goodness, and I want to get there with my family.

Desire For Family Unity & Spiritual Abuse

Sorry, I’m not trying to invalidate what you said, but I know you really well. I’m just thinking of comfort. I don’t know if that is the right way to describe it.

Coach Sharon: I wanted my marriage. It’s just like I had a vision for what my life was supposed to look like in terms of my family and so forth. When I say comfort, I’m not talking about the luxuries of life. I’m talking about the purpose of life. I’m talking about what I gave myself to and believed in.

I wanted, wanted to hold on to what I felt like my destiny was, and my destiny was connected to a unit. It was connected to a person. When I say the person, I’m talking about my family.

Anne: Do you mean like the church because he was a pastor.

Coach Sharon: Just metaphorically my family, but yes, the church as well. I felt committed to what will this look like to others? How will this harm others? What will this mean if I walk away from this in terms of the people that will be hurt to see that this has happened when we’re supposed to be something that represents what a good marriage is supposed to look like?

What will that mean to them? So all of that played a part with me staying and feeling like, no, I need to try to do this. It was an uphill battle, and I begged God to change circumstances that just never changed.

Shattered Dreams & Seeking Spiritual Safety

I knew at some point, there’s no way this will ever get better, because there was no enlightenment.

I am in no way stating that I didn’t have a role in the harm that was played in it. I did, but it wasn’t a systematic denial of personhood. It wasn’t like I wasn’t allowing a person to be a person, that there was a continual determination to not allow a person to be heard.

Or to have an opinion in so many different areas where they stopped having the ability to weigh in or be a part of their own life. To not have the ability to weigh in on your own life is to rob you of your identity. Faith doesn’t even do that. God gives you the ability to choose even when the choice is a bad choice.

I set before you life and death. No, don’t set anything before me. Just give me the good thing. You can choose me or you can choose not to choose me. No, just make me choose you. He gives us the gift of choice.

When that’s taken from us in a relationship where you can’t choose what you want to do or to have a voice in your parenting or to make a choice about what you like or dislike, what’s important to you, your values, that’s taken away your personhood, and that’s not a holy thing.

How Spiritual Abuse Effects Choice

Anne: In my experience, that never occurred where I felt like my personhood was taken from me or that I didn’t have a say. I always felt like I for sure had a say. What I felt like was that I couldn’t do anything. It doesn’t matter. I can’t make progress in my own life.

The things I wanted to do, I could not accomplish. I was saying them out loud. I was attempting to do it, but it was like I had an anchor that was dragging me. But then the other issue is after I separated and after I got to safety, I started seeing all of the ways that my person had actually been taken from me.

Even though I didn’t realize it at the time I was in the dark. There were so many things that I had the incorrect information or knew what was going on, I would’ve made a different decision.

Because I had been kept from that information on purpose, he had purposefully withheld it from me. That in and of itself, even if women feel like, oh yeah, I get to have a say. Yeah, I share my opinion even if they feel like that, if they don’t know what’s really going on.

They’re saying that based on a foundation of just nothingness because they think that they have a say because they’re talking, because they’re making decisions based on what they know. But because there’s this huge lie that they don’t know about that really takes away their agency, it takes away their ability to self govern.

Manipulation & Withheld Information Are Part of Spiritual Abuse

It takes away that bodily autonomy that you’re talking about, and that makes me really sad. There’s victims in both situations. Ones who feel like I have no say, I have no voice, and then others who feel like they do, but they don’t realize that their foundation that their voice is coming from is based on a lie.

Because they might tell somebody, oh, yeah, I use my voice and I tell my husband all the time, Hey, I don’t want you to do that. He’s like, okay, no problem. But you didn’t know that he’s sleeping with prostitutes or you didn’t know that he’s been lying to you about the bank account.

Coach Sharon: Going back to The Living Free Workshop, I think you call it the cupcake, right? So it’s that belief that you actually have something that you’re happy to have it, that you’re rubbing on your face, but it’s not reality. It’s really not reality.

You think that it is and you’re so happy to have it, but it’s not what you think it is. It’s actually the shadow. Going back to that principle again, it’s really important for it to be authentic for that space to be authentic. The experience is different from relationship to relationship, and that’s what I like about BTR.

Though we are all at different places in terms of how we came to be where we are, the experiences may be different in terms of the day-to-day. The abuse, the control, all of those emotional, psychological behaviors that keep us stuck, that’s where the similarities lie.

Understanding Coercive Control In Spiritual Abuse

I mean, for some women, it is that coercive control, whereas for me, it was very over. It was, no, you can’t have this.

At the end of the day, the harm is still the harm. Whatever they experience, the harm is still the same.

Anne: Absolutely. I think the intent is still the same, even if it looks a little bit different from one victim’s experience to another’s, the intent of the abuser is the same. It is to control the narrative. To exploit and to manipulate the situation to get what they want without you figuring out.

Wait a minute, this isn’t good for me. I think they know. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but they always try to spin it. This will be good for us. It’s not that way. It is not good for you. I think they probably know it’s not good for you, and that’s why they need to manipulate you to do it.

Because if it was good for you, they’d be like, Hey, let’s both eat a salad for lunch. Great. I’ll make the salad for you. Cool. Instead, if he’s like, I don’t want to make the salad and I know it would be good for me. I know that she’s allergic to lettuce, but I’m still going to make her make the salad and eat it because it’s good for me, even if it’s bad for her.

Coach Sharon: I remember this from Patricia Evans when she talks about how a person will root themselves in another person. They’ll kind of their reality in somebody else, and their truth becomes your truth because you cease to be a person. You become an extension of them.

The Universal Patterns In Spiritual Abuse

They really know when they say, this is good for us, I’ve actually heard that said, I know what’s good for us. There is this belief that we’re now one, so my thoughts, my feelings, what I’m experiencing is your experience.

I kind of sit there like, huh, how is that possible? Really confused as to how that could be believed, but there really seemed to be a belief that you’re an extension of them. Over a period of time, you can lose the ability to be able to give voice right in your life because you’re an extension of that person. It’s amazing how that can just manifest itself in so many different weird ways

Anne: For women who don’t want to lose their faith. In the face of spiritual abuse like this, there are many women who are spiritually abused through scripture or through church. They try to get help from their pastor or their clergy, and it’s just so traumatizing that they lose their faith.

They feel good about it. Some of them feel more free than they’ve ever felt, and they feel like this feels good to me. For those people, that’s great. However, you feel better and wherever you are going, we support you here.

Spiritual Abuse: Betrayal & Loss Of Faith

This isn’t about that, but I do want to talk about women who don’t want to lose their faith, but they’re hanging on by a thread because of all the spiritual abuse. It angers me that something that could be very comforting to them.

Because I’m Christian, I believe Christ can heal them, right? Christ can come and save you and help you heal from spiritual abuse. So for the women who want to go there, but they just feel so traumatized.

Retaining Faith Despite Spiritual Abuse

Everyone is welcome here. So if you’re agnostic or atheist or you’re a different faith, then Sharon and I, you are welcome. We’re just sharing from our own experience, hopefully something that we share will be helpful to you.

Women who don’t want to lose their faith, but they’re hanging on by a thread because of all the spiritual abuse. It angers me that something that could be very comforting to them and also because I’m Christian, I believe Christ can heal them.

Christ can come and save you and help you. So for the women who want to go there, but they just feel so traumatized, what are your thoughts for them?

Fresh Perspectives After Spiritual Abuse

Sharon: Stay curious. It’s just like going back to the scriptures again. Read the scriptures through fresh eyes. Throw out everything you thought you knew and rebuild yourself with the power inside you. That may mean that everything is ripped away so that it can be rebuilt better.

I remember God speaking to my heart, not audibly, but saying, I’m going to take everything away from you so that you can see that you had nothing, so that I can give you everything. Everything had to be stripped away. Everything that I thought I knew about God, about salvation, about my faith.

I learned so much in the hardest season of my life, discovering who God is personally—not who someone told me he was, or what I thought he was, or what I sang about, or what I learned.

No, this was what I experienced. I got to learn that brand spanking, and new. I had to be curious and I had to determine I’m not going to let go. I’m not going to give up. I’m going to hold on and allow God to find me. I couldn’t find him. I was just like, I’m lost.

I’m right here. I don’t know where you are or how to get to you.

Personal Growth Through Spiritual Challenges

This is bad, but I just reached my arms up like, dad, find me. Find me. Hey, find me. He found me. We give so much to being strong. There’s so much power in being weak and I learned how to be weak and say, Hey, I need you to look for me. In that weakness, I found strength. I really found him. Be curious also, community. Have a good community.

If the community you have is not a community that is validating the truth, keep looking for a community. There’s a community out there. The community finds truth, and while some institutions have failed, many good ones exist.

I still believe in the church. I still believe in good women and men of God who carry light, love, validate, and support women. Many of them have supported me. I just had to get over the spiritual abuse.

Don’t give that up in terms of your pursuit of your faith with all that has been lost. Don’t give that up too. I mean with all that has been taken, hold on to what’s meaningful to you. You have to hold on, and my faith wasn’t up for grabs me and God was going to go through the trenches, but that was not an option for me to let go.

I knew at the point that I let go. My life was over. BTR was a resource that God used to save me. In my mind, it was God’s way of bringing truth to my life, but God brought that truth to my life. If I were X him out, then that resource would not have been made available.

The Importance Of Supportive Community

He gave it to me. But you can be curious. There’s so much more love that God has for us than what is sometimes displayed in religion. He’s so loving and so compassionate in terms of his willingness to find us right where we are. All this work of trying to get to him and get perfect and get this and be enough. I can’t live without you is enough

Anne: For me, it was the same way. There was no option for me to decide that faith wasn’t for me. That was not an option for me. I remember it was probably about a nine month period where I could not feel comforted, I would pray, but I couldn’t hear him.

I would pray, but I couldn’t feel him. It felt so terrible and I just kept trying. I kept reading my scriptures and then sometimes I’d talk to clergy. They’d make me feel worse, so I’m not doing that. I believe in God. I don’t believe in you. This dude that was telling me this wackadoodle stuff that I was like, no, but that period for me was really, really hard and I wouldn’t say it ended with a vision or something.

It wasn’t like at the end of this nine months, suddenly it parted. God came down and was like, oh, I love you.

When You Can’t Feel God’s Presence

I’ve been here the whole time. No, that didn’t happen either. But there was at some point, and I don’t really know when that was when I started feeling comforted again, when I started being able to feel his spirit with me. It was such a dark time and remembering that gives me, it’s just so creepy.

One of the things that I thought of as I was looking back on that time was that my feeling was that God was there. He was trying to get to me, but my abuser kept swatting him away. My abuser kept oppressing me. He kept saying things that weren’t true and frankly, I’ve felt like that recently as well. I’ve started feeling God’s comfort. Spiritual abuse is real.

Everything is going to be all right and then there’s some action on someone else’s part through no fault of my own. Then someone else’s action is like swatting the blessings away a little bit or swatting that comfort away and hit after hit after hit. At least with the abuser, he just kept knocking me down.

I started to kind of reframe it in that God is here and he is with me and he’s protecting me, but of course I’m going to feel terrible and it’s hard to feel comforted when you’re being metaphorically knocked down all the time.

Dealing With Spiritual Abuse & Its Implications On Faith

Sharon: Really, it’s a war, this warfare to reclaim your identity. It’s a struggle and a war that I think that only sheroes in our community really know the hell that you have to fight to bring yourself back from. All the different layers pain that you’re now in the process of trying to figure out. How do I even get myself to a place of healing? It’s turmoil on a lot of different levels, but recapturing that essence.

It is not a journey that you undertake by yourself. There’s help for us. I don’t understand what broke or when the reality of God’s love for me came back or when I was able to pray. The spiritual abuse was so intense. That was horrific. Every prayer would take 25 minutes to get out. I kept restarting it, but for whatever evil kept trying to block me.

The Battle To Reclaim Identity After Spiritual Abuse

I’m glad you kept going. I’m glad that you stayed in that fight and even now that staying in the fight. I know it’s not easy being on the front lines of this battle and you’re on the front lines doing this every day and no one knows what it takes to be on the front line.

It’s easy to click on a podcast or to listen to a workshop and appreciate it and go away. There was no sacrifice, but someone has to pay a sacrifice, a price for everything that someone else enjoys. A lot of us understand that you’ve paid a great price to be able to bring this content and I really thank you.

Anne: Thank you. It’s really interesting with The Living Free Workshop and The Message Workshop, I look at it now, it’s incredible. I almost feel like it just appeared out of thin air. I forget how hard I worked for years to get it to the point where it is. All the study I did, there was a time when the strategies in Living Free and The Message Workshop were in beta.

I had used them to deliver myself and my own children, but I wasn’t sure that I could duplicate it. I didn’t know, and so I worked with other victims to see, does this actually work? Can we apply it? And as I worked with other victims applying these strategies, they were like, holy cow, this works.

Strategies To Overcome Spiritual Abuse

Helping them get to safety was also another process. It took a while. I’ve seen stuff floating around on social media and it doesn’t make me smile, but I just think, wow, do they not understand it at all?

Because it’ll say, six steps to a better marriage, take this six part workshop and you’ll be great. In Living Free and the Message Workshop, I’m like, this will be very hard. It’s not good marketing because I’m never like, oh, this is the solution to all your problems.

Just do this and you’ll be happy and everything will be good. I’m like, no, no, no. These strategies work, but employing them and experimenting with them. When I mean experimenting, I don’t mean that they’re experimental because I already did all those experiments to duplicate it. The principles absolutely do work, but when women find it and it’s new to them, then these principles are new to them.

The experiment isn’t the principles themselves. The experiment is how do I apply these in a way that works for me in a way that takes me to safety, and that’s a process.

It’s just not like any other type of marketing where it’s like, this will solve all your problems. These principles are good, true principles. They will help you. We will also help you on that path, but this journey is difficult and we will walk with you through it.

Anne’s Goal To Reach Other Women

I think also comparing it to therapy, which is really interesting, or at least couple therapy or a pornography addiction recovery program.

Well, the problem there is the therapist doesn’t know that the abuser’s manipulating the therapist. No matter how much work you put in, it’s not a correct principle to be basing all of the work on.

You said the work has to be based on truth. So when it comes to pornography, addiction, recovery or couple therapy, if there is not a foundation of truth there, it’s not going to work. In The Living Free Workshop the principles are going to work no matter what.

If you take living free, you may end up going down the path where you separate, you may stay married. Regardless, you will be able to see more clearly what’s happening. You will be able to make decisions based on reality rather than this manipulated, contrived, false narrative that they’re trying to tell you in order to exploit you.

Sharon: Yes, because The Living Free and The Message Workshop identify the diagnosis, the problem, right? Therefore you get the right results. If you don’t start at the right place, then you get to the wrong destination. I think that what makes it powerful in terms of the resources that you’ve made available is you understand what the issue is.

Focusing On Real Issues

The issue is spiritual abuse. If you start at the right place, not an issue of forgiveness, not addiction. If you start at the wrong place, you wind up at the wrong destination. Because you are able to rightly determine this is what the real issue is.

This is the stuff of real life that you’ve actually lived and now take in your work and put it in these different tools and forms to now help other women get to where they need to be.

The expansion of it I think is wonderful. I started with the podcast. Those podcasts saved my life. I didn’t have at the time The Living Free Workshop or The Meditation Workshop.

Then the podcast was my lifeline to greater understanding, and then as you built upon those things. I now had more tools and greater tools to equip myself and they worked. I can see it in how I remember communicating.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast Helped Heal Me From Spiritual Abuse

Anne: Getting to safety when an abuser does not want you to is never going to be easy ever. I’ve worked with victims now for over 10 years, and all of the coaches who coach at BTR have been through it themselves and they’ve worked with hundreds of victims, so now we can see the patterns.

Even though the road is going to be difficult, the BTR podcast and The Living Free Workshop and The Message Workshop and the meditations that we have here, they help make it safer.

The sad thing is, and therapists won’t tell you this, and I don’t think that you’ll get this anywhere else. The sad thing is even though it makes it easier, it’s still going to be hard. Thank goodness it makes it easier because it’s so hard. It’s painful. It’s difficult on so many levels, legal levels, emotional levels, physical levels.

Am I going to be able to eat? Am I going to have a roof over my head? There’s just so many layers of danger. I think people just don’t want people to know either that or alternatively they want to say something like, well, it’s just too emotionally dangerous or It’s going to be too hard, so don’t get to safety.

Just give up. For women who are like, wow, Ann, this isn’t very motivating. You’re telling me it’s going to be so hard. We want to say to them it’s worth it, but what would you say to them. Sharon women who were thinking, oh, wait. It’s going to be really hard. Then maybe I don’t want to do this.

Difficulty In Achieving Emotional Safety After Leaving Abuse

Sharon: Yeah. I would say life is hard. The life that I lived was a hard life. It was hard. I mean, life doesn’t get easier. We get stronger and circumstances of abuse, when there’s abuse, when there’s harm, it doesn’t go away.

You delay it, and I wasted a lot of time trying to delay what ultimately the direction I had to go in anyway. I lost so much waiting for something to happen that was never going to happen. For something to come, that never came from waiting for a deliverance that was quite frankly just not going to happen.

I was going to say, hold on. It did happen. You were delivered. This is the truth. Your wife is for you. She’s trying to assist you. She sees something you don’t see.

There are blind spots that you need to pay attention to. I thought that there was going to be some kind of divine intervention that was going to make all that clear so that the road ahead there could be unity. So I waited for that, not realizing that there’s choice, that it comes down to what you choose to believe in, what you choose to deal with, and I waited and I wasted.

The Personal Cost Of Waiting for Someone To Save You

I wouldn’t necessarily say wasted because there were lessons that I learned and things that came out of that in terms of experiences with my kids and so forth. The trauma that was suffered as a result of me waiting is something that scarred me deeply. I can’t get those years back.

I can’t get that time back in terms of my life, and it would’ve been better for me to just embrace the hard. Life comes with hardship, but we can do hard things. I say that in group, you can do hard things. Life requires for us to do things that are hard, but we can still move forward.

Anne: It reminds me of the Israelites, right? They prayed for deliverance and Moses came and Pharaoh was like, yeah, you can go in our time. We can go at any time the laws of our country, the laws of our society, everyone is like, yeah, you can go.

I guess is what I’m saying. We don’t have to wait for Pharaoh to give us permission, but at that point, the Israelites had to pick up their stuff. They had to get their bags and all their animals or whatever they needed, and they had to stand up and walk out of there, and same thing when it came to the Red Sea.

Deliverance From Spiritual Abuse

They get backed up against the Red Sea, Moses parts, the Red Sea, and then what do they have to do? They have to walk through it. There was no point in this deliverance, and I love the story of Moses. I went to Jerusalem and studied deliverance. I saw with my own eyes the landscape and stood on Mount Nebo and looked down at the promised Land and it helped me build living free.

That’s where I got the strategies I used to deliver myself and my own children from abuse. It really just struck me that there is no point in that story of deliverance, not one where God picks them up off the ground and physically moves them.

Every single time they have to leave Pharaoh’s land and they have to cross the Red Sea, and then they have to wander around in the wilderness. Then they wait at Mount Nebo and then they have to actually go down into the promised land.

They have to walk down there. There’s no part in that story where they don’t have to work, where they don’t have to move, and I know a lot of women are praying for a lot of different things. One of the most common ones, and I’m going to say it out loud here and it’s okay, everyone can take a gasp that I said out loud.

Accepting The Hardship Of New Beginnings

I know so many of us think can he just get hit by a bus? Let’s get divine intervention to stop him? It is very rare that they get hit by buses. If ever in the story of deliverance with the Israelites, when they’re at the Red Sea. They start going through and that pillar is stopping Pharaoh’s army from going through. Then at a certain point the water does fall on them and kill them, so I guess in that story, they are killed by the Red Sea.

However, those Israelites are still wandering around in the wilderness. They have nothing to eat. They have to rely on manna, so it’s not like that solved all of their problems. There was not just one thing that happened that solved all the problems.

Sharon: Yes, it’s very similar to the Israelites coming out of Egypt in terms of the deliverance story, especially when you think about how they wanted to go back.

It’s just like sometimes coming out of the cave is painful. The way of life that you had is just like this was better than that because it’s a new life and going into something new. There’s going to be growing pains with anything new, with anything new.

Trusting God In The Journey To Heal From Spiritual Abuse

It’s hard in the beginning, but then you adjust to the hard. Just like everything when you’re first learning how to navigate it is difficult, and we shy away from hard, and the Israelites did too. They thought it was going to be easy and it’s nasty food and this is not familiar to us. We didn’t like this. We want to go back to Egypt.

Yet this was a better life for them, but they were not able to see it. Then because they weren’t able to see it and move forward. They stayed stagnant for a long time wandering in a place that God never wanted them because they refused to live in reality, this is where you are.

This is the circumstance right now. Trust me, trust me and move forward, and that can be a difficult place to be. I see that in group a lot. When women get this truth, they listen to podcasts, they come to group and it’s like, now what am I supposed to do? I don’t have the money, I don’t have a house.

I don’t know how to do this, I don’t have any answers, and I was there, but moving forward is sometimes moving forward with no answers. It’s trusting and believing the same God that gave you revelation, that D-Day that sometimes we don’t know or don’t need. You trust that the same God who brought you here will lead you to your promised land, and that act of faith, as you said, is hard.

What Do To If You Want To Heal From Spiritual Abuse

It sounds good on paper, I trust you, sounds good, but living this out, this is a whole nother type of situation. It’s not an easy thing

Anne: At BTR because we live in reality, we will be with you. We will hold your hand the entire time. We have resources that will bring you light and truth and correct principles and strategies. Based on those principles that will help you get to safety as quickly as humanly possible and make it easier than it would be without them, but it’s still going to be a hard road.

We can hold all of those truths at the same time because we know there aren’t any quick fixes. It worries me when people think, just get divorced and then your abuse problems go away.

They don’t realize that this is a life long-term problem that will continue post-divorce. Not to say you shouldn’t get divorced, but divorce does not solve your abuse problem. So you have to be strategic as you start making boundaries about what you decide because it’s going to be complex no matter what.

The Journey To Heal From Spiritual abuse

Sharon: Yeah. Well, Ann, can I ask you one question? What would you say in terms of being the author of all things BTR, where would you say it would be good for women to start in terms of their journey?

I know there were so many different roads into our community. Where do you feel like it would be a good place for women to start? Would it be with the workshops or the podcast or group or sessions? Can you just speak to that?

Anne: That’s an interesting question because everyone’s path is so different. The paths are all pointing towards safety. Women have listened to the podcast for years without using any of our services, and the podcast itself has gotten them where they needed to go.

They felt good and they felt supported in real life. They met a good friend that lived down their street who helped them through it. There are people who never heard the podcast, who came to Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group.

There are women who think, I don’t think I’m being abused. I don’t think this is for me. This seems kind of too extreme, and then a year later they think, oh, this is abuse.

Individual Paths To Emotional Safety

They’ll be like, this is the only place we’ll get what I’m going through. Some women start learning about abuse and listening to it, and they realize, I think it might be abuse. Now that I hear what abuse is, that isn’t what I’m experiencing.

I mean, that’s also a possibility. If someone’s listening right now and they’re like, where should I start? This seems so complicated. Listening to the podcast is a great start. BTR Group Sessions are a really good place because you can start listening to other people’s stories.

I’m a super introvert, so groups make me a little bit nervous, but I did go to group at the beginning of my journey and it helped me to hear other people and see myself in that and be like, oh, okay. This is what’s happening.

Living Free is also a really good place to start because it gives very foundational principles for where your journey is going to take you and also very practical things that you can do like now every day to get to safety. You can implement them immediately, and it gives really clear visuals for how to do that.

I think it’s the most clear thing in terms of what to do, so if you’re listening and you’re thinking, what do I do? I just need somebody to tell me what to do. If you’re thinking that, I would say The Living Free Workshop is the right place to go.

BTR Can Help You Heal From Spiritual Abuse

If you’re thinking, I know I’m being abused, I need support: BTR group. If you’re thinking, is this abuse? I’m not sure, then the podcast is a great place or even BTR Group Sessions is a great place to start figuring that out. I wish I could just say, everyone do this thing first.

That would be really cool, but everybody’s different and everybody comes in with a different set of expectations or a different desire about what they want to do. Some people come to BTR and they’re already divorced

They’re looking for safety tools. My main concern is the women who don’t know they’re being abused on the top of my mind with everything that we do here at BTR, I’m always thinking about them.

How can I help a woman who is being spiritually abused, who’s trying to read scripture, who is praying to figure out how to make my marriage better? She doesn’t know it’s abuse. How can I find her? She’s at the top of my mind because once people have access to our resources will help them through that process.

I’m really happy that we have the tools for them, but every day I wake up and I think there’s somebody out there that doesn’t know there’s someone out there who thinks it’s her fault. There’s someone out there who thinks that she’s just ugly and worthless and that’s why her husband doesn’t love her, and that is not true.

Healing From Spiritual Abuse Takes Community Support

If that’s you, you are beautiful. You are powerful, and you are so important. You’re important to God. You’re important to me, and I don’t want you to be blaming yourself or to feel bad for absolutely no reason, and for some ridiculous reason.

Everyone you’re going to for help, therapist, clergy, whatever, if they’re telling you it’s your fault because everyone is just in this soup of abuse. I hope to be a light to you, I want to find you. Whether you use our services or not, I don’t care.

I just want you to know that I care and I believe God cares. So if you’re listening and you feel the same way that I do, please share our information with people. Please get the word out about the podcast because that’s it. So when you ask that, I’m like, I don’t know how they’re going to utilize our services.

I’m grateful that they’re all available to people, but my main concern is, can I get to you? How can I find you in your hour of need? Especially women who are praying for it, and I hear stories all the time of women who are praying and they’ve been praying for years.

Then one day they do an internet search or they find something on social media, and that’s how they get to us. I’m so grateful they found us, whether a friend shared something or they typed in a search and an article popped up. I thank God they got here.

Coach Sharon Is Here To Support You

Sharon: Yeah, I am too. I’m glad that we have so many different points of entries and for all the work that you do to make sure that we’re loved so well. Thank you so much, Anne. It was such a pleasure being here and talking with you today.

Anne: Thank you, coach Sharon, and thank you for being online available to support women as they’re going through this. Every day. You do several group sessions and you’re available for individual sessions to help women. Thank you.