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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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,