“Tell me all the things you’d like to do but you can’t
‘Cause you’re scared that you’re goin’ to hell.”

– “Apple Tree Blues” by Caamp

 

The above lyrics happened to catch my attention in the same time period that I was reading Doctor Jamie Marich’s memoir about spiritual abuse and religious trauma, You Lied to Me About God.

I’m sharing this book review in hopes that it helps people who have experienced these issues. I also hope that the book review educates people who haven’t experienced these issues but are open to learning about, preventing, and helping others heal from them. For anyone interested in learning more, I recommend reading the book and checking out the resources mentioned at the end of this review.

Spiritual Abuse & Religious Trauma Themes in the Book

Dr Jamie (she/they) defines spiritual abuse and religious trauma as the use of God, religion, or spiritual concepts as tools to gain power and control by the abuser. Here is a helpful video of her breaking the terms down more so that we can see the subtle differences:

• Spiritual abuse is the umbrella term and is when God, religion, or spiritual concepts are used as a weapon, which can occur in places other than religious institutions (such as homes, families, schools, government/laws/“the state”, etc.)
• Religious trauma is more specific and is when the above occurs in the context of religion

Dr Jamie expresses hoping that the book:

• Is beneficial for both believers and non-believers
• Illustrates the effects of spiritual abuse and religious trauma beyond the experience of cults since not all spiritual abuse is as obvious as cults
• Illustrates the overlaps of spiritual abuse in various spiritual traditions and religions while acknowledging that her experiences are largely Christianity-based

The book demonstrates the fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, and depression that people often experience due to spiritual abuse. Dr Jamie takes the reader on their personal journey through such experiences in childhood while growing up in Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity as well as experiences in a yoga ashram as an adult. They address how the aforementioned emotions result from the following aspects of spiritual abuse:

• Being taught to fear a deity and to fear being punished by that deity if not obeying the rules of the religion or community
• Being taught to fear loss of the community if not obeying the rules of the religion or community
• Judgmental attitudes and hypocrisy from community members, such as when Christians act judgmental despite claiming to act Christ-like or lovingly
• Attempts at controlling bodies, sexuality, gender roles (such as expecting women to be subordinate), relationship structures (such as expecting people to get married and have children), and choices (such as parents coercing children into following a religion instead of giving them choices)

The book addresses how spiritual abuse often involves people claiming that their unkind messages are facts or brutal honesty. Dr Jamie writes, “When you grow up in spiritual abuse, you can get the feeling that if the messages coming from preachers, ministers, priests, rabbis, imams, gurus, or other faith leader are not harsh, then they are not true.”

The book also addresses Dr Jamie’s process of deconstruction and reconstruction (aka D & R), or what they refer to as an ongoing pilgrimage, as well as how the process plays out for others. This process involves taking apart and analyzing the beliefs one has been taught and either putting what’s discovered back together in a way that makes sense or building something totally new. Dr Jamie validates that some people’s D & R process is gradual while for others it is more like an explosion. She also validates that some people determine that life away from any kind of church, faith, or spirituality is the best course of action while others decide to follow a different religion or to participate in a variety of spiritual practices.

Dr Jamie cautions that there is danger in othering, or ostracizing, each other since we are biologically wired for connection. She points out that we can connect over things that are healthier than bonding over judging others who have different beliefs, lifestyles, etc. My heart ached for her as I read about her feeling the need to keep being bisexual a secret out of fear of being outcast from family, friends, teachers, and other community members because of this othering behavior. It resonated for me when they write, “Especially for those of us who are tender of heart, the pain can become too much to bear. The pain of rejection, the sting of your comment, and the horror of you judging your own children into the fires of a hell that doesn’t even exist. If hell exists anywhere, it’s on this earth, living with people who make us feel this way and believe such horrors about ourselves.”

Dr Jamie takes the reader through her struggles with body image, which is related to spiritual abuse in that diet culture and beauty norms are related to the rigid gender role expectations so often found in religion. They share that they became rather perfectionistic about academics as a way of proving their worth since they didn’t feel worthy in other ways, including physically. They share how their nurturing adult relationships proved their body shame to be unwarranted while also being honest in a very human way about how body shame still creeps in at times.

Related to body image issues and body shame, Dr Jamie describes how spiritual abuse contributed to developing dissociation as a protective mechanism. You can learn more about this concept in a review I did of their prior book, Dissociation Made Simple. In her memoir, Dr Jamie describes dissociation as protecting her from the unhealthy and abusive dynamics that occurred in her family while growing up. They also describe how spiritual abuse involving various harmful beliefs about sexuality, such as sexual desire and pleasure only being acceptable between married people and by heterosexual people, contributed to dissociation because of shame and disconnection from their body. The memoir thus explains that spiritual abuse can cause people to feel dissociated or disconnected from their bodies because of the trauma response to being shamed regarding spirituality (such as being told that one is disappointing God), shamed regarding sexuality, and shamed regarding appearance.

Another theme in the book is that of spiritual bypassing. John Welwood coined this term to describe when people “use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” He also says, “When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it.” Dr Jamie shares her journey of fully facing and dealing with all her emotions and struggles so that she could truly heal instead of trying to heal without doing the necessary but painful work. She also gives compassion and encouragement to the reader to be able to do the same.

Dr Jamie addresses how relationships are harmed by spiritual abuse and how so many people who experience it struggle with authenticity for fear of being judged and outcasted. She talks about things like falling into patterns with unhealthy relationships out of desperation to be loved, the concept of surrounding ourselves with “chosen family” to find our belonging, and being in a mother role without being a biological mother by nurturing others. They point out that relationships are often the last area we heal in when we have experienced relational abuse as young children because it was the first area we were hurt in.

Dr Jamie takes the reader through how she now uses authenticity and compassion as a compass for her values and behavior instead of following expectations at all costs. As they declare in the book, “My spirit does not belong in a box. And I don’t have to follow the rules anymore.” She also makes clear that she supports others in this.

Aspects I Like About the Book

Some things that I especially like and appreciate about the book:

• It normalizes and validates the experiences of others affected by spiritual abuse and gives hope that they can heal even though it is a memoir that is specifically about Dr Jamie’s journey
• It is very personable
• It is trauma informed, with the introduction encouraging the reader to practice self-care if triggered because of the reader’s own spiritual abuse experiences
• The chapters end with expressive arts-based self-reflection prompts for the reader to explore their own experiences with spiritual abuse and spirituality in general

How My Story Is Similar & Different

Feel free to skip this section if you’re not interested in learning about my own experiences with this subject matter.

What I’m about to share feels extremely vulnerable but important to share. I feel inspired by Dr Jamie’s vulnerability in writing her memoir and thank her for giving me and others encouragement to share our stories. I feel that it’s so important to share our stories to validate ourselves and others with similar experiences. I hope that sharing my story helps inspire others to do the same. I also hope that people who have experienced these issues and are seeking healing or help moving on are able to find what they are seeking by either working with me or another professional with experience in these issues.

Reading Dr Jamie’s memoir confirmed what I suspected in the few years that I have been following their work, which is that we have a lot in common. Some of our similarities are:

• We’re very close in age
• We’re both very expressive and have always been into various types of arts
• We’re both easy criers and feel very deeply, and we both wonder if we’re neurodivergent (I identify as a Highly Sensitive Person or empath)
• We both have arthritic right knees from injuries in our teen years yet love to stay active despite it, especially through hiking and dancing
• We both have been in bigger bodies throughout much of our lives, have been made to feel ugly and unlovable by family and peers because of it, have been fat shamed by medical professionals, have thus struggled with low self-esteem around body image, continue to experience shame at times for not having it all figured out when said shame pops up despite all of our hard work around this issue, and believe in a Health At Every Size approach
• We both became academic perfectionists as a way of proving our worth and still have to be careful about our perfectionistic tendencies
• We both struggled to fit in with our families and peers growing up as “the chubby odd girl who didn’t quite fit in with their world”
• We both fell into many unhealthy relationships because of insecure attachment but have found ourselves in healthy and nurturing relationships in more recent years that not only prove unkind messages of the past wrong but have caused us to feel truly loved and valued
• We both consider ourselves to be in a mother role in non-biological ways, which for me shows up in how I nurture people in my professional and personal lives
• We both use authenticity and connection as leading values on our moral compass
• We both have become comfortable not following the rules or fitting into molds, such as being childless by choice or staying friends with our ex-husbands and their families

Our differences are fewer:

• Whereas Dr Jamie often felt lost as a young adult regarding things like school and career, I discovered drama therapy in my mid-teens and started pursuing that path immediately and have always had a secure sense of this direction
• Whereas Dr Jamie experienced alcohol and other substance addiction, I never experienced substance abuse or addiction
• Whereas Dr Jamie identifies as a believer and found healing in religion, I started identifying as a non-believer around age 11 and personally find no comfort in religion

I would like to expand on the latter point since it most closely relates to the theme of spiritual abuse in the book. While Dr Jamie grew up in Catholicism and Evangelicalism, I grew up with both sides of my family being Catholic. Thus, I did not have the same experience of traumatically being put in the middle of differing parental opinions.

I don’t consider my family to be super strict about Catholicism, but many Catholic viewpoints didn’t make sense to me from an early age and didn’t feel like they fit into my values (especially regarding LGBTQIA+ people, sex, birth control, abortion, and gender roles). My spiritual abuse largely had to do with typical Catholic guilt, such as thinking I was going to go to hell for impure thoughts or for disappointing the God I believed in as a child. These are some of the reasons why I became a non-believer and a “religious done.”

I came to this conclusion long before reaching the confirmation age of 15 in the church I grew up in and told my parents this. At first they said they wouldn’t force me to be confirmed, but then my mom told me she had talked to a priest about it and wanted me to go through with it in case I ever decided that I wanted to be married in a Catholic church. Thankfully, my parents honored my wishes to not go to weekly church after getting confirmed. My family has been mostly respectful about me leaving Catholicism, though I’ve heard statements about them worrying for my soul since I’m no longer a believer.

My own spiritual abuse experiences paled in comparison to others I learned about both personally and professionally as I got older. I have witnessed many loved ones and clients harmed by spiritual abuse. I tend to get angry and sad more than anything when being the target or witness of spiritual abuse now that I can’t be guilt tripped by it. Because spiritual abuse continues to be a common problem in so many organized religions, I personally don’t want anything to do with organized religions. Just like other aspects of my life, I don’t want to participate in harmful systems if I am able to avoid doing so.

That all being said, I absolutely recognize that religion can be very healing for others, even when they don’t like or agree with all aspects of it. I appreciate that Dr Jamie found healing in Catholic and other religious communities despite disagreements with the theology of them and that she points out that Catholicism was not as damaging to her as Evangelicalism. I have witnessed religion help many loved ones and clients similarly to how it has helped Dr Jamie.

I think it’s important to distinguish between spirituality and religion. I view spirituality as how we find meaning, purpose, and interconnection. This may or may not be related to religion. For me, it has nothing to do with religion. I identify as a spiritual non-believer, spiritual atheist, or spiritual agnostic because I find meaning, purpose, and interconnection without belief in a deity or deities. The concepts in scientific pantheism most closely capture my spirituality because they find meaning, purpose, and interconnection through the natural world.

For example, I don’t believe that I have a soul that will live eternally in a heaven but do find awe and comfort in the fact that part of me will continue on in the life-death cycle when my decomposing body gives nutrients to living beings. I don’t believe that my consciousness will go on after death but do resonate with the idea that my physical energy is like a metaphorical drop of water that will become part of the larger metaphorical ocean of water of the energy of the rest of the universe.

I never felt empty or lost, or questioned my morals, after losing my faith though understand why some people do. I found other ways to find meaning, purpose, and interconnection. I feel even stronger in my morals because they are coming from my own sense of right and wrong instead of fear of being punished by a deity.

Some of the things that fulfill my spiritual side are:

• My work as a drama therapist because helping people gives me meaning and purpose, helps them find their meaning and purpose, and helps all of us connect to each other
• The same reasons for the above point apply to other roles in my life, such as leader, supervisor, mentor, speaker, writer (even sharing an article like this feels spiritually fulfilling!), etc.
• Nature
• Rituals
• Veganism because it’s important to me that I’m doing the least harm possible to all the creatures I  feel a sense of interconnection with

I want to be clear that, like Dr Jamie, I understand that my spiritual path does not have to be the same spiritual path as anyone else. I do not share my beliefs to put down anyone else’s. However, I want to encourage people to see that fundamentalist or extremist religious views that include hatred or harm to others is not just a matter of difference in opinion. Difference of opinion is us having different favorite colors, favorite seasons, decoration preferences, etc. It is more than difference of opinion when harm is actively being done.

Getting Help Healing from Spiritual Abuse & Religious Trauma

If you’re a Reisterstown or other Maryland area resident looking for therapy to help heal from spiritual abuse or religious trauma, contact me to see if we’re a good fit to work together.

You can also contact me if you reside outside of Maryland and might be a good fit to do coaching with me. Instead of focusing on healing as we would do in therapy, we would focus on achieving goals you have regarding moving on or thriving in your new deconstructed/reconstructed life.

Here are some other ways to seek help from professionals with experience with this issue:

• Therapy Den is a therapist directory that allows therapists to list religious trauma as a specialty
• Reclamation Collective is an organization whose mission is to help people who have experienced spiritual abuse and religious trauma that has a therapist directory of therapists who specialize in this and offers support groups and workshops for survivors
• Journey Free is an organization who also aim to help people recovering from these issues, and they provide trauma informed coaching as well as various resources to help with healing, such as a support group and books

Other Helpful Resources for Healing from Spiritual Abuse & Religious Trauma

• Dr Jamie’s YouTube channel, which has videos about this subject matter
• Dr Jamie’s podcast appearances on this subject matter
  • Recovering from Spiritual Trauma
  • Navigating Religious Trauma…
  • Religious Abuse…
• Light Up the Couch’s podcast episode about flourishing after leaving religion
• Hillary McBride is a therapist, speaker, and author who posts about spiritual trauma on social media and has a book coming out about it soon
• Quincee Gideon is a psychologist, speaker, and consultant who posts about this on social media and has been on podcasts speaking about it