Summary of Abusive Behaviors
So you want the short list - a summary of how my ex-church was abusive?
- Coercion
- Restricting or strongly impairing ability to leave group (i.e. you'll go to hell if you leave)
- Appeals to fear of not being enlightened or saved
- Uses humiliation or guilt to control behavior (you have to do this and this, be at a certain level of ever-changing "dedication," to be good enough)
- Appeals to vanity or egotism in becoming one of the elect, elite or chosen (you smoke so you can't be on the worship team, it's too sinful)
- Restricts access to outside ideas and people (banning all forms of media - books, tv, music, etc - unless they are Christian-based)
- Demands conformity
- Encourages hyper-emotionalism and manipulation of feelings, such as inducing alternating emotional highs and lows
- Plays on feelings of inadequacy or low self esteem (everyone else may hate you but we still love you)
- Encourages over-dependency
- Uses intimidation or threats in recruiting or retaining members (you'll go to hell)
- Verbal abuse (Jesus would have saved you, but I wouldn't do a thing for you)
- Alternating intensely pleasurable emotional highs (i.e love bombing by groups or individuals) with intensely negative emotional lows (i.e. public confessions, humiliation etc.)
- Prolonged mind numbing meditation, chanting, etc. (worship time going on and on with repetetive music and lyrics)
- Altering brain rhythms to induce trance (whether intentionally or not)
- Creating disassociative psychological states in members through trance induction, hyper-emotionalism etc., and then mislabeling those states as spiritual manifestations or signs that the member has had a legitimate spiritual experience.
- Subjection to intensely cathartic or charismatic experiences where one transfers control to someone or something else (being overcome "by the spirit," crying or laughing uncontrollably)
- Uses one or more of the many ways of inducing trance states (intentionally or not)
- Induces fanaticism or zealotry
- Reduces compassion and empathy, members become hardened, unloving, unforgiving (my transgressions against one person made the entire church mad at me)
- Induces intolerance towards people whose beliefs are different than their own
- Induces members to sever normal relationships and/or loyalties or obligations (i.e. don't hang around with people who aren't saved...they will drag you down)
- Induces members to only associate, do business, marry, date, etc., with other members (same as previous statement)
- Demands obedience to authority vs. individual conscience (you don't know what you want or need...you have to obey god and we have a message for you from him - by prophecy)
- Is disproportionately concerned with security and secrecy (ushers with walkie-talkie systems patrolling the halls and parking lot...having the Spanish Inquisition when you leave to go to the restroom)
- Induces members to contribute beyond their means or the dictates of wisdom ("I challenge you to give 25%!")
- Induces members to donate so much of their time that their normal other loyalties and obligations are harmed (people quitting their much-needed jobs to serve the church, exhausting themselves from doing so much for the church)
- Induces members to donate so much of their time or resources that their health is harmed (exhausting themselves to the point where they get colds or the flu)
- Induces members to engage in other activities which harms their emotional, mental or physical health (see above)
- Using fear and other pressures to effect free willed spiritual choices vs. respecting the un-pressured reflective exercise of free willed spiritual choices