Tiffany

“The hero child is groomed from childhood to have the pressure of eternity placed on their shoulders. The souls of others become their responsibility. Ingenerating and venerating a compulsive drive to rescue.”
― Hillary L. McBride, Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing

“We go along to get along, but the cost is agency, the sense of a robust intact self with opinions, intuitions and autonomy.

People may be told that the self is undesirable and to be spiritually mature and thus respected in the community, and safe for eternity, they must die to self. Distancing themself from any thought, behavior or person that might draw them away from adherence to the way of being expected of them.”
― Hillary L. McBride, Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing

“In spiritual environments of high control a person is often told they are bad to their core. An evil lives inside them and they are powerless to stop it from taking over and ruining their life and causing eternal suffering UNLESS they are rescued by someone outside themselves. A system, a doctrine, a right way of believing.

All three roles are represented, the victim, the persecutor and the rescuer. When we are in these spiritually abusive contexts there is still a triangle created, but people are told both the victim and the persecutor lives within them. That leaves a person trapped. At war inside themselves. The only way out of the conflict, to quell the storm inside, is to have someone to swoop in to rescue them.”
― Hillary L. McBride, Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing

“I don’t want to diminish the suffering involved in believing you are both evil at your core and powerless to do anything about it. It creates a distress and inner conflict that can torment a person their entire life…

…It doesn’t help that the system or person who promises to help in this toxic dynamic is usually also reinforcing the idea of the continual badness of people.

Said another way, this is like a doctor providing a medicine that both causes and treats a wound at the same time. The cure is also the cause of the harm.”
― Hillary L. McBride, Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing