Tiffany

“When are an adult if we have had a secure and safe upbringing and healthy relationships, someone telling us that we are bad might sting or cause confusion or it might strike us as outright ridiculous.

But if someone tells a child the same thing as their world is developing and they lack any other frame of reference, the words shape their development from that point on.”
― 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

“For a lot of my students and clients the biggest spiritual belief they have that they have a hard time letting go of is that they are bad. It’s a kind of learned spiritual helplessness and they’ve learned to outsource their spiritual or moral discernment to a spiritual authority...

… Then some people say, hold on this is weird. There is this nudging process of spiritual exploration where they eventually realize “that was silly, I’m not spiritually evil, my intuitions for flourishing are good.” Then they come to this new level of satisfaction. But a lot of times their spiritual and religious communities can’t hold that kind of growth. That is a disorientation of its own. They end up becoming spiritually exiled. They have to find new communities.”
― 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