Recognizing and Responding to Spiritual Abuse

Small Group Workbook

Session Overview and Goals

This session addresses a topic that affects more people than often talk about it: spiritual abuse. Many people have been wounded in religious environments—sometimes subtly, sometimes severely—and carry those wounds into their current relationships with faith, church, and God.

Our goal is to create a space where we can:

1. Understand what spiritual abuse is — and distinguish it from normal imperfection in communities
2. Learn to recognize the markers of spiritually unhealthy environments
3. Validate our own experiences without shame or self-doubt
4. Begin to envision what healthy spirituality looks like — and that it's possible to find

Important Note for Participants: This session may bring up strong emotions. You are not required to share anything you're not ready to share. Your experience is your own, and you get to decide how much to disclose. If you need to step out, that's okay.

Teaching Summary

Why Spiritual Abuse Is So Destructive

Dr. Cloud describes the spiritual life as our "real life"—the invisible part of us (heart, mind, soul, strengths, values) that produces everything visible in our lives. Our relationships, our work, our character—all of it flows from this inner life. Because spiritual growth is so foundational, spiritual abuse is uniquely harmful. It damages the very part of us that produces everything else.

The Safe People Test

In Safe People, Dr. Cloud and Dr. Townsend define a safe person as someone who has three effects on you:

1. They help you become more of who you're created to be — your best self, developing your gifts and strengths
2. They help you grow closer to God — deepening your experience of Him, not just knowledge about Him
3. They help you become more relational — better able to trust, connect, and love others

Spiritual abuse is the opposite. In spiritually abusive environments:

• You become less of who you're meant to be
• You move further from God
• Your ability to trust and connect with others diminishes

If your spiritual environment is producing these fruits, something is wrong—regardless of what the teaching says or how sincere the leaders seem.

Five Markers of Spiritual Abuse

1. It's Not Relational

Jesus summarized the entire Bible in two commands: love God, and love your neighbor. The whole thing is about relationship. When a spiritual environment becomes primarily about rules, performance, compliance, or being good enough, it has drifted from what faith is supposed to be. Watch for environments where performance matters more than people.

2. There's No Freedom

One of Dr. Cloud's favorite verses is "It is for freedom that Christ has died." Throughout the Bible, God gives people choice—even the choice to walk away. Healthy spiritual environments give you freedom to think, question, decide, and grow. Controlling environments restrict your choices, pressure conformity, and make you feel like you need permission for ordinary life decisions.

Remember: the fruit of the Spirit is self-control, not other-control.

3. Failure Is Met with Judgment, Not Grace

Jesus said, "I didn't come to call the righteous—I came to call sinners." Healthy spirituality welcomes broken people and helps them heal. The word "sin" simply means "to miss the mark"—and we all miss it.

In healthy environments, when you struggle or fail, the response is compassion: "Come on, let's see if we can help." In abusive environments, the response is shame, condemnation, or exclusion.

A healthy spiritual community is like a recovery meeting—you can show up broken and be welcomed. A toxic one requires you to be "good enough" to belong.

4. It's Authoritarian

True authority means expertise offered in service of others' growth. Authoritarian leadership is different—it means power over people, hierarchy that keeps people one-down, and leaders on pedestals who can't be questioned.

Jesus specifically warned against this: "Don't call anyone on earth your leader"—meaning, don't put people on pedestals. We're all brothers and sisters, equals with different gifts. Healthy leaders help people rise up and develop their own authority. Unhealthy leaders need everyone beneath them.

5. It's a Closed System

Healthy communities are open—they learn from others, acknowledge their limitations, and don't claim to have exclusive truth. Toxic communities are closed—they're suspicious of outside perspectives, claim to be the only ones who have it right, and create an "us vs. them" mentality.

If your community treats all outside input as dangerous, if other churches and perspectives are routinely dismissed or demonized, you're in a closed system.

Discussion Questions

Work through these questions together. Not everyone needs to answer every question. The facilitator will guide the pace.

Opening Questions

1. Without sharing details you're not ready to share, what drew you to this session? What are you hoping to get from our time together?

2. Dr. Cloud says the spiritual life is our "real life"—the invisible part that produces everything visible. How does that framing land with you? Does it match your experience?

Exploring the Content

3. Of the five markers Dr. Cloud describes (not relational, no freedom, judgment instead of grace, authoritarian, closed system), which ones are most familiar to you—either from personal experience or from what you've observed?

   [Facilitator note: Give people time to think. This is a weighty question.]

4. The "Safe People" test asks: Is this environment helping me become more of who I'm meant to be, drawing me closer to God, and making me more relational?

   How would you answer those questions about spiritual environments you've been part of—past or present?

5. Dr. Cloud emphasizes freedom—that God always gives people choice, even the choice to walk away. What has been your experience with freedom in spiritual communities? Have you felt free to question, disagree, or make your own decisions?

6. How have you seen failure handled in spiritual environments you've been part of? What messages did you receive—explicitly or implicitly—about what happens when you mess up?

Going Deeper

7. Many people struggle to trust their own perceptions after being in unhealthy environments. If this resonates with you, what helped (or what do you think would help) you begin trusting yourself again?

   [Facilitator note: Allow silence. This is a tender question.]

8. Dr. Cloud makes a distinction between relationship with God and religion about God. For those comfortable sharing, how has your experience in spiritual environments—healthy or unhealthy—affected your relationship with God?

9. What has been the hardest part of recognizing or acknowledging spiritual abuse—whether in your own experience or when watching someone else go through it?

Looking Forward

10. Based on what we've discussed, what would a spiritually healthy environment look like for you? What would you need to see to trust a community?

11. What's one small step you could take this week to move toward healing or clarity in this area of your life?

Personal Reflection Exercises

These can be done during the session (5-10 minutes of quiet writing) or taken home for further processing.

Exercise 1: The Three-Question Inventory

Think about a spiritual environment you've been part of (current or past). Answer these questions honestly:

Becoming Who You're Meant to Be

• In this environment, did you feel encouraged to develop your gifts and strengths?
• Were your questions and doubts welcomed or dismissed?
• Did you feel more confident and clear about who you are, or more confused and diminished?

Growing Closer to God

• Did your experience of God deepen, or did it become more complicated or distant?
• Did you feel closer to God as a result of this community, or did the community become a barrier?
• When you prayed, did you feel free to be honest, or did you perform?

Becoming More Relational

• Did this environment help you trust people more, or less?
• Were you better able to connect with others outside the community, or more isolated?
• Did relationships in this environment feel genuine and mutual, or controlled and conditional?

Exercise 2: Messages I Received

Complete these sentences based on what you absorbed (not just what was explicitly taught) in a spiritual environment:

• When I failed or struggled, the message I received was: _______________
• When I questioned leadership, the message I received was: _______________
• When I wanted to do something differently than the group, the message I received was: _______________
• The implicit requirement for belonging was: _______________
• What I learned about God in that environment was: _______________

Exercise 3: What I'm Looking For

If you could design a spiritually healthy environment for yourself, what would it include?

Write 3-5 characteristics you would need to see before you could trust a community. Be specific—not "healthy leadership" but what healthy leadership would actually look like in practice.

Real-Life Scenarios

Read each scenario and discuss the questions that follow. There are no perfect answers—the goal is to think together.

Scenario 1: The Questioning Friend

Your friend has been part of the same church for ten years. Lately, she's been asking questions about some of the leadership decisions and expressing discomfort with how much control the church seems to have over members' lives. When she raised a concern with her small group leader, she was told she had a "critical spirit" and needed to pray about her attitude. She's confused and wonders if she's the problem.

Discussion Questions:

• What markers from Dr. Cloud's teaching do you see in this situation?
• How would you respond if this friend came to you for perspective?
• What would be helpful to say, and what should you avoid saying?

Scenario 2: The Grace Gap

A man shares in a support group that he's been attending his church for two years but has never told anyone about his struggle with alcohol. He says the church talks about grace, but he's watched how people respond when someone admits a serious struggle—with distance, advice, or spiritual clichés. He's convinced that if he's honest, he'll be seen differently. He's sober now but feels like he's living a double life.

Discussion Questions:

• What does this situation reveal about the environment, even if nothing explicitly abusive has happened?
• What's the difference between a community that talks about grace and one that practices it?
• What would this man need to see before he could be honest?

Scenario 3: The Family Dilemma

A woman was raised in a tight-knit religious community. Her entire family—parents, siblings, grandparents—are still deeply involved. Over the past few years, she's come to see the community as controlling and harmful. She wants to leave, but she knows that leaving will create significant tension with her family. They've already started making comments about her "drifting" and questioning her commitment to God.

Discussion Questions:

• What makes this situation so complicated?
• How do the concepts of freedom and closed systems apply here?
• What would you want her to know as she discerns what to do?

Practice Assignments

These are experiments to try between now and your next gathering. Approach them with curiosity, not pressure.

Experiment 1: The Outside Perspective

This week, share something about your spiritual experience (past or present) with someone who is not part of that environment—a friend, counselor, or family member outside the community. Notice what it feels like to describe your experience to someone with no investment in it.

Pay attention to:

• What feels hard to explain or justify
• What reactions you anticipate vs. what reactions you actually receive
• Whether their perspective helps you see anything differently

Experiment 2: The Freedom Inventory

Throughout this week, notice moments when you feel the need for "permission" in areas of your life—what you read, who you spend time with, what you believe, how you spend your time or money.

Ask yourself: Where did this sense of needing permission come from? Is it coming from within me (healthy self-reflection) or was it installed by an external system?

Keep a brief log of what you notice.

Closing Reflection

The wounds from spiritual abuse often take time to surface and even longer to heal. If this session has brought up difficult emotions or memories, that's not a sign that something is wrong with you—it's a sign that something real happened and it mattered.

Healing from spiritual abuse doesn't mean you have to leave faith behind. Many people find their way to a deeper, more honest, more life-giving spirituality on the other side. But getting there often requires time, safe relationships, and sometimes professional support.

You are not alone in this. What you experienced was real. And the kind of spiritual community that actually helps you flourish—where you're free to grow, free to question, free to fail and be welcomed back—does exist. It's worth looking for.

If this session has surfaced significant pain or trauma, consider reaching out to a counselor who understands religious trauma. Healing from spiritual abuse often benefits from support beyond what a small group can provide—and seeking that help is a sign of strength, not weakness.