3. Highly spiritual or religious people.
These are the people who go through life wanting to be a better person, which of course is a good thing. They wanna take the high road, but they also think it’s a good thing to be patient, tolerant, and long-suffering in the face of abuse. And the truth is, that’s not good for either party. So, you know the types.
Often, this is the good Christian, not always but often. And these people also tend to be overly forgiving. And while I’m all for forgiveness, there’s a lot of skewed thinking around forgiveness that comes out of spiritual and religious environments.
These are the folks who will guilt trip and shame you when you finally establish no contact with your abuser. Not so healthy, actually. And let’s be clear, while we’re on the subject of forgiveness, we forgive for us, not them. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not one and the same.
Just because I forgive a person does not mean I ever have to be susceptible to their particular brand of crazy ever again. So know that you do not have to rebuild a relationship with everyone you are forgiven. Just because you’re at peace does not mean they’re not still toxic, damaging, or dangerous.
A book: Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse.
So for those of you who identify as being spiritual or religious, but still find yourself a real magnet to empathy-deficient, consciousness, narcissistic, toxic people, here’s the thing. We don’t wanna be judgmental, but we don’t want to dropwise discernment in the process of living from our heart and our spiritual or religious beliefs and convictions, right?
Yes, we wanna see the good in people for sure, but how about we see the truth, because the truth is, there are a lot of people walking this planet that don’t carry the good that you or I do. And it’s important that we learn to discern. Judgment equals criticism and condemnation. Wise discernment is an accurate assessment, not necessarily accompanied by criticism and condemnation, but an accurate assessment of what it is that we are thinking, feeling, seeing, hearing, experiencing.
What another is showing us through their behavior. Wise discernment, a vital piece that we often lose while we’re trying to be the good Christian or the spiritual warrior, right? So don’t forget wise discernment and telling yourself the truth.
In my experience, as much as churches and 12-step environments and the like are filled with good people, they are also filled with high-spectrum destructive narcissists because there are a lot of targets in those environments. So there are a lot of predators there too.
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