This is understanding today's narcissist.

Brought to you in part by psychcentral.com.

And now here's your host, Christine Hammond.

Welcome back to our series on narcissistic abuse tactics. And so today we're going to be talking about

spiritual abuse. This is kind of a delicate area because it doesn't really matter what the

spirituality is or what the religion is. What matters is how a person uses it against someone else.

And so we're going to really try and focus on that aspect of it.

Because sometimes, you know, a narcissist will demand some kind of spiritual perfectionism.

And they will tell you that you're not going to be accepted or they might have implausible spiritual expectations

that you have to live up to. So your religion or your spirituality should be a source of peace

and companionship. But now when it becomes abusive, it might be a sense of insecurity. It might be a sense of

comparison. It might be a sense of frustration instead of your peace and comfort that you're trying

to gain from it. You might, where you used to find security in your faith, there now might be only like rituals and ceremonies.

So how in the world did this happen? Well, we're going to talk about how a narcissist actually

does this. And we're going to go through the different kinds. And remember, the religion does

not matter. This happens in Christian religions, in Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu,

Jewish, even some minor sects such as Mormon, Taoism, Confuciism, New Age, all of these can be used.

And I've even seen this even for atheists, for agnostics, as well, for those who don't believe in God,

because there is, even if you don't believe in some level of spirituality, there can be an

abusive nature to it. So let's talk about exactly what I mean by that. In the beginning, it begins

with what I call dichotomous thinking, which is dividing people into two parts, those who agree with the narcissist beliefs and those who don't.

Interestingly, only the narcissist is the judge and the jury of who belongs on which side.

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