The Particulars of Spiritual Abuse: Dissociation and Healing
The Allender Center Podcast
The Allender Center
4.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2020
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we’re re-sharing the second half of a series Rachael Clinton Chen and Dr. Dan Allender recorded last year on the particulars of spiritual abuse. Throughout their conversation, you’ll hear them discuss the effects that spiritual abuse has on our bodies, including dissociation and shame. Because spiritually abusive leaders rarely stop with mind control, they work to create a system in which they can control every aspect—including the bodies—of the people under their authority. Rachael and Dan also explore the long, slow movement of healing in the wake of abuse and the work of tending to small areas of growth, trusting that God is contending for us in the big areas.
No matter how long it takes, how can we begin reclaiming our minds and moving back into our bodies? What are the small steps we can take on the long road to healing? As we attune to that which is beautiful and true, and to that which honors the dignity in who we were created to be, we may begin living into the hope that trauma, death, and spiritual abuse do not have to have the last word.
Resources
- Read an article “Enigmas, Myths, and the Shame of the Strong Silent Type” by Beau Denton
- Read “Leading out of Healing” by Wendell Moss
- Read “When Shame is Deeper than Salvation” by Andrew Bauman
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for listening to the Allender Center podcast. |
| 0:06.7 | I'm Dr. Dan Allender. |
| 0:08.7 | And I'm Rachel Clinton-Centen. |
| 0:10.5 | We're fiercely committed to providing hope and healing to a fragmented world. |
| 0:14.7 | And restoration for the heart. |
| 0:17.2 | Thank you for joining us. |
| 0:18.5 | Let's get this conversation started. |
| 0:28.8 | Thank you for joining us. Let's get this conversation started. Well, we've come to a point, Rachel and I, dealing with spiritual abuse, that we do want to make a bit of a shift, but again, want to say, as we address what's called |
| 0:40.5 | for us to engage in order for there to be growing freedom, we do not want anyone to hear. |
| 0:47.4 | This is a matter of a few steps. |
| 0:49.6 | Doing a few things in a short period of time will create all the goodness that you want. |
| 0:56.4 | There's a sense in which this harm is so deep. |
| 1:00.0 | It lingers and will have to be addressed again and again and again. |
| 1:04.4 | It's kind of like having, I don't really know the deep data about this, |
| 1:09.3 | but somehow like the germs within us, we |
| 1:13.9 | always have a cold, but somehow when something happens, we begin to feel the symptoms. |
| 1:19.2 | You know, spiritual abuse is going to linger for a long, long season, but when certain triggers |
| 1:26.5 | seem to happen, when there are words or persons or events |
| 1:31.4 | that begin to occur, this is trauma. |
| 1:34.2 | And like any trauma, it's going to have to be addressed progressively in the body, in the |
| 1:40.2 | midst of your story, but with a larger perspective of eternity. |
| 1:44.6 | But with all that said, where would you begin as to what needs to be addressed in order for |
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