For me, I was blessed to have Christian friends who understood where I was coming from, who also in their hearts wanted to love and honor their parents but also be free of the abuse. Until today I am still recovering but going through counseling, inner healing seminars and allowing God to work through my pains and stitch me up…Just the other day, I realized my biggest wound was always being made to feel that my mom did not trust me to make a good decision. She always questioned it. Even the time I decided to join a youth group at a different church to get more serious about my faith, she questioned it. She said am I sure I was not going there just because of boys
(?!?) At this time boys were the last thing on my mind because I had just had a bad break up with my first boyfriend. She resented the fact that I wanted to move out on my own after college (which I didn’t even get to talk to her about she just made assumptions when she found a flyer on my table) and until being super happy to be engaged to my husband who is an awesome godly man she questioned. My engagement days up to the wedding were my most beautiful and also painful days because of this. I have to say though, eventually she came around (almost 2 years later when she came to visit us in another country!) Before leaving she said to me “He’s a good man”. FInally it kicked in …
I’ve forgiven my mom. I love her. And I think the times she gets all controlling or condescending hurts the most because I love her. But I have also learned to take the space when I need it (the ground rules as you call it) and to not expect too much from her. And when she does come through in affirming me it becomes a surprise.

On behalf of being a Christian, I apologize to those of you who have been manipulated and abused through “religious words” or “cliche” answers. As a fellow survivor, I encourage you to press on and know that our God is always compassionate, always suffering as you suffer and holds our tears so precious to him that He bottles them in heaven.
Tight hugs to you all.

Found it – what made it harder for me to deal with my depression was that too many Christians blamed me for being depressed, which added to all my self blame and shame. So often I was told that if only I worshipped, read my bible and prayed enough the…n I would not be depressed and have joy. I went round and round in circles and got no better only got worse and felt more and more guilty and ashamed about being depressed. I seems very few Christians have read their bible and read about so many people in the bible who experienced depression.

Oh and the classic one I heard so many times- in Christ you are a new creation so your past as gone including the abuse in your past, so get on with it and stop living in the past, all that stuff is gone, gone and dealt with on the cross.

Another classic one – inner healing is a waste of time, you don’t need inner healing, you don’t need therapists what you need to do is to command those bad thoughts and bad feelings to go away, you are choosing to stay in this place, you are choosing to be a victim, you are choosing not to live in victory, get with it!

The spiritual abuse and lies just made living with depression even harder. All the time I was desperately searching for solutions, desperately crying out for answers. And all the time I was blaming myself when the real core of my depression was in trauma of my childhood that was filled with horror.

I have a pattern of reaching breaking point just before breakthrough happens. I keep going and keep going then break, no sooner do I break than the answer comes.

Thanks again Mike
Hugs, Darlene

The big issue is that it’s a no-win argument. When life is rough (and PTSD counts as rough) then her belief protects her “God has a plan yada yada yada” or “God is working towards something”. When things are going well “God is answering prayers”. It’s a totally closed belief system.

On the plus side we keep having “I thought you were over [this stuff]” conversations with me responding “Yeah, well there’s still lots of things I need to work on” type replies with specifics. So clearly she keeps thinking prayers are being answered and then finding it’s not quite true.

At least it’s all light-hearted now.

It’s only in the last few days I’ve managed to intuit the dynamics of the whole situation and how I’ve been suckered in for so long.

Today I turned it around and threw two conflicting things at her – one is not for here, another was “Will you pray about……. for me” and that’s when the confessions started and everything clicked into place esp. the viewpoint that fails to see other people as other people who are really indepdent and autonomous rather than fitting into God’s plan for me/my-family in some way.

I think it’s subtly corrupting. The situation that started the conversation is that a woman I’d like to continue dating is not really ready for that. It’s simple. There’s no need for God to change the situation; the situation is not faulty. It is what it is. There’s nothing that needs to change. But if you put God into the picture you can start to believe that somehow the situation needs to change to be just-whatever-you-think-is-best and in one stroke God is written out of the picture since “Maybe everything is just as God wishes” doesn’t feature.

Am I rambling?