Spiritual abuse and codependence, part 1: Immediate background

A note before the story begins:
This is a story in twelve parts. Every detail written here is true. “Sage” is not the name or the title of the person it describes “Source” is not the word either Sage or I use for the Higher Power; the names of the religious organizations and their terminology, exact dates, and other details have been left out. It is not my intention to identify anyone. In fact, part of the reason this story does not have identifying details is that it could have been any faith and any profession, and I want the abusive/codependent patterns of the interactions to show up without distraction. I use “they” and “their” to replace gendered pronouns: it’s the best solution I can find to that particular grammatical problem.

Part 1: Immediate Background

I came from an abusive family, and coped by becoming codependent. When I was a teenager, my way of getting by in the world was to find a person who seemed stronger and follow them everywhere. I was part of a healthy spiritual community, but I didn’t know how to cope in it because it was so different from my family. I ended up following an older, dominant friend into a spiritual organization that practiced what we now know as spiritual abuse. I was shamed, coerced, manipulated, threatened, and finally shunned when I found the courage to leave.

For years thereafter, I avoided spiritual organizations. When I decided to become part of one again, I started yearning for and working toward leadership status. Early on, I found myself losing my spiritual connection to my Source as I pursued a role and status that I thought I wanted. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay attention to that. I kept trying harder to do what hadn’t worked before. I followed a dream I’d had before I experienced spiritual abuse (but long after I experienced the abuse that led me into codependence), a dream that had come to me at a time when I didn’t know myself well. When further self-knowledge conflicted with that dream, I discounted the knowledge. I made the dream into the goal of my pseudo-spiritual seeking. In Christian terms, you might call that idolatry; in Buddhist terms, you might call it attaching to an illusion. In some of the therapies I’ve worked with, you’d call it creating a false self and seeking external validation.

I started work that would lead toward a leadership credential, despite an inner knowledge that the timing was wrong for me and the organization in which I was working was deeply troubled. What followed was a nightmare of broken promises, political maneuverings, and missed connections. I came out spiritually bruised, emotionally exhausted, and physically ill, having lost both my hope for a much-desired future and my desire to continue being part of the organization I had thought I wanted to serve. Casting aside my usual habit of going public about painful situations carefully and well after the fact, I poured out my grief and anger online. The next day, I got an email from someone called Sage.