There Is Very Little Help In Churches Filled With Narcissists
I had great difficulty getting the help I needed from the church. I did not fault them at the time because many of them just did not seem to get me anyway. I always felt like a literal black sheep out of place. I just figured that church was just not the place for me. I was deemed as too introverted, too weird, and too self-thinking anyway.
At the time, and still in the present, I have always felt as if the church is simply not equipped to handle people like me, people with mental health issues, or people with personality disorders. In just my experience, I felt that the churches I attended refused to face tough issues, and if they had to, they would slam the issues into categories that members themselves needed to take responsibility for on their own.
I do believe in doing the work necessary to change myself. I do believe that there are oftentimes when people are under demonic possession, however, slapping this label on everyone that has a problem is blatantly wrong especially when there are no attempts to understand a person’s circumstances. Unfortunately, this has often been the case in most of the churches I have attended in the past. They were so quick to label people as either good, bad, or defective – always neglecting the greatest needs of their members.
As for me, I prayed all the prayers. I read my bible. I did all of what I was told to do and even what I read and believed that I should do, but it was never enough. I went as far as to exorcise any demons within myself because I was so desperate to be free from the pain and the struggles. I was patient and longsuffering [emphasis on longsuffering]. I followed the admonition to wait on God.
So I waited on God … and waited and waited, and nothing happened in those instances until I realized that waiting did not mean doing nothing. Maybe many who read this will not agree with me, and that is fine. This is my life story, and I am talking about me and my experiences. I was just not okay with the status of my life at the time, and I was not okay to wait.
So I had to research things on my own. I had to be a persistent pest even if I aggravated people. I was that desperate for help. I learned to wait on God with intention – not in ignorance. I could not just sit around and do nothing. Looking back, I believe that I was told to wait on God because those telling me this just did not have the answers to give me to my problems. I think they were just pacifying me in hopes that I would simply go away.
Instead of accepting all that “they” had to say, I did what the disciple Matthew said should be done [ask, seek, and knock]. I asked questions to get answers. I sought help to actually receive help. I knocked on enough doors until one finally opened for me. When I got the help that I needed, it was nowhere in the church, and that is the sad truth of the matter. Unfortunately, I did not find what I needed in the church. I did not even find God there, but I did find His counterfeit.
Those times that I thought I was getting help turned out to be scams. For a small amount of time, I thought I might have been getting somewhere, but I felt for the most part, I was always being set up to fail. The more I shared about myself, the more my life seemed to be aired out as a part of a pastor’s sermon. I once listened incredulously as a pastor shared personal information that I had shared with he and his wife in confidence. He used my information as a selling point, but instead of having the effect that he might have desired for a testimony, my information became nothing more than fodder for gossip.
I was embarrassed and ashamed to say the least, and this pastor passed the negative and astonished reactions off by others in the congregation as them simply not willing to understand and “catch the truth”. This is what happens in narcissistically empowered churches though. The feelings of members do not matter. There is no such thing as a private conversation. Caution is needed in talking privately about your testimony because you never know how what you say will be later used against you. I learned this too many times the hard way. Unfortunately, my feelings were not even warranted enough to be granted an apology for a boundary violation. Instead, I was gaslit into believing that “it was for the best”. Who’s best? Surely not mine.
My experiences with churches were not all bad, however, but my experiences were not all good either. In fact, things were downright horrible at times. There were times that were so bad that I actually wished for death as an escape, but I did not realize while going through it all that I was really around so many toxic people. Many of the church leaders along with members did not like change to the status quo, and they certainly did not appreciate my investigative questions.
For the most part, some of these people simply wanted me to either shut up or disappear. The longer I was around, the more difficult some of these people made it for me to want to remain in such a toxic environment. Yet, I did not think about the toxicity as toxic. Instead, I thought it was more the devil coming against me, but in hindsight, he had better things to do. The evil was already being done by the people themselves.
Although I did not realize this at the time, I was constantly being nudged out of church by a still small voice despite some people telling me that I was wrong. I was told that I could not have been hearing God about leaving the church, but I had to wonder why God wanted me to stay in an abusive situation. It did not make sense to me, but I held on for as long as I could because I wanted to do the right thing.
Yet, if I was being led to cut ties with individual toxic people in my life over time, then surely I could be led to cut myself away from toxic environments too. The church was a toxic environment for me, but that same sentiment could be echoed by other people that I knew too. It is so unfortunate that church members are prescribed to stay in abusive situations and even given twisted scriptural verses to gaslight them into accepting abuse as normal and a part of struggling to endure.
Far too many church members leave churches because more harm than healing sums up the atmosphere. Many people leave the church scene more damaged than before they arrived to it. They become casualties of the drama that most of them do not have an idea of unfolding behind the scenes. Sadly, so much is done and carried out in the name of God’s Son, God’s directives, God’s voice, and God’s Spirit when only counterfeit spirits exist within the midst of these church environments. I have heard countless stories and experienced many of these abuses myself.
On the contrary, though, not all churches are abusive, of course. There are many churches that DO provide the help people need in the area of narcissists and narcissistic abuse. In fact, I have noticed over the years that more spiritual leaders are learning more about antisocial personality disorders like NPD and are teaching others how to deal with and heal from narcissistic abuse based on their personal experiences. These churches are putting in more effort and love when it comes to their members. They are no longer sweeping mental health issues and disorders under the rug.
So, it is a turning point, but unfortunately, the turning point did not happen in time for me. I eventually left the church scene altogether much in the same way I walked away from my career. Enough was enough. I simply could not take any more of the abuse. Leaving helped me to breathe a great sigh of relief. Essentially, quitting church was like going no-contact from a narcissist. I had escaped and was free from narcissistic and spiritual abuse. In fact, leaving church was one of the best spiritual decisions I ever made even though it was very difficult for me to do. It took me breaking away from the notion that I needed to be in church to continue my relationship with God. I have sense learned and experienced otherwise.
Stay tuned to find out how I eventually achieved help in my journey in the next post.
My Voice Unchained 