The Red Flags Are Always There
At the admonition of a former therapist, I embarked upon returning back to school a second time in pursuit of a another master’s degree. This time around, my pursuit was in the area of mental health counseling. My former therapist seemed to believe that I would make an excellent therapist even though I was not so sure. The therapist believed my journey was to help someone. I naively believed I was destined to help people with narcissistic personality disorder.
Despite wading around with the idea of returning back to school for another advanced degree, the therapist was persistent. In fact, the therapist was a little too persistent. I only eventually became inclined to the idea once I realized that another career would be a segue away from a career that I had grown burned out from because of the often mentally challenging and toxic atmosphere within my former workplace. I saw returning to school as an eventual release for me.
Looking back, I wish I would have paid attention more to the signs … the red flags around my choice for seeking further educational advancement at the religious school that I chose, but I was more focused on my pathway to learning something new and receiving the advanced degree. I figured that once I got through the degree program, I would be good, but I had not bargained on all the dogma that going to a religious school would bring me.
Spiritually Abusive Colleges and Universities
There is no question that school organizations can be found within the realms of spiritual abuse. In fact, when I was in college I dodged becoming involved in at least two cult organizations that constantly paraded themselves around campus in the guise of people who really cared about others but were only looking to build a community of brainwashed followers. Although I am all for being open-minded about different concepts and perspectives, I do not believe that my mind should be forced opened just because someone else thinks so. I believe that changed ideas and perspectives occur over time. It is up to the individual to decide and not someone else for that individual.
Nevertheless, when I entered the graduate program within a school considered to be prestigious among Christians, I had only minimal expectations, and of those expectations, I desired to learn and be given an education regarding mental and psychological health. I did not expect to have to debate my stance regarding my personal spiritual beliefs and experiences, integrate the school’s dogma into my writing assignments, or fight against a system of gaslighting professors and staff and the school’s spiritual policies and dogma that had less to do with God and more to do with their need to control the lives of students.
What I got in terms of an education was less than what I gained in an understanding that spiritual abuse just does not exist within the confines of a church, spiritual abuse exists within the confines of religious school settings as well. The interesting thing is that I never physically saw any of my professors or any fellow students except for occasional individual weeks of intensive study over the course of the five plus years I was in the program. Otherwise, I could only infer what professors and classmates really thought of me in terms of their comments, emails, and posts in class sessions in response to me.
Mainly, I often felt like I was a nuisance for asking questions, for having a different opinion, and for not going along with some crazy program. It was this religious educational program that opened my eyes to the fact that if one does not subscribe to the beliefs of the organization that presents itself as all-knowing with attempts to be omnipresent and omnipotent in the lives of students, then hellfire should rain upon me for disagreeing. In many ways, my refusal to subscribe to the school’s doctrines or beliefs left me with experiences of being gaslit through means of the silent treatment (put on probation for a semester or two) or cast aside until some form of penitence could be repaid to them via writing letters to plead my case to be reinstated back into the school’s good graces (a form of stonewalling).
Looking back, I should have simply quit or transferred long before I chose to end it, but I was invested in getting my degree. By the time the honeymoon period of love bombing was over from this school, I had already invested my time, energy, and money to achieving my goal. Yet, the school seemingly made achieving my goal hard for me in a variety of subtle ways. Supposedly, my line of biblical thinking was off to “them”, and although some professors deemed it necessary to challenge my ways of thinking, it was a different story when I chose to stand up for myself and challenge them.
I realized that what this school wanted was a student who would simply go along with their ideals even when I came to realize their ideals were shrouded in lies and deception. So much for joining the school for an education. I received more than I bargained for and less than I actually desired from this school, but I did learn a lot. I learned that it is okay to walk away, and it is okay to take a loss (mainly financially) when dealing with schools like this. I lived, and I learned though, and it is not a lesson I am willing to ever repeat.
Online Versus On-Site
I was a part of an online program. So I cannot even begin to imagine what it might be like for students who attend in-person. The underlining spiritual abuse online is indeed existent, and for the most part, many students just go along with it because they are either blind spiritually or prefer to simply “do their time” so they can complete their studies without any issues. Yet, I am not one for remaining quiet. That has never been my thing. Perhaps that simply comes from years of experiencing other forms of abuse or the personality that I have within me. Either way, I could not stay quiet.
After all, I was paying a good amount of money to receive an education to become a mental health therapist. I did not want to become indoctrinated along the way. The school is free to do whatever it wants to spread their so-called version of “the gospel”, but that does not mean that I need to or even have to accept their message. So … I chose not to, and for many of the professors, my choice was a problem. I have never experienced so many professors becoming typed-tied in lingo when I entered the forums to answer discussion questions. Many times, I was placed on mute or stonewalled out of discussions, and I was never argumentative but always staying to the point.
I was often confused as to why some of the professors thought they needed to teach me about faith that I already have or insist that I establish my faith in a way that I did not agree with from their viewpoint. I am an adult. I have lived a life of varied experiences, and my faith has sustained me in many ways, but it has also been stretched to the limit. From this school’s dogma, I was out of line. Yet, it was crazymaking since all of the books I was assigned to read by the professors had absolutely nothing to do with my faith. Imagine incorporating spiritual dogma into a math problem. How does that even make sense when the problem is as simple as 1 + 1 = 2?
These types of schools hope for students with ideals like them, and if those students do not share their ideals, then these schools will find ways to drill their views into students. More so, these schools would prefer to have blind followers who will allow themselves to be indoctrinated, brainwashed, and pushed into worshiping them. Anyone who voices their own opinions are ridiculed and painted as troublemakers. Anyone who stands for the truth is deemed as “crazy”. Anyone who defies their ideals is seen as godless and lacking in the morals that they seem to create via their own rules and regulations which only faintly mirror biblical concepts. Unfortunately, many of these schools use the bible as a ruse or a prop.
My Experience
Throughout my time in the program, I battled severe depression (mainly because I was surrounded by narcissistic individuals in my private and professional life), and on many accounts, I was forced to disclose my private situation to the school as if to grovel for a continued place within their graduate program when I withdrew from a course or took a hiatus for a semester. Administrators seemed to be non-empathetic to my plight at all despite me being in a mental health program and despite mental health being a true issue that many students battled to keep intact.
Interestingly, though, I was reinstated into the program because in the end, my money mattered to them, and if I was willing to pay, then they were willing to take me through the hoops even if they could not get me to surrender my allegiance to them. As a matter of fact, I had to have others vouch for me as if to provide the school with some layer of security in the belief that I was a genuine student. It was crazy to me and reminded me of the time that a pastor and deacon of a congregation required me to write an apology letter to them and the congregation for taking a hiatus for several weeks. I had to seek to be reinstated back as a member despite the fact the the pastor knew that I was battling severe depression at the time.
Nevertheless, I was still in therapy while working towards the master’s degree, and I shared my struggles with the therapist. I believed that maybe the school was just not right for me, but the therapist encouraged me to continue while hinting that I battled with a demonic force that was working overtime to keep me from accomplishing my goals. Although all of that reasoning may have been true to the therapist, I now look back upon my time at that school and believe that the obstacles in my path were actually red flags regarding the narcissistic and spiritual abuse that surrounded me. Unfortunately, I did not clearly see it back then.
This particular school was an entryway into a very dark place for me, and in time, I equated my continued stay in the graduate program as a synonymous reminder of what I had experienced in three former places of worship in the past. In fact, many of the doctrines followed within those churches from the past were similar doctrines established within this particular school. So, I came to realize that spiritual abuse is simply not always allocated to people in a physical building such as a church. Spiritual abuse exists wherever anyone exerts some form of control over another person or group of people in the form of supervising another’s faith, religion, or spirituality.
My Voice Unchained 