Welcome to Res Ipsa, where we talk about the intersection of the law, faith, and abuse, the obvious and the subtle, the easy to see, and the complicated parts of abuse and how that shows up in communities of faith, families of faith, and people of faith.
We’re going to start with the basics. What is abuse? We see that word a lot. We see certain words related to abuse or allegations of abuse including narcissism, gaslighting, abuse itself. So what really is abuse how do you identify it and what do you consider abuse?
Let’s start with some foundational understandings about abuse
There are certain foundational understandings related to abuse that not everybody knows.
The first is that abusers don’t abuse everyone.
That’s part of what makes it so complicated. And that’s part of why it hurts when someone who is a victim says, “Hey, they did this to me.” And other people say, “I think they’re wonderful. And they’ve never hurt me.”
That’s part of the dynamic.
Abusers don’t abuse everyone. Some people they need in order to function. They need for maintenance of their self-esteem. They need in order to get something or to get ahead. Often their abuse focuses on people they can control. Because the basis of abuse is power and control.
The second thing to understand is that abusers don’t abuse all the time. That’s also what makes it hard to detect even for their victims, because it’s a cycle. It’s a pattern of behavior.
Many of you may have heard of the cycle of abuse. In domestic violence, it’s common to think of the honeymoon phase, the tension building phase, then the explosion phase, and that keeps going in a circle.
Abusers don’t abuse everyone.
Abusers don’t abuse all the time.
So even in that basic description of a cycle of abuse, there are times when an abusive person is nice and wonderful. A victim can feel like that kind, giving person is the real person.
And the harsh, possibly violent, critical, deceitful, manipulative person is the aberration-- the exception. So they keep thinking they can get that person back to the nice, wonderful person, if they just acted right, if they did the right things. Often they’re being told that if they just did this, that other person would be the nice, normal person and it’s actually the victim’s fault as to why the abuser is not staying that nice person. Over time, the victim often diminishes into a very small piece of themselves in an effort to get the abuser back to that person, back to that part of the cycle where they’re nice and kind.
Now I’m describing specifically what happens often in domestic abuse. But these things happen in other types of abuse as well.
In chronic sexual abuse, sometimes the victim imagines the abuse isn't happening at all or re-frames it as a relationship or innocent behavior to "get back to" the original relationship.
That’s some basic understandings that we all need to have in order to look at evaluating what is and isn’t abuse.
Abuse generally is a pattern of behavior. It’s not because one single act can’t be abusive. It actually can be. So, an act of sexual abuse -- it’s objectively abusive. However, the patterns that we’re talking about are often over time, over the course of an individual victim sometimes, but often over the course of multiple individuals.
That’s true in domestic abuse, sexual abuse. There’s a reason it plays out in a pattern, and that is because abuse is a mindset. It’s a mindset within that abusive person -- how they perceive themselves and how they perceive other people.
Abuse is a mindset within that abusive person -- how they perceive themselves and how they perceive other people..
Other people are for their use and whether that’s their use to maintain their self-esteem, to get gratification, whether that’s sexual gratification or gratification that they’re smarter, or better, or that they can control them and get them to do what they want. It is that other people exist for purposes of the abuser.
Does the Bible say anything about abuse?
There are passages in the Bible that talk about this. For example, Matthew 15:18-19:
But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart and this defiles a person. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander.
Also in the book of Mark, chapter 7:
For from within out of people’s hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.
So our actions come out of the state of our heart. The behaviors of an abusive person, they’re a pattern and are very difficult to change.
Even if they (seem to) have a willingness, humility, and a brokenness to change, you won’t know that for years and likely decades, whether that’s actually changing. Yes, there’s probably a rare circumstance. We look at Saul, Paul in the Bible, it was instantaneous, but he literally became a different person.
And in the case of abusers, often it can seem like that for a period of time, but it is wisdom to examine behavior and test what that looks like over years and decades to understand whether that change is real.
So how can we evaluate whether something is abuse?
I’m going to jump into how I look at abuse, what framework I use to examine abuse.
For me, that consists of three things:
power
the misuse of power
harm
That’s generally in all types of abuse.
I’m going to look at different types of power, then misuse of power and how that comes about. How do you decide if someone is misusing power and the types of harm that can result.
It used to be that people considered only physical violence to be abuse. in domestic abuse, if you weren’t being hit, people didn’t consider that domestic violence. If you see movies back in the day, like The Burning Bed with Farrah Fawcett, those are the traditional views of what domestic abuse looked like.
But we’ve learned this more in the last, 20 to 30 years. The core of abuse is the desire for power and control and how that plays out. It makes sense that we would first look at the power and the differential in power between the abuser and their victim.
So what’s not abuse?
So before I get into those elements of abuse, I want to talk about, what it could be if it’s not abuse? Many people say not everything is abuse. I think on the one hand, we’re just better at recognizing and understanding what abuse is versus under-diagnosing abuse.
But it’s helpful to be nuanced about it and look at, what’s really not abuse. If you’re a doctor looking at a variety of symptoms there are differential diagnoses for abuse.
For example, relational conflict, often in domestic abuse, people characterize what’s happening as just a conflict. This is just a personality conflict. This is just a marriage conflict. This isn’t abuse. Relational conflict can be things like being generally unfriendly, either, with friends or say, at church, if we’re talking spiritual abuse, you could have possibly an intimidating or a bold personality that makes it difficult for others to engage with you.
Not getting along, seeing the world differently and having disagreements and you annoy me. Also accidentally hurting someone, or saying things or doing things that are hurtful. Those things are not abuse. But there’s a difference when we get into patterns of behavior.
And that is that one person has greater power than the other and there’s often numerous conflicts. So there’s a volume. That’s one of the difficulties in recognizing say sexual abuse, for example, the first time someone does something because you don’t see a pattern to know they’re not going to stop doing it.
And that’s why when people are arrested for sexual abuse, they often have dozens, hundreds of victims because of a mindset viewing others as servicing their needs. In the case of abuse, there’s that volume of behavior, the patterns. often it affects a number of different people or victims, and there is a depth of harm. This isn’t just superficial harm that’s being done, and that remains unresolved.
So let’s say we’re talking about relational conflict. Of course, there are people who accidentally hurt you over time. But if there is someone that is abrasive, deceitful, and hurtful to a number of people and those conflicts are never resolved.
That would generally not be relational conflict. If that person is in a position of power, that would most likely qualify as abuse. If those relationships are of equal power, it can still be harmful and hurtful, but not as much so as if that person is in a position of power.
In spiritual abuse, one of the differential diagnoses can be doctrinal differences. We can disagree on how we interpret the Bible. We can disagree on doctrines in our church, whether that is complementarianism or egalitarianism in terms of the roles of men and women. how we view the rapture, or how we view the tribulation, whether we are affirming. We can have different doctrines and it doesn’t have to be an abusive situation.
There’s actually a specific basis for looking at spiritual abuse by leaders, in the Bible from Ezekiel 34:
Ah, shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.... as I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep.
Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.
That really is a basis of looking at how shepherds or leaders in faith can be abusive to people under their influence. They can be feeding off of them, using them for their own financial gain, sexual gratification, their own ego maintenance or glorification.
Let's talk about a framework for analyzing abuse
Let’s get into the framework that I use for abuse. Let’s start with power, the abuser, or the influencer, because really power is the ability to influence people, to influence behavior. So I’m going to call them the influencer and the target. Those are labels that are often used in books that talk about influence or talk about power.
What do you mean by power?
There are lots of different kinds of power in the literature. One of the books that looks at power is called “The Bases of Social Power” by French and Raven, and it identifies five different kinds of power.
Legitimate power comes from a formal structure such as your job title, responsibilities, hierarchy. Expert power refers to knowledge. one possesses via intellect, education, or otherwise. Referent power refers to the strength of regard. followers have for a leader. A highly respected leader has high referent power. Reward power comes from an individual’s control over resources that others need or desire, such as funding, access, or benefits. Coercive power uses fear, punishment, or force to influence others.
There’s also other sources of power identified in other literature, such as charismatic power, which is charm and engaging qualities of a leader. Informational power, holding information that others don’t have, where withholding or sharing it allows that person to leverage that information. Moral power, which is trust gained through being perceived as having ethics, belief for their behavior. Connection power, being allied with influential people or giving followers the sense that the leader can access that power. [“Power and Leadership: Nine Types for Effective Leaders.”]
There’s other sources of power that I personally have identified, especially in spiritual abuse, such as spiritual power itself. And that’s a combination of some of those other powers. It’s held by a leader who is regarded as speaking for God, whether it’s because of their intellect, education, morality, or connections. They either set themselves up as, or are perceived as speaking for God.
Relational power is similar to connection power, but it’s the ability to amplify a message. Whether you have access to social media, or a pulpit. That relational power amplifies the things you can say or do over and above somebody else.
So you might say, that person has power, but the other people have power too. And you’re right. One of the key things is the relationship of the power between the influencer and the target. And that’s often why certain people will not experience harm from an abusive person.
Say someone is the employer and the employee, obviously that relationship would be different than if they’re friends. So we would look at those same types of power in the person potentially identified as being the target of the influencer.
Another important aspect of the power is the values of the target. So let’s say the influencer has reward power. They have access to certain benefits or resources that people need. But let’s say those benefits or resources are of no value to a particular target. So there would be less power in that area for the influencer over that person because they don’t need those benefits.
Or for example, in a faith context, in the context of spiritual abuse, potential targets who place high value on their faith, on being right with God, if they have a pastor who is engaging in spiritual abuse, that can be even more harmful to them because they place such high priority and high value on the things that are offered in the pastoral context.
Examples of power in different kinds of abuse
Let’s look at those types of power in the context of different kinds of abuse. So let’s say physical abuse, whether that’s domestic abuse or in other contexts, often the abuser has greater physical strength. They’re more imposing, so they can harm the victim more significantly.
Often in domestic abuse situations, the abuser is a male who might be larger in physical stature, more muscular, more powerful.
In sexual abuse, the perpetrator might be an adult who has more experience in the world. They have more knowledge. They have more relationships. They are a person of power and the victim might be a child. So you can see there’s a significant difference in different types of power, even just in an adult child relationship versus two adults.
Let’s look at sexual abuse in the context of clergy sexual abuse. If the perpetrator is a member of the clergy, if they’re that person’s pastor, they have those different types of power that we talked about in terms of spiritual power. They have legitimate power as the pastor in that role.
If they’re highly regarded, they have high referent power. They have reward power possibly in terms of access to, services or regard in the church. The victim might be their subordinate. Often they have coercive or charismatic power if they’ve become a pastor and can convince other people that they’re telling the truth versus the victim.
They have relational power because they have the power of the pulpit. They have the power of possibly the church’s social media or email list to amplify their message. They have spiritual power often in the church as people perceive them as interpreting God’s Word and speaking for God. they have significant power in that relationship if there is a clergy sexual abuse situation where a pastor has sexually abused someone in their congregation.
Let’s look at the situation of emotional or psychological abuse. For example, in a domestic abuse situation, often in those cases, the perpetrator is a male and the victim is a female. They often have access to the greater amount of funds, resources in the family.
They’re often highly regarded in their community and the victim may not have contacts or be as well known. Often they’re charismatic and coercive in order to convince the victim that the victim has to get the approval of the perpetrator in order to function or do certain things in their life.
They often hold information that they keep from their victim That’s a type of power often used in a tactic called gaslighting where they hold certain information that they know to be true or not true and use that deception and warping of reality to hold power over the victim over what is real and what is true and what’s actually happened in the past.
That’s an overview of the types of power involved potentially in abusive situations.
How can we tell if someone is misusing power?
How do we see whether power is being misused, especially in an abuse of power situation that may not involve sexual behavior, it may not involve financial, lack of integrity or other situations?
One way to look at misuse is the intent of the perpetrator or in the actions themselves. The intent or the actions or the harm can show that there was misuse. For example, in a case where a perpetrator is engaging in behavior that is not objectively abusive.
For example, back rubbing, or massage. Those are behaviors other people do that are not abusive, but if the intent of the perpetrator is for their own sexual gratification and the victim may not even know. That still can be abuse where their intent is manipulative, controlling, or abusive.
In some cases, that intent may not even be conscious. It may be subconscious. sometimes abuse is for the maintenance of the ego or self-perception by the abuser to maintain their sense of worth, their sense of power and control in the world. They may not be doing these behaviors consciously, but it doesn’t make it any less abusive.
We can look at the behaviors and determine whether that’s misuse. We can look at the pattern over time. There’s also the Duluth wheel, the power and control wheel developed by a specific domestic abuse group that describes different behaviors that can exist within an abusive relationship, most often in domestic abuse.
We can also look at the behavior itself. Sometimes behaviors themselves are objectively abusive, such as physically striking someone, and physically striking someone within certain relationships would then be domestic abuse, or sexual touching outside of a consensual relationship. Anytime an adult, touches a child in a sexual way, that is objectively sexually abusive behavior.
Other behaviors, specifically in efforts to gain and maintain power and control, which often play out in emotional or psychological abuse or also spiritual abuse, are weaponization, which is taking information again, that information power, and using it either to harm someone or to manipulate the people around them. In spiritual abuse, that can be the use of spiritual concepts in order to try to, manipulate people’s behavior or for sexual gratification or for making the perpetrator feel powerful.
Another concept is triangulation, which can be sowing discord or pitting people against other people through the use of words or stories.
Another tactic is the use of deception in strategic ways. Deception can also be used in gaslighting, where the abuser, uses information and deception to make the victim question their sense of reality, question what actually happened.
That’s a tactic called rewriting history where the victim knows, “The other day I went to this store,” and the abuser, “No, you didn’t. You must be imagining things. You don’t have a very good memory.” That’s a tactic called gaslighting. Over time, the use of that behavior actually reduces the trust of the victim in themselves, in their own memory, in their own perceptions. They begin to rely more and more on the abuser telling them who they are, what happened, what they like and don’t like. that slowly erodes the sense of self that the victim has over time. Often this can go on for decades because sometimes in those relationships there is no physical violence or specific actual contact.
There are other types of physical violence. Intimidation and threats are considered physical violence, but they’re not being touched. If that victim’s sense of self has slowly eroded over time, where they trust the abuser more than themselves, and they haven’t necessarily been hit, they may have no understanding that what’s happening to them is abuse.
Other tactics include hypocrisy where there’s a special circumstance for the behaviors of the abuser -- they get to spend money in this way, but the victim does not and things don’t line up and don’t make sense.
Another tactic is isolation. And often people think in abuse that isolation is physical isolation. I won’t let that person leave the house. I won’t let them have friends. But isolation can also be psychological isolation. And that can come in the form of, losing trust in anyone but the abuser. So the abuser discounts everyone but themselves. that person is a terrible person. You know, they made that terrible decision and if they do this enough a victim slowly distrusts other people and that emotionally isolates them from anyone they might tell what’s happening, or that they might confide in or become closer to, and thus, continue to rely more and more on the abuser.
What types of harm does abuse cause?
The other part of abuse is the harmful impacts. There can be behaviors that are objectively abusive without necessarily there being harmful impact at the time. In some cases, only by education and experience over time do people realize that something that happened to them is abuse.
On Wednesday, we’re going to talk about how does someone not see what’s happening to them or what has happened to them? How do people get to the age of 50? And say, “Oh my gosh, I was sexually abused as a child.” We’ll look at how that happens. How do people sit in a marriage for 20 years and only after going to therapy realize, “Oh my gosh, I’ve been in an abusive marriage.”
The harmful impacts of abuse can be emotional. psychological, relational, physical, sexual, spiritual.
Emotional impacts of abuse can be fear, especially when you realize that you’ve been in a type of abusive relationship or you might have an experience where you see a side of them that you’ve never seen before and all of a sudden strong fears arise: “Are they following me? Are they going to harm me? Are they going to kill me?”
Yes, that fear is real. Whether or not that’s grounded in reality, but the fear itself is real. They might also fear that people think of them as crazy. People fear that they won’t be believed.
Other emotional impacts include anger at themselves for not seeing the truth, anger at the abuser, anger at people who failed to hold that person accountable or to stop the abuse. Depression and grief can be very strong emotional impacts. When you realize that nothing was as you thought it was. Having to go back and reconstruct your history with that person and in other parts of your relationship, can bring on a lot of grief and even depression.
I've seen these impacts and this need to reconstruct a more accurate history of the relationship in all types of abuse: sexual abuse, domestic abuse, spiritual abuse, power abuse.
Guilt and shame can be part of this. “Why did I stay? Did I play a role in this? Did I cause this?” Those are even worse if they’re brought on by the people who have received the allegations and they compound that grief and shame.
We’ll talk about that at one point here on Res Ipsa how to be a person that’s safe to receive allegations and what happens when people do not receive allegations well and become part of the problem. sometimes the harm from that situation is equal to, or even greater than the harm of the original abuse.
Other harmful impacts, psychological impacts, specifically looking at tactics like hypocrisy, deception, and gaslighting, a distorted sense of reality, a loss of your sense of identity, confusion, paranoia, PTSD, whether that’s, in the form of complex trauma or complex PTSD, changes in overall mood, sudden anger, reexperiencing, hyper focusing on things that happened or on protecting yourself. The concept of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn comes into play here on how you start handling things in your life or interactions with the abusive person.
Also avoidance, where you avoid people situations, triggers, conversations, or similar experiences to stay away from the pain that has happened as part of the abuse.
There can also be relational impacts. It can affect your belief about people. It can affect your friendships, your sense of trust. Family relationships, especially if the abuser has sowed discord in those relationships, it can affect your employment and community relationships.
Also physical impacts. Obviously there are physical impacts that can come from sexual abuse and physical abuse, but there’s actually physical effects that come from the emotional and psychological impact of abuse.
Childhood physical, sexual, or emotional abuse and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), they’re associated with an increased risk for types of chronic pain, as well as emotional abuse is a significant predictor of having irritable bowel syndrome. There’s a link between emotional and psychological abuse and actual physical manifestations of conditions and symptoms.
Finally, there are spiritual impacts of abuse, especially of spiritual abuse itself. It can affect a person’s relationship with God, how they (may) view him as an abusive God or controlling or punitive God. It can affect their faith beliefs, their relationships within a faith community or whether they’re willing to be a part of that. There can be triggers due to prayers, songs, showing up on Sunday, holidays. If those were used as part of the spiritual abuse or part of the emotional abuse within a marriage, going back into those or experiencing those as you’re trying to heal can be very difficult.
*It’s not surprising when people who have endured spiritual abuse or any type of abuse have difficulty in communities of faith, especially if that community was part of covering up for, enabling, or excusing the behavior of their abuser. That’s why it’s so important for communities of faith to learn how to be trauma informed and to learn how to receive allegations of any type of abuse.
That is part of our role. If we are going to be Jesus to people, that is caring and compassionate and serving people and binding up their wounds. And that is not by making them feel shame and guilt for their abuse. It’s not by enabling the people that are harming them. The Bible speaks of helping and supporting the oppressed and liberating the captives so many times. And that is our responsibility as Christians, as part of the church, as believers for victims of abuse.
What's coming up next week?
On Monday in Chicken and Bones, we’re going to talk about what’s helpful and what’s not in terms of terminology. The terminology of abuse, gaslighting, narcissism. What do we keep and what do we let go? How do we look at this with nuance?
Then on Wednesday in Res Ipsa Nota, I’m going to talk about how someone can not see that they are in an abusive relationship, whether that’s in a spiritually controlling or cult like church environment, whether that’s in a domestically abusive situation, whether that is childhood sexual abuse.
How do we not see something as abuse? Is that because it’s not abuse or are there other factors that come into play for how we hide that from ourselves?
I look forward to seeing you again on Monday and Wednesday, if you are a paid subscriber, and to have conversations on the chat about these topics.
See you next week sunshiners.
Warmly,
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