Who Gets to Decide?

How Spiritual Abuse Controls the Story

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

Philosophers call it epistemic injustice.¹

Researchers call it institutional betrayal.²

Survivors experience it as confusion.

Spiritual abuse is often talked about as the result of bad leaders or misuse of Scripture. Though those are components, they don’t capture the more serious dynamics people experience. The deeper problem is far more entrenched and confusing: who has the authority to define what is real. Who gets the final word on what actually happened? Whose memory stands? Which interpretation becomes the official version of events?

“Epistemic” simply refers to knowledge – how we know what we know. At a human level, it reflects the idea that as image bearers of God, people are knowers, capable of perceiving and speaking about their own experience. In a system, it raises the question, “Who gets to decide what is real?”

Epistemic power tends to lean towards whoever has the final say on what counts as “knowing” and how events are interpreted. In many abusive systems, this epistemic shift is subtle. People may still be allowed or even invited to speak, but the authority to interpret what “actually” happened shifts toward those with position.

A church member may describe a meeting where they felt pressured or belittled. Leaders listen carefully, then someone says, “What actually happened was that you were being confronted in love,” or it is suggested that their hurt feelings clouded perception.

When authority controls interpretation, it also controls the moral judgement about who is wrong, who must repent, and who belongs.

In healthy families and churches, there is space for people to know what they know, see what they see, and feel what they feel, even when it’s uncomfortable or creates tension. There’s an understanding that disagreement or difference of opinion aren’t threats but invitations to conversation and understanding.

In unhealthy systems, the opposite pattern emerges. People begin to doubt what they know, question what they see, and distrust what they feel. Phrases like: “You’re too sensitive,” “That didn’t happen the way you think,” and “Let us explain what really happened” begin to replace trust in one’s perception and memory.

When control of interpretation is backed by spiritual authority, emotional and psychological abuse take on a spiritual force and weight. If leadership controls meaning, it also controls whether harm occurred, whether someone is “misunderstanding,” whether someone is “divisive,” whether someone needs to repent, and even whether someone ultimately belongs.

Spiritual Abuse Is Not a Separate Harm

Throughout this season of the Safe to Hope podcast, you will hear our expert guests return to this point again and again: spiritual abuse is not a stand-alone category. Spiritual abuse is emotional and psychological abuse layered with spiritual authority and moral language.

So to understand spiritual abuse, we need to back up and define what we mean by emotional and psychological abuse.

Coercive control researcher Dr. Emma Katz argues that they way we define abuse is changing:³

“We’re moving from asking ‘What is emotional abuse?’ to asking ‘What is emotional abuse ‘ABOUT?’ But this is just the beginning. Identifying that emotional abuse has a bigger agenda of entrapment is a gateway to a fresh set of questions.”

While Katz writes in the context of domestic abuse, the same pattern shows up in many systems where power and reputation must be protected, including spiritual ones.

That shift matters because focusing only on behaviors can miss the deeper pattern driving the abuse. Emotional and psychological abuse are not simply isolated hurtful actions. They exist to protect power – the power of a person, position, or the institution – by obscuring a person’s emotional world and sense of reality. In other words, a person’s intuitive knowing.

In faith environments, abuse often gains another layer: the spiritualization of abuse itself. Patterns of control begin to adopt the language of faith, reinforced with theological language, moral framing, appeals to spiritual maturity. What is harmful begins to appear righteous.

The harm is rarely obvious. It is clothed in the language of sincerity. Scripture reminds us that vice often imitates virtue.

As you read the descriptions and examples below, notice how ordinary patterns of control can be dressed up in spiritual language that mimics virtue.

Emotional Abuse: Conditions in the Emotional Realm

Since abuse targets different dimensions of a person, emotional abuse targets a person’s emotional world in ways that maintain power and position over them.

This isn’t about occasional conflict or emotional immaturity, but a patterned behavior that produces self-doubt and self-surveillance in the victim over time. It is a far more hidden and insidious harm than the common stereotype of put-downs.

The victim’s emotions are repeatedly corrected, minimized, invalidated, or weaponized. Meanwhile, the abuser’s emotional states begin to organize the relationship: anger which silences, disappointment inducing guilt or obligation, collapse that pulls others into caretaking, and tears that resist accountability.

Other indicators may include:

• Discounting, dismissing, or exaggerating the victim’s feelings

(“Your emotions are clouding your discernment. You need to submit your feelings to truth.”)

• Withholding affection, communication, information, or presence as punishment

(Silence and avoidance, or “The elders have already addressed this privately. Not everything needs to be communicated.”)

• Shaming, belittling, mocking, or humiliating (even from the pulpit)

(“Sometimes loving discipline means naming things publicly.”)

• Rewriting the victim’s motives or intentions

(“You’re not raising concerns because you’re hurt. You’re trying to divide the church.”)

• Shifting expectations so the victim cannot succeed

(“You should have come to us privately. Why are you bringing this up again?”)

• Chronic criticism that erodes confidence and self-worth

(“You’re not being teachable.”)

• Invalidating or reframing emotions disguised as maturity or logic

(“Mature believers don’t act this way.”)

• Conditional or variable empathy or support

(“I’m here for you, but only if your heart is submissive.”)

• Focusing on the victim’s tone, expression, or mood instead of responding to the actual concerns

(“Your tone and contempt tell me your heart isn’t right.”)

Here, emotions are not responded to with curiosity or care. They are things to be managed, minimized, or weaponized.

At the same time, an abuser may use their own emotional reactions or states as a way to control others.

This often looks like:

• Playing the victim to draw caretaking, guilt, or compliance

• Lashing out in anger or using quiet rage to intimidate or silence

• Demanding loyalty to the leader, the relationship, or the institution

• Avoiding accountability by pressuring quick forgiveness or grace

• Overwhelming the victim with emotional intensity or drama

• Sulking or emotional collapse when challenged

• Using calmness, withdrawal, or unpredictability that doesn’t match the situation

• Disengaging or distancing, especially when concerns are raised

One key marker of emotional abuse is an internal shift in the victim.

They stop asking, “Is this wrong?”

And they start asking, “What’s wrong with me?”

The goal is not honesty or repair. The goal is compliance, submission, control, and escape from accountability.

Psychological Abuse: Conditions in the Reality Realm

Psychological abuse occurs when a person’s perception of reality, judgment, or sense of self is steadily undermined in order to control or silence. It can be communicated with a high degree of certainty and confidence which makes trust in self even more difficult to hold onto.

Where emotional abuse erodes emotional freedom, psychological abuse erodes a person’s internal compass: their ability to trust what they know, remember, and perceive.

This is not about ordinary disagreement or everyday relational conflict. Psychological abuse involves repeated patterns where the abuser or system become the narrator of reality and the arbiter of truth.

Psychological abuse can show up through patterns like:

• Gaslighting: denying, minimizing, or rewriting events that clearly occurred

(“That’s not what happened.”)

• Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO)⁴

(“We’re the ones being hurt by the accusations you’re making.”)

• Spiritual bypassing

(“Let’s focus on healing and extending grace rather than revisiting the past.”)

• Rewriting someone’s motives or intentions

(“Your feedback was actually rooted in bitterness and anger.”)

• Creating double binds through shifting explanations or expectations

(“We value honesty.” “Your honesty is causing division.”)

• Contradictory or differing explanations that make clarity difficult

(“You’re misunderstanding what happened. You’re focusing on the wrong details.”)

• Reframing or selectively remembering events in ways that protect leadership or the institution

(“You’re misremembering the timeline.” “I don’t recall.”)

• Restricting access to information and decision-making while selectively asking for

input

(“We understand your perspective. Leadership will talk and tell you what we’ve decided.”)

• Pathologizing normal reactions such as fear, anger, grief, or confusion

(“You’re not seeing clearly because you’re so hurt.”)

• Using expertise, authority, or “pastoral concern” to override someone’s experience

(“God has placed us in leadership for your protection.”)

• Framing disagreement as moral, spiritual, or psychological failure

(“This division you’re causing is spiritual warfare meant to stop our mission.”)

• Blaming the victim for the confusion created by the abusive dynamic

(“If you were walking in humility and submission, this wouldn’t be so hard.”)

In psychologically abusive systems, questions are managed, ignored, or treated as threats, while naming harm and truth-telling are routinely reframed as sinful and divisive.

Gradually, the victim begins to doubt their own perception and instead looks outward for meaning and direction. This can feel easier because authority often appears strikingly calm, reasonable, or morally certain.

A key marker of psychological abuse is another internal shift. The victim stops asking, “What happened?”

And they start asking, “Did it really happen the way I remember?” and “Am I mistaken?”

Who Gets the Final Word

Emotional and psychological abuse work in tandem, each reinforcing the other. Emotional safety and interpretative authority are claimed by those in spiritual authority, creating long-term psychological harm that can be difficult to recognize and therefore slow and complex to heal.

Often what happens within the community is even more devastating. Credibility itself becomes uneven. Those who raise concerns receive a credibility deficit⁵ and are treated as unreliable witnesses to their own experience, just as in other examples of abuse. Meanwhile authority, granted automatic credibility excess, becomes the arbiter of what happened, what it means, and whose voice counts.

What is lost in the process is not only voice or belonging, but a person’s standing as a knower and God-given image-bearer. It undermines our capacity to perceive, speak, and bear witness to truth (to know what we know, to see what we see, and to feel what we feel). These are the very capacities required for truth, justice, and faithful witness.

1. See Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford University Press, 2007). Here, she describes situations where people are undermined in their ability to know and speak about their own experiences.

2. Jennifer Freyd, “Institutional Betrayal,” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 14, no. 4 (2013): 1-5; see also Jennifer Freyd and Pamela J. Birrell, Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren’t Being Fooled (Wiley, 2013).

3. Emma Katz, “Why Domestically Violent Men Use Emotional Abuse,” Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz (Substack), May 26, 2024. https://decodingcoercivecontrol.substack.com

4. See Jennifer Freyd, above.

5. See Fricker, Epistemic Injustice (2007), on testimonial injustice as a credibility deficit assigned to a speaker because of prejudice or power dynamics.