How Emotional Abuse in Your Christian Marriage Impacts Your Spiritual Health - Emotional Abuse 101 | Part 5 [360]
Flying FreeShow Notes
Emotional abuse in a Christian marriage doesn't just damage your mental health. It corrodes your spiritual foundation until you can't tell the difference between God's voice and your abuser's voice anymore.
🔑 Key Takeaways: Emotional abuse doesn’t just affect your mind and body. It wounds your soul. Natalie draws a powerful connection between emotional abuse and spiritual damage, especially for Christian women who’ve been taught not to trust themselves. When you’re conditioned to distrust your own inner knowing, spiritual confusion sets in. This leads to internal conflict, spiritual isolation, and the inability to differentiate between God's voice and the voice of your abuser. The church’s role often compounds the harm. Religious teachings that equate self-trust with rebellion against God cause many women to stay in abusive situations out of fear of divine punishment. You were never meant to worship at the altar of someone else’s control. God doesn’t ask you to sacrifice your voice, sanity, or safety. He offers freedom, not bondage. 📚 Natalie Reads from Her Memoir: All the Scary Little Gods
Timestamp 2:00–20:30 Natalie reads Chapter 58: “Bible Counseling”, which recounts two devastating encounters with so-called “biblical counselors.” These counselors weaponized scripture to enforce submission and silence rather than support. Through deeply personal storytelling, she illustrates how spiritual guidance can become a vehicle for psychological and spiritual gaslighting.
🎁 I want to give you a free gift. It’s the audio version of my book, All the Scary Little Gods. It’s a spiritual memoir about healing from religious trauma and toxic programming. You can listen to it FREE by going to scarylittlegods.com
🎙️ Watch the rest of this Emotional Abuse 101 series (as it comes out) HERE.
🔗 Other Links and Resources Mentioned 🧭 Free Resources & Support — Visit flyingfreenow.com 📕 Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage — Order on Amazon https://amzn.to/4o5FCM8 💌 Join the Flying Free Kaleidoscope — Visit joinflyingfree.com
More from Flying Free
My pastors told me that what I was experiencing for over two decades wasn’t serious enough to be called “abuse.” They said I had to be physically hurt for it to cross the line of “hard marriage” to “abusive marriage.” Their beliefs kept me spinning in a turmoil so great that I thought a lot about ending my life.
Today we welcome back Arizona family law attorney Wendy Hernandez to celebrate the release of her brand new book, Legally Ending Love, and to walk us through exactly what every woman needs to know before they file for divorce.
Today I’m going to tell you about the last of the three books I picked as the most life-changing for me so far. I was nervous to write this episode because the book is controversial in some circles, and even I was afraid to read it many years ago. I expected to confront all kinds of lies and heresies (this is what I was taught at my church!)
This is the second in a 3-part series where I’m sharing the top three books that have changed my life. Last week I talked about the book A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman. This week I will talk about Altogether You by Jenna Remiersma. And next week…well, you’ll have to come back then to hear me talk about a VERY controversial book in conservative Christian circles, but WOW did it absolutely do a number on my chronic fear, shame, and anger. But for now - let’s dive into a book that helped me make sense of the contradictory thoughts I struggled with every single day. “I can totally do this!” “I could NEVER DO THAT!”
A lot of people got mad at me when I started to change over ten years ago. They got so mad, they booted me out of my church and my family. In this episode, I’m going to tell you about a book that changed the way I parent, lead, and show up in my own life.