About

The Spiritual Abuse Recovery Blog exists to make information, education and advice about spiritual abuse accessible to anyone who needs it. 

My name is Ruth and I live in the UK. I am training to be a counsellor (or a therapist for my American friends) and am a trustee at the Charity for Action on Spiritual Abuse.

I believe there is not enough easy-to-access information about spiritual abuse out there. More people are beginning to talk about it and people are asking more questions, which is great. I wanted to create a place where anyone can get balanced and helpful information on spiritual abuse and the road to recovery, for free.

What Will I Find On This Blog?

This blog covers a wide range of topics connected to spiritual abuse and religious trauma. For example, you can find:

• Discussions about what spiritual abuse is and isn’t
• Information about how spiritual abuse impacts people
• Practical advice on spotting spiritual abuse and taking action
• Practical advice for people who are recovering from spiritual abuse
• Practical advice for people supporting others who have gone through spiritual abuse

My goal is for it to be as accessible as possible, so I have used simple language and made things easy to understand. I hope this doesn’t come at the cost of quality. 

I hope in the future to add video content and audio recordings, so that people can get the content in the easiest way possible for them. But right now publishing one post a month takes up as much of my spare time as I can give. (If you have video editing skills and are interested in helping out, please get in touch!)

What Won’t I Find On This Blog?

This blog:

• Is not a place for me to process my own experiences of spiritual abuse. You won’t find any details of my story here. I’ve shared the reasons why in this post. I do share some parts of my recovery journey but only when I feel it will help others.
• Is not anti-religion. I think faith and spirituality are beautiful things, and I believe that having open conversations about spiritual abuse will make faith safer for everyone.
• Is not free from an agenda. I try to be fair in everything I write, but I am passionate that spiritual abuse is real and is harmful. My goal is to make people aware of spiritual abuse and how it effects people, and give survivors support and advice.

• Is not guaranteed trigger-free. I do everything I can to avoid someone being triggered by reading the content I share, and include content notifications if there is something which might be triggering. Still, everyone’s triggers are different. Please read this blog with care and if you feel I have missed something, please email me and let me know. If you ever feel you are getting overwhelmed, visit the Help for When You Feel Overwhelmed: Getting Through Hard Moments page.
• Is not AI generated. Every word on this blog is written by me or a guest author. I use an online language level checker tool to make sure I’m writing at a level that is easy to understand.
• Is not full of ads. I make no money from this project, and I do it all in my spare time with my own funds. This means I am only writing (I hope) high-quality content. There is no click-bait or filler content to try and earn me money.

How Can I Trust What You Write?

I am a survivor of spiritual abuse, which means this is more than theory to me. I have lived and breathed it.

At the same time, I am careful not to speak only from my own story. I have read a huge amount about spiritual abuse, trauma and recovery, and everything I am writing on this blog is backed up by research and writing from people of many different faiths and backgrounds.

Of course, I will always be more of an expert in my own background (evangelical Christianity), and this blog will reflect that. I hope that with time I will have more guest authors from different faiths sharing their knowledge too.

I am also training to be a counsellor and am taking courses about how to help people recover from trauma. This means that the advice I give about recovering from spiritual abuse is based in my professional training, as well as being shaped by my own recovery journey.

I am a trustee for the Charity for Action on Spiritual Abuse and volunteer on the support service. This means I am talking to survivors every single week, listening to their stories and supporting them to move forwards. Many of the posts on this blog address the themes that come out of that work.

At the end of the day, you get to decide if you trust what I write or not. Think about what I write. Ask questions. Pick holes in my arguments. Weigh up the evidence. Please don’t just believe what I say without thinking it through. If you decide for yourself that you don’t agree, that’s fine by me. As long as it is your decision.

More About Me

Here are answers to some questions I often get asked, so that you can get to know me a little better and decide whether my writing is for you.

What faith are you from?

I was raised as a Christian but I now think of myself as agnostic. This means this blog will be shaped by Christian ideas and experiences more than other faiths. I hope that in time this blog will have contributors from people of many different religions and spiritualities, sharing their advice and insights.

Even though I am no longer a Christian, I still have a very high respect for all faiths. I believe spirituality is incredibly beautiful. If it is handled well it can bring healing, peace, and deep nourishment to individuals and communities.

What kind of Christian were you?

I was raised as a protestant in a conservative evangelical denomination and then found my way into the charismatic evangelical world as a teenager in the early 2000’s.

Even though I was raised mostly in England, half of my family is Northern Irish. The religious culture of Northern Ireland is very different to the rest of the UK, and this shaped my faith and identity growing up.

I also spent a year at a ministry school at a megachurch in the USA, which gave me a rather stark insight into American evangelicalism.

All of these experiences feed into my writing on this blog.

What do you do when you are not writing this blog?

I am currently studying part-time for a Masters degree in Integrative Counselling. My journey to becoming a counsellor was of course shaped by my experiences of spiritual abuse and all I have learned through recovery. Those who know me also say they wouldn’t be surprised if had ended up becoming a counsellor one way or another.

To make an income while I study, I freelance as a digital marketing consultant, which I have been doing since 2018. Nowadays I only work for clients in the wellbeing space. I build websites, manage CRM systems, run marketing campaigns, and all sorts of other things. All of which comes in handy when you start your own blog!

As a person who gets bored easily and likes to have lots of projects on the go at once, it is no surprise that I am also a trustee of a growing charity, the Charity for Action on Spiritual Abuse. It’s a fantastic organisation and a privilege to be a part of it. We offer support for survivors, deliver training to faith and statutory services, and drive forward research on spiritual abuse.

Do you do stuff for fun?

Spiritual abuse is quite a serious topic, and it does get heavy at times! Thankfully it is not the only thing which steals my attention for long periods of time.

I am lucky to live in a beautiful city in England near stunning areas of countryside. So you will probably find me walking in the hills, swimming in a reservoir, or climbing up a crag.

If the English weather has forced me inside, I might be snuggling up with one of my cats and playing the Legend of Zelda on my Nintendo Switch, or at a board game cafe with some pals.

I also love folk dance and am part of a morris dance side. I love performing in pubs and at festivals with them.

All of these interests I have found as part of recovery. My life now is full and varied, and I have friends across many groups who I feel safe to be myself with.

Get In Touch

If you would like to get in touch, you can reach me at [email protected]. I will do my best to get back to you, but I only have so much time to give to this project.

If you are looking for support or advice, I won’t be able to give it over email. Check out the Get Help for Spiritual Abuse page to find organisations who might be able to give you some support.

You can also find me on LinkedIn.

Some Special Thanks

Lots of people have helped and supported me on the journey of writing this blog. I wanted to say a special thanks to a few of them:

• to everyone who has read my writing and given me feedback, thank you!
• to my therapist, who has believed in this project from the beginning and given me lots of encouragement.
• to everyone at Holy Rood House – I spent a week there writing from dawn to dusk in the sanctuary of the library, with beautiful grounds, Thomas the Tortoise, and plenty of cake! Your interest in my writing and encouraging smiles helped me finally get this published.
• to Simon and the trustees at the Charity for Action on Spiritual Abuse, who helped give me the idea for this project and really ‘get it’.
• most importantly, to every survivor and victim I have had the privilege of working with through the Support Service. Your stories stay with me, and everything I have written here is for you.