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

Check out the rest of the Emotional Abuse 101 series.

Article: How Emotional Abuse in Your Christian Marriage Impacts Your Spiritual Health – Emotional Abuse 101 | Part 5

Emotional abuse doesn’t just shatter your heart. It sabotages your soul. Especially when it’s wrapped in Bible verses and blessed by church culture. 

On the Flying Free Podcast Episode 360, I share my own experience of spiritual devastation inside an emotionally abusive Christian marriage. I also offer three telltale signs that your inner spiritual radar has been hijacked and how to start reclaiming it.

How does emotional abuse silence God’s voice in your heart?

One of the cruelest consequences of emotional and spiritual abuse is that it trains you to mistrust yourself.

You’ve been told that your intuition, your internal GPS, is rebellious. You’ve been taught that trusting yourself is prideful, dangerous, or even sinful. So when your gut says, This doesn’t feel safe, you silence it. You spiritualize your fear. You try to trust God by ignoring the very alarm bells He placed inside you for your protection.

And slowly, the voice of your abuser starts to sound like the voice of God.

This is not faith. This is spiritual captivity.

A peek into my own spiritual disintegration

Let me take you back to May of 2014. I wrote in my journal:

“I’ve been a child my whole life. I’m afraid to walk away from the God-figures in my life because if I do, I think God will abandon me too.”

That’s what happens when spiritual abuse takes root. You don’t just fear people. You fear God.

In chapter 58 of my memoir All the Scary Little Gods, I share the story of working with a “biblical counselor” who used Scripture as a weapon. She gaslit me under the guise of godly authority. She gave my abuser spiritual cover. 

And worst of all, she trained me to override my own voice in order to be “a submissive wife.” I believed her because I believed God sent her. 

He didn’t. 

I read this chapter in the episode above or you can buy All the Scary Little Gods and read the whole book. 

How does emotional abuse hijack you spiritually?

If you’re stuck in a confusing, emotionally abusive marriage and struggling to hear God clearly, here are three red flags that your spiritual radar has been tampered with.

1. You feel guilty for listening to your own instincts

That pit in your stomach? That anxiety when he walks in the room? That exhaustion from walking on eggshells? That’s your nervous system doing its job. But you’ve been taught that listening to it is distrusting God.

You’ve been conditioned to see your instincts as the enemy. But God gave you those instincts. They are not sin. They are signals.

2. You feel unsafe but think it’s your job to endure

Church culture often glorifies female suffering as sacrificial obedience. You’ve been told your pain is proof of devotion. That if you’re suffering, you’re doing it right. That if you leave, you’re giving up on God, not just your marriage.

This kind of theology doesn’t save. It enslaves.

God does not ask you to suffer so others can stay comfortable. Jesus came to set captives free, not lock them in cages of spiritual performance.

3. You can’t tell the difference between conviction and control

When you’ve been under spiritual manipulation for years, you may start to confuse shame with conviction. You may think God is “convicting” you when really, you’re just absorbing someone else’s disapproval or control tactics.

If every so-called conviction leads to fear, self-doubt, or paralysis, it’s not the Holy Spirit. The Spirit convicts to bring clarity and freedom, not confusion and despair.

So where do you go from here?

If you’re realizing that your spiritual radar has been hijacked, please know that you are not rebelling against God. 

You’re refusing to mistake abuse for godliness.

You don’t have to choose between your safety and your salvation. God is not your abuser. 

He is not the pastor who told you to submit no matter what. 

He is not the biblical counselor who gaslit you. 

He is not the voice in your head that says you’re being selfish or dramatic.

God is the one who gave you the courage to question.
He’s the one lighting up your inner warning system.
He’s the one inviting you to freedom.

Listen to All the Scary Little Gods FREE!

If this is hitting home, I want to let you listen to the entire book FREE. Just head over to scarylittlegods.com to sign up. You’ll also get my weekly Freedom Notes newsletter free. 

XOXO,

Natalie