Women in Religious Communities and Abusive Relationships

Over the past few years, I have immersed myself in researching the similarities and correlations between women who were raised in highly controlled religious communities and women who find themselves in abusive relationships.

Many of the values and teachings found in highly controlled religious communities groom women into accepting and even seeking out relationships that are toxic, controlling, and abusive. Relationships where they are not seen, heard, or valued for who they are. Instead, the focus is on what they do for others, particularly their male partners.

Women are taught that love requires sacrifice and that love is a choice.

They are taught to believe that in order to deserve love, they must give everything that they have. Their time, intelligence, body, emotions etc. If love is a sacrifice, then they must sacrifice their entire selves. Women are encouraged to be grateful, useful, and needed. They are celebrated and rewarded for being helpful and for putting others first.

They are taught that their worth is tied to their utility. Women are encouraged to become selfless at work, as mothers, and as partners, because essentially, their needs do not matter. Instead, meeting the needs of everything and everyone else in their life is what gives them value. Essentially, the love that they receive must be earned.

In doing so, many of them lose themselves completely.

Instead of being taught to thrive, these women are taught to make themselves small and to please others. They often confuse abuse and pain with connection.

While it is important to care about others, selflessness can often result in self-abandonment. When you abandon yourself, your feelings, and your needs, you become someone who others can take advantage of and use. Abusive systems and people crave women like this. They look for those who over-share, over-give, and over-function. They learn very quickly that you will do anything you have to do to make them happy or to keep the peace.

When women are groomed to become servants and helpers, they can be controlled by those in power. They are drawn to people and systems that reinforce these beliefs and many of them get sucked in for years, if not entire lifetimes.

The good news is that more and more women who grew up like this are beginning to find themselves.

I work with many women who followed these toxic rules, embraced these values, and tried to meet the unrealistic expectations of these people and systems.

Many of them are told that if they fall in line and follow the rules, they will find joy, purpose, and fulfillment. This is not the reality for many, if not most of these women.

There is no joy or fulfillment in self-abandonment or letting others consume you. This is not love. This is not what gives you value.
Real love does not require you to erase yourself. In erasing your identity, you give full control to something or someone else.

When working with women who have experienced this kind of upbringing and/or relationship(s), I focus a lot on helping them see who they are apart from everything and everyone else in their life. My goal is to empower them so they can experience what authentic love looks like, sounds like, and feels like.

If you are someone who has been struggling with this type of indoctrination, I would love to help you navigate what comes next in your story.