Ann Maree: Hello and welcome to the Safe to Hope podcast. Safe to Hope: Hope Renewed in Light of Eternity exists to offer women space to tell their stories of suffering and loss with care, dignity, and honesty. Though all suffering is loss, we ground that belief in a God who cares and remains present. This is our hope. My name is Ann Maree, and I am the Executive Director of Help[H]er and the host of this week’s podcast.
Today I’ll be joined in the studio with our resident expert and board member, Julia Filner. This podcast is made possible by donors who believe faithfulness means protecting the dignity of women’s stories and creating a space for truth-telling without pressure or performance. Together, we listen for God’s redemptive thread and look for ways to join Him in His transforming work.
Before we begin, we want to take a moment and care for our listeners. The Safe to Hope podcast typically includes discussions of abuse, and this season will as well. In particular, we’ll be talking about spiritual abuse. However, our conversations may include other abuses. Please listen at your own pace and take breaks as needed. If at any point you need to pause or step away, that’s okay. Your well-being matters.
Julia: Hi listeners, and welcome to another episode. Today we wanted to give a brief intro before we hear from our expert contributor. In this episode, we will be discussing narcissism and spiritual abuse. Narcissism is a word that gets used a lot right now, though people are often talking about very different things when they use it. Clinically, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD, refers to a specific diagnosis that’s characterized by patterns of grandiosity, entitlement, a heightened need for admiration, selective or variable empathy, and difficulty maintaining mutual or accountable relationships.
Researchers debate prevalence rates, but estimates for NPD generally fall somewhere around 6% of the population, but newer data suggests that it’s closer to 15 to 18%, or 1 in 6, with much higher rates among those in leadership positions. Many of the dynamics people are trying to make sense of don’t always fit neatly into a diagnostic category, and really, they don’t have to in order to create harm.
Many clinicians distinguish between a more formal diagnosis and broader narcissistic traits or styles of relating. So practically, how might narcissism actually show up? It can be seen in patterns like image management, chronic defensiveness, lack of collaboration, difficulty receiving feedback, blame shifting, denying, lack of meaningful repair, control, centering their needs, using trust to gain alliance or compliance, feeling easily slighted and then withdrawing or withholding, making future promises that aren’t fulfilled, a low threshold for frustration, or prioritizing their emotional needs over the well-being of others.
Many individuals with strong narcissistic traits also tend to overestimate their own empathy and significantly underestimate the impact their behavior has on others. To them, intentions carry more weight than impact. There’s also a particular type called communal narcissism, where someone’s identity is tied to being especially moral, sacrificial, helpful, service-oriented, spiritually mature, or uniquely chosen and gifted in specific ways.
And that becomes especially apparent in religious environments where narcissistic dynamics are often veiled behind language of humility, obedience, calling, sacrifice, shepherding, and even grace. One of the things we need to understand about spiritual abuse, and any abuse, in fact, is that it is inherently narcissistic. And not simply in the casual internet sense where every difficult person gets labeled a narcissist, but in the way leaders and systems gradually organize themselves around protecting their image or brand, around preserving their authority or positions, around managing other people’s perceptions, and around avoiding accountability.
And once those patterns become embedded, harm becomes, well, inevitable. If low empathy and arrogance and chronic defensiveness are part of narcissism, how could those not impact human souls eventually? All of this information isn’t just gleaned either from secular psychology. Scripture speaks about these personalities with surprising clarity. In 2 Timothy 3, Paul warns about people who are lovers of self and have the appearance of godliness, but deny its power.
John warns the church of a man named Diotrephes who likes to put himself first. He’s described as a leader who refused accountability, who spread malicious accusations, and who pushed people out of the church. Nabal is described as harsh and badly behaved as well, responding with contempt and disregard in ways that placed many others in danger. Paul defines spiritual strongholds as arrogant and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God.
Proverbs repeatedly connects wisdom with teachability, humility, and correction. It says, “The way of a fool is wise in his own eyes,” and, “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.” And then there are the Pharisees, whom Jesus repeatedly confronts over issues of image and public self-righteousness that are disconnected from true humility and mercy.
He also felt their hostility and accusations. He sees. He knows. In other words, there’s nothing new under the sun. Those who study spiritual abuse spend time studying narcissism. It’s our hope that this conversation adds clarity alongside the work that has already been done.
Today I am joined again in the studio with our resident expert, contributor, and board member, Julia Filner. And Julia, as always, it’s wonderful to have you back again.
Julia: Thanks for having me.
Ann Maree: Absolutely. We are excited to be joined today by our expert contributor for this series, and that is Chuck DeGroat, who has graciously offered to help our audience understand better how to care for somebody who might be impacted by the circumstances of spiritual abuse, as our recent storyteller, Michelle, was.
Chuck serves as the Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and founding Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. He is also a faculty member for the Soul Care Institute. Chuck is a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, author of six books, and a retreat leader and speaker.
He is also a minister of the Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America, having pastored in Orlando and San Francisco before transitioning to training and forming pastors. Chuck has been married to Sarah for 31 years, and he is the father to two amazing daughters and one fantastic son-in-law.
And so we’re just going to have a conversation about this. We have some questions that we really want to get asked, and we really just want to hear from Chuck, from his experience as a therapist and just as a thinker and also a child of God who is very concerned about the church and God’s people. And so I’m going to hand this over to Julia to get us started.
Julia: Anything that you want to say to our audience just to introduce yourself, Chuck? I’m pretty sure most people are familiar with your work, but for those of our listeners who aren’t familiar, I’d love for you to say a piece.
Chuck: Well, I think what I’m having the most fun with these days is we started a clinical mental health counseling program at Western Theological Seminary, where I teach, and it’s been really gratifying to train a new generation of mental health counselors who are trauma-informed and understand these kinds of dynamics. Right. And so that’s a large part of what I do besides my work as a therapist and, now, an empty nester dad of two daughters, one who’s married, one who’s getting married, and both of whom, one who’s in the counseling program right now, one who might be, and a husband who already is too. So it’s becoming like a therapy mafia family or something like that. You know, it’s interesting. We’re all in the business now. And even my wife has a counseling degree. So, yeah.
Ann Maree: I bet your holidays are fun.
Chuck: You know, we try to keep it very playful and light because if you know anything about the therapeutic world, right, I mean, it’s pretty intense work. And so we have a lot of fun together.
Ann Maree: Yeah. Good. I’m just like, if you’re in the realm of trauma.
Chuck: That’s right. That’s right.
Ann Maree: I was just picturing a get-together of internal family systems at Christmas anyway.
Chuck: Yeah. Now that they’re starting to get more familiar with that language, it’s getting interesting. You know, what part of you spoke that said that, you know?
Julia: Yeah. Can you share a little bit about your journey and how you came to do the work that you do currently?
Chuck: Yeah. Well, I was a seminary student in the mid-1990s, and I was the guy who came to seminary who had all the answers before he even got there. I had it all figured out, and that was in 1995. And by 1997, the pastoral counseling professor named what he was seeing in me: the arrogance, the certainty, all the things, and invited me, more than that, invited me to go on a journey to do my own work.
I was 27 years old at the time, and I had no idea what he was talking about. But I began doing my own work in a very relationally oriented program, a very experienced program, and it didn’t take very long in the context that I was in, like the ecclesial context that I was in at the time, that was quite complementarian, but even more explicitly misogynistic, that it didn’t take very long for me to begin to see some of the dynamics that we were talking about in the classroom.
People weren’t talking about spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, that as much back then. There were very few resources. But, you know, it wasn’t hard because I had gotten a job and I started pastoring too. It wasn’t hard in some of my pastoral counseling conversations to begin to connect the dots, to see that there were dynamics of abuse. And yeah, back then, we didn’t have social media, we didn’t have resources.
And so about six years into that job, because of the work that I was doing, I was fired. And that was a very, very painful, incredibly painful ending to a role that I poured my life into. We had had two kids. They had both been baptized at that church.
That’s when I began to discern that I had felt the sting of abuse myself. You know, there’s more to my own story, of course, before that. But I carried that around as trauma in my own body for almost a decade before I landed in the hospital, recognizing at that point that I had not dealt with the depth of the pain that I had absorbed, both directly through the traumatic experience that I had had, but also in a secondary way. We talked about secondary trauma through the work that I’d been doing with my clients.
And so, yeah, I got into it in that way. I mean, I used to go to court more regularly on behalf of women in particular, who I was doing work with in abusive marriages. And then the work grew. You know, I started doing psychological assessments and a little bit of consulting with churches, and the work just sort of grew from there. But yeah, I’ve been doing this work for 25 or more years now. And as you all know, it’s profoundly hard work and taxing, emotionally taxing, but deeply personal and transformational and gratifying at another level.
Julia: Yeah, yeah. It certainly challenges you and pushes on all the spots and your blind spots and the places that need to be changed. You mentioned a pastoral counseling professor who spoke those words to you, kind of challenging maybe what he was saying, but then also your own experience and a church space of harm. What I guess my question of curiosity is, what kept you in it? And what kind of change agents led you to the healing path? Because a lot of people can just say, I’m done doing this anymore, or stay stuck in their same patterns.
Chuck: Yeah. You know, thankfully, I wasn’t terribly entrenched in patterns. I think I was more confused, and I was trying to be what I thought I was supposed to be as a seminary student at that time. So my defenses collapsed pretty easily.
It was also an environment where there were a number of women in the program who, pretty within the first six months or so, sat with me in various contexts to tell me how they experienced me. And that’s very powerful. I don’t know that you can do this abstractly. You know, I think you need to know your impact.
And as they explained my impact and as I began to take that to some others in my life, including my own wife, you know, we’d been married about three or four years by then, you know, she was able to sort of reflect back, yeah, I experience some of those things, and here’s how I experience it. It’s like the scaffolding came tumbling down. And, you know, then it was a matter of sort of rebuilding in a new way.
But I also think, you know, we weren’t trauma-informed back then in the ways that we are now. And so I don’t think I was guided in a way that was well-paced. I was sort of like someone who got converted and was sent out into the mission field right away. I think my professors and supervisors in particular were like, well, now you know how good this is. Go out and tell everyone else and do it.
And so I sort of got pushed out prematurely, I think, you know. And so as I look back, there are some things that I think I’m really grateful for, but I think there are some things that probably could have been done in a more trauma-informed and paced way.
Julia: When you were willing and able to trust the voices of those around you, I think, which is really a testament both to your willingness to stay in the work and also to hear from those others around you, trusting their perception and their own insight and intuition.
Chuck: Yeah, what a gift. An incredible gift. I mean, and I know it’s also terrifying. There may be people listening right now like, I don’t know what I would do with that, you know. But I do think when multiple people come to you saying essentially the same things, you know, yeah, I suppose I’ve experienced it, and you have too. People’s defenses can go way up, or it can be a pretty amazing opportunity to say, I’ve been missing something, you know. And that’s where repentance is born out of, I think, real repentance, not a phony, what I call phony faux, you know, but something that is accompanied by deep grief and repair, you know, that needs to be done relationally. Right? So yeah.
Julia: Yeah, sounds to me like something that should be required for all of us, right?
Chuck: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: In helping positions.
Chuck: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julia: Moving into a little bit more of our content, we like to ask all of our expert contributors how they define spiritual abuse. So I’d love to hear from you how you define it, but also what isn’t spiritual abuse.
Chuck: Yeah, yeah, that’s good. I usually sort of riff on something that comes out similarly every time, I guess, but I consider it like the misuse and abuse of things like pastoral authority, Scripture, spiritual practices, other kinds of pastoral relational practices in ways that control, coerce, and exploit image bearers.
And I use the language of image bearers very intentionally, because I think it targets what I call the worth, belonging, and purpose that is inherent in image bearing. You know, it targets a person’s inherent sense of worth, a person’s inherent sense of belonging, God-given sense of belonging, a person’s God-given sense of purpose in a way that is, as you know, profoundly confusing.
Julia: Yeah, it’s a diminishing of the self at the hands of another.
Chuck: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Julia: You talk a lot about, well, most of your work is also in the realm of narcissism and specifically narcissistic pastors. Can you give us maybe some working definitions and symptoms of what narcissism looks like and how it contributes to spiritual abuse?
Chuck: Yeah. Well, where there’s narcissism, there is, and this is really important to say out loud, a fragile sense of self. Most people see narcissists as extremely confident people. If only I could be as confident as he is or she is, right? But there’s a fragility. There’s a disconnection from oneself that is sort of tantamount to trauma, really. So one who’s narcissistic is one who’s profoundly traumatized.
Now, the classic definitions get at things like grandiosity, attention-seeking, entitlement, a lack of empathy. And, you know, I think that’s true. That’s foundational to narcissistic personality. But I think it’s probably more typical of the grandiose narcissist. We also talk about the covert, sometimes called vulnerable narcissist. And you see a little bit of a different flavor and texture with vulnerable or covert narcissism.
It’s not coming through the front door. It’s more coming through the back door. It’s controlling and exploitative more passively or passive-aggressively. And so it can look like slow grooming. You can see it in more brooding temperaments. And so it’s a little harder to define because everyone sort of knows the classic narcissist, you know?
But what I would say is it’s more experienced by survivors of narcissistic abuse when they start to tell their stories. And this is what I love about what you all are doing, right, is listening to stories. They’ll talk about how sticky and controlling it’s like, and shaming, and it’s not really in my face, and he doesn’t yell at me, but I just feel small in his presence, you know? And he controls with silence. And so it’s a little bit different.
Julia: Yeah. I think the vulnerable and the covert narcissism is so much more destabilizing to the person on the other side of it. Now, we know the story of Narcissus, the mythology of the man who’s trapped and looking at his reflected image in the water. On the flip side of that is Echo, and she’s the quiet character. She’s the tragic foil that not a lot of people know about.
She falls in love with Narcissus. Her existence essentially becomes about mirroring back to him or echoing his words and his desires. And over time, she gets erased. You see, her body fades, and all that’s left is this echo. So she’s trapped in this relationship with somebody who is incapable of reciprocity or mutuality. And so slowly she loses her voice. She loses her true north. She loses reality and her sense of self.
And a lot of people who experience that covert or vulnerable type of narcissism feel as if they’re drinking poison and slowly they’re dying, which is really hard for survivors to articulate to other people. It’s not as if there’s a gunshot wound that you can point to. Right?
Chuck: Yeah. Yeah. It’s akin to, I mean, I remember early on beginning to understand emotional abuse. There was a book written in French that had been translated into English. There were very few resources back in the late ’90s. Right? I remember reading it and, you know, now this is common. We know this, but there aren’t bruises, right? But there are deep wounds.
I remember going to court back in the day talking about this. And, you know, judges and lawyers on the other side said, no, we need to see bruises. We need hard, concrete evidence. Right? But it’s the confusing, crazy-making version of it. It’s the proverbial frog in the boiling pot. Right? But both, you know, Narcissus and Echo, both are situations of self-abandonment. Right? And so both are really tragic.
Julia: Yeah, absolutely. Are there sort of markers, because you work in the assessment realm, pastors understanding if they’re positioned in a place where they can effectively, in a healthy position, serve the church. Are there any markers that might not be those typical diagnoses that you’re looking for that would flag someone or would just be red flags for you?
Chuck: Yeah. You know, I would say at the top of the list for me is how someone I’m assessing responds to the feedback that I’m giving. What’s really challenging about assessment, when people hear I do assessments, they think it’s like a surefire way of diagnosing narcissism. Right? And it really isn’t.
I mean, I use a very reliable and validated clinical inventory called the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory. It’s really helpful. But it’s when I give them the feedback: there was an elevation on both the narcissism and turbulent spectrums. And here’s what we mean by that. Here’s what I typically see.
If there is curiosity, “Oh, I was wondering about that. So say more about that. What would that look like?” And if we can move in the direction of a conversation, if that person can begin to make connections to his, generally his, his or her own life, I do these for women and men. In terms of my own ecclesial space, I’m in an egalitarian space, and so I’m doing candidate assessments for women too. But we see this, I tend to see this more in men.
Then going back to, you know, that assessment process, if I see some of that curiosity, that’s good. Where I become concerned is where there’s some defensiveness. “Well, you therapists, you’re all, you’re looking for a narcissist under every bush. I knew this would happen. You’re just anti-church. You’re anti-pastor.”
Well, no, I was actually a pastor for 12 years. I teach pastors. I train pastors. I’m an ordained minister.
“But no, you’re anti-pastor. You’re just trying to get me.” You know, that’s where I tend to lean in a little bit more. We’re all in process, right? So I’m okay if someone has some elevations on the narcissistic spectrum and they’re willing to work with that.
Now I’m going to want more information vis-a-vis like a 360. I want to understand how this person impacts other people. I want to get some feedback, you know, so there are other steps that we can take. But that work is much more profitable than, you know, I think when there’s defensiveness, it just really shuts down a process and a conversation. And that’s generally where I put up my bright yellow and red flags.
Julia: Yeah, it feels like you’re running into a wall or pointy elbows.
Chuck: That’s a good way of describing it. Yeah, that’s what it feels like.
Julia: Yeah. That’s more information too.
Chuck: I mean, I think as you’re speaking about it, I feel like, well, you’re getting your answers.
Julia: Yeah.
Chuck: One way, you probably use this language too, but the way I often talk about it, others talk about it sometimes, is we’re collecting data along the way. Everything is data, you know. And so even from the body language, even the communications before my assessment, you know, I have folks who will miss an appointment, who won’t get back to me promptly. There are little subtle things that, you know, you start to connect the dots just a little bit, and you’re like, oh, he’s not terribly interested in this. It’s all data.
Julia: Curious about the body language. What do you usually see?
Chuck: Yeah. Well, you know, there’s a coldness. There’s not a warmth, right? There’s not a meeting eye contact. There’s a flippancy, you know, looking at the watch, “I’ve got somewhere to be.” There’s a sense that I get, you know, those of us who are survivors of abuse know that at some point along the way, we were cut off from our intuition, from our bodies’ intuition, right, our gut.
And so I need to kind of trust my gut in spaces like this. If I feel myself kind of small or diminished, you know, this person comes into my office or we’re meeting virtually and I have this sense that I don’t really have time for you, or I’ve got more important things to do, or what are your credentials again, or what is this test?
Now, clearly, I have the privilege of being a white male in this space. Right? And I hear all the time from women colleagues, colleagues of color, how they’re dismissed in ways that I’m not dismissed too. Right? So I recognize that I come in with a PhD and I’m an ordained minister, and yet I still experience these things at times, you know?
Julia: Yeah, yeah. It’s also helpful to hear that as a clinician, one of your best diagnostic tools is your body and what you’re feeling and you’re noticing.
Chuck: Right. Yeah.
Julia: It’s often noted that those with narcissistic traits, we’re not going to necessarily call them disorders because we can’t maybe diagnose the way that you can.
Chuck: I like that.
Julia: But those with narcissistic traits are drawn to leadership. And because they’re in a leadership position, then their narcissistic traits get more pronounced over time. What would you say it is about pastoral leadership in particular that seems to attract and also reward these traits?
Chuck: Yeah, this is so important. When you think about it, you know, pastoral ministry, getting up on a platform with maybe a collar on or a robe or a stole or behind a pulpit immediately conveys some sense of, I’m above you. I’ve got some expertise. I’ve got some authority.
You know, anytime someone gets up in front of a group of people on a stage behind a mic, there’s some presumption, perhaps, of authority. Right? Or, you know, it’s just an assumption that people have that he or she knows what she’s talking about. Well, that’s magnified in an ecclesial context, in a pastoral context. Now that person doesn’t just have authority, it’s authority in the name of God.
You know, I stand here speaking on behalf of God. I’m the one with the Bible in my hand. I’m the one with the authority to explain this text to you, you know? And so it’s really interesting to me, it’s been interesting to me to watch men who I’ve done assessments for, I’m now going back 25 years, and I mean, I’m not going to name names, but there are some men that have made headlines that I did assessments for 25 years ago, or that went through a care process or a care committee that I stewarded back when I was a Presbyterian in the late 1990s and early 2000, who had famous falls.
And they, oh, there were traits, but there was some sense of, well, I want to do everything that I can, you know, to be accountable. I just want to serve the Lord, you know, all the right, they said all the right things. But when they got the authority, the pulpit, the position, the salary, when they were in the work for three to five years, I began to see something shift.
When they began to get the accolades, when they began to hear from the audiences, “You’re the best preacher I’ve ever heard,” when they got the promotion, when they got the first book deal, that’s when traits became ingrained, hardened. And I’m talking about a number of men I worked with who seemed to be well-intentioned at one point.
“I know the dangers of pastoral ministry. I’m reading the Puritans. I just want to know what it looks like to be a repentant, humble, wise servant of the Lord.” You know, all the language. And then within three to five years, coercing, controlling, exploiting, diminishing the personhood of others. Yeah, I even forget how you framed your question, but I think we’re sort of getting to it.
Julia: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I think language can be one of those areas that hides the traits, and power and increased power over time exposes what has been there maybe in seed form, but it is allowed to grow.
Chuck: Yeah. Especially if you think about the base being insecure. Right? Like we’re talking about someone who has a profoundly fragile sense of self, which, again, is puzzling to people because these guys can show up at a church planting assessment or three- to five-day assessment looking very, very confident and inspiring, you know. But with that fragile sense of self, the more power they get, the more it sort of feeds that fragile sense of self. Right? And those tendencies and traits.
Julia: I think it’s also important to name it doesn’t stay stuck in the individual. And we just had a conversation with Wade Mullen, who talks about the systemic features and every part and piece that goes into play in a place of spiritual abuse. And oftentimes, as narcissistic traits get scaled systemically, so we use language like borderline system or narcissistic system to describe maybe a church or community or even a whole denomination. So I think that’s important for other people to know that it’s not just that one person. It’s sort of the enabling system that surrounds them.
Chuck: Yeah. That’s right. And this is what makes it so difficult in situations where I don’t do as much of this consulting anymore, but in situations where I’ve done consultancy and maybe even an investigation or inquiry of some kind, and the senior pastor has been asked to step down, I can almost predict what’s going to happen next.
They’re going to be really relieved. Some people are going to be like, yeah, this is great. This is what we wanted. And I’m going to say, this is part one. Now we need to get to part two. Now we need to look at how you all have sort of embodied this systemically. Right?
“Oh no, no, no, no, we don’t need to do that because the problem is gone now.” And yet within a year, they’ve elevated someone that looks a lot like the previous pastor. And so you all know, you’re shaking your heads, right? Like you’ve seen this 100 times, 1,000 times.
Chuck: Yeah. I’d like to hear how you’ve experienced it. What story would you have to tell, Julia, Ann Maree?
Ann Maree: It’s Julia’s turn. I’m up this season.
Julia: Oh, my gosh. That was just an absolute perfect chain of events, descriptions of yes. And we’ve seen it multiple times and experienced it, sadly, as well. I think there tends to be a focus on culture, which isn’t not important. That is an important aspect. But when you’re talking about a personality structure, it’s deeper.
So I think of culture as like the wallpaper. And the personality structure is what is behind the wall that holds up the house. So if you’re not doing that deeper assessment and analysis from somebody trained in systems thinking and an abuse assessment, then you’re going to miss it or paper over. Maybe we just need to involve women in a different way without changing actually the heart and the root.
Chuck: I’ve got a little bit of a different metaphor, but I think we’re talking the same language. I use the iceberg systems model. Right? And, you know, they’ll tweak behaviors. They’ll put a Band-Aid on this. They’ll recraft their vision or mission statement or something like that, but they won’t address the historical patterns, how these things are embedded in particular structures, polity, and things like that.
You know, even the architecture, even the size of the office. There are all these different things. And then the deeper mental models, you know, that they’re not aware of. They may say, we affirm women at this church, but there may be deep mental models of misogyny, you know. And so that takes, as you know, so much more work.
And so this is where, you know, I’m grateful for, I’ve gotten to know Wade a little bit over the years and learned so much from him. I think our books, When Narcissism Comes to Church and Wade’s came out around the same time. Diane Langberg wrote a book, and yet I think what we often see is they’ll do an investigation, someone will lose a job, but then this, not just the church, right? But I’m thinking of networks I’ve done work within, oh, I won’t, you know, the denominations and institutions and stuff like that. But it’s institutional as well, right? It’s denominational as well. It’s presbyteries, it’s classes, it’s dioceses. And so that’s the harder work.
Julia: Yeah. What typically exposes the architecture underneath personally or systemically, either/or?
Chuck: Either/or, all the above. Yeah. Well, we were just talking about systems. You know, personally, I gave you a little bit of an example of my own story on a personal level.
You know, I do think when I work with folks, and I hope this is getting to your question, so reroute me if it’s not, Julia, but oftentimes I see these structures as highly defensive and protective. And so on a personal level, as I’m working with people, it’s about creating enough safety for there to be enough of an exhale for the person I’m working with, let’s just say the pastor that I’m working with with narcissistic traits, to begin to have a bit of curiosity about patterns that have been named.
And I’ll often bring narratives from other people. Here’s what I’m hearing from seven different staff members of your church. What do you think of that? You know, what are you hearing? What are the themes? It’s hard enough one-on-one doing that work. Think about, you know, I’m thinking of the therapeutic work that takes a long time.
Systemically, it’s like you’re talking about defenses and protection that has been, it’s historical. Like it’s been going on for years. You know, I did some work with a couple of churches in Chicagoland, let’s just say, right, where the church had started out in the city. But as there was greater diversity in the city, they moved to the suburbs. And as diversity moved to the suburbs, they moved further out from the suburbs.
And they weren’t aware of the historical impact of decisions that they had made over time to move away from diversity, to run from complexity. And so when we begin to talk about these things, there’s, “No, this is what we value. Look at our mission statement. I mean, we talk about the nations. We talk about diversity. We want…”
And yet, as I began to show them the data, so to speak, right, but this is what 30 years, “Well, I wasn’t here 30 years ago. I’ve only been here 10 years.” You know, now, this is what 30 years does within a system. You know, this is what people begin to embody. This is the water that you’re swimming in.
Well, people can’t see the water they’re swimming in until you show them, in a sense. This is the water you’ve been swimming in for 30 years. These are the historical decisions that have been made. Here are the seven women that were told that they were going to have opportunity or authority or get to preach that ended up leaving quietly because the Lord called them to other places, but the Lord really didn’t call them to other places. You know, here are the 19 other people who have had a heart at the church.
That’s what ends up happening. But we’re talking about, back to the language of data, we’re talking about naming these things in a way that, as you all have experienced, when I can go in as a supposed expert on these things and I’ve written 30-page, 50-page, 70-page assessments of a particular system, and I’ve sat with groups of men in particular who said, thank you, where do we send your check? That’ll be all. You know? And off with you.
So it takes tremendous courage. But I bet all three of us have examples of churches, systems, institutions that have had courage, pastors that I’ve worked with who have had courage, you know, who have leaned into these hard things.
Ann Maree: Yeah. So if I’m hearing you correctly, is it safe to say the people are the symptoms of the system? Like your examples were talking about the people that kind of quietly left.
Chuck: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are. And I think there are probably many more symptoms, you know, but those are the stories. As you know, they didn’t know what they were leaving at the time. Probably half of them, three quarters of them, maybe 90% of them, you know, what they knew is that they were minimized. They were diminished in terms of their personhood. They were passively or passive-aggressively shifted into a different position further away from the lead pastor. They were demoted. Their benefits were taken away. They left quietly.
They don’t know until you begin to have this fuller conversation. And oftentimes, as you know, we talk about this a little bit earlier, they’ve been cut off from their own bodies, you know, so their own bodily intuition. And so as they begin to become aware, that’s when, well, that’s when we shift over to the trauma abuse to trauma conversation. Right? Because it’s like, oh, so, you know, it’s really strange. The last seven years I’ve had migraines. For the last 10 years I’ve had chronic irritable bowel symptoms. I haven’t slept well. I’ve started and stopped jobs because I just really don’t feel like I have anything to give. I don’t have a voice. That’s when we start to connect the dots. We say, oh no, that’s trauma.
Julia: Yeah, yeah. I think what you’re also pointing to related to the question about exposure, how a system or an individual is exposed, is through shining the light.
Chuck: Yeah.
Julia: It’s truth-telling. It’s accountability. And we see that in the life of Jesus. We see Jesus speaking truth to the Pharisees and religious leaders and scribes, holding up a mirror and saying, this is what you’re doing and this is your impact on other people.
And I think that’s when you can see as an observer how deeply entrenched the patterns are, if there is a movement towards the truth-tellers or if there’s a silencing of the truth-tellers. And it sounds like even in your own work, that’s so much of what you do, is naming things and naming stories and telling the truth.
Chuck: Yeah, yeah. I mean, at the core of it, there’s a deception, right? And even more core to that is a self-deception, particularly when you’re talking about these abusive leaders. Right? And so, you know, my work, you know, Jesus asked a lot of questions. And I think, you know, as a therapist, I ask a lot of questions.
And there’s a peeling away of the layers of the defenses, of the deception, to the point where, again, personally or systemically, there are times, and this is just the hope of the work. This is what keeps me in it. And I’d love to hear what keeps you in it, you know. But there are the times when, you know, I’m here in my office here. I’ve got a couch right over there, and I do this five-day intensive work with folks, you know, five days, three hours a day. We can go longer than that as well.
There’s a moment where it’s like, oh no, could that really be true of me? Oh no, you know. And then it’s like, oh no. And you feel it in the room. In my body, I feel it right now. I get chills. You know, it’s that moment of like, if this is true about me, I have to step down. And I can’t believe the damage that I’ve done is unspeakable. I’m so embarrassed. I’m so ashamed. I’ve hurt my family.
It’s harder, as you know, in systems where people, it’s mutually reinforcing. You know, the system reinforces, this is just what we’ve always been, and the Lord has blessed it. Right? So it’s harder in systems. It’s harder for a group of people, in a sense, to say, this is what we’ve done, or for a board to come back to me and say, we’ve read what you’ve written to us, and we take it seriously. We agree we’ve done harm.
You know, I love to talk with a lot of my clients about the beauty of repentance and repair. I think, in our Christian context, we don’t do it well. It’s very superficial. It’s often trite. It’s often the thing that we feel like we need to do and then move on and move past it. And repentance is meant to be a gift. It’s meant to connect us with the Lord, obviously, and also with one another.
And I work a lot with addicts, and we do 12-step work. And when people are finally, or for the first time maybe, opening their eyes to what true repentance means, if the threshold and tolerance is very, very low, and once they begin to practice it, it becomes easier and easier and easier, so much so that they incorporate it into their daily lives. And they’re like, why wasn’t I doing this before? I feel so much more free than I did before.
Julia: Yeah, yeah. So I think that is something we need to disciple more people into. And that also becomes its own litmus test, is how people are able to repair and repent and continue to do that. It’s not a one-and-done thing.
Chuck: Yeah. Julia, do you see a kind of faux repentance often out there, you know, kind of words that are general, you know, confessions that are nonspecific? I mean, is that your experience?
Julia: Absolutely. Yeah. And oftentimes when someone is free of their addiction, they can still be working out those addictive behaviors because they’re avoiding conflict. It’s much easier for them to sit before you or their sponsor and act out repentance. It’s a whole other thing to face the person that you’ve harmed and have that spirit that you’re talking about of humility and curiosity and not demanding for defense, just to say, this is how I’ve harmed you. This is inconsistent with my character and actually who I want to be, and abide. It doesn’t sound quick. It’s not. Slower and much more specific.
Chuck: Right? Yeah.
Ann Maree: I was going to take a little turn here just in speaking about the people, like refocusing a little bit more in now on perhaps the healing. I mean, that is also one of your books, one of the things that you write about, but you’re kind of touching on it too.
So I just wanted to ask, you talk about this divine imprint that we each have and that we were created for this belonging. And so now I’m imagining, as you all are talking, I’m imagining that person that you talked about in the system who was quietly released or whatever. But when they were in the system, they risked this incredible vulnerability to belong. And so maybe if you can speak to what happens, what happens to them? You touched on some of the physical.
Chuck: Yeah.
Ann Maree: But go a little bit further on that one.
Chuck: Well, there’s such a profound alienation and betrayal, right? I mean, when we’re talking about belonging, this is a deep core for me. I mentioned earlier the image of God is worth, belonging, and purpose. And so we’re talking about a deep core longing of the human heart, need of the human heart. Right?
And oftentimes there is a sense of belonging when someone comes to work for a church or becomes a member of a church, right? There’s some sense of belonging, and it begins to scratch that deep itch. So you can imagine when there’s spiritual abuse, there’s such a deep sense of betrayal.
And oftentimes, as is the case with child abuse, for instance, what did I do? It can’t be the pastor because he wears the collar. He’s got the authority. He went to seminary. He has the assessments. He carries the Bible in his hand. So what did I do wrong? You know, and so it must be me.
And so not only is there an alienation from the community, there’s an alienation from oneself. There’s shame, which is, you know, shame at its core, as Brené Brown talks about, is disconnection, is self-alienation. Right? And so there’s, by the time someone like me sits with, I don’t know, Julia, you’re a therapist too, do you?
Julia: Yeah, yeah.
Chuck: I mean, you know, you’re sitting with someone who’s so disconnected then not just from community, but from herself. Right? And so there’s a targeting, in one sense, of what’s so core to who a human being is, a diminishment of that deep inheritance as an image bearer.
Ann Maree: Yeah, yeah. And just on that note of connection too, you quoted Peter Levine in your book, and you said he wrote that sometimes that’s hard to recognize, that it’s not even something, well, you were just talking about that just now. But so when that disconnect happens, you used this word withering. And I thought that was perfect. Talk to me about that. But is that also related to how you would define trauma?
Chuck: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, here’s the thing about trauma, is it grows, metastasizing, in aloneness, you know, and so in alienation. And so that’s the withering I’m talking about, a plant without water and sun, you know. And this is why, for me, you know, trauma, if two people go through, I think I talk about this in Healing What’s Within, but two people go through the same or similar event, you know, perhaps within a church or perhaps even a natural disaster or something like that, and one is held and seen and cared for, she goes and she sits down with Julia and they start talking, and Julia says, you’re not crazy, this is what, she has a much better chance of finding a way toward healing and resilience than the person who is utterly alone in the midst of it.
That’s the person who withers, you know, the person who is like, I must have just, I’ve blown it, you know. I did something wrong. I must have really done something that hurt the pastor’s feelings. I don’t belong. No one wants me, you know. And they kind of pull away. That’s a recipe for trauma right there.
And, you know, I honestly, when I got fired, you know, I was a therapist, I was doing work with others, but I pulled away. I had community, but I was hiding in community. And that’s what led to trauma that eventually led to my hospitalization years later. In one sense, I went off on my own and tried to deal with it by getting busy, by getting another pastoral position, and proving myself again, you know.
And so it’s embarrassing to say that out loud, that I was a person who was doing work with other people. But I think this is the case, and I often say this in the context of, you know, when I’m speaking to therapists and others, like, we have to do our own work, you know. And in the process of helping others, that can lead to a different kind of self-alienation, you know. So helpers have to be really aware of how we get disconnected from ourselves.
Ann Maree: You went right where I was going next. You had talked about your inner dashboard and your hospitalization revealing that trauma. So in my circles, I hear that trauma is not a thing. It’s the diagnosis du jour. And so I just want to press in a little bit more with you talking about, tell me about the connection with the body. Tell me what happens. Well, not on a regular, of course, basis, but yeah.
Chuck: Isn’t that interesting? I mean, yeah, there are lots of different words that are used and probably misused. Right? People come to me, they say, well, we talk about trauma too much. We talk about narcissism too much. I’m like, yeah, well, I could say the same about forgiveness, the way we use the language of sin, you know. And so, yeah, of course, let’s be careful with our words. But trauma is Greek for wound, right? So we’re just talking about a wound to the soul. And so I tell people, if you’re not comfortable with the language of trauma, let’s just talk about wounds.
But what’s really interesting to me, Ann Maree, is that I’ll work with these pastors and I’ll give them some fodder for the dashboard that you’re talking about. The dashboard for me is sort of like a dashboard of a car that points to problems in the engine, in this case, the autonomic nervous system engine of a human being. Right?
And I’ll say your dashboard has thoughts and feelings and body and behaviors and relationships, and they’ll say, oh yeah, yeah, I’m fine. You know, I mean, sometimes I get a little edgy, but that’s it. I’ll say, go back and fill this out. And here’s some thoughts and here’s some feelings, and I’ll give them a whole bunch of stuff, and they’ll come back and they’ll be like, my list is three pages long. I didn’t realize all these things that you write about the body.
I mean, going all the way back to 2008, I remember speaking at a church planters conference, and I talked about the number of church planters that come to me with, and I just said, irritable bowel syndrome. Well, that was the only thing, apparently, that these church planters remembered about my talk because I had a line of men afterwards saying, tell me about this irritable bowel thing that you mentioned, you know.
And they’ll come with their lists of migraines and sleeplessness and digestive issues and heartburn and racing thoughts and black-and-white judgments and deep sadness, and they’ll say, so what? Okay, what does this mean? That’s the dashboard. Right? And so, okay, what it means is that your nervous system is in probably a chronic state of dysregulation and probably has been for a long time.
And so, you know, once we start to, it’s like when my car is having, I don’t know much about cars. It’s really helpful to have a technician say, here’s what’s wrong. And we’ll sit down and we’ll say, okay, this is chronic dysregulation. Here’s what’s going on. Here’s what you’ve lived in. And then the tears will start to flow, like, oh yeah, I haven’t really rested in 17 years. I don’t even know what it’s like to rest. I’m so tired, you know?
Whether survivors or, you know, I work with perpetrators of harm, you know, and I experience the same thing with them.
Julia: Yeah. There’s trauma there a lot of the time too.
Chuck: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Ann Maree: So do you mind me asking if you had an opinion? And if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to, but why do you think that word is so fought against? Why is the concept fought against?
Chuck: Yeah. Well, I mean, nowadays empathy is fought against.
Ann Maree: And then there’s that.
Chuck: Yeah, yeah. I do think that there’s a sense culturally that the therapeutic has taken over and that people are, because of therapists like us, being framed as fragile and victims. You know, as one pastor sat in my office here and said to me, you know, we work really hard to serve the Lord, and what you’re doing and people like you are doing is you’re telling people that they’re victims of hardworking servants of the Lord like us and that they’re traumatized. And so it’s not that they’re traumatized, it’s that you are feeding them. You’re convincing them that we’ve caused them harm. You are enemies of the church, enemies of God, you know.
And so it’s caught up in this kind of culture of fear, oftentimes, again, by men that I’m working with who are profoundly afraid of losing their authority, profoundly afraid of losing their position, and profoundly afraid of hard conversations, you know. So I’m not targeting your church. I’m not trying to get you to step down from your role. I’m just asking for some accountability, reflection, curiosity, you know. So, yeah, there’s a whole lot more we could say about that, but I know we’re short on time.
Ann Maree: Yeah. But that was good in a short amount of time. Thank you. And thanks for taking the risk of answering an off-the-cuff question. Julia, did you have anything?
Julia: I was going to also just say that sometimes, yes, therapy language can become inflated.
Chuck: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: And especially as new research comes out, more interest comes out, more awareness, people are talking about it more. So it feels like it is trendy, but it’s sort of like the doctors finding a new test to even more early detect a certain type of cancer. Well, then those cancer diagnoses would increase. So just because there’s an increase in maybe diagnoses or language, it doesn’t mean that that thing is not true.
It also depends, you said it a lot better than I just did, it depends on the context and for what purpose. You know, a teenager can be talking about self-diagnosing on TikTok, or a pastor who is fearful or wants to gatekeep can say abuse isn’t a thing, don’t use that word, and silence people. Again, it just depends on the context.
Chuck: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, yeah.
Ann Maree: Well, I do want to thank you for again taking the time and not knowing who we are, taking a risk and just talking with us, and just what you’ve given to our audience of people helpers, pastors, and survivors and victims, just giving language to put around their experiences. So now I want to come to Charlotte and just sit with you in the living room or the counseling office and have a longer conversation about what you do and all this hard stuff.
Chuck: Good stuff. Yeah. Anytime. Call us. You know where to find us now. So yeah.
Ann Maree: Well, blessings, and thank you again. Have a great day, and we will be in touch again, I’m sure, because we need to have more conversations with you.
Chuck: Well, thanks for trusting me enough to invite me into a conversation like this. It feels, as you know, we’re talking about these things up here, but we’re talking about our own stories and the stories of people who, it’s really tender. Right? So I’m just mindful of people who’ve probably been listening with tears. You know, these are tender conversations. So thanks to your listeners too for sitting with us for an hour.
Ann Maree: Yep, yep. Same. Blessings, my friend. Thank you.
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If this conversation stirred something for you, please know you do not have to carry it alone. Support resources are listed in the show notes, and you’re welcome to reach out in the ways that feel safest for you. Safe to Hope is a production of Help[H]er. Our executive producer is Ann Maree Goldsworthy.
