In 1988 my friend Monica (not her real name) sat opposite me in a large, second-hand armchair that creaked when she fidgeted. Like most of the donated furniture that filled the three-storey community house I shared with eight other women, the chair was mismatched, oversized, and had seen better days. Its noisiness seemed to put Monica even more on edge. She had something to tell me, she said. Something important.
I had known Monica for five or six years, having first met when I was a fledgling leader and she was finishing her degree in Biology. She was a wild child, a rebel who loved to drink and party and cause a riot. She came to a Basic Christianity Course (like an Alpha Course) we were running at the University of London, and I was her small group leader.
“I’m a bit drunk,” she’d grinned at me. “Been sampling a nice bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau”.
It’s not even seven O’clock, I’d thought. She must have been drinking all afternoon. I was not impressed. I rolled up my sleeves ready with my answers, with my compassionate face, with my invitations to come and have coffee with me soon.
As a young recruiter into our covenant community I was ambitious. I worked alongside a large handful of celibate men, the Brothers, as well as a couple of women like me, Staffers who were there to recruit, disciple and befriend new women. We also baked bread for the Brothers every Saturday, cooked meals for hundreds of people, babysat and cleaned houses for free. But that’s another blog. I was on trial, working on Staff without being paid, having told the leaders I believed God had called me to forsake my career and dedicate my life to service. They’d not been keen to have me. At twenty-two I had come out of a bad year, a year when I had strayed a little, getting distracted by boys, flirting with a bit of partying and having the small amount of fun I could secretly get away with whilst living in a community household. I had kissed a guy, and that was seen as the worst sin I could have ever committed. I felt I needed to claw my way back into God’s favour, into the Leaders’ favour and what better way than to give my whole self in complete surrender? So when Monica showed up I rubbed my hands with glee. I was going to show everyone what a great evangelist I was and how much they’d made a good decision by letting me work for them.
Monica was open, honest, sweet and vulnerable. She was adventurous, but she seemed lost. Monica responded to my love-bombing as if I were pouring sunshine over her. Here I was, an extrovert, friendly and warm person who was happy to shower her with attention, invite her for dinner and parties, go out for coffee with her, and had all the answers to her questions about faith. I’d never met anyone so responsive and so desperate for love as Monica. I did love her. Do still love her. I loved her sense of humour and her edginess. I loved her fearless headlong dive into every experience, every excitement and I loved how positive and funny she was. But, I also loved her in a way that wasn’t fully accepting, or fully generous. I considered she had a long way to go to “put herself right with God.”
The rules regarding female friendships in community, both overt and implied were clear to those of us who were fully indoctrinated. Some women saw through it all and refused to adhere, but I had been recruited so young it was in my blood. I was expected to be an example of moral excellence to my “sisters”, upholding community values like service and unity even at the cost of making others feel “less”; I was expected to be loyal to all other women, not picking who I wanted to be close to, but having friendships forced on me, and actually seeing a clash in personality as a “god-given opportunity to grow”. I was also expected to be “accountable” to all other women, and vice versa. This meant anyone could point out my flaws to me and I could do the same back. My friend and fellow survivor Lucy (not her real name) came up with the phrase Friendship Hierarchy to describe this way that many women relate within the cult. These rules, rather than encouraging women into generous acceptance of one another, often sows seeds of competitiveness, jealousy, judgementalism and one-up-womanship.
Because of the environment I had been raised in I considered myself to be more enlightened than Monica, holier, more pleasing to God than she was, wiser, more experienced in spiritual matters. I did not consider us to be equals and held myself back from her even when she told me her deepest and most painful secrets. I was keen to instruct and mentor her. Largely due to my efforts, Monica went through the system and came out the other end a new convert, with a strong and palpable conversion experience and a brand-new set of friends. My role in recruiting her was set in stone and I applauded myself for finally being a successful Woman Of God.
So, when she sat opposite me disappearing into a dusty armchair, nervously sipping a McDonald’s cola and announcing she had “big news” I was a little intrepid. I knew she was prone to making what I thought were rash and hasty decisions. In this instance I wasn’t mistaken. Monica had decided to leave the community. She was moving away into a flat with an ex-member, somebody I deemed had been a bad influence on her. She was going to join an exciting new Church on the south coast.
“It just feels right for me,” she kept on saying.
I smiled. I didn’t reply. I asked her lots of questions. I kept smiling. I’d been taught that feelings were pretty much irrelevant when making an important decision. I’d been taught feeling something was right, didn’t actually make it right. I thought Monica was making a grave mistake.
“What about your commitment to the Community and to the Catholic Church?” I asked, being careful not to sound overtly judgmental, even though I was judging her. Why was she allowed to do whatever she wanted and I was stuck here, not allowed to travel, not allowed to date whoever I wanted, not allowed to pursue my career?
“Well, I’m just not happy Jessica,” she said. “I’m not happy.”
I tried not to smirk out loud.
“Well, happiness isn’t necessarily what God wants for you.”
Yes. I said that.
Monica was visibly shaken by my cold reaction. In later years, after I’d left the group myself, she told me how much it had hurt her that I just sat there and smiled calmly back, refusing to show her any kind of support or validation, or betray my own uncomfortable feelings, making her feel small and ashamed for stepping “out of line”. Thankfully her instincts and her sense of self won the day and she went off and ventured into an exciting roller coaster life that she has never looked back on. I’ve learned a lot from her bravery and authenticity over the years and have also apologised to her profusely for being a judgmental cow. Her complete and utter acceptance of me, even though I was, let’s face it, cruel to her, have shown true generosity that I didn’t deserve.
Fast forward thirty years and the shoe is on the other foot.
I find myself in a coffee shop with a community leader, somebody I think is a friend. The person has sent me a variety of communications asking to meet me face to face. I haven’t seen them for a one-to-one conversation or heard from them in over ten years, but I know they are reading my blogs and they’ve expressed they want to understand better. Initially I ignore them, because I am dubious and suspicious, but their persistence is bothering me, so I agree to see them. Because I’m not sure what I’m walking into, I am understandably guarded when I meet them, not my usual warm friendly self. I was spiritually abused by community leaders, and although this individual was not personally responsible, they represent a system that was damaging and toxic to me.
Turns out I am right to be fearful.
I don’t wish to shame the person by divulging the detail of our three-hour conversation, but it becomes clear to me from the offset that the friendship hierarchy is in full flow. The person wants to hold me accountable for something that hurt them ten years ago, how I failed to uphold a community value, citing examples of things I said and did, going on to imply that my character is self-serving, disloyal, and shallow. They don’t use those exact words, but their manner, expression and dismissive vocabulary betray a lack of generosity and acceptance, and their stinging sentences are peppered with phrases like "you were always one of those people who blah blah blah,". All the while they profess they have compassion and understanding for my situation and declare how much they love me.
This is not at all what I was expecting, and not at all what I would have willingly walked into had I known.
I am somebody who is willing to take responsibility for any wrongdoing. I am happy to own my mistakes. But this is different. The person forgets that their rules no longer apply to me and I’ve not been in their system for over twenty years. The person is oblivious that my meeting them is potentially hugely triggering for me. Suffice to say, within five minutes I am inwardly, a jibbering wreck. All the things I have prepared to ask, all the questions I have stacked up to challenge them tumble into a pile at my feet and I am fifteen again. Fifteen and being told off by my Pastoral Leader for drawing too much attention to myself, being too excluding, being too flirtatious. Fifteen and being told my character is flawed and my behaviour displeasing to God. Fifteen and needing to be more surrendered, more servant hearted, less selfish, less of a show off, more demure, quieter, gentler.
As my friend (ex-friend) points my flaws out to me, with tears welling over the rim of their bottom lashes, I feel like utter crap. I blame myself for being a terrible, awful human being. My ex-friend, still ensconced in that world, is still living by its toxic rules, a place where it is completely acceptable to shame somebody for “bad behaviour” because doesn’t God want us to be accountable to one another? A place where a “friend” can point out your flaws, unprompted, after ten years of silence, and list off to you all the proof that shows how well they know you and how much they have been loving toward you. A place where there is little to no understanding of what it is to be spiritually traumatised, and where it is normal to decimate somebody, gas light them and make them feel worthless.
I am immediately sucked back into that world of shame and self-blame and self-hatred, because I was trained to think in that way by people like my ex-friend. It takes all of five minutes for my thinking to become confused and blurred, for my healed and informed vocabulary to disappear and my thoughts to be a jumbled mess. All of five minutes to lose my grip on my true self.
Effing, jeffing terrifying.
I sit there and I take it. I don’t defend myself or explain, even though I know my explanation is valid. I say sorry for being mean. I say sorry for hurting their feelings. The rest is largely a blur, I’ll be honest. As we part company, they say they’d love to see me again, utterly oblivious as to their effect on me. I have the wherewithal to realise I’m not quite OK, so I say I need time to process. At home, I break down, crying uncontrollably. I realise I am having a trauma response, but even then, I still spend the rest of the evening self-blaming, feeling crap about myself, accusing myself and feeling utterly ashamed.
At three o-clock in the morning, however, I have an epiphany with the following sentence.
If they love me as much as they say they do, why do I not feel loved?
Why do I feel decimated?
After this sentence hit me, I was able to claw my way back out of the cess pit of self-loathing, show myself compassion and acknowledge what was actually going on for me. I emailed the ex-friend, explained I didn’t need anybody in my life who made me feel the way they did and told them to stay the eff and jeff away from me. Even though it's possible the person will attribute my response to them as “spiritual warfare” against them, therefore exonerating them from any responsibility, it was the final nail in the coffin, that enabled me to take the brave step of cutting myself off from my toxic past.
So, why have I shared these two examples here?
Many people say to me “how did you get brain washed like that?” The answer is that it happened scarily easily. When you are surrounded by other people who are modelling a particular way of relating, you very quickly start to mimic what you see because it appears normal. Add an articulated lorry load of religious distortion, isolation from outside influences, and an ecstatic spiritual awakening into the mix and Bob’s your uncle. Back in 1988 I was not a bad person. Similarly, my ex-friend is not a bad person. They are mostly kind, funny, respected, loved by many. The difference between us is that I started really listening to the cognitive dissonance that was in conflict with my behaviour. Monica never called me out , but I did feel a tiny niggle that I was being unfair to her. I did know there was jealousy at the root of that niggle. Slowly, eventually, I started listening to that inner voice, which resulted in us leaving the cult. I have no idea if my ex-friend will take any notice of what I’ve said to them, but I do know I am not the only person who has been on the receiving end of their cruel words. Perhaps one day they will ask themselves why some of their “friends” avoid them, have blocked them or refuse to engage with them anymore.
When you’ve been in a toxic system for a long time, given your whole life to it and invested energy into maintaining it, you are rarely objectively challenged by people outside the cult. And perhaps nobody explains to you that your behaviour or language or thinking is questionable, or that it makes people feel shamed. Imagine if Monica had said the following to me:
“Jessica, what the actual eff…..? What do you mean God doesn’t want me to be happy? Does he want me to be miserable? Are you saying I shouldn’t use all of my senses (intellect, gut instinct, feelings, rationale) to discern the path for my own life? Are you saying I shouldn’t listen to my feelings at all? Do you realise that your words and your attitude make me feel ashamed and small and rejected? Do you realise that this doesn’t feel healthy, or even Christian?”
It took a further ten years before I got out of that system, and even longer to recognise fully my own toxic behaviour or get help for the spiritual trauma and emotional abuse inflicted on me.
All I can say is that I hope it doesn’t take my ex-friend as long as it took me.
Thanks for reading.