The Continuums of Abuse (Purdy & Nichols, 1981) has long been the standard for defining abusive behaviors, especially as those behaviors relate to domestic violence. There are four categories or continuums: emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and social abuse. Emotional abuse includes name-calling, put-downs, ridicule, labeling, crazy-making, isolation, and so on. Physical abuse is, well, physical: hitting, pushing, choking, restraining, and so on. Sexual abuse is the most difficult to discuss or even think about as it includes rape, affairs, forced prostitution, and so on. Social abuse is the most misunderstood as it comes in two varieties: 1) society's reinforcement of a man's right to punish his wife and children in order to control them; and 2) emotional or physical abuse perpetrated either through a third party or in front of a third party (such as making a false police report, for example).

The Continuums of Abuse does not list the type of abuse that has come to be known as Spiritual Abuse. This category of abuse, however, is becoming more obvious to those of us who work with abuse dynamics. It's probably time, then, to start a serious discussion about this topic so we know what we're talking about. To start with, we will need some kind of definition for spirituality. Wade Clark Roof, University of California at Santa Barbara religion professor, surveyed middle-aged Americans and reported that: "In the truest sense, spirituality gives expression to the being that is in us; it has to do with feelings, with the power that comes from within, with knowing our deepest selves and what is sacred to us, with, as Matthew Fox says, 'heart-knowledge.'"

With this definition we can see that there are two sides to the dilemma of spiritual abuse. On the one hand, the spirit, by definition, cannot be abused. It is, after all, spirit, our connection to the All. It is the God-within, and there is nothing external to it. Therefore, there can be no abuser or victim, for those dichotomies collapse when we are dealing with the All. In other words, our spirits are immune to abuse simply because they are Spirit.

On the other hand, however, our spirits produce feelings of sacredness within us -- feelings of awe, wonder, mystery, reverence and joy; feelings that can produce for us what the Navajos call "walking in beauty." Additionally, spirituality is a doorway to power, "the power that comes from within." Spiritual power is the agency or energy that all living creatures possess that enables us to fulfill our own creative destiny. It is the power that an acorn has that pushes it to become an oak tree. It is the power that fuels what Jung called the "individuation process" in humans, the process from a pre-conscious infant to a fully self-conscious adult.

In both these categories (feelings and power), then, we definitely could have abuse. Let's examine each.

Feelings: Awe, wonder, mystery, reverence, joy and "walking in beauty" -- imagine what would happen if you wandered around in your life with these as your dominate feeling-states. Ridicule would probably be the least you could expect from the passersby in your life. Comments such as, "What's wrong with you?" or "What have you been smoking?" or "Get real" would be common. Without an observable right to that difference (no saffron robes, no baby in your arms, no bouquet of roses delivered to your desk), you would most likely, very quickly, become an object of suspicion, ridicule and scorn, if not actual assault -- no bad guy is going to let somebody like you remind him of his deep unhappiness without some kind of punishment. But even if you feel these "spiritual" feelings only sporadically and "appropriately," you still might not be safe. Close friends, spouses, co-workers are not going to let you get away with feeling that good if they are in a bad mood, especially justifiable bad moods that they want to hang onto so that they can play victim for a while longer. Your good mood will be like sandpaper on their delicate sensibilities.

Power: In physics, power is defined as the ability to do work. So, power is the energy source for getting anything done. The major thing each of us usually wants is to successfully accomplish our developmental processes. When we get that completed, we are functionally adult. Well, codependency cannot be played with adults. That game is age-appropriate from about age 5 to age 12. It is then that the abuser-rescuer-victim game appears as the developmental challenge that needs to be met and overcome. If you grew up in a healthy family system, you outgrew codependency and arrived at interdependency in your teens. If you didn't, you may still be stuck in the codependent game. That game, when played by adults (in the chronological sense) is all about the abuse of power. It is all about dis-empowering others and controlling them, manipulating them, using them. Abuse is accomplished by others compromising one's inherent power-base. Abuse is also accomplished by interrupting or denying another's unfolding and/or individuation process.

Spiritual abuse, then, is possible in at least two major categories: assaults on one's feelings of the sacred, and assaults on one's personal power. In both cases, assaults function to undermine one's spiritual connection, one's faith, one's hope, one's sense of spiritual adequacy, and one's deep knowing that we are all children of God. These assaults rob us of the peace and confidence that comes from that deep knowing. The assaults range on a continuum from mild to terrible to life threatening. The exact progression and definition of these attacks have yet to be agreed on. I think it is important to begin that work. It is important because one cannot solve a problem that has not been defined. By defining the problem, whatever it is, a solution can be found. Without a definition, denial, discounting, ignoring, and just plain ignorance is the "solution."

Obvious items on our list of spiritually abusive behaviors can be garnered from the above brief discussion. For example, ridicule, put-downs, and so on, which are already on the emotional abuse continuum, can be made to do double-duty when they are used to punish a person's spiritual expressions. At the other extreme would be cult-groups that feed off the personal power of the individual cult members. How would we define that? What is the difference between a cult and a sangha, for example? That one is pretty easy: a cult strips its members of their individuality in service of the cult-leader's ego; a sangha encourages the member to evolve past his/her individuality in service of Enlightenment. But the issue here is how to define the difference in real terms, behavioral terms, verifiable terms that gives helpers a starting point for the recovery process. When we have that kind of leverage, we can aid our clients in getting back to their inborn immunity to spiritual abuse -- since it doesn't, indeed cannot, exist.

Bruce Bibee, MTP, is a counselor in private practice. He is also the owner/instructor of the Kung-Fu San Soo Center.