The Holy Gaslighter: Were You a Victim of Religious Abuse?

What does it look like when a child is spiritually victimized by their parent?

I've been pretty quiet about my story and my experiences with spiritual abuse...until now. In this episode, I'm going to break down my relationship with spiritual abuse and explain how narcissistic parents use this weapon against their children. 

This is a must-listen-to for anyone who has been gaslit or manipulated by a spiritually toxic (or narcissistic person). Learn to spot the signs and recover yourself from the pain, devastation, and confusion of spiritual abuse. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Practical Growth podcast with me, ebi Johnson. Author, nlpmp and cognitive reappraisal coach. This is the podcast created for people like you, people looking for more, more health, more peace, more happiness. Each week, I explore a new topic in pop psychology and help you build a better life and better relationships. Join me for special guests, exciting ideas and practical advice that you can use to improve your life from the inside out. Let's get into it. Hello, hello, hello, my lovelies, welcome back again to the Practical Growth podcast. It is me, ebi Johnson, your favorite mediumcom writer, your favorite TikTok coach and your favorite cognitive reappraisal specialist. And we are getting into one today.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Man, I tell you what, when I was writing this episode, it got me in the guts when I was writing out the notes for what I wanted to talk about, because so much of this hits so close to home for me and this is probably ultimately why I want to do this episode because this is an element of my experience as a child which I have not talked about a lot. Now, if you follow me on TikTok, you will have heard this come up once or twice, but I've never gone deep into this dysfunctional, toxic, abusive element of my childhood, this element of my relationship with my mother. So I'm really gonna be laying it all out today and I hope that by doing so, I'm gonna make some of you really stop, reassess, look back and reconsider some of the things that maybe have happened to you, or maybe things that you, unknowingly, are perpetrating yourself. Okay, and this is what it is Today, we are going to be talking about spiritual abuse, okay, which is the same as religious abuse. It's the same thing spiritual, religious. It all does the same damage, but that's what we are gonna be breaking into today. Spiritual abuse, specifically. What does spiritual abuse look like in the narcissistic family? How does it work? Why does it happen? Thus the title of this episode, right, the Holy Gaslighter. We're really gonna get into the meat of this so that, hopefully, moving forward, we're all a little bit smarter, a little bit wiser and looking out for these traits and behaviors, as I said, in those around us and even in ourselves.

Speaker 1: 2:24

I think the best way and you guys know this I think the best way for us to share knowledge or to demonstrate our understanding of something is to share our own experiences, right? That's why so many of you are here, that's why this podcast resonates with you. That's why my articles resonate with you. That's why you know the TikToks go through the roof. It's because you guys have been there. You see what I've gone through. Because you've gone through it, and vice versa, right, I'm able to understand your experiences and help you get the help that you need, because been there, done that, got the t-shirt. And that's no different with spiritual abuse.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Okay, I have a very long standing background with spiritual abuse and all of that specifically had to do with my mother, and it all started one day when I was about nine or 10 years old. My dad had maybe been gone for a year, but I don't even know if he was really gone that long yet and my mother woke up and she said my dead father-in-law was in my dreams. His name was Lefty. We call them Lefty. Lefty was in my dreams. Lefty's been coming to me in my dreams and I didn't wanna tell any of you, but Lefty finally came to me last night and he told me that I was special and that I was gifted and that I needed to deliver a message from God. So, if I'm not mistaken, she might've told my middle brother, but I'm pretty sure she told his wife and myself who she was really close with.

Speaker 1: 3:40

She told us this first and I just remember standing in this little kind of like foyer living room. It was just a little tiny room with a stove in it that was off the living room. But I remember looking at her and thinking what Thank you? What we go to church on site. What are you talking about? And she expounded on it. She was completely confident she was talking about it. Like Lefty had appeared in the room. She said I could smell cigarettes and cigars and I knew it was him. And he told me that I needed to go and watch the Grapes of Wrath.

Speaker 1: 4:11

The Grapes of Wrath, which my mother had been watching over and over and over again for like a week or two. And she had to. This was the 90s, right? This is, you know, mid to early 90s. Well, mid 90s, late 90s. And so she had to, like, go to the library and find this video and things right. There was no, just just on demand streaming at this time.

Speaker 1: 4:32

So she told us that her dead father-in-law of the husband who had left her was coming to her in her dreams and telling her that she had a special mission from God and that she was a medium and that her job was to speak to God and to speak to her dead father-in-law, to tell people the truth and to lead them into the truth and away from these crazy religion. She did not, of course, mention that just a few weeks earlier she had been found by a relative really spiraling out over the fact that she was now ultimately a divorced Catholic and she didn't know how she was going to explain that to God in the afterlife. She didn't, she didn't, she didn't kind of dig into that or expound on that any. What she did instead as she escalated right.

Speaker 1: 5:15

So, after my mother came out and told us that she was talking to her dead father-in-law, she then said that Jesus had started coming to her and that Jesus was appearing to her in her dreams and in her journaling sessions and he was telling her all these secrets about how the world worked. Specifically, he was telling her all about the aliens and apparently Jesus took her to the Akashic Records and apparently he was just on her speed dial because she would just talk to him a lot for people or say that she had visions of him coming to her and having these really deep conversations, right. And then she started reading the book of Enoch over and over and over again, and then she opened herself a little spiritual practice in which she was the star, she was the center of the universe, and she would travel into the city, which is about an hour away, and she would sit in this circle of people I don't know where she found these mostly women who would applaud her and tell her how great she was and they would ask her all these questions and she would sit right in the center of this circle and act like God and she would pull herself up really tall and grandiose and really just do the whole big I am. She started taking phone calls, doing these little weekend seance things, telling people she was channeling directly to God and directly to their spirit guides and directly to their dead loved ones, and for a little period of time she got quite busy and quite well known. Right, she was dealing with some pretty hoity-toity folks from around the world who were coming to her to sit on the phone with her for four hours at a time and talk about all this like psychic work that she was supposedly doing with them, and when she was doing this as someone who has now actually done the work to become a professional in the mental health space. I now realize that this was her half-assed attempt at becoming a coach. It's the same thing as those people who just watch a couple videos in one of these weekend courses and then start calling themselves a certified life coach, which just pisses those of us who had to take real, proper programs off. She was coaching these people. Right, she was saying that she was talking to dead people for them, but really she was telling them what to do and she had this power over them. I mean, these people were emotionally invested in my mother like emotionally invested. They would just send her random gifts like cruises and checks and all kinds of stuff. Right and always.

Speaker 1: 7:41

The advice she gave was as narcissistically centered as she was. It was to be suspicious of the people around them who were probably trying to do ill. It was really kind of now looking back, it was passive-aggressive, kind of spiteful, paranoid advice about their partners that they were worried about or the relationships that they were trying to get in. These are the things that she was doing as this quote-unquote spiritual guru. But at home, as you all know, the house was a wreck. A house was a wreck like disgusting. We were drowning in sewage.

Speaker 1: 8:14

My mother was just rotting herself into a hole in the couch, literally, literally, okay, the couch was started rotting in this spot that she sat and slept all the time. She didn't bother teaching me any skills, as we know right. She wasn't bothered about teaching me to take care of my body or to take care of my mind or to like have a physically healthy life. She was making me chronically ill. She could barely speak to me without rage and resentment once I was past the age of 12. And she did nothing for herself. She did nothing. She sat on the phone and said your spirit guides want you to do this and this and this, and then she did nothing. My mother would rot until someone would give her food, give her a job, give her a car. All of those things were given to her by people that felt sorry for her. She was a lump. She never did anything and I remember thinking who is this spiritual master? Who Jesus is talking to? This person? This is the person who's going to lead everyone into the light, into truth. It was completely delusion. So there is a reason that I explained all that, right, because here's where the spiritual abuse ramped up. This is where my mother went from just being this kind of rageaholic emotional abuser to this really amped up narcissistic spiritual abuse, which she targeted me with more than anyone else in the family. Okay, now it started because I was the youngest and the weakest.

Speaker 1: 9:38

We were very much an Irish Catholic family before my mom did this dramatic shift. Okay, and we weren't necessarily practicing like a lot of Irish Catholic families, but the religious tenements were being held in the home, even if we weren't attending a Sunday Mass, right, because my mom was kind of ashamed so she didn't want to go to Mass, but we did all the stuff in the house. So the rest of the family, my brothers, who were so much older than me they were grown adults at this point certainly were not receptive. They were like, okay, mom's losing it. Obviously my dad her ex was like wow, this is baddie, and she told her sister and things like that. And everyone around her was just like in the immediate family was really weirded out by it. It was really weird. It's like left field to here, right, all of a sudden your Irish Catholic sister comes to you and says that Jesus is talking to her about the aliens. It's weird. No one was receptive.

Speaker 1: 10:32

I was trapped, being around nine or 10 when this started. I was the youngest. I couldn't escape her, even if I wanted to. At that point, I certainly did not have the courage to talk back to her or question anything. I mean, this is my mother, right, so that's it. I became the target of this spiritual abuse and the behaviors were tested on me, perfected on me and escalated on me, specifically Because I couldn't fight back. So she, this is what she did. This is how I was spiritually abused. First and foremost. This is disgusting and it's weird and I still hate thinking about it.

Speaker 1: 11:06

My mother used to take me to these little spiritual fairs that she would go to, where they had like astrologers and tarot readers and things, and she would have me sit at a table and she would tell people that I could see people from the past and I could see their spirit guides, and then I could draw them and I would sit and draw these I mean, they're childish pictures of people. I would sit and draw them and color them and I would just draw a different person every time and she would sell them for money, okay, and she was telling me not that it was a scam. She's saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you can do this. You can see these people because Jesus told me and my spirit guides told me that they talked to your spirit guides. And yeah, yeah, all of these imaginary people and stories that you make up because you're a highly creative child who's one day going to be a writer no, those are actually people that you're seeing in the spirit world and that makes you really important. So let's draw them and sell these pictures. Okay, so that's the first thing.

Speaker 1: 11:58

She pedaled me around like a child star during this window of time. Next, she started in on how I was an indigo child and I was better and more important than everyone but her. Okay, but her, who was the sacred vessel by which the universe had entrusted me with you know, whatever, and that I had a responsibility to protect her, to save her and to save the rest of humanity. Wow, how delusional is that right? Absolutely nuts. And it didn't make me feel important. It made me feel terrified. It made me feel like I was going to have ghosts crawling out from under my bed and that I had to grow up and be crushed under the wheel of society in order to save them, like I had to sacrifice myself on some kind of pedestal Really freaking, delusional and scary now looking back with that indigo child crap.

Speaker 1: 12:50

Next, she then used fear, right, because she knew this was all wrong. She knew this was like wacky and weird and that she was in some kind of really dangerous mental state, but she didn't want to take care of that, as we've talked about previously. Right, that's where my mother's narcissism really shown. She was very aware that she was mentally ill but that hit on her ego so she refused to treat it and she wanted to hide it. So the spiritual abuse when it came to me is, she told me, and I remember this, I was so scared when she told me this because I was literally imagining, like the Salem Witch Trials which I had just learned about. She told me all of this stuff, the spiritual stuff that she was doing inside the house that she was driving me to other states to do, I couldn't tell anybody. I could not tell anybody. It had to be a secret. I wasn't allowed to tell anybody about the drawings or what I was doing or where she was taking me or what was going on, because if anyone at school found out they would and I quote, and I quote, create a mob and come and burn the house down and she would die and I would go into foster care, okay, so she was forcing me to hide all this wacky banana-y flouackey stuff and telling me it was reality.

Speaker 1: 14:00

As a little teeny, tiny child with a developing brain, obviously, as I got older and I got into my teenage years and I was listening to punk music and reading philosophy and science and learning about ancient cultures, I started questioning all of this and I started really seeing the delusion in it. So my mother, instead of maybe facing up to it, nah, she doubled down. She doubled down on the spiritual abuse, okay, and when I started questioning her and some of the things she was doing, saying the way she was living her life, she started saying to me when she was at her worst well, you chose me, you chose me as your mother. You wanted to learn these lessons. You have a soul contract with me. We're comically, karmically bonded and we always have been. We've had multiple lives together. I've always been your mother.

Speaker 1: 14:48

This is what she would feed me when she would do really horrible things, like um, like when I was 17 years old and she did the whole kick me off on the side of the road and I ended up like sitting on the step of my brother's house just sobbing while my friends came to like console me and hold me. Um, after that whole debacle, she didn't apologize, she did this. She said the whole well, you know, I'm not perfect, but I'm the mother that you needed to become, the person that you needed to be, just absolutely shirking all accountability and basically saying it's your fault that I am the way I am, because you wrote a contract with God, jesus, aliens, and they decided that I was going to treat you like shit because you wanted to become a better person. Okay, that is spiritual abuse. And then, last but not least and this is weird, right, because this was where her kind of it was a hangover is what I kind of consider a hangover from her Irish Catholic faith purity culture. Purity culture was built into all of this for her.

Speaker 1: 15:45

When it came to me, I was constantly shamed for my body. Um, I was constantly shamed if I liked boys or was, you know, dating a boy or anything like that. I mean, I was disgust. I couldn't even look at myself naked in the mirror by the time I was 15, I was disgusted by it. I was like that. That guy interested development, just like never nudes, you know, um this. She basically even though she was into all this new age stuff and she was supposedly such a feminist and raising a girl boss she was very much about teaching me that my body was sinful and it was to be used for men and if I used it in the wrong way, the right men wouldn't want it. Okay, and again, this all came back to this idea that If I didn't use my body in these pseudo religious spiritual ways, then I was gonna go to a bad place or I was not going to get love, fulfillment, whatever from the universe. So I didn't realize this at the time. But all of this and I'm sure there's so much more, because things were just popping up left Next to obviously tried to block out a lot of this. But all of that, all of that mess Disgusting mess with spiritual abuse, that was a narcissistic woman who knew she was in a mental health crisis, who knew she was having spiritual psychosis, but who was so narcissistic she decided to double down because it felt good, she got power out of it, she got power over me, she got attention from people around her, it made her feel special, and she was more than happy for me to be a casualty of her getting to feel special, getting to feel important in her delusions Delusions while nothing fundamentally changed.

Speaker 1: 17:53

She was still sitting at a rotten house, she was still making no money, not taking advantage of any of her knowledge or experiences, right, just being passed off from person to person because she was too lazy to do anything for herself. She expected everyone else to solve life for her. All of this was a package. All of this, all of this was boiled Into this spiritual psychosis, a spiritual delusion that she then weaponized Against me. And that is my journey, right, that is my journey with spiritual abuse, but it may not be the same as your journey with spiritual abuse. Yours might look very different because, you know, one in four people has experienced this. So it's very, very, very likely that a lot of you listening to this have had Some kind of spiritual or religious abuse experience. So let's look at the stats of that, the facts, the the black and white bare bones of what is spiritual and religious abuse.

Speaker 1: 18:52

According to web MD, spiritual abuse religious abuse it is defined as Any attempt to exert power and control over someone using religion, faith or beliefs can be spiritual abuse. Spiritual abuse can happen within a religious organization or a personal relationship. Spiritual abuse is not limited to one religion, denomination or group of people. It can happen in any religious group as an element of child abuse, elder abuse or Domestic violence, which is what narcissistic abuse falls under. That's a really complex definition. So if we were going to boil that down, really boil that down, what should you be looking for in your life? Because my story is an extreme. My mother was clearly in psychosis. I question if there wasn't even some kind of maybe Schizophrenic elements at play and what was going on with her. But yours may not be that extreme. So, in general, what are the general signs of spiritual abuse? And now, this is via choosing therapy.

Speaker 1: 19:57

If you're being Religiously or spiritually abused, what you might notice is using religious or spiritual beliefs to control the choices that you make. Okay, making you act against something that you want to do or avoiding something that you want to do Because of a quote-unquote religious or spiritual demand. You might also experience intimidation. They try to make you conform by scaring you. Scaring you with the threat of hell, scaring you with the threat of not being in the group, not being loved. You know, whatever it is physical harm, but it could be more subtle. You might also Find them constantly undermining or insulting other belief systems, like calling them evil, treating people who are a part of other religious groups or beliefs as subhuman or less than okay. This can all be a form of spiritual abuse.

Speaker 1: 20:48

You might see censorship and weaponization of curiosity. That's a big one, right. When I questioned my mother, what did she do that quit, that curiosity, that kind of point was weaponized against me. She would turn around and say you wanted this, you asked for it, or she would blow up to the point that I became completely scared and never wanted to Speak up again, never wanted to ask another question. I didn't even want to think those questions because I didn't want to deal with that reaction again. You might also see alienation and isolation as a tool. We see this in groups, like with Scientology, when people are, you know, put into that no contact thing, and then they kind of get their lives destroyed and alienated. You see it in the Amish community. When people are, you can't remember what it is, they get ostracized and basically no one shunned and they get shunned. So that would also be a part of public shaming, humiliation. Big one is threat of spiritual consequences. Right, threat of spiritual consequences. If you don't do what I say, you're gonna go to hell. If you don't behave the way I want you to behave, if you don't believe what I want you to believe, you're gonna go to hell again.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Spiritual abuse and, unfortunately, what we see all the time, a lot of sexual and physical abuse. Okay, and it's it's often described as being a part of doctrine oh, you have to do this thing because you know you have to submit to your husband, whatever it is. That's, that's, that's abusive. And then, specifically, with the narcissist, what you see with the religious and spiritual abuse is using those religious beliefs to Gaslight someone, right? Oh well, I can't even believe you would think that or say that or react this way, because if you were a good Christian you wouldn't do that. Right, that would be religious gaslighting. They also use that to silence you, right? If you speak up, I'll be taken away from you and you're gonna go into foster care and then that will be your fault and I will die and that will be your fault. That's, that's basically kind of what my mom said. And then they also use it to hide. Don't you tell anybody. Don't you tell anybody, because this is this is our belief, and they don't they. This is ours. You know, all of that is spiritual abuse that you might be experiencing Right now in your relationships, or you might be seeing it play out around you. What I think is really important, though, is helpful, as those signs are to help you right now, in the present, when you're doing the work of looking back.

Speaker 1: 23:05

I think it's really important to Distinguish that there is a difference between the spiritual abuse experienced by children and the spiritual abuse experienced by adults. And now here are the differences here, specifically Some of the patterns you may have noticed in your childhood that, looking now with your adult eyes, you need to know that these were spiritual abuse. And here they are Encouraging single-minded thinking, so creating really negative environments if the child thinks outside of the parents religious beliefs To creating an us V them mentality and children Okay, the we are the good, they are the bad because we are part of this group and anyone not in this group is evil. Also preventing children from learning about other faiths, closing them off in these little, teeny, tiny environments and Alienating them from experience, from growth, from the world. Also burdening children with a concept of sin, forcing them to participate in church or, you know, religious organizations, religious schools, when they are really experiencing distress in those environments, forcing them in there despite that distress. We also oh, this is such a big one with the kids, with the kids for religious abuse.

Speaker 1: 24:20

Withholding medical care. Withholding medical care and if you don't believe me, go and look on my tiktok at that narcissistic parenting trait video that I've got pinned because, jesus, there's Thousands of comments on that video and a lot of it is people talking about. Well, my parents had this religious belief so I had to walk around with a broken leg for six months. You know Whatever it is. Withholding proper medical care is a big part of religious abuse and some and some religious and spiritual sects Also they.

Speaker 1: 24:48

Spiritual abuse is used to manipulate a child's emotions, shut your mouth, stop crying. And the last big point that I want to make there on the specific Forms of spiritual abuse you should look for in children or in your own childhood is the roll casting, especially if you suspect that you were raised in a narcissistic family. Religious and spiritual beliefs are used so often to cast children into roles and families, which then a justify the narcissistic parents abuse but also reinforce those power structures that we've talked about before, and here specifically what I mean. I've had a lot of clients who have come to me who are older, who came from much more religious like specifically religious versus now, which is much more spiritual Religious backgrounds and their parents, from a very young age, started calling them bad or calling them sinful and tied it into behaviors that they deemed to be against whatever that religious background was right. And so, from a very young age, these children learn to associate themselves as being bad, as being evil, and, as they develop their sense of self, that became a big component of their sense of self, which, unsurprisingly, broke them and created really strong Self-loathing and really low self-esteem. Right, this is spiritual abuse and I, if you don't think it's still happening, if you don't think it's still happening, guess what? I Just watched a video a couple days ago, being shared I thousands of times it had been watched millions of times of Sylvia Brown giving a talk to a packed audience of people that paid hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars to be there.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Because Sylvia Brown who we, she was the big time. That was who my mother was trying to copy. It was my mom's Taylor Swift. Okay, in this talk, sylvia Brown was talking to parents about seeing their evil children, seeing that their child was a reincarnated evil spirit, and how to deal with that. There were people in that audience who were oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, clapping and applauding. Okay, and Sylvia was very proud because she'd clearly given this talk a lot of times.

Speaker 1: 27:02

These parents were going home looking at their child, interacting with their child, forming their beliefs and behaviors around that child based on the idea that this child was evil. That that is what this child child was evil. Okay, like this child had evil intentions. This role casting follows people throughout their lives and it's incredibly damaging and it's incredibly dangerous, okay. So if you saw that pattern in your childhood, if you're seeing that pattern around you now, that is the spiritual and religious abuse of a child.

Speaker 1: 27:36

It's no small thing to laugh at, guys. It is no small thing to laugh at because guess what the costs. Guess what the costs are for spiritual abuse. A sense of self that we just talked about absolutely warped. How do you think I went into the world seeing myself in early adulthood after this like weird fuckery of? You are the lowest person in this household, but also you're an indigo child, completely confusing and weird right.

Speaker 1: 28:01

It causes a lot of emotional anguish and despair as well. It is emotional abuse in many forms and there's also trauma involved. There's trauma involved in these behaviors that affects you just like any other form of trauma. The nervous system, the way the neurons connect in your brain, that vagus nerve, the somatic processing all of these things are affected. You can develop CPTSD, ptsd and even chronic illness chronic illness folks there's evidence for that on the back of serious, serious religious and spiritual abuse. It's not something to mess with. And, worst of all, spiritual beliefs. Religious beliefs can be a great coping mechanism when used in a healthy, meaningful way, alongside other meaningful and healthy tools.

Speaker 1: 28:54

When someone is spiritually abused, guess what? If they wake up and get out of it, that coping mechanism is taken from them. I will never, ever, ever be able to be a holy, spiritual or religious person. In some ways that's good. In some ways I kind of wish I had that, because I've been through so much emotional trauma. It would be nice to have the comfort of some kind of system like that, but I cannot and will not ever feed into that, because every time I see it, I see my mother sitting and rotting on that couch and lying to people on the phone and taking their money from them and centering herself as a narcissist in the middle of this disgusting self-ego glorification fest. And anyone that I have a religious or spiritual kind of encounter with, I'm going to question it. I'm just going to question it. Unfortunately, that is the reality. It's harder to prove it to me, baby, because I've seen the top tier scam artist in action. So there's a total loss of faith that a lot of people never learn to overcome and again, that takes away a coping mechanism from them which can be very, very important. Now, all that's very heavy. I know it's very heavy.

Speaker 1: 29:59

So let's end it with something positive, because I know I've been rambling on here at you For a while. Let's end it strong. How are you going to beat it? How do you beat the spiritual abuse? There's four things that you can kind of take from this and put into action today. Number one establish a self-defined inner world. Get rid of all the projections that have been put on you and figure out who you are, what you want and what you believe. All of that starts with figuring out your values and then building from there. You align all of your beliefs and everything on what you value. Number two treat the freaking trauma, please.

Speaker 1: 30:32

Okay, religious and spiritual abuse is not going to be healed just by unlearning or deprogramming those beliefs. You also have to treat the physiological results of the trauma that you experienced, which means the nervous system has to be targeted. You're going to have to really get intentional with the way you're working with your brain, emotional regulation. You might have heart problems, you might have chronic illness, you might have hormone problems. All of those things are going to have to be dealt with. Number three get out of any toxic religious environment that you're in. If you are still in an environment in which all that same spiritual abuse, that religious abuse, is taking place, guess what you ain't going to heal in that environment. It's not going to happen. You're going to keep getting re-traumatized. So remove yourself from the spiritual environments that encourage these types of behaviors.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Last but not least, find some healthy coping mechanisms. If your spirituality, if your faith, was taken away from you, that's fine. Find how to ride a bike. Get into painting, get into mountain climbing. Go do some kayaking. Get a dog. Get really invested in birds, whatever it is. Get some super passion projects. Find your connection, find a way to cope without drowning in the darkness, because ultimately, that's what it is.

Speaker 1: 31:49

I tell my clients all the time you guys listening, you know you got to find your life ring. Sometimes that's it. You just got to find something that you can hold on to and float until you just get out of the storm and that's it is what it is. That is it. That is my episode on spiritual abuse. Woo Got some tension in the shoulders there because I'm telling you this is haven't talked a lot about this because it's pretty humiliating. Right, it's pretty gross that your mom was basically acting like a carnival, madam psychic, right, it's laughable. Now you see it. You see the delusion. It's all a part of her narcissism. But it's so important that we take these lessons away that we apply them to our own lives, and I know by sharing my story, you're going to be able to see something in yours or at the very least, I hope that you will.

Speaker 1: 32:40

For everyone else, I'll be back next week with something bigger, better and better. Woo, very exciting. So I hope you will tune in, come back, stream it, share it with your friends, family. All that good stuff. You can go and read me on mediumcom. I'm still there. You can find me on sub-stack. You can find me on TikTok and Instagram as well If you just want some daily tips, advice and a laugh here and there. If you're interested in coaching, then head over to therealebjohnsoncom. Click on Working With Me. If you really loved the episode, I'd love for you to leave a five-star review, but anyways, for everyone else, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for making this possible and for blowing all of this up for me. I really, really appreciate it. I'm forever grateful. Until next time, keep your heads up, keep your eyes on the stars and keep moving forward. Bye, bye.