ACA Religious Abuse Survivors

ACA Religious Abuse Survivors is a sub group within ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Other Dysfunctional Families), and the Inland Empire Intergroup has been very supportive of our meetings. Basically, the Big Red Book does mention religious abuse as a qualifier for some adult children but falls short of explaining how to provide a safe space for people who are put off by the religiosity of the original ACA 12 steps, which are in turn based on the AA 12 steps. More traditional ACA groups often don’t understand that religious abuse causes complex PTSD and that religious language can be extremely triggering for survivors. 12-step group members may fall back on “take what you like and ignore the rest,” without comprehending that they are also forcing religious abuse survivors to pray and even admonishing them to find a higher power that they specifically call “god,” which makes it feel like the abuser is very much present in the room.

While Religious Trauma Syndrome does not currently appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, ed 5 (DSM), there is growing recognition of how it affects sufferers. Symptoms can include and are not limited to: “confusion, difficulty with decision-making and critical thinking, dissociation, identity confusion, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, suicidal ideation, anger, grief, guilt, loneliness, lack of meaning, sleep and eating disorders, nightmares, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse, somatization, and developmental delay resulting from the control of information and discouragement of critical thinking within the religious environment.” (Wikipedia) Notably, alcoholism and other destructive addictions may or may not play a part at any time in a religious abuse survivor’s life as such behaviors are part of the broader picture of reactions to complex trauma. It makes sense then that religious abuse survivors can find support in ACA when considering the second part of the name “and other dysfunctional families.”

For some background, religious abuse can happen at any point in a person’s life and can reoccur at multiple points, and so we have observed the following patterns, all of which demonstrate coercion. Some people were raised in a very controlling religion while others find it later in life, try attending different sects within the same religion or find a different religion from a previous one, and others join cults. For survivors of monotheistic belief systems, the god of the bible (or allah of the koran, etc,) is a malignant narcissist, and so there’s a strong correlation between narcissistic abuse and religious abuse. Religious leaders may model judgmental and condemning behavior after their god, and then spiritual narcissists in the group (ie, the flying monkeys or church ladies) seek to keep others in line. Additionally, there are those who find themselves forced to become religious through a 12-step group that teaches that recovery requires a higher power, often interchangeably referred to as “god.” This situation is essentially religious 13th stepping where those who have been in the program longer proselytize to newcomers and may even try to get them to attend their particular church, bible studies, etc. There are also survivors of polytheistic religions and ancestor worship, who find that all of their actions and feelings must fit in with familial/societal expectations with no space allowed for individual needs and wants. They might need to pray and make offerings to appease both the spirits as well as their elders, risking their wrath if they fail to act as expected. Then there are those who did not experience abuse through a particular religion but rather come out of abusive families or countries with totalitarian governments where a relative or political leader was a malignant narcissist and essentially became a god that required fear and adulation. To compound the problem, survivors of religious narcissistic abuse often go on to find themselves trapped in a relationship with a narcissist, who can be a romantic partner, a cult leader, a boss, a professor, really anyone in a position of power over the victim.

The ACA RAS meetings are secular in nature with no requirement of a higher power. While some religious abuse survivors still have a sense of a higher power and certainly can say that they have one, we ask that they respect the healthy boundaries of the group and keep the details to themselves. Too much information about a person’s higher power during the meetings can resemble proselytizing or witnessing, which is very triggering for the others who are present. We encourage those who feel the need to talk at length about their higher power to go to other ACA meetings where members are free to talk as much as they want about their current religions. Instead, our meetings focus on creating a safe space where religious abuse survivors can talk about their past experiences, describing how they left and the trauma that they have endured. In that respect, discussions of religious trauma focus on the negative aspects of belief systems rather than on positive ones simply because survivors were never allowed to question those beliefs or admit to feeling anything other than happiness.

In keeping with the secular nature of the ACA RAS meetings, we recognize that religious abuse survivors find the ACA 12 steps to be extremely triggering due to their religious language, emphasizing the requirement of a higher power that they also call “god,” along with confession, amends, forgiving, and prayer. This triggering framework, which comes out of the AA 12 Steps (half of which actually arose from the Oxford Group), can cause religious abuse survivors to avoid 12-step programs altogether and lose out on the benefits of the ACA program. Fortunately, ACA is by nature an inclusive program that recognizes all dysfunctional families, warns of the issue of black-and-white thinking, and speaks of “spirituality” as opposed to religion. Based on this inclusivity, religious abuse survivors can reasonably ask for a safe space within the program to learn self-love and an autonomy that high-control religious groups and totalitarian governments do not allow.

ACA RAS meetings currently offer an agnostic/secular version of the 12 Steps and the Solution, inviting fellow travelers to consider a path of recovery that reaches toward reparenting themselves with self-love. Learning self-love can be very difficult for those who learned all too well that they were supposed to condemn themselves for human imperfections as well as to sacrifice themselves for others. They have internalized messages that are difficult to escape, and the inner critical parent might scold them for acting egotistical and selfish, something which the original 12 Steps can all too easily reinforce. The ACA RAS agnostic/secular 12 Steps focus on a path toward the Solution of becoming one’s own inner loving parent, using a version that takes out the triggering insertion of an eternal outside source of parenting and traces of cult-like love-bombing. In this way, survivors can discover steps that actually help them to work through their CPTSD without the sense of coercion that comes from being told to focus on steps that only trigger them and cause further damage. As religious abuse survivors find steps that ease them out of fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode, they can gradually let go of the self-loathing that has been crushing them. Consequently, the ACA RAS version of the 12 Steps are not written “in stone” but rather serve as a starting point. Religious abuse survivors have the right to autonomy, to choose their own steps, and even to rewrite them at any point to reflect new discoveries that they have made about themselves. In this way, religious abuse survivors can always revisit step work without anyone else chastising them about not having worked a particular one enough or not having finished them.

Currently, the ACA RAS group has meetings that focus on dealing with different aspects of Religious Trauma Syndrome. (Please note that all the meetings in the following list use US Pacific Time zone, which is the same as Los Angeles, CA.)

The Saturday noon USPT meeting, which was our original meeting, focuses on learning to identify all of our feelings, which can be difficult as high-control religions only allow a limited range of feelings and in specific settings.
The Saturday 9 pm USPT offers a secular approach to The Loving Parent Guidebook, which is an important ACA piece of literature as it helps adult children find immediate relief for CPTSD.
The Sunday 11 am USPT examines different versions of the 12 Steps and invites people to choose their own as a path to a secular version of the Solution.
The Sunday 1 pm USPT meeting is for those who identify as women and provides a safe space for recovery from patriarchal religious abuse while currently reading Janja Lalich’s Take Back Your Life: Recovering From Cults and Abusive Relationships, which the Monday noon USPT is also using.
The Monday 7 pm USPT meeting uses guided meditation to help reduce the fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode that many religious abuse survivors find themselves stuck in.
The Tuesday 4pm USPT meeting is for the recovery from the shame and blame of sexual repression.
The Wednesday 4 pm USPT meeting focuses on recovery from religious narcissistic abuse while looking at the Laundry List and the Other Laundry List.
The Thursday noon USPT meeting is currently reading Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and also offers suggestions for gentle physical practice to reduce the symptoms of CPTSD.
The Thursday 7 pm USPT meeting concentrates on recovery from the emotional abuse of the religious drama triangle.
Lastly, the Friday 4 pm USPT meeting deals with post traumatic embitterment, as adult children can be “frightened by angry people” (The Laundry List, Trait 3) as well as “frighten people with our anger” (The Other Laundry List, Trait 3).

ACA Religious Abuse Survivors Readings:
Starting RAS affirmation:

Today I seek the serenity to express myself honestly and to be true to myself.

The Laundry List – 14 Traits of an Adult Child of a Dysfunctional Family and Religious Abuse Survivor (RAS version)

We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
We act compulsively and recreate our dysfunctional families with others to relive our abandonment needs.
We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
We became addicted to excitement.
We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue.”
We have “stuffed” our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).
We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
Alcoholism is one of the responses to intergenerational trauma; and we became codependents and took on the characteristics of that condition even when we did not pick up the drink.
Adult children and religious abuse survivors are reactors rather than actors.

(Please note this not an ACA WSO-sanctioned document)

The Other Laundry List

To cover our fear of people and our dread of isolation we tragically become the very authority figures who frighten others and cause them to withdraw.
To avoid becoming enmeshed and entangled with other people and losing ourselves in the process, we become rigidly self-sufficient. We disdain the approval of others.
We frighten people with our anger and threat of belittling criticism.
We dominate others and abandon them before they can abandon us or we avoid relationships with dependent people altogether. To avoid being hurt, we isolate and dissociate and thereby abandon ourselves.
We live life from the standpoint of a victimizer, and are attracted to people we can manipulate and control in our important relationships.
We are irresponsible and self-centered. Our inflated sense of self-worth and self-importance prevents us from seeing our deficiencies and shortcomings.
We make others feel guilty when they attempt to assert themselves.
We inhibit our fear by staying deadened and numb.
We hate people who “play” the victim and beg to be rescued.
We deny that we’ve been hurt and are suppressing our emotions by the dramatic expression of “pseudo” feelings.
To protect ourselves from self punishment for failing to “save” the family we project our self-hate onto others and punish them instead.
We “manage” the massive amount of deprivation we feel, coming from abandonment within the home, by quickly letting go of relationships that threaten our “independence” (not too close).
We refuse to admit we’ve been affected by family dysfunction or that there was dysfunction in the home or that we have internalized any of the family’s destructive attitudes and behaviors.
We act as if we are nothing like the dependent people who raised us.

ACA RAS Agnostic/Secular 12 Steps

Admitted we were powerless over family dysfunction and religious trauma, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to trust that we could learn to reparent ourselves.
Made a decision to practice self-love and follow a path of recovery.
Made a blameless inventory of ourselves, our families of origin, and our religious trauma.
Admitted to ourselves and to another fellow traveler the exact nature of our past.
Became entirely ready to reparent ourselves with self-love.
Worked with our inner family to reparent and transform ourselves.
Made a list of how we had harmed ourselves and became willing to love ourselves unconditionally.
Made amends to ourselves and understood we can love ourselves unconditionally.
Continued to take personal inventory and admitted when we needed to reparent ourselves with unconditional love.
Sought through meditation and gentle physical practice to improve our being in the world.
Having had an awakening as a result of these steps, we sought to share them with other survivors and to practice self-love in all our affairs.

(Please note this not an ACA WSO-sanctioned document)

ACA Religious Abuse Survivors’ Solution

The (modified/religious abuse survivors) solution is to become your own loving parent.

As ACA religious abuse survivors meetings become a safe place for you, you will find freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the religious shame and blame that are carryovers from the past. You will become an adult who is imprisoned no longer by childhood reactions. You will recover the child within you, learning to accept and love yourself.

The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation. Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the religious trauma of the past. We learn to re-parent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect.

This process allows us to see our biological parents as the instruments of our existence. We are here to learn to reparent ourselves with self-love and self-acceptance.

This is the action and work that heals us: we use the Steps; we use the meetings; we use the telephone, apps, and email. We share our experience, strength, and hope with each other. We learn to restructure our dysfunctional thinking one day at a time. When we release our parents from responsibility for our actions today, we become free to make healthful decisions as actors, not reactors. We progress from hurting, to healing, to helping. We awaken to a sense of wholeness we never knew was possible.

By attending these meetings on a regular basis, you will come to see family dysfunction and religious abuse for what they are: transgenerational trauma that affected you as a child and continues to affect you as an adult. You will learn to keep the focus on yourself in the here and now. You will take responsibility for your own life and supply your own parenting.

You will not do this alone. Look around you and you will see others who will listen and accept what you have to say. We ask you to accept us just as we accept you.

This group is working toward finding peace and happiness now in this lifetime. We are sure that as your self-love and self-acceptance grow, you will see beautiful changes in all your relationships, especially with your inner family.

(Please note this not an ACA WSO-sanctioned document)

ACA RAS Agnostic/Secular 12 Traditions

Our common welfare should come first, personal recovery depends on ACA unity.
For our group purpose, decision making is guided by a well-informed group conscience based on member participation. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
The only requirement for membership in ACA is a desire to recover from the effects of growing up in a dysfunctional family and culture.
Each group is autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or ACA as a whole. We cooperate with all other Twelve-Step Programs.
Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the adult child who still suffers.
An ACA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the ACA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
Every ACA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
Adult Children of Alcoholics should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
ACA, as such, ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
Adult Children of Alcoholics has no opinion on outside issues; hence the ACA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, films, and other public media.
Anonymity is the core foundational principle of all our Traditions, reminding us to place principles before personalities.

(Please note this not an ACA WSO-sanctioned document)

ACA RAS Agnostic/Secular 12 Promises

We will discover our real identities by loving and accepting ourselves.
Our self-esteem will increase as we give ourselves approval on a daily basis.
Fear of authority figures and the need to “people-please” will leave us.
Our ability to share intimacy will grow inside us.
As we face our abandonment issues, we will be attracted by strengths and become more tolerant of weaknesses.
We will enjoy feeling stable, peaceful, and financially secure.
We will learn how to play and have fun in our lives.
We will choose to love people who can love and be responsible for themselves.
Healthy boundaries and limits will become easier for us to set.
Fears of failure and success will leave us, as we intuitively make healthier choices.
With help from our ACA support group, we will slowly release our dysfunctional behaviors.
Gradually, with the help of others and our inner loving parent, we will learn to expect the best and get it.

(Please note this not an ACA WSO-sanctioned document)

The ACA Bill of Rights (ACA RAS version)

I have the right to say no.
I have the right to say, “I don’t know”.
I have the right to be wrong.
I have the right to make mistakes and learn from them.
I have the right to detach from anyone in whose company I feel humiliated or manipulated.
I have the right to make my own choices and decisions in my life.
I have the right to grieve any actual or perceived loss.
I have the right to all of my feelings.
I have the right to feel angry, including towards someone I love.
I have the right to change my mind at any time.
I have the right to a spiritually, physically, sexually, genderly, and emotionally healthier existence, though it may differ entirely or in part from my parents’ way of life.
I have the right to forgive myself and to choose how and when I forgive others.
I have the right to take healthy risks and to experiment with new possibilities.
I have the right to be honest in my relationships and to seek the same from others.
I have the right to ask for what I want.
I have the right to determine and honor my own priorities and goals, and to allow others to do the same.
I have the right to dream and to have hope.
I have the right to be my True Self.
I have the right to know and nurture my Inner Child.
I have the right to laugh, to play, to have fun, and the freedom to celebrate this life, right here, right now.

(Please note this not an ACA WSO-sanctioned document)

The Flip Side of The Laundry List (modified RAS version)

We move out of isolation and are not unrealistically afraid of other people, even authority figures.
We learn to love ourselves and do not depend on others to tell us who we are.
We are not automatically frightened by angry people and no longer regard personal criticism as a threat.
We do not have a compulsive need to recreate abandonment.
We stop living life from the standpoint of victims and are not attracted by this trait in our important relationships.
We do not use enabling as a way to avoid looking at our own shortcomings.
We do not feel guilty when we stand up for ourselves.
We move out of fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode and choose workable relationships instead of constant upset.
We are able to distinguish love from pity, and do not think “rescuing” people we “pity” is an act of love.
We come out of denial about our traumatic childhoods and regain the ability to feel and express our emotions.
We stop judging and condemning ourselves and discover a sense of self-worth.
We grow in independence and are no longer terrified of abandonment. We have interdependent relationships with healthy people, not dependent relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable.
With our loving inner parent’s help, we work to identify, acknowledge, and remove our self-destructive behavior.
We are actors, not reactors.

(Please note this not an ACA WSO-sanctioned document)

The Flip Side of The Other Laundry List (modified RAS version)

We face and resolve our fear of people and our dread of isolation and stop intimidating others with our power and position.
We realize the sanctuary we have built to protect the frightened and injured child within has become a prison and we become willing to risk moving out of isolation.
With our renewed sense of self-worth and self-esteem we realize it is no longer necessary to protect ourselves by intimidating others with contempt, ridicule and anger.
We accept and comfort the isolated and hurt inner child we have abandoned and disavowed and thereby end the need to act out our fears of enmeshment and abandonment with other people.
Because we are whole and complete we no longer try to control others through manipulation and force and bind them to us with fear in order to avoid feeling isolated and alone.
Through our in-depth inventory we discover our true identity as capable, worthwhile people. By seeking to reparent ourselves with unconditional love, we learn to free ourselves from the burden of inferiority and grandiosity.
We support and encourage others in their efforts to be assertive.
We uncover, acknowledge and express our childhood fears and move out of fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode.
We have compassion for anyone who is trapped in the “drama triangle” and is desperately searching for a way out of insanity.
We accept we were traumatized in childhood and lost the ability to feel. Using the 12 Steps as a program of recovery we regain the ability to feel and remember and become whole human beings who are happy, joyous and free.
In accepting we were powerless as children to “save” our family we are able to release our self-hate and to stop punishing ourselves and others for not being enough.
By accepting and reuniting with the inner child, we are no longer threatened by intimacy, by the fear of being engulfed or made invisible.
By acknowledging the reality of family dysfunction we no longer have to act as if nothing were wrong or keep denying that we are still unconsciously reacting to childhood harm and injury.
We stop denying and do something about our post-traumatic dependency on substances, people, places and things to distort and avoid reality.

(Please note this not an ACA WSO-sanctioned document)

A Religious Abuse Survivor’s Serenity Affirmation:

Today, I seek the serenity to accept myself, the courage to change the self-hatred of the past, and the wisdom to love myself unconditionally.