This transcript was generated automatically. It may contain errors.
Pam King: Although our path to spiritual health can be so life-giving, we need to keep our eyes open to the ways religion and spirituality have been exploited to coerce control and create chaos.
Focusing on the intersection of religion and psychology, licensed therapist, researcher, and podcaster, Dan Koch is creating a much needed public conversation about spiritual harm and abuse, helping victims learn how to deal with trauma and offering insight and guidance towards healthy, religious and spiritual experiences. I define spiritual abuse as a form of emotional and psychological abuse perpetrated by a religious leader or group and, or with a religious or spiritual component. usually involving coercion or control.
Dan Koch: I describe religion and to some extent spirituality as nuclear fission. when nuclear fission is going well, We get the cleanest and most abundant form of energy that the world has ever known. And Yet when nuclear fission goes poorly and those reactors break down and you have nuclear fallout, you kill and irradiate everything in a 20 mile radius. Religion by its very nature, almost by definition, just deals with those. Big, deep, internal, important things, you know, spirituality is linked to our deepest values, and our deepest sense of connection to the universe.
So, that’s why it’s destructive, because the levers are pressing on the deepest parts of ourselves.
Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King and you’re listening to With & For, a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
I spend so much time exploring the expansive benefits and positives that emerge from our inherent spirituality as human beings and how that relates to our individual and collective thriving. I truly believe that spirituality can be a force for good. That religion offers countless pro-social benefits to the world. And that exercising our innate spiritual capacities is an essential factor in what it means to thrive.
But we have to acknowledge the harm and vice and corruption, the violence that has been perpetrated through religious and spiritual context.
If you’ve experienced spiritual abuse or harm, or even suspect that you might have, please know it’s okay to approach this topic on your own terms and when the time is right. Consider doing so with the love and trusted support of family, friends, or even professionals.
Spiritual abuse is a serious matter, and there’s no way we can cultivate a full understanding or integrated experience of healthy spirituality without coming to terms with its prevalence and effects.
This makes me incredibly grateful for my friend Dan Koch.
Dan’s a former touring musician with an educational background in academic philosophy who started podcasting years ago to explore the theological and sociological and political aspects of Christian faith, particularly within the evangelical and fundamentalist varieties. He wanted to start a more constructive and honest conversation about the ways these Christian communities quite apart from being a source of spiritual healing and care, were actually capable of fostering spiritual abuse and harm.
Dan is a licensed therapist caring for many patients to work through the trauma of spiritual abuse, and his work and insight in this domain emerges from his own empirical research. He’s also an expert communicator with so much insight and infectious curiosity and a very warm and inviting affect.
You can find his podcast. You have permission wherever you listen to podcasts and find exclusive episodes at patreon.com/dan Koch. You’ll find all these links in our show notes. Having been on Dan’s show a few times, it’s great to bring him on to, with and for, to share his expertise and experience working with spiritual harm and abuse.
Pam King: In this conversation with Dan Koch, we discuss
the psychological study of spiritual abuse and harm, including conceptual definitions and the many factors that come along with them,
the symptoms and most recognizable patterns that point to spiritual abuse,
the impact of abuse and trauma on psychological and spiritual health.
How to reappraise and challenge harmful core beliefs,
how to find healing, joy and transcendence as we deal with past trauma.
Welcome, Dan. So great to have you on With and For. I have so enjoyed being on your podcast. You have permission and I have been really looking forward to talking again.
Dan Koch: I love talking to you every chance I get, Pam, so glad to be here.
Pam King: Well, today we have a heavy topic, your area of expertise, spiritual abuse and spiritual harm. I think it’s worth noting that as we get talking about issues around abuse that this can be triggering for people. And I really want to be sensitive to our listeners. and I’m wondering how you would like to frame this conversation just so people can be prepared. Might it bring back some lingering memories or issues or feelings?
Dan Koch: Yeah, I mean, just briefly, I’ll say I actually don’t do trigger warnings you may be as aware or more aware than I am of the research on this, but they don’t seem to actually work when they’re studied. that’s not necessarily the same as saying that we shouldn’t let people know what they’re going to be hearing about.
That’s different, right? So I would just say, if you’re listening and you think, Okay. I might figure out a thing or two about my life as regards spiritual harm and abuse. Then I would say, maybe be mindful of when you listen to this episode.
Maybe, just like you would do with any sort of difficult activity, like if you would do, you know, deeper kind of trauma work with a therapist or, you know, kind of want to check in and make sure that Is this a good time for this right now or not? And if it’s not wait and listen later, that’s probably all I would say.
And I would just say, if, if it’s, if you’re curious about it and it might be, it might be something there, thenfollow the curiosity.
Pam King: I so appreciate that. The other thing I’d put out there is that there’s kind of a self diagnosis culture out therewhere it’s almost like people are looking for their own problems. And so also for listeners who, you know, I think many of us are really prone towards spiritual growth, but sometimes we have this catastrophizing tendency as well to be like, Oh my gosh, that’s my problem.
Or maybe that explains these issues for me. So any tips you might have for folks who,Tend toward self diagnosis or just how they might frame how they think about this.
Dan Koch: I would just distinguish between self knowledge and self diagnosis. So, you know, I have a philosophy bachelor’s background and I’m not really sure how much good that’s done me, except that I do often think about, you know, in the mouth of Socrates written by Plato is, you know, thyself. And as I work with therapy clients on.
You know, awareness, mindfulness, these kinds of things. I do keep coming back to Socrates in that way. And so I think it’s really good to want to know ourselves. I think it’s really good to, to actively seek out language and concepts, and to monitor our own thoughts, feelings, sensations, our reactions to things, where, where we feel it, how we feel it, what it makes us think of all that stuff is fantastic.
Know thyself. I agree. But, diagnosis is different. People have to go to school, they have to generally go to some sort of medical or mental health training to be able to diagnose things, and the reason that we require that is because There are a lot of factors and you end up having to know a lot of things about a lot of areas to make diagnoses in a confident way that people could really stand behind, for instance, in a court of law or something like that, uh, where these diagnoses often quite matter quite a bit.
and so I, you know, I would just be like, learn about yourself, know yourself, diagnosing yourself, unless it’s a slam dunk, I would say if you can pull up. A DSM list of symptoms. And it’s like, I have all seven out of seven. Okay. Then maybe you’re approaching an accurate self diagnosis, but a lot of those diagnoses are four out of seven and it has to be this much impaired.
There’s just a lot of detail. And so I would, you know, I would just be cautious about diagnosis. Lean into to knowledge.
Pam King: When it comes to spiritual abuse and the questions we all might have about whether something in our past might have been spiritually abusive, Dan is rightfully wary of self-diagnosis, but he considers it more helpful to come at this with an open and exploratory mindset, leveraging our desires to understand ourselves better and approach our past with curiosity and courage and self-love.
I asked him to walk through a grounding practice that might center us and prepare us to do that kind of exploratory work of seeking self-knowledge in these sensitive areas So appreciate that. Dan, one of the things that I found our listeners, really enjoy about the show is the practical applications, and I would be so interested if you might guide our listeners through a self knowledge practice.
Something that you just talked about, being aware of your thoughts and your feelings, reflections about yourself. Is that something that you would be interested or able to do?
Dan Koch: Sure. Yeah, we could, we can do some versions of that. Maybe just starting globally zoomed out. You’re about to listen to two people talk about spiritual abuse.
How does that have you feeling? What, you know, what are you noticing right now? You can close your eyes. You can ask yourself questions like, do I feel more up and activated by this?
Do I feel Maybe a kind of a dread. do I feel, does part of me want to avoid this conversation? That’s interesting to note. is part of me excited? is there a part of me that’s like, Ooh, I might get some language here for something that has gone on in my life. Is there a part of you that feels like.
Well, this is taboo. This is off limits, really anything like that. That’s really good data. You know, if you could, you recognize that going in, it tells you something about either what you’ve learned, how you’ve been formed, what the people around you telegraphed to you consistently, whatever about a topic by looking at how it’s affecting you before you even start.
It’s like a nice little measure of all the stuff besides the actual information. That you’ll hear about the topic.
Maybe some of you are feeling very curious and not a lot of fear while other people are kind of like,uh, yeah, I’m, I’m curious in the way that I think something really bad is going to happen and I can’t look away. That’s a different kind of curiosity. I’m not at all talking about American politics right now.
so you could, you could think about. How fear blocks other mental activities to, to just go very neurological about it. Right? Like the seat of our fear, the amygdala, it is an older part of our brain. It is, it is spatially prior to the parts of our brain, electronically prior to the parts of our brain where we do more abstract thinking.
That is possible when we are more calm. So, you know. Someone who’s listening who has unprocessed spiritual or religious trauma, for instance. There will be some of those people they might get triggered in the way that people with PTSD get triggered They may have a heightened nervous system response They may want to avoid
Pam King: well, Dan, what if they are feeling a bit anxious? Do you have, what are your recommendations on how people might calm down and somewhat override their anxiety?
Dan Koch: share one kind of general mental health one and then one personal one from my experience in life with panic disorder. So the general one is, you know, breath work of almost any kind. you know, a simple rule of thumb is like a four count in, six count out, or three count in, five count out.
breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth. You do that for about five minutes. You will find that your body has calmed down a fair bit. And while you’re doing it, you can focus on your breath. focus on the sensation of the rising and falling of your chest. And that helps to reduce the ability of extraneous anxious thoughts to be the primary ground in which we are living for those moments.
And then I’ll share one more autobiographical. My dad is a therapist, and when It first became clear that I was experiencing panic attacks. One of the things he said to me, this was in my twenties. So he used adult language with me. He said, it’s a wave. You’re going to ride this wave, but like waves in the ocean, like it eventually crashes and chills out.
And that’s true. That’s true. Like neurologically neurochemically it’s true mentally, unless you are re triggered in, let’s just say something like a panic attack. Anxiety spell, unless you have a fresh trigger, you can graph how that looks over time and it looks like a wave and you will ride it.
And one hour from now, it will be better than it is right now. And 10 minutes from now, it’ll be better than it is right now. And that. Just that knowledge, just knowing that I could I could graph it out if I wanted to and I know that in the future I’ll be at a lower part, I’ll be in more of a trough than a crest. That was like the first real thing I learned to hold onto when I was feeling anxious and I, I still use it with clients.
When I’m narrating this with clients, I will say something like in through our nose, hold it for a second or two, and then out through your mouth slowly.
And I’m just kind of paying attention to my chest rising and falling in for a couple seconds, hold out for more seconds. And there’s been some research on this and people will claim some particular number of seconds is the right amount, but the most stable finding is just in through the nose and then out through the mouth longer than it took you to go in through the nose.
That’s the one thing that is most clear.
Pam King: I know you’re asking what are the symptoms of spiritual or religious abuse? How does it compare to other kinds of relational abuse or trauma? Dan walked me through the symptoms that might be present for people who’ve actually experienced spiritual abuse in their own lives
Before we got into the exercise, you brought up like the DSM, symptoms of trauma, and I’d love to hear you talk about symptoms of trauma. Not that I’m trying to encourage people to self diagnose, but again, to be aware of what they’re experiencing.
Absolutely. Our symptoms of abuse or trauma and how that might be related to spiritual abuse specifically.
Dan Koch: So with trauma, we’re looking for things like, recurrent, involuntary, memories about an event. We are looking for dreams about the event. You don’t have to have all of these, by the way. It’s, it’s usually some, some mix. Um, we’re looking for dissociation,kind of checking out. We’re looking for distress, psychological distress at being exposed to something that reminds you of it, which then can lead to avoidance.
avoidance is one of those things that’s very interesting in trauma because it is both a symptom and a cause. It’s not the initial cause of the symptoms, but by avoiding processing the memories and associated experiences, we actually keep the rest of the symptoms around. So avoidance is something that we focus a lot on in trauma work.
Okay. There can be issues with memory. There can be self loathing and negative beliefs about oneself. it can just, it affects our emotional states, uh, in kind of both depressive and anxious type of ways. And, you know, there can be irritation, hypervigilance, people can engage in reckless or self destructive behavior, which you could think of also as a type of avoidance, right?
people, like, one thing that is a tell for a lot of people is an exaggerated startle response. You know, just like, how easily startled are you? and again, like we said earlier, Self diagnosis for something like PTSD is very complex and we don’t recommend it. but these are, this is the ballpark essentially that we’re working in.
Pam King: I think that’s really helpful. If, do you have any comments or suggestions to listeners who might be hearing that and going, wow, some of that really resonates or rings true with me? Um, advice or thoughts for
Dan Koch: Well, the first thing to know if you think you might be experiencing religious trauma or have experienced something like spiritual abuse is there is an ongoing kind of inside baseball conversation in the psychological and psychiatric community about whether or not. somebody can have PTSD without like one big event.
And if you’ve heard people talk about complex trauma or complex PTSD, this is a way to sort ofacknowledge that there are people who have all the symptoms, of PTSD, but never had the one big event where they were beaten up or assaulted, you know, where they saw someone die or whatever. Uh, but they just grew up.
For instance, in an environment that was like routinely traumatizing in like a small t kind of a way and so religious trauma can be either. I’ve had clients who had really, it came down to like one or two conversations that really showed them what had been going on. And those events. acted in their lives similar to the kind of main event in a PTSD diagnosis.
And then often it is more like the complex trauma where it’s like just being in a situation for a long period of time, where, You know, your autonomy is undercut and you are, maybe you’re being controlled. Maybe you’re being minorly traumatized over and over again by terrorizing imagery and ideas or something being threatened with hell all the time.
You know, these kinds of things. So it’s, it just does get a little tricky and it makes diagnosis in the proper sense, especially difficult, in this realm. And it does feel like. The field is moving forward on that and really good conversations are happening, but it’s worth knowing that religious trauma, spiritual abuse, this is like a, comparatively very new angle on shell shocked world war one veterans, for instance, like we, you can trace modern PTSD conversation back to a hundred years ago and longer.
And the spiritual trauma, religious trauma thing is like, we’re talking the last. I don’t know, 10 years or so, 10, 15 years.
Pam King: Dan’s study of spiritual abuse isn’t just a neutral scientific curiosity
for him it’s a very personal exploration of his own childhood experience of terror and trauma and his mounting anxiety surrounding hell and evangelical teachings and predictions about the end times
I know for some of you this is familiar, but for others this might be foreign. Fear is exploited in many religious traditions, but in certain Christian denominations, hellfire and brimstone is a regular topic and a powerful coercive tactic used by controlling leaders.
When he was younger, his exposure to these teachings the way they were communicated produce severe panic attacks that continued into his twenties
And Dan, I’m really looking forward to diving into, your work and measurement and research on spiritual abuse. But before that, I’d love to hear about your own journey, your own story that gives us context for how you have dedicated so much time and energy into this work.
Dan Koch: Sure. So I was raised what I call kind of moderate California evangelical, pretty much a direct lineage from the Jesus movement of Orange County and the LA area in the seventies. So I was born in 83 and, attended a, technically an interdenominational church, which by the time I was there was more of a kind of straightforward non denominational.
You know, a little bit of hymns, a little bit of that old mainline flavor, but, but pretty straightforward, non denominational nineties. If you have an image of that, it was probably like that, but not a South or Midwest, not a Bible belt, not all that religious and cultural sort of barometric pressure that those parts of America experienced.
We had. More leeway. I grew up in the Silicon Valley and it, you know, it didn’t really become what we now think of as a Silicon Valley until about the nineties, but that’s when I was growing up and the first internet boom, you know, and early kind of computing boom, so a fairly wealthy area, very racially and culturally diverse.
our community was really knit together by our evangelical Christianity because it wasn’t. Ethnically homogenous and in that world, there were a lot of really beautiful people, many of whom I’m still close with. Many of my parents friends are still sort of mentor like figuresto me now, a lot to be grateful for. Also, was traumatized through, end times teachings. When I was about 11 years old, I was given a book that was a riff on a previous book that had been very popular in the eighties. And this book was called something like 94 reasons why Jesus will return in 1994. And. Likely a riff on the Harold Camping 1994 question mark book, which you can find these days on Amazon used and, it basically told me that the world was going to end six months later.
This was April of 1994.and as I said, I was 11 and I had panic attacks nightly for a month or two until my system kind of worked it out.Um, but that issue became my life’s. Most common source of panic attacks. And I have, I would say I, I describe myself as having panic disorder, but it’s been in remission basically for the last decade or so, um, done a lot of work on it and have made a ton of progress that right there, might be helpful for people who have mental health struggles, but so the antichrist, who’s the antichrist is the, are the end times coming soon?
And all that stuff was if something triggered that in me, then for about 15 to 20 years of my life, that would all but guarantee a panic attack, which then would stay a trigger for a year or two until I’d kind of worked that out.And yeah, I’m not, I don’t know how many panic attacks I had over that issue over the years or near panic attacks, but probably somewhere between like 20 and 50 or something if you count the small ones as well.
Pam King: And so that eventually led me to thinking about my dissertation, you know, fast forwarding into into my mid thirties andwhat I wanted to do it on and I chose that and As I got into the research found that there actually wasn’t even enough research on The kind of more basic issue of religious trauma spiritual harm and abuse so pivoted but the end times terror and horror violence you know hell house scaring people with hell all that stuff did find its way into The spiritual harm and abuse scale just as one part Among many
Absolutely. Well, I find that fascinating and it makes me so angry that a young person, you were 11 ish
and, you know, imagination is very activated as a younger school aged child and that these beliefs, took hold of your imagination and became integrated in such a way that really caused you terror.
I am so sorry.
Dan Koch: And this is interesting from a psychological angle, has been interesting for me is what is it that’s terrifying for people? And a lot of people, I would say the majority that I have either interviewed or just spoken with, you know, off the record.
I did like 20 interviews, early on before the dissertation, before the academic research, I did some proto research for the podcast and I put together a series called, End times anxiety. And there’s, it’s a four part series. You can find it, your permission. And those interviews, it was much more about being ending up in hell or being left behind at the rapture, which basically meant you were probably going to end up in hell.
And for me, that was never the thing. For me, it was not getting to live out a full human life. That’s really what it came down to. So It was this cutting short of the natural life cycle. and you could say I was entitled to it. I don’t think an 11 year old is capable of that kind of entitlement, actually, I would think that would be, that would be a categorical mistake to, to blame an 11 year old for entitlement about living a long life.
I think it was a beautiful thing that, We could say God put in me, to want, to love being alive and it was pretty violently shattered. not physically violent, but psychologically violent and saying, no, you’re going to be dead in six months.
Pam King: Dan, I’m imagining that 11 year old boy. did you get through that and get to where you are today? Because you you are the same full of life person, but you’re also really changed and have worked through a lot. To maintain that full of liveness,
Dan Koch: I appreciate that. I white knuckled it until I was 24. So around 24, I had the worst panic attack of my life. it was the summer. I think I was 23 about to turn 24. I was working with a, with a buddyon a record. So my, my past is my twenties I spent as a touring musician. And I was co producing an album and I saw You know, nightline, one of these sort of hour long news shows, not like the nightly news, but like one of those in depth ones, and it was about this guy in Miami who claimed to be the antichrist. He had some sort of flowery redefinition of that term that was actually good, but bad and he had his followers tattooing.
666 on their hands and a few of them on their foreheads. And it just, you know, I had been drinking too much caffeine and not realizing that I was that made me anxious and this dateline special hit me and it just was. Like a bomb going off in my nervous system, and I actually had to fly home the next day I did not finish making the album My co producer finished things out.
It majorly disrupted my life absolutely disruptive.
My nervous system was just so on fire and After that point it got so bad that I had to get some therapy At that time I got like an as needed Xanax prescription And I started kind of working through what is this and I found the term panic attack and panic disorder and you know that that sort of began the process of working through it I cut out caffeine for many years which was extremely helpful that’s like my little piece of practical advice if someone is new to recognizing that they have panic attacks, cut out caffeine.
It’ll take you four days of headaches. Just take Tylenol. You’ll be fine. and then I’ve actually, you know, I’m drinking it right now. I’ve actually been able to fully reintroduce caffeine without causing any panic, but that’s because of the progress that’s been made over that time. So. Yeah, white knuckling and then basically what we would call psychoeducation, eventually.
and just practicing, understanding when I’m feeling that and what to do and, you know, all that stuff.
Pam King: Today, Dan’s spirituality has taken a contemplative and ecumenical turn. He shared with me about his theological perspectives, many of which he discusses on his podcast, as well as his spiritual experiences, which are characterized by a transcendent joy. That’s extraordinary. I’m so grateful for that growth in development in you.
I’d love to ask, you know, given where you’ve been, what you’ve come through, how would you describe your own spiritual life today? How
Dan Koch: I still identify as a Christian. I often say that something like 75 percent of the world’s Christians might not agree.theologically, I’m extremely liberal. To the extent that word makes sense. I’m really kind of more of a classic, um, mid century liberal mainline Protestant in the vein of Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner and guys like that.
For me, My faith changed when I discovered contemplative practice. And so, My spirituality today is a Christian spirituality that I would say it’s an ecumenical Christian spirituality. It is Christian insofar as it is connected to the. breadth of Christian tradition over thousands of years. For me, it, this really relates to the effects of trauma and recovering from trauma, it wasn’t able to enter a more healthy adult phase until I felt fundamentally accepted and comfortable.
With God, accepted by God, comfortable in God’s presence to the extent that I can be confident that I’m in God’s presence, really, it’s about this feeling of joy. At its best, it is like a deep underground reservoir of joy. And like, the best moments are when like, I’m fracking directly into that reservoir, you know, and I think that the most transcendent experiences that I’ve had are these just flooding of joy throughout my whole body. Those are correlated with the types of things that, that people describe as spiritual, you know, transcendent experiences of beauty, making connections between things, conceptions and language about God or words of Jesus or whatever that just line up, you know, Terrence Malick films.
Whatever.Uh, and a lot of those moments are now with my kids. it’s things that they do or say my boys have a tremendous ability to snap me into the present moment just by being themselves. I doubt that’s rare. I’m sure that’s probably an almost universal parent experience. I would guess.
Pam King:
Dan continued by sharing about positive spiritual practices and coping strategies that are grounded in values and principles, and also backed by psychological research.
Pam King: This segment on spiritual practices led into a really fascinating take on what it means to thrive. Here, Dan is so integrated drawing on his psychological clinical training and his research, his background in philosophy and theology, and his own sense and experience of healing and restoration
Well, you know, I’m, really interested in spiritual health and we’re going to talk a bit more about spiritual trauma today, but before we get into that, I’d love to hear based on all these things you’ve said, like, what would be your definition of spiritual health or spiritual wellness or healthy spirituality?
level. this is off the cuff, but it feels. Pretty solid for me. It’s like when we talk about people living into their values, it’s almost like, the ship has a captain and the captain’s orders are more or less being followed. By the rest of the ship, that’s healthy spirituality, like, and it’s interesting as a therapist that I’m framing that a little bit inclassic psychology, negative psychology, you might call it right, like an absence of disorder.
So maybe I think of it that way because of my practice, but I think of it as more or less my life is in alignment with the things that are most important to me, that most thoroughly and transcendently connect me to everything else. That’s other people. That’s whatever my conception of God is or universe.
Dan Koch: but a healthy one is like, it’s driving the ship.
Pam King: That’s really wonderful. I want to ask you, who’s the captain and who’s the ship in your analogy?
Dan Koch: Well, the ship is like the rest of me, like the ship is like the totality of my body and mind and life, which would also include to some degree, the other people in my life, if I’m in a family, it’s the way I interact with those family members. If I’m running a business, it’s the way that I run my business. And the captain, you know, it makes me think of acceptance and commitment therapy, which sort of posits, you know, comes out of the, in part, positive psychology, renewal that your work is a part of, and it posits this sort of, you know, this center, the seat of consciousness, this sort of center of us.
That kind of runs the show and we have, and by the way, I’m not like fully trained in acceptance, commitment therapy. So this is like my riff on it, but I think it’s consistent with the basic idea, which is that. Our will is constrained, but we do have this ability, this almost like third eye kind of language might make sense here of like, I can see myself doing things.
there is this part of me, of my consciousness that goes through time is basically the same through time, is an observer. I can observe myself as I observe the rest of the world. It’s executive control is related to this and that’s the captain. So a good spirituality is when that part of me, the part of me that is in control to whatever extent I’m in control is being informed by my spirituality.
That’s a healthy one.
Pam King: Earlier when you were talking about emotion in panic attacks, like a wave going through you, I was thinking of that third eye that you were very much describing how you kind of can come out of yourself and observe yourselfgoing, okay, these are feelings.
This is literally like there is electricity running through me and this too will pass.
And so let’s
Dan Koch: electricity running through us at all
Pam King: That’s what I mean, literally.
Dan Koch: Yeah.
Pam King: And caffeine in some of those instances. But, you know, going with the ship metaphor, the captain is in control to a limited extent. There are always waves,waves of emotion, waves of economic, political, et cetera, in our lives.
and I’ll I will also wanted to add, in my studies of thriving, one of the biblical verses that I love is talking about the fullness of life in Christ. And Pleroma is the Greek word for fullness there. And one of the ancient Greek, you probably know this, connotations of Pleroma is actually an ancient Greek ship, fully stocked and fully loaded.
manned or humaned in sync and rowing. And
I
Dan Koch: didn’t know that,
but that’s great.
Pam King: Isn’t that great.
This is good.
preaching material, but no, this concept of being in sync. You know, you mentioned other people in your life, the components of your life, your desires, your values, your will kind of aligned. And I love the image of it being stocked and purposeful and going somewhere.
And for me, that is a lot of how I understand thriving of being purposeful. being aligned, being with others and growing and going. And we’re not always moving. We get stuck in doldrums and tossed by waves, but I’d love to follow up and ask you what practices particularly help you be aligned to yourself, to God, to others.
Dan Koch: Yeah. You might think of it as like preventative care and more crisis care to use kind of medical analogy. So in a more of a crisis, like which could be a truly like a mental health crisis, you know, like a. needing a mental health day, feeling like I have too much anxiety or depression to sort of get everything done that needs to happenin that day or that season, you know, in all the way up to much smaller crises, like I’m just in with a client, I’m getting very sleepy and I noticed that I’m not like fully present, I’m not providing good therapy, you know, so anywhere in that world. Then I, I think that’s where the sort of, classic, what you would call positive coping, positive religious coping or spiritual coping comes in. So it’s like, okay, what can I draw on? What values and larger connection to a transcendent reality can I draw on to get the necessary fuel to do this thing right?
That I need to do. And that’s mostly how that ends up feeling for me is it’s like a drawing on reserves a thing in those moments of crisis. And if that’s in a moment, like With a client or something, then that’s a momentary drawing on those reserves. If it is a longer situation, like this has been a tough week or a month, then it’s more like, okay, drawing on the larger tradition, what practices should I be doing?
can I like, how can I ground myself and center myself? And then I will draw on whatever. You know, seems to be useful. Some of that might be self care and rest and relaxation. Some of it might be greater connection with people that love me. you know, depends on the situation.
And then you could think about preventative care and that’s more like. some of those regular practices. So, you know, for me, I do find like regularly engaging with church to be very clarifying grounding, puts me back in this larger story that I’ve been a part of for my whole life. I think of intentional time with my children or my wife,these types of things that just, you know, like those are actually the most important things in the world to me.
And yet I can get. so distracted and caught up in work, which I really love. I don’t understand workaholism at a personal level. I think I’m too lazy to be a workaholic. I just, I don’t have that capacity, but I do understand like getting absorbed in something that is primarily for my own enjoyment, even though it’s also maybe earning income or.
putting something out into the world, there can be a time when that’s not balanced, you know, and so then I have to find that balance. Those are the things that I would put into the preventative category or any, any sort of regular prayer meditation practice would also go in that category.And frankly, regular exercise, like mindful exercise behaviors, which I’m much worse at.
That’s great. That’s all really helpful. I might push back and say, I don’t know if they’re preventative. They’re also promotive because, you know, you’re talking about connecting, going to church, connecting with people, getting grounded. I think you might’ve alluded to like even clarifying your beliefs, understanding what is meaningful, what types of activities you might get absorbed in that provide you these positive emotions.
Pam King: You’re describing to me from my perspective, like these positive emotions that move us forward, but also these values that guide us and direct us towards what’s meaningful and meaning and purpose are so important for human beings. It’s like when we, you know, it’s not just a quick dopamine hit, but it helps you tap in.
To those enduring sources of joy that you were talking about earlier, that are really important for a thriving and constructive, meaningful life. so thank you. That was really helpful for me.
Dan Koch: I totally agree. I like that. Promotive. I, yeah, I, by preventative, I just meant like, these are global things that bring up my overall level of health, mental, spiritual, emotional, whatever, as opposed to responding to a particular need.
Pam King: absolutely. Well, all of this flirts into, the territory of thriving
and a question that I ask every guest is what is thriving to you?
Dan Koch: I mean, I think it’s the Greek ship thing. Well, I’ll tell you this, actually, but something that’s come up for me in the last few years, which is interesting having been raised evangelical and then having gotten into Soren Kierkegaard when I was a philosophy major, you know, and the line of his that I’m thinking of is, you know, purity of heart is to will one thing, which is of course a biblical reference, but he develops it much further and he imagines the night of faith, you know, in, in fear and trembling in his book.
and this is a person that likekind of looks to us like a normal guy, but actually Kierkegaard tells us like his every intention and every sort of conscious. I don’t know. I may be butchering it, but he’s actually purely just loving God and the gifts of God in his life. And he is almost sold out.
In that way, and I compare it with and contrast it with like something more like an Aristotle type view, which is like the good life. A thriving life is one of a lot of balance, you know, and your work and others on virtues and virtues as, you know, often best understood as a balance between two poles.
There’s a very interesting tension in my mind between those two approaches, and I think both can be Christian, but in a lot of ways, like Jesus. Seems a lot more like Kierkegaard than Aristotle. And I am a lot more like Aristotle than Kierkegaard
Pam King: Yeah. and I recognize this. this is a real tension. My intuition.
Dan Koch: Is that thriving is more like the Aristotelian good life. you’re, You’re buffered from crisis in that you have resources built up in all these different domains at a personal level, at a family level, you know, economics. but also social connection and also regular physical activity and all, you know, that kind of a thing.
That’s actually how I think of thriving. And then I read the sermon on the mount and I think, Oh, maybe someone who literally doesn’t worry about what they’ll wear or eat. And is like dumpster diving for their meals because they are not contributing to climate change. Maybe that person’s thriving. And I, it’s frankly a fight in my own mind.
And most days I think, no, that person’s not thriving.even though they are closer to what Jesus taught and preached. And, Yeah, that one gets hairy for me.
Pam King: Wow, you’re naming a lot there. you know, I think something that you name is just that lack of peace, that thriving is not, it’s a dynamic process that we’re, you know, it’s not necessarily like we’re always growing, like discovering new, but. Like the ship, going back to the ship, it’s moving. and even riding a bike, the more velocity you have on a bike, the easier it is to balance.
I rode my first electric bike this weekend and wow, it’s easy to balance because it’s moving. And so. A thriving person, I doubt, I want to normalize that tension is often, present. As you spoke, I really wondered about thinking about the Kierkegaardian approach, this single desire, this purity of heart, this in a sense aligned purpose as being the higher order.
and that Aristotelian. The intentionality of training of making virtues a habit and making this balancing more automatic allows one to be more aligned and not have to be so conscious and distracted, uh, by pursuing the balanced life. And so that when one does, you know, when you think Paul offers so much advice about running the race and training, When wedo that training, when we keep up practices, like you, you’ve named that we can more automatically and single mindedly live out the Sermon on the Mount.
Dan Koch: I like that. I that’s, I think that’s a good way to integrate it. I think that where the rubber meets the road though. So if I imagine Jesus showing up to my life, for
Pam King: That’s a scary thought. showing up to my life, no
Dan Koch: well, I guess I just mean like, you know, I’m an established married 40 year old dad with a mortgage and a decent income and, you know, like, you know, Of a basic retirement planand like a sturdy house in a beautiful setting in the Northwest.
I don’t know. I feel like the particularities of that are pretty far from the son of man has nowhere to lay its head. And you know, this kind of. These sermons to an oppressed people that who have no ability to have the kind of things that I have and like Jesus is I have this sense that Jesus is a lot more for them, but at least practically He’s more for them than for me And I don’t necessarily mean like he’s more on their team for them than he is for me Like he’s more of their booster Like I do think if there’s anything true about god It has to be that god loves creatures the same That like god is not playing favorites of one creature over another and when I think about integration, which is a word that’s come up in my mind a couple times now in when you’ve been speaking, you know, most forms of therapy in today’s world are aiming for some version of integration. That’s like, that’s something that, you know, I think Carl Rogers, I don’t know if he introduced it, but it goes in with that kind of humanistic approach, which Most forms now include and
Pam King: Say a little bit more about integration, whether Carl Rogers or just the way you use it for our listeners. Cause that’s not a term everyone is used to.
Dan Koch: yeah, well, you were hinting at this earlier when you’re talking about the ship, that was when I was most thinking of the word integration of like, okay, it’s fully humaned, it’s fully staffed, it’s got full provisions, and everybody is rowing in the same direction, this ship is like getting its job done.
Well, and thoroughly it’s integrated. It’s not like to be unintegrated would be like, well, the captain thinks we’re going due East, but the foreman who’s running all the rowers, he’s got his own ideas and he thinks we should be going South. And so we kind of keep.Changing direction and we’re sort of not arriving at either placebecause these two parts are actually fighting against each other and maybe that leads to a mutiny.
But even before the mutiny, there’s a real sense of despair. So the crew starts breaking open the beer casks earlier than they’re supposed to, and they’re just partying because. This ship, like this is not going to happen. We don’t have to listen to this guy, you know? So the cruise drunk, the ship is zigzagging West and South, and there’s a mutiny brewing that’s unintegrated in a metaphorical sense.
Pam King: At this point, we dove into the definition of spiritual harm and abuse. Dan explained them conceptually and offered distinctions from other kinds of trauma and abuse.
He goes on to describe the way he set up his research and the spiritual abuse factors that are the essential components he paid attention to in order to measure the impact of these traumatic experiences I call it spiritual harm and abuse at the spiritual harm and abuse scale, just to telegraph that, like. Something that someone experiences on this scale might be experienced as abusive. It might be experienced as merely harmful. I just mean like, well, that sucked, but it didn’t derail my life. Uh, or it can be experienced as like nothingness, but it was bad.
Dan Koch: You know, but just like with trauma, we, you know, we know that two soldiers can see the same atrocity, and one of them has PTSD, the other doesn’t, and we’re trying to figure out exactly why. People are working on that, but it’s just variable from person to person. So that’s mostly just a nod at the variability and to not overly demonize any particular church, subculture or Christian practice or whatever, uh, unnecessarily to kind of be careful. I define spiritual abuse as a form of emotional and psychological abuse perpetrated by a religious leader or group and, or with a religious or spiritual component. usually involving coercion or control. We can go through those different clauses and break that down. So emotional and psychological abuse is a form of abuse that is not physical, but that nonetheless causes predictable and regular.
affects a type of scarring, if you will. again, not a physical scar, but you know, it, it degrades people. It robs them of agency. It makes them second guess themselves. It, uh, you know, it, it can actually lead to physical, uh, you know, emotional and psychological abuse can lead to physical things like malnourishment and things like that as well.
So it’s not physical abuse. It’s not sexual abuse. If somebody is, sexually abused by a priest, I would describe them as being both sexually abused and spiritually abused. The sexual abuse would have its own kind of common results that would be shared with other people who are sexually abused by adults that were not clergy.
And then the spiritual abuse would have its own set of expected results that happen to people who are hurt in some way by people with religious authority. It’s going to affect their ability to practice their faith. It’s going to lead to all the other kind of similar stuff that we find with other trauma.
Pam King: Okay. That’s a really helpful distinction. So like, Just to put it really practically, if you’re dealing with sexual abuse by a clergy or religious or spiritual, cult, whatever, leader, that you’re in a sense dealing with two types of trauma from your perspective. That which gets lumped in and treated by categories of sexual abuse and then also what we’re going to talk more about, spiritual abuse.
Dan Koch: So like, if you were treating a client who had been, uh, sexually abused by a priest in ideally given enough time and resources, you’d want to focus on the results in their spiritual life as well. You might not start there. You might start with the more kind of, you might just say basic bodily, you know, sexual autonomy stuff and
Get that going first. I would personally, generally speaking, I would work on that first, but I would want to include stuff about and the effects that this has had on their ability to practice their faith, how they think about God, you know, we will probably get to it later, but Some people who experienced spiritual abuse, they end up coming out the other end, feeling like God is a villain in their story, which is very theologically interesting because basically not true in any Christian theology that God acts as a villain.
And it’s a real kind of perversion. Of the goodness of God that Christians, you know, ascribe to. So you’d want to, you’d want to think about both, as a clinician in that situation,
Pam King: Well, let’s get into the scale. tell me about how you measure and assess spiritual and religious abuse.
Dan Koch: So I’ll do the statistics part real quickly. I came up with 91 prompts that were taken from as much existing peer reviewed literature on spiritual abuse that I could find.
And then I gave that to. 3, 200 people as a survey, and then the computer, which does this beautiful statistical work, it finds clumps.
It’s called factor analysis, but they’re basically clumps. So if people say, yeah, I experienced a lot of being expected to consult my pastor before making non religious decisions in my life,
then it turns out they also report a lot of behavior being excessively monitored by their pastor. Or group members.
So it’s looking for like, if this happens to these other things tend to happen, and then we clump those together and then those get called subscales or subtypes of potentially spiritually abusive experiences. So we could maybe go through, there are four of them and then two sort of common internal reactions, basically.
So there’s, I got four types of abuse and then two types of reaction to abuse in the scale.
Pam King: Awesome. Let’s start with the four types.
Dan Koch: All right. So the first of the four types is maintaining the system. Both leadership and group members tend to act in ways that maintain the status quo. This can include victim blaming, shunning, protecting leaders from consequences, socialized, social isolation.
Things like that.
Pam King: So at a systems level, people are behaving in ways that allow abusive leadership to continue. Absolutely.
Dan Koch: Catholic scandals that have really kind of mushroomed in the last 10 years, as we catch up to our Catholic brothers and sisters,that’s some gallows humor there. You know, there’s usually a phase of this in the story, in the reporting.
Well, this came forward, but then they circled the wagons and the lawyers recommended that they do this. You know, I’m thinking about the SBC report and things like that. So there’s a, you know, systems want to stay the way they are by default. And. It’s the same with spiritually abusive systems.
Pam King: so maintaining systems is the first. What is the second?
Dan Koch: The second is one that people often think of, probably first. And I was using a couple examples of this earlier controlling leadership, right? This is the classic, you know, cult leader type of a vision of someone at the top or a group of people at the top who have a lot of control and they exert that control.
At the cost of others. So pastors or leaders, may see, pastors or leaders may be significantly exalted. above parishioners. This is a part of controlling leadership. They are considered to have like a direct line to God. They may even explicitly say that they might have increased access and control over the daily lives and minutiae.
Of people in the group.
Pam King: Fascinating. Yeah. Because so many people, I think even well intentioned, you know, have told me, well, God told me to tell you this, and you should X.
Dan Koch: Yeah. What do you do with that? Like you, you, it really, presents you with a dilemma, either
they’re a liar or God’s a liar, or you go along with it. and maybe none of those are good options in any given instance,
Pam King: Absolutely. That’s tough. Discernment, maturity is important. Okay. The third area.
Dan Koch: embracing violence. So this includes
the. eschatological end time stuff in it, these communities might see violence in many forms as a necessary part of God’s plan for the world. So they see it in scripture. they might see it in their interpretation of historical world events, and they think this is how God does things.
So they would then lack a concern
about what’s appropriate for children.
In terms of fear, they’re going to overemphasize the sort of gruesome aspects, terror and horror will be used to motivate religious commitment or moral behavior, and that will, to them, seem, yeah, like that’s just the way the world is.
Pam King: Well, it’s super interesting to me, in the three that you’ve described so far that when I, as a psychologist, when I often think, I think of the importance of beliefs and feelings and behaviors, and that how beliefs in this instance. can really get internalized and cause a problem for people.
And also pairing that with fear and emotion, can also, you know, make it almost a double whammy or really, accelerates or catalyzes the integration of those beliefs into kind of a synctified reality. Um,fourth one,
Dan Koch: Discrimination. So the scale itself only men only measures gender discrimination. Uh, that’s kind of for statistical reasons, but you can imagine sexual orientation, racial discrimination, other forms of discrimination,
and it’s basically where people are denied the chance to serve or be involved, in opportunities, or be discriminated against just kind of more broadly.
Pam King: this is tricky because there are a lot of. Churches and denominations with particular theological. stances on women or non heterosexual sexualities. And so it can be tricky, but even in situations where let’s just say it’s a complementarian view of men and women that can be applied unevenly. And that can be women could be treated as second class citizens, even in a church like that, even in a way that, that they don’t mean to be right.
Dan Koch: So there’s room here to talk about this both at a denomination versus denomination level. it’s my personal opinion that kind of more liberal approaches to this is going to be less likely to lead to a perceived experience of discrimination.but even, you know, you can even have better and worse forms of doing Complementarianism, or doing a traditional sexual ethic, and our, you know, you could call it sinful nature.
You could call it our biases. You’d call it whatever can get in the way and actually we can just treat people, we can just discriminate against them. And even going beyond whatever the official party line is
Pam King: So, let me ask you a question here. Obviously, racial, gender, sexual discrimination, ageism, is a common thing in life. So, why is this part of spiritual abuse?
Dan Koch: because it gets linked to God. So,
yeah, so if you
Pam King: Anytime that we say we, we invoke God when we want to make this, I think, let me say it again. I think that we invoke God often because we want to make the strongest possible argument we can make. And if we are in a religious community, the strongest language we have is God language. It’s the best argument to make. If I was going to try and convince a bunch of political progressives of something, I would not talk about, I don’t know, the sacred Liberty to own a gun. I would talk about. Intersectional discrimination. I would talk about, you know, caring for the environment. I would use the language that would be most powerful for the group that I was talking to, if I wanted to convince them and religious people will talk about God if we want to convince.
Dan Koch: And so that’s like, one of the ways that I think about how this happens at a very mechanistic level is just, we reach for the strongest language. And in a religious community, the strongest language is God language. And if we are doing it in a way that does not line up. With the way we would like to be treating other people thenor I should say and if we are reaching for that language while we are doing something that is harming another person.
Well, we’ve now attached God to that and actually without talking politics. in any specific way, you can look at the way that national politics, Republican politics was wedded to the Christian agenda starting, especially in the nineties, the Clinton era. And it led to a bunch of people leaving the church.
And you could look at graphs at this. That’s just to say that like in America. For a lot of people, God and Christianity became synonymous with the GOP that will have consequences. And if you’re in a church community and God becomes synonymous with gaslighting and victim blaming or whatever. One of the interesting forms of sexuality discrimination would be like these non affirming churches that are very culturally affirming.
So they present themselves as maximally open minded and open handed. Everyone’s welcome here. We all have sin. Yada, yada, but then you go to let’s say you’re a gay person and you’ve been there for a few months and you’re enjoying it and you love the music and you’re a singer and so you go volunteer to sing in the praise group and they go, yeah, here’s the thing.
Well, that’s going to affect your faith. It just is like now you’re going to think, well, when can I trust that someone’s going to accept me? You know, so
it’s that kind of a thing that was a very winding answer.
Pam King: Well, thank you for that answer. so that is a good moment to move to the second two subscales that are more these internal experiences. Tell me about those two. what, how are people experiencing spiritual abuse
on the
Dan Koch: we already talked a little bit about one of them, which is I call it harmful God image
and it’s like
Basically, like I’ll just read you the items that load on this one there are three feeling betrayed by God feeling as if God harmed me directly and distrust of God and I find this so interesting because it’s usually not God’s fault in any sort of Christian conception of anything, right?
Like we tend to think of God as like, well, if there’s a problem, it’s not God. We would, we would generally say something like things that people attribute to God are false. It’s not like God is actually that way. Like when an atheist argues that like, look at this morally horrendous God of the old Testament, commanding all these things, like Dawkins is not saying that’s the real God and God really did that.
He’s saying God doesn’t exist, right? Like for most of us, it’s either God is good and loving, or there’s no God. This is a weird third option where there is a God. And God’s hurting me. I think this is probably the most pernicious effect of spiritual abuse. If we care about people being able to live out their spirituality, you can’t worship a villain.
We’re not wired for that.
Pam King: Right, but we do know we’re wired that often our understanding of God maps onto, you know, our experience in the real world, whether with our primary caregivers or whether with these repeated even adult experiences. So when we experience people chronically in the name of God, being, degrading us, discriminating against us.
And I think your fifth factor, the internal distress, speaks very loudly to some of the consequences. So I’d love to hear you explain more about what that is.
Dan Koch: Yeah. So this is the final subscale factor and it’s,it maps pretty well onto some of the PTSD stuff that we mentioned earlier, but it’s a bit wider, so it’s, I call it internal distress. It’s a bit of a grab bag. So there’s depression, anxiety, self image issues, social isolation, which is not hard to understand when you’re thinking from a thriving social connection perspective, anger.
lack of meaning, avoiding religious situations, right? That’s the avoidance is very similar to PTSD. So it’s really yeah, depression, anxiety, trauma effects that are experienced in someone as a result often of these experiences.
Pam King: Where Does God fit in with all of this? How does spiritual abuse internalize for a victim? How does it impact personal spiritual experience?
Dan offered interesting insights, particularly his observation that spirituality is like nuclear e fission. When it goes well, it’s powerful and an abundant form of energy, but when nuclear e fission goes bad, the fallout is catastrophic Why is abuse, neglect, discrimination? Control, in the name of God, so pernicious and complex and ambiguous.
Dan Koch: I describe religion and to some extent spirituality as nuclear fission. So when nuclear fission is going well, We get the cleanest and most abundant form of energy that the world has ever known. And probably a good climate future for us is going to involve some amount of nuclear power, because it is better for the environment.
Right. And yet when nuclear fission goes poorly and those reactors break down and you have nuclear fallout, you kill and irradiate everything in a 20 mile radius. Religion by its very nature, almost by definition, I’ve been thinking of it lately, it just deals with those. Big, deep, internal, important things, you know, spirituality is linked to our deepest values, right?
and our deepest sense of connection to the universe. just all the language is big language, right?
Pam King: Our deepest sense of dignity and
Dan Koch: Human dignity, human worth, human value, uh, yeah, stuff like that. So, that’s why it’s destructive, because the levers are pressing on the deepest parts of ourselves. when it comes to dealing with spiritually harmful or abusive experiences. Dan recommends cultivating some widened and fresh perspective
Pam King: because the religious and spiritual domain is so often resting on the power of belief, this is often where spiritual abuse occurs.
Especially during childhood or other moments of religious conversion, transformation or change. Our core beliefs create a foundation for the way we see and inhabit the world.
Beliefs about God, the sacred or the transcendent, have orienting power on our lives. They inform our identity and how we see and experience the world.
And when those beliefs are suspect or corrupt, they can wreak havoc on our psychological and emotional and even physical wellbeing.
So I asked Dan to walk us through a practice of cognitive reappraisal of certain beliefs.
How can we reframe or challenge the core beliefs that might actually be terrorizing us from within, we’ve been talking a lot about beliefs around God that are involved with religion and spirituality, and I know you’re a cognitive therapist.
I’d love to hear how you bring your therapeutic skills, to understanding and challenging our core beliefs.
Dan Koch: Yeah, so core beliefs. First of all, I describe them to clients as like you might have thoughts throughout the day and you know, you mentioned earlier the cognitive triangle thoughts, behaviors and feelings and how those all kind of connect to each other and influence each other. You’ll have thoughts during the day, but core beliefs arethey persist through time.
They are more like these kind of more deeply held assumptions about ourselves, about others, about the world at large and about God in a religious setting. And those sometimes are implicated in our suffering. So somebody might have a core belief, something like. I’m not allowed to question a pastor and they might have come by that very honestly insofar as it was drilled into them in their family and their church tradition, something like that.
So what we might do then in cognitive therapy is the first thing I will have people think through is what is the evidence for that claim? What is the evidence that you can’t question a pastor? A pastor. And then we might think, huh, well, there are a lot of pastors who’ve been wrong. Would we want people to not have a question to them?
No, we wouldn’t. We actually, it seems like questioning a pastor is good. A pastor should be able to handle. Some questioning and you could always go to a different church with a different pastor. And that would seem like a healthier way to think about this. You know, like we, we certainly are aware that there are other churches and other pastors.
Like, why does it have to be this guy? Right. So you get people kind of thinking, or yes, or gal, just I’m going with the statistical average here in America. and like, You get people thinking in terms of evidence and the really important thing about the way I ask people about Evidence is something that a third party would agree is evidence So I always use the example of a murder case in a courtroom and say sir Can you point to the man who murdered that woman?
He says it’s right there. It’s a defendant and then The lawyer asks, and, did you see him shoot her? Well, no, I didn’t see it. Well, how do you know it was him? I got a bad feeling about that guy. Like, that’s not evidence, right? Like, that’s not enough evidence to convict someone, and that’s not really evidence in our lives either.
I have a lot of feelings about things all the time. Some of them end up being accurate. Some of them end up being inaccurate. We want real evidence. So a belief some or like, here’s another one. Um, any day now, Jesus will return visibly in the clouds and the rapture will happen. What’s the evidence for that? What would a third, a neutral third party accept as evidence? And this one is interesting and tricky because the things that count for us as evidence within our traditions There’s a much lower bar.but if a Muslim missionary came to knock at my door and said Dan Allah loves you
I want to spare you from the coming wrath. We have Prophets in our and this is not really how Islam works But let’s just Islam is helpful because it gets us out of our Christianity,
Pam King: Assumption.
Dan Koch: right? So he says in the Muslim tradition, we have these prophecies, they’re all coming true, and you got to convert to Islam right now to avoid Allah’s wrath.
I would say, I don’t, that doesn’t seem plausible to me. So we can get into that. That’s a, I have a third party perspective on those.
Dan Koch: If my uncle tells me about something he read about Israel or something, it’s like, I might not have the same level of credulity that I would. With someone from outside, but why not
Pam King: Right.
Dan Koch: and
because there are other claims within my tradition
that do pass that test So someone says Dan you’re being really selfish You’re hoarding all of your money and resources and don’t you know that Jesus said that in order to gain your life?
You have to lose it And then I would go, well, what’s the evidence for that? And if I really looked at it, I would go, oh, there’s kind of a lot of evidence for that. People who re like people who just act like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, they’re not happy, Pam, like billionaires are not happy.
Pam King: They’re not happy.
Dan Koch: not thriving. They’re not living good lives. So there is evidence for a lot of the things that we hold as Christians.
And then there’s not evidence for a lot of things. And that can be so liberating. I personally find it. Tremendously liberating.
Pam King: Absolutely. Well, I love this concept of freedom and liberation, and I would so appreciate it if you would take a moment to guide our listeners through an exercise of how they might bring to mind, and courageously challenge some of their core beliefs.
Dan Koch: Yeah. Okay. So let’s pick one.
You want to give me
one? Do you want to give me one from your life that has been maladaptive at times?
Pam King: I was told at a very poignant time, vocationally for me, um, in ministry to lie low and don’t challenge the status quo.
Dan Koch: Okay. So the,first thing you got to do is you got to phrase it. What you want to do is you want to find the strongest phrasing, strongest and shortest phrasing that sometimes feels true to you. .
So then the core belief is I must not challenge the status quo. Something like that. Just you want to state it as baldly and straightforwardly as possible. So what is the evidence? In your life, Pam, that you must not challenge the status quo. Have you ever challenged the status quo? How did it go? What has happened when you’ve avoided? Challenging the status quo for long periods. How did that go?
Like what’s the, you know, Evidence is the idea that like things happen and they leave remnants. They leave evidence behind if they’re real So tell me tell the listeners What’s happened when you’ve either followed or not followed that directive?
Pam King: I think when I have challenged it, disruption didn’t always go so well and there was retaliation, to the extent that I was, became physically ill.
so that was like internalized. I also became really adaptive of doing things on my own. So instead of challenging the main stage, so to speak, I could create.
And do things on the peripherals and stay off the radar. Haha.
Dan Koch: At this point, like I would ask a bunch of questions and we don’t have a whole like 50 minute session But I’ll ask one or two and see where it goes. So on the one hand You like one of the things that I often say with clients is core beliefs that really bother us Always have a kernel of truth to them, because if they have no truth, then they just don’t stick.
They’re not sticky enough, right? So in this situation, it sounds like, well, they’re, you know, given when you were born, when you came of age in your profession, certain realities, there’s a certain kernel of truth that like women who do push against the status quo are going to have a hard time. true. It sounds to me like your experience has backed up that claim, but that’s a softer claim than I must not challenge. That’s to say, a claim there would be something like, if I challenge the status quo, there will be consequences. That’s a different, that’s a different claim.
That one feels more true, right?
Pam King: Mhm.
Dan Koch: And so then what you figured out was, well, that part’s true, but I’m still going to do what I want to do. I’m going to find a different way to do it that isn’t directly challenging the status quo. That’s going to be not worth it, essentially, for me.
Pam King: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Pro, one way of looking at it, it’s, oh, that’s adaptive.
And you get something new done. The other is that it might be too sidelined and lacking the courage to stand up more in the center.
Dan Koch: Yeah, and I don’t know how, you know, I don’t know how personal you want to get here, but I’ve talked with you about that in particular and encouraged you in like,
how well positioned I think you are to speak to a really broad range of people. And I’m wondering if like this autobiography, this history of yours plays into, you know, I don’t know if you were surprised by that feedback for me, or if it felt like, Oh, no one’s told me that in a while.
it’s like scratching some itch. Way back in me or you know, that may be interplayed with that story. your personal story and those messages that you were given when you were, you know, quite a bit younger.
Pam King: No, absolutely. And I still remember you when you first made those comments and how encouraging and I do get that feedback a lot and actually be just really vulnerable sharing this right now. It’s like, wow.
Dan Koch: Sort of what we figured out there between the two of us is that there was this really big, bold message you were given that became a core belief.
It had enough truth in it some version of it has stuck around, but you actually didn’t. If you had taken it on its face value. You would have acted differently. You didn’t, you did not accept that belief in general. You found ways to basically work around it and still get something done.and when you, if you found yourself in a moment where.
You were having anxiety because you thought this thing I’m going to do is going to challenge the status quo. What you could remind yourself is like, well, that’s been true, but not totally true. And it actually, it matters the way in which I go about something. And that’s really different.
Back to the cognitive triangle. That thought will affect your feelings and your behaviors differently than I must not do this because it will go against the status quo.
Pam King: Absolutely. And what I love what you said there, and I really want. Our audience to hear this is that when you start to feel that anxiety stirred up by a core belief, that’s when attuning to your body and being aware of your emotional state is so important because that should be ared alert that something’s off and you can override that anxiety cognitively.
It’s not always easy, but take that third eye or that third person perspective, check the facts, collect the data, and Most often you’ll realize, like, actually, no, there’s a way forward. Something within me is holding that back, but I can courageously name that, put those emotions aside and keep moving forward and find the support to move forward that you need.
Dan Koch: And there’s one other element that I think is particularly true because you have been at this a long time. You have a multiple decade long career. There’s a time element. There may be a sense in which That core messaging was more true 30 years ago than it is today. And so then we can go, well, what’s the evidence for that now?
Okay. Maybe then, you know, like I, I listened to, like comedians a lot and Susie Essman from Curb Your Enthusiasm was talking about how, when she was coming up as a standup in New York in the nineties. They wouldn’t put more than one woman on a bill on like a four comic bill and like that was true then and it’s not True now and if she were still being held back by something about then Right, like that would be irrational, that would be, there would not be good evidence for it.
But there was evidence for it then. So it’s like, it’s having grace for ourselves, it’s finding the kernel of truth. These are really helpful in sort of diffusing, they’re, they’re like little reactors that just create anxiety and depression, you know, these, these false core beliefs.
Pam King: We closed on a hopeful notes people can heal and change. We grow when we face our past with courage and learn how to feel and deal with the traumatic events that haunt us.
There are spiritual practices we can pursue for repair. We can work with professionals, friends, truly caring leaders who lift us up and respect our dignity. This is how we can find healing from abuse and trauma in spiritual and religious settings, and we can find our way back to the path towards spiritual health. Reconnecting with God retuning us to the sacred and reinvigorating our spiritual senses
Let’s talk about hope and let’s talk about healing. How do people move through this? Obviously challenging core beliefs like you
just named, but do we journal over this? Do we get therapy? what, where do people go?
Dan Koch: Well, first of all, that people get healing is unambiguously true to me. I literally sit with people every week who are healing and making progress.
I don’t ever struggle with hope for this life. for individual people.
Pam King: It’s one of the perks of being a therapist, frankly, is you are constantly reminded that people can change, they can grow, they do, and, you know, there’s a self selection there.
Dan Koch: The type of person who comes to therapy wants to change, generally speaking. Some of them are there because they feel like they have to be, and that can be more challenging, but even those people often change.
So we can. I mean, there is hope. People heal. People change. That’s the first thing to say. you know, I have a bias being a cognitive therapist and finding those tools to be so helpful. I just, should mention that there are other approaches that are also evidence based, that have a very good evidence, evidence base to support them. So there are more somatic forms, right, that are bodily focused.
There are more feelings and emotion focused forms, like emotion focused therapy, and there are things like EMDR, which sort of combines multiple of these facets. There are, I looked the other day and I can’t call them all to mind, but there’s something like eight evidence based approaches to trauma, at least that have a wide, a wide backing of evidence.
So there’s a lot of options there. And the more intense your feelings, your reactions, maybe to the content of this episode, then the more I would recommend finding a licensed therapist. That’s like the very basic rule of thumb. Trauma is complex. it gets in there and messes with some of our most basic neurological, emotional, cognitive functions. It’s closer to brain surgery than, you know, Band aids and antibiotic cream. You know, it’s like expertise is very helpful for these issues. And so I’m reticent to recommend things that aren’t therapy or therapy derived, recognizing also that there’s a real financial barrier. For a lot of people there. The good news though, financially is that a lot of clinicians and clinics that accept insurance,insurance companies really want to know that the, what they’re paying for is evidence based.
And so you, there is kind of a nice overlap there. And especially for something like trauma, where I would be even more encouraging of an evidence based approach because the stakes are high.
And when you get into religious stuff. People get wacky and people want to follow their own intuitions, much in the way that a lot of pastors will do that without a lot of evidence
and there’s That’s its own topic. It gets funky.
So,
yeah,
Pam King: Well, I would also like to qualify your comments about a licensed therapist, uh, using an evidence based approach and also looking for a practitioner, a clinician or therapist that is well versed in spiritually engaged therapy, to really understand the power.
Of our transcendent beliefs and just as so much of the show looks at healthy spirituality and when beliefs about transcendence are centered on love and grace and are empowering and can shape our identity and really powerful or empowering ways. It can go wrong, and I’m so grateful for you to take the time to talk about the hard side of spirituality, and I completely agree.
It’s nuclear fission. It is so powerful, and it can go so wrong, or it can go so well, but in TV’s language, from our tradition, it can be redeemed, and I’m hopeful for that. I’m so
grateful for researchers, scholars, thought leaders. practitioners like yourself, that can help people heal and find hope, in these domains of ultimacy and transcendence and God and the divine and the sacred.
Pam King: Dan, thank you so much for joining me on With and For. It’s been great to be with you and thanks for being for the spiritual health and wellbeing of so many.
Dan Koch: Huge pleasure, Pam. Always love talking to you. Thank you.
Pam King: Dan Koch’s attention to spiritual harm and abuse is about clearing the way toward a healthier spirituality, grounded in care and healing. By exposing and exploring past traumas in the context of healthy and respectful relationships, we can grow into a more joyful faith and transcendent spiritual life.
The key takeaways that I will carry with me from this conversation are the following.
Spirituality is like nuclear efficient. It’s incredible. Power can be harnessed for abundant good, that is essential to thriving. But when it is exploited or used irresponsibly, the fallout is catastrophic for human wellbeing.
Thriving is an integrative process that can be better understood and better lived. When we draw on tools from psychology, philosophy, and theology.
Religious belief, motivated by fear often leads to anxiety, panic, and a distorted view of oneself, of others, and of God.
Healing and caring relationships are key to our recovery from spiritual harm.
Sometimes our core beliefs are the source of spiritual harm and trauma,
But these can be reframed, reappraised, and challenged, aligning us with self-respect, truth and love, and rebuilding our faith, restoring our trust in God and reigniting our sense of the sacred.
With & For is a production of The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. For more information, visit our website, thethrivecenter.org, where you’ll find all sorts of resources to support your pursuit of wholeness and a life of thriving on purpose. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of the Thrive Center and our With & For podcast team.
Jill Westbrook is our senior director and producer. Lauren Kim is our operations manager. Wren Jeurgensen is our social media graphic designer. Evan Rosa is our consulting producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy.
I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Dan Koch
Dan Koch is a licensed therapist supporting patients working through the trauma of spiritual abuse; and his work and insight in this domain emerges from his empirical research. He’s also host of the 'You Have Permission' podcast. With a background in philosophy and theology, he explores questions of faith, doubt, and spiritual well-being. His research focuses on the psychological effects of religious trauma and how individuals can heal from spiritual abuse. Find more of his work at dankochwords.com. You can find his podcast, You Have Permission wherever you listen to podcasts and find exclusive episodes at patreon.com/dankoch.
Episode Summary
“Spirituality is like nuclear fission—it has the power to illuminate and energize but also to destroy when mishandled.” — Dan Koch
“Thriving isn’t about a perfect life; it’s about alignment between our deepest values and our lived reality.” — Dan Koch
On our path to spiritual health, we need to keep our eyes open to the ways religion and spirituality have been exploited to coerce, control, and create chaos. Focusing on the intersection of religion and psychology, licensed therapist, researcher, and podcaster Dan Koch is creating a public conversation about spiritual harm and abuse, helping victims learn how to deal with spiritual trauma, and offering insight and guidance toward healthy religious and spiritual experiences.
From his own personal journey of religious trauma to his extensive research on spiritual abuse, Dan shares insights on how faith communities can both wound and restore. The conversation covers the psychological impact of religious trauma, the complexities of self-diagnosis, and practical strategies for self-knowledge and healing for anyone who has wrestled with faith, struggled with past church experiences, or have lost their religion.
In this conversation with Dan Koch, we discuss:
– The psychological study of spiritual abuse and harm, including conceptual definitions and the many factors that come along with them.
– The symptoms and most recognizable patterns that point to spiritual abuse
– The impact of abuse and trauma on psychological and spiritual health
– How to reappraise and challenge harmful core beliefs
– And how to find healing, joy, and transcendence as we deal with past trauma.
Spirituality: Pro-Social Benefits, with a Shadow Side of Harm, Exploitation, and Violence
Through With & For, as well as the broader work of The Thrive Center, we regularly explore the expansive benefits and positives that emerge from our inherent spirituality as human beings, and how that relates to our individual and collective thriving.
Religion and spirituality can be an immense force for good, offering countless pro-social benefits to the world, helping us our innate spiritual capacities is an essential factor in what it means to thrive.
But we have to acknowledge the harm and vice and corruption—the violence—that has been perpetrated through religious and spiritual contexts. Spiritual abuse is a serious matter and there’s no way we can cultivate a full understanding or integrated experience of healthy spirituality without coming to terms with its prevalence and effects.
Dan Koch’s attention to spiritual harm and abuse is about clearing the way toward a healthier spirituality grounded in care and healing. By exposing and exploring past traumas in the context of heathy and respectful relationships, we can grow into a more joyful faith and transcendent spiritual life.
Show Notes
- Dan Koch on spiritual abuse, religious trauma, and healing
- How beliefs about God shape emotional well-being
- Practical self-knowledge exercises to promote healing
- The impact of fear-based religious teachings on mental health
- Strategies for deconstructing harmful religious experiences
Helpful Links and Resources
- Dan Koch’s Website
- Join Dan Koch’s Patreon
- You Have Permission Podcast
- Dan Koch’s Research on Spiritual Abuse
- The Spiritual Harm and Abuse Scale Clinical Screener
- Development of the Spiritual Harm and Abuse Scale (Article, May 2022)
Quotable
"I would just distinguish between self-knowledge and self-diagnosis—one leads to growth, the other can lead to unnecessary fear." "Avoidance is both a symptom of trauma and a cause of it—it keeps the rest of the symptoms around." "Spirituality is like nuclear fission—it has the power to illuminate and energize but also to destroy when mishandled." "You can't worship a villain—when spiritual abuse distorts your image of God, it becomes almost impossible to stay in faith." "Thriving isn't about a perfect life; it's about alignment between our deepest values and our lived reality."Understanding Spiritual Abuse and Religious Trauma
- Definition and key elements of spiritual abuse
- Difference between spiritual harm and abuse
- The role of power, control, and coercion in religious settings
- How religious trauma manifests in daily life
- Connection between religious trauma and PTSD
The Psychological and Emotional Impact of Religious Trauma
- The interplay between faith, fear, and mental health
- The long-term effects of toxic religious teachings
- How avoidance perpetuates trauma symptoms
- Self-diagnosis vs. self-awareness in spiritual healing
- The importance of challenging harmful core beliefs
Practical Strategies for Self-Knowledge and Healing
- Dan Koch's guided self-knowledge exercise
- How breath work can regulate anxiety from spiritual trauma
- Recognizing and reframing harmful core beliefs
- The power of contemplative practices in spiritual healing
- Using evidence-based approaches to reconstruct faith
How Churches and Communities Can Foster Spiritual Health
- How leadership can avoid coercive control
- Creating spaces for questioning and spiritual growth
- The importance of transparency in religious institutions
- Encouraging self-agency in spiritual communities
- Redefining authority and spiritual guidance in a healthy way
Pam King’s Key Takeaways
- Spirituality is like nuclear fission: its incredible power can be harnessed for abundant good that is essential to thriving, but when it is exploited or used irresponsibly, the fallout is catastrophic for human well-being.
- Thriving is an integrative process that can be better understood and better lived when we draw from psychological, philosophical, and theological sources.
- Sometimes our core beliefs are the source of spiritual harm and trauma, and these can be reframed, reappraised, and challenged—aligning us with self-respect, truth, and love.
About the Thrive Center
- Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
- Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
- Follow us on X @thrivecenter
- Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter
About Dr. Pam King
Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.About With & For
- Host: Pam King
- Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
- Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
- Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
- Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa
Explore More
Dr. Varun Soni
Recovering the Sacred in an Age of Anxiety, with Dr. Varun Soni
We need a recovery of the sacred in our secular world. Because the mental, emotional, and psychological struggles haunting society right now can’t be solved without addressing meaning, purpose, and the longing for connection to something beyond ourselves. In other words, spiritual health is an essential part of mental health. An attorney, religious scholar, and university chaplain, Dr. Varun Soni is Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, and is leading us back to our true north, through spacious and life-giving spiritual conversations and sacred practices that realign us to our values and identity. In this conversation…
Dr. David C. Wang
Listening to Our Emotions: Healing Through Self-Compassion, Grief, and Acceptance with Dr. David C. Wang
Emotional health is deeply intertwined in an ongoing journey with spiritual health. This involves opening to our pain, grieving our trauma, and patiently cultivating a resilience that stabilizes and secures our relationships and our sense of self. With compassion, pastoral presence, and emotional attunement, psychologist Dr. David Wang is using psychological and theological tools to help us understand and adapt to emotional realities, explore the wounds of our past, and find healing and strength through acceptance and grief. In this conversation with David Wang, we discuss: – The difference between human development and spiritual formation and how to understand maturity…
Tina Payne Bryson, LSCW, PhD
From Rupture to Repair: Relationships, Emotional Regulation, and Our Social Brains, with Dr. Tina Bryson
Our brains hold our relational history—all the joys, all the ruptures, all the repairs. And even in the most difficult childhood or parenting circumstances, the science of relationships and connection can give us hope for whole-brain and whole-life transformation. Therapist, bestselling author, and mom—Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is seeking a connection revolution that brings neurobiology and practical relational wisdom to bear on both how we were parented, how we parent, and how we relate throughout our lifespan. In this conversation with Tina Bryson, we discuss: The science of childhood relational development and growth into strong, adaptive adults The brain…