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Books

Written exclusively for my blog readers, Spiritual Abuse: A Victim’s Guide to Recovery is now available for your Kindle.

About the eBook:

Spiritual abuse is happening in increasing numbers around the world. As Christian fundamentalism grows, so do the numbers of psychological and “spiritual” abuse victims. Spiritual abuse is becoming a common term for those harmed in churches and cults. Lisa Kerr is an ex-cult member and former reverend with the Assemblies of God who worked with a group called Master’s Commission for nearly a decade. Today, she advocates for ex-cult members and those who’ve experienced spiritual and psychological abuse in the hands of clergy.

If you enjoy the book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.

Table of Contents

Introduction
My Story
How Does Religion Differ From A Cult?
What Is Christian Fundamentalism?
Spiritual Abuse Is Abuse
What Can Be Done?
Report Abuse
Don’t Approach the Abuser
Who Can Help?
Licensed Psychologists and Medical Doctors
Legal Professionals
The Internal Revenue Service
Investigative Reporters
Trauma and Mental Disorders
Therapy
The Five Stages of Grief
Going Public With Your Story
Protecting Yourself Online
Being Offended
Excuses Cult Leaders Use
I’m Not a Christian Anymore
Are Pastors our Advocates?
How to Get Your Child Out
How to Get Out Of a Destructive Group or Cult
Parents and Friends
References
Mental Health Resources Online
Books on Forgiveness, Human Suffering, and Genocide
Feminist Books
Books on Progressive Christianity
Acknowledgements
Credits
About the Author

Read an Excerpt:

Spiritual Abuse Is Abuse

I went on a job interview recently and my blog ended up being the subject of the latter half of the interview. When my interviewer asked what I blogged about, the easiest answer I could find was “Spiritual Abuse” which is the standard term we bloggers use to group together those who’ve left cults and those who’ve suffered from controlling and manipulative pastors.
The man interviewing me asked what that meant and in an attempt to explain it, I listed some of what has happened to me and others I know.

He said, “Oh, real abuse.”

Lesson learned. Regardless of someone’s religious beliefs, “spiritual abuse” doesn’t mean a whole lot to someone who isn’t an insider in our community. Not only that, spiritual is a vague term that is not specific to one religious community.

What I took from my job interview was this: abuse is abuse. Whether one was raped, verbally abused, humiliated in front of a group, etc. these are defined as abuse. The numbers of abuse victims (sexual, physical and emotional) within church and religious settings are ever present and growing, with the blogosphere opening up communities where victims can discuss their abuse and recovery. The all-powerful hierarchy has attempted to silence victims for years.

In context of my own experience, it helps for me to define the abuse I encountered as psychological and emotional abuse. Almost as soon as I left the group I label cult, I entered a public university where I was able to receive professional therapy to identify the abuse I went through.

Abuse can be broken up into a few different categories: sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, bullying, and hate crimes. Unfortunately, all of these types of abuse can be found in religious and secular institutions; most institutions that have policies for mandatory reporting. Churches do not.

Why is it important to speak up about spiritual abuse? Andrew Brown, who blogs for The Guardian, says:
“…I believe that all institutions attempt to cover up institutional wrongdoing although the Roman Catholic church has had a higher opinion of itself than most, and thus a greater tendency to lie about these things. Because it is an extremely authoritarian institution at least within the hierarchy, it is also one where there were few checks and balances on the misbehaviour of the powerful.”

The problem lies there: most churches have few checks and balances on the powerful leaders who do everything in their power to protect their authority in order to rule the group. When church members trust their leader to that degree, any scandal involving their leader will threaten their belief system. Most faithful followers won’t even listen to the victim’s story because they fear they’ll lose the thing in their life that’s most sure—their beliefs.

My New eBook – Spiritual Abuse: A Victim’s Guide to Recovery

Written exclusively for my blog readers, Spiritual Abuse: A Victim’s Guide to Recovery is now available for your Kindle and your Nook.

About the eBook:

If you enjoy the book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or visit my author page for upcoming events.

Shh. Memoir Writing in Progress

I’m writing a memoir and I’ve already spent a few years on it. I imagine my first book as a little baby. Everyone is cooing and asking about how it’s doing. At night, I pick up the piles and piles of notes and place them neatly in bed, next to a window and stare at it admiringly. I imagine when the whole process is complete, it’ll have taken me a decade and may have been the hardest thing I’ve done to date.

Last night I went to pick up my notes and writing from a friend. She’s an experienced journalist and editor and she’s always someone I learn from. I’d taken a month or two off writing while she read through what I had. Initially, when I handed my writing over, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I couldn’t stop worrying about what I normally worry about (structure, chapter length, style, etc). And then I relaxed and started really resting. And then I started getting involved in other projects and truly enjoyed my time off.

But now the ~~baby~~ book is back. In my arms. Awww. I missed you, love. I have so much work to do to make it into the final product, but I have a lot of direction for it now and a break from it helped my mind truly take a vacation.

So, with a renewed energy, I’m approaching this next step with excitement. I almost worked on it last night, but I had to get some sleep. As is expected, my social media interaction may suffer, which I might truly miss, but it’s either that or my book will be written on Facebook, one line at a time.

This Just In: Sex Sells & Why I’m Afraid of Love

I’ve been incredibly popular with men in the past decade, in part because I was following the prescription for fame and attention: be half naked and flirt a lot.

Halloween. Note the pearls I'm wearing. Gotta keep it classy.

And as any woman knows, it’s always good to show off your boobs.

My boobs

But let’s be honest, I was fresh out of a cult and wanted to give a big FUCK YOU to the purity movement I’d lived in for seven plus years. So it was only right that I did what I did and trust me, I’m okay with all the attention I got. It doesn’t make me any less human.

People have said over and over they don’t know why Kim Kardashian is famous. Yes, you do. I believe her fame emerged after her sex tape. And Paris Hilton. And then let’s take Coco from Ice Loves Coco.

Screenshot of ass from Cocos World

The reason these women are famous is because sex, nudity, and ditsy behavior sells. It makes you famous.

I went through a dumb blonde phase (see photos above) where I insisted on pretending I was stupid, pretended to get bad grades, and really pretended to care about asshole dudes. But the problem was that I was just pretending. I am not stupid and I didn’t get bad grades. I may or may not have cared about some of those assholes.

I learned very quickly that the male attention I got during those days was for one reason and one alone: I was sexy. I was also thin. As the years went on and my depression compounded my issues, I gained weight. Sure, some people still think I’m sexy and some still hit on me, but there has been a huge decrease in male attention over the past few years. I believe my own mother said that if I lost some weight I’d find a good man.

The odd thing about my weight gain is that it’s directly related to wanting to be invisible. After being miserably hurt by those I loved, I didn’t want to go through it again. I didn’t realize I may have purposefully gained weight so I didn’t have to be around people, or trust them, or even get male attention. But this is one thing my therapist proposed to me a week or two ago. We just started talking about it and I’m not sure what all is truly behind that desire for invisibility but it’s very clearly present in my life. It also manifests in other ways, too, but the weight gain is most noticeable.

Back to fame. I know a girl who recently made herself semi-famous. She has no talent that I know of, but she’s taken very sexy, half naked pictures of herself. As a result, she’s everywhere and can get any media attention she wants. For awhile, that was my plan. Lose some weight, get famous. As a writer, fame would be very helpful. It’s a plan that certainly works, but as I started getting to know myself a bit more, I realized it’s not for me. I do love being half naked or whole naked, but I don’t like being inauthentic. I don’t want to live my life as an act and for me, acting stupid would be an act. Being naked would not be an act. I’m naked right now and I often write naked. But not to turn you on.

I’m not saying that girls who sell out for fame by being naked are wrong or stupid. Sometimes, I think they’re quite smart because they are marketing GURUS. I often wonder if it is an act, though. How much of them really wants to be famous for who they are? Or because of a talent they may be hiding because it’s not “what hot girls do”? I’ve noticed a lot of celebrities have very good hearts and sometimes even brilliant minds.

So when Katy Perry said today that she’s tired of fame, I get it (not the fame, of course). I’m sure she may even regret it sometimes. But because fame is this monster that can often turn against you, you have to play the game or the game will kill your career.

So, while I’m still pretty, I’m pretty fluffy. And I am not a huge fan of sharing my fat pictures with anyone but here’s one:

It’s easy to hide after becoming fat and as anyone who has ever gained weight knows it’s even more difficult to take it off after putting it on. I’m healthy and I’m secretly happy with my fluffiness, yet I know I’ve stacked to odds against me when it comes to finding love. But you know what? Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I did this to myself–to prevent myself from finding love again. If you don’t find love, then you don’t have to deal with someone not loving you, rejecting you, or abandoning you.

On the other hand, somehow through all of this, I’ve found myself. I wear my glasses with pride instead of thinking they make me look ugly. I read feminist books and don’t care if that makes me unappealing to the straight male. I am smart and I’m not afraid of being who I am, regardless of how others judge me. I don’t often wear makeup, I refuse to wear stilettos anymore and I may be more interested in reading or debating than what others tell me I should dress like or look like. Because of all that, I’m very happy.

Got Dumped?

Friday night was a night like no other, except that the boyfriend and I had been fighting a week earlier. That being said, he and I made up and I was looking forward to a long night of romance and sex. I even had a romantic night lined up–dinner sea-side watching the sunset, eating his favorite dish of shrimp pasta.

I’ll skip all the gory details mainly because I don’t want to retell the story. It just makes me depressed. What is important is that he dumped me after a big fight and I do believe it was partly because I had been more forthcoming about my struggle with depression during that time in an attempt to BLAME myself for our fight so we could move past it. Lesson partly learned: I will not take the blame for something I didn’t do.

In his breakup speech he said something about seeing things in me during our fight that made him “uncomfortable” and he mentioned they were things I couldn’t change or he didn’t want to ask me to change. I had just recently written this blog about my struggle with depression.

Depression can’t be cured but it can be managed. I’m extremely forthcoming about my depression because I’m just that way. I’m forthcoming and honest about most things. I’m direct, sometimes when it hurts. I learned to be direct because I spent almost a decade being pushed over and hurt and not speaking my mind.

To sense that someone I loved deeply may have broken up with me because I struggle with depression is incredibly hurtful, and naive on their part. It’s hurtful to know that I worked hard to forgive him and his shortcomings but he didn’t have the same love or respect for me to forgive mine. It’s also naive for him to think that my depression is unmanageable and also that he doesn’t have any flaws or things that make me feel “uncomfortable.” I felt uncomfortable when he told me he was going to film a TV pilot with these 2 girls and he might stay in their hotel room. But that’s beside the point. Asshole.

Blogging and writing is a tough job. A writer must be honest with his or herself in order to be able to draw a reader in. A memoir writer like myself has to be able to talk about her own life transparently. She must see her own flaws as they are, take responsibility for things she’s done to hurt others and have the ability to create art from them. The art may be flawed or rigid or beautiful or painful but it will be art if she has the skill and insight to create.

My partner may not have been able to see his own flaws as well as I can see my own. Part of living with depression, in my case, is living with incredible self-introspection. In fact, as we talked Friday night I realized he couldn’t see any of his own flaws or at least wouldn’t admit to them. That’s not the toughest part of a break up though. It’s having someone you love deeply tell you they don’t love you anymore (with their actions, even when their words say something else), realizing you won’t spend every day with them anymore, and know that everything you trusted and held important in moments before that is all coming crashing down around you and you can’t stop it.

They want out. They’re leaving.