How To Start To Heal From Emotional Abuse – Penny’s Story

Is it possible to heal from emotional abuse and betrayal trauma? Everyday, brave women resist in a variety of ways. Penny shares her story of how she resisted abuse and finally was able to heal from emotional abuse.

Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today to share your story with other women who have endured the same type of emotional and psychological abuse and begin healing from emotional abuse TODAY.

This episode follows Penny’s Story
How to Start to Heal From Emotional Abuse – Penny’s Story (THIS EPISODE)
Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse – What Gets In Our Way? – Penny’s Take

Transcript: How To Heal From Emotional Abuse

Anne: I have Penny Lane on today’s episode. She’s a writer, wife, and mother with an insatiable passion for life and books. Originally from Queens, she loves being outdoors. Cycling, hiking, traveling, and connecting to and inspiring people.

She has a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology from Golden State University. And in her spare time, she helps underserved youth learn to read, apply to college and find jobs.

Penny’s Journey Healing From Emotional Abuse And Helping Others

Anne: Her book, Redeemed, A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood, she recounts how she was pressured into marriage and endured years of forced confessions, Salem style accusations, secretive disciplinary actions, and excommunication. Penny finally reached her breaking point, and we’re going to talk about her story today. Welcome, Penny.

Penny: Thank you for having me.

Anne: Why do you feel it’s important for you to speak out about your abuse and write this memoir?

Penny: For one, I feel compelled to write it. Because I met a lot of people who have childhood trauma of different sorts and they tend to be ashamed of it. And the opposite is actually true. When we talk about it is when we begin to heal from emotional abuse, find relief, solace and community.

I think it is important to write my story to remove some of the stigma involved with abuse or trauma. It will help others heal from emotional abuse as well.

Anne: You were coerced into marrying your husband. Can you talk about the abuse that led to that and then also the abuse that you experienced from him?

No Opportunity To Heal From Emotional Abuse From Childhood

Penny: I was a 16 year old runaway when I met my husband. He was my boss. I worked at an IHOP as a waitress and he quickly saw that I was a very hard worker. He promoted me and then took me out on dates . Because I was a runaway, you know, it was basically living with a family and paying rent. I had no time to heal from the emotional abuse from my upbringing.

Pretty soon he said, why don’t you move in with me? Then I was working for him and living with him. I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t have any family because I was a runaway. He started asking me to work more hours. At first I said yes, because he paid me a little bit extra and I made a lot of money waitressing. It was great.

But then he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Let’s say I worked three double shifts in a row. Even though I was 16, it’s exhausting to be on your feet in a very fast moving restaurant for 12 hours, 14 hours a day. I tried to say, no. I’m too tired. Get someone else. And he’d say, this wasn’t a question. You need to get to work. Be there in five minutes or I’m coming to pick you up in five minutes.

Manipulation and Control

Anne: How old was he?

Penny: He was six years older than me. He was 23, he left college, and was a restaurant manager for four or five years before I met him. So he was managing a staff of 30 or 40 people in a very busy, high revenue restaurant in a busy location.

And he was domineering. A little while after we started dating, he started disappearing and I didn’t know where he was. The girls I worked with said, Oh, he’s got another girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. You know, I didn’t think that was true. Half of you doesn’t believe and half of you does.

Religious Pressure

Penny: So one time I went along with him to where he was going, because he said he was going to church. I thought, this guy gambles, drinks, curses and I didn’t think he was a very honest guy. And I didn’t think he would possibly be going to church. So I went along with him.

And he had indeed gone to church. He went to a very fundamentalist, Bible believing, evangelical type church. This was in the 70’s, and it was quite emotionally wrought. The services were long and drawn out. At the end of the service, there was a call to walk the aisle, to accept Jesus as your personal savior.

I wanted nothing to do with that. I thought it was totally weird. Besides, I had just run away from home. I didn’t want to belong to something else. I wanted to be free.

Anne: Were you raised religious at all?

Penny: No, I was born Catholic and communion at 12, under duress. I didn’t know anything. We didn’t really do anything. else.

Forced Conversion

Penny: So, long story short, once I went to the church, he would ask me each time he went. He went Wednesdays, Thursdays and twice on Sundays. He would just wait for me at the restaurant and say, okay, we’re going to church. I’d get in the car with him and we’d go. I wasn’t really given a choice .

I went two, three weeks of this, going three or four times a week. People started pressuring me to accept Jesus and the story is very compelling. I’m sure you and your readers know this. It’s don’t you want to be loved forever? Yes, of course. Who doesn’t? Don’t you want to have a forever family?

Don’t you want to have God’s love? Well, the answer to all of that is yes. I didn’t feel loved. Don’t you want to belong? Of course. I didn’t belong anywhere. Didn’t belong in my family. I didn’t have a family at the moment. So eventually I gave in to the emotional pressure of accepting Jesus and I walked the aisle

Questioning Free Will

Anne: At the time, did you feel like you were doing it of your own free will or at the time were you like, I don’t really want to do this, but in order to stay in his good graces, I have to do this. It’s hard to identify the effects of spiritual abuse. Can you talk about a bit of your thought process at the time?

Penny: At the time I thought I was doing it for my own free will. But look, I was 17. And I was a runaway, working for this man, living with this man. I thought that he loved me. I loved him and this is what he’s doing with his life. In hindsight, I don’t know if it was really free will or if it was emotional manipulation and pressure.

Because I knew that if I didn’t do this, I would have to walk away from the whole package. Leave him, my job, my living arrangement. And remember I was 17 and I didn’t know how to negotiate in the world. I didn’t know how to find an apartment or find a new job.

Anne: This is also your first experience with religion.

Penny: Yes, and he is my second boyfriend. I had a boyfriend while I was going through high school and I broke up with him because he wasn’t ambitious enough. Then I started working at the IHOP and I met this man. Though here’s the interesting thing that happened. It was a bait and switch.

Abusive Restrictions

Penny: At first it was all lovey dovey and Jesus loves you and you’re part of this forever family. But pretty soon the pastor’s wife and the other women in the church pulled me aside. And said, you can’t dress like that here. And again, I was 17. It was the seventies. We wore blue jeans, platform sandals, high heels, lots of makeup, long shaggy hair, and tight clothes.

That’s what we wore, and that’s all I had. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t dress that way anymore. I had to wear skirts and I couldn’t wear makeup or wear less makeup.

Anne: Only at church or all the time?

Penny: Well, they talked to me about it at church. I really kind of didn’t have any other life. I worked in the restaurant, and I had a uniform. Then I went to church. We didn’t really do anything else. Because previously his life was drinking and going out to eat and drinking. We didn’t do that anymore because he stopped drinking and he stopped smoking.

He didn’t pressure me outside of church, but at church I was required. And I kept arguing with the pastor and saying, you guys didn’t tell me this. Like, I don’t want to change. I like this and I liked that. It was a lot. And let’s fast forward three or four months. The pastor said, I want to meet with you guys on Friday night at my house.

And so of course I was told I was off work and went to the pastor’s house and the pastor made me wait in the living room. He took my boyfriend into his study and they were gone about 10 minutes, maybe more. When he came out, my boyfriend looked very troubled.

Engagement Under Duress

Penny: He looked preoccupied. And he said, Penny, will you marry me? We’re living in sin and I can’t live in sin anymore. So will you marry me?

He had talked to me about that before. My boyfriend had said to me like three or four visits after I got saved. He said, you know, we’re living in sin, right? I really didn’t know what he meant because I didn’t really have a concept of sin or hell or heaven, even though they talked about it at the church.

I wasn’t absorbing it. Like my little 17 year old brain was looking at people and looking at clothes and looking at the guitar player and looking at the piano. I wasn’t able to comprehend that. So it meant nothing to me. And I didn’t feel guilty. Like, I hadn’t been a, what I would call a terrible sinner, right?

I know now, because I’ve read the Bible, that like any sin, even jealousy is sin. At the time, I didn’t even think sleeping with your boyfriend was sin. I kind of knew it was wrong, but I didn’t equate it to sin. I didn’t feel any guilt in my heart whatsoever. However, unbeknownst to me, because he didn’t tell me yet, that my boyfriend did.

He had been stealing from his boss, he had gambled, he had drank and slept around. He felt very guilty. And so he really absorbed this Christian thing and became all in from the minute he got saved. He immediately quit drinking and quit smoking cold turkey. And that wasn’t the case for me. So then we have this meeting with the pastor.

Healing From Emotional Abuse While In Bible College

Penny: He comes out and he says, will you marry me? Nobody twisted my arm physically, but again, I knew in that moment that if I didn’t say yes, I was out. I was out of a place to live, a job and out of the church.

I thought I loved him at the time and I didn’t see a lot of dangerous signals yet. Again, I’m 17. The big thing was he didn’t beat me. So I assumed I was safe. We got engaged and we started planning a wedding. The church was very, very heavily involved. Very heavily, from the get go. I did end up finding another apartment and moving out.

https://youtu.be/JOgZyAWjul8

So I didn’t live with him anymore after that. The church would talk to us about things like birth control. And again, I’m 17, and I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? If we can’t use birth control, I could have a baby a year for the next 20 years. I said, this is ridiculous. I was pushing back and I was pushing back so much that the pastor said to me, you have a rebellious spirit. We need to send you to Bible school.

Increasing Pressure & Control

Anne: I’ve heard this before. You have a rebellious spirit thing,

Penny: So they sent me away to Bible school, literally. And you know what? I didn’t mind going because the pastor was overbearing and my then fiance, became overbearing. Because the way he looked at the world was different than the way I look at the world now.

He looked at the world like the pastor said, therefore you need to do it. No free will. No your own relationship with God, even though that’s what they preach. He became like my spiritual director and enforcer. So I had to do whatever the pastor said. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I was ready to or not.

And the pastor made me do some really strange things that I did not want to do. But again, under pressure from my boyfriend, here’s an example. The Bible says, children obey your parents. Well, that’s great when you’re living with your parents, maybe, but what happens if your parents beat you? So the pastor made me go back to my stepmother and ask her forgiveness for running away. Now I still had no opportunity to heal from emotional abuse from childhood, and this kind of advice compounded the problem.

Anne: Even though you ran away because your stepmother was beating you.

Submitting To Husband’s Abuse

Penny: Beating me, mean to me, calling me names, withholding food. I was humiliated. And again I knew, if I don’t do this I have to walk away. So I did it. He even said, if she wants, you need to move back home. And I thought, you’ve got to be kidding me. I have been gone a year and a half. I have my own apartment, job and bank account. I’m engaged. Are you kidding? Nope.

They weren’t kidding. So luckily, my stepmother said, no, I don’t have to move back that I would disrupt the family. I had a little sister and I’ve hurt my sister by running away. I wasn’t able heal from emotional abuse from childhood while still being abused. So luckily I didn’t have to do it, but that’s the kind of thing I mean about domineering and overbearing and making me do things.

Now, as a middle aged woman, I look back and say. Why didn’t that tell me right then and there? Who’s going to be in charge of the relationship? That whatever my husband will say will be right. Not whatever I feel in my heart is right, but I didn’t see that. So I go away to Bible college for a year and it’s a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Marriage & Moving Away

Penny: During this time, things change at the IHOP. My husband quits and opens up a restaurant. The restaurant ends up failing. Now he’s out of a job and he’s out of money. He gets another job at IHOP, but it’s in Maryland. I’m thrilled to move away from this overbearing pastor. I finished Bible college. We get married after Bible college by that same pastor and immediately move away.

Anne: And of course you would have had no idea how fundamentalism and patriarchy fuel abuse. Really quickly, how did you like Bible college?

Penny: I loved it, and the reason I loved it is because it was in a beautiful, beautiful setting in upstate New York. I lived in an all girls dorm. I’ve never had friendships with girls my age before because I wasn’t allowed to.

Anne: You have this good experience where you’re safe, you’re housed, have food. You’re getting an education, even though it’s something you didn’t expect.

Penny: The college is a lot less focused on rules. I mean, there are rules. For instance at Bible colleges, Christian colleges in that time, I don’t know how it is today. You couldn’t wear pants. Even though it was winter, we wore long wool skirts over boots. It gets really cold in upstate.

We had long coats. And there’s rules like that, but you can live with that, right? Because of the rest of it. You’re having a great time, studying and you’re going on little field trips. In the summer, you’re a camp counselor at a Christian camp. So it’s fun. It’s fun to be around other girls my age, something I’ve never had before.

I graduate, we get married, we move away, I’m a New Yorker so I dress up. I’m back to wearing jeans and high heels and makeup and pretty dresses. I’m myself.

Struggles With Abuse In Maryland

Penny: We live in Maryland for about three years, and it’s rocky. It’s not an easy marriage because he’s domineering.

Everything is his way. I feel lost but I don’t know what to do because the church teaches that divorce is sin. And further they teach that if you deliberately do something that you know is sin, like divorce. You may not even be a Christian at all, which is scary, right?

Because if you’re a Christian, which I thought I was at the time, then you’re afraid of hell. You’re afraid of displeasing God. It’s a mind game. They differentiate between accidental sin, like, Oh, I fell into temptation. I committed adultery. That would be accidental sin.

Anne: Which is not accidental at all. That is 100 percent on purpose. Your penis just doesn’t fly out of your pants. In this context when there is this dynamic biblical submission often becomes abuse.

Penny: Right. But that’s what they teach. And I’m sure you’ve heard that before.

Anne: Oh, 100%. And then what? You just trip and then you accidentally have it with, no! It’s misogynistic because it always benefits the man. The man, it’s always accidental. But women, it’s always on purpose.

Penny: Right.

Religious Manipulation Continues

Penny: At some point, We meet up with this guy who runs a Bible study in his home. He’s in Bible college in Maryland. My then husband is an acolyte of this pastor, right?

Anne: What does acolyte mean in that context?

Penny: He loves this pastor and is a follower of this pastor. He thinks he’s the greatest. This pastor finally graduates from Bible college and he tries to get ordained. And he’s having a very hard time getting ordained. Which should have been a red flag, but it wasn’t.

Finally, this pastor finds a sect that will ordain him. He gets assigned to some rural church in the middle of very rural Michigan in a town of 200. A church that’s been around like a hundred years. It’s a handful of old ladies that are just keeping this church alive. The pastor moves away and my husband misses him so much. He arranges a trip to visit this pastor. I think, great, it’s just a one week trip.

We drive to Michigan from Maryland. We go to visit and I’m out of my element. I’ve never been in a place so rural. before. The church is weird and it’s small and I’m uncomfortable. I grew up in a city and these people are people that have never left their hometown. They’ve maybe never left the state. They’re just different. Nothing wrong with them, just different from me. So we go back to Maryland.

Unexpected News

Penny: I go back to work and I’m happy. I’m focused on being a good wife. I don’t think about church. We’re visiting different churches every weekend. All of a sudden the pastor who lives in Michigan, his wife calls and says, Hey Penny, I found you guys an apartment.

I said, what? She said, Oh yeah, your husband told me to look for an apartment for you guys, that you guys are moving. He hadn’t asked me and he hadn’t told me. So I’m very upset because I did not want to move. I knew that place would kill me. I knew it was too weird for me I didn’t want to move, but he’s making plans.

He said, listen, I’m moving. So you need to get your head around this. I’ve given my notice to my boss. We’re moving in two months and I don’t know what to do.

Seeking Advice & Rationalizing Abuse

Penny: And I remember talking to his, brother’s wife. So my sister-in-law, and she’s also born again, Christian, but she lives in New Jersey and she’s an independent woman. Back then I would have called myself a weak person, because I had no freedom as a child.

I hadn’t healed from my childhood trauma. So healing from emotional abuse seemed daunting. I was scared and timid, and had never lived on my own. My sister-in-law, on the other hand, was a strong woman. She went into her marriage as a strong woman. She was already a Christian when she met my brother-in-law, and she kind of called the shots for her life.

When she got married, for example, she said, I don’t want children. In the evangelical church, that’s huge. That’s a big no no. Because that’s your job as a woman, to be a good mother and keep house. So, I trusted her. I called her up and said, what do I do? I don’t remember exactly what she said. But she somehow, in a way that I can’t even remember, talked me into it. By saying, look, he’s your husband.

This is part of God’s plan. You think you won’t like it, but God’s plan is always wonderful. And you’re probably going to like it once you get there. So I think you should go. That sort of thing. She didn’t pressure me. She didn’t threaten or ultimatum. There was no hell, nothing like that, but somehow she made it okay. I don’t remember how, probably cause I was traumatized.

Struggling In A New Life

Penny: So we moved and uprooted everything we knew. And it was very weird. I was very young. We got married when I was 18, three years later, I’m 21. And we moved to this place where everybody is at least 10 years older than me.

And they had never been to college. The women never worked outside the home. They got married to their childhood sweethearts at 17, 18 or 19. And now they had a bunch of kids. And the area was very depressed. People didn’t have a lot of money, they literally stretched a giant jar of peanut butter week to week.

It was very dependent on the auto industry, so people were needy. People were very committed to the church, because really that’s all they had. I think I’m judging here. I’m making a judgment. Whereas I always looked at things wide open. Like why aren’t we going anywhere on weekends? We lived an hour and a half from Ann Arbor and two hours from Detroit. But nobody ever went to see museums, art or theater. Nothing. I didn’t fit in.

Questioning The Church

Penny: And I started questioning things again. I didn’t like what was being taught. They were teaching some really weird stuff. The church becomes your authority and you have to ask the church’s permission before you do anything. Like buy a house, go on vacation or to have another baby.

I was trying to have a baby at the time. And instead of encouraging me to have a baby. They were having me babysit people’s children while they went away for a few days. Kind of to teach me how hard it was to have a baby.

Anne: But like, didn’t they ultimately want you to be a parent?

Penny: It’s hard to say now, yes and no. But I had been trying for three years and I was not getting pregnant.

Anne: Oh, maybe they’re trying to “make you feel better”.

Penny: Or here’s the thing, like in the church, everybody has a gift. And wouldn’t it be convenient if I had the gift of serving and I don’t have my own children to take care of? Because then I could serve the church a lot. I could serve other people in the church.

Anne: Be people’s free babysitter.

Penny: Right.

Struggles With Conformity

Penny: Some people I get along with in the church and some people I don’t. And we typically had somebody over for Sunday dinner, or they had us over. We were supposed to fellowship and meet with people and have coffee with them. We weren’t supposed to have relationships with anybody outside the church.

So none of us had friends outside the church, unless of course you had family there, which we didn’t. It ended up that you only spent time with people in the church. I was not happy, but I was doing my thing. I was doing all the reading the Bible, going to prayer, fellowshipping with the women, helping out in the church and that kind of stuff.

A Wedding Trip

Penny: And at some point, a cousin of mine was getting married on the East Coast and I had asked to go.

Anne: You asked the church to go?

Penny: I asked my husband to go and my husband went and asked the church, went and asked the pastor.

Anne: Wow, that’s intense, ok.

Penny: Yeah. The pastors came over and met with the pastor and the elder came over and met with me and they said, Penny, why do you want to go to this church on the East Coast?

You know, I didn’t tell them the real reason. It’s boring as heck here. But I just said, My cousins, it’s fun, I haven’t been away, haven’t been back. I haven’t seen them and I want to go.

Anne: Wait, why do you want to go to this church? You’re just going for like one day, right? For the wedding. You’re not like becoming a member of this other church, right?

Penny: Oh, it wasn’t even at a church. It was just a wedding, a cousin’s wedding somewhere on the East coast. Right.

Anne: Wow. Why do you want to go to this wedding? Okay.

Penny: What they said was you pray about it. If the Lord tells you to go, that’s fine with us. Well, of course I didn’t hear voices and I didn’t hear a yay or nay. And so I decided, well, I didn’t hear no. So let’s go. So we. Packed up the car, we drove, it’s, you know, eight hour drive or something back to the east coast from Michigan.

Set Backs In My Ability To Heal From Emotional Abuse

Penny: We get there, we’re there for the whole weekend. We stay with cousins or grandmother, I can’t remember. And we had a great time. But as soon as we start driving, getting close to Michigan again, I start feeling this uneasy feeling in my stomach. Like, Oh, I wonder if I’m going to get in trouble for this. Sure enough, there’s a knock on the door.

The day after we get back, the pastor and the elder come and they say, Penny, tell us about your trip. I look over at my husband and he’s looking at the floor. I’m like, well, we went, we had a great time. We danced, we socialized and they say, we don’t believe you. Like, what do you mean? You don’t believe me.

He said, we don’t believe you had a good time. I said, I had a really good time. And he said, are you sure you didn’t just try to have a good time? I said, no. And they said, we think you’re lying. We think God told you not to go. So we think you’re lying about going and having fun.

Excommunication & Husband’s Abuse

Penny: So we’re going to excommunicate you. We’re going to discipline you is the word they use.

Anne: Did they think you went somewhere else?

Penny: No.

Anne: So this is just like a huge manipulation thing. They know you actually went.

Penny: My husband went with me and my husband’s in the room. Yeah.

Anne: And he doesn’t stand up for you?

Penny: Nope

Anne: Or defend you?

Penny: Nope. He defends everyone but me. As a matter of fact, he must’ve called the elders behind my back. To say, We’re back.

Anne: He was abusive. We know he was abusive, even though you didn’t know it at the time, right? He’s emotionally abusive, psychologically abusive. What do you think was his abusive reason for calling the elders on you and getting you excommunicated?

Penny: I think he thought that it was his job to keep me holy and keep me righteous. Therefore, anything that the pastor thought was wrong?

Anne: But you hadn’t done anything wrong.

Penny: That’s correct.

Anne: He was just trying to put you down. I’m just trying to think of his abusive reason. He goes to this wedding with you and he sees you happy and dancing. He sees, Oh my word, she could notice that I’m abusing her and that she’s so exploited and sad. I don’t want her to recognize when she’s happy. I’m going to try and shut this down. Maybe something like that. We don’t know.

I so wish I could have given you The Living Free Workshop at this point in your life, I made it so women could recognize when someone is manipulating them and help them get to safety.

Isolation & Depression Further Harm My Ability To Heal From Emotional Abuse

Penny: Possible. So the elder says, you’re on discipline, we’re disciplining you. Discipline means you don’t talk to anybody in the church. You don’t call them, say hi to them on the street, meet with them or come to services. You’re excommunicated. You stay home or you stay away from anybody in the church and we’ll get back to you when we think you’re repentant.

So here I am, we have a tiny, tiny apartment, it’s a studio apartment and I’m an outgoing person. I’m an extrovert, and I’m left on my own. My husband leaves for work in the morning, and you can clean the whole apartment in half an hour. I wash the dishes, do the laundry, and do the shopping. I mow the lawn, and do all the stuff.

Luckily I love to read. So I go to the library, but I’m heartbroken. I’m crestfallen and depressed. I stay in bed most of the day. Because this has happened to me and I don’t know how it happened.

I didn’t lie, I didn’t know how to change it. So I’m powerless and stuck. Again, I don’t even think of leaving at this point, right? Because now I’m three years into a marriage, into the church. I’m a good Christian and believe what I’m taught. I believe the Bible but yet, God’s not helping me

Anne: And you’re exactly where they want you.

Penny: I’m depressed and I’m not eating and I’m not sleeping. Again I call my sister-in-law or my sister-in-law calls me. She must have heard about it and she calls me. And she says, Oh Penny, you know, we’re all in sin one way or the other we’re all in sin.

Confession & Return

Penny: So just confess to the elders that you lied and get it over with and they’ll take you back. It’ll be fine And so I say to myself, Oh my God, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. That’s what I’m going to do. So I do it. I tell my husband, I’m ready to confess. He goes and tells the elders. A couple of days later, the elders come back to me and they come to the house and they’re all smiling with these fake smiles.

Cause there’s a verse in the Bible that says that there’s more joy in heaven over the one son who comes back to the faith and the hundred non believers that convert. I don’t remember the exact verse, but it’s something like that. So they say, we forgive you. And we’re so happy. This is midweek so stay away from the church . And We’ll invite you back to the church at the Sunday service.

Continued Abuse From Public Humiliation Harms My Ability To Heal

Penny: And what I didn’t know, which they didn’t tell me at the time, was that when they invited me back to the Sunday service, I basically sat outside until the elders brought me in.

And then they said, congregation, we have something to tell you. We have something to rejoice in. Our sister Penny has repented of her sins and she’s been in sin for a month. Thank God, praise God. She’s repented. She’s come back to us and the Bible tells us to welcome her with open arms.

Well, a couple of people in the church stood up, a husband and wife team that were kind of newish to the church. They’d been there maybe a couple months. They got up and they said, this is wrong. And they got up and they walked out.

Anne: Were they like, we don’t want her back? So that’s why they left?

Penny: No, I think that they were upset that this happened to me.

Anne: Oh, okay. So they were on your side. Good for them.

Penny: Everybody else in the church was dead silent. Nobody said a word and everybody’s staring at me. I had no idea this was going to happen.

In those days we sat in a circle, so a great big circle. Imagine we were in like a a ballroom. We were renting an old, old, old hotel in this town, a big giant ballroom. We’re all sitting in a circle all facing each other and everybody’s staring at me aghast. He doesn’t tell them what the sin is.

Psychological Abuse

Penny: So you can imagine people are thinking, was it adultery? Was it child abuse? Does she need to heal from emotional abuse? Was it theft? Is she a gambler? Is she a drinker? Does she take drugs? Nobody knew, right?

Anne: I just want to pause here for a second to point out why this is happening, not necessarily to you in particular, but just in general. It’s psychological abuse to try and force someone to think that something happened when it didn’t. And then they also want to ruin someone’s reputation. It’s so hard to heal from emotional abuse when you can’t get the right help and are still being abused.

So they could be like, okay, the sin was you jaywalked, but we’re not going to tell people that . And we’re just going to leave it up to everybody’s imagination in order to ruin your reputation and harm you. Wow.

Penny: it was really horrific.

When You Are Living In Fear You Can’t Heal From Emotional Abuse

Penny: And then here’s the other thing that happens to me as a person. On the inside because I didn’t do anything wrong to begin with, and they told me I did. From that moment on I walked on eggshells every minute of every day. I could never relax because I never knew if I was doing something wrong.

And I didn’t know if I was lying because if somebody said to me, how are you doing today, Penny? But really I was nervous in my stomach, but I didn’t want to say that. Then I would run back to that person and say, I’m okay, but I’m nervous in my stomach and I didn’t want to lie to you. I was constantly going back to everybody and correcting myself. I looked like a fool. Now people don’t know if they trust me.

Anne: I want to point out, this is what an abuser would do to undermine your confidence to exploit you more or control you more. It is a purposeful tactic that someone would do to stop them from healing from emotional abuse.

Penny: I did not know that at the time.

Anne: Right. I’m just pointing that out to my listeners. So that if they’re like, Oh, emotional abuse is happening to me right now it’s impossible to heal. It is a purposeful thing to undermine someone’s confidence.

Penny: this went on for another couple of years, living in fear and turmoil and insecurity. Something else happened and I was accused and disciplined again, for a very long time, for a year. I was really broken as a person, suicidal, very broken. And when it came time, the elders decided enough.

Heal From Emotional Abuse By Realizing Independence

Penny: They said, you either leave or you confess. I decided to leave and that meant leaving the church. I left my husband and I left the state. Clearly I was a completely broken person. I was 31 by that point. And I basically had to start life all over again. Meaning I didn’t have a job, money, degree or career. I was scared of everybody, I thought my life was over at 31. Nobody would love me and I would just be a street beggar and maybe a waitress.

But that’s not what happened. Because once I was free I became a full human being . It’s been a powerful, powerful thing. Once I began to heal from emotional abuse, I became a highly successful and highly paid salesperson. I have a master’s degree and undergrad degree, am highly respected and retired early. I adopted a son, have a wonderful husband and home. It took a lot of work and it’s still work.

Anne: If you could go back to that 17 year old that you were and talk to yourself when you’re working at that IHOP. What would you say to yourself? When you weren’t yet asking the question, “am I being spiritually abused?”

Penny: I would say don’t do it. There are many people in the world. He’s not the only one. This isn’t your only job in the world. There’s many jobs in the world. You don’t need them. You’re stronger, you’re wiser, you’re smarter. You can do it on your own.

Healing From Emotional Abuse And Getting Your Life Back

Anne: That’s what I want to share with our listeners is I don’t know where your journey to psychological and emotional safety will take you. It’s so different for every single person. But the important thing is that you are brave and you are strong and you can do it. The abusers want you to think that you can’t heal from emotional abuse.

They want you to think you’re dependent on them. They want you to think that you’re not smart or incapable. And that is not true. You are brave and strong. You are capable. When you heal from emotional abuse, you can do anything. So Penny, thank you for your story, and wish you well as you heal after emotional abuse. I appreciate you coming on today’s episode.

Penny: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.