How Spiritual Abuse Relies on Category Collapse
Whenever authority dismisses experience, moralizes development, spiritualizes harm, or relocates responsibility from actions to internal states, category collapse is being used to exert control.
Spiritual abuse is real, but the victim does not understand the primary mover: category collapse. Spiritual abuse is not about overt control. It is about epistemic control – controlling what counts as real, true, or legitimate.
1. The Core Pattern of Spiritual Abuse
Spiritual abuse works by collapsing categories selectively to:
- Silence experience.
- Override agency.
- Preserve authority.
- Avoid accountability.
The abuser does not deny all categories, only the ones that threaten power.
2. The Three Categories – A stable triad:
Category A — Ontological Reality
- What exists independently of perception.
- God, moral truth, events, history.
- “What is.”
Category B — Lived / Perceptual Reality
Experience, memory, and nervous system response
- Meaning-making, fear, shame, safety.
- “What is felt and interpreted.”
Category C — Formative / Volitional Reality
- Habits, character, neural wiring.
- Identity-in-formation.
- Future trajectories.
- “What is becoming.”
Spiritual abuse requires these to be blurred.
3. The Four Primary Abusive Collapses
Collapse Type 1: Invalidation
Ontological → Perceptual
Statement pattern
“That didn’t really happen.”
“That’s just your perception.”
“You’re interpreting it wrong.”
What’s happening
- Category B (experience) is dismissed
- Under the guise of defending Category A (truth)
Why it’s abusive
- Experience is erased.
- Memory is delegitimized.
- Trauma is reframed as rebellion or weakness.
Result
- Gaslighting.
- Shame.
- Self-distrust.
Collapse Type 2: Blame Transfer
Perceptual → Ontological
Statement pattern
“Your thoughts caused this.”
“You manifested the outcome.”
“If you had more faith, this wouldn’t have happened.”
What’s happening
- Category B (perception/thought) is elevated, and is …
- Illegitimately made causative of Category A (events, harm)
Why it’s abusive
- Responsibility is shifted to the victim.
- External wrongdoing disappears.
- Authority is absolved.
Result
- Moral injury.
- Internalized guilt.
- Suppression of protest.
Collapse Type 3: Moral Overreach
Formative → Ontological
Statement pattern
“If you were spiritually mature, you wouldn’t feel this way.”
“Your anxiety proves a lack of faith.”
What’s happening
- Category C (formation-in-progress) is treated …
- As if it were Category A (fixed moral status)
Why it’s abusive
- Developmental process is moralized.
- Healing becomes performance.
- Growth is replaced with judgment.
Result
- Perfectionism.
- Fear-based compliance.
- Arrested development.
Collapse Type 4: Coercive Spiritualization
Ontological → Formative
Statement pattern
“God is using this to shape you.”
“Submit, and you’ll be transformed.”
What’s happening
- Real harm (Category A) is rebranded …
- As divinely mandated formation (Category C)
Why it’s abusive
- Abuse becomes sacred.
- Resistance becomes sin.
- Exit becomes apostasy.
Result
- Learned helplessness.
- Trauma bonding.
- Spiritual captivity.
4. Why Category Collapse Is So Effective
Because it:
- Sounds spiritual
- Uses true words in false ways
- Exploits trust in God-language
- Bypasses consent and agency
- Leverages fear of being “wrong before God”
Spiritual abuse is structural, not merely interpersonal. Because these categories are often blurred –
- Ontological Reality
- Lived / Perceptual Reality
- Formative / Volitional Reality
Summary
Spiritual abuse does not begin with cruelty; it begins with confusion. Specifically, it begins when distinct categories of reality are collapsed in ways that benefit authority and silence the person. When lived experience is dismissed in the name of “truth,” when formation is moralized as failure, or when harm is rebranded as divine intention, the problem is not faith – it is epistemic coercion.
Restoring clarity to these categories restores agency. Ontological reality tells us what happened. Lived reality tells us how it was experienced. Formative reality tells us what is still unfolding. None of these invalidate the others, and none may be weaponized to erase responsibility, suppress protest, or sanctify harm.
Naming category collapse exposes the mechanism behind spiritual abuse without requiring cynicism toward God, growth, or truth itself. It allows victims to trust their experience without absolutizing it, to pursue healing without moral condemnation, and to reclaim consent in their spiritual formation.
Clarity is not rebellion. Differentiation is not unbelief. And refusing collapse is not resistance to God – it is resistance to abuse.
A Recovering Legalist 