I've been learning something about leaving unhealthy systems that I wish I had understood much earlier.
Leaving is not the hard part.
Realizing what leaving actually means is.
Because you don't just leave a church, an organization, a job, a leadership structure, or whatever name you want to give the thing that hurt you.
You leave an ecosystem. And at least for a while... ecosystems still have carbon-based entities called... people! :)
People you love. People who love you. People who watched what happened. People who didn't.
People who know exactly what happened and people who have decided they would rather not know.
And, perhaps most painfully, people who know, believe you, validate you, tell you privately that you were right, sometimes even tell you that things are worse now...and then go right back into the ecosystem.
I haven't quite known what to do with that category.
It has a weird "friends of your ex" vibe to it (never been there, but I'm sure this is what it feels like; you tell me if I'm wrong). I'll say it again:
Leaving a spiritually abusive system can feel a lot like a divorce where you slowly realize most of your friends were actually your ex's friends.
I can like you. I can believe that you care about me. I can even understand why you continue having a relationship with them.
But then you invite me to the party and... they're going to be there.
You tell me what's happening in their life and... I don't actually want to know.
You tell me what people are saying over there, and suddenly I realize that this conversation has transported me right back into a room I worked very hard to leave.
And eventually you have to ask a difficult question:
What exactly are we trying to preserve here?
It takes a buttload of courage to face that question!
It's so hard, because you don't want to end up realizing you only nourished relationships that were functional to you... That's the system you are trying to leave behind.
But it is a very stubborn question that keeps coming back, no matter how hard you try to ignore it.
I've noticed that, after spiritual abuse, relationships seem to sort themselves into a few categories.
First comes the "I don't want to hear about it" crowd.
Fair enough.
Some people don't have the emotional capacity for your story. Some don't want the conflict. Some need the institution to remain uncomplicated. Some have already decided that whatever happened must have two equally valid sides because that is infinitely more comfortable than considering the possibility that sometimes one side simply had more power than the other.
Assuming otherwise would have catastrophic consequences for their belief system.
I get it.
Then there's the "you're no longer functional to my goals" crew.
Nobody sends you a memo.
They just... fade away.
The show must, and I mean must, go on.
Turns out the "friendship" was much more dependent on shared geography, shared projects, shared leadership, shared Sundays, shared ambitions, or shared usefulness than either of you realized.
That one hurts, but at least it eventually makes sense.
It leaves a bitter aftertaste and a sense of sorrow for the times I was probably perceived that way by people who left before me, simply because I didn't care about them anymore.
I'm learning...
I am a better human now.
But there's a third category that has been much harder for me.
This is the "fix you need" for coping with the aftermath of a dysfunctional family. The high that allows you to play pretend for a few hours before it fades away after the meeting is over or the thread cools down a bit (again... never been there, but I'm hecka sure this is what it feels like).
The "I hear you" people.
The witnesses.
Sometimes even people who were somehow involved.
They know.
They saw enough.
They may know about what happened before you and what happened after you.
They may sit across a table from you and validate things you spent months wondering whether you had imagined.
And I cannot overstate how valuable those people can be when you're trying to find your footing again.
When your perception of reality has been questioned enough, hearing someone say, "No. You're not making this up. I saw it too," can feel like someone finally handing you a compass after you've been walking in circles.
Those relationships can be bridges.
I needed some of those bridges.
And thank God for allowing people to be there for us when we needed to hear we were not crazy.
But here's the part I'm only now learning:
Bridges aren't destinations.
And sometimes the relationships that help you leave are not the relationships that can help you heal.
There's actually some interesting research adjacent to this. A meta-analysis looking at 29 studies and more than 6,500 adults who had experienced betrayal trauma found, unsurprisingly, that broader positive social support was associated with fewer post-traumatic stress symptoms.
But there was a detail that stopped me.
A positive response when someone disclosed what happened to them was not, by itself, associated with fewer PTSD symptoms in that analysis.
General positive social support was.
That distinction fascinates me.
Because "I believe you" matters.
God, does it matter.
But "I believe you" and "I am capable of being part of the environment in which you rebuild your life" are not necessarily the same thing.
And I think I confused them for a while.
Maybe we all do (we tend to be more red-pillers than we care to admit).
Someone validates your experience, so you assume the relationship is safe.
Someone acknowledges the dysfunction, so you assume you now occupy the same reality.
Someone tells you privately that things are actually worse than when you were there, and you think, "Finally. Someone gets it."
But then they remain completely embedded in the same relational system.
And something strange happens.
Their relationship with you can become a cognitive-dissonance pressure valve for them.
The system taught them it's all about them and protecting themselves. They preached submission and putting others before self from the top of the organization, under a spotlight they alone have access to and that has zero to do with merit or faith.
So, like a confused kid, they learned you solve problems by drinking while Dad told them not to before passing out.
They learned to protect and stay quiet (for the third time, never been there, but I'm sure this is it).
But they can still remain inside while maintaining a relationship with someone who was hurt by it.
They can know what happened without having to decide what knowing requires of them.
They can acknowledge privately what they would never acknowledge publicly.
And I'm not even convinced this is usually malicious.
I think human beings are just exceptionally good at compartmentalizing realities that become inconvenient when placed next to each other.
I know what happened to you.
I care about you.
I still belong here.
All three statements can apparently coexist for a very long time.
But there is another side of that relationship that I think those of us leaving unhealthy systems need to recognize.
Because while the relationship may function as a pressure valve for their cognitive dissonance, it can become something very different for us.
A little token of re-victimization that we keep carrying around in our pocket.
We go back for another conversation.
Another update.
Another validation.
Another "you wouldn't believe what happened now." (Boy, have I got stories!)
Another reminder that they know.
Another reminder that they stayed.
And every time, we touch the wound just enough to make sure it is still there.
Why do we do that??
I'm realizing that healing requires more agency than that.
And this may be the hardest thing for me to admit:
Sometimes our longing for belonging is stronger than our desire to heal.
At least mine has been.
Because closing those doors feels brutal.
These aren't strangers.
These are people I laughed with.
Worked with, ate with, built things with, recorded their kids' weddings...
People who occupied enormous portions of my life.
And so you leave these little relational doors cracked open because closing them feels like admitting that you didn't just lose an institution.
You lost a world.
"Let's grab coffee sometime."
"We should get together."
"Keep in touch."
And sometimes we mean it.
But sometimes, if we're painfully honest, we have almost nothing left in common.
Take away the institution and its history and I'm not even sure we would become friends today.
Most of your friends and family probably want me out of the country :)
That's a horrible sentence to write.
But pretending otherwise doesn't make it less true.
Psychologists have studied belonging and social exclusion for decades, and the basic point isn't particularly controversial: belonging is not some cute accessory to human life.
Social exclusion threatens basic psychological needs, and prolonged ostracism is associated with alienation, helplessness, and other serious psychological consequences.
So maybe it shouldn't surprise us that we fight like hell to preserve scraps of belonging even when those scraps keep cutting us.
Maybe that's why leaving takes so much longer than walking through the door.
We aren't stupid nor necessarily indecisive. We're just grieving.
And sometimes grief bargains.
Maybe I can leave the system but keep everyone.
Maybe I can heal while remaining relationally adjacent to the place that hurt me.
Maybe I can attend this event and just avoid that person.
Maybe I can hear what's happening there and not be affected by it.
Maybe I can maintain twenty relationships whose primary common denominator is the very thing I'm trying to remove from the center of my life.
Maybe... I tried. But at some point I had to confront two truths that I really didn't want to confront.
The first one hurt:
I was much more alone in that environment than I realized.
Not because nobody cared... a lot of people did.
But when the moment came that my healing required something different from what the system required, I discovered how many relationships could only exist comfortably while I remained somehow oriented toward the system.
Even from outside it.
That's a very particular kind of loneliness.
But the second truth has been much more beautiful:
Being alone there does not mean being alone everywhere.
There is life outside the ecosystem, trust me!!
There are friendships to be found that don't require a shared institutional history. People who don't need a briefing on who said what at the last meeting.
There are tables where nobody has to calculate who else might be invited, conversations where healing doesn't require reopening the case file first.
There are people who will know the person you are becoming instead of constantly reconnecting you with the person you were when all of this happened.
There is belonging that doesn't require proximity to the thing that hurt you.
And maybe that's one of the final tricks unhealthy systems play on us.
They become so socially comprehensive that leaving feels like choosing loneliness.
So we keep reaching backward for belonging while trying to walk forward toward healing.
I'm learning that sometimes you can't do both.
Some people were bridges.
And I will always be grateful for the bridge.
But you don't build your house on it.
Eventually, you cross.
And apparently there is a whole world on the other side.