Megan Von Fricken

03/09/2026

When you’re raised in a group where submission to authority is spiritualized, gender roles are rigid, and “submission” is praised, it can become harder to spot red flags in dating and marriage.

Here’s a brief breakdown of 5 dynamics that I’ve noticed tend to show up in both high-control religions and intimate partner abuse.

🔸 Power & Control Dynamics

Both operate through centralized authority.

Leaders or partners position themselves as the ultimate authority over your beliefs, actions, and life decisions while dismissing your input entirely.

🔸 Isolation and Separation

Both rely heavily on cutting you off from outside perspectives and support systems.

When you have no one else to turn to for reality checks, you become entirely dependent on the controlling figure.

🔸 Manipulation & Coercion

Both use love-bombing to draw you in, then employ shame, guilt, and fear to keep you compliant.

They reframe manipulation as love, protection, or guidance.

🔸 Loss of Autonomy

Both systematically strip away your ability to make independent decisions, from major life choices to everyday preferences.

Over time, you may stop having opinions of your own.

🔸 Dependence & Guilt

Both cultivate dependence by making you feel like you cannot function without them.

They use guilt as a primary tool, suggesting everything would be fine if you were just more obedient.

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Ultimately, high-control religions not only act as an abusive partner would, but these religious groups also make women more vulnerable to ending up in a relationship fraught with intimate partner violence because of the framework it establishes for “godly” households.

If you’ve ever looked back on a relationship and thought, “How did I not see it sooner?” this is part of why.

When coercion was normalized in the group you grew up in, coercion in any relationship is also normalized.

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Here’s a brief example from my own life.

When I was 22 and attending a Brethren In Christ church, I mentioned to my boyfriend that I wanted to take a yoga class.

He immediately told me I couldn't take the class because yoga was "dangerous.” He believed that when you “empty your mind,” you're "creating space for the devil to crawl in."

I thought he was joking. He wasn't.

He threatened to break up with me if I took the class.

So I didn't.

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Looking back, I can see how small that moment was a red flag for what could have become an escalating pattern of coercion and control had we stayed together.

And even though I got of of the relationship before it became overtly abusive, this story is a clear example of how control starts, especially when you’re already in high-control religion sets you up to accept it.

When you're raised in an environment where submission to authority is treated as a virtue, where questioning gets punished, and where your worth depends on compliance, you learn to tolerate behavior that should be unacceptable.

The reality is that the dynamics in high-control religion mirror the dynamics in abusive relationships so closely that one feels like a natural extension of the other.

If you grew up in high-control religion and later found yourself in a controlling or abusive relationship, it’s important to remember that it wasn’t your fault.

The system, and the partner you were with, enveloped you using tried and true tactics of coercion ❤️‍🩹

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03/04/2026

High-control religions create an entire ecosystem of conditioning that makes women significantly more vulnerable to intimate partner abuse.

This is because these types of religious groups normalize submission and control while systematically stripping away your ability to trust your own judgment, recognize red flags, or leave unhealthy relationships.

This article explores the specific ways religious upbringing, family dynamics, rigid gender hierarchies, and beliefs about divorce all work together to increase vulnerability, and examines how high-control religions themselves mirror abusive relationship dynamics.

It's an ecosystem of harmful, gender-based conditioning.

03/02/2026

High-control religions and domestic violence abusers share a notable characteristic.

Both will try to isolate you from “outside influences.”

Isolation is a cornerstone of both of these dynamics because it keeps you from:

1️⃣ Being able to clearly identify that what’s happening inside the relationship is abuse

2️⃣ Having access to resources or people who could assist you in getting out

My upbringing was particularly isolated because I was also homeschooled.

We weren’t homeschooled in the way where we were still taken to community activities and supported in exploring our individual interests.

Nope, my siblings and I were homeschooled in a way that cast “worldly influences” and public schools as “dangerous.”

Throughout my upbringing, I had very little exposure to anything that might open my mind to perspectives outside of what I was being taught at home and in the church.

When I look back now, I think of that isolation as one of the primary methods for systematically stripping away my autonomy and personal agency because choice doesn’t really exist when you do not have access to options.

💬 Have you noticed isolation tactics in your former religion or in a past relationship?

02/25/2026

If you were raised in a high-control religion, there’s a good chance you’ve had at least a few challenging conversations with a parent who cannot tolerate your autonomy.

This is Part 2 of my “Dealing with Religiously Indoctrinated Parents” series.

Part 1 was published on Feb 17th, and if you haven’t already checked it out, I’d encourage you to start there.

In that post, I shared 9 suggestions for dealing with religiously indoctrinated parents and the rationale behind each one.

In this post, we’ll go through those same 9 suggestions again, but this time I’m sharing actual scripts you can try using.


📝 Keep in mind...

This post assumes you want to maintain the relationship on some level, even if it’s distant or low-contact.

Not everyone can maintain (or *wants* to maintain) the relationship, and that’s valid too.


1️⃣ Suggestion: Lead with the present, not the past.

Focus on what is happening *now* and what you need going forward.

Script options:

▫️ “I’m not revisiting the past today. I’m talking about what I need going forward.”

▫️ “I’d like to find a way for us to stay focused on the here and now and how we can structure things moving forward.”


2️⃣ Suggestion: Set boundaries without debating theology.

Theological debates often distract from the greater goal of cultivating safety.

Script options:

▫️ “I’m not discussing beliefs. I’m talking about how we speak to each other.”

▫️ “You can believe what you believe, but I’m not available for those types of discussions.”


3️⃣ Suggestion: Aim to be respected rather than understood.

Respect matters more than being understood.

Script options:

▫️ “You don’t have to understand my point of view, but you do need to speak to me with respect.”

▫️ “Even though you may not agree with my perspective, I need you to respect my boundaries.”


4️⃣ Suggestion: Get validation from safe people, not from them.

Build a support system that can actually hold your reality.

Script options:

▫️ Acknowledge: My parents are operating from a different reality, and probably won’t be able to really “see” my true authentic self. I’ll seek out that true acceptance in healthier spaces.


5️⃣ Suggestion: Let them have feelings without fixing them.

Their discomfort is not a problem you are responsible for solving.

Script options:

▫️ “I hear that you’re upset, and I’m still not changing my decision.”

▫️ “It’s ok for you to have feelings about this, but I’m not available to process them with you.”


6️⃣ Suggestion: Use clear limits rather than ultimatums.

Say what you will do, not what they must do.

Script options:

▫️ “If this turns into preaching or guilt, I’m going to end the call.”

▫️ “I’m not comfortable with prolonged prayers, so I will join once everyone is done.”


7️⃣ Suggestion: Avoid over-explaining by sticking to a script.

You do not owe a dissertation on your beliefs, your boundaries, or your reasons for leaving religion.

Script options:

▫️ “I’ve already answered this, and I’m not repeating myself.”

▫️ “This is not a topic I’m willing to get into.”


8️⃣ Suggestion: Identify the tactic, then return to the limit.

Use your awareness of high-control tactics to identify what’s happening, instead of getting sucked in.

Script options:

▫️ “The direction of this conversation isn’t working for me. Let’s go back to _.”

▫️ “I’m not available for guilt tactics. We can talk when it’s respectful.”


9️⃣ Suggestion: Get support while you renegotiate the relationship.

Mental health support can be critical when renegotiating roles.

Script options:

▫️ Acknowledge: I’m constantly on edge or dysregulated when it comes to my parents. Accessing support may be the best way for me to get the tools I need to be able to cope in a healthier way.


And a note for anyone who still relies on their parents because of money, childcare, disability support, or cultural expectations: it makes sense if some of these scripts feel unrealistic right now.

Smaller, internal boundaries can still bring relief, and more subtle limits or softer exits may be more workable while you figure out what is actually possible.

Internal boundaries are the limits you set *inside yourself* when you cannot (or do not want to) set an external boundary out loud.

They are decisions about what you will engage with, believe, explain, absorb, or take responsibility for, even if you keep your behavior polite and low-conflict on the outside.


➡️ Here are some examples of internal boundaries:

“I’m not taking the bait.” (engagement boundary)

🔸 Internal script: “They are trying to pull me into theology, politics, or a character trial. I’m not entering that conversation.”

🔹 What it looks like externally: You give short, neutral responses and change the subject.

▫️ “I don’t have to prove my reality.” (validation boundary)

🔸 Internal script: “They do not get to be the authority on what happened to me. I know what I lived.”

🔹 Externally: You stop offering evidence, examples, or long explanations.

▫️ “Their feelings are not my job.” (responsibility boundary)

🔸 Internal script: “Disappointment, fear, or outrage is theirs to carry. I’m not fixing this.”

🔹 Externally: You tolerate discomfort in the room without rushing to soothe, apologize, or backpedal.


💡 I’m curious, how do these scripts land with you when you consider your own unique situation?

02/23/2026

Convincing people that “spiritual warfare” is real is a common phobia indoctrination tactic used in religious cults.

It’s an effective control strategy because it puts people in a state of constant hypervigilance.

Which means instead of being able to access your critical thinking, you’re always scanning for unseen threats from the spiritual world.

The idea of “spiritual warfare” is usually a part of the everyday language in religious cults.

It’s the belief that a constant battle between good and evil is being waged on earth for the souls of people.

Often there is a supernatural component where demonic possession feels like a real possibility, and where Satan or demons are roaming around (either invisible or in disguise) trying to lead people “astray.”

Conditioning people to believe in the idea of spiritual warfare is a common phobia indoctrination tactic used in religious cults.

👉🏻 Phobia indoctrination is a deliberate process where a religious cult primes your nervous system to constantly be in a fear state and then uses that fear as leverage.

Over time, normal uncertainty starts to feel more heightened, like even everyday decisions are carrying some catastrophic spiritual consequence.

When your fear response is constantly “on,” your ability to think clearly is diminished, and you no longer have access to a full range of choices.

This creates an opening for the cult to step in and offer “safety.”

The cult can now tell you what’s safe and not safe, and what your everyday actions must look like in order to maintain safety.

They’re now in total control of your life.

💬 How was “spiritual warfare” used in your former religion?

💡 For more on cult mind control practices such as phobia indoctrination, check out the work of Steven Hassan and Janja Lalich.

02/17/2026

First thing to understand… indoctrinated parents are often very emotionally immature because they’ve spent a lifetime outsourcing their emotional needs to “Father” god.

The outcome?

Stunted emotional development that can show up as rigid or controlling behavior, defensiveness, shame spirals, gaslighting, and/or spiritual bypassing.

Wondering if your parent is emotionally immature? Here are some common traits (not an exhaustive list):

▫️Difficulty regulating emotions
▫️Self-centered, meaning conversations often circle back to their own pain or experiences
▫️Difficulty empathizing with your feelings
▫️Overreactions to perceived slights
▫️Conflict with others either damaging or avoided rather than generative
▫️Withholds love as a form of punishment

📝 What follows are 9 suggestions for dealing with religiously indoctrinated parents and the rationale behind each one.

This list assumes you want to maintain the relationship on some level, even if it’s distant or low-contact.

🔸 1) Suggestion: Lead with the present, not the past.

Focus on what is happening now and what you need going forward.

Rationale: Deep indoctrination + emotional immaturity often makes accountability conversations about your upbringing intolerable for them. Bringing up the past can be true, but it will likely trigger defensiveness, shutdown, or spiritual bypassing.

🔸 2) Suggestion: Set boundaries without debating theology.

Theological debates often distract from the greater goal of cultivating safety.

Rationale: For many indoctrinated parents, religion is their stability system. Criticizing it can feel like you are attacking the only thing that helps them feel safe, so they respond like it’s an emergency.

🔸 3) Suggestion: Aim to be respected rather than understood.

Respect matters more than being understood.

Rationale: When someone is deeply indoctrinated, your autonomy may be viewed as danger, rebellion, or “deception.” When that’s their framework, more explaining usually creates more debate. Respect is a clearer, more realistic standard to hold.

🔸 4) Suggestion: Get validation from safe people, not from them.

Build a support system that can actually hold your reality.

Rationale: Emotionally immature parents are rarely able to validate pain they contributed to. When you think of them as emotionally childlike, it can help you to stop expecting them to do emotional work they are not really capable of.

🔸 5) Suggestion: Let them have feelings without fixing them.

Their discomfort is not a problem you are responsible for solving.

Rationale: Children of emotionally immature parents are often parentified, meaning you were placed in the role of meeting their emotional needs from a young age. Stepping out of this role allows you to focus on your needs instead of constantly ensuring their emotional “ok-ness.”

🔸 6) Suggestion: Use clear limits rather than ultimatums.

Say what you will do, not what they must do.

Rationale: Ultimatums can escalate emotionally immature dynamics into all-or-nothing thinking. Expectations often trigger childlike resistance, but limits help you stay grounded and in charge of your side of the interaction.

🔸 7) Suggestion: Avoid over-explaining by sticking to a script.

You do not owe a dissertation on your beliefs, your boundaries, or your reasons for leaving religion.

Rationale: In high-control religion dynamics, explanations often get treated like something to interrogate, “correct,” or debate. Short scripts can keep you out of courtroom energy and reduce openings for guilt and fear tactics.

🔸 8) Suggestion: Identify the tactic, then return to the limit.

Use your awareness of high-control tactics to identify what’s happening, instead of getting sucked in.

Rationale: Your parents may automatically default to using fear-based or high-control tactics with you. When you can identify these tactics, you are less likely to get sucked back into a harmful dynamic with them.

🔸 9) Suggestion: Get support while you renegotiate the relationship.

Mental health support can be critical when renegotiating roles.

Rationale: This process often brings up not only present-day stress but it also tends to activate childhood wounds and trigger deep grief. Support can help you stay regulated, identify your boundaries, and validate the parts of you that still wish they were different.
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If you were raised in a high-control religion, there’s a good chance you were raised by parents who were emotionally immature on some level.

By “emotionally immature,” I mean they never fully developed certain emotional skills.

In everyday life, that can look like big emotional reactions, low empathy when your feelings challenge their worldview, and an urge to regain control through guilt, fear, blame, or withdrawal.

If this is resonating with you, I recommend reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson.

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And a note for anyone who still relies on their parents because of money, childcare, disability support, or cultural expectations: it makes sense if some of these suggestions feel unrealistic right now.

Internal boundaries can still bring relief, and smaller limits or softer exits may be more workable while you figure out what is actually possible. Support from a trusted friend or a professional can also make a big difference while you navigate this.

💡 I’m curious, which of these ideas really landed for you?

02/12/2026

In this post, I’m going to cover 11 Tools of Religious Gaslighting but first I wanted to give you an overview of what it is and why it’s weaponized by high-control religions and religious cults.

Religious gaslighting is psychological manipulation disguised as spiritual guidance, designed to keep you compliant by making you doubt yourself.

Religious gaslighting supports the ecosystem of coercion and control in high-control religions in four main ways:

➡️ Reality distortion

Your perceptions get dismissed by authority figures, your memories get minimized or reinterpreted, and your lived experiences get relabeled to fit the doctrine. You start questioning what actually happened.

➡️ Emotional manipulation

Your psychological pain gets spiritualized as sin or weakness. You're pressured to forgive quickly so no one has to deal with the actual harm that was done.

➡️ Suppressing critical thinking

Questioning gets called rebellion. Doubt gets labeled as spiritual danger. Prayer and worship get used to shut down your thoughts before you can fully process them.

➡️ Social pressure

When you push back, you get isolated and labeled as deceived. You're told you have free will to leave, but the consequences feel so severe that choice becomes a trap rather than genuine freedom.

These tactics work together to make you doubt your reality, your feelings, and your ability to trust yourself.
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Here are 11 tools of religious gaslighting to watch for: ⚠️

🔸 1.) Authority-based invalidation

Religious leaders or texts are used to dismiss what you perceive, feel, or experienced as real.

Example: "You feel hurt by that teaching? Well, the Bible says to submit, so your feelings don't change what God commands."

🔸 2.) Spiritualizing emotional distress

Psychological pain gets labeled as sin, spiritual weakness, or lack of faith rather than recognized as a valid human response.

Example: "Depression isn't real. It's just a lack of faith. You need to pray more and trust God."

🔸 3.) Memory and reality minimization

Harmful events or teachings are downplayed, denied, or reinterpreted until you start questioning your own memory.

Example: "That sermon wasn't harsh. You're being too sensitive. Pastor was just speaking truth in love."

🔸 4.) Questioning redefined as rebellion

Compliance with leadership or doctrine becomes the definition of goodness, while questioning gets labeled as rebellion.

Example: "A good Christian doesn't question their leaders. That's pride and rebellion talking."

🔸 5.) Forgiveness used to bypass accountability

You're pressured to forgive quickly so that harm and systemic problems don't have to be addressed.

Example: "You need to forgive and move on. Holding onto this anger is keeping you from experiencing God's presence."

🔸 6.) Fear-based doubt suppression

Independent thinking or disagreement is labeled as spiritual danger, deception, or moral failure.

Example: "Those doubts aren't from God. That's Satan trying to deceive you and pull you away from the truth."

🔸 7.) Isolation and silencing dissenters

When you question or push back, you're labeled as rebellious, deceived, or spiritually dangerous, leading to social and emotional consequences that make you doubt whether your concerns were valid.

Example: "I'm worried about you. You're starting to sound like those angry ex-members who left because they couldn't handle the truth."

🔸 8.) Creating false choice

You're told you have free will to leave or question, but with warnings of severe spiritual consequences, making "choice" feel like a trap rather than genuine freedom.

Example: "Of course you can leave. No one's forcing you to stay. But we can't protect you from what happens when you step outside of God's covering."

🔸 9.) Redefining lived experience to fit doctrine

When your actual experience contradicts what you're taught, the teaching is upheld and your experience gets relabeled as misunderstanding, spiritual immaturity, or lack of faith.

Example: "You say you felt harmed by that teaching, but that's just your flesh resisting conviction. The Word doesn't change based on how it makes you feel."

🔸 10.) Thought-stopping through ritual

Using prayer, scripture repetition, or worship to interrupt and suppress doubt before you can fully process it, treating critical thinking as a spiritual threat.

Example: "When those doubts come, just start praising God and speak the Word over yourself until they go away."

🔸 11.) Spiritual superiority claims

Leaders position themselves as having special access to god's will or truth, making it impossible to trust your own discernment without being accused of rejecting god himself.

Example: "God has given me spiritual authority over this congregation. When you question my leadership, you're not questioning me. You're questioning God."
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💬 Of these 11 tools of religious gaslighting, how many did you experience?

09/30/2025

Growing up in fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity, I felt like my mom’s emotions and overall well-being were my responsibility.

If she was upset, I believed it was my job to figure out what the problem was and then fix it.

At the same time, I carried the immense weight of following every religious rule perfectly because I didn’t want her to have the burden of fearing for my eternal soul if I stepped out of line.

🔥 In fact, I hid my deconversion journey for many years because I didn’t want her to have emotional distress around whether I might be going to hell.

This double burden of emotional caretaking and religious perfection meant I rarely had space to even notice my own needs, let alone honor them.

My identity became wrapped up in managing others’ feelings and spiritual expectations rather than developing my own sense of self.

And it took years of healing to realize how much of myself I had been putting aside.

Looking back, I can see how this enmeshment wasn’t just about close family bonds but also about the blurred boundaries that made it impossible to separate my worth from my compliance.

📬 If this resonates with you, make sure you’re signed up for my weekly newsletter.

🗓️ This Friday, I’m going to be going more in-depth on this topic.

You can sign up via the link in my bio 🔗

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09/17/2025

I was raised mostly in non-denominational Evangelical churches, all of which were very fundamentalist in their teachings and practices.

And when I reflect on my childhood, I can clearly see how all 10 of these indoctrination tactics were used on me.

🎁 I’m sure it will come as no surprise that by the time I reached young adulthood, I was a “model Christian.”

In my case, being a model Christian meant perfectionism, shame, judgmental attitudes toward myself and others, and a strong fear of “worldly influences” were all deeply internalized.

The constant pressure to conform was exhausting, and it felt like I could never measure up to the impossible standards set for me.

I was so tightly wound with fear, guilt, and self-judgment that it affected nearly every part of my life.

🏃🏻‍♀️ For me, unwinding myself from the mentality that was instilled in me from an early age meant removing myself from the community that continually reinforced it.

Once I got outta there, I was able to start seeing things more clearly, and THAT’s when the real healing began.

For many people who grew up in high-control religions, the effects of childhood indoctrination can stick around long after they leave.

🙇🏻‍♀️ You might still find yourself battling perfectionism, guilt, fear of judgment, or the tendency to cut yourself off from anything or anyone that doesn’t align with your worldview.

I get it…

Healing from this kind of deep conditioning takes time, and it’s a process.

💬 Let me know in the comments which of these tactics mentioned in my post were part of your childhood indoctrination experience.

📬 And if content like this is helpful, make sure you’re signed up for my weekly newsletter (just follow the link in my bio).

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09/03/2025

Oftentimes, “true believers” are exceptional at answering people’s questions about their faith, doctrines, and belief structures.

In fact, I’ve attended many a sermon, Sunday School class, and Christian conference that actively trained members on how to respond to people’s questions.

But these questions were not to be engaged with in an open-minded, good faith kinda way.

Nope. The goal of engaging with questions was always to clear up any doubts or misgivings someone might be having, so you could draw them into “the fold.”

There’s a whole field dedicated to this called Christian apologetics, and some people (particularly religious leaders) are exceptionally skilled at it.

So while on the surface it might seem like a green flag to have a pastor or church member encourage your questions, take a closer look to see if their doctrines are rooted in what they’ll probably refer to as “truth” or “right thinking.”

If they claim to know “the truth,” then your questions are likely being covertly used against you as a subtle form of religious coercion.

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06/30/2025

High-control religions prescribe parenting practices that are know the create attachment injuries.

This is most often because of authoritarian parenting practices or emotional neglect.

Most people raised in a high control religion experience a combination of both of these.

If this resonates with you, I’m taking a much deeper dive into the topic of mother wounds in this week’s newsletter, and I’m planning to cover “Father Wounds” the following week.

👉🏻🔗 You can sign up by following the link in my bio!

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06/24/2025

Most of my clients are confronted with the challenging task of not only recovering from religious trauma, but healing from the attachment wounds that result from being raised by emotionally immature parents.

To understand more about emotionally immature parents, I recommend reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson, PsyD.

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