What is the weapon Christian abusers most commonly use?

In this sixth installment of the Emotional Abuse 101 series, Natalie Hoffman talks about a subtle weapon many Christian men wield in emotionally abusive relationships: criticism. But not the obvious, name-calling type. This is the more insidious, underhanded kind that’s drenched in misogyny and spiritual distortion.

If you've ever wondered why your husband criticizes you, even while appearing like a “good Christian man,” this episode will show you the truth behind the curtain. And it will help you take your power back.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Criticism is not always loud: Subtle criticism such as eye rolls, dismissive sighs, mansplaining, and “just joking” jabs can be more damaging than overt name-calling.
• This weapon is cultural and spiritual: Christian men are often raised to believe that anything “feminine” is weak, emotional, and inferior. This deep-rooted belief forms the foundation of their contempt.
• The misogyny is systemic: From Sunday school to locker rooms, boys are programmed to equate masculinity with power and femininity with weakness.
• The wife becomes the target: Once married, that learned disdain manifests as chronic correction, condescension, and disregard.
• You are not responsible for fixing him: Understanding the root of his behavior doesn’t mean justifying it. You have a right to healing, boundaries, and truth.

📒 Take a free Emotional Abuse Assessment by going to emotionalabusequiz.com

I will also send you my weekly Freedom Notes Newsletter for Christian women in emotionally and spiritually abusive marriages.

📌 Relevant Links and Resources:

🎙️ Check out the rest of the Emotional Abuse 101 series: http://bit.ly/49VU1qr

💡 Join the Flying Free Kaleidoscope community — Get the education and support you need to reclaim your identity and heal.

Emotional abuse in a Christian marriage doesn't just damage your mental health. It corrodes your spiritual foundation until you can't tell the difference between God's voice and your abuser's voice anymore.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Emotional abuse doesn’t just affect your mind and body. It wounds your soul.
  Natalie draws a powerful connection between emotional abuse and spiritual damage, especially for Christian women who’ve been taught not to trust themselves.
• When you’re conditioned to distrust your own inner knowing, spiritual confusion sets in. This leads to internal conflict, spiritual isolation, and the inability to differentiate between God's voice and the voice of your abuser.
• The church’s role often compounds the harm. Religious teachings that equate self-trust with rebellion against God cause many women to stay in abusive situations out of fear of divine punishment.
• You were never meant to worship at the altar of someone else’s control. God doesn’t ask you to sacrifice your voice, sanity, or safety. He offers freedom, not bondage.

📚 Natalie Reads from Her Memoir: All the Scary Little Gods

Timestamp 2:00–20:30
Natalie reads Chapter 58: “Bible Counseling”, which recounts two devastating encounters with so-called “biblical counselors.” These counselors weaponized scripture to enforce submission and silence rather than support.

Through deeply personal storytelling, she illustrates how spiritual guidance can become a vehicle for psychological and spiritual gaslighting.

🎁 I want to give you a free gift. It’s the audio version of my book, All the Scary Little Gods. It’s a spiritual memoir about healing from religious trauma and toxic programming. You can listen to it FREE by going to scarylittlegods.com

🎙️ Check out the rest of the Emotional Abuse 101 series: http://bit.ly/49VU1qr

🔗 Other Links and Resources Mentioned

• 🧭 Free Resources & Support — Visit flyingfreenow.com
• 📕 Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage — Order on Amazon https://amzn.to/4o5FCM8
• 💌 Join the Flying Free Kaleidoscope — Visit joinflyingfree.com
  
  

What happens when you're the only one trying in your marriage? When your partner seems indifferent, and you're the one praying, planning, reading, learning, bending, sacrificing only to be met with silence or worse, resistance?

In this episode, Natalie peels back the layers of emotional and spiritual exhaustion that come from being the only emotionally invested person in a relationship. With grace, clarity, and a no-nonsense look at reality, she answers a powerful listener question: “If I’m the only one caring, what’s the point of staying?”

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• One-sided effort isn’t love. If only one person is carrying the weight of emotional and relational labor, it’s not a partnership, it's a survival pattern.
• Control often disguises itself as passivity. Abusers don’t need to yell or hit to maintain power; many use silence, neglect, and apathy to keep you chasing connection.
• Spiritual bypassing keeps women trapped. Many Christian women are taught that leaving a cold or neglectful husband is rebellion against God. But that’s not what the Bible says, and it’s not what Jesus models.
• You can stop asking for crumbs. It’s okay to stop showing up for someone who consistently chooses not to show up for you.
• God isn’t asking you to abandon yourself. He's not honored by marriages that demand your silence, your sanity, or your soul. He's inviting you to freedom, not bondage.

🎙️ Check out the rest of the Emotional Abuse 101 series: http://bit.ly/49VU1qr

Get a free chapter of Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage: A Christian Woman’s Guide to Hidden Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by going to isitmebook.com

Episode quotes:

“If you’re the only one working on the relationship, you’re not in a relationship. You’re in a slow death sentence, and it’s okay to want to live.”

“Control isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a stone wall you beat your heart against, hoping it’ll soften.”

“You don’t need your partner to validate your pain for it to be real. It already is.”

“God doesn’t ask you to sacrifice your soul to prove your commitment.”

In this episode, I walk you through five crucial differences between a healthy Christian marriage and an emotionally abusive one.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Healthy marriages = clarity, respect, and growth
• Abusive marriages = confusion, control, and punishment
• If you're constantly walking on eggshells, it's not normal.
• God never asked you to sacrifice your soul on the altar of someone else's entitlement.

Read the full show notes and/or ask Natalie a question here

Related Resources:

• Check out the first two parts of this eight-part series: “The 10 Most Subtle Signs of Emotional Abuse in a Christian Marriage” and “The Art of Saying No: Setting Boundaries When You've Been Trained to Say Yes.”

In this end-of-the-year BONUS episode, I want to share one of my recent PRIVATE podcast episodes exclusively for members of the Flying Free Kaleidoscope only.

I also made an 8-minute video tour of the Flying Free Kaleidoscope on my phone. It will show you what the INSIDE of the Kaleidoscope looks like here at the end of 2025 and going into 2026. You can watch that on YouTube HERE.

The price is going up on January 1, 2026, and I'd love to see you get in on the lower price if you can. Prices never go up for current members, so lock yourself in on the price we've had for five years while you've got the chance because it will never be this low again.

(Currently $29/month or $290 for an entire year - but going up to $39/mo or $390/year starting January 1.)

Learn more and complete your application HERE.

Have you ever been told that saying "no" makes you selfish? That good Christian women never rock the boat, always serve with a smile, and definitely do not have thoughts of their own?

This episode is Part 2 of our Emotional Abuse 101 series, and today we’re diving into the art of saying no.

If the idea of saying no makes your stomach flip or sends you into a guilt spiral, this episode is your lifeline. I’ll walk you through WHY it’s so hard to say no and HOW to start saying it anyway with confidence and without apology.

Key Takeaways:

• Saying no without guilt is an adult skill, not a rebellious sin.
• People-pleasing is often a trauma response. Your nervous system isn’t broken. It’s just been doing its job a little too well.
• You don’t need permission to have boundaries. You’re not waiting for anyone’s approval.
• Boundaries ≠ controlling others. Boundaries = choosing how YOU respond when others misbehave.
• There’s neuroscience behind this. Your brain can be rewired to feel safe even when saying no.

Read the full show notes and/or ask Natalie a question here

Get a FREE chapter of Is It ME? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage, along with the companion workbook for that chapter, by going to flyingfreenow.com. I'll also send you the Freedom Letters. (Also free. 😉 )

Related Resources:

• Check out Part One of this eight part series: “The 10 Subtle Signs of Emotional Abuse in a Christian Marriage.”

Welcome to part one of a brand-new series I’m calling “Emotional Abuse 101: Everything You Need to Know,” because, let’s face it, the church didn’t exactly hand out “How to Spot a Narcissist in Your Youth Group” pamphlets in Sunday school.

In this episode, I’m diving into the 10 most subtle signs of emotional abuse, the kind of signs that don’t leave bruises on your body but do leave bruises on your soul. These are the red flags that fly under the radar, the ones that make you ask “Am I too sensitive?” or “Maybe I am the problem?”

Here are some things we’ll cover in this episode:

• The Silent Treatment Special — Why emotional withholding isn't just immature behavior, and the real reason he's using it against you
• Mr. Jekyll and Pastor Hyde — What happens when everyone else thinks he's amazing, but you're living with someone completely different at home
• Strategic Emotional Sabotage — The shocking pattern behind why your birthdays, holidays, and girls' nights keep getting ruined
• Weaponized Vulnerability — How opening your heart becomes ammunition in his hands, and why you're not crazy for feeling betrayed
• Dream Crusher Lite™ — The subtle way he makes pursuing your goals absolutely miserable without ever saying "no" outright
• Plausible Deniability — Why you're always "too sensitive" or "making assumptions," and how this phrase is actually a manipulation tactic

Read the full show notes and/or ask Natalie a question here

Take a FREE emotional abuse quiz by going to emotionalabusequiz.com. Find out if what you're experiencing is normal Christian marriage stuff...or abuse.

Related Resources:

• Was this episode helpful? You may find these two Flying Free episodes equally worthwhile: “Does an Abuser Know They Are Abusive?” and “Nine Tricks Emotional Abuser Use to Pull Us Back Into the Cycle (and six clever ways to respond!)”

In this episode, I get down and dirty with a topic that triggers all the rule-followers and religious gatekeepers: salvation. Not the flannelgraph-Jesus kind where you prayed the “magic words” at age seven and then spent the next 30 years terrified you did it wrong. Nope. I’m talking about real, liberating, soul-exploding salvation.

This one’s especially for you if you’ve ever stayed in an abusive marriage because you thought God would be mad if you left. If you’re exhausted from trying to please “godly” authority figures who think they are mini Popes. If you’ve prayed the salvation prayer 73 times just to be sure it “took.”

Key Takeaways:

• Belief isn’t a checklist. It’s not about doing the right things, following the right leaders, or avoiding the wrong music. It’s about trusting that Christ already did it all.
• The gift of salvation is already yours. Yes, even if you cuss, leave your abuser, or buy non-organic lettuce.
• Many Christians are still hoping for a salvation that is already theirs. Why? Because we’ve been taught to fear God more than we trust Him.
• The verse “God hates divorce” has been weaponized. (Psst…it doesn’t say what you think it does, anyway. Listen to find out what the Bible actually says in Malachi.)
• You can experience the joy of salvation the moment you believe it’s real. Like full-body joy. (Really!)

Read the full show notes and/or ask Natalie a question here

Listen to my book, All the Scary Little Gods, FREE by going to scarylittlegods.com.

Related Resources:

• If this episode was helpful for you, you’ll love these two episodes, too: “Two Hotel Rooms: One Rescue Mission” and “Praying for a Miracle — When the Miracle Might Be You Walking Away.”