This Survivor Retreat Felt More Like Church Than Church

When a survivor retreat feels more like church than church itself, it's time to ask why.

What happens when abuse survivors experience more safety, compassion, and authentic Christian community at a retreat than they do in their own churches?

In this episode of Hey Tabi, licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook shares powerful reflections from women who have survived coercive control, domestic abuse, and spiritual abuse. Through their own words, these survivors reveal what genuine healing community looks like—and why so many faith communities still struggle to provide it.

You'll hear why being believed matters, how listening can be more powerful than fixing, and what pastors, church leaders, and Christian communities can learn from the resilience and wisdom of survivors. This conversation explores trauma healing, church culture, spiritual abuse recovery, emotional safety, and the role of compassionate presence in ministry.

Whether you're a survivor, pastor, ministry leader, advocate, counselor, or someone who wants to better understand the impact of coercive control, this episode offers important insight into creating safer, healthier faith communities.

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Transcript

When Retreat Feels Like Church

SPEAKER_00 0:40

If a retreat for abuse survivors feels more like church than the church does, I think we need to talk about that. Welcome to Hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off-limits here, and we are not take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook, and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now, let's get going. Hey friends, welcome back to this week's episode of Hey Tabby. What if I told you that some of the most faithful women that I have ever met don't actually feel safe in their churches? And it's not because they've abandoned their faith. It's not because they're rebellious, and it's not because they hate their pastors or their leadership, but it's because they have survived coercive control and abuse. At a recent women's retreat, I asked a group of ladies who attended that retreat for survivors two questions. One, what makes this retreat so special? And two, if a pastor could be a fly on the wall, what would you guys want him or her to learn? And I did expect some really thoughtful answers, of course, because they're amazing ladies. What I got made me want to cry. Again and again, these women described something that many of us take for granted: being believed, being safe, and being able to tell the truth without defending themselves. One woman wrote, this is one of the safest places on earth. Another one wrote, this is the closest experience to real church and Christian community I've ever had. That statement honestly should stop us in our tracks. Because if a retreat for abuse survivors feels more like church than church actually does, then we absolutely need to talk about it. Today I'm gonna let survivors do most of the talking. I've protected the identities, but I've kept their words as close to the originals as possible. My challenge to you today is simple. I want you to just listen. Don't prepare a rebuttal, don't prepare a defense. Just really listen and hear what's being said. What many of these women have to say may very well change how you see survivors, how you see ministry, and maybe even how you see church itself. Let's talk about the power of being safe. One woman said, My first time at the retreat, I remember feeling so safe and free to tell my story, and no one judged me or questioned whether it was true. I only received love and care. Can we just sit with that for a moment? Nobody questioned whether it was true. Think about what has to happen in someone's life for that to feel remarkable. Many survivors spend years trying to convince other people that their reality is, in fact, actually real. They explain, they defend, they soften, they add caveats. They

The Power Of Being Believed

SPEAKER_00 3:57

tell only part of the story because they're afraid the whole story will be too much. Another woman described the retreat as an oasis of friendship and fellowship amidst the desert of loneliness. That phrase gets me every single time I read it. The desert of loneliness. One of the most devastating parts of abuse and coercive control isn't simply the abuse itself. It's the isolation. It's being surrounded by people and still feeling completely alone. It's carrying a story that nobody wants to hear. It's wondering if anyone's even going to understand. When survivors finally enter a space where they don't have to defend themselves, something shifts in their nervous system. Their body starts to literally exhale. Their shoulders come down, their hypervigilance softens. And it's not because problems are fixed or some miraculous thing has happened, but it's because they're just simply safe enough to exist. Let's talk about what healing community looks like in these places. One participant described the retreat this way: there's weeping with those who are weeping, rejoicing with those who are rejoicing, sharing burdens with those who feel crushed by oppression, and lifting the arms of those who are weary. That should sound really familiar to you because that honestly comes straight from scripture. This isn't complicated theology. It's not a church growth strategy, it's not branding, it's not pithy little sentences. It's just people literally carrying one another. Another woman wrote: Some are

What Healing Community Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 5:40

radiant with joy, some are barely holding their heads up. Some are weary, some are excited, some are unsure what to anticipate, yet all are welcomed. And that's really what healthy community does. Healthy community doesn't require people to arrive healed before they even step in the door, and they don't have to be healed to belong. Healthy community doesn't require some polished testimony. It doesn't ask for someone to perform or to be faking strength. It makes room for the entire person. The laughing parts, the grieving parts, the angry parts, the hopeful parts, and the parts still trying to figure out whether like hoping is even safe or not. I think this is really powerful. This is what survivors wish pastors could see. I think if I could summarize the responses in one sentence, it would be this please just see us. One woman wrote, I wish pastors could see how women who have been torn down emotionally, called worthless, and overlooked show up for each other. Another one wrote, I wish they could see the beauty, the strength, the resilience, and the faith of these godly women. Another one said, We are not a bunch of rebels or Jezebels or insubordinate women.

Please Just See Us

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Man, that's powerful. There is a lot packed into that one statement. So many survivors have been stereotyped. They've been mischaracterized, treated as difficult, treated as divisive because they dared to tell the truth about their experience. Some have even been excommunicated from their bodies of faith. But what these women wanted pastors to see wasn't their pain, though, it was their faith, their endurance, their courage, their love for Jesus, despite absolutely everything. Frankly, I think many church leaders would be stunned by the spiritual maturity that is sitting in rooms like these. You know, I wish that there could be more pastors as a fly on the wall. You know, I've long said that if pastors sat with women in these spaces, they would come out differently. Another common theme was listening without fixing. One response was super simple, but so deeply profound. Pastors could learn how to truly listen without the intent to fix everything. You know, as a therapist, I can tell you that healing rarely begins with being fixed. Healing honestly begins with being heard. Sometimes the absolute greatest gift you can give another human being is your presence. In our practice, we call it the ministry of presence. It's not giving a solution or an explanation or even a theological framework. It's just your presence, just being with the withness. Many survivors have sat through conversations where

Listen Without Trying To Fix

SPEAKER_00 8:39

people immediately started offering advice before they even understood the problem. And when we are doing, you know, marriage work, we often say, don't start just trying to fix it. You have to hear first. And I think that pastors oftentimes fall into that accidentally. I don't think it's necessarily a desire to harm or anything like that. It's just this is the way that we are kind of habituated. And so it's what we lean into, but it's not helpful because when we try to fix something or even offer advice before we actually understand the thing, we're almost certainly going to be off. We're going to be off the mark. We are not going to get it correct when we're talking with someone. And even though experts often come to retreats and speak, they're not describing a retreat full of experts fixing them. They actually describe a retreat full of people who listened. And when you are listened to honestly, it changes everything. I might go to retreats and be a speaker. I may serve in various different ways, but what I am not trying to do is fix the attendees. I'll be honest with you. My main goal when I go, besides to share the information that I feel like God has laid on my heart or the message that the Lord has given me to teach, it's honestly to sit with the women and their stories. And for those who need this or are willing to hug them, to just hold them in my arms. I often call what I do holding stories and holding tears. And that is profound. I can't change their problems. I cannot make someone who is destructive not be destructive. I can pray for that person. But the only person who's going to be able to heal that is God. And I'm not Him. So I can't fix that. I can't fix broken court systems that are going to do destructive things. I can't do any of those things. But I can sit and I can listen and I can be present and I can hear and I can take in information before I give any information out. And I think that that is a place that I would really long myself or pastors to lean into with survivors. And it can feel, in some ways, a little bit futile if you feel like you have to fix it. So I would invite you, just check your heart. You know, whether you are a pastor or a friend of someone who is in a destructive relationship or has gotten out of a destructive relationship, the propensity there sometimes is to not know what to do with our own grief, if I'm being real. And so, how do we sit with someone in a dark and hard place? And that is an area that, as the body of Christ, I think that we can grow into a bit more. There's a scripture that says we rejoice with those who rejoice and we're really, really good at that part. And we weep with those who weep and we're really not good at that part at all. And I think that's something that I would encourage pastors to get some discipleship in, to disciple others in if you're good at it, so that we can sit with survivors who need that and any griever, honestly, anyone who is going through something really difficult, right? Like this can apply to all areas of ministry, not just survivors of coercive control. I would encourage you to lean into those spaces of just learning to listen before trying to help or fix. Obviously, we want churches to have excellent resources and excellent tools, but that's not honestly your first line sometimes. It's really just being with. You don't know what tools to give until you really know what's going on. So what do these survivors long for in a church? Several of the women described the retreat as the closest thing to church they had ever experienced. I want to sit with that for just a moment. The closest thing to church that they had ever experienced. This isn't the closest thing to counseling. It's not the closest thing to a support group. It's not the closest thing to anything, but it's the closest thing to church. And I think about just my own experiences at some retreats that I've been an attendee

The Closest Thing To Church

SPEAKER_00 12:52

at. One in particular comes to mind where there was a corporate lament. And I just remember thinking to myself in that space as I watched people who had been so deeply harmed, just really getting ministered to, crying out to the Lord in those spaces and thinking, if we did more of this in the corporate body of church on Sunday mornings, how much different would our churches look in general? How much more would the gospel be preached and proclaimed and shared if that was what we were seeing more regularly? And that gives me pause. I'll be honest, being in Survivor Spaces myself has utterly changed how I do church, how I view communion, how I view so many things that for my whole life were honestly, if I'm being real, were, you know, the things that I did, I didn't connect them with the gravity and somberness, you know, the solemn nature of what they are, right? Like, and just that tender space and thinking about so many of these people that have been excommunicated from their bodies of faith and knowing like with what precious hands they hold things like communion and prayer and worship that, you know, maybe some of us have taken for granted. And I think that is such a profound thing. And for me, that's one of the things I want pastors and leaders to see is the reverence with which survivors very often worship God. And I think, you know, so many times, so many, like I said earlier in the podcast, are like, oh, they've just abandoned their faith. And it's like, no, no, it's actually deepened quite a lot. And while some do, in fact, walk away from the faith, I would say the majority of them end up with this faith that is light years more mature than honestly some people I see teaching in the pulpit. And man, we should pay attention to that. We should pay attention to that. One woman wrote in her response to me, I long for my local faith community to replicate this. Another said, This was the closest experience to real church and Christian community ever. Wow. That should really create some holy discomfort for us if we're church leaders, because the retreat isn't really built around performance, right? It's not built around like this is what we do every Sunday. It's built around presence, it's built around care, it's built around support, it's not built around image management. It's truly built around honesty because people are seen and not just like, hey, yes, I see you. There you are. Hi, how are you? But they're really seen, like their character, their personhood, their struggles, their rejoicing. All of it is truly, truly seen. People were believed and welcomed. You know, we all have belonging built in, a need for belonging built into us. Kurt Thompson says it this way we come into the world looking for someone, looking for us. And I have to say, I don't think that ever changes, honestly. I think that we all need these places of belonging. And when a church, who is supposed to be our family, right? I've heard over and over, families are formed at the cross. It is supposed to be a community. Now, it doesn't mean they're going to be perfect or not sometimes have difficult moments, but it's supposed to be a real connected community. And in the retreat spaces, like that's what we see. And honestly, what I see looks a lot like the kingdom of God. It looks a lot like the way that it is described in scripture. I think another important theme here that I saw come up in the comments over and over again is that survivors are not who many people think that they are. Survivors really wanted leaders to understand who they really are. One woman wrote, do not underestimate survivors. They underestimate our knowledge, our effort, and our love. And that is so true. You have no idea until you listen to stories how much these women have tried to love well, serve well, be the wife that they feel like God has called them to be. They are not apostate. Honestly, these women long for relationships and marriages that are good. And they throw so much into that, like honestly, over and over and over again. And oftentimes that doesn't get recognized enough. Another one said, What I hope pastors we see is what a beautiful, strong, and sincere bunch of women we are. Amen to that. The women at every retreat I've ever been to are not weak. They really are not. They have seen some things, have been through horrific things that most of us cannot even imagine. They are not weak. They're extraordinarily strong. Many of them have endured years, years and years, decades of course of control, manipulation, spiritual abuse, and profound loss. And yet they continue to show up. They continue to love, they continue to believe God, they continue to fight for truth. None of those things would be weakness. Every last one of them could be defined as courage, incredible courage, probably more courage than some have that are listening to this, which is wild, right? Like, why would you not want to know more about that, right? One woman's story particularly moved me. She shared that she grew up in a very restrictive environment and never felt safe expressing herself in worship. Over time, she began to explore forms of worship that felt really meaningful to her, but she still did not feel safe doing them publicly. Then she came to the retreat. And that was a space where she was able to be more open. Initially, she brought some worship flags for somebody else, not even for herself, right? She brought them so someone else could use them. But during worship, she experienced profound care, connection, and acceptance. In her story to me, she described receiving a hug from another woman who had felt prompted by God to reach out for her. And then she wrote, Something broke free within me. I could stand up again, I could breathe deeply, and I could smile. What? I love that so much. Her healing wasn't manufactured, it wasn't some amazing counseling intervention, although counseling interventions are great. But honestly, healing happened in that moment because she felt safe. Safety is often the soil where healing can grow. And I'll tell you my own story of something similar. Years and years ago, I was very restricted in my worship. I felt like I had such a hard time worshiping God. I had grown up in some very unsafe places. And I had, for whatever reason, learned some American Sign Language. And in this church I was at, I wanted to be able to talk with the pastor's wife who was deaf. And so I set about to learn American Sign Language. And one of the best ways to do that is to sit with the deaf community during worship and follow along and try to learn, right? And I ended up learning how to sign worship songs, what they meant, and what it actually did in that moment in that safe place for me was to set my body free. And so where I had a hard time worshiping and a hard time connecting with God in those spaces, it really gave me an open body for real, using my physical self to be able to connect up with God. And I see that in the story of the worship flags, right? Having that safe place to engage your whole self and worship of God is so powerful.

Safety That Unlocks Worship

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Now, look, I know not everybody is going to be waving worship flags or learning American sign language or any of those things, but there is something there for each person because God is so faithful to meet us where we are when we have a safe place, right? We can feel his presence and lean in and try something new when we have a safe place to do it. So, what can the church learn from all of this? I think that there is so much here that churches can learn from women. First, and this should go without saying, but believe them, right? It is so hard for someone to come to a leader and say, this is what's happening in my home and I'm really scared, or you know, there are bad things or whatever. And so start from a posture of belief. And like we can talk about what if a story is not true and all of those things at some other time. But I will tell you very rarely is someone going to go to their pastor and say something is wrong if something's not wrong. So I'll just encourage you, start from a posture of belief. Second, listen longer. Before you start talking, listen more. One of the things that we teach in advocacy class is the acronym WAIT, W A I T. And that stands for why am I talking? Right. Especially at the beginning of a relationship, we should be listening more than we're talking. Or as the old adage goes, God gave you two ears and one mouth. That should tell you something, right? And we want to learn how to listen well before we give feedback, advice, or anything else. Third, we want to stop assuming that survivors are the problem. They're talking about a problem. They are not the problem. I think that's a very, very important distinction. Fourth, we need to Also recognize that survivors often carry tremendous wisdom. One woman wrote that she wished pastors could see the prophetic wisdom available amongst these women, calling to light what has been hidden in the dark. Oh my word. That is some powerful words right there. Some powerful prophetic words about being prophetic, right? And prophecy, man, it's just speaking the truth out loud, right? Like that's really what it is. And so when we look and see the wisdom that God has birthed in survivors, like there is goodness there for the church. It's like really good stuff. Like, man, survivors know what darkness looks like. They have lived it. They also know what courage looks like, and they also know what doing it scared looks like. And it's really, really important that we understand that many have spent so many years learning to distinguish truth from manipulation. Like that's wisdom

What Churches Can Learn Now

SPEAKER_00 25:07

worth listening to. I often think about the statement that judgment begins in the household of God. And we would do well to remember that all the time. As I read through all the responses, I noticed something. None of these women were asking for perfection. They are not asking for anything undue. They're not asking for celebrity treatment or any of that stuff. They're not asking for a church to revolve around them. They're asking for compassion. They're asking for curiosity. They're asking for safety and for dignity. They're asking for the chance to tell the truth and be believed. These are not radical requests. In fact, they're pretty much in line with the gospel, right? So to everybody that is a survivor that's listening today, I want you to know that I see your courage and I see your resilience. I see all of these ways that you continue to show up despite things that would have crushed so many people. Like to tell survivors often, you have survived every bad day that you've ever had so far. That is incredible strength, incredible resiliency. Yes, we wish you didn't have to survive so many of these days. Let's be real. But we're so grateful that you have. And I hope you're grateful that you have. Now, to every pastor, elder, ministry leader, or just church member that is listening, I want to say this. What if we became the kind of people who made survivors feel the way that they feel at a retreat? And honestly, that would extend to everybody in the body, right? If we could make everyone feel the way these women feel at these retreats, the entire body of Christ would be so much better off for it. What if people walked into our churches and thought something like, oh, I don't have to defend myself here. I don't have to prove my story here. I can, in fact, tell the truth here, like all of the truth, the whole truth. And I'll be loved here. To me, that sounds so much like the kingdom of God. They will know who we are because of our love for one another. I want to say thank you for hanging out with me today on Hey Tabby. If you love conversations like this, I hope that you will come back. And I also hope that you will check out our transformational topics community. The transformational topics community is a deep dive into amazing things. We want to help you have all of the resources that you need. It can be so hard in this life. It can be so stinking hard to find time and access. And yet you want to grow, you want to learn, and you just don't have a ton of time to do it. Well, the transformational topics community starts with a private podcast every month where you can get it right to every podcast player that you love, your favorite one, whichever one that is. And you can listen to it in the carbo line, walking on the beach, wherever you happen to be. And then each subsequent week, you get a tool in your email that takes you into that deeper space. One more layer down in the topic of the month so that you can grow and learn at your own pace, but without having to log into 75 things or be tied to your computer or whatever. If you want to learn more about that, the link will be in the description and the show notes. And we hope that you will check it out. If you like this, if you think it's helpful, please send it to a friend. Also be sure to like and subscribe. And if you're willing, please rate it on your favorite podcast player. It really helps people find it, and we definitely want to get good information out there. For all the survivors listening to this, please be sure to take care of you. As I often say in advocacy class, you are the only you that you have. Thanks for being with me, and we'll see you next time on Hey Tabby. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of Hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrook.com forward slash hey tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-C-I, and you can grab it there. Look forward to seeing you next time.