When Narcissism Comes To Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

Chuck DeGroat
Book
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Faith Community

This challenging book is an honest, serious assessment of the understudied phenomenon of narcissism among church laypeople, leaders and systems.


Have you ever been reduced to thinking, “What’s wrong with me?”, not knowing till later you had experienced a narcissist’s ugly bite? Or what about your own shadow side? When pushed, do you give those same bites? I (James) confess to both the receiving and giving end of narcissism’s spectrum. That’s why I found this book so helpful.


Chuck DeGroat is a licensed therapist and has counseled hundreds of people who have experienced (or inflicted) emotional and spiritual abuse. DeGroat outlines nine faces of narcissism, and asserts that narcissists hold inside of them a boatload of “shame, rage, self-doubt, inner chaos, and intense fear.” Because they cannot show their real self to the world, they have fashioned a false self which they need to maintain, even if it kills them.

Beyond corrective measures for narcissistic tendencies, this clear-eyed examination highlights the warning signs of emotional and spiritual abuse driving people out the back doors of churches. With tenderness and wisdom, it offers a profound hope of escaping narcissism without cheapening the pain that it causes. Individuals addressing their pathological ways of relating and churches confronting the violence in their midst are offered a slow and winding road back to true humanity and courageous reconnection to brave relationships full of grace and truth.  

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