The religion co-opts anything you might consider spiritual, taking your private experience and making it proof of the entire religion. Thus it becomes difficult for the born again Christian with personal mystical experience to leave the faith, because this would seem to be a denial of firsthand evidence. The former believer has been brainwashed to accept everything as a package deal; thus trying to salvage and honor this part of religious experience creates enormous guilt. This manipulation can legitimately be called spiritual abuse.
spiritual abuse: a form of emotional and psychological abuse characterized by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behavior in a religious context
