Fertile Ground For Toxic Faith:

FOUNDATIONS OF
TOXIC FAITH

· Abusive parent, often the father. Abuse is physical, emotional or sexual.

· Child deprived of nurturing. Neither parent meets the basic emotional needs of the child.

· Feelings of alienation. Child feels detached from the family and what is perceived as a perfect world for others.

· Attitudes of perfectionism from imperfect parents. Demanding parents inflict the child with an irrational desire to be perfect and make no mistakes.

· High expectations. The parents are relenfless in demanding the child be what they were not and attain what they did not.

· Low affirmation. Although the child exerts tremendous effort, the parents are never satisfied and rarely provide positive feedback to the child. Irents' addiction problems. Frequenfly, one or both parents will be alcoholics or sex addicts, or they will exhibit some other obvious compulsive behavior. Absent father. A child of divorce may have little male influence.

· Feelings of being dirty. Abuse and negative attention leave a child feeling guilty and dirty.

· Poor peer relationships. Afraid to share personal reality with others, the child feels cut off emotionally from friends and often seeks destructive relationships. Vivid fantasy world. Reality becomes so difficult that the child creates a fantasy world and retreats to it frequently.

· Feelings not shared. The home has provided little freedom to express emotions, and the child never learns how this is done or why it is helpful.