In my view, narcissistic abuse means essentially that you are living in somebody else's world, prevented from being or developing yourself. Your own ability to think is crippled and your emotions twisted and repressed. This can happen when a megalomaniac has significant power over you. A parent certainly has significant power, but so can a religious leader or team of them with whom you have daily contact, particularly if you surrender your free will to those people as baalei teshuvah sometimes do. It’s that much worse if all this happens in a controlled and isolated environment. When religion is imposed on you forcefully, playing on your sense of guilt and fear, tremendous damage can occur to the psyche. You are trying to reconfigure your entire life to match a demanding religion to which you have opened the doors to your soul. However, when that religion is portrayed to you in a distorted way, a way that robs you of your individuality, autonomy and perhaps even your basic humanity, then you can become a kind of cripple. You are no longer you, and you can’t even make basic decisions about your own life. Your judgement has been undermined and your instincts shut out of the room of your life.