Word of the Week: Gaslighting

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where an abuser causes their victim to question their own memory, perception, reality, and sometimes even their sanity. The term comes from a 1944 film called Gaslight, in which a husband secretly dims the gas lights in their home and then convinces his wife she's imagining it, along with every other sign of his abuse, until she begins to doubt her own mind.

In practice, gaslighting is what happens when someone systematically denies, distorts, or reframes your experience of reality until you stop trusting yourself and start trusting them instead. To put it simply, it’s when someone lies to you so much about things you’ve seen and experienced yourself that you believe their lies instead of your own eyes. 

It’s not a lie in the conventional sense, but a sustained, deliberate campaign to make you doubt the evidence of your own eyes, ears, and instincts, and to make you dependent on the abuser's version of reality as a substitute for your own. This isn’t just manipulative, but deeply sinister and abusive, and it makes you reliant on your abuser for something you must be able to discern for yourself: reality. 

How Gaslighting Works in Churches 

Gaslighting in the church is particularly insidious because it often comes from pastors and ministry leaders who claim spiritual authority and wrap it in biblical language, which makes it feel like correction and loving guidance, rather than abuse, manipulation, and deception. 

When an abusive church leader is confronted or called out for abusive, inappropriate, disqualifying, or otherwise unacceptable behavior, gaslighting is a surprisingly common tactic used to avoid accountability while also abusing those trying to hold them accountable. 

Church or ministry leaders who gaslight will respond to allegations or straight-up statements of facts by saying things like: 

"That's not what happened. You're remembering it wrong."

"You're being too sensitive. That's not what he meant."

"I think you're under spiritual attack. Your perception is off right now."

“You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgment. You’re not thinking logically.” 

"Nobody else agrees with you. Have you considered that the problem might be you?"

Notice what every one of these responses does: it takes your legitimate perception of a real event that you saw or experienced yourself and reframes it as a problem with you. Your memory, your emotional maturity, your spiritual condition, your discernment, or your ability as a human being to see what’s right in front of you accurately. Over time, a person subjected to this consistently will stop bringing their perceptions forward at all. Not because their perceptions were wrong, but because the cost of having them dismissed, spiritualized, and turned back on them has become too high, or they’ve stopped trusting themselves. 

This is exactly what wolves in sheep’s clothing count on, and it’s why they gaslight. Not only to protect themselves from the truth, but to protect themselves from your ability to recognize the truth, even when it’s standing right in front of you. 

Why Gaslighting is so Effective in Churches

Outside the church, gaslighting can be challenged by other voices, like friends, family members, therapists, police officers, doctors, and other witnesses who will reflect reality to the victim and help them trust their own experience again. There’s a wealth of resources available to victims who aren’t trapped inside an isolated group or relationship, but inside a high-control church or relationship, those outside voices have often been systematically discredited or cut off entirely. The congregation is the only community the victim has in a high-control church, and sometimes even they’re off limits to victims of abuse. 

In an abusive and cultic church, the pastor and their small inner circle of leaders are the authority on and source of truth, and the entire ecclesiastical framework has been constructed to make questioning leadership feel like questioning God. Or at least, a holy and godly “shepherd” of God. 

In that environment, gaslighting doesn't just distort one experience. It dismantles a person's entire capacity for independent discernment and thinking, which is precisely the goal: complete dependence on the church and its leaders. 

The Tell: “You didn’t see anything.”

Healthy churches, led by healthy leaders, can receive your testimony of an event, even when it differs from theirs, without making you or your perception the problem. If a genuine account is answered with them claiming, in one way or another, that “you didn’t really see that,” then you know you’re being gaslit. 

A leader who consistently responds to your concerns by redirecting attention to your spiritual condition, your emotional state, your mental health, or your memory, rather than engaging honestly with what you're actually addressing, is not shepherding you.

They’re lying to you, and in a particularly sinister and abusive way. 

Have you experienced gaslighting in a church context? Drop a comment below and describe what happened, how they gaslit you, and when you realized you weren’t crazy. You don't have to name the church, but your experiences and insights can help protect others from this insidious form of abuse. 

Check your church, people 🧐. And let me know how it goes.