Mind Games
You're not crazy. It just feels like it.
Your pastor asks you to do something—and you do it. Later, he reneges and says he never asked that of you. You're confused. If you push back, you look defensive. If you don't, you look like you're agreeing you were wrong. Maybe you did misunderstand him. Either way, you lose—and you start to wonder if you remembered it right at all.
If that pattern sounds familiar, you may be experiencing gaslighting—and you are not losing your mind.
What Gaslighting Actually Is
Gaslighting is a pattern of manipulation that makes you doubt your own memory, perception, and judgment. It isn't simply one dramatic lie. It's a slow, repeated erosion—small denials and distortions, stacked up over months or years, until you no longer trust what you saw, heard, or felt with your own eyes and ears. The goal, whether the person doing it fully realizes it or not, is control: if you can't trust yourself, you'll have to rely on them. And that's the end game. A god-like posture over you. It's dark. And disorienting. Especially in spiritual contexts.
Why It Shows Up So Often in Spiritual Contexts
Gaslighting is painful anywhere it happens. But it takes root especially easily in church settings where cultures of control may be present. This has less to do with faith itself than with how spiritual authority tends to get treated.
Spiritual leaders are typically given the benefit of the doubt—by default. He's the professional. A priest or a pastor. She's a ministry leader. You're taught to believe the best of them. Communities are often taught to protect their leaders rather than question them—so pushing back doesn't just feel uncomfortable, it feels wrong.
And after all, maybe you did misunderstand.
That combination—an unearned trust in an unhealthy leader, systemic discouragement of pushback, and pressure to believe the best before you've even asked a question—is exactly the soil gaslighting grows in.
The first time it feels accidental. The next confusing. And even then, confusion about your own experience gets chalked up to a misunderstanding—which is how it starts.
It's also what makes it so disorienting once it does happen. The person playing mind games with you has positioned themselves as someone who speaks for God in your life. That's what makes gaslighting by a spiritual leader different from other kinds: it doesn't just ask you to doubt yourself. It asks you to doubt whether trusting yourself is even allowed.
Gaslighting rarely looks like one clear moment. It looks like a pattern.
Some signs to watch for:
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You constantly second-guess yourself, even about things you used to feel sure of.
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You find yourself apologizing, even when you're not certain you did anything wrong.
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You're told you're confused. You misunderstood.
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You're "too sensitive," "too emotional," or "always making things bigger than they are" when you push back.
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Your memory of specific events is flatly denied—not debated, denied—as if it didn't happen at all.
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You feel confused more often than angry, even in situations that would reasonably upset most people.
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Agreements or promises quietly go unmet, and when you finally bring it up, that becomes the issue instead of the broken agreement itself.
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You've started keeping records—texts, journal entries, dates—because you no longer trust your own recollection. (Even if you don't use it, you want to be able to defend yourself.)
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You feel isolated from people who might see the pattern clearly, because the relationship discourages outside perspective.
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You catch yourself defending the person to others, even while something in you feels unsettled.
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You find it harder to make simple decisions without checking your read of things against someone else's first.
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You've been told, directly or indirectly, that you seem to have lost favor or you're not thinking clearly.
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Your spiritual leader checks in on you as if you're the one with a problem.
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Warmth and praise arrive right after conflict, resetting the tension before you've had a chance to process it.
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You've been told other people also have issues with you, without specifics, as if to preempt your credibility.
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You're reminded of everything they've done for you whenever you raise a concern.
None of these signs alone proves gaslighting is happening. But if several of them describe your experience, especially inside a relationship with someone who holds spiritual or positional authority over you, it's worth taking seriously.
16 Signs of Gaslighting
Gaslighting rarely stops at one "misunderstanding." It's gradual. And it's groundwork. Once someone convinces you your own gut can't be trusted, they've disabled the exact warning system you'd need to catch what comes next. That's part of why this pattern often shows up early in relationships that escalate into Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse—and in the communities around them. By the time something worse happens, you've already been trained not to trust the alarm. So has everyone else.
The same is true even when the abuse of power takes a different shape. And even after you're out, the damage doesn't stay behind. Losing confidence in your own gut can take years to heal, and it comes with a second, harder gut-punch compounding the injurty: the person you trusted, defended, and made allowances for turned out to be genuinely dark. And if you couldn't see that, how can you trust your read on anything, or anyone, going forward?
But that wasn't your gap, or your miss. Not because you're flawless—but because this was intentional. Fortified.
If you look back, you likely did notice moments that felt off—small warning signs you set aside. Skilled manipulators count on that: diverting your attention, claiming innocence when someone calls them out, letting the moment pass before you can name it. So all too often people move past it—and the next time, it's just a little easier for them to get past your compromised defenses. Eventually it's hard to name—or reconcile what's really happening.
None of that makes you naive. It makes you someone who was up against something built to be missed.
The Damage That Outlasts It
If this is landing close to home, here is what we want you to know: your confusion is not a character flaw. It's been intentionally crafted and drawn out. It's not ungodly to push back. It's not a lack of faith. It's not dishonor or disrespect. It's the natural result of someone working to make their version of reality the only version allowed. God is not the author of confusion, and He is not honored by manipulation dressed up in His name. Reclaiming your ability to trust your own perception isn't pride—it's part of healing. You're allowed to remember what you remember. You're allowed to trust what you felt.
Rebuilding that trust isn't instant, but it can be practiced. Send the text without asking someone else's opinion on it first. Make a low-stakes decision on your own—what to eat, which way to drive, what to read—without checking in with anyone else. Small decisions rebuild the muscle the bigger ones will need.
When you feel the swirl starting—that familiar confusion creeping back in—pause. Write down what's actually happening. And if you can, say what you would say if no one else was listening.
You don't have to sort through any of it alone.
If this resonates with your own story, we'd be honored to walk with you. Reach out and start with a conversation — confidential, no pressure.
Healing After Gaslighting
→ Questions Worth Asking → Patterns Worth Naming → Red Flags
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The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in people who are trustworthy.
- Proverbs 12:22 BSB