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Gaslighting.
It's Merriam-Webster's word of the year.
They say that the search spiked 1,740% in 2022.
And today we have a special guest who's going to talk about gaslighting, what you need to
know about it, what is gaslighting, and how do you know if it's happening to you.
Our special guest today is my mother-in-law, who I love dearly, and she is the CEO and
founder of Couples Care Center in the Marriage Warrior Institute.
She works and helps couples through crisis and trauma, and she's the perfect person to
talk to us today about gaslighting.
Welcome, Suzette.
Thank you, Shelby.
It's so good to see you.
So tell everybody a little bit about who you are.
Well, I'm known as Suzette the Marriage Warrior, and my practice years and years ago started
kind of merging into dealing with crisis marriages, you know, just trying to find out how the
crises are occurring inside the marriage and then how to help them.
And so I kind of hemmed myself into doing a lot of research to determine how can we
help these couples that are in situations that seem so harmful that they're going to
end in divorce.
And so I started working with the 14% of divorces that were destined to have attorneys and be
in the family court system.
And I started working with them on this side of the tracks to figure out how can we start
really reconciling these marriages.
Yeah, not only have you done a lot with couples and marriages, but you've also made songs,
you've worked in ministry, you were a worship leader for many years.
So you've been around the block in a lot of different areas and have a lot of wisdom and
revelation from the Lord.
So I want to talk to you today about what gaslighting is, but also your experience,
whether that's in ministry or seeing that in couples and family life.
Gaslighting is a hot topic right now, just as any characteristics of narcissism.
And gaslighting is kind of the key to Pandora's box of the other characteristics of narcissism.
And they cause a lot of toxic interactions between any intimate relationship, whether
it's your partner, your spouse, your boss, your family member.
And the typical tool that will be kind of the sign, the red flag, if you will, of other
narcissistic behaviors, which are toxic in nature, is gaslighting.
So the definition of gaslighting is a manipulative emotional or psychological tactic that offsets
you from your own reality.
That's the simplest way to determine what the definition is.
Now to explain that a little bit, the way it occurs in an interaction is if you are
trying to reason with someone and you bring something to their attention or you want to
confront them on a matter or you want to just try to resolve and solve an issue between
the two of you or about something else.
If an individual feels threatened in any way, and if you're dealing with narcissists, they
are threatened by all kinds of things that are unknown to most people.
It's called narcissistic injury.
And so you don't ever know when you're stepping on that landmine and triggering that injury.
And so the tactic that is first used is gaslighting.
And it's going to try to offset the person who's confronting the issue or the individual
to where they don't think clear.
It's a crazy maker because it offsets you in a way that it makes you question and doubt
yourself.
So it causes a lot of self-doubt.
It causes you to kind of move from the original subject, we call that deflection, so that
you're not talking about the issue you brought up anymore.
You're talking about whatever it is they came and used you as a target to light you on fire.
So they all deflect by using all kinds of words or phrases.
You're crazy.
You're too sensitive.
Why are you bringing this up?
You're just argumentative.
They offset you.
Now, if the issue is brought up in a way that threatens them like a confrontation about
them, they're going to gaslight you to where they say something about you that then pulls
you off the subject.
And then before you know it, you're like, wait, what are we talking about?
And that happening over and over will create a lot of self-doubt that creates self-esteem
issues for the individual being the target.
And it's pretty much kind of like from what I understand is you're going to somebody with
a problem or with something that you want to address with them, then you end up leaving
feeling like you're the one in the wrong.
And that's the motivation for the tactic.
The gaslighter knows that they're doing that.
And they know the reason that they're doing that is to take the attention off of them
because vulnerability is threatening for them, confrontation, being wrong is threatening
for them.
So they have to put it upon you in order to get it off of them.
So as somebody who works with Christian couples, or really couples from all walks of life,
what would you say that people who are either in a relationship or in a marriage should
do if they realize that this is happening to them?
Well, first of all, I'm laughing because the shock for the other person when it's happening
to them takes a while to get over.
You're so shocked.
I mean, you're like, wait, what?
Wait, wait, what?
You know?
And then because the gaslighting technique is so critical to the person bringing the
issue, they're starting to self-doubt thinking, well, am I doing what they're saying?
Is the sky really purple?
Am I really like that?
And so the shock is so difficult to get over first.
Then you're starting to back away and say, OK, what is this really about?
I didn't get my issue solved.
We changed topics.
And now I'm criticized in some way that I didn't even know this person felt about me.
And so the confusion, that's why it's a snake fest for the enemy to use against coupleship
and unity and trying to reconcile together.
Because the shock that comes first then brings that person into self-blame.
And so that's what starts to disintegrate the self-esteem inside the person that's being
the target.
Because they're wondering, is it about me?
Am I wrong?
And they didn't even get their first problem solved with the person that is gaslighting.
And so once the shock is over, and if it happens enough times, and most gaslighters know this
tactic and they use it in all kinds of areas in their lives, so it's going to happen again
inside that relationship.
So then the partner is going to start seeing a pattern.
When they start to see the pattern, they're going to start self-evaluating through listening
to other people.
They're going to try to look up social media helps to figure out that's why Webster is
saying it's so research.
It's because people are looking to get help in this because it's offsetting them to the
point of self-devastation.
So God right now, I believe, is unveiling this whole system of toxicity.
Because for a long time, it was just us clinicians that were throwing around the words gaslighting
or discard or narcissistic supply or narcissistic injury.
We were the ones talking to one another in a referral sense, like to refer from one clinician
to another, you would talk about these particular characteristics.
But now social media has really enlightened a lot of people on this subject.
And I believe that it's God unveiling this because this particular characteristic of
gaslighting goes totally against the word of God that tells us in Isaiah to come, let
us reason together.
Because there's no way to reason with this type of behavior.
So that's what I think the person needs to do is be able to get over the shock, research,
step back, kind of step away slowly because they can really be harmful if they're not
getting the type of energy they need from you, which is to be self-devaluating and to
tell them they're right and to say the sky is purple.
So you have to step away slowly and then evaluate the situation.
The clinicians talk about going into gray rock mode.
What gray rock mode is, is to be non-reactive.
The reason you want to be non-reactive is because the injury that this person has suffered
in the past and is still operating in is a tormenting thing within them.
They bottle a lot of emotion up, most emotion up because they cannot stand the pain of vulnerability.
For people who are more empathic, vulnerability is kind of like the thing that we like to
do.
We kind of interconnect with one another and be vulnerable and open up.
But for people that suffer with this type of characteristic, vulnerability is very threatening.
It scares them.
It causes fear.
So there's an automatic response that's impulsive for them that gets them to where they have
to push all of that bottled up energy that is usually negative and pour it on to someone
else.
By the way, when they do that, your pain is their healing.
And that's the way the energy shift is because if you're hurting, they have poured out that
pain that was inside of them onto you and then they feel a sense of health.
It's a dysregulated emotional system within them that then gets regulated by them pouring
on the pain to someone else.
It's kind of like it settles the score in some way.
Wow.
That's really intense.
And I think just listening to it and what you're talking about, would you say in a spiritual
sense that somebody who is a narcissist, who has a lot of those tendencies, who uses gas
lighting on the people around them, is that something that they need deliverance in?
How do they reconcile from that and find breakthrough?
Let me just clarify something.
When you're dealing with narcissism as a disorder, it's on a spectrum.
So the continuation scale is it varies.
Some people may have some characteristics and not all of them.
Gas lighting is just the key to Pandora's box.
It's like the one that's the gateway that for sure, if they're starting with this behavior,
then they may have other characteristics.
So but narcissism on the continuum scale, they have several characteristics, it's very
complex.
It is very spiritual.
It is psychological.
It's emotional and it's mental.
It carries all of the combined systems of the human because the spiritual part has to
deal with the hardness of heart.
So there's a hardness of heart condition.
If I have no empathy towards you and I'm just going to gaslight you and not listen to you
and just offset you to cause you damage, that's a hardness of heart condition.
The soul in the mind, emotions and the will is broken.
It's fractured.
And then there's a broken consciousness.
So the awareness is lacking as well.
They don't have a lot of self-awareness and self-reflection because they are so guarded
in their whole protective system that then they push everything away that looks like
self-reflection, if that makes sense.
And so when you're dealing with the spiritual part of it, it's very demonic because it feels
evil in what they're doing.
These behaviors are very evil.
But at the core of the individual acting out in these behaviors is a very wounded person.
So they were wounded in a very young age, five, six years old.
So it's kind of all they know.
Okay.
They don't know a lot more.
And so the psychology part of it is to be able to locate the wound and create awareness.
But because self-awareness is not something they like, they typically don't get help.
However, becoming aware of these things does not create healing.
So the healing is spiritual.
What creates the healing has to be self-expression of self-awareness and confession.
You see, we have to have confession to the Lord and you have to be able to make the trade
from this way of operating that's so harmful to everybody to make another way to operate
that follows the pathway of Christ.
See, it's a trade because they think what they're doing is right because it works.
It gives them power.
It gives them pleasure and it gives them a way to punish.
So it's a combination of a lot of things.
And the clinicians will say all the time, there's no healing it.
I've seen different in my practice, but the way I've seen it is I don't go into deliverance
as in casting out demons and all of that.
What I do is I bring them to truth with self.
Typically if marriage has a crisis, there's been an adulterous situation or addiction,
something that's causing a lot of explosive episodes inside of the marriage.
And so they're catch me if you can people.
So they lie a lot.
I mean, they'll lie when it's easier to tell the truth.
And so it's very difficult to catch them.
And so when there's an adultery situation, it's kind of easy to catch them because something
happens to show off what they've done.
And then once they're caught, they know that they are in jeopardy of losing their wife,
their marriage, their reputation, their money, all of that.
The odds are stacked against them.
So then what they'll do is when they come to me, I require them to tell the truth.
And so when they have to tell the truth of every single thing that they've done, and
by the way, they don't like it, but once they do that, that softens the heart.
They see their wife didn't run away or their husband didn't run away.
It starts to soften the heart.
Then what we have to do is bring them into the truth of the other behaviors that are
characteristic to this kind of self-indulgence.
When they can see the truth of that and how it's harmed others, then they are ready to
open their hearts to the trauma that began this whole show because it started in childhood
and they're afraid of that because it's been so painful.
And then they started operating into all of these other very toxic, harmful behaviors.
And so then once they can do that, the empathy starts to flow through the heart.
Long process must require the person operating in this to step up to the plate.
There's no way you can have enough empathy for them, have enough love for them.
They are going to drain you of all of the energy because they do not have it within
themselves.
So they're stealing from you, which is why they will offset you in something like gas
lighting.
Wow.
Well, from what you're saying though, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
You have seen people healed from this and marriages walk away from this better than
ever.
Absolutely.
But it's not common.
There's a system to do it, but it's not a common system.
And I imagine a lot of people are walking couples through really with what you're talking
about, dealing with the trauma from childhood, but understanding the spiritual component
and all of that.
So obviously that's so important to be led by the Holy Spirit and have him lead and guide
those conversations.
But my last question is for people who do have an out, maybe they're not married, they're
working for a ministry.
We have a lot of people who watch who are in ministry world or jobs and they realize
I'm working for a narcissist.
What would you tell them they should do?
Ministry, there's a lot of narcissism inside of religious institutions.
They'll use the religious biblical scriptures or whatever to basically gaslight other people,
make them follow because they want power.
And so the scripture can be abused as well for power.
There's white bosses and people who know that you're relying on them for your wellbeing
and your livelihood.
It also gaslights you to be able to reduce your self-esteem instead of lifting it.
Everything with the Lord is about lifting and light and moving someone.
If you win, I win kind of mentality.
And so it goes against the nature of Christ.
And so when the person knows and can recognize they're in this situation, their entire demeanor
needs to change to where they can back away slowly.
And different with a marriage and a job, you can feel a rescue in being able to find another
place of employment once you figure out that you have an operating system above you.
That is going to harm your own self-worth and self-value.
In a marriage, it's a little more difficult because there's so many ties inside of a marriage,
not only the covenant, but also the ties with children and all of that.
So it's a little more difficult to back away and try to stay married.
Sometimes it's impossible to stay married because they would gaslight and deflect and
discard and cheat and steal and all this stuff that's so against scripture that there's no
way to reconcile the marriage, especially if they're not willing to step up.
But with a boss situation, you really can't control the boss.
So you have really no influence except to try to back away and find where God is opening
another window for you.
I'm big on looking for the window.
Sometimes it's not a big old door, but it's a window.
You got to look for the windows because God is always the way maker.
That's what I have found out in living for Him all these years is He's going to make
a way.
You just got to find the peak of light wherever it is and go towards the light.
Yeah.
So true.
Before we wrap up and close here, would you pray for people, however you feel led on this
topic?
Yes, absolutely.
Yes.
Father, we bless you for who you are, Lord.
We thank you, Father, that you see all things, nothing is hidden from you.
In the times that we are in right now, you say that all that is hidden will be revealed.
Father, we open ourselves up to you to let it come however it comes.
Give us patience and endurance, Father, and long suffering to understand and to create
a healthy mind and a centeredness within us that is centered on you and your ways, Father,
as certain people are going through this, as they're learning more about this and trying
to confront this and know that they're going to be battered in abuse as they confront it,
Father, that you would give them the strength to stand on a firm foundation of who you are
and who they are in you, that nothing that the enemy would try to do to them can offset
them from you and your truth.
Lord, let the truth always prevail in situations that corner us, that are being, you know,
as we are lied to and manipulated, Father, and our minds begin to feel mind controlled
and mind games going on, Father.
Let us center our mind to where we are aligning perfectly in our mind, our emotions, our will,
and our love for you and love for others, God, that as you show them the way, those
that are going against what your word says to do, Father, to bring us into unity, Lord,
as they go against it, Father, we pray for them.
We ask that you and only you can enlighten them, Father.
It is nothing that we can do by our own might or power, but it is something you can enlighten
into.
And Father, we do pray for that.
And Father, if those who choose to not follow you and not be enlightened upon themselves
and see the harm that they're causing others, Lord, if they choose not, give us the ways
to get out, Father, that we would stay safe and sound and secure so that we can continue
to flow in our giftings and give to others in your kingdom purpose.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
Thank you, Suzette.
That was so special.
Thank you for joining us here today.
And for everybody who's watching, Suzette is just filled with wisdom and knowledge, revelation
from the Lord.
And I'm not just saying that.
It's true.
So she actually has courses that you can do as a married couple or even if you're single
and you want to prepare for that season of your life.
Now where can people go to find Marriage Warrior Institute and the courses that you have?
Marriagewarinstitute.com is a training process that I developed out of everything that I've
learned by the Spirit of the Lord, by my training, by my experience in just loving and watching
people and how they move and how coupleship is designed not only biblically to function,
but psychologically that works for everyone.
And so I just made an institute that had all the training videos of everything that I've
done to create this stability in couples online.
So it's the Marriage Warrior, it's Marriagewarriorinstitute.com.
And there's sections for individuals.
If you're not in a coupleship, there's a coupleship one.
There's ones for mentors that I'm trying to train lay ministers, people who just have
a heart and a gifting for people in the churches or outside the churches that can learn how
to figure out the situation that you're seeing, when to refer to someone that you're not really
equipped to help.
And then those that you are equipped to help, it teaches you how to help them, assist them,
know the signs, the triggers.
And as they are learning what all of the situations are inside of their dynamic, the mentor can
help them and guide them and feel very purposeful in their own calling and ministry towards
the Lord.
Because the harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few.
And so I'm trying to just multiply myself so that people don't have to necessarily see
me.
They can see me, they can contact me through Couples Care Center.
But if they just want online training, there's a plethora of all kinds of videos.
They'll help you also go through your family of origin trauma.
It gives you exercises to go through that.
And for the couples, it gives them a structure to put their marriage in while they're learning
the education in the training program and go through their family of origin.
And they will learn how they dance inside of the marriage.
So it's a beautiful work that my clients are saying they're taking pages and pages of notes
to each video, even though they're seeing me.
So it's been a wonderful blessing of the Lord that I'm trying to pass on to others.
And it's pretty simple and it's pretty affordable for what you're getting.
So I hope people will be blessed by it.
And they can also connect with you on couplescarecenter.com as well, right?
Yes, that's where if you want individual or couples training by me personally, and some
people will elicit my help in sessions while they're doing Marriage Work Institute videos.
So it's a way to kind of combine the two depending on what they need and how I can serve them.
Awesome.
Well, thank you for joining us here today.
This is a hot topic and just so amazing to be able to hear and understand from a spiritual
perspective as well as what's going on psychologically.
And so we just thank you for joining us here today.
And for everybody who's watching, this is Shelby Bowen with Charisma News.
And make sure you check out our videos down below.
Thank you for listening to Charisma News.
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