Any time he is bringing up religion or Christianity, you can almost bet because of past behavior, that he is gas-lighting you. He knows it works because that is what you hold near and dear. Whatever we love an respect becomes a weapon for the difficult child to punish us with, rage, against or use against us in some way. I have posted this information before on this board and am posting it again for your benefit:
Perhaps it would help if you had an explanation of gas-lighting: Gas-lighting or gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.
Most everyone here has been through gas-lighting. It is the lies, the distortions, the manipulating of facts. It is both emotional and mental abuse. It is used by difficult children to get you to do,for the difficult child, anything you would not reasonably do for another "normal" person. It is used to cause what you are going through right now: doubting yourself and scaring yourself with all the what-ifs. It is the never-ending merry-go-round that we stay on until we recognize that we have no control over what difficult child does, says they are going to do or the consequences of THEIR own actions.
I would hazard a guess that gas-lighting works so well against most of us here because we are loving, caring and nurturing. These things about us are well known by the difficult child and so they use those very compassionate qualities against us by saying things that, when believed, leave us doubting ourselves, who we really are, and feeling emotionally devastated when accused by difficult child of being anything but an ideal parent. Probably the hardest part of not falling into the trap of gas-lighting is to begin to believe in ourselves enough, know ourselves enough, to not fall for gas-lighting.
These difficult child's say horrible, vile, and disgusting things to manipulate us into feeling bad enough about ourselves to give the difficult child whatever they want at any given moment. Most difficult children lack the empathy to understand the things they say are so hateful and hurtful. It is if gas-lighting by the difficult child is the baby crying for the pacifier. Yeah, real mature!
It is probably the most helpful for you to understand that the intensity of the feelings you are experiencing has been brought about by the gas-lighting of your difficult child just to position you where you are now. If you don't "feel bad" for difficult child, just how is he going to get you to keep coughing up the money? What "other skill-set" does he have for providing for himself? He gas-lights you because like the rat in the cage he has found that pushing the gaslighting button, if he pushes it enough times he is going to get a pay off. In fact as you stop falling for gas-lighting expect the threats, the manipulations and the abuse to ratchet up because gas-lighting you has worked for far too long and darn he knows that if he just gas-lights you with the right amount of hate and hurt - you will give in.
Something to think about.
