Protecting Trust: Gaslighting, Power, and Accountability in Helping Roles
In my earlier reflections on In the Healer’s Seat, I examined the invisible architecture of power and the inner landscape of the healer, exploring how projections, wounds, and responsibility shape every encounter in which one person seeks help and another offers guidance. I highlighted how unconscious projections and the misuse of authority within helping relationships can lead to harm, and called for practitioners to cultivate self-awareness, ethical integrity, and a commitment to honoring the experiences and boundaries of those they serve. In this sequel, I turn more directly to what happens when these same dynamics are not only unconscious but also used in ways that harm.
The very fact that someone reaches out and someone else responds already creates a subtle hierarchy: one person is searching, the other appears to know. The air in the room changes. Words land differently. Silence begins to mean something else. It is precisely in this charged space that spiritual language and psychodynamic concepts can either serve clarity or begin to twist reality around the person holding the microphone. This article is about gaslighting in the name of healing, and about why taking a clear ethical stand within the helping professions has become unavoidable.
The weight of interpretation
Anytime someone steps into the role of therapist, coach, consultant, mentor, or spiritual teacher, a structural asymmetry emerges. One person defines the frame, chooses the language, and selects the tools. The other arrives with symptoms, questions, hope, and often a very old feeling of “something is wrong with me.” They bring a nervous system shaped by parents, teachers, bosses, partners—by all the hierarchies they have already survived—and a history of how authority has felt in their body.
That asymmetry is not automatically harmful. It can create profound safety and orientation when it is held with humility and attunement. But it does mean that every interpretation offered from the healer’s seat carries extra weight. When we say, “This is what’s happening,” we are not dropping neutral information into an empty space. We are molding the way another human being understands their own reality.
This is why the language we use in those moments matters so deeply. It is one thing to quietly wonder together: “I notice how strongly this situation touches older pain. Can we be curious about both what is happening now and what it reminds you of?” It is another thing entirely to declare: “You are not hurting because of what happened. You are hurting because of your story about it.”
When spiritual and psychodynamic tools turn back on the person who suffers
Gaslighting is a relational pattern in which a person’s perception is chronically questioned, inverted, or dismissed until they begin to distrust their own mind. In helping relationships, it rarely appears as an overt “you’re crazy.” It often sounds much more refined, wrapped in the vocabulary of insight and growth.
It can sound like: “You’re suffering because of your story, not because of what happened.” Or: “This anger is your ego holding on to a victim identity.” Or: “The problem is not what they did; it’s the belief that they shouldn’t have done it.” Sometimes it sounds like: “You feel unsafe because of past trauma; this space is actually safe,” said with full conviction in a room where a body is loudly saying the opposite. Or: “Notice how attached you are to being hurt – that’s where your work is.”
On paper, each of these sentences could belong to an intricate, trauma‑informed exploration. In practice, I meet many women for whom they were used to minimise real harm, to recast legitimate protest as pathology, to shift responsibility from the person with more power to the person with less, and to bypass grief, anger, and fear that needed to be witnessed rather than corrected. The more often this happens, the more the nervous system learns a painful lesson: “If something feels wrong, it is probably my fault.”
Similar to what has been termed “medical gaslighting” in healthcare, where patients’ reports are minimised or reinterpreted until they doubt their own experience, spiritual and psychodynamic gaslighting in helping relationships trains people to question their perceptions of harm and to locate the problem inside themselves.
Over time, the effect is confusion and distress. Trust—in oneself, in others, and in the possibility of healthy relationships—deteriorates as one’s perception and bodily signals are increasingly doubted. When trust is violated in these relational settings, the damage goes beyond confusion; it can destabilise a person's entire internal navigation system. As inherently social beings, our ability to trust ourselves and others shapes how we interpret the world, form bonds, and experience safety. Systematic erosion of this trust can lead individuals to internalise messages such as, “If I am still hurting, it must be because I am thinking wrong, feeling wrong, or not evolved enough.” Research shows that this collapse of self‑trust may have enduring psychological consequences, including heightened anxiety and depressive symptoms (Stark et al., 2020). The loss of trust can leave people feeling isolated, disoriented, and disconnected from their inner wisdom and from the possibility of genuine connection with others.
The double wound of harmful “healing.”
When women come into my practice after such experiences in coaching programmes, spiritual settings, or quasi‑therapeutic communities, they rarely come with just one injury. They are carrying the earliest trauma, from childhood, from intimate relationships, from workplaces, from earlier spiritual environments, and a secondary trauma from the attempt to seek help.
They often tell me that their grief was framed as ego, that their anger was treated as a sign of spiritual immaturity, that their fear was reduced to an overactive nervous system reacting to “nothing real.” They describe sitting in circles where their accounts of boundary crossings were gently but firmly turned back on them, with the prompt to explore how they had crossed their own boundaries first. They recall being encouraged to “do their work” on how they themselves were the very thing they were judging, without anyone clearly stating, “What happened to you was not okay.”
By the time they arrive, they are often exquisitely self‑critical and deeply hesitant to trust anyone in a helping function again. Their bodies may have responded accurately to danger or misattunement, yet their minds were gradually conditioned to doubt those very responses. This pattern is characteristic of gaslighting injuries: the harm is found not only in the first act, but also in the ongoing, systematic rewriting of its meaning (Sweet, 2019; Stark et al., 2020).
Grey zones and the slow erosion of boundaries
Harm in helping relationships does not usually begin with a dramatic, unmistakable breach. It often begins in the grey zones.
It does not start with a blunt “no” that is ignored, but with a session that “just runs over a bit.” Not with an outright violation, but with a late evening message, a personal disclosure that feels unusually intimate, a private invitation that seems flattering and confusing at the same time. It starts with small exceptions to the frame that are never really named as such.
These grey zones are rarely obvious at first. They feel like closeness, like trust, like “we are beyond rigid rules here.” That is precisely what makes them so dangerous. Because in these not‑quite‑defined in‑between spaces, where professional roles blur, the frame is no longer transparent and uncertainty is never spoken, something slowly shifts inside. The internal scale that quietly measures what is acceptable in a helping relationship starts to recalibrate.
At the beginning, there may only be a faint sense: “This is a bit unusual, but I don’t want to overthink it.” One part is uneasy; the other feels chosen. Especially after a history of relational trauma, this ambivalence can feel strangely familiar. Being both perceived and unsettled at the same time is not new. It is the pattern the nervous system already knows.
As this process continues, the clear contours between professional boundaries and personal relationships erode. A “this is special” feeling begins to replace an “I know where we stand” feeling. What was once a clearly defined therapeutic or coaching space becomes something more diffuse: a hybrid of guide, friend, confidante, maybe even saviour. The more someone lives inside this vagueness itself, the harder it becomes to say, afterwards, “Here the line was crossed.” For many people, it does not feel like one decisive moment. It feels like sliding – almost imperceptibly, until it is too late.
It is precisely in these grey zones that the statements I described earlier often appear. “You are only this hurt because of your story.” “You are attached to being a victim.” “You are too identified with your boundaries; that’s what you need to work on.” On paper, these lines can sound like consciousness work. In the context of slowly shifting boundaries, they function like a double erasure. They do not only move responsibility away from the person in power; they also obscure the fact that clear, safe limits were never consistently named and held in the first place, which would have been the healer’s responsibility, not the client’s.
A mature, ethical practice does not pretend that these grey areas do not exist. It does not reduce boundary work to “never any flexibility” versus “anything goes.” It knows that gradual shifts in the frame, small exceptions, “special” arrangements, private contact, unclear roles – are often the prelude to more serious violations. It understands that it is never the client’s job to monitor and enforce the frame. That responsibility rests entirely with the person in the healer’s seat.
Grooming and betrayal in healing relationships
Harm in helping relationships is also frequently preceded by grooming, not the sensational version we see in films, but a slow, careful conditioning over time. At first, it can feel like being specially chosen. A practitioner offers extra time, unusual access, and personal stories. They confide in the client, share their own struggles, and invite an intensity of connection that blurs the line between professional and personal.
For someone whose attachment history is characterized by neglect, confusion, or gaslighting, this can feel like finally arriving somewhere safe. The longing to be seen and chosen is powerful. Exactly there, vulnerability deepens. The power differential is downplayed (“we are friends,” “we are peers”) while being quietly exploited. The client is encouraged to see themselves as exceptional, different from “other clients,” someone who understands the healer in a way others do not.
When a boundary crossing or overt harm then occurs, a shaming intervention, an inappropriate touch, a humiliating group confrontation, an act that clearly goes beyond any ethical frame, the person on the “one down” side usually feels complicit. They remember all the moments they enjoyed the special attention. They remember the comfort, the feeling of belonging. They do not see the grooming; they see their own allegedly poor judgment.
This is where the betrayal trauma comes in. It is one thing to be hurt by someone clearly marked as an adversary. It is another to be harmed by a person you depended on for healing, wisdom, or safety. The nervous system reacts differently; the cognitive dissonance is deeper, and the shame is heavier. And if the surrounding system responds with denial, minimisation or silence, the injury reaches into very old layers of “I must not trust myself. I must not rock the boat. If I speak, I will lose everything.”
Betrayal trauma theory and the literature on institutional betrayal show that when harm is committed by those we rely on for safety, care, or meaning, the impact is especially severe, and the urge to stay silent is strong (Freyd, 1997; Freyd, 2008; Freyd & Smidt, 2014). This is precisely the territory we enter when spiritual teachers, coaches, or therapists use their authority to reinterpret harm as the client’s “story” or “ego.”
From the outside, it is easy to ask, “Why didn’t they leave sooner? Why didn’t they speak up?” From the inside, grooming and betrayal trauma feel very different. They feel like they've finally been chosen, finally belong, finally have a guide. They feel as if the risk of losing that bond outweighs the discomfort. They feel like shame: shame for not leaving, shame for being hurt, shame for needing someone who turned out to be unsafe.
This is why, when writing about power and gaslighting in the helping professions, it is not enough to focus on individual bad actors. We have to talk about how people are slowly prepared to accept what they once would have rejected. We have to talk about the early signs: the erosion of clear boundaries, the idealisation of the healer, the creation of inner circles, the expectation of gratitude in exchange for access, and the discouragement of outside perspectives. We have to talk about how spiritual and psychodynamic language can be used to explain away the anxiety that arises when something doesn’t feel right.
When we name grooming, we begin to restore context for survivors. What happened to them was not a chain of isolated “bad choices.” It was a process designed to shape their choices. When we connect grooming to betrayal, trauma and institutional betrayal, we can also see why the shame runs so deep and why silence is so persistent. If the person who harmed you was also the one who held your hope, and the system around them told you that speaking up makes you the problem, it takes great courage to break that spell.
Not all helpers stand on the same ground
In public conversations, we frequently talk about “helpers” as if they shared a single ethical context. In reality, the ground on which different helping roles stand is very uneven. A licensed psychotherapist is held within codes of ethics, supervision, regulatory bodies, and a regulatory bodies, and a legally defined scope of practice. A coach, mentor, or spiritual teacher may or may not be accountable to any external standard.
This does not mean that therapists always practice ethically or that coaches do not. But it does change the risk profile when someone uses highly evocative methods, touches trauma, attachment, and dissociation, or markets themselves as “trauma‑informed” based on brief training. When practices that fundamentally reshape how people perceive and interpret reality are taught without solid grounding in trauma, attachment, and power dynamics, the risk of unrecognised bias, misattuned interventions, and problematic applications of methods increases, even in well‑intentioned programmes.
Clients feel this difference, even if they don’t have the language for it. They sense whether there is a clear structure for raising concern, whether repair is possible, whether the person in front of them is embedded in a culture of accountability or floating in a self‑created cosmos in which their word is the final word.
When theory protects the practitioner instead of the relationship
In depth psychology and spiritual traditions, we hold powerful concepts: transference and countertransference, defences, parts, the inner child, projection, attachment styles, and ego structures. Applied responsibly, they help bring unconscious patterns into awareness. Used defensively, they can operate as elegant shields around the practitioner.
This happens when every expression of hurt is interpreted as transference, when every boundary or “no” is framed as fear of intimacy or resistance, when any questioning of the process is treated as evidence that the client is “not ready” or clinging to a victim identity. In such climates, curiosity always focuses on the client’s psyche. The practitioner’s impact, blind spots, and use of power remain in the dark.
Ethical practice looks different. When someone says, “I felt hurt by what you said,” the first step is not to analyse their defences. It is to pause and ask: “Can we slow down and look at that together? Where did I miss you? What did my words touch in you?” That question does not dissolve complexity; it opens a room where both the current interaction and older echoes can be held. It tells the nervous system: your perception is not automatically an enemy to be overcome; it is part of the data we honour here.
Responsibility without erasing reality
Many contemporary psychological and spiritual approaches encourage us to take responsibility for our triggers, projections, and interpretations. This is meaningful to a point: as adults, our present reactions are often influenced by earlier experiences, even when we do not fully realise it. When we become more aware of these inner patterns, we sometimes gain more freedom to respond differently, instead of being driven by automatic reactions.
The distortion begins when responsibility is quietly equated with self‑blame. If a survivor of bullying, abuse, racism, or spiritual manipulation is told that their ongoing suffering is caused mainly by their thoughts, their “story,” or their unhealed parts, a line is crossed. The focus shifts away from what actually happened, and how it continues to affect the nervous system, toward an almost exclusive focus on changing cognition.
Trauma‑informed work holds two truths at the same time. It recognises that history intensifies present responses. It also recognises that some present responses are simply appropriate reactions to real violations happening now. An ethical stance in the helping professions does not collapse these truths into one. It supports people in differentiating between, “This is old and needs care,” and, “This is happening now and needs a boundary, a clear no, or a different environment.”
Image via Unsplash by Mert Kahveci @mertkahveci
What responsibility in the healer’s seat requires today
Given what we know today about trauma, attachment, grooming, grey zones, and power, sitting in the healer’s seat demands more than good intentions, whether as therapist, coach, or spiritual mentor. It calls for a willingness to look at our own use of authority, to understand how easily interpretation becomes control, and to recognise when our favourite tools are not appropriate for the nervous system in front of us.
Responsibility in this context means being explicit about the asymmetry in the room and inviting feedback on our impact. Fear, anger, grief, and disgust are not enemies of enlightenment but are often important indicators of boundary violations or misattunement (Brown, 2021). Thus, these emotions should be explored rather than dismissed. Maintaining responsibility also requires naming and sustaining clear boundaries, and noticing when “exceptions” and “special arrangements” start to multiply. Practitioners must recognize when the complexity of someone’s trauma, dissociation, or risk exceeds their competence, referring clients to other professionals as needed, rather than stretching their own role. Finally, it means refusing to use inquiry, “shadow work,” or psychodynamic labels to close a conversation that should remain open and participative.
Most of all, it means remembering that the person who comes to us has already lived through hierarchies in which their perception was discounted. Our task is not to repeat that story in more sophisticated language. Our task is to help them come home to a reality that includes their body, their feelings, and their history – and to stand beside them as they learn to trust their own sense of truth again.
Taking a stand against gaslighting in the helping professions is not about placing ourselves above others. It is about looking honestly at the ways our own field can wound as well as heal, and choosing, as often as possible, to bring our practice with the simple commitment that should underlie all helping work: that the person sitting opposite us leaves with more access to their own reality, not less.
Abuse never happens in a vacuum
Abuse in helping relationships rarely exists in a vacuum. Sociological work on gaslighting has made clear that gaslighting is not only a private, psychological method but a social and institutional process: it flourishes where authority is unquestioned, where disagreement is framed as disloyalty, and where marginalised people are already less likely to be believed. This lens helps us see why gaslighting in healing spaces is not only about individual “bad apples,” but about entire systems organised around deference, charisma, and silence. It is held in place by a system: by colleagues who see things and say nothing; by organisations that protect reputations over repair; by communities that quietly reward loyalty and punish questioning. Shame is the glue that keeps that system intact, the shame of those who were harmed, who blame themselves for not leaving earlier, and the shame of those who witnessed and did not intervene.
Part of our responsibility in the helping professions is to stop letting that shame work in the service of silence. Instead, we can transform shame into an invitation for honest dialogue about what we know, what we missed, and what we are no longer willing to tolerate. Such ongoing transparency and accountability remain key to fostering safety and trust (Freyd & Smidt, 2014). Only then can the power of the healer’s seat fulfill its true purpose: not the preservation of systems, but the protection and empowerment of those who sit across from us and risk being seen.
© 2026 Dr. Kerstin Hecker. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced, distributed, or used in any form without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations with proper citation.
References
Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. Random House.
Freyd, J. J. (1997). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Harvard University Press.
Freyd, J. J. (2008). What is betrayal trauma? What is betrayal trauma theory? Retrieved from https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineBT.html
Freyd, J. J., & Smidt, A. M. (2014). Institutional betrayal. American Psychologist, 69(6), 575–587. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037564
Stark, E., Sweet, S., & Wiggins, E. (2020). Gaslighting, psychological abuse, and the erosion of self-trust. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 21(3), 323–338. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2020.1751537
Sweet, S. (2019). The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life (Rev. ed.). Harmony Books.
