- Gaslighting is a form of
manipulation and emotional abuse, which can be hard to notice
if we've grown up in it our entire lives. Since it'd be so difficult to recognize, here are the seven signs your
parents are gaslighting you. (upbeat music) Number seven, they repeatedly refute or deny your experience. This is a classic gaslighting move because the goal of gaslighting is to get you to question
your own memory or reality through manipulation. Denying our past experience
or memory of an event is how they slowly erode
our trust in ourselves and our ability to recall past events. And when this is done repeatedly, possibly since we were young we may not feel we can
trust ourselves at all, always looking to other people
to validate our experience or even immediately
minimizing what happened unless someone else agrees. They can say things like,
"Oh, you aren't really upset with what happened, you're just tired." This can be detrimental to
our self-esteem and confidence which in turn makes us easier to control. We can start to doubt
everything we thought we knew. And this can make our
future relationships tricky and possibly toxic too, because we're always
looking to other people to tell us what we think,
feel, or experience, which can lead to us
picking friends and partners that are just like our parents. Moving on to number six, they refuse to take any responsibility for things that happened blaming it on you or others instead. And this means that they won't apologize for their role in something or admit that they did anything wrong. Again, we have to
remember that gaslighting is a form of manipulation and by never owning up to their
role in a painful experience they're trying to force us to believe that it was someone else's fault. They can even take it a step further and claim that they're the
victim and they need you or someone else to own up to what you did. It can be an incredibly
confusing experience to have this play out because not only are they
denying our experience but they're also fabricating another one, and they can lay on the guilt by always leaning into their alleged pain, which if we're empathic as most of us are we can struggle to not apologize for whatever it is they're claiming. It's completely confusing
and disorienting, which remember is the goal of gaslighting. Sign number five that your
parents are gaslighting you, they say you're too
sensitive or overreacting. This is another way that they
try to deny our experience or refuse to take responsibility. It doesn't matter what
our emotional response is, it's gonna be too much
or too dramatic for them. They will try and downplay
what we went through or claim that we're just
being overly sensitive. And if that's not enough, they can even claim that if
we had just listened to them things would've been better. For example, if we're upset about the way an interaction happened at work they can tell us that
we're just being dramatic. And if we'd done what they had said and confronted that coworker months ago then none of this would've happened. And because of this, the close correlation with narcissism and gaslighting, you will see and even feel
the elevated sense of self that they can have. They always think they
know better, do better, and are right all the time. When we're upset, especially
if it's with them, they will try to minimize and validate and deflect the blame. Moving right along to sign number four, and this one may be a
little counterintuitive so hang with me; they lay
on the compliments and care, here's the kicker, when
they need something. Now, this is actually part
of the love bombing stage which is an imperative
component of gaslighting because it pulls us close to them and continues to keep us
held in the cycle of abuse. They will tell us that
we are the most smart, thoughtful person that they know and that without us they would be lost. They can even buy us
gifts, take us on trips, and wanna spend all of their time with us. We can feel, especially
if we have other siblings, we can feel like the
favorite one all of a sudden. Like we're the best child, 'cause they wanna do everything with us and they get us extra goodies and gifts that they don't get our other siblings. And because anyone would
love to be complimented and loved on, especially
from a parent, right? We need it. We can enjoy this and stick around for it. And this can leave us more
vulnerable to their manipulation because we believed them when they were saying
all those nice things, why would the bad things
be any different, right? The painful and abusive side of this is that the love bombing is short-lived and once they get what they want, like attention, validation, or even maybe some more
private information, it will quickly devolve
into more put downs and name calling. Sign number three, they will say that everyone
around them is a liar. Anyone who thinks they're to blame or remembers them doing something hurtful just has it out for them or is lying. They can even get other people like their spouse, a friend, or other family members
to agree with their lies. And these people who agree are
often called flying monkeys because they kind of do the
bidding of the narcissist. And yes, this term did come
from the "Wizard of Oz", where Dorothy runs from the
wicked witches Flying Monkeys. And you might be wondering why
someone else would do this. Like why would you put up with that? Why would they believe their lies over the experience of someone else? Well, most likely it's because they've only heard one
person's side of the story and they are probably also being
gaslit or even love bombed. So it's gonna be hard
for them to be unbiased and see the situation for what it is. That's why a huge part of our healing and what can make us
more resistant to this is to have our own
friends and support system outside of our family. They won't get sucked
into their lies as easily and will be able to hear us out and help us check our
facts on a situation. And sign number two, they use the things you love against you. When a gaslighter knows a lot about us, they can use that to their advantage. They can know how much we
love our close friend group and instead of supporting that, they will try and poke at the
people we care about saying, that this one friend was talking
about us behind our back, they heard them. Or they will make comments
about how unmotivated or what a bad influence one of them is. They will slowly try to
distance us from them so that we have to rely on them more. And this could also play out in things that we love
to do for ourselves. Like let's say we've
decided to try a new class or we really enjoy our new job, they'll try to point out things
that they see wrong with it or wrong with the way that we're doing it, or even say that we're
being taken advantage of and should just quit. They will do whatever they can to take away anything we hold dear so that we have them and
only them to rely on. And finally, sign number one,
they are enmeshed with you. When there aren't healthy boundaries between where we end and
where our parents begin, we can start to think that their response or emotional experience
is ours and vice versa. And this can make it impossible
for us to grow on our own and have our own subjective experience. Parents who are meshed
may not even realize it and see it as them protecting their child from the bad feelings. But by doing so, they aren't giving us an opportunity to experience all of our natural
emotions and process them which can lead to us
stuffing down any feeling that we think is bad, and not knowing how to regulate our system when we feel overwhelmed. And this example really impairs our growth and can even impact our
future relationships. Now, I know that that's
a lot to keep up with. So in summation, here are the seven signs our parents are gaslighting us. Number one, well, it's
really number seven. They repeatedly refute
or deny your experience. Number six, they refuse
to take any responsibility for things that happened. Number five, they say you're too sensitive or you're overreacting. Number four, they lay on the compliments and care when they need. Number three, everyone
around them is a liar. Number two, they use things
that we love against us. And number one, they
are enmeshed with you. Okay, so if we think this is
happening, what can we do? Number one, we check our facts. Do we know what actually happened? Anything we can prove, maybe we actually have a receipt,
or a photo, or something. Be a detective and see what you can find and remember facts are not emotions. It's simply what took place. So check your facts, even check in with other
people, see what they remember. Let's put this case together. Number two, we can work on building up our own support system. This can even help us check the facts because we'll have another person who isn't under their spell to talk with and see what they remember or to help us see where
we're being reasonable and maybe areas where
we're being manipulated. Number three, place and
uphold healthy boundaries. If you didn't know I have
a boundaries workshop that's available on my website. I talk about everything
from what boundaries are, the different boundaries
that exist in our life, how to place them, how to uphold them, and what to do if someone
doesn't respect them. So if you're interested, you can click link in the description, head over to my website and access it now. But I know boundaries can be hard hence the workshop, right? Especially because these people that we're trying to set
these boundaries with are our parents, and they raised us to
not have any boundaries because then how would they manipulate us? So being able to pay attention
to natural boundaries like things that you find exhausting, or when they say certain things and you find it jarring or upsetting. One of the examples I
usually offer personally, this doesn't have to do
specifically with parents but is when I'm out in a public
place that's kind of crowded and someone I don't know
comes up from behind and touches me on the
back to get around me, I don't like it. Ooh, it gives me all the bad feels. That's a natural physical boundary. I don't like someone touching
me that I don't know, especially from behind me,
it gives me the willies. So that is an indicator of
a boundary being crossed. So just pay attention to those. Our body and our brain innately they tell us when boundaries
have been crossed. Remember that boundaries
aren't about control or telling someone else what to do, they're about what we will
do as a result of that. They can be spoken or not, depending on how they'll be implemented. If we aren't gonna respond to their mean or name calling texts,
then we just don't respond. But if we're gonna leave the home when they start to talk to us that way we might wanna let them know
that that's going to happen and why that's happening. We would hope that they
would respect our boundaries and change their ways. But remember, we can't
control other people or make them be better. I hope this video was helpful. Feel free to share your
own thoughts or experience in those comments down below,
and I will see you next week.
