Gaslighting: How to Stop the Abuse

um welcome everybody my name is kristen snowden i'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of california and a certified life coach who specializes in um love and sex addiction recovery betrayal trauma and infidelity recovery and today's webinar is going to be focused on what i think is one of the most insidious and abusive and traumatizing things that show up in a relationship dyad and that is called gaslighting and so today's webinar is going to be focused on helping you understand what is gaslighting how do you heal from it and repair from it and then what are the ways that you can construct your life and your relationship to try to prevent gaslighting from happening in the future because i am a huge proponent of the idea that we never really go to school and learn how to do relationships we kind of just muddle through and figure it out through error and hurt and struggle and then triumph and so that's what i've dedicated my time and energy to which is teaching you all what i know to be the latest research and understanding of what kind of goes wrong in relationships from extreme uncovering addictions multiple infidelities and betrayal all the way over to run the mill issues of um ineffective communication and not matching each other's intentions and understandings or just trauma that keeps bubbling up into the relationship so my my theory is if i can armor you with education and a better understanding of what might be going on in your relationship dynamic the more likely you'll be to be empowered to change it see it happen and start making the very purposeful steps to alter the cycle so let's start by saying what is gaslighting gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where someone either consciously purposely directly um or even subconsciously manipulates another person into believing that their reality is not actually accurate so it's based on a 1940s black and white movie called gaslight and that's so that's the term gaslighting that's where it came from and the premise is that there's there's this man who's a thief and he tricks a woman into marrying him he seduces her and she doesn't know this but there's this lost fortune that he's been trying to find in her family and he married her to gain access to the home so he can continue to search around the home for that lost fortune and in the process he's also slowly and systematically making her feel like she's going crazy at night she hears rumbling around up in the attic and and the rumbling around causes the gas lights to flicker and she says you know what's going on and he instead of you know he's not giving her all the information he's denying her the truth because he's obviously trying to protect his nefarious plan he just makes her think that she's crazy i don't know what you're talking about you're making this stuff up he goes even steps further where he'll move stuff around the house and she'll say what happened to that picture like i don't know what is wrong with you but you just keep doing things like that picking things up losing losing things he gifts her things and then he takes them away but makes her think that she lost them he makes her believe in social settings that she's crazy and she's unstable so that she continues to isolate herself um and so that's obviously the most extreme example of what gaslighting can be is this huge nefarious plan that someone wants to constantly keep you off the scent so they can victimize you we see gaslighting most often come up in relationship dyads where there's maybe like a narcissistic type personality um either man or a woman quite frankly um and it also is always prevalent almost always prevalent when there's any kind of addiction present that can even be substance abuse addiction gambling addiction porn addiction sex addiction etc because the obvious reason for that is it is an addict is devoted i mean their addiction and acting out they protect it at all costs because it's their their best friend their number one coping skill and so when other people have instincts and intuition they're telling them something's off they they get them off the scent quickly by gaslighting them you know so it's not just like oh i don't know what you're talking about i don't know where that money went it's like uh if you nag me all the time and constantly question my judgment then we probably wouldn't be having these issues and man you've always been jealous you've always questioned everything about me why do you never ever trust me um and there's a lot more examples that i can give to that but in so many terms gaslighting shows up when someone is trying to maintain a power over someone else in some way or another because they're trying to either just avoid any kind of conflict you know because in wherever there might be conflict someone might win or lose maintain power over them so they can kind of make decisions and do things around them not with them um so they can continue to act out of the relationship etc the biggest issue with gaslighting as well is that they're more invested with being right with being more powerful um and trying to shut down any kind of conflict any kind of adversity in that moment right that you might see something differently that you disagree with what's going on that you're not okay with it and so they'll use gas lighting to shut it down so let me give you a couple examples and then i'm going to talk about kind of gaslighting in general um where we see it a lot um so some examples of gaslighting is you might be arguing with your partner over something hurtful that he or she said to you and he or she will just instead respond gosh you are always so sensitive you know maybe if it's a man to a woman like are you on your period is that why or you know something going on but it's kind of just saying i can't hold space for this argument or why we're having this problem or why you seem to be upset so i'm gonna just quickly tell you um your anger your feelings aren't validated and also maybe there's some other reason you know that i have nothing to do with that you know it's your emotions your hormones something else going on or that you're kind of always like this you might ask your partner say hey you've been working too much you're a little standoffish or you're not really giving me or the family of the attention that we need and the par the partner will not only say no they can't hold space for that they won't want to ask questions about why you feel that way they just say well maybe you just need to be so needy you know maybe i you know i do i'm there all the time um but as we know especially for those of you who are with um addicts they might physically be there but not exactly emotionally present and so there might be invalidation around that another example um my your partner might insist you're being ridiculous and out of control when you actually feel like your your communication is very clear and that you are you have appropriate anger or appropriate confusion or appropriate sadness that any human would feel under these conditions um but instead you're just kind of being dismissed that that this emotion is erratic it's ridiculous it's uncalled for um and with the classic one that you might have all heard is you know you should be over this by now or you need to really calm down when again you feel like your feelings and your responses are just very reasonable like you're not asking for much the number one thing that i look for in clients when they come in you know struggling in their relationship the word is always confusion so they come in just really confused about what their reaction should be what is stable and unstable what what they have the right to be upset about do other people get upset about this how should i respond when i uncover this things that you know if you if you surveyed a large group of people they might all have a somewhat similar answer but someone who's been gaslighted finds themselves extremely confused and upside down and that's the trauma that's happening is when you have someone constantly invalidating your reality it's chips away at your instincts and intuition to the point that it creates this cycle where you know you might just being as a normal human with instincts and intuition we notice things we see things you know something doesn't feel right to us something feels uncomfortable to us that look that person that phone call that late night activity and you will inquire about it because that's what you were built for you were built with an autonomic nervous system a survival mechanism inside you that's supposed to like pick up when things aren't right and then you seek out your partner you know a trusted loved one someone who again if you're if you're like a securely attached person you expect them to be giving you the same benefit of doubt you know the same um generous interpretations of what you're asking for someone who you think is you know securely attached people are supposed to be attuned to each other's needs they're supposed to talk about hard things when when ruptures are made right when we screw up they're supposed to be repairing they're supposed to be forgiveness so you will seek them out with that secure attached behavior and then they'll just kind of throw you off by like no you're crazy you're wrong this is out of this world and i have no idea what you're talking about and it really spins you upside down because when you experience betrayal trauma right that's that's trump that's betrayal at the hands of someone where there's an understood commitment that like you're my teammate or you know family members right that they're supposed to be your family and and you're supposed to give each other the benefit of the doubt you you you have honesty or transparency this is a place where i can be flawed but still loved um you you think that's what it's supposed to be and then someone makes these either direct or indirect commitments and promises to be that person with you and then all of a sudden you find out you know the stuff's coming out of their mouth that am i crazy because the person that i married and had children with now suddenly has assessed me and told me that i'm crazy so maybe maybe i i'm emotionally unstable and then by an extension of someone constantly accusing you to be unstable you know it develops this shame voice in you of like oh my god maybe i i am unstable is this an unstable reaction and so sadly being gaslighted just sets you up for more gas lighting because as you get your intuition and instincts get chipped away at more and your shame voices build and build those voices that are like you're not enough you're too messed up who's gonna love this because it's too much of a hot mess um you become more dependent on that partner to validate your reality because you've already been thrown off and you're like okay yeah maybe i do make the wrong interpretations maybe i do pick up the wrong everything and in fact some of you who have already gone through discovery my my guess is even though it's been devastating and destructive to your life there's often this part of you that's like holy crap i knew i knew there was something that it is very validating to finally have you know when you uncover this or you do that full disclosure to say oh my gosh when i thought something was wrong and you were calling me crazy or you were telling me i was unstable or i kept picking up this energy that you were just not with us that's you healing and repairing and reconnecting with your instincts and intuition again because you know i'm going to skip forward to the one of the ways to heal and develop a structure and a safety net around you so gaslighting doesn't happen again is that you can never let someone's someone else's reality supersede yours yes we are social beings and i will go into more detail about this later but we are we're wired to connect right so i'm wired to want to consult with other people i'm wired to want to check in and get feedback and validation from them there's nothing wrong with that especially when you're pair bonded with with a partner you're supposed to want their feedback and their validation but you can't let their interpretation of the reality supersede trump and cancel out yours so it's a it's a really delicate uh boundary and and happy medium that you're trying to reach as you're moving forward from from a relationship where you might have been gaslighted in the past um so let's talk about we talked about the cycle and not ever letting another person reality supersede your own because remember we are all flawed and do consult you know in fact that's going to be one of the processes to heal and structure your life to avoid gaslighting is to lean into a community you know that's why i love programs like weeton glenn or sextonrelationshiphealing.com where this is a place where you're supposed to be able to bounce things off from other people and kind of re-connect with your instincts and intuition you know this is my gut's telling me that this is how i need to respond this is the boundary i need to set this is what might be going on and then kind of seek feedback from someone else who's not invested in the outcome right they're not in the relationship with you so they're not trying to seek power over you or they're not worried about being wrong or um in in a potentially like manipulative type relationship and they can kind of just say yeah that makes sense i i'm hearing the story and it's making me really angry so yeah i can validate your anger um this is the thing is we're moving towards understanding how to get through gaslighting and avoid gaslighting in future relationships one of the number one rules is that you have to be okay with agreeing to disagree sometimes so you will sometimes present to someone an issue like that i'm really struggling let's say my husband and i had an argument and he got really upset at me and said look you're acting just like your sister and i really hate when you start acting like your sister and and that like enrages me and so in that moment i i create this story in my head that's like oh my gosh he doesn't like me he doesn't respect me he views me as x y and z um that's what our brain does by the way our brain really quickly in survival mode wants to structure a story it's not like oh this husband of mine can love me and then sometimes disagree with me and sometimes not see things the same way that i see them your brain does not like that your brain likes black and white when you are faced with distress it really quickly wants to write a story okay this is the bad guy this is the person that's out to get you this is the threat that you need to defend yourself from fight to you know to defeat etc and as you can imagine the brains involuntary response to adversity that shows up in a relationship because all relationships have conflict and adversity is kind of counterproductive to what i'm talking about so you have to use your higher functioning to say like okay we're gonna have to agree to disagree you know this is this is my partner and my one of my favorite sayings is that you need to try to listen to understand the person um and not listen to respond i'm a person that you know when i get in conflict i have very high arousal and and we're going to talk about that how to down regulate in those arguments and i will try to fight my way out defend my way out uh i'll cut somebody else down but that those are the things that are counterproductive when there is gas lighting involved let me take make a note and let me go back for a minute to let you know gas lighting there's very mild versions of gas lighting by the way that all of us kind of do to some extent and then there's more egregious gaslighting that's kind of done to protect and hide a nefarious plot that's going on uh outside your privy so one of the more common things i always think of uh parenting you know your child at a park and you're saying hey you know watch out for those cracks don't run so fast you're gonna fall and then all sudden in that exact moment my child runs and trips and eats it and just starts screaming his head off it is an instinct of ours to walk up and go to the child and say you're okay you're okay it wasn't that bad it wasn't that bad that is a form a very again mild form of gaslighting right we're not talking high on the richter scale that's going to send the child to a therapist office but still in a moment of my discomfort of my maybe even some shame voices that i didn't protect him or that you know he's screaming so loud everyone's looking at me and telling me that i'm a bad parent like in a moment of shame and my own discomfort of this moment of wanting him to just stop crying and be comforted and be better i will invalidate his his experience i will invalidate that he might be in true pain that he um is upset about something so that's a very mild version of that um another incident of gaslighting that just kind of shows up in this world in general and i hope i do it justice by explaining it is the absence of what we call a civil discourse right if anyone's out there in the social media and the media world it's a pretty brutal place there's a lot of public shaming you know it's kind of that i'm right you're wrong eat it you know get get out of here you're you're the devil you're a horrible human judging around parenting we've we've lost the ability to have uncomfortable conversations where i don't agree with you i don't see it the way you see it but golly gee we're all different people you know we're kind of as i always tell clients and you hear me say it sometimes if you watch my youtube videos we're all like aliens from outer space and you either listen and engage to better understand where this person came from and maybe they'll they'll inform you your heart and your understanding a little bit and you might expand your capacity for compassion and empathy by hearing them and sitting in that uncomfortable discourse or you just shut it down and you gaslight them and you say you're wrong you're bad everything's wrong so i'm just trying to empower you to see the way that gaslighting kind of sprinkles into our everyday life and is is a very culturally accepted behavior when you think about it you know i always say physical abuse is so like oh if you get punched or kicked or anything like that that's like unacceptable and if you get called nasty names you know any word expletive in the book that's emotional abuse but really it's extremely traumatizing to feel what's going on your body see what's happening present it to a trusted loved one and have them say you're crazy i don't know what you're thinking i don't know why you're thinking this but holy gee gross because we can by the way sit with someone's difference of opinion and not gaslight ourselves i should always be able to go to my family system or safe places um friends communities say friends and community and therapists where i can say look this is what's happening i'm i'm feeling this way i don't like it and the next question should be tell me more tell me why you feel this way what's going on you know what's the story you're telling yourself and then they can build upon a better understanding of where it's coming from it doesn't always have to be right you know i could be like hey husband when you raised your eyebrow at me um the story i told myself is you think i'm a horrible wife and he's like i actually just had an itch in my eyebrow so no that's not what was happening um but you have to be comfortable with civil discourse you have to be comfortable with agreeing to disagree and our brain doesn't like it so you have to remind your brain it's okay brain there's not a black and white enemy this isn't like that this isn't an obvious threat where this person's either gonna you know stay married to me and love me or murder me it's somewhere in the gray area so let's go over i'm gonna finish up by just letting you know a couple pointers that i have for ways that you can start structuring your life to kind of stop the gas lighting and or structure it to avoid it in the future so first things first is i think it's always healthy especially after a relationship crises which a lot of you have gone through major relationship crises is to reset down in crises and assess who who am i and who do i want to be what do i want this life to look like one of my favorite things that someone says about crises is from glenn and doyle you know she says the root word of crises is a greek word for sift and when you're in crisis and really think about this what it does is it is like a sift for sand where everything that's superfluous everything that's not that important in life quickly just goes through the sift and only what is most important stays right there and that's what crises does is it really helps delineate in your life instantaneously what is most important to you what you want the most and everything else just falls through that's superfluous and so in moments of crises i always encourage clients to sit down and re-explore or sometimes it's for the first time ever their values and goals and again i i have a whole curriculum book and i'll talk about that later that just asks questions educates you on it another thing that's really important is to go through your boundaries and your non-negotiables so i have this boundaries chart it's available on my website for free just in like under my resources tabs and this is just a really great way you know of saying you know i'm not gonna i know what my wants and needs are and i will communicate them clearly i'm not responsible for other people they're not responsible for me um i share personal information gradually and in a safe healthy way um etc there's there's just a lot of really great nuggets in here to say okay it's really hard when you're living a very clear what's okay what's not okay who am i what do i stand for to be gaslighted um and again i wanna underpin that if you have been gaslighted it's not because you've just been this lost soul who didn't know who she or he or she was to begin with and then it set you up to be gaslighted again you could be very securely attached and you could have gone into this relationship with securely attached intentions and behavior such as again like we we have hard conversations if i say something that makes you angry you can sit with it with me and we can come to a better understanding we have forgiveness we have honesty we have it transparency so it doesn't mean that you were terrible at all these kind of things however if you are in a gaslighting relationship you've probably quickly had your boundaries tripped away at your instincts and intuition who you are what you stand for just completely wrecked and devastated so now is the invitation to kind of start rebuilding those things in your life a few more things lean into your community if you are repairing a relationship with someone who is a gaslighter you know they just can't hold space for those uncomfortable conversations they can't they're just go straight to like it never happened that's not that's not how it happened you're wrong this is you know when you're gonna get over it maybe maybe the problems that you're just your needs are too much and that you're just too emotionally unstable if that's the go-to um then you you've got to lean into a community so it's got to be therapists who are educated in this stuff who don't actually gaslight you as well by the way 12-step communities and support communities that are available support groups non-judgmental friends who also don't gaslight you right they don't say what you should be doing what you're doing wrong people who show the space for empathy and compassion um and by the way i have a whole other section on that on empathy and compassion you might be able to look it up on my youtube channel but compassion remember if i am sitting with a friend in compassion or i am a therapist sitting with a client and compassion it is not one person who knows more or knows better and can like guide that person to ascend up to where i am compassion is the understanding that we all struggle we all are in pain at one time or another and so if i want someone to hold space for me when i lose my mom or i i'm going through a tough time or i question my value and worth and i just kind of need to muddle through that and talk about it and and find empathy in that space you know the me too and i get it i want to hold space for other people to do that and i want them to hold space for me to do that that that's compassion and i hope that you're finding that in your support groups another thing to help you rebuild who you are and reconnect with your instincts and intuition is keeping like a journal or like talking into an auto recording or something like that um because when you have that untethered you're not speaking to anyone this communication is not going to anyone so it's not a relationship dyad type of communication it's just you it's really interesting to see what might pop up you know some anger that you didn't realize or some insight about what you might be wondering or thinking or feeling comfortable about that you weren't maybe feeling safe to stay in the relationship mindfulness this is going to cross uh all healing things um mindfulness back you know 10 11 years ago it would have been like a god mindfulness such like a hippie dippy saying that like you know i don't i don't hang out with people that do mindfulness sorry i i work and i win trophies but mindfulness just keeps showing up in the research so mindfulness can also be mindfulness paying attention meditation prayer sitting in stillness thinking when you're keeping a journal that can be done with mindfulness it's this idea that trauma disconnects you from your body and other people trauma and gaslighting disconnects you with your instincts and your intuition and it's there it never goes away like you can't shut down that instinct's gut instincts intuition that runs in the backdrop of your body all the time it doesn't go away so it's just you you have to kind of kick out the defense mechanisms oh no i'm wrong i'm crazy no that's you know and reconnect with it is it 100 accurate all the time absolutely not will it be falsely triggered um because you have so much trauma at this point in your life sure your instincts and intuition can often be wrong but guess what that's the beauty of healthier relationships you can own that you can wonder something guess something assert something and then go back and repair if you're a rock get comfortable with being in the in between space right that agree to disagree no one is right or wrong we're just shooting to be seen and hurt um you know there's that saying in a couple shift do you want to win or do you want to be understood and seen and hurt and have a safe space um you know do you want to listen to understand that's what you want to do is listen to understanding not to respond um be comfortable with your flaws and strengths so again this goes back to the several other pieces about knowing who you are you know so when someone comes at me and says um i think you're a little emotionally unstable i can quickly go back and be like i've done that inventory i'm not like i'm actually i'm a forgiving person i can sit and process i can have really hard conversations sometimes yeah i get angry and sometimes it might be a little bit more explosive but like i'm not emotionally unstable i'm actually pretty pretty grounded and it's because you do those inventories if you're familiar with the 12 steps and i have a whole series on youtube for free about how 12 steps for the non-addict can be very classic and helpful but it's this idea that if i become very in tune and understand my good am i bad my light and my dark that if someone does come up to me and says um i don't know like my husband i think i've mentioned this recently in another youtube i'm loud my family's loud so when we get i get angry i get loud and that's not productive for our exchange so if if you're talking about something and he's like ugh you need to be quiet or like please talk quieter and be like okay yeah that's i do to have a tendency to be a little loud when i get boisterous so they really can it can make a more productive engagement with another person so no one needs to gaslight the other person uh daily inventories i talked about the 12 steps step 10 11 12 are all about keeping your side of the street clean so that when someone does try to gaslight you or shame you that you're you're emotionally unstable you're a bad mom or dad you're you're crazy you're you're too jealous too much of this to not enough of this 10 11 and 12 are those daily inventories and practices to keep you very connected and very aware of who you are who you're not and and that way you can fend that off mentally and emotionally a lot more easily even if it's a trusted loved one hold others to all these same standards as you really fight to know who you are and have this inventory and accountability around what your strengths and weaknesses are and you can have hard conversations um you're going to hold other people to those uh those same standards of you know do you know who you are do you know what your boundaries are and my last things never defend what you know to be true um never you know i just kind of always say there's some things where it's just you just never negotiate with terrorists there's people that will just come up to you and say the same poor me story or the same rationale or the same why i don't want to go to 12-step meetings or why this or why i'm different and unique in a unicorn and i just don't defend what's to be true you know especially again when i'm working with addicts in recovery i really hold my ground and go yeah no sorry that's not working you know you've tried other things and life's pretty unmanageable and you show a lot of powerlessness so this is what you need to be doing never invalidate your reality experience so your gut and your feelings whether or not they're 100 accurate or just fractionally accurate don't ignore them they're picking up something something's telling you it's not okay and that's okay your your body is a neurofeedback system and you really want to honor that something's going on that's giving you a story that something's unsafe so you really need to take the time to say what is it was it is it the way the person said something is it something i saw it's something from my past that i haven't processed and acknowledged yet but never ever invalidate what what input you're receiving in your body talk it out safely with empathy compassion and um don't confuse holding space for someone else's experience with with like what gaslighting is so i can totally disagree with somebody but i can still hold space to say you know tell me more help me understand okay well this doesn't make sense though so help me understand this part okay but i've always felt like it was like this so give me more information because i just don't see how how you've come to this conclusion and the problem again is that your brain never finishes it off and go ah that's a nice and easy and complete conversation that you won 100 and everything's fine now that's not how conversations end so do not expect this really great dopamine hit of like ah that was a lovely productive conversation most conversations or i should say disagreements or civil discourse does not end with this dopamine hit of like oh yeah you rocked that that went 100 perfectly it just doesn't so that concludes that um before i finish up i just i have to let you know if you want more information i obviously i have my youtube channel where i have a ton of resources on all this um you saw me show several different resources on um on values and goals most of these are all available on my online course which i gave you a password and i think like a password and a code if you guys wanted to look into that online course otherwise i have live workshops and new ones have just been put up for january 18th so i'd encourage you to go check those out the trade partners groups and i also am a certified daring way uh facilitator so i teach a lot of brene brown stuff um material about shame resiliency vulnerability getting out of fear states shame states to have real authentic transparent intimacy with yourself and with others um and i believe that that's it so i'm going to shut everything down and have you ask any questions that you want to ask and i appreciate you joining us you

Channel: Kristin Snowden

Views: 2,563

Keywords: codependency, healthy relationships, divorce, meditation, mindfulness, healing trauma, betrayal trauma, infidelity, sex addiction, love addiction, attachment styles, gaslighting, emotional abuse, addiction recovery, 12 steps, healthy coping skills, depression, anxiety, shame, resiliency, boundaries, getting help, couples counseling, relationship problems, attachment science, love avoidant, anxious attachment, brene brown, rob weiss, values and goals, prodependence, narcissistic abuse

Id: zIQv7_Ui7wA

Length: 38min 6sec (2286 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 06 2021