(gentle music) - Have you heard of gaslighting? Here to explain what it
is, how to spot the signs, and perhaps most importantly, what to do, is clinical psychologist
and MedCircle doctor, Cali the lab. I'm just kidding, Dr. Ramani. Although Cali's getting an education too. - Cali, yeah, I mean, I bet
there's narcissistic dogs. - Oh, there are, there are.
- Yeah, yeah. - Okay, so we're talking, we just filmed a series
about narcissistic abuse. You can check out the link
in this video description to learn more about that, but in this video we're
talking about gaslighting. What is that? - So gaslighting is a
form of emotional abuse. It's where a person doubts
the reality of another person, leaving that other person
very, very confused. Gaslighting is sort of a
signature tool of the narcissist and they're often engaging in it to protect their fragile egos, to keep the world in line
with their own reality, with little regard of how
much it hurts another person when we doubt theirs. So again, it's very much
a tool of manipulation, of emotional abuse, of again, second guessing someone else's reality. - And there are lots of
things to look out for, but we're gonna go through
three of them today. What's the first one? - The first one is when
somebody says to you you're too sensitive or you
have no right to feel that way. When you do that, you
immediately tell them that their emotional world is invalid and you're judging them for it. You have no right to feel that way, as though you are judge and jury on their emotional state, okay? So what that does is it makes
a person literally doubt their feeling and a feeling
is a spontaneous experience, so now it's almost like telling
someone you must be too hot and they're perfectly comfortable, or telling someone they're
hungry when they're not. You know, so this is the emotional, when we do this emotionally,
it is termed gaslighting because the person's like,
I thought I was that, but you're telling me I don't
get to be angry about this. And then some people, when
they're told it enough, they believe it. When people are given this situation, being told that you're too sensitive, you have no right to feel this way, the best thing to do is to
not engage at that point 'cause you can't win. No matter what you say,
this person, if anything, by those statements has
shown that they're willing to emotionally manipulate and abuse you. There's nowhere to go
in that conversation. So if they say that,
maybe if anything say no, that is in fact how I
feel and leave it at that, but they're gonna keep pushing at you so you can just let it go and know the conversation ends there instead of you getting into
a ongoing conflict with them. - Right, okay. - The second is deflection. Believe it or not, deflection
is a form of gaslighting because you're talking about something. You might take the time and say we need to talk about this
issue, and sit the person down in a hope of benefiting your relationship, and maybe you raise up something,
I don't know, about a lie or about something financial
in the relationship, and they deflect it to,
well, you know what? Now that you brought this up, remember two years ago when
blah, blah, blah, blah? And now an issue you're bringing up that's very relevant to here and now, they now are talking about
something that happened years ago or something that's unrelated,
but when they deflect, they deflect to a situation
that makes you look bad. - And see, what I would wanna do is say excuse me, you're deflecting, but I'm guessing that's wrong.
- And they'll say, oh, 'cause that situation makes
you uncomfortable, doesn't it? And they'll keep, you see what I'm saying? They're gonna tunnel. - Oh, sorry, Cali, sorry.
- And when there is that kind of deflection, once again, you can either gently
bring it back, say, okay, you know, we can come
back to that, absolutely, you think we should talk about that if it's important to you, I really wanna stick right now though, to the issue that we were
originally talking about. Oh my God, you know, it's really
hard to talk to you about, and then they might keep
going back and forth. If you have to reign
them in more than twice that conversation is done, you're gonna have to either
find a different forum for it or realize you may never get
to have that conversation. - Yeah, managing expectations
is a reoccurring theme when you are dealing with
someone who's a narcissist. - Especially gaslighting. - Especially gaslighting, yeah. - The third example of gaslighting
is that never happened. So to which you know, most
of us when we're told that, our first tendency, believe it
or not, is maybe that didn't. You know, I'll always say like,
I'm getting a little older, maybe I didn't remember that. And there will be people, the
Internet's made this easier, they'll go back over old photos,
they'll dig up old emails and I'll say, ha, there it is. And proud as punch
they'll trot that evidence up to the narcissistic
person and say, see? Narcissists just don't like getting caught in the inconsistencies
of their gaslighting. They will either get angry
or they'll deflect again. Oh, how nice. Would you like me to pull out emails that show when you did this
to me, then, that, this? And so, it's very unsatisfying. I've always said that a
surefire sign to detect whether you're being
gaslighted in a relationship is you get to the point where you feel like you need to either A,
record all your conversations, but I can tell you this right now. If you play back that
recording to the narcissist, they're not gonna cop to it. They're going to either say
you are such a petty person that you had to feel the need
to record our conversation, how dare you? And they will get very sort
of morally high and mighty but you're doing this
to preserve your sanity. If you do make these recordings, they're really only for your sanity. You can say, okay, I did say it this way, I didn't say the thing they said. And if anything, that data
might give you more conviction to realize this person's gaslighting you and decide what your next step's gonna be. Another mistake people make when they're in gaslighting relationships is they write the long email. 'Cause see, the gaslighter
never listens to you. They're always deflecting and accusing. You're too sensitive,
you're this, you're that, so the person, I'm gonna
write them an email. And if I can explain it all to them and they can't interrupt
me, they're gonna get it. No. - Not gonna happen. - They're not gonna get it. And then these people
will spend days, weekends, entire weeks like writing
the perfect email, making sure the language is right, and they send it thinking
well, now they're gonna get it. The narcissist is gonna reload both guns and just, they're gonna
send it all back to you, sometimes they'll even give
you a bullet-by-bullet, so then they're gonna
gaslight you on paper. So I think that the simplest advice when you're being gaslighted
is to end the conversation because you're going nowhere. But gaslighting does lead
people to do these things like emails and recordings that just only confirms
what you already know. It's a very unhealthy pattern, most people in the field characterize it as a form of emotional abuse, and people who are confused by it, that often contributes to other issues like second guessing, and
self-doubt, and confusion. And at that point, I really
think that it's critical to get the mental health
services you need, talk to someone about
this, and really figure out what you want the direction
of this relationship to be. - Yeah, and figuring out that direction requires getting an education. In this MedCircle series
on narcissistic abuse, one of the questions that
I asked Dr. Ramani was, do they know that they're gaslighting? Here's what she had to say about that. (gentle music) Now we say gaslighting as if
they took a weekend course on gaslighting to implement. This is a natural trait
behavior that they have. - Right, so when we
talk about gaslighting, one thing that makes people go mad is they must know they're doing this. Ish. And the reason I say ish is that because of the
narcissist's core insecurity, they're singularly motivated
to protect themselves and their reality or
their version of reality. And so when they gaslight,
it's not like they're ha ha ha, I'm gonna manipulate this person. It's not like the evil
genius kind of thing. It's the fact that they have no empathy so they don't stop to think
what this kind of conduct would do to another person. They're entitled, so they feel they have the right to do it, and they're fragile, so they don't wanna be sort of found out, and they wanna protect
what they might consider a fail or a mistake. So the combination of those
three things come together to make gaslighting an easy out and to minimize anything bad they did. So when they say you're
being too sensitive, what that's really saying is all right, you're having a feeling
and maybe I'm responsible, but let's not even talk. I don't wanna talk about
it anymore kind of thing. It's just minimizing, minimizing,
minimizing, and minimizing is a form of gaslighting. So it's probably not an active ha ha ha, but it's definitely,
it's a passive process, which actually makes it more dangerous because they do it without thinking. - You can watch the entire
series at medcircle.com and Dr. Ramani, you are gracing us with, I think this is your third book? Fourth book?
- My third book on October first. You want it, it's on everything
related to narcissism, and not just the intimate relationship, but relationships with parents, with your own adult
children, with your boss, with your friends, with your
in-laws, but it also gets at why we all are in a
relationship with the narcissist and it's called "The World at Large." I don't think anyone could
go through an entire day, either on your subway
commute, in the grocery store, in traffic, at a doctor's
office, on an airplane, where you are not in the
purview of narcissistic, entitled, or uncivil behavior, and I think that this book
is meant to set us all free and not keep falling for these traps that are being set for us. It is sort of like my
love letter to the world and saying please get yourselves out, everyone deserves better. And also even how to
avoid raising a narcissist in the first place. There's an entire chapter
on that, it's called, Don't You Know Who I Am? How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. It's already available
for pre-order on Amazon and it's on Barnes & Noble
too, you can pre-order it, or, and it's October one, or
you can get at your bookstore, but I think people should pre-order it. It's a big revolution. - I've already pre-ordered mine. It certainly is the topic of our time. In addition to reading that, make sure you check out the list of series that Dr. Ramani has
filled at medcircle.com. You can check those out using
the links below this video. I want you guys to leave a comment if you feel comfortable sharing
a short story or example of when you have been gaslighted. I think sharing these examples can open up people to different
forms of how this may look so they can recognize if
it's happening to them. Dr. Ramani, thanks for
being here as always. - Thank you, Kyle. - Cali, you just are an angel. I love ya to death, girl. I'm Kyle Kittleson, remember, whatever you're going
through, you got this. Thanks for watching. If you liked what you just
saw, then why not subscribe? Click right here for new episodes
and new series every week and to access exclusive
mental health videos that we only release at medcircle.com, check out the links below. (gentle music)
