What is "gaslighting"? (Glossary of Narcissistic Relationships)

hi everyone its dr. Romani welcome back to this series where we take apart all the terms you need to stay sane in a narcissistic world these terms get thrown around a lot this series is designed to make you and help you understand these words in so many rich ways so that there's no more question I'm gonna give you examples that are that are relevant to your intimate relationships your family relationships and your work relationships and by the time you each understand each of these terms hopefully they become less of a problem for you today we're going to talk about gaslighting it is a word that everybody is talking about but not everyone is exactly sure of what it means and trust me for those of you who've experienced it most of you experienced it you'll know it when it happens but simply put it is having your emotions and your reality denied so I'm gonna run you through some classical statements the kinds of words people use when they're gaslighting you so here are some of the classics stop being so sensitive that never happened I think you may be mentally ill you need help why can't you take a joke why are you always so angry why can't you let go of the past no one is ever going to love you the way I do it doesn't sound like what you just did was that difficult it sounds like you are exaggerating I am sorry you choose to make yourself feel that way there is nothing that warrants you feeling that way you have no right to feel that way actually you don't really feel that way let me tell you how you do feel other people have it so much harder than you stop being a victim and to everyone out there on YouTube if you have some more examples of gaslighting statements you've heard or experienced please drop them below in the comments because it's always good for us to keep a library of gaslighting taglines so you know it's happening to you so exactly what is gaslighting let's start with where the term comes from it originates from a play that later became a film in the 1930s called Gaslight in the film the husband keeps turning the old-fashioned gas lights up and down and when she asks him who is turning the lights up and down he denies it's happening he tells her he doesn't think that they're any less bright than they were before she slowly starts to doubt her own reality then she loses her grip on reality and then she goes insane simply put gas lighting is the doubting of another person's reality deliberate or not it can be done by that long variety of phrases that I read to you above by saying something then denying it by promising something and then denying the promise over time the gas lighted person feels confused and full of self-doubt gas lighting can be manifested in a variety of ways so let's break them down first let's talk about classical gas lighting this involves straight up denial of your reality that never happened you have no right to feel that way every single narcissistic relationship I have ever worked with counseled or consulted on had some gas lighting present it's a given in a narcissistic or toxic relationship it results in the narcissist holding all of the power in the relationship because they hold the reality it leaves you full of self-doubt second-guessing confusion and when you are focusing all all of your energies I'm trying to get your own reality sorted the narcissus can do a good job of continuing to confuse you gas lighting is obviously manipulation emotional abuse and it sets a tone for the relationship one classical book about this is called he said the sky was purple and that is how gas lighting works not only is your reality denied you start accepting the reality of the other person the second kind of gas lighting is withholding I'm not going to talk to you if you bring that up again this results over time in silencing yourself in a relationship for fear that your other needs will not be met fear for example that you will lose the relationship and then also a pattern of doubting yourself and wondering if there is something wrong with you for bringing up a topic anyone who has ever been from a family of origin where this kind of emotional abuse was taking place or any other physical or sexual abuse you know this dynamic - well and for a child to hear that if you bring something up again that you would lose the love or support or safety of a significant adult such a parent it can be terrifying this kind of gas lighting can result in going into adulthood feeling that you are not allowed to speak about your own needs and as you can guess that can be a perfect setup for getting into and staying in a relationship with a narcissist as an adult the Third Kind of gas lighting is contradicting this involves screwing with your sense of reality by telling you that you did not remember a situation correctly actually your mother was at the party or I met you after my wife moved out of the house or you had already said that you didn't want to come to my birthday party when I changed the date contradicting can leave you wanting to do things like check old emails voicemails and text messages you may look at old photographs to actually confirm whether indeed your mother was actually at the party you start feeling like a private detective in your own life the fourth kind of gas lighting is diversion this involves changing the subject to something that makes them the narcissist look good and makes you look irresponsible or like a bad person for example I remember that time I had to run to the school to get Johnny when he broke his arm while you were too busy to be there for him because you were at work or when you bring up cheating or infidelity they will then bring up something that you may have felt ashamed about from your past for example perhaps you confided in your partner that you once cheated on a high school ex-boyfriend or girlfriend and they will twist it into that or they will try to play the guilt card and bring up their own dramas their work problems their health issues their money problems and the troubles they are having with their family to garner pity and distract away from a feeling that you are sharing the fifth type of gas lighting is gas lighting that involves minimization or sort of dampening of your feelings this is when they will tell you you're being petty for focusing on such a small issue or trying to make you feel like less of a person while framing it as other people having it so much worse than you you were really gonna stand here in our big comfortable house that I worked so hard for us and complain that I was flirting with someone when there are people out there that are homeless by the time you make sense of that you're like what gas fighting is all about moving the goal posts which the narces is do all the time they shift your reality and they change the rules mid-game or they have one set of rules for themselves and another set of rules for you and other people when you try to bring up this inconsistency they will either insult you or label you as petty in many ways it can feel really nitpicky I often say the gas lighting is sort of the way that lawyers argue they go after that one little thing designed to win the argument because for narcissus it is all about winning they do not care that it is cruel to you or dissolves the intimacy and closeness in the relationship as long as they win in one story a guy was snagged in the parking lot of a motel where his wife had seen the woman she has suspected him of having an affair with and she had seen that woman had gone in earlier when she confronted him and in fact could even see the other woman getting into her car on the other side of the lot she said there you go I finally caught you in bed with your girlfriend and you know what he responded he said no you didn't you just found me in a parking lot and there is a mall over there I don't know what your problem is you need to get some psychiatric help I suppose legally he was right she did only see him in a parking lot and only speculated that he was in bed with someone else but after seeing all the texts and emails and all the rest of it she knew that wasn't the case but this is cruel what he did was cruel and life is not a court of law physical gaslighting happens when physical violence starts to creep into the relationship this may happen when the narcissistic partner for example may strongly grab another person's arm and when the person whose arm was grabbed reacts to it the narcissist will say stop exaggerating it didn't really hurt stop being so sensitive and in top of that at this point you're probably often feeling a lot of Terror to other forms of gaslighting include gas lighting by proxy and gas lighting by tribe gas lighting by proxy occurs when someone else does the gas lighting for the narcissist and since you know how good and how often other people enable narcissists these enablers become gas lighters for the narcissist as well examples of this would be one parent making excuses for the narcissistic parents behavior your father didn't really mean that or other employees in your workplace making excuses for a toxic supervisor hey listen we're the most federal office in the region he may be a tough talker but he's just trying to push all of us to be our best or the friend of a toxic spouse making an excuse go ahead and give him another chance he really is a good guy gasps sliding by tribe is in essence a form of enabling it is when you're faced down by the network of people around you and around the narcissist and who turn around and tell you that what you are experiencing didn't happen I have consulted on many cases where people were subjected to invalidation harassment intimidation and other verbal abuse in work settings and even had solid documentation in most cases other people in the workplace were saying things like it isn't that bad or her bark is worse than her bite which is a horrible feeling gas sighting by tribe happens in families all of the time especially when there is abuse the victim or victims of abuse in a family or the scapegoats in a family are not heard and the family will often close ranks and tell them that they are disloyal for criticizing the father or the grandfather or the aunt or the mother whomever the perpetrator was and then they will talk about how lucky they are to be in this family and obviously gaslighting by tribe can happen in a couple your friends try and minimize how bad your relationship is for example they may say things like marriage is hard all relationships go through rough spots and most people who Gaslight by tribe don't want the inconvenience of your divorce or separation from the family because they don't want to have to choose sides they don't really care about you they are doing what works for them kids are very susceptible to gaslighting because they aren't quite yet cynical enough to understand that people could be this manipulative children don't feel safe questioning parents and will often succumb to the skewed reality of the narcissistic parent gaslighting bosses can harm your career and your mental health or you may take the fall for a bosses error or the error of someone that the boss or the workplace wants to protect while it is happening and everyone is gaslighting you at the same time you feel like you have walked into the matrix and when the tribe is gaslighting you you'll see that you likely will not have a legal leg to stand on to protect yourself there is a flip side to gaslighting too you may start gaslighting yourself after having to numb yourself for so long and to live in confusion for so long you may find yourself denying your own emotions saying something like I don't feel anything this isn't upsetting me after years of being gaslighted you learn to Gaslight yourself why do narcissists Gaslight the same reason they do everything to protect their fragile egos other people's realities are a threat to their own they construct their version of reality that allows them to maintain their false sense of power and because the narcissist narratives are inflexible they are not willing to integrate other people's perspectives which is why they so often come off as pigheaded and stubborn if you are in pain and they may be in responsible if you are in pain and they may be responsible in part for your pain they sure as hell don't want to deal with that uncomfortable feeling so they don't they simply tell you that you aren't having that feeling you're not in pain and their fragility means that they're threatened by other people's feelings and realities and so they don't make room for them and they deny them outright how convenient for them and how abusive for you so why do we fall for it why do we fall for gaslighting why don't we just walk away the first time that someone gasps lied to us or say a few choice obscene words to them there were a few reasons and abilities first if you grew up being gaslighted you already doubt your reality after a lifetime of gas lighting it is almost normalized and you accept it as part of a human relationship second is the fact that most of you are nice people and you create rationalizations or you offer people second chances believing that they really didn't or couldn't possibly mean it third for too many people especially those who are frightened of abandonment or just do not recognize their own reality there is the fear of losing the narcissist if you call them out or at least you may be concerned about being perceived as arrogant or narcissistic yourself if you actually said something fourth most people don't know gas lighting is a thing and after seeing this video you no longer have that excuse it is a classical form of emotional abuse and yet we don't tell and teach people about it most people when I point out to them that they were gas lighted they'll say what's that and then in a matter of minutes 30 years of a confusing marriage starts to make sense so what are we supposed to do if we're gaslighted obviously in the best-case scenario you see it as the red neon flag that it is and you walk away that's not always an option so I tell people to internally stand their ground as always don't get in the mud with them don't defend yourself don't react just learn that little Mona Lisa smile reveal nothing on your face give a little head Bob like that and do not give up on your own reality hold it internally and make a mental note that you were just gaslighted once a person does it once they will do it again it is a wake-up call that you should not share your vulnerability with this person you shouldn't share your intellectual property or your fears or anything they will weaponize all of it and use it against you what shouldn't you do don't try to bring them over to your way of thinking that is a mistake that many people make in narcissistic relationships when they're being gaslighted everyone wants to explain themselves to the narcissist and then they think everything will be okay this is a huge mistake to do this narcissists are masters at gaslighting and they don't give a darn about your reality once you pull out your phone to show them the text messages that show them that they were gaslighting you they don't step back and say oh my goodness I am so sorry you are right I did say that instead they'll double down you guess let you some more and tell you that you are a petty little person who fights dirty and that in fact they're doing you a favor by putting up with your sorry pathetic self so now you just got gas elated twice don't explain yourself and then there's what I call the gas lighting test one surefire way that you know you're being gassed lighted you want to know how that works when you start pulling out text messages emails and voice recordings during arguments on a regular basis to make your point you know you're being gaslighted you start recording everything because you don't trust yourself anymore because your reality has been confused many times once you start doing that you know you're being gaslighted if you are being gaslighted then you are being emotionally abused if you can't leave at least be aware that this is a real thing and that it's happening and find other sources of support to be accurate mirrors and reality checks stop handing your reality over to the narcissist and then the next time they say the sky is purple just smile in them just smile at them in that sad way we smile at people who just don't get it and say I'm sure it'll be a mighty nice sunset tonight and then wink at that blue sky above you and own that it is blue your reality is safe grid don't pawn it off on a narcissist thank you again for tuning in hit the bell and subscribe because we've got episode's coming out daily and you can also go back and watch this entire series there'll be no word that's relevant to narcissistic relationships that you will not be a master of thanks again

Channel: DoctorRamani

Views: 275,400

Keywords: yt:cc=on

Id: bVBdWSPXyRw

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020