Gaslighting
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Thanks for listening to Take Out Therapy, where you can improve your mental health, emotional stability, and life skills in less than 20 minutes a week. Simple, straightforward, authentic advice and education, right from a private practice therapist and anxiety expert. I'm Rebecca Hunter, and this is better mental health, delivered.
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Well, hello there, friend. I'm so glad you stopped by today for yet another mental health lesson. I'm tackling the ever popular idea of gaslighting, something that therapists, talk about all the time in the therapy office. Because actually, part of our responsibility is to help people understand what is happening, that means that we educate people. And actually in my work, I don't really do [00:01:00] talk therapy anymore. I lean way more towards the side of education and action in my work, because that's what gets change going the fastest. So yeah, gaslighting. Today, my goal is for you to understand what it is.
What it most certainly is not, and the degree of abusiveness of it, because there's a spectrum when it comes to gaslighting. Because there's a difference between the normal day escapism that we're all up to and real gaslighting.
And I just want you to understand the spectrum of things. And of course, see yourself. In that spectrum of things before I get going, I just want to mention that with any improvement in our mental health, we always want to try some different actions. People come to me all the time for overthinking, overthinking, too much thinking, monkey mind, all of it.
Oftentimes [00:02:00] it's not a super surface problem, like it's, it's underneath the surface. We talk through that, we get to the root of the problem, and we attack that, but the solutions to it are all the same. We have to retrain our brain. When it's overthinking, we have to retrain the brain. My simple, free, online class will help you do that.
And right now, I'm just giving stuff away. I've created so much content over the years, you might have noticed I'm back at it. On social media, I'm giving away a lot of the content that I have just sitting around because it's like leaving gold sitting in a drawer and I'm just not hiding it. Download your free class today at TakeOutTherapy.
com. Okay, so now we can get to today's topic, the ever popular gas lighting. Here's the problem. Gaslighting is now the overused mental health term of the [00:03:00] decade, and it has completely diluted people's understanding of a really serious and emotionally abusive things that happens all the time in relationships.
You know, I'd love to tell you that it only happens in really unhealthy relationships, like, you know, those really unhealthy people do it, but no friend. You know me, I'm a realist, and I'm going to be straight up with you and tell you that lots and lots of us do a little bit of gaslighting in our relationships to try to get our needs met.
So today I'm just going to like be real with you and talk about this everyday gaslighting that we do to each other. Because it is unhealthy, and it's kind of manipulative, and frankly, it's completely unnecessary in adult to adult relationships. Isn't that great news? So [00:04:00] why do we gaslight each other? And what is gaslighting, ?
So let me tell you a little bit about what gaslighting means. And then we'll talk about why on earth we do it. Gaslighting is when someone is trying to get someone else to question their own belief about something, they're trying to get that person to deny their own reality.
Gaslighting is basically a whole cacophony of behaviors designed to, uh, distract, put the focus on another person, and escape any negative ramifications. It's a bunch of masterful hijinks, really. Gaslighting can be pretty abusive behavior. It's incredibly invalidating and [00:05:00] frankly, it's incredibly rude to do to people you're in relationship with.
Right? So you might be scratching your head and saying, well, God, that sounds awful. Are you seriously saying we all gaslight each other? Are we all abusive? Are we all abusive? No. We do these behaviors sometimes when we get disconnected. And some shame creeps in, maybe vulnerability, which is ever so hard, and we get lost.
somewhere in the middle. We lose ourselves. We say things we shouldn't say because we don't know how to do conflict or hard emotions or how to deal with somebody else in their own hard emotions, right? We also gaslight ourselves. By sometimes denying that our own experience is valid, by calling ourselves names and [00:06:00] telling ourselves that our reality isn't really what we should be experiencing.
Taken to an extreme, these gaslighting behaviors eat away at a person's sense of self, to where they lose themselves. I've met a lot of people in my work having started my career at a shelter for women coming out survivors of domestic violence. We lose ourselves when somebody tries to take away our own trust in our own reality, right?
Yeah. If you gaslight yourself, you lose trust in yourself. If you gaslight others, you feel shitty. And if someone gaslights you, it's heartbreaking. It's completely disconnecting for the relationship, but also with yourself,
so, what are we talking about here? What kind of behaviors do we all kind of use in everyday [00:07:00] gaslighting, right? One is stonewalling. This is a big one that many of us use in otherwise healthy relationships, and all it means is The classic example of like one person is kind of hacked off at the other person, but they don't want to talk about it, but they want to let the other person know that they're upset.
And so the other person says, well, are you mad at me? And they say, no, right. And it goes on and on. And the person says, well, if you're mad at me, I really want to talk about it because it's so disruptive, right. Thinking that somebody is upset with you. And then there's more no, we're just stonewalling it.
We're not. Gaslighting is denial that something even is happening, right, that is actually happening. It's like, I never said that you're so crazy or you're always so negative, even when we're just trying to [00:08:00] have like a discussion about something that's, you know, kind of part of relationship and something that needs to get worked through.
Gaslighting is trivializing. Someone else's experience, really. And so, again, I'm talking about these, common everyday ways that we gaslight each other, right? Somebody comes to us with something and we're like, Oh, you make such a big deal out of everything. You're so sensitive. I'm like, almost laughing when I'm saying this, cause it's not funny.
Like we do this stuff to each other. A friend comes to us with something and they were more like, it's not a big deal. You're just being emotional. Right? This is everyday gaslighting. Gaslighting is blaming someone else for our own emotions or behaviors, which I used to do a ton when I was younger, right?
For [00:09:00] saying , you made me feel this way and that's why I behaved so badly, right? If you hadn't acted like that at dinner, I wouldn't have drank too much or acted out. It's this classic, I am the way I am because you're the way that you are. This is everyday gaslighting. And as I describe it, I can identify for you times in which I have done this in my own life, in my own relationships.
It's okay. When we look at ourselves, we want to remember that we always do our best and sometimes we don't know what the hell we're doing and we don't even know why. Right? But when we get disconnected from people,
we tend to get dysregulated. We tend to get kind of jacked up, right? And we say things we don't mean to say and behave in ways we don't mean to behave. And so many of us do this [00:10:00] and I want you to like put your arms around yourself and tell yourself, it's okay friend, like you're just working on yourself.
You're getting better every day. So am I. We just keep showing up and we keep seeing ourselves and we keep being willing to just do the work. So if you want to stop like these kind of micro gaslighting behaviors, as you go through life in the next couple days. Just notice. Notice these subtle things we do to try to get out of Uncomfortable things. Right? That's all we're really doing. We're trying to cope with discomfort. And please, please, please remind yourself that you can deal with discomfort.
You can navigate relationships as an authentic person. You can meet up with people as they are and just like listen to what they have to say. And it's okay. If you think it isn't a big deal or they are kind of being emotional, that's okay. That's better left unsaid. [00:11:00] What's more important is connection, validation.
And authenticity. I don't think this is important as you think it is, but I hear how important you think it is. That's okay. Right? To say things like that is really appropriate. I don't have this level of urgency about this situation, but I totally understand why you do. I get it.
I hear you. It's not hard to practice validation. Maybe I'll do another episode on it. The last one I did was way at the beginning of my podcast. So let's get into this. Let's talk about what do you do if you realize that you're in a situation in which gaslighting is happening? What I would say is always, always, always .
Slow down because gaslighting is very triggering and we tend to get a little jacked up, right? Our body starts to go into a little bit of fight or flight. So take some deep breaths, slow yourself down, [00:12:00] really feel what's happening in your body and commit to just regulating before you jump into some complicated communication situation.
My advice for you is always to regulate, I have a free class that I'm giving away right now. It's a top secret regulation tool chest that if practiced a bit here and there. It's going to lead you to be able to manage some of these situations.
So much better,
Okay, so then once you've slowed down, you've really felt yourself to make sure that you're regulated because that is your responsibility, then you want to practice what I call differentiation, right? And so what differentiation means is that In gaslighting, one of the dynamics that kind of takes place is that we get [00:13:00] all mushy with each other.
And what I mean by that is that, like, for the first example that I used about stonewalling, it's like, well, are you mad at me? And then the person's like, no, I'm not mad at you. But you know, They are mad. They're just not saying they're mad. And then a bunch of passive aggressive behavior. In this case with differentiation, and what I suggest in the face of gaslighting is to now separate out from someone's emotional state, right? And so we talked about this on a recent podcast episode about the art of disengagement, disengaging from someone else's emotions.
This sort of, , emotional processing process can be really important to good connection, meaning not that you don't really care that it's happening, but that you understand that the way that the person is dealing with this isn't [00:14:00] necessarily functional and that you're going to let them get to a place where they can get functional.
And the great thing about relationships is that we get to ask for what we want. And so we can say, Hey, I want to talk to you about what's going on here, but I'm going to wait in for you to be ready to do that. And trust that if it's something that you want to talk about, you're going to bring it on back to me.
Does that make sense? Instead of allowing gaslighting behavior to run the relationship, to actually get out in front of it and call it out, name it, and then we can proceed from there. . In the case of denying that something happened, meaning like, Oh, I never even said that. You're acting crazy.
Or when we introduce a relationship discussion and then somebody is like, Oh, you're being so negative, always bringing up problems, which [00:15:00] does happen in many relationships, right? Like this is real. Every day gaslighting, then again, we can regulate and we can go back to that process of differentiation and calling it out, right?
Meaning that someone else's denial of our reality is absolutely theirs. We don't have to own their denial of our reality. Meaning, if you think that I'm really negative, that's fine. That's totally your right to think that. That is not my intention in bringing this forward with you, nor is it what I'm looking to talk about.
And actually at this point, that's a distraction from what I do want to talk about. So again, regulation allows us to do this. It's this like little differentiation thing where we're like, listen, friend, I'm me [00:16:00] and you're you, and I'm going to differentiate myself from you because we don't deal with things the same.
That's really, really helpful in calling out gaslighting because here's the thing about gaslighting is it's a denial of what's happening. happening for someone else that they kind of push on to us. It's like they don't know how to deal with their own behavior. And so the best way to do that, oftentimes for many people that don't have the capacity, frankly, the emotional, the physical capacity to like, Tolerate this amount of discomfort, they just try to push it on to us.
And what I want you to understand is that you have a role in like, this isn't yours. So when someone tries to hand you a bag of poo, you say, [00:17:00] no, thank you. Right. And that is what I'm suggesting in terms of gaslighting is to say, I don't think like you think, and that to me is totally appropriate. And then oftentimes that helps to soothe the, you know, like kind of unhealthy thing we do in relationships when we're like everyday gaslighting.
And we come back together as. Uh, somewhat trying to be healthy partnership to talk it through, blah, blah, blah. Here's the thing. As a therapist, I see lots of abusive relationships. I see lots of everyday abuse. I see lots of absolutely hideous abuse.
And what I would say is like differentiating yourself and being willing to stand on your two feet and say, no, no, no, this is what I actually do think in [00:18:00] this situation. This is what my reality is, and this is what I would like to discuss. Just holding on to that is the, is going to be your guide. Right.
And what I say is like a three strikes rule. And then we need some help. When we get into a big pickle together to try to work it through in three different ways or three different times. But here's the thing. If it doesn't get solved to both people's, Oh, like that we could live with it. Right. Cause we don't always get what we want.
Don't bother being in relationship. If you always gonna want to get what you want, it ain't gonna happen. . But if we get to a point where we've tried and tried and tried, then we need to get some assistance and that's okay. We don't all have perfect relationship skills. Relationships are one of the most.
Threatening scenarios, love. Are you [00:19:00] kidding? Romance. Please. One of the most threatening scenarios for human beings to get in. So be patient, call behavior out of your own and other people's in order to get healthier within your relationships. It's okay to point things out, right? Emotionally developing adults.
We can talk through things. Now, here's a really important piece about gaslighting, and I know this podcast is running a pinch over today, but bear with me for one more minute. We gaslight ourselves all the time, and I want to call attention to this behavior because we have to stop doing this particularly.
When we gaslight ourselves, we tend to not notice when people are doing it to us. So when you deny your own intuition, when you call yourself a name, or criticize or [00:20:00] belittle yourself for your behavior or for what you think or how you feel. This is self gaslighting. And I would really, really encourage you to notice when this is happening and curb it.
Do you want to learn to knock that off? Like, come work with me. I'll show you how. This is what I do for a living. I help people learn to love, respect, and live for themselves. That's what gets me
All excited. You can come do a session. Here's the thing.
I got tools for all these things. If you need help, just reach out. If you need tools, keep listening.
Keep working on yourself. Keep asking for what you want and need in relationships. And you and I, we'll just keep showing up. We'll just keep doing our best and having that be enough. Okay. All right. I'll see you again next week. Take care of yourself.
Thanks so much for joining me today. To support this free [00:21:00] resource, subscribe, review, and pass an episode along to a friend in need. And always, please get the level of support that you need for your situation. Want a full session? Just reach out. I'm here to help. Head to TakeOutTherapy. com for lots more resources and to join my community.
This is better mental health delivered.
