A friend of mine shared a youtube clip with me. It depicts a scene from the movie “A Guide for the Married Man”. Even though it is an American sitcom and made to make you laugh, it actually functions as a great example to explain “gaslighting”.
It illustrates the experience of being with a partner who holds on to a lie even when all evidence is right there. Note there is a difference between lying and gaslighting. When combined together it feels lethal to the soul. The scene depicts both, lying and gaslighting tactics.
For those who are confused about the term gaslighting: Gaslighting is when one person is denying the “reality” about something that happened and you are left with doubting yourself and your sense of perception of it all. Keyword here is “reality”. Losing your sense of perception essentially indicates you have lost the connection to your own sense of self. You stopped trusting yourself. You stopped believing in your ability to accurately perceive and interpret your environment.
I experienced this skin-deep myself in “that” relationship. He denied everything when I expressed my perceptions (gut feelings). As we all now know, his entire personal and business life was fabricated, a lie. It literally brings you to the brink of loosing your sanity. Some narcissists go into attack mode to deflect the attention away from their doings and pinning it onto you, accusing you of being the cheater and the liar.
A narcissists accusations most often are their own confessions.
Depending on your temperament, you either crumble and your soul withers away. Or you fight, and stand up for yourself. When you reach this point of utter confusion, coupled with disbelief, pain, and frustration, you start fighting back and most likely begin to react to their poking. It’s your coping and protection mechanism, your response to the ongoing mistreatment. Hence the saying “hurt people hurt people” — here comes the generational trauma, passing the behavior down from generation to generation, until one wakes up and breaks the pattern.
Going back to you standing up for yourself, it is the perfect set up for the narcissist or psychopath to turn the table, to point out “your” behavior and call you abusive or unstable and further criticize your character (aka look how you behave, look how you treat me, etc). In psychology, it’s called “reactive abusive”.
You are starting to behave out of character.
At times you don’t even recognize yourself anymore. You wonder what happened to the person you once used to be.
It’s truly crazy making. At least, these days it’s safe(r) to publicly talk, acknowledge and bring awareness to these experiences. We are lucky to have so much support and resources available. Back in the days, women were labelled as “hysterical”, put away into mental institutions, sedated with drugs, and deemed as crazy for the rest of their lives without questioning what really happened behind “closed doors”. Can you imagine? It’s one thing to be betrayed by the person you love(d), it’s a whole other level when you are betrayed by the entire system that was supposed to help and protect you. I can not even fathom.
It takes a lot of strength to stay anchored and solid in yourself to handle situations as such, and make it through. For those of you facing challenging times right now, don’t give up.
The key is to nurture the re-connection to yourself.
Remember, the only thing you have to do is to stay authentic to yourself, to your own truth. Nobody else’s. Ground yourself in that. I’m still a hopeless romantic, even after everything I experienced. I have not given up on hope to love again, deeply and with all my heart and soul. However, for now, I want to focus on myself. If I can do it, so can you. Keep going. You are doing great!
So long, ‘til next time….
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>> Continue Reading — #24: The Power of Release: Prioritizing The New Path — Yours
