Gaslighting 101 :How to Expose a Gaslighter
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Gaslighting: Abusive Relationship Tools that Sociopaths use to Hurt and Manipulate You!
Gaslighting: Abusive Relationship Tools that Sociopaths use to Hurt and Manipulate You!
So many times as a hypnotist and dating and relationship coach I witness the behavior of Gaslighting. The term “Gaslighting” has only been around for a short amount of time as that it came about after the study of sociology and psychology for years and years.
Bluntly and directly Gaslighting is the installation of a belief into a person’s mind that they, as a person are lacking sanity. It is making a person to believe that they are insane and or crazy or depressed or overly anxious.
Please, note the words “Blunt” and “Directly” above in my description of Gaslighting. A person who is using Gaslighting will be lacking the ability to tell the truth and to allow for a person to make their own decisions and to come to their own conclusions. In that being explained to you, please feel free to debate me or contradict me on this matter.
Why?
Because, a truly abusive and manipulative person that is focused on hurting and manipulating and having control over a person would never allow such a thing to take place.
Bullshit is Bullshit and the Truth is the Truth!
There is no such thing as a substitute for the Truth. Also, the Truth will usually have two properties, 1) it will trigger you or another person before they or you can accept it as true, 2) You and others cannot argue it or debate it.
The Sun is the Sun. It will rise and set on the horizon. It is a fact!
Please, take a moment and notice that most of reality in our day-to-day is filled with illusions. As a reader, you are forced to accept a certain level of Self-Responsibility in what you allow and disallow into your life. Many of us call this a specific and high level psychology term known only by the name of “Adulting!” Yes, that was a joke to keep the article light and it is needed because many of the outcomes of Gaslighting are beyond heartbreaking and disempowering! You can overcome Gaslighting in your life with understanding what Gas Lighting is first.
Gaslighter Tactic #1: Using your Fears to force you into a position that they are choosing for you!
When this techniques is used it can be used by some salespeople to make a sale or a purchase and it can be done in a manner that is helpful and considerate. After all, the first Parachute salesman would want to make money from selling parachutes before a plane begins to crash, correct? So there is a positive application to this. So what is the Negative use of this?
A) Terrorist Organisations use Gaslighting to inform their recruits that before an American Citizen can become an United States Marine that they must kill a newborn baby in order to show their devotion and cold heartedness. This is a lie. I myself, serving after 9 years in the Marine Corps never say anyone murder or harm a baby that was in uniform. In fact, I was a Military Correctional Officer that supervised military prisoners and some of those prisoners were guilty of sexually harming children. Harming Children is a criminal offense and is punished for in the United States and in the Military. It is not tolerated!
Still, this lie is told again and again in rumors and propaganda to recruit and to bring more and more recruits. A similar use of this was by the Japanese Army towards the Marines as well during the Second World War. Stories were told to the Japanese people that the Marines would come to kill the men, rape the women and eat their babies in front of them before then killing them were rampant throughout the communities. When the Marines arrived and took control of the island they had found that several civilians had murdered their child and committed suicide only to have the survivors to receive medical care and food and shelter. For details on this read this link on the Suicide Cliff in Saipan, Japan <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Cliff>
Commonly the fear is installed in a woman by a man to warn her to stay home and that the world is filled with dangerous people and that there are people who wish to harm her and rape her and that she needs him, a strong and defensive man to keep her safe and to provide her with safety.
The fear of a woman being taken advantage of by a banker, or in the matters of money is another. Please, ladies, do know that calculators do not require a specific type of genitals to operate and that they can add up to a Billion easily on the screens. Go make some money and do fun stuff. I encourage my woman to out earn me everyday! Here and I are a team and work together for our goals to come true. Gaslighters never encourage a person that they are abusing to excel and to have more freedom and independence!
Gaslighter Tactic #2 “Hey, I know you and you are…”
The phrase of “Hey, I know you and you are <insert negative aspect>” is one that has it’s roots in conversational hypnosis and manipulation. Common uses are, “Hey, I know you and you are a mess of depression and guilt, you need someone to help you to make sense and to protect you, baby” So the woman or man is then trapped into a relationship when they start accept this belief. Plus, how often does a person say that they are depressed in our world today? We hear it and see it everywhere in our society in the United States.
The assumption of smaller and less upsetting terms are used at first and they grow more and more severe as the yare used and asserted on to the person. So be aware of this.
Gaslighter Tactic #3 “This is normal! You should feel like this when this happens…”
Once I went to an event where men were being instructed on how to approach and hit on women in order to get a date and to have sex with women. There were several speakers there and many of them were teaching methods that were very respectful and appreciative of women, except for one speaker there that was on a pitchfest of shouting about his products and programs. A person had asked him, “What do I do if she changes her mind at the last moment and says that she doesn’t want to have sex with me? What do I do then?” Well, if you are reading this, when a person says “Stop”, “Stop having sex with me” or “No, I don’t want to have sex.” that is your cue to put your pants back on and go get a burrito or something, take the other person with you! Just get out of the bedroom and restart the interaction in a place that is safe fro both of you and to find out what went wrong. Talk about it!
Did this guy at the Seminar say that?
No, he did not!
This what he told the guy to say this. “Hey baby, this is normal and you should feel a bit uncomfortable and hard to get the first time we have sex, you will learn to enjoy it before we are done.”
Did you just get creeped the fuck out after reading that? I know I did just as I was typing it! I can still hear that piece of slime saying that in my head and he is still teaching that material to this day!
Gaslighters will always try to change the negative or discomfort of a person that they want to manipulate by saying, “This is normal, you should feel pain the first time you have sex with me.” “This is normal, all women give their boyfriends money to buy drugs with.”
Does these statements seem over the top yet?
Well, I can promise you that someone has used them on a person that you love or know and they got away with it.
Gaslighter Tactic #4: Questioning your sanity when they lose cooperation from you.
Commonly a sociopath or psychopath (there is little difference between the two and the field of psychology still debates what one or the other means) use this tactic. They will ask or request or demand something from someone and when that request is not fulfilled, they may become angry or upset or even extremely sad to create drama and then accuse the other person of being abusive to them or to being insane and crazy or even extremely unintelligent.
If you see a person in a relationship that has this being done to them, it is extremely difficult to get them out of this relationship and environment without proper training and understanding of the abuse.
Many cults do this exact technique to subdue their subjects and lovers and children into a web of trickery that not only holds them captive, it is also a protective and beneficial to them as well….in their own point of view that is.
Gaslighter Tactic #5: Spoken statements become a type of affirmations come in these forms
“Dammit that is why you can’t have a check card for the bank account! You can’t handle the responsibility to being a good mother and housekeeper, how could you ever hold down a job!”
“This seems too difficult for you and that is why you need me to help you. I love you and want what is best for you but you have an imbalance of chemicals in your brain and that is why you need me to help you make the better types of decisions for us and the family, you trust me right?”
There are many variations of these and they get more and more toxic. My fears is that by sharing too many of the common ones that more of these types of people will prey on people in their lives and wreck them more and more.
Gaslighter Tactic #6: Making you doubt yourself
Gasligters again want their prey to lack self-Confidence and Self-Esteem as that those two things when in a positive amount will force the Gaslighter to be shrugged off quickly and permanently in 99% of all cases.
So the over criticizing of a person and the pointing out of flaws keeps the person unable to build any self-confidence in their abilities and also makes building any resemblance of positive self-esteem nearly impossible.
I once lived with such a person as roommate and he would do this to me and other of my housemates and the one female roommate got it the worst and had been crippled by this Gaslighting her whole life. It was normal behavior for both of them and it was commonly done to each other. Their lives were always being lived out in the roles of the victim and the victimizer.
There are several ways to remove doubt from your life and I use a few of the more powerful exercises to give rock solid certainty and tools to address doubts in my clients that have abusive pasts or are looking to be taking on a leadership position in their company or communities. Leaders must be able to recognize Gaslighting as a Negative Manner of Motivating people, if not they are destined to be seen as feeble dictator that uses Force rather than personal power to lead their people.
Gaslighter Tactic #7: “I never said that!”
Abusive persons that gaslight others will deny statements that they made in order to maintain control. This is Red Flag that when done must be seen for what it is. Frailty and Weakness of a person attempts to assert control over another. It can take place from time to time but if it happens regularly and commonly than that is where the alarms should be sounding off in your head.
This happens in politics and it happens to an extremely high amount among the higher levels of Corporate America as persons begin to rise to the higher levels by stomping and outwitting others only to get to a place where maintaining their position must be done through fear and intimidation and the provoking of insecurity in others.
The dodging of the responsibility for their actions or lack of actions in situations grants them a sense of safety and security that cannot be challenged directly without a drastic and damaging response from them. There are procedures that work extremely well with this people to be exposed or to be realigned to work for you and with you but you have to follow the procedure extremely close and carefully! Once you do it once or twice it is easy to repeat.
Gaslighter Tactic #8: “Hey, I am in a jam here can you tell a little white lie for me?”
They will try to get you to lie for them in order to lower or lessen the stress for themselves. They won’t do this only once or twice but this is a repeatable and overused tactic for them and it has been used many times by persons in criminal organizations towards their spouses in order to hide evidence or to protect them from prosecution. The same is done by several higher level executives in large multi-billion dollar companies. Sure, not all of them do this yet, when you see the repeated over and over again use of lies being used it becomes clear, they are gaslighting!
The most common and overused aspect of this is that of a woman or a child lying to someone about an injury that they had received at the hands of an abuser. Such as a black eye and claiming that they had fallen down. They do this for several reasons. Sometimes to keep themselves safe from further abuse that they believe will end by the false promise being done by the abuser, or to protect the abuser from being arrested by Law Enforcement authorities.
They will also force the person to remain silent as well if there is a lack of physical harm being seen or expressed.
The worst thing an abused person can choose to do is to remain silent. Remember this, your voice matters. Your Words deserve to be heard and understood. You are worthy and deserving to be living in a safe and positive environment.
Gaslighter Tactic #9: Having a person to question their own sense of sanity!
As if the Abuser telling a person that they are insane or crazy is not bad enough they do it so often and frequently that they convince their victim that they themselves are crazy and they will accept this belief or debate it for sometime until ultimately they believe that they are insane.
If you believe that your loved one is having mental health challenges and issues get them to a trained professional that is a Psychologist and/or Psychiatrist. Get diagnosed!
Also know that when a mature and healthy person loves another person, they will do nothing of the sort to shame or embarrass a person who is having a mental health challenge. Loving persons hold others up, they don’t hold people down or lip their wings.
Gaslighter Tactic #10: They make you feel depressed!
Sadly, most Gaslighters are depressed and mentally unhealthy themselves and they can be depressed as well and os they can make others feel that way by manipulating them into believing that being depressed is normal because after all, being depressed is normal for them and they can be a bit of an energy vampire and draining of others in order to get their fill!
Most Gaslighting is done by people who learned it from others and it was used on them by people who had power over them. So, they empower themselves over others with this behaviors and they use it due to the behavior being a form of adaptation to the world and is used for survival and success. They are lacking resourcefulness and must learn a new way of communicating and overcoming their faults.
IT IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO FIX THEM!
IT IS THEIR OWN RESPONSIBILITY TO DO SO!
If a person you know is being abused report it to the local authorities, police, teacher, friend. The most important thing is to get that person out of the situation and to gain a new sense of reality where their voice is heard without punishment! If you are in this situation and are living with domestic abuse use the The National Domestic Violence Hotline or go to the website <http://www.thehotline.org/> for more information and please look at it in a safe and private place away from your abuser!
There are some higher levels of training and observational skills that I teach to my students that will allow for a person to easily recognize an abusive person or a sociopath and yet keep in mind that they are beyond chameleon like and will burrow deeply into the social environment in order to maintain their safety and their ability to use others and to abuse them!
There are some higher levels of training and observational skills that I teach to my students that will allow for a person to easily recognize an abusive person or a sociopath and yet keep in mind that they are beyond chameleon like and will burrow deeply into the social environment in order to maintain their safety and their ability to use others and to abuse them!
If you are interested in finding out more about Human Behavior and Behavioral Psychology that is taught to Top Level Intelligence Agents, Law Enforcement Officers and Criminal Attorneys and Interrogators, go and visit my good friend, Chase Hughes at Ellipsis Behavioral Laboratories for some of the most advanced training and information that I have seen. Go one step further like the Professionals above mention have and get the book by Chase Hughes where he tells all. A must have for anyone looking to gain influence and control over uncertain environments and persons!
