Gaslighting Sounds Like Concern. That’s How It Works.

Learning what gaslighting is, is a very different experience than actually recognizing it in real time. When you’ve become accustomed to others gaslighting you, you stop questioning it. Instead, you convince yourself people just talk that way. But it’s not. It’s not the way people talk. The ones who talk that way are the ones to stay away from. Gaslighting is a vicious act. It works to create an artificial life for you and then sell it to you as though it’s really yours and that that’s the one that you’ve actually been living, not the real one you’re living now. It starts to strip you of any self-confidence or belief in your own decision-making or your own intuition. It seeks to destroy your connection to your intuition. It seeks to destroy your connection to who you actually are and everything you know about your life. It seeks to disconnect you completely so that you become completely reliant on the narcissist to make any decisions. This control hunger of the narcissist is the most terrifying and seemingly unbelievable thing about them. Because they have no empathy, they are able to take any route without feeling guilty at all. Instead of feeling guilt, they work to discover a new angle to be able to accomplish their same goal if you don’t buy the current story they are trying to “sell” you on.

It’s difficult to recognize gaslighting. It’s so shocking that you may sometimes just block it out of your conscious mind. Has anyone ever said to you... “Well, are you sure it happened that way? Are you sure you didn’t say something to upset them?“ or maybe they quip, with a condescending, poor, silly you tone “Are you imagining things again?” or “That’s not what I meant. You completely took it the wrong way.” Or something along those lines. It’s so subtle and insidious that it’s easy to let it go as a question from somebody that wants to “help“ or that wants to ”be there“ for you. But this is not help. This is not supportive. This is just someone who wants to knock you off of your solid ground. It makes them feel powerful. It makes them feel “right“ or, worse…it’s a very intentional direct attack and will continue if you allow that person to remain in your life. The first step is recognizing every time it happens. Don’t expect yourself to do and be aware of everything immediately and in real time. It’s more important for you to recognize it at all. Most of the time this means your realization comes well after the fact; later in the evening, the week, the month (or longer). Then, all of a sudden it hits you, and you realize it was gaslighting. During those moments, no matter how long they take to get to, this is cause for celebration! I know you will feel so many emotions, one of them most likely being anger, and that’s OK. Because once you do recognize it, that’s the point that turns everything around and from there, it will become easier to spot it, to hear it, and eventually to walk away from it. That’s the ultimate goal. To not just walk away from it, but to be completely unbothered by it and really see and genuinely understand, inside and out, that those actions have nothing to do with you. They have zero to do with you, no matter how much the narcissist is trying to make you believe that what they describe is your actual reality. It never was you and they never had any right to try to make you believe this. Their cruelty is unsurpassed. So don’t be discouraged when it takes you so long to recognize it, remember instead that it is like a man-eating worm traveling underneath the radar of conscious acceptance. Celebrate when it comes up to your conscious awareness and makes itself fully clear, celebrate! Get yourself some confetti and throw it up in the air. Get a kazoo. I’m serious. Enjoy your Growth. I for one, know just how hard you work for it.

~Janice M. Burke

Image by Pruthvi Sagar from Unsplash