Midlife Crisis: Support for Left Behind Spouses
Archives => Archived Topics => Topic started by: Songanddance on November 27, 2019, 01:48:26 AM
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I have noticed a lot of references to gaslighting and how our MLCers use it especially the narcissists. When ever I read about narcissists on here they always seemed extreme and I did not see that in my MLCer H; He's never fitted the classical symptoms. But what I began to realise as his MLC continues and so does his denial of his actions - how he would gas light me very subtly and carefully to try and keep me in his loop rather than my own.
So here's a thread for examples of gas lighting and how to deal with it. I would prefer it if the discussion did not go off at tangents discussing narcissism (plenty of examples on here already) nor examples of projection. I am more interested in the little ways that MLCers play the gas lighting game.
So share away....
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Excellent discussion topic, Songanddance.
I, too, saw the need for the topic after reading Jojojo’s latest post.
I hope to get back with my thoughts later.
It’s an important topic in that by recognizing what GL is and responding appropriately, LBS upholds the boundaries and her dignity.
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Mine used to say something...and in the very next sentence deny he ever said it. ???
Even if I had recorded it and played it back...it would be me ''miss hearing'' what he said. Or ''putting words in his mouth''.
Another thing he did that was in this realm was passive aggressive style punishment. So if I didn't say or do something he liked...he would then take a silent, cold mood and ignore me, avoid eye contact, not speak to me....this could last for hours or days if I let it. When I asked why he was acting that way...he would deny that he was acting differently at all... then tell me I was just trying to make a fight with him.
The idea of course was to get me to question and torture myself mentally trying to figure out why I was trying to start a fight I didn't want. ::)
He would also do things like talking to OW on FB for a bit before she became the OW fully, and when I asked about it..or said it made me uncomfortable how much he spoke to her...it told me I was controlling. That I NEVER let him have any friends...that I was jealous...None of which was true because she was the only friend I had a problem with, yet he painted it as if I had a problem with ANY friend he had. Deflection of course.
There are lots of other things but mainly it was a constant mental battle trying to make me question things. Was I being mean? Was I starting a fight over nothing? Was I being controlling?
I would like to say all this behaviour was isolated to after BD but it wasn't. It is something that did happen in small places throughout, but increased drastically in the year and a half before and after BD.
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Great topic Song,
I think my H has done small amounts of gaslighting throughout our marriage. It has only been in the last year or two I have come to recognize when it is happening. I believe this is coming about because as I have begun to dissect our marriage I have been sorting through what issues actually belong to me and what belong to him. I am starting to stand up for myself more and more and I THINK it is actually causing my H to stop and think. Recently his guilt is catching up with him and he has been trying to deflect it on me. Here are some recent examples:
My D called me the other night, in the conversation she asked if her dad was out of town. I said no why? She said she had not heard from him in 3 weeks. He never responded to any texts. She said he never checks on her anymore. I asked her if she had said this to her dad. She said no. I told her she needed to talk to him. I decided to mention my conversation to him. His first response was "What did you tell her?" I said she needed to reach out to you. He said "Why don't you ever defend me? You used to have my back. Are you siding with her?" (he is in teenaged mode) I said I'm not going to defend you when I have no idea what you have and haven't done with our D, and besides that our children are adults and so are you. Your relationship with our kids has nothing to do with me. He went silent.
The women in the office thing reared it's ugly head the other day. I had to stop by the office and my H was in his office having a beer and looking up plans with a woman employee. I was instantly triggered. I got what I needed to get and headed out the door. My H called me later and asked why I left so quickly. I was honest with him and said seeing you having a drink with a woman employee is a big trigger for me. He seemed confused. He said I always have had drinks with employees if I have a meeting at the end of the day, men or women. I told him that this is how his affair started and it is something that bothers me. He said,maybe you shouldn't come to the office at the end of the day and then you won't see it. :o I said maybe you should rethink your drinking habits and have some empathy for for the situation you caused to make me trigger. I left it at that. He went silent.
When asked why he is working so much my H always responds "I'm just trying to provide for everyone. You have no idea how hard it is for me, don't you care about our company? We could both retire and live a very comfortable life at this point. But it is all about his need to be the best and get more.
The funniest gaslighting moment was on our 30th anniversary 2 years ago. I posted a wedding picture on facebook. H asked me to take it down because "some people" (IE OW) might get upset about it. He said that "some people" may think that I was rubbing that fact in that we were still married after 30 years? I left it u.
The further along we go into this crisis the more my eyes have been opened to what my H is doing to try to relieve his guilt. I am responding more than reacting lately and I am unzipping my lip when the situation calls for it. I feel like the more self respect I have gained the more I am taking responsibility for what truly belongs to me and what doesn't. My H is kind of surprised at me calling him out calmly because the last 3 years I have been truly reactive and sound crazy sometimes.
Off to get Thanksgiving dinner preparation started. I pulled out some extra table for kids today and the thought crossed my mind that maybe I will put my H at the kids table....He has dipped into the tunnel and is acting like a teen.
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Earlier in his MLC H was more honest.. But the longer this goes on, the more he gaslights, probably because the more time that he remains in MLC, the more he has said and done that he feels the need to deny or twist into something other than what it was.
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I completely agree NYM. I think my H is starting to process somethings and wants to find someone else to blame for his transgressions. It’s not working with me anymore.
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Very good topic choice, Song :)
I think you recognise gaslighting bc it makes you doubt yourself or your own judgment about what is normal or real. If it goes on for a long time, it is crazymaking to the point where you feel unsure about what is real or not or unsure about your ability to know.
Gaslighting may involve lying but it is different. It is designed to cause you to doubt your sense of reality and adopt someone else's or be off-centred by uncertainty.
I think lies tend to make you doubt the other person or perhaps your ability to know when they are lying or not. Gaslighting leaves you uncertain and anxious about your own knowledge of what is true.
Imho I don't think gaslighting is always done with a conscious Machiavellian intention to drive us crazy. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is about distraction, sometimes about someone else's ability to know truth from lies or reality from story.
But I do believe gaslighting can be profoundly damaging to those on the receiving end for a long time. It can normalise the abnormal and dysfunctional so much that it takes real mental effort to claw our way out of it.
The antidotes? Refusing to engage, persuade or justify. Reducing contact/exposure to someone who does it. Placing less weight on someone else's POV. Finding and acting on facts and speaking your own truth. Calling it out for what it is like the small child looking at a naked emperor lol.
Some of my xh' gaslighting triumphs? Using his psychiatric diagnosis as a reason for not being able to communicate with me at all...while holding down a job and starting a relationship with ow. Getting angry about a tweet post I made about 'a nice snowy walk with my h' bc he despised social media now. Saying in an email that 'we have talked and talked without anything getting better' when he had not talked to me for months. Sending the police round bc he was 'worried' when I ignored a series of ranting texts for three days. Refusing to admit the existence of ow or mention her to everyone from his L to his family or me when all the facts meant that everyone knew she existed and he was living with her. Saying I had agreed to things I hadn't. Denying he had agreed to things he had even in the face of documentation. Saying that his L didn't 'necessarily represent his real views' bc he 'never read any of the legal letters before they were sent' as if the idea of your own L working for you was a novelty. Or complaining about the stress of a divorce process HE initiated damaging his mental health. Or using the divorce process as a reason for not being able to talk about the divorce bc he was 'scared of me', that I would use things he said against him legally so couldn't 'have the kind of conversation he wanted that would get us back to being a team again'. While he was planning his wedding with ow.. It's a pretty long list lol...but it was an exhausting mindf**k.
Looking back a bit more objectively, I think he did it for one of two reasons usually - whether consciously or unconsciously - to control the 'story' or to avoid being challenged by realities he did not want to deal with.
I have no idea if he did or didn't believe any of these things at the time, but it was obvious eventually that it was impossible to have any kind of rational conversation with him about anything really. He truly at one point, after maybe about a year, would have insisted that black was white or the earth was flat. The only picture of reality he saw was his own and for some strange reason he needed everyone else including me to see it the same. Regardless of awkward things like facts or different opinions or the law.
For me, gaslighting was the biggest reason why bit by bit I refused to meet him or talk to him on the phone when he occasionally popped up wanting to. Tbh his 'normal' seemed more and more bizarre to me and the fact that he seemed not to think so made it even more bizarre. His gaslighting was a serious threat to my mental health and trying to change it or work with it was futile. Found this a useful article https://medium.com/@sheaemmafett/10-things-i-wish-i-d-known-about-gaslighting-22234cb5e407 and this https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/are-gaslighters-aware-what-they-do
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Gaslighting. A trade secret of my H during MLC. Sigh...
If I may share my thoughts on why my H did it and how I tried to identify and respond to it, please.
My MLCer gaslighted during his escape and avoid, not because of any nefarious agenda or to deceive me. It was to avoid responsibility for himself. To avoid feelings of deep shame and guilt. Truth was too difficult to face so he relied on blaming others, especially me, for the state of our marriage, family and the ever growing emotional distance between him and us. A case of self protection at rather primitive level.
For example, he gaslighted (bigly!) when I asked him why he was so emotionally distant from me. He blamed me for it by saying that I didn’t share the same hobbies as him, blah, blah, blah.
My reaction was, ‘O cra*, it’s my fault.’ Now, that’s one of the ways I identified his prodigious gaslighting. He made me feel guilty for his dastardly choices. Another indicator that he was gaslighting was when he convinced me with his accusation, I would think, ‘there is a grain of truth in what he said.’ That’s more insidious because that ‘grain’ became a huge rock in no time and I hung it around my neck. ::)
In short, identification of his gaslighting was through my immediate reaction of feeling guilty, and not what and how he said it.
Once I identified how easily I got sucked into his gaslighting, the only way to cope with it was not to engage him. ‘O’, ‘I see’, ‘really?’, ‘uh huh’. That took quite a bit of self control (AKA respond, not react) which is a part and parcel of detachment. By regarding him like a TV presenter ranting about something based on fluff, I could see how silly it all was. And immature. And bonkers.
Fortunately, he stopped gaslighting as the escape and avoid phase came to a close.
A sample of one.
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I think they all gaslight.
My h did it for months prior to him leaving. He did it a lot just after he left when he was coming to see me frequently. Since I only see him once a month he still tries it but I have come to see it for what it is.
I think he does it in order to justify to himself that what he’s doing is the right thing whilst trying to convince me that it’s my fault because he cannot handle the guilt he’s feeling.
Really not my problem this is for him to deal with. He told me last week that he feels tremendous guilt and knows I am suffering emotionally. A WTF moment if ever there was one. He would like to think I am suffering emotionally and will try to gaslight me into thinking I am but, I am not. I passed through that particular part of my journey some time ago. My other thought is maybe he sees me moving forward and being so much stronger than him that he tries to convince me that what he’s saying is actually true.
Right after saying all of this he then said it’s for the best. I just sat listening and saying very little. As my uncle always says it can only bring you down if you allow it to. You know the truth so don’t listen to what you know is false. Listen to yourself as only you knows you.
I prefer to keep going forward and I don’t pay attention to his victim mentality and gaslighting. I told him one thing which was, you go do whatever it is you think you need to and I will do the same for myself. I then left.
Gaslighting or lying is more to themselves to keep you from going forward. It’s like they cannot allow you to move forward. Crazy bus ticket holders all of them.
God bless you all
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When I told XW that I was uncomfortable with her and TGF26 Training with These Young lads she said "your paranoid and dont trust me. You Need therapy!". This was between BD and ABD!!!
I actually believed this $h!te too for a while "no, shes Right. Shes cool and would never……" PUKEBUCKET anyone?
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Undoubtedly they all gaslight - some are more extreme than others.
How though if you are a newbie do you recognise it and separate it from comments that made me based in truth.
For example - H accused me of being controlling and having to control everything.
Partially correct and partially gaslighting. I was much more of a control freak than I am now (mirror work) but the everything bit is the gaslighting.
As a newbie the reaction to such a comment would be defensive " No I don't have to control everything" which leads to the MLCer justifying further their comments and increasing the gaslighting.
A detached comment recognising the gaslighting would be " Everything H? - hmm interesting"
This is what I where I would like this thread to go - examples as Whyus and others have given and possible alternative solutions not to react and perpetuate it. Instead of discussing why MLCers gaslight - let's make this thread a share of the kinds of things they say and how to deflect/detach/defeat it.
Your turn!!
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Haha Whyus
It’s when I look back I think to myself WTF! He really convinced me that this was my fault entirely. That it was all my fault that he was unhappy and if I had have been a strong person who didn’t stop him from riding his bike when it was raining (I’m not kidding but I never stopped him doing anything he wanted btw). It was my fault that he took a job he had never wanted ( he actively wanted the job and loved it, he now hates it). Plus many other things I supposedly did wrong.
These MLCers are all in Lala Land and they are all desperately trying to avoid what they did and what they need to face. Let them get on with it and leave them alone to do it. It’s only giving them what they want after all isn’t it?
God bless you all
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Whyus
My W started with skimpy workout outfits at gym. Yes, told me I didn't trust her. Told me that's why she never wore revealing stuff. Because I was jealous. Total BS. Hell I was so dumb I encouraged her in her changing of wardrobes. As a husband I actually did like it.
Then she changed all her wardrobes underneath the clothes, I was still clueless. I never seen her wear them, but somebody was.
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I read somewhere (assuming you want to engage at all) that you can do a 'normal people with good intent test'.
Spew, blah, blah...
Gosh, I never knew you felt that way...I'm so sorry bc that really wasn't my intention. Can you give me an example so I can be sure I am understanding you now?
Normal people will usually a) become less angry bc they feel acknowledged and b) be able to give you a specific factual example which c) makes sense even if you don't agree with it.
Not normal people who are gaslighting? Won't do that and will usually double down and spew more.
The other trst I think is to use the rule of 3 to consider a)the facts you know and b) what they have to gain from persuading you the facts are not true. So, for instance, my xh got on a gaslighting roll towards the end of his divorce when he would complain that I was dragging the process out. I knew that a) that was not factually true but the opposite was actually and b) I could have emailed him the 'evidence' and it would not have changed his POV, waste of time. The other bit of gaslighting was that he was like a dog with a bone that he wanted my written permission to say I was ok if he broke his agreement, that I was happy for our m to end and if he applied for the absolute before the financials were done. No idea why he felt that way but it was a nonsense...he didn't need it legally, I couldn't stop him nor did he need my approval or permission...and it wasn't ok with me and I was entitled to feel that way..repeated words from his L and mine made no difference. So I just stopped engaging with him about it.
The other gaslighting clue I think is when people use words like Always and Never and Everything...particularly about a long time period. Rationally, this is unlikely to be the whole truth even if it is their perception.
I honestly think though the biggest warning sign of gaslighting is that it makes you feel off balance, unsure, as if you are being unreasonable when you know really you're not.
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What is curious here is why has a thread on how to deal with gaslighting been classified as a mirror work thread and not as an mlc strategy thread?
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I think I recognized gaslighting after I was told that I was a victim of it by my therapist.
You will feel uncomfortable, as if you're to blame, when in your heart you don't think you've done anything wrong.
Basically - you'll feel like you've done something wrong, when you haven't and it's the MLCers way of negating the responsibility or putting their blame on you and making it your fault.
Maybe that will help any newbies who don't realize, as I didn't...
Sea
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What a great idea to help people ide tidy gaslighting, when it started happening to me I felt like I was going crazy. It took me a long time to figure out what it was, and now the kids and I are better skilled at handling it, can still be hard, but, we’re progressing.
First time - end of April 2017 we arrive in FL for a family vacation, I made all arrangements, about a week before our flight he asked me if I had reserved a car, I said no, thanks for the reminder, he said “I’ll do it right now” - I said I always reserve through (our frequent flier airline) and we automatically get the points, discount etc on our mileage credit card. He said, great! A couple minutes later he says, I found a car for $xxx, I said great, that’s a good deal. It was an off brand place. Fast forward a week, we arrive at the airport, head downstairs to the rental areas and nowhere - nowhere can we find the change of the rental car company - it strikes me, I said, can I look at the reservation? He hands me his phone and the rental place is a few miles away from the airport - I said ok, this place is miles away, let’s see what we could do - he was way stressed, unreasonably so, I said it’s ok, I’m online now I may be able to find something at the airport right now - we got in one of the long lines and I had made a new reservation before we got to the counter - wasn’t too much more $$$... the reservation my H made was cancelable, so he just cancelled and it cost us nothing. All good right? As we were leaving he said, well it’s your fault, you made me reserve through xxx. It was totally out of character and completely false - the airline has all the big names at the airport, he just picked the best price. I also immediately knew it was something his mother would have said - we used to look at each other and take deep breaths when she did so. It that moment I literally said to myself, uh oh, I’m in trouble - it was the moment I knew my marriage was in trouble.
The other day in an argument on phone with sporty Son - he said, dad everything I just told you is true - it’s a fact, H said, just because it’s a fact, doesn’t make it true”
One day when working outside, H can I help you? H, no. I go upstairs and help kids with homework. Come back down less than an hour later, H, can I help you? No... I do it a third time about 15 minutes later...still no. Within an hour we drive sporty Son to practice, as we exit the car, he says I can’t believe you didn’t help me outside with the project.
More recently, we absolutely need to work together and not spend any more money on lawyers - he’s hired two more lawyers I. The last two months and started more legal proceedings
I could go on for days
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I spent atleast a year being gaslight before I figured out what it was. I thought I was going crazy. I literally called my mom crying on my way to work telling her something was wrong with my wife. She said you two are made for each other. Dad and I were just saying how good you guys are together.
I couldn't figure it out. I would ask my wife what was going on. She said she was in single mom mode and couldn't get out of it. Then we were looking at new houses and got a new car. I thought it was in my head that I was bipolar like my sister. It was the worst part of my entire life. I am still trying to recover from it. It seems like a bad dream.
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If I feel slimed, I've been slimed. My suggestion to people is if you feel like your concerns have been dismissed or poo-pooed as if your feelings don't matter, you are likely being gaslighted, and that applies to everyone you deal with.
My favorite gas lighting story was when I told xh that I felt like I was in this marriage alone. Xh declared, "I'm completely engaged in this marriage" yet was never there to help with anything. When BD came, xh declared," You were right. I had checked out way back then"
So he checked out, insisted he hadn't when I called him on his behavior, then said that he had.
For me, I didn't think it was my problem, I knew something was wrong, but assumed it was stress he was under.
Xh also used to "borrow" my tools and insist he put them back. I would have thought it was just forgetfulness until I found my tools hidden in his nightstand drawer, and then they would magically appear in my tool box two days later. When I asked if he had found them or put them there, he'd say I must have forgotten I'd put them back. I knew better.
Trust your instincts, if it feels off, it's probably off.
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Of course everyone of us has had some experience with gaslighting. You know that feeling when you just "know" something is going on ( like knowing there is an OW) and you are told in an extremely convincing way that you are "nuts?". That internal battle with simply knowing something and another person is an expert at denying and convincing you that you are in fact crazy and something is wrong with you . Neither voice gives up ...so you do feel like you are cracking up.
I believed my husband was the king of gaslighters and that caused repairing any marriage to come to a dead stop...many many times. One of the most troubling issues that still rears its head is him continual saying " I never said that ". So an example would be having a rather deep conversation and he asks me something and I answer ...sometimes at great length. He is then silent . When I ask for a response he says " I never said that". Like I am hearing things ???. Endless debates on what he said and what I heard . Yes, I started to doubt myself, thought I was nuts and talking to him was endless anxiety. The king of denial. I started to refuse to have conversations with him as it was extremely upsetting. Then I overheard him on the phone talking to one of his employees and low and behold he said " I never said that ". Interestingly , he also has said that to the counsellor . He responded to her, she replied and he said " I never said that". She ( because she is patient and loevely and gets paid to listen to his crazeee ) asks him to explain exactly what he means. The bottom line is he is a very poor communicator in terms of his thoughts, perceptions and emotional language. I knew that in the past when he helped with homework and the girls also said " I don't know what you mean" until someone was crying. We discussed this at length in therapy. So is his "gaslighting" intentional ? Or is he just a very ineffective communicator?
He had no idea what gaslighting meant or that there was such a term. We have watched videos , done some work with this and he sees what damage it creates . So it is now his responsibility to change that , not mine. T stay away from the damage of feeling gas-lit , I now ask for clarification of what he means ( before I answer) , repeat his question or call him on it . You are gaslighting...or it certainly feels the same. It still is a struggle. So is he an evil manipulative gaslighter or just a really shi##y communicator?
Another issue that has created endless misery is silence. There is much control and manipulation in silence. I have felt "punished" by his refusal to answer, react, ask questions, maintain the conversation etc. It is crazy-in-the-head making to deal with someone who simply quits the conversation. It enrages /triggers me to an absolute screaming maniac. It attaches to the childhood wound from my mother of refusing to answer me all of my childhood. And boy or boy, that makes me so reactive and angry. There was some understanding when I finally saw that connection. My mother "punished" with silence and is a gaping wound from my childhood still alive in my marriage.
I interpreted his "refusal" to respond as utter control, manipulation and a form of gaslighting and it endlessly triggered me to my 5 year old self with loud nasty protest behaviour. And then came a day in counselling when the therapist asked him some hard questions. He refused to answer her . She waited . Three , four, five minutes ...and she asked again. I am reacting to his refusal to answer and actually happy someone besides me will see what I put up with. Again she asks him ...and we wait . He is silent, he is bright red and sweaty looking , his eyes are like slits and he is frozen. I can see his chest moving to breathe...no other movement . He refuses. She asks him "what is happening to you right now? ". He says nothing. I FEEL FURY ...HOW DARE YOU TREAT SOMEONE LIKE THAT? . It feels like that person is made invisible, like you have "voided" thier presence and they do not matter one bit. She gives me the "be quiet look". She works away with silent him ..He "cannot think". He cannot find the right words to describe the emotion ( and it is a HUGE risk for him to "not get it right again), he is "emotionally flooded to his "freeze" reaction from his childhood. He was conditioned to "freeze" ...otherwise he would / believed he would be killed by his father. The fear is that paralyzing . She explained his reaction to me ( to us) in great detail , and for the 1st time I saw it in a different way and could react in a different way. It was a changing moment in my life. It was NOT gaslighting ...but it sure felt like it was. He works on this "freeze" response endlessly because he does see how it feels to me . He has not always been successful. Neither have I. But we now understand what is truly happening inside our little wounded selves. It is NOT always gaslighting but rather our responses to certain behaviours programmed inside of us. I hope this makes some amount of sense. I guess we have to look deeper sometimes and examine our reactions ...not just their behaviour. Hard lessons to learn . If I see or feel like I am being "gaslit" , I point it out and it gets talked about and stopped.
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What is curious here is why has a thread on how to deal with gaslighting been classified as a mirror work thread and not as an mlc strategy thread?
Good question.
My personal experience was I never heard the term, “gaslighting” until after BD. Why would I? I thought I was in a happy marriage, living a normal life.
When I read about gaslighting (among other things), it was like being hit with another bomb. He had been gaslighting the crap out of me and I had no idea.
Well, my MLCer didn’t stick around, he was gone the day of BD, so why would I have to worry about gaslighting now?
Bc the ghost of his words were inside me. I trusted him, I believed every single word that came out of his mouth and now I had to separate reality from his lies, not really about his life but mine.
That was the mirror work. Mirror-work that I believe is an ongoing project.
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What is curious here is why has a thread on how to deal with gaslighting been classified as a mirror work thread and not as an mlc strategy thread?
I can see why you would question that - however to me until I had recognised what my H was doing to me I couldn't recognise how my own growth was being hindered and so for me it was and still is important to be who I want to be and to be comfortable with my own decisions so that I recognise the gas lighting when it happens and it still does from my H.
So perhaps until you recognise that it is gaslighting it is mirror work and then your response can be a strategy. That said - we know that trying to be strategic with a high replayer MLCer doesn't always yield results because strategies fail until you have done the mirror work to back it up. It's a cycle and to be honest does it really matter what icon this thread has? Does the debate about have to belong to a precise icon? it could have been part of my story and my request and your answers would have been the same.
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What is curious here is why has a thread on how to deal with gaslighting been classified as a mirror work thread and not as an mlc strategy thread?
I can see why you would question that - however to me until I had recognised what my H was doing to me I couldn't recognise how my own growth was being hindered and so for me it was and still is important to be who I want to be and to be comfortable with my own decisions so that I recognise the gas lighting when it happens and it still does from my H.
So perhaps until you recognise that it is gaslighting it is mirror work and then your response can be a strategy. That said - we know that trying to be strategic with a high replayer MLCer doesn't always yield results because strategies fail until you have done the mirror work to back it up. It's a cycle and to be honest does it really matter what icon this thread has? Does the debate about have to belong to a precise icon? it could have been part of my story and my request and your answers would have been the same.
I feel similarly. While my self esteem was shot and I believed much of the gas lighting - that I was inadequate; that he had been unhappy; that my anger and lack of forgiveness was the problem, rather than the fact that he wouldn’t give up contact with ow; that he couldn’t talk to me but could talk to her ...etc, then I could t even begin to do mirror work properly. I had to find some confidence that it wasn’t all my fault.
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Seems like mirror work to me for the simple reason that I can't do anything at all about someone else's desire to try to gaslight me, but I can do my own work to recognise it, deal with it and have the confidence and boundaries to reject it.
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Seems like mirror work to me for the simple reason that I can't do anything at all about someone else's desire to try to gaslight me, but I can do my own work to recognise it, deal with it and have the confidence and boundaries to reject it.
^^^^^^That. Right there. It's no different than anything else. How you recognize a dysfunctional communication style, and once you do, how will you choose to deal with it. I recognized my experience was valid ( I fortunately had facts to back up my feeling I was alone in the marriage), I chose to do nothing except continue family life without a checked in H and father.
But the tools? That one made me start to feel crazy until the third time I found them in his nightstand and I simply said, "Hey, I see you found my tools." They never went missing again, but BD followed shortly thereafter.
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Here’s another good one - Sporty Son was injured two weeks ago that required a trip to the Energency Room/hospital. Last week we had a follow up with a specialist who talked about course of treatment options - one included MRI and PT, one straight to PT - this orthopedist specializes in work with athletes - he said, “all my elite athletes prefer to get the MRI first, gives them more info with the therapist and surgeon if we ultimately need that@ - H came to the appt with me and son. End of spot we agreed MRI plus PT. h was going to call insurance company to push through MRI approval. He calls us in the car about half an hour later and say he talked to insurance and they were working on it - the next morning I get an email from him, the first line says “I don’t think we should get an MRI..” I email him back saying “I’m confused we just agreed on an MRI last night... his next email to me, the first line reads “I never said he shouldn’t get him an MRI” - total and complete gaslighting - now I just say, stop gaslighting me - read the first sentence of your email.
Intentional effort to make you feel crazy? Ramblings of a mind that no longer works properly, I don’t know, but it really does make you feel like you are going crazy if you don’t learn how to identify it, not react to it, and feed it back to the person doing the gaslighting.
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Okay - so question... how to differentiate gaslighting from just plain lying?
Or is gaslighting lying to put the blame on you?
So,. I gave my H a picture of myself in 2005 from when he was going away for 8 months. It had been on his bedside table since then. One day, after I had been out of town with his ill father, I noticed that it wasn't on there any longer. I look and it's face down in his bedside table. I asked him what happened to it, and he said "it must have fallen behind the nightstand". I obviously knew he was lying, but next time I went upstairs, he had moved it to be under the nightstand! I just laughed so hard...
SO is that gaslighting or just plain old lying!?!
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Sea - gaslighting
Gaslighting has this element of trying to make you feel crazy and to question what you “know” - so that you question yourself - like did you really hear, experience what you heard - it’s the Wizard if Oz, I’m manipulating you but pay no attention to the person you see behind the curtain
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Great example, Sea.
If he had just said the nightstand thing, a lie.
Moving it? Gaslighting.
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Good discernment Treasur!
I'm sure that picture was destroyed when he moved his things into his new house - now he'll never have to worry about hiding it again!
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Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.
I got that from Wikipedia. You can lie to someone and not care if they believe you or not. Specific to gaslighting is not only the lie, but doing something to make the other person question if they are incorrect or misunderstood. If maybe the lie is accurate.
If the question is "what happened to the picture" the answer "I don't know" can be a lie. The answer "What picture, there was never a picture" is trying to make you question your own recollection of the situation.
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Thanks all - this is what I'm talking about. I hope that newbies are reading and absorbing this; it doesn't shortcut your growth but it sure helps on the road to detachment.
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And knowing you are not insane lol