In this video, I want to talk about gas lighting, which in
my view is the most insidious form of emotional abuse. This
type of abuse can happen in all sorts of relationships, from
the ones that we have with our intimate partners, our close
friends, parents, colleagues, co-work... co-workers, colleagues, they're the same,
bosses, you name it. If manipulative people could come to
us with a sign on their heads advertising their intentions,
that would make our lives so much easier. But on the
flip side, they often present as charming, flattering, kind.
Oh so sweet in the beginning. And hence, why a relationship
with them begins in the first place, and it might not be until
you're already neck deep into that relationship that you
start to notice that you're no longer the person that you
once were prior to the relationship beginning.
And so I wanted to make a video today and I want to share
with you the three telltale signs that you are the victim
of gaslighting. Watch until the very end for a fourth bonus
sign and for a message from me.
But first, if you're new here, please consider subscribing
because I make videos like this at least once a week.
What is gaslighting? Gaslighting is a form of psychological
manipulation, whereby the abuser or gaslighter leads the
victim to doubt their perception of reality. The term comes
from the 1944 film "Gaslight", in which an emotionally abusive
husband has isolated his wife from the world.
He then turns down the gaslights of their home, and when the
wife starts to pick up on the changes to her environment,
he completely denies them, leading her to believe she's gone
insane. And so this is the first sign of gaslighting
that I would offer to you, and it's that you find yourself doubting
your recollection of events.
Let's say you go to someone and you point out an inconsistency
to them. If their response to you is "I never said that," or
"that never happened," your natural inclination would be to
believe them because why would they be malicious in their
intentions? However, if this kind of occurrence keeps happening
within a relationship, then overtime you can start to feel the need
to record your conversations or go back to old text message
threads or email threads, just to verify to yourself that
you haven't gone insane.
That would be the first red flag, is feeling the need to record
conversations. If you then go to this person and you offer
evidence of their in consistencies, if this person's response
to you is anger, deflection, blame-shifting, then that's another
huge red flag. At the very least,
I would just say that in a healthy relationship,
you shouldn't have to feel so on edge all the
time from having to have backup of things that have happened
in the past.
There is a certain element of grace that comes from mutual
trust and respect that allows us to work through our disagreements
in a healthy way. Sign number two, you find yourself constantly
apologizing to the other person and yet they hardly ever
apologize to you.
Most of us have no issues with making apologies, taking ownership
of our mistakes because it's the right thing to do. But there's
a certain breed of manipulative people who seem to view any
suggestion that they've made a mistake as an attack on their
sense of self.
They can be so invested in this false sense of self that
the moment you point out an inconsistency, come hell or high
water, all they will be motivated to do is to bring your
perception of reality back into line with theirs. This person
is notorious for saying things like "Well, if you hadn't gone
on vacation, I wouldn't have ended up with more work to do,
and it was so much work.
Of course I missed
my deadline because I could hardly breathe under the
weight of all the work that I was left with."
Sorry.
That's a little personal. Anyways, or they'll say things like
"It's not my fault
I forgot to pick up so and so because you were supposed
to remind me."
You see the theme here. Their mistakes somehow become your
mistakes. The other thing that I want to point out here is
that not all instances of gaslighting are done out of intention.
Sometimes it can be a pathological defence on the part
of the gaslighter. But whether it was intentional or not,
if you were on the receiving end, if you are constantly apologizing
for things that you don't need to be apologizing for, if you
are constantly walking on eggshells, that is a huge red flag.
And sign number three is walking on eggshells.
They call you crazy or too emotional or too sensitive and
overtime,
you might even start to believe it.
You've learned to conduct yourself in a way that minimizes
blow-ups from the other person.
It's almost as if you've made an implicit agreement with
yourself that the act of self-preservation is more important
than the act of authentic self expression.
And of course, if you consider Maslow's hierarchy, this makes
a lot of sense. Bonus sign and our fourth sign, the manipulator
was oh so sweet and charming in the beginning and they made
you feel so good about yourself.
There's this imagery of a frog in hot water.
So they say if you take a frog and you throw that frog into
a boiling pot of hot water, that frogs going to immediately
jump out, but if you take a frog and place them into a pot of
cold water and gradually turn up the heat, then the next thing
you know is you'll have a dead frog in hot water.
I don't know how much of that imagery is true and I would
never want to find out, but as a metaphor, I think it's pretty
fitting. Manipulative people often
come across is flattering, charming, kind. Like the stuff of
our dreams in the beginning. And it's not until after a relationship
has begun and the honeymoon period has expired that the mask
starts to fall off. And even so, it can be a gradual process
and an intermittent process, one with positive affirmation
laced throughout intermittently. That can make things even
more confusing because you might start to bargain with yourself
and reason with yourself.
And you say well this person can't be all that bad because
they just said something nice about me yesterday.
So, I would offer this to you as my fourth sign, knowing that
many manipulative people tend to be overly flattering, charming,
sweet in the beginning. If someone comes to you that way and
they're offering all of this to you,
it kind of has to make you wonder, what their intentions are.
Not to say that being kind and sweet to someone isn't a good
thing. But, there's a point where you can almost intuitively
feel, maybe that's just my paranoia.
But anyways, I'm just going to present it to you
anyways, you can tell me what you think about it. If somebody
is overly sweet and kind to you, kind of has to make you wonder
what does this person want?
Why
does this person think I'm everything and a bag of chips when
they barely know me?
Of course, if you are someone who deep down feels like you're
lacking that from yourself, you're of course going to want
to get it from someone else and I can say from personal experience
that that was exactly my experience.
So anyways, that's it for our video today.
Thank you so much for joining me for another video.
And yes, I don't know if I've let it slip that I am speaking
from personal experience
when I share with you the signs of gaslighting.
I want to know, first of all, is this a topic that you resonate
with because I would love to make more videos about this
topic and would you be interested in hearing about my personal
story of having been on the receiving end of gaslighting?
If you found this video to be otherwise interesting or helpful,
please consider giving it a like and subscribing if you haven't
already and I will see you in my future videos.