Do you think that you are a victim of a narcissist gaslighting tactics?
By the end of this video, you'll know exactly what gaslighting is, what the tactics are
that they use in relationships and in breakups and how to stop it.
Hi, I'm Rebecca Zung, top 1% divorce attorney and the bestselling author of the books "Negotiate
Like You Matter" and "Breaking Free: A Step-by-Step Divorce Guide."
And I've helped thousands of people just like you go from lives of drama, trauma and chaos
to step into lives of freedom, possibility, prosperity and purpose, and I do the same
thing right here with you in these videos.
So before we go any further, make sure you hit that little subscribe button, hit that
little notification bell and that way you'll be notified next time I upload any new videos,
which I do every single week, and even often more than every single week.
Now if you are dealing with a narcissist, you're dealing with gaslighting because they
all do it.
All different forms of narcissist.
No matter what kind you're dealing with, whether it's the malignant form, the grandiose form,
or the covert form, they all engage in gaslighting and especially the covert form.
And if you're dealing with a covert narcissist or you suspect that you may be, you're definitely
going to want to check out my videos on covert narcissism in relationships and the covert
passive aggressive narcissist and I will drop a link to those videos below.
So I'm going to give you a definition of gaslighting and then I'm going to give you some examples
of what it looks like in regular relationships in general and then also what it looks like
when you are either divorcing a narcissist, breaking up with a narcissist or dissolving
any kind of a relationship with a narcissist, even if it's a business partnership or a friendship,
something like that.
So what gaslighting is, it's a form of psychological manipulation and abuse that is deliberately
designed to try to make you think that you're crazy and more importantly from the narcissist
or sociopath's perspective, it is designed for them to self preserve and maintain control
over you or whoever their victim is.
The term gaslighting actually came from a play and then a movie from the 1940s where
the husband and it was actually called Gaslight, I believe.
And the husband was intentionally trying to make the wife think that she was crazy.
So what he would do is he would mess with the gaslights in the house.
He would blow them out or turn them down or something like that.
And she would say, wasn't that just lit?
And he would say, Nope, wasn't lit.
So obviously, you must be crazy.
I think she did eventually even end up going crazy.
And so that is the term that we now use for people who inflict psychological abuse on
another person in order to try to gain control over them and make them think that they're
crazy.
And as I said, it's especially a favorite tactic of covert narcissist because it's a
really under the radar type of abuse.
It's not overt abuse, it's not physical abuse, it's not outwardly calling someone a horrible
name, it's not calling them stupid.
It's much more subtle.
It's much more lethal in a lot of ways, much more toxic, very, very stealth and insidious.
And because it's so stealth, because it's so toxic, because it's so insidious, it can
actually cause the victim to start feeling anxiety, depression.
You do start feeling like you're going insane, it invokes feelings of self esteem problems,
worthlessness.
You really feel traumatized.
It literally sucks the life out of you.
I mean, you've heard narcissists be referred to as energy vampires.
They literally drain the life out of you and it can cause forms of PTSD.
It is a trauma and it can be very difficult to get over if you've been subjected to it
for years at a time.
So one form of gaslighting is lying and how it will look is the lie, if you ask them if
they did something, they'll lie and say that they did it.
And then when you catch them saying that they didn't, you're finding out that they didn't
do what they said they were going to do, then they manipulate it in some way so that you
confuse the conversation or so that it didn't happen the way you thought it was or something
like that.
So they just out and out lie about it.
And then when you catch them in the lie, they go to manipulate the truth about it.
So how that might look in a divorce is that they said that they were going to deposit
money in a certain bank account.
So you go and you keep checking the bank account because they said they took care of it and
you will keep not seeing the money in the bank account.
And so days go by and you say, "You said that you put the money in the bank account, it's
not there."
Well then they come back and they'll say, "Oh, I never said that I was going to put
the money in the bank account.
What I said was that I was going to pay the bills."
And you say, "No, no.
I have this email that says, I asked you if you put the money in the bank account and
you said you took care of it."
And then they say, "Well, what I meant was that I would take care of the bills, that
I'll just pay them directly.
And so you misunderstood what I was going to say."
And then of course they don't even pay the bills directly.
So it's this game that that goes on with you where you're just on constant pins and needles
wondering what's going on.
And it's their way of maintaining control over you and also making you think that you're
crazy.
So another form of this charming thing is manipulation.
And so how this looks is that you think that you had a conversation about something, maybe
it's about scheduling or maybe you decided that you weren't going to do something on
a particular weekend or maybe you decided that you were going to do something together
and suddenly that's changed and they've manipulated how that was going to look as well.
So how that might look in a divorce or a breakup situation is that they'll come to you and
they'll say, here are three choices for how we can settle and resolve our differences
and our issues and you say, okay, I pick number two and then they come back and you think
finally, I'm just going to give them what they want.
I can live with number two.
When you go through all of the machinations of figuring out if this is the right one and
okay, I guess I ca live with that and all right, I'll pick number two, thinking this
is finally going to be over, and then you go back and you pick number two and then they
come back and they say, well, we can't do number two anymore because number two only
was on the table if you were going to do X, Y and Z and they make something up that of
course never was part of the conversation and now suddenly the whole deal has blown
up because it was an illusory promise to begin with.
It was a deal that was never going to be had because the truth is they don't want to settle
the case.
They want to make your life as miserable as possible.
They want to get as much as they possibly can.
They do want to win, but they want to win in a way that isn't manipulation when it's
not the reasonable person conversation.
And then the third thing is deflecting or blame shifting and how this looks is that
if you call them out on their behavior and you say, "Aha, this is definitely something
that you didn't do.
You said you were going to send this email on this day and you didn't do it."
Well then they deflect, they blame shift or let's say you, you call them out on something
in the middle of a conversation.
You were irresponsible.
Well, they'll turn around and they'll say, "I don't like your tone.
I don't like the way you said that.
Or you are always irresponsible because blah, blah blah."
So they deflect and blame shift.
So in a divorce, it might look like this.
You guys have an agreement to use a co-parenting app for all of your communications for the
child.
Then out of the blue you get a message in the co-parenting app that says, thank you
so much for agreeing to change weekends with me and give me Johnny on your parenting time
next weekend.
And you immediately write back and you say, as you know, we were supposed to use our co-parenting
app for all conversations around changing the schedule and you didn't ask me about this
and this conversation never took place.
And then the next thing you're going to hear is, Oh really, really?
You're so petty that we have to use an app, really?
I mean, I guess if you're just that petty and you're that immature that you can just
have a regular conversation that we have to use the app for everything and suddenly it
becomes your fault.
If you are so ready to be done with these games, give me an "I'm ready" in the comments.
So here are a couple of things that you can do about gaslighting.
Remember, you are not going to stop them from gaslighting, but what you can do is shut them
down in some way so that it doesn't affect you.
So my suggestions or ways that you can protect yourself from what they're going to continue
to do.
Think of the narcissist as the wild animal.
They will never be caged, they will never be tamed or they can be caged.
But that's a whole other conversation and that's, that's more around strategy and leverage.
And that's another whole conversation.
But they will never be tamed.
And so you just have to assume that they're going to be whoever they are.
So the first thing that you can do is realize what's happening.
Once you start to take a step back and you can start observing them as if they are a
two year old having a tantrum on the floor and say, "Oh well there they go again, being
their narky selves", that's the first step in not bringing this into yourself and starting
to get over those feelings of anxiety and all of that, when you can really start seeing
them for who they are.
So that's number one is just realize what's happening and take a step back.
So number two is not to take anything personally that they do.
So number one, you just start taking a step back and you're just observing them.
Number two is realizing that they are just all about self preservation.
When you realize that everything a narcissist does is just really about them and has nothing
to do with you because they can't see past themselves, that nothing is about you.
So you can't ever take anything they do personally.
It's always about themselves.
They don't have the ability to have any empathy.
They lack total empathy for anyone except themselves.
So remember they have no internal sense of value.
They're trying to grab everything they can from the external.
So this whole thing of gaslighting you is self preservation and trying to control you
and control their environment.
So number two is don't take it personally.
And number three is to connect with other people who have been targets or victims, survivors
and thrivers of narcissistic abuse because these are your people.
These are the people who understand where you've been and where you're going and what
you need to do to heal yourself.
I have a private Facebook group, it's totally free.
It's called narcissist negotiators with Rebecca Zung and I will drop a link to that below.
If you want to connect with other people who are dealing with the same things that you
are, go ahead and ask to join that Facebook group and there you'll be able to connect
with other people who can support you online.
Number four is to create hard and fast boundaries.
Just decide this is how much communication I'm going to have with this person or this
is what the communication is going to look like and when you recognize the signs of what
they're doing and that they're lying, just don't allow them to get away with it.
Don't allow that to continue to happen.
You've noticed it, you've decided not to take it personally, so now you're just going to
just keep it over here away from you.
Number five is seek professional assistance.
If you can't afford a therapist or you don't have insurance, maybe there is some clergy
member or somebody that you can talk to or some kind of support group in your community
if you want to talk to somebody who has more training around helping people through trauma
and dealing with how to get over the abuse and all of the feelings of anxiety that you
probably have as a result of dealing with this for years.
And finally, the last one, number six is if you can, I always advocate to start planning
your exit from the relationship, if you can.
I obviously understand if you have children together or there's a financial constraint,
or there's other reasons why you feel like it's best for you to stay in the relationship
right now.
Then that's what you need to do.
But, eventually, eventually I would suggest that you try to shut down everything with
that narcissist.
There's never a good way to try to have a relationship or be in relationship with the
narcissist.
They just aren't capable of doing that.
And if you're getting ready to negotiate with the narcissist, make sure to grab my free
crush my negotiation prep worksheet.
It is chockfull of super valuable information and I will drop a link to that below.
And if you like this video, make sure you give me a like, give it a share, drop a comment,
let me know that you were here.
And if you haven't already subscribed to my channel, make sure you do that now.
Subscribe, hit the little bell so that you can be notified when I upload my new videos
every single week.
I'm Rebecca's Zung, top 1% divorce attorney, and I'm so glad that you stopped by here to
check out this video.
I look forward to seeing you in the next one and remember that today is a great day to
start negotiating your best life.