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- Have you heard of gaslighting?
Here to explain what it is, how to spot the signs,
and perhaps most importantly, what to do,
is clinical psychologist and MedCircle doctor,
Cali the lab.
I'm just kidding, Dr. Ramani.
Although Cali's getting an education too.
- Cali, yeah, I mean, I bet there's narcissistic dogs.
- Oh, there are, there are. - Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, so we're talking,
we just filmed a series about narcissistic abuse.
You can check out the link in this video description
to learn more about that,
but in this video we're talking about gaslighting.
What is that?
- So gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse.
It's where a person doubts the reality of another person,
leaving that other person very, very confused.
Gaslighting is sort of a signature tool of the narcissist
and they're often engaging in it
to protect their fragile egos,
to keep the world in line with their own reality,
with little regard of how much it hurts another person
when we doubt theirs.
So again, it's very much a tool of manipulation,
of emotional abuse, of again,
second guessing someone else's reality.
- And there are lots of things to look out for,
but we're gonna go through three of them today.
What's the first one?
- The first one is when somebody says to you
you're too sensitive or you have no right to feel that way.
When you do that, you immediately tell them
that their emotional world is invalid
and you're judging them for it.
You have no right to feel that way,
as though you are judge and jury
on their emotional state, okay?
So what that does is it makes a person literally doubt
their feeling and a feeling is a spontaneous experience,
so now it's almost like telling someone you must be too hot
and they're perfectly comfortable,
or telling someone they're hungry when they're not.
You know, so this is the emotional,
when we do this emotionally, it is termed gaslighting
because the person's like, I thought I was that,
but you're telling me I don't get to be angry about this.
And then some people, when they're told it enough,
they believe it.
When people are given this situation,
being told that you're too sensitive,
you have no right to feel this way,
the best thing to do is to not engage at that point
'cause you can't win.
No matter what you say, this person, if anything,
by those statements has shown that they're willing
to emotionally manipulate and abuse you.
There's nowhere to go in that conversation.
So if they say that, maybe if anything say no,
that is in fact how I feel and leave it at that,
but they're gonna keep pushing at you
so you can just let it go
and know the conversation ends there
instead of you getting into a ongoing conflict with them.
- Right, okay.
- The second is deflection.
Believe it or not, deflection is a form of gaslighting
because you're talking about something.
You might take the time and say
we need to talk about this issue, and sit the person down
in a hope of benefiting your relationship,
and maybe you raise up something, I don't know, about a lie
or about something financial in the relationship,
and they deflect it to, well, you know what?
Now that you brought this up,
remember two years ago when blah, blah, blah, blah?
And now an issue you're bringing up
that's very relevant to here and now,
they now are talking about something that happened years ago
or something that's unrelated, but when they deflect,
they deflect to a situation that makes you look bad.
- And see, what I would wanna do is say
excuse me, you're deflecting, but
I'm guessing that's wrong. - And they'll say, oh,
'cause that situation makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it?
And they'll keep, you see what I'm saying?
They're gonna tunnel.
- Oh, sorry, Cali, sorry. - And when there is
that kind of deflection, once again,
you can either gently bring it back, say, okay,
you know, we can come back to that, absolutely,
you think we should talk about that
if it's important to you,
I really wanna stick right now though,
to the issue that we were originally talking about.
Oh my God, you know, it's really hard to talk to you about,
and then they might keep going back and forth.
If you have to reign them in more than twice
that conversation is done,
you're gonna have to either find a different forum for it
or realize you may never get to have that conversation.
- Yeah, managing expectations is a reoccurring theme
when you are dealing with someone who's a narcissist.
- Especially gaslighting.
- Especially gaslighting, yeah.
- The third example of gaslighting is that never happened.
So to which you know, most of us when we're told that,
our first tendency, believe it or not, is maybe that didn't.
You know, I'll always say like, I'm getting a little older,
maybe I didn't remember that.
And there will be people, the Internet's made this easier,
they'll go back over old photos, they'll dig up old emails
and I'll say, ha, there it is.
And proud as punch they'll trot that evidence
up to the narcissistic person and say, see?
Narcissists just don't like getting caught
in the inconsistencies of their gaslighting.
They will either get angry or they'll deflect again.
Oh, how nice.
Would you like me to pull out emails
that show when you did this to me, then, that, this?
And so, it's very unsatisfying.
I've always said that a surefire sign to detect
whether you're being gaslighted in a relationship
is you get to the point where you feel
like you need to either A, record all your conversations,
but I can tell you this right now.
If you play back that recording to the narcissist,
they're not gonna cop to it.
They're going to either say you are such a petty person
that you had to feel the need to record our conversation,
how dare you?
And they will get very sort of morally high and mighty
but you're doing this to preserve your sanity.
If you do make these recordings,
they're really only for your sanity.
You can say, okay, I did say it this way,
I didn't say the thing they said.
And if anything, that data might give you more conviction
to realize this person's gaslighting you
and decide what your next step's gonna be.
Another mistake people make
when they're in gaslighting relationships
is they write the long email.
'Cause see, the gaslighter never listens to you.
They're always deflecting and accusing.
You're too sensitive, you're this, you're that,
so the person, I'm gonna write them an email.
And if I can explain it all to them
and they can't interrupt me, they're gonna get it.
No.
- Not gonna happen.
- They're not gonna get it.
And then these people will spend days, weekends,
entire weeks like writing the perfect email,
making sure the language is right,
and they send it thinking well, now they're gonna get it.
The narcissist is gonna reload both guns
and just, they're gonna send it all back to you,
sometimes they'll even give you a bullet-by-bullet,
so then they're gonna gaslight you on paper.
So I think that the simplest advice
when you're being gaslighted is to end the conversation
because you're going nowhere.
But gaslighting does lead people to do these things
like emails and recordings
that just only confirms what you already know.
It's a very unhealthy pattern,
most people in the field characterize it
as a form of emotional abuse,
and people who are confused by it,
that often contributes to other issues
like second guessing, and self-doubt, and confusion.
And at that point, I really think that it's critical
to get the mental health services you need,
talk to someone about this, and really figure out
what you want the direction of this relationship to be.
- Yeah, and figuring out that direction
requires getting an education.
In this MedCircle series on narcissistic abuse,
one of the questions that I asked Dr. Ramani was,
do they know that they're gaslighting?
Here's what she had to say about that.
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Now we say gaslighting as if they took a weekend course
on gaslighting to implement.
This is a natural trait behavior that they have.
- Right, so when we talk about gaslighting,
one thing that makes people go mad
is they must know they're doing this.
Ish.
And the reason I say ish
is that because of the narcissist's core insecurity,
they're singularly motivated to protect themselves
and their reality or their version of reality.
And so when they gaslight, it's not like they're ha ha ha,
I'm gonna manipulate this person.
It's not like the evil genius kind of thing.
It's the fact that they have no empathy
so they don't stop to think what this kind of conduct
would do to another person.
They're entitled,
so they feel they have the right to do it,
and they're fragile,
so they don't wanna be sort of found out,
and they wanna protect what they might consider
a fail or a mistake.
So the combination of those three things come together
to make gaslighting an easy out
and to minimize anything bad they did.
So when they say you're being too sensitive,
what that's really saying is all right,
you're having a feeling and maybe I'm responsible,
but let's not even talk.
I don't wanna talk about it anymore kind of thing.
It's just minimizing, minimizing, minimizing, and minimizing
is a form of gaslighting.
So it's probably not an active ha ha ha,
but it's definitely, it's a passive process,
which actually makes it more dangerous
because they do it without thinking.
- You can watch the entire series at medcircle.com
and Dr. Ramani, you are gracing us with,
I think this is your third book?
Fourth book? - My third book
on October first.
You want it, it's on everything related to narcissism,
and not just the intimate relationship,
but relationships with parents,
with your own adult children, with your boss,
with your friends, with your in-laws, but it also gets at
why we all are in a relationship with the narcissist
and it's called "The World at Large."
I don't think anyone could go through an entire day,
either on your subway commute, in the grocery store,
in traffic, at a doctor's office, on an airplane,
where you are not in the purview of narcissistic,
entitled, or uncivil behavior,
and I think that this book is meant to set us all free
and not keep falling for these traps
that are being set for us.
It is sort of like my love letter to the world
and saying please get yourselves out,
everyone deserves better.
And also even how to avoid raising a narcissist
in the first place.
There's an entire chapter on that, it's called,
Don't You Know Who I Am?
How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism,
Entitlement, and Incivility.
It's already available for pre-order on Amazon
and it's on Barnes & Noble too, you can pre-order it,
or, and it's October one, or you can get at your bookstore,
but I think people should pre-order it.
It's a big revolution.
- I've already pre-ordered mine.
It certainly is the topic of our time.
In addition to reading that,
make sure you check out the list of series
that Dr. Ramani has filled at medcircle.com.
You can check those out using the links below this video.
I want you guys to leave a comment
if you feel comfortable sharing a short story or example
of when you have been gaslighted.
I think sharing these examples
can open up people to different forms of how this may look
so they can recognize if it's happening to them.
Dr. Ramani, thanks for being here as always.
- Thank you, Kyle.
- Cali, you just are an angel.
I love ya to death, girl.
I'm Kyle Kittleson, remember,
whatever you're going through, you got this.
Thanks for watching.
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