Have you ever been called lazy, crazy, not good enough or otherwise unsavory by a narcissist?
Have you ever been made to doubt your own reality, your own perception and even your ability to function in this world?
Well my friend, if you have, you might be experiencing cognitive dissonance.
This is one of the effects of being in a relationship with a toxic
narcissist and that's exactly what we're talking about today at queenbeeing.com.
Cognitive dissonance and exactly what it is, what it looks like, how do I identify it and what you can do to stop it.
Now, make sure you stay tuned to the end of this video when I'm gonna talk about how you can actually
change your life and change your cognitive dissonance.
I'm going to share with you some free tools to help you take your recovery to the next level. There's no catch here.
There's nothing except go pick up your free tools. So let's get started.
My name is Angie Atkinson and on this channel, I offer free daily video coaching to help you discover, understand and overcome
narcissistic abuse in toxic relationships. I like to call it Toxic Relationship Rehab.
So if that sounds good to you, hit that subscribe button and we will just get going.
So the first thing you need to know is that cognitive dissonance and gaslighting are very connected
but I'm not going to go into all the details of gaslighting in this video.
So I'm going to leave a link for you right there
so make sure you take a look at that video when we're finished here.
All right. Next, we're gonna talk about how do we identify
and understand what cognitive dissonance truly is.
We're gonna talk about who introduced the theory of cognitive dissonance as well as exactly what cognitive dissonance means.
So take a look. What is cognitive dissonance? The cognitive dissonance theory was first introduced by an American social
psychologist named Leon Festinger in
1957. Essentially, it states that as humans we are predisposed to seek internal constancy. Basically what that means
is that in general, our beliefs, our thoughts, our opinions must
correspond with our actions and our behavior and our attitude. This way,
we don't really feel the stress of trying to live in a way that doesn't correspond with our beliefs but if dissonance, discomfort or
inconsistency of any kind is experienced,
we tend to feel psychological discomfort and we strive hard to reduce that or to avoid it altogether.
What this means is that we have a sort of predetermined drive to hold all of our attitudes and behavior in harmony and to avoid
disharmony or dissonance.
This is known as the principle of cognitive consistency: when our attitudes or behaviors don't match,
it creates dissonance. If we're going to get rid of the dissonance, we must change something.
We are programmed to allow the dissonance to continue.
As a matter of fact, we feel mild to serious mental and emotional stress if we can't resolve it.
But here's where your narcissist comes in, since they make it nearly impossible for us to remain sane and to resolve the dissonance,
well
it adds to our already full emotional
plate. How much damage it causes us will depend on the level to which we take seriously the issue over which we have
cognitive dissonance. Of course. The theory is the greater the dissonance, the more you will naturally feel motivated to resolve it.
Why do we have cognitive dissonance?
Cognitive dissonance basically happens when our own self-image is contradicted by what happens in our lives.
So for example, if we see ourselves as strong and intelligent people
but then we end up within a controlling abusive person in our lives,
we feel weak and we feel less intelligent and we question who we are and what we are doing in that relationship.
This happens for several reasons.
For example,
we believe what we do and our ethics are what they are
based on what we feel is very important to us, things that really matter in the bigger picture
but our actions tend to be based around instant gratification,
personal comfort or very often for survivors of abuse a desire to keep the peace in our environment on some level. Next step,
we're going to talk about the silver lining of cognitive dissonance.
The truth is there are couple of actual pros to this particular state of mind
so take a look at that. Pros and cons of cognitive dissonance... wait, there are pros to cognitive dissonance?
Well,
yeah actually. See in a healthy situation,
cognitive dissonance allows us to question ourselves and our
perceptions and then to take action to positively change our lives.
In fact, if we choose to use it to our advantage instead of just reliving our traumas over and over again,
well cognitive dissonance can become the engine that will help drive us to new levels of evolution.
It literally drives nearly all discoveries and new thought processes that lead to them.
The downside is that if we just sort of relieve the pressure instead of actually fixing the problem,
well, we're short cutting ourselves to nowhere, Sure we'll feel some temporary relief
and yeah, we'll be far more comfortable
but we definitely won't evolve or get anywhere new in our lives.
Now that we've understood that, what exactly does cognitive dissonance have to do with narcissistic abuse recovery?
Why am I talking about it? Well, take a look.
What does cognitive dissonance have to do with narcissistic abuse recovery? When we're in a toxic relationship
with a narcissist, he/she will use cognitive dissonance
against us as a tool to more easily gain and maintain control.
In fact,
this is one of the key tactics used to
psychologically abuse you and
emotionally abuse you. Though it offers the narcissist the chance to mess with your head and get that control
they so desperately want, it also leads you the victim to doubt your own reality.
You've doubt your perception, your beliefs, your own thoughts
even. You start to develop a sense of confusion
and you generally feel unreal or less real than other people around you. You stop trusting your own
perception and you start to rely on the narcissist to tell you what's real and guess what? This gives the narcissist what they want,
more control. And how exactly are you supposed to identify cognitive dissonance in your relationship?
Well, you know, I got you covered. Take a look at this.
How can you identify cognitive dissonance in a toxic relationship. In a toxic relationship,
cognitive dissonance can obviously become debilitating for the victim. When the narcissist implies that you're weak, you're not good enough,
you don't care enough, whatever or that you're otherwise flawed but you believe that you're a strong, compassionate and loving person...
well, that causes dissonance. You might attempt to resolve it like this,
"I'm a compassionate person who loves you but you say I'm not giving you enough or I'm otherwise flawed or
unfit to be in this relationship
so I will do my best to try to understand you and change myself to meet your needs." or worse like this,
"I am a compassionate person who loves you but you say I'm not giving you enough or I'm otherwise flawed or
unfit to be in this relationship. So I must be exactly what you say I am." Next up,
we're gonna talk about how do we resolve
cognitive dissonance in our lives, in our relationships, in
ourselves? Well, it's a process but we're gonna start here by talking about Festinger's
ideas as far as what he says resolves cognitive dissonance. Take a look.
So how do you resolve cognitive dissonance?
There are 3 primary ways to resolve this according to Festinger's theory. First, you can change your beliefs or your ethics.
It's the most obvious way that we resolve cognitive dissonance is simply to change our minds and our beliefs and/or our ethics. We choose to
start believing that action, behavior or attitude that caused the cognitive dissonance really is okay.
This is obviously the least effective way to reduce or eliminate
cognitive dissonance because it essentially asks us to change who we are at the core.
So while it might be the easiest way to go, it is definitely a road less traveled for most survivors of abuse.
Part of the way that we interpret the world is based out of these beliefs and ethics. So we would need to almost relearn how
to function if we did this too often. Number two:
we can change what we're doing. The second way to resolve cognitive dissonance involves a change in behavior or
attitude or actions to match your beliefs or ethics.
The only problem here is that there tends to be a lot of guilt and anxiety
involved with cognitive dissonance and while both can spur change in our lives neither one is really healthy.
Another one is really a condition under which we can effectively learn plus
some people are going to train themselves not to feel these things which would eliminate their effectiveness in change.
So the best way to create change then would be to get a whole new level of understanding
without changing your beliefs or your actions
which brings me to number three: change of perception.
The most often employed way of dealing with cognitive dissonance is to change the way you see your actions.
So if you feel bad that you cheated on a test for example,
you might rationalize it by deciding that test wasn't really that important and maybe it was unfairly
administered or whatever so that your choice to cheat would become less unethical because the test was faulty.
So basically sort of reframe what happened with these newly determined facts and you eliminate the cognitive dissonance by making what you did okay in
your mind. All right. Now it's time to talk about your free toolbox that I've prepared for you. This is your personal evolution
toolbox. Go ahead and go to the link in the description below and pick up your free
cognitive dissonance toolbox. It comes with not only a report which is about I think 15 pages but also an
actual workbook that you can print out and work through or you can just use your notebook and
write down the answers. It will help you to process and work through cognitive dissonance on your own. It's a DIY kind of thing.
So make sure you pick that up at the link in the description below.
This brings me to the question of the day
and the question of the day is do you think that you have experienced cognitive dissonance? Have you already gotten through it?
Are you still going through it and if you did get through it, share your thoughts as to how you did it.
Maybe you can help another survivor to get through it today
and if you're still going through it,
let me know how else I can help you with this issue because I'm gonna do a little series on this and make sure you
pick up your free tools at the link in the description below. As always,
thank you so much for being a part of my day and a part of my life and hey, thanks for
letting me be a part of yours. It really does mean a lot to me and don't forget to check the videos
I'm leaving for you right here and right here. Oh! And while you're here, go ahead and hit that subscribe button right there
so that we can continue on this healing journey together. And don't forget you're never alone
because you always have your SPANily. See you soon!