Gaslighting is notoriously difficult to spot, especially in the middle of an abusive episode. Anne shares her thoughts on gaslighting. Read the full transcript below and learn more about gaslighting in this informative article.
Empowerment Through Education
As women learn the tactics that psychological and emotional abusers use to gaslight them, they are empowered to make informed decisions about their own safety.
Victims of abuse deserve safety in every area of their lives, especially their own minds. When abusers choose to gaslight victims, they are forcing the victim to call her own reality and her own sanity into question.
The Four Secret Tactics of Gaslighting Revealed
Abusers will often use four discreet tacts to make victims question their reality and sanity; these tactics often overlap.
Tactic # 1: “You Didn’t See What You Just Saw”
One of the most notorious tactics used by gaslighting abusers is to blatantly discredit the reality of victims.
“Where did that $500 go that was in our bank account yesterday?”
“What $500? It didn’t go anywhere. You’re wrong.”
OR
“I saw you with that woman from work; she told me that you are sleeping together. Please just tell me the truth.”
“What woman from work? You’re crazy. I’m not seeing anyone.”
Abusers often use this tactics to try to hide substances and behaviors like infidelity, pornography, drug use, and gambling.
Tactic # 2: Redirect Responsibility
When abusers can successfully get a victim to look at her own responsibility in the chaos that he has created, the spotlight is off of his abusiveness, and he is able to carry out his abusive behaviors without consequences.
“Where did that $500 go that was in our bank account yesterday?”
“Why can’t you keep track of the money? You’ve been terrible with money since the first day I met you.”
OR
“I saw you with that woman from work; she told me that you are sleeping together. Please just tell me the truth.”
“I’m not… but if I did, it would be because you never have sex with me when I want to.”
Tactic # 3: Saying You Need Mental/Emotional Help AND/OR Dismissing Your Mental/Emotional Help
When an abuser can deflect from his own behavior by pinning the “craziness” on the victim by either
a. telling her that she “needs help” (stigmatizing mental health issues)
and/or
b. criticizing and dismissing the mental/emotional help that she is receiving through counseling, therapy, coaching, or support groups,
he is creating a distorted reality where he is the “sane and healthy” side of the partnership, and she is the one causing the chaos.
“Where did that $500 go that was in our bank account yesterday?”
“You are so paranoid! You need a psychiatrist!”
OR
“I saw you with that woman from work; she told me that you are sleeping together. Please just tell me the truth.”
“Is this more of your man-hating therapist’s garbage coming out? Is she telling you to accuse me of having affairs?”
Tactic # 4: Highlighting and Criticizing Your Character Flaws
This is simply another way for a gaslighting abuser to distort reality and create the illusion that the real chaos is caused by the character flaws of the victim, rather than his own abusive behaviors.
“Where did that $500 go that was in our bank account yesterday?”
“If you weren’t so insecure, you’d be able to see that you’re totally overreacting again. Every other woman out there would be totally calm about this… but not you. You’re freaking out over $500.”
OR
“I saw you with that woman from work; she told me that you are sleeping together. Please just tell me the truth.”
“Why are you always trying to create drama? When I met you I thought you were better than that but I can see that you’re just like your mom. A total drama-queen.”
I’m Being Gaslit, Now What?
Women can protect themselves from the devastating pain of gaslighting by setting and maintaining boundaries. Boundaries are not statements, requests, or ultimatums. They are courageous actions that women take to separate themselves and their children from abusive behavior.
BTR.ORG Supports Victims of Emotional & Psychological Abuse
Attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today for support as you begin to heal from gaslighting.
Full Transcript:
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne.
Well, I know in my life I have benefited greatly from learning about gaslighting and also learning about what behaviors to look for so that I knew when it was okay or not okay or safe or not safe to engage in a conversation, which is really what we’re looking at with gaslighting. Is it safe for me to engage in a conversation with this person and is it going to be productive?
I think those are the things that we’re looking for because in unhealthy relationships, sometimes we just spin our wheels, quote unquote, communicating when there’s really no communication actually taking place. It’s also a really scary thing saying, okay, I’m gonna find out because you don’t know what you’re gonna find out, and if you find out that, yeah, my husband is too unsafe to even engage in conversation with, then what do you do?
“I didn’t want to deal with the consequences of what might happen if my relationship was unhealthy”
Right? Then it’s like, oh man, now I have to do this or that. And so at least with me, I sort of lived in denial for a long time because I didn’t wanna deal with the consequences of what might happen if my relationship was in fact unhealthy. Right?
So I just wanted to force it to be healthy rather than taking a step back to really take a good look at it. You ask them, Hey, are you upset? And they’re clearly upset. We’ll say, you know, I am upset. This is what happened, and it’s really been bothering me. You know, I mean, that would be a healthy exchange rather than, are you upset? No, I’m not upset, <laugh>. You know, you’re like, whoa, like clearly you’re upset. Why? What is going on? You know, that is always an indicator of an unhealthy exchange.
What types of gaslighting have YOU experienced?
There were times where I would say, I just feel like you don’t love me, and instead of giving me a hug and telling me, oh, I’m so sorry.Of course I love you. Right? I would say, I feel like you don’t love me. And he’d like, why are you always saying this to me? You know what I mean? It was just a crazy response to that. Like, I feel like you’re really angry with me and I don’t feel loved.
How is yelling and you know, either my, my particular ex would yell and yell at me, or even sometimes swear, how is that gonna help me feel more loved? You know, it just a lot of times does obviously doesn’t make sense to our listeners. What types of gaslighting have you experienced? We wanna know how gaslighting has affected you in learning about this. I’ve realized this is where I think I went wrong, is that my husband would be being abusive and then I would say to him, this isn’t right. This is not okay.
“This is where reality would get a little thin and really difficult to grasp”
And then I’m realizing, wait a minute, I’m telling him that the way he feels isn’t right or okay, it’s coming from a place of abuse and abuse isn’t right and it’s not okay. So then I would get a little bit confused at this point, right? This is where reality would get a little thin and really difficult to grasp in abuse situations.
This is where it gets very tricky because if you leave the topic open for discussion, you just sometimes you could get further abused, right? So this is where it things get really tricky, and this is where I think having a coach navigate this with you or guide you through this is super important. And a coach who gets it, like an absence coach is really important because as I went to therapists, they were telling me, you need to leave room for discussion, right?
“I was just running around in circles using ‘healthy communication'”
Or let’s, let’s use better communication tools or whatever. And I would do those things and I would open it up a little bit more and then I would get even further abused, right? I think that’s why having someone to assist us who knows what they’re doing in these situations is so important so that you can stay safe
Cause safety is our number one goal, and I was just running around in circles using quote unquote healthy communication, you know, and all that stuff, and all of those things are just really keeping me in the abuse cycle, which was unfortunate, but that’s what happened. BTR coaches, their number one priority is to establish safety first so that we can heal from the trauma.
“Finding out how to be safe teaches us all these healthy skills”
Even though my trauma is still really intense, like I’ll be hit with something and I start crying, or you know, I feel a little helpless at times in terms of the quality of my relationships and my ability to communicate and my ability to share my feelings. Those are better now than they have ever been. So I have that, like at least that foundation, even if the trauma is still hitting me from time to time, the way that I deal with it is so healthy. You know, I can say to someone, I’m feeling very traumatized right now. You know what I mean? I can like process what’s happening, which is much better than I was before. I love how this process of recovering from trauma and finding out how to be safe
Teaches us all these healthy skills.
