Gaslighting 101 : PACER Integrated Behavioral Health

I'd like to welcome you to Today's presentation on Gaslighting 101. I am your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. The first question, we talk a lot or we hear a lot about gaslighting, but what exactly is it? Gaslighting has been called the ultimate emotional abuse. It's the act of manipulating a person by forcing them to question their thoughts and the events occurring around them and is a form of emotional abuse. A victim of gaslighting can be pushed so far that they question their own sanity and develop clinical depression and anxiety because they feel unsafe and powerless. Now, the term gaslighting actually came from a movie from the 1940s. So you can go back and it look and learn all about it in Wikipedia if you want to, but it is something that still happens today. Why do people gaslight? Well, to gain power, control, and money. Generally, we do things when there's a benefit. Why would you try to make someone feel like they're crazy, you know, trying to figure out the motivations behind that? There has to be something there. And generally it comes down to getting something that they want or to get away with something that they want. Gaslighting is a very common behavior among people with antisocial or narcissistic personality disorder and a lot of times people with addictions. Now, it's important to recognize that people with antisocial or narcissistic personality disorder often have very little empathy. This is not true 100% across the board. Nothing is true 100% across the board when you're dealing with humans. But it is important to recognize that those who lack empathy can be very dangerous. Think Ted Bundy. You know, he wasn't so upset about the fact that he killed people, but the fact that he got caught. He was upset because it made him unhappy. So we do want to look at what is the motivation for gaslighting in people just to kind of understand for our own, you know, knowledge and curiosity. I guess, ultimately it's important to understand that a lot of times, because the person often has some underlying pathology or sufficient underlying motivation that they don't care that they are not going to be empathetic toward the vict, that changing their perception is probably not going to go very well unless you are able to offer them a much more significant reward. And, you know, let's just not even get into that. Let's talk about protecting ourselves, because gaslighting takes a toll on people. Let's talk about gaslighting behaviors first. Then we'll move into symptoms, and then what you can do about it, gaslighting behaviors. And I am specifically not going to go into particular examples because gaslighting applies, you know, across the spectrum. But when you're in a situation in which you feel like you are be. If you feel like you're being gas lit, gaslighted, I'm not sure what the past tense of that is. Anyway, it's important to just ask yourself these questions. Is this person telling me blatant lies, either something that has absolutely no basis in fact or that I know for a fact to be false, or they have no proof of and they're just telling me, you know, take my word that this is the way it is. And, and I guess, you know, I said I won't use a lot many examples, but I will give the example of living in, being in a relationship with someone with an addiction. A lot of times they will tell you blatant lies to cover up, to minimize, deny blame and cover up their, their use. A person who gaslights may deny something is true or that they said something. Even when the victim has proof, you know, a person with an addiction may say, no, I didn't use. Even when the victim has, you know, receipts from them buying alcohol or they found paraphernalia that hadn't been there before from drug use. The gaslighting person creates fears and insecurities about other things. Like the victim may start fearing their safety or their goodness. And they do this to distract the victim from looking at the gaslighting behavior. You know, I can engage in my addictive behaviors over here. If you're looking over over here. If you're worried that the kids are going to get taken away by dcf, you're not going to look at what I'm doing over here. Or if you're worried that we're going to lose our house, you'll be focused on that. And I can get away with doing this over here. Kind of like a shell game. The gaslighter will manipulate things to make it appear the victim is crazy or simply tell them they're wrong and dismiss their concerns. How many times has this happened in a gaslighting behavior that you've been involved in? Gaslighters will align others against the victim, finding people who either won't question their version of reality and will join them in calling the victim crazy, finding people who are easily easy to tell this is what happened. They can spin a web. They can tell a story and convince others. You know, they are the master manipulators. When this happens, the victim starts to Feel even more isolated. And you know what you hear that old thing. If somebody, One person tells you something, I don't know, if three people tell you something, there might be something to it. Well, and get. A person who's good at gaslighting will make sure that they've got an army of people that are willing to support their version of reality, even if it's not actually based in reality. It will. They will support. They have support for their version. The gaslighter will use things the victim cherishes as ammunition, like their kids, their identity, or their freedom. They will make it. If. If you don't listen to me, if you don't comply, if you don't agree with me, then I'm going to start taking away these things that are important to gaslighters. Wear the victim down. It is exhausting to be bombarded with information that you believe or you know to be false. The gaslighter repeats the same lies and manipulations and gets others, you know, those people that ever are aligned with them, gets others to repeat those same lies until the victim just doesn't have the energy to fight and gives in to their, quote, superior knowledge. It's like, you're not hearing me. I've got all this evidence. You're not hearing me. You're not listening. You're not even trying. You're just continuing to get more boisterous and more aggressive, telling me that my. My facts, my reality is wrong. The gaslighter, their actions don't match their words. They may say that they want to be in a good relationship and, you know, bring everybody together, but they still regularly insult the victim or anyone who doesn't agree with them and do whatever they want, irrespective of the victim's wishes. They throw in occasional reinforcement, giving a compliment or feigning to take the victim's perspective for a moment to make themselves appear like they're considering the other person's perspective or make themselves appear good. So they'll occasionally throw in a bone and to the victim, a little bit of reinforcement, which confuses the victim even more because they're like, okay, this person is, you know, in a completely different reality. They're not making statements based on fact. And then all of a sudden there will be this little nugget in there that's actually true. And it's like, okay, well, if that was true, then I wonder about all this other stuff. Is it actually true and I'm wrong or is it still wrong? So the. The victims becomes progressively confused because they're thrown A mix of truth and reality, or, I'm sorry, truth and. And fantasy and distorted truths. So what happens to victims? They become more anxious and less confident than they used to be. You know, as people start questioning, remember, the gaslighter doesn't. Generally doesn't operate by themselves. In the movie, this guy was trying to convince his wife that she was losing her mind, and he got her family to believe him. You know, he spun the web to make them believe that she was, you know, hallucinating and delusional. And he got her doctor and her psychiatrist to believe it because he would tell a completely different version of reality that than what she would tell them. So gaslighters do not operate in isolation. It's important to remember that they're going to have backup because they need to have other people to validate their story. The victim, as a result, becomes more anxious and less confident. They're looking around, going, well, all these people say, I'm wrong. I know I'm right, but they're saying, I'm wrong, and I have respect for these people. And so it becomes this very discordant situation in the person's brain. They start feeling angry, feeling threatened and powerless. It's like, I can't. I don't know what's true anymore. I don't feel like I've got people's support. They start feeling hopeless and anhedonic, which is depression. The person is starting to withdraw and, you know, learned helplessness. They're. They're starting to give up the act or give up the hope that their reality is actually right. They start feeling like everything they do is wrong and believe it's their fault when things go wrong, because that's what the gaslighter tells them. They apologize often even for things they don't even believe are their fault. They start apologizing. They feel guilty for things. The gaslighter's job is to make the victim question their beliefs, question their goodness, question their intellect, and start feeling completely helpless and powerless. The victims often feel something's wrong, but aren't quite able to identify what it is. Now, this isn't always the case. If you're living with someone within an addiction, you know, you really may have some evidence that things are not as they're supposed to be. But other times, you may just have that gut feeling that something hinky is going on here. I can't quite tell you what it is. The victim often ends up questioning whether their response is appropriate. They wonder if they're being unreasonable or they're assuming or they're drawing, you know, incorrect conclusions. They start questioning every belief they have, which leads them to start isolating to avoid confrontation. They're, they just. When they talk to people, those people that the gaslighter lets them talk to, those people, the gaslighter gives them access to tell them they're wrong. So even though they know they're right, they've got facts, they've got evidence, they know they're right. The environment that the gaslighter allows them to be exposed to tells them they're wrong. So it's. They feel like it's them against the world. As a result of all the confusion and the anxiety and the anger and the depression, it becomes increasingly hard to make decisions. Think about if you've ever been in a situation, you know, and this can range from mild to very, very severe. Think about a situation in which you've been in, in a relationship or in an interaction with someone who was engaging in gaslighting. You know, how did you feel? How did you feel when, you know, you interacted with somebody who was aligned with the gaslighter and they proceeded to tell you how you were crazy, how you were completely off base and you needed to change your perception? So what do you do? That's really what we're here to talk about, isn't it? What do you do? Focus on what you can change, physical, affective, cognitive, environmental and relational in order to create safety and empowerment. And I have safety underlined, bolded and italicized because depending on the situation, the person may not be safe. It is essential that you make sure you are safe. It is in, in some cases, not safe to stand up to someone who is a gaslighter because they can become very incensed and enraged when you stand up to them. So it is important to identify what you need to do for your own physical safety. You know, that comes first. What do you need to do there? So physically figure out what you need to do to be safe. Then you need to start addressing the other side effects of gaslighting. When you're being gaslighted, your anxiety, your HPA axis is ramped up. You're not going to sleep as well. You're going to toss and turn. A lot of times people have distressing dreams and, and there's a lot of angst pretty much in them all day, every day, which impairs their sleep. The worse your sleep is impaired, the worse your moods are going to be, the worse your health is going to be. You know, there's a lot of downsides to this so for your own health and well being, it's important to figure out what you need to do in order to get good quality sleep. Now that is so much easier said than done, especially if you're living with the gaslighter. But if you're not living with them, maybe it is one your in law or your friend or, or whatever, what do you need to do? Maybe you need to make sure that you don't talk to them within two hours of going to bed or even minimize your interaction with them. Even more than that, if every time you inter interact with them, they gaslight you and get you stirred up, how often do you have to interact with them? Because when you're stirred up, you're not going to sleep. So maybe you even cut it down to less than once a day. Nutrition. When people are stressed out, they go to comfort foods which are low in nutrients or a lot of times they don't eat at all. And either way is not good. Your body needs the building blocks, especially now when it's under stress, to help keep your immune system going and balance your hormones and everything you need to, you know, keep that HPA axis and the HPG axis and the gut brain axis and every other axis functioning well. You know, it's not going to do you any good if you end up sick and clinically depressed. Avoid addictive behaviors. And this can be, you know, an increase in smoking, you know, noticing suddenly that you're chain smoking, you know that is going to be harmful on your health. Drinking more, you know, people smoke, people drink, I acknowledge that. But recognizing if the gaslighting is contributing to you engaging in harmful behaviors even more, it's important to start trying to figure out other ways to deal with that stress and anxiety. And we're going to talk about some of those ways in a minute. But avoid the addictive behaviors or getting sucked into those and pay attention to your physical health. If you're starting to feel sick, go to the doctor, you know, take your medicine, do what you need to do. The body and brain work together. If your body factory is not working well, then your emotions and your cognitions, your thoughts are not going to be going well either affectively, which means emotionally do things that help you feel happy. Oh my gosh. It's possible you can have somebody in your life or a situation in your life where you feel like you're being gaslighted and you can do things that make you happy anyway just the same. Acknowledge the anxiety and anger non judgmentally when you feel it, acknowledge it and respond with what we've talked about before as toward thoughts and behaviors that use your energy purposefully. For example, is continuing to argue with this person about this issue, that you have facts and you know you're right? Is continuing to argue with them going to do any good? Is it going to change their mind? And the answer most of the time is no. So that is a waste of energy is sitting there and stewing on how mad you are that they're gaslighting you. Is that going to solve the problem or do you any good? And the answer most of the time is no. Use that energy to do something positive. Don't. To extract yourself from the situation, to find other social supports that are willing to be supportive for you. Whatever you need to do that's going to help you use your energy to continue to move toward the things that are important in your rich and meaningful life. Cognitively practice hardiness. We've talked about this one before, too. Commitment, control and challenge. One aspect of your life, this aspect that's being gaslighted, maybe going really crappy right now, but what other areas of your life are going well that you're happy about, that you're committed to? You know, you may have this. Let's just go with the movie. You know, that woman in her relationship with her husband, it was. It was a hot mess. And you know, that was not well, but, you know, having her look at other aspects of her life, and it's been, you know, decades, literally since I've seen that movie. But if she had kids, you know, how was her relationship with her kids? If she had, you know, hobbies, if she had work, if she had other things, what was. What else was going well? This over here that the gaslighter is trying to convince you is not going on, but you know it's going on. All right, that's a mess. But what else is going well? So hardiness means part. First part is to focus on all the things that are important and acknowledge the things that are in your control that are going well. The second part is control. Address what you can control. You know, that whole serenity prayer, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Well, let's put that to practice right here. What things about the situation can you control? And we've already identified the fact that you can't control the gaslighter. They are likely. They likely don't have empathy, so they're not going to respond to that. They are Motivated by something that is extremely rewarding and you probably don't have a more powerful reward out there for them. So, okay, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. Why is it so important to change their mind? Can you just agree to disagree and, and not go there? And again, if you're living with the person in some relationships, it's not that easy to do. But it is important to figure out what aspects of the situation can I change in order to make it physically safe, emotionally safe, mentally, environmentally and interpersonally safe. We need safety. Focus on authenticity, not approval. Be true to yourself. Don't look for others to tell you you're right because they may have been brainwashed or hogwashed just as much as you know somebody else. But focus on authenticity. Be living authentically with what you know to be your truth and not so much on trying to get the approval of the gaslighter. If you need to find the facts and collect the evidence to help you confirm the truth for your own self. If you feel like you want to have hard facts, just so you know that you're right, okay, go ahead and do that. Some people want that, some people don't care. Whatever. Give yourself permission to feel your feelings non judgmentally. If you're angry, if you're scared, if you're frustrated, you know, if you're. Lots of words that YouTube would censor me for, that's okay. It's how you feel that those feelings are your body's way of saying, your brain's way of saying there's a threat here. And I'm going to give you a whole bunch of energy, adrenaline, norepinephrine, blood glucose. I'm going to give you a whole bunch of energy to fight or flee. You better need, you better use that energy to do something. Your body doesn't dump all that energy for you to sit there and, and stew on it. That's, that's not helpful. Let go of the wish for things to be different. That person's not going to change. 99. Well, probably 99% of the time. The research that I've read, the experiences that I've had, people who engage in gaslighting probably are not going to change their behavior. They're motivated by their own wants and needs. Environmentally, seek safety. Make sure you're in an environment where you can actually go to sleep and feel like you're safe so you can relax enough to get good quality sleep. Make sure and environmental and physical safety kind of go hand in hand. Make sure you're safe. Environmentally, surround yourself with support. It doesn't have to be a person sitting in the same room with you, necessarily, but somebody that you can call or you can text or you can FaceTime with when you need support, when you need to have somebody to say to you, I believe you eliminate things in the environment that trigger your anxiety. So, for example, if there's something that. That triggers your anxiety that makes you think about this issue that you're being gaslighted on, eliminate it. You know, if you have to. Just if it's a person on Facebook, you know, that is continually gaslighting, you block them, you know, make sure that you do what you do to protect the sanctity, the safeness of your environment. You have your personal space, and with the Internet and, you know, all the digital technology these days, a lot of times we forget that we don't have to allow technology or all technology into our personal space. And finally, relationally, what can you change? Well, develop what they call healthy detachment. You know, we always talk about healthy attachment. Healthy detachment is important, too. And what that means is acknowledging to yourself and really believing that, you know what, not everybody's going to agree with me, not everybody's going to like me, and that's okay. I don't have to be loved and approved of by everybody all the time. And it's really important to be able to focus on that, recognizing and developing a healthy detachment from, you know, the need to have that constant approval, as well as a healthy detachment, potentially from the source of the gaslighting, where you can say, you know what? I need to put you, you know, whatever you are over here. I need to have some space between us right now. Which means setting good boundaries, emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, environmental boundaries. Remember that interpersonally, relationally, you cannot control anyone's opinion, even if you're right. So don't debate what's true. I remember when, before, when I was in undergrad, I used to volunteer at a crisis hotline, and there was one young man who would call us up pretty frequently, and he had schizophrenia. And when he was off his meds or his meds weren't stable, you know, obviously he would be in this delusional state. And what my supervisor told me at that point in time, and the same thing is true for a gaslighter, is their reality. Is their reality. Yeah, if they, you know, sometimes a gaslighter knows the difference, but just assume that their reality is their reality and don't try to convince them to change it. If they think the sky is green, say okay, well, that must be awful colorful. And I learned to deal with people who were in a delusional episode through that first experience and not trying to argue with them about my version of reality and that trying to convince them that their version was not right because their version was very, very real to them. And a lot of times that's what I fall back on with. When interacting with people who tend to gaslight is, okay, well, that's their reality. And is it worth my energy to. And would it even do any good to try to change them, change their opinion? And generally the answer is no on both accounts. Be assertive and refuse to tolerate being yelled at or called names. And if it is safe, otherwise, seek safety. Again, if you're. If this is in a domestically violence or a violent situation, sometimes it is not safe to be assertive and it's more important to get yourself to safety somehow. So, you know, I keep repeating that because I don't want people to go back later and say, well, you know, Dr. Snipes told me, no, Dr. Snipes told you to make sure you're safe from first and above all, and then start figuring out your next steps. Recognize the gaslighter is never going to admit responsibility or openly consider the facts. Doing so means they have to admit wrongdoing. And that's the difference between a person who's gaslighting or one of the. One of the many differences between a person who's gaslighting and a person who has some sort of psychotic disorder. A person who has a psychotic disorder is often very empathetic. A gaslighter is not. A person who has a psychotic disorder really believes their reality. That is what they see, what their senses tell them. That is their reality. A gaslighter often knows the difference, but they are trying to pull the wool over your eyes. They're trying to manipulate you. A person with a psychotic disorder is not trying to manipulate you. They're trying to survive. So I gave you that example earlier just to help you try to have a point of reference, maybe for the futility of arguing with a gaslighter. But I definitely want to separate the two. You know, a person with a delusion in a delusional episode is, you know, most of the time they have a lot of empathy and they truly believe what is going on. And they may feel very scared that their reality is different. Most of the time, the gaslighter is angry that they're not getting their own way. I think that's it. That is it. What questions do you have about Gaslighting. And as I said, we can see gaslighting in addictions, in active addiction, the person is. Does a lot of minimizing, blaming, denying, trying to make you think that they're not using, convince you that, you know, they are, you know, they're. They are in recovery or they are doing the next right thing when they're really not. And you can see, you know, the obvious reason there they are the reward of the addictive behavior. The dopamine rush is more, is the reward at that point. So you can see that when people who have addictions are in recovery, they, you know, have a lot of empathy. And even when they are in active addiction and engaging in some of this gaslighting behavior, for a lot of them, they have a fair amount of empathy and it hurts them to feel like they've got to manipulate you. But the addiction wins. The addiction's stronger. So, you know, we do see this, but with people with antisocial personality disorder, they. One of the. The key characteristics is a lack of empathy, a lack of ability to consider or even care about other people's feelings, and a desire to do whatever they need to, to get whatever they want, whenever they want. And the term sociopath really isn't something that's in the DSM that would fall under antisocial. So yes, and generally, no. A gaslighter will never feel bad about their manipulative behavior. They may be angry if they don't get their way. Just like Ted Bundy, you know, he got caught and that's what really ticked him off. It wasn't, you know, this sudden remorse that he had killed a bunch of women. And he, you know, was a great manipulator. He made people think that he was this great, wonderful human being. And yes, they can be narcissistic. Gaslighting is such an interesting phenomenon, and it occurs a lot in domestically violent relationships. It's one aspect, one aspect of domestic violence. So it is something to consider if you are a clinician, a behavioral health clinician, a nurse, a doctor, somebody who works with people with domestic violence, or if you even know somebody who is in a domestically violent relationship. Knowing that gaslighting is a common occurrence in those kinds of relationships is really important. And there are books out there I. I found when I was preparing this presentation on recovering from gaslighting. So you can go to Amazon and find some workbooks and some help books. I can't tell you how good any of them are because I haven't reviewed them. But it is something that a lot of people it takes them a lot of time to recover from because they're so confused. This person they thought they could trust, it just has totally betrayed them. So it makes them question trust. It makes them question the goodness of humanity. It makes them question so many things. That is often a big issue in the recovery process. If there are no other questions, please remember if you haven't already to subscribe to, hit the like button and I will see you next week. Now remember, I am going to be doing a video on Covid shame in probably 10 or 15 minutes. I need to take a little bit of a break and I will put upload that to the YouTube channel before the end of the day today. So if you're interested in learning more about COVID Shame, you can come back to the channel and find out more about it later. Was the Movie Gaslight from 1944 Good? I personally didn't like it, but I had the attention span of a gnat. So, you know, you may enjoy it. You know, even some of the old Alfred Hitchcock and stuff I don't really enjoy that much. But that is me. I tend to not be a huge movie person, but it's certainly worth checking out, especially if it's, you know, streaming somewhere that you can watch it for free. Everybody, have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you on Monday.