The 3 Signs You’re Being Gaslit (And What to Do About It)

In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about the 3 must-know signs of whether you are being gaslit. So we're going to be talking about how do you know it, what to do, and if it's you who's actually unconsciously, unknowingly doing the gaslighting. All that and more coming up. Welcome to the Jefferson Fisher Podcast, where I'm on a mission to make your next conversation the one that changes everything. I want to give some exciting news, and that is the Next Conversation Workbook is officially out for presale. You can find the links down in the show notes. Is something I have worked very hard on to make sure you have practical exercises to continue your communication journey. Also, if you're listening and you have not done it, please click wherever you see subscribe. It helps me, it helps my family, and it tells wherever you're listening that this is good content. And that's my mission, to make you a better communicator one conversation at a time. 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So whatever they put out, that's why I like them so much, is because it's quality stuff and they actually put their money where their mouth is and they back it up as a 10-year warranty. So if you are thinking of that special somebody, and maybe that person is yourself and you wanna give yourself a little bit of love this month, go to cozyearth.com/jefferson, use the code Jefferson and get up to 20% off. That's cozyearth.com/jefferson and use the code Jefferson to get up to 20% off. And now let's get to the episode. I know we hear the term a lot, gaslighting. Almost always I get the question of what exactly is gaslighting? I know I've talked about it on this podcast, but it's worth reiterating again. Gaslighting is a term that has come about to mean when somebody's trying to distort your reality in communication, right? They're trying to make you question your truth, the veracity of what you say, to make you question your own state of mind. It comes from, from what I researched. It's a term from a play, and I think it was actually a movie, like in the 1930s, where it was a woman and her husband, and in the house they had a gas light out in the, in the yard. And what he would do is every once in a while turn it a little bit lower, and she'd say like, isn't it— I think it's— that light's a little bit lower. And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about, you're, you're crazy, it looks exactly like it was yesterday. And the whole moral of the story was that she eventually just kind of lost her mind where she was doubting everything. Right. And it was a control tactic of this husband of saying, you can't— you can't trust your own memory. You, you can only trust me. That's really what gaslighting is. It's where you're saying, look, you can't trust what you think. You have to trust what I think. I'm the one who's responsible. I'm the one who is going to say what you should think and how you should think it and what's the truth and what's not the truth. What I say is the truth, not what you say. And so gaslighting presents itself in a way, in a variety of different ways, and it can be conscious, unconscious, meaning it can be intentional and also unintentional. For example, maybe have you ever tried to get somebody off the scent of something? It's not an outright lie, but you're bringing something up in a way, or maybe distracting something in a way that's going to keep you from getting in trouble. Right. So if I were to say, I don't know, this is going to be a very caveman-like example, but if I asked my daughter, did you eat the cookie? And she said no, that would be a lie. But if she tried to convince me somehow that there was never any cookie, like, what are you talking about? There was no cookie. Nothing happened. You see how that's all of a sudden changing my whole mindset of like, oh, maybe I'm losing it, my memory, where you're trying to throw somebody off a scent. So it can be— let me just say this. I've gaslit. You've gaslit. We all have done it intentionally, unintentionally. It happens. It's different from lying in the aspect of gaslighting. It's typically a pattern, a pattern of getting somebody to only accept what you say is true in order to protect yourself, in order to make sure that you are the one that is secure and the other person is made to feel inconvenient and a problem. And that's not healthy conversation. A healthy conversation doesn't make you the problem for pointing out that there's a problem. Healthy conversation should make you feel like you wish there was a witness to it. Healthy conversation is where you can say something and they consider it and want to know your perspective rather than just saying there is only one experience and it is my experience. So in a nutshell, that is gaslighting. So let's look at the internal and external factors of whether or not in that moment, how do you know, am I being gaslit? Maybe there's something going on in your life right now. And with another person, boyfriend, girlfriend, romantic relationship, whatever it is, and you're going, I don't know if I'm really being gaslit. Here's some tips, right? Number 1, if you feel like you leave conversations more confused, right? If you feel like you are always doubting, am I the one? Is it me? Am I crazy? Am I the problem? Am I 'Is it me?' Whenever you have that high sense of self-reflection onto you, not on the whole moment, not on the whole conversation, not the overview— instead, you have that self-reflection onto you that you must be the problem. If you continue to start to feel the need to write things down right after they happen because all of a sudden you don't trust yourself, We just had a conversation. Now I need to write it down. I need to make that note. Now I need to have this in writing. I need to have proof. Otherwise, you're not going to trust yourself of what you're saying. Those are high internal factors that something else is going on. Because, because healthy conversation doesn't need proof of the truth. Whenever you feel like you are constantly going, I don't— this just doesn't feel right to me. I feel like I'm the only one that's pointing out there's a problem. And all of a sudden, when I point out a problem, it's I'm the issue now. Now it's about me. And you're starting to feel guilty for bringing things up. That's a problem. When you feel guilty, where you feel almost like an inconvenience in order to say that something is a problem or point out an issue, and all of a sudden it now becomes you. It's always you. You're the one that's doing this. You can never be happy. You're the only one. Any of that kind of stuff is high likelihood. I would say red flag factors, high risks of somebody potentially gaslighting you. Now I want to talk about external factors. This to me happens a lot in conversation in terms of shifts. Narcissists do this, toxic people do this, we all do this. I find it as a symptom of gaslighting. To where it shifts from something about them to something about you, right? You might hear it as flipping the table. The, the, the— they have flipped the conversation, and that's exactly what it is. So instead of it being about the impact of how it felt to you, it's now become about their intention of what they intended to do. And because they intended this, well, then that's the end of it. I don't care about how you feel. The impact— you shouldn't be feeling that. That's not what I intended. And because I didn't intend for you to be upset, I didn't intend for you to be so frustrated, well, then that's your problem, because that wasn't my intent. And if it wasn't my intent, then sorry, this is the only truth. This is the only experience that matters. Maybe there's another shift that all of a sudden it's not about what they said. It's now about your tone. Now it's about how you said things. Yeah, I said this, but if you hadn't have just used that tone, you know, that tone you always have, right? If it was all of a sudden you being the problem, right? When you know good and well, you're like, no, this is— something is off. Here. This is where I'm going to remind you, trust your gut. All right, trust your gut. When that happens, when you feel like, no, this— something is off, high sign here that those external factors are pointing to something is pushing on you. Before we continue, I want to take a second to tell you about Wayfair. This new year, one of the things I always try to do is redecorate or reorganize a space. I think it comes from when I was a kid, we would always try and rearrange my bedroom because it just felt exciting and fresh and it felt like a different space every time. Well, let me tell you, I'm the same way now, and that's why I've been using Wayfair. Wayfair has everything in one place, furniture and beyond. 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You can't take a joke. You can't be normal with anybody else. You're less than because you're too sensitive, and all of a sudden you're now questioning yourself of, am I too sensitive? Is there something wrong with me? It's where that self-reflection piece becomes the center of everything. In my opinion, I find that most people who are susceptible to being gaslit are the people that are more insecure and often more self-reflective, meaning they overthink things in their head. All the time. They say something and then they overthink a conversation that they had said, like, why did I say that? That was so dumb. I must look so stupid to them. And they, they really get negative in their own thoughts about that. That's where I find that people who are gaslighting kind of get into the crevices of that. They can tell and they prey on those type of personalities. Here's one last shift that I think I see a lot, is it shifts from their behavior to your reaction. Meaning it doesn't matter what they've done, how they've behaved, what they've said, how, how they've, how they've reacted, their own behavior. And now it becomes about how you reacted to them. They wouldn't have done this had you not reacted that way. You know, they wouldn't have done X, Y, and Z had you not. It's all, it's, it's reverse. Rather than talking about cause and effect, they're saying that the effect was what stimulated the cause. Like, that's, it's the opposite. It's illogical thinking. And that's the whole point of gaslighting is it is illogical thinking that ultimately only harms you. All right. Now that we've talked about both the internal factors and the external factors that can signal to you if somebody is gaslighting you, what are you gonna do about it? Like, what's, what's there to do about it? Here's where I wanna give you some tools right away, right? Anytime that somebody is trying to pull that onto you, there's a phrase that I continue to teach time and time again because it works so well, and it is this: I remember things differently. Period. It's not ellipses, it's not dot dot dot dot. It is I remember things differently and sticking with it. I try to move off, not trying to overexplain, to justify. None of that's going to work because the more you justify and try to explain, the more you are exposing the things that they can try and shift, right? For behavior to reaction, from accountability to sensitivity, any of that kind of stuff, that's their playground. So rather than trying to chase everything and dig every hole, I want you to just say, I remember things differently. If that doesn't feel good to you, say, that wasn't my experience, period. It's the ellipses that get you when you say, that wasn't my experience because you said this and I said this, and you continue to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and now you are what? Overexplaining, and now it becomes how, oh my gosh, you're so draining. Can you hear yourself right now? Can you hear how crazy you sound? Ever been told that before? Can you hear how crazy you sound? Whenever you hear that, red flags should just be waving, alarms should be going off in your mind. When you just say, can you, can you hear how insane you are? How crazy you are? Insane. Crazy, unreasonable, irrational. That's a good one. Those are words that I would say I'd put in the box of— these are words that gaslighters use a lot to try and convince you that something is wrong with you. Everybody else is normal, but you're not. All right. And when that happens, I want you to go back to what you know and be grounded. And say, I remember things differently. That wasn't my experience. No matter what they say, they're going to try and come back on you, try and push you off, trying to spotlight something else. I want you to come right back to that wasn't my experience. That to me is something that keeps you so grounded in that moment that they really can't do anything with it. So that's a phrase that's going to help you time and time again. Before we keep going, I want to take a moment to tell you about a sponsor that I use almost every single day, if not every day, is Momentus. Like me, you're probably somebody who has a very busy life, and you have work, you have kids, you have obligations and responsibilities, and you don't have time to make sure that you're in some 1,000% peak fitness. Why? Because sometimes you skip breakfast, you skip lunch. I do it. It's not ideal, but it happens. That's where Momentus comes in for me. So I'm able to put things in my body that I know are good for me, and I have it covered. Everything with Momentus is NSF certified. Certified. What does that mean? It means it's the highest quality stuff that you could probably possibly get. I take their grass-fed whey protein, so I do protein shakes almost every single day. 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So it's not just kind of this one-off thing. It's a pattern of doing it. So how can you tell if you're gaslighting somebody? If at the end of the conversation you have to walk away as the victor, it can only be your truth. You're the only one that's right. The other person is doubting themselves at the end of the conversation, yet you are completely sure of yourself. The other person is a little confused and you feel completely justified. They feel apologetic and you feel like they— you absolutely deserved every bit of an apology and you don't have to offer anything. Where you're discussing a problem and they're the problem and you're no part of the problem. You see how off-kilter that is when, when the scales just absolutely always put you on top. You're never part of the problem. You never have to apologize. You know everything. Only your experience is the right one. Only what you have to say. You're the one who has the final say, the final answer. You always have to be right. Anything that they say is irrational, illogical, unreasonable, crazy, insane, I'm gonna have to break it to you. You're most likely delving into a behavior of gaslighting the other person in your life. So I hope that this is an episode that has been a little bit enlightening for you of the 3 signs that you really need to make sure that you know if somebody is gaslighting you. In your life. All right, we talked about what gaslighting is, some internal and external signs of whether that's happening to you. We talked about what to do when it happens. And 3, we've really talked about how to know if it's you that's doing it unconsciously, unknowingly to somebody else. And if it's always that you're the one that has to end up with no mud on you and the other person has to be caked all over, chances are You might be gaslighting somebody. Again, that does not mean you're a terrible person, right? Because we, we all do it to some extent. It's more so that you're catching it and not making it a pattern and giving yourself a little bit of grace and being able to say, hey, there are two sides to this coin that I, I can say that's not my experience. Help me understand what was yours to say. I remember things differently. What do you remember? If you can open your mind and reverse that damage by saying, hey, look, the other day I kind of closed you down. I kind of— I did. I did close you down and made it to where my explanation was really the only logical explanation. I don't think that was very fair. Can I hear what you had to say again one more time? You see how you can start to kind of unwind that before it gets entrenched into you just being this Scrooge of my way always has to be right. And if it's not, I have to divert to protect myself, to make sure that I'm the smartest, the best, the shield, whatever bad behavior I've been doing. That's what I'm talking about. Gaslighting. It is out there more than you think. That's why you need to protect yourself. So I hope you're able to share this episode. And as always, you can try that and follow me.