Gaslighting: Protecting Yourself

[BloomInWinter]

Texting was something I should have been able to reply to very fast, in his eyes. It got to the point of me dreading to even look at my cell phone when I got off of work.

(((((Ayesha)))))

I'm so sorry you went through that.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

It's okay, Bloom. :) We are no longer talking. I put my foot down and told him to f*ck off. One of the best things I have ever done!

 

[Jacquie]

I'm glad. Feeling that we *can* say.....is half the battle.

 

[Deleted member 10686]

I had never heard of gaslighting before... I guess thats why I wasn't aware that it was hapenning to me. It just blows my mind the things that my ex did to gain power over me, I can't really wrap my head around it. At the risk of sharing too much, heres an example. I did not experience childhood abuse, possibly some emotional neglect such as I hadn't hugged my father since around the age of 5. My ex knew this... so when he would be beating me and I would dissociate from the situation, and in a very confused state of mind, he would tell me I had multiple personalities and that I had an alter that was 5 years old.

Is this gaslighting? This is only one example.

I know now that I do not have DID, and yeah..wow. Besides everything else, all the other abuse, the mind f*ck is the hardest to wrap my head around and understand

 

[BloomInWinter]

(((((forwardmotion))))

Yes, telling ssomeone a lie is gaslighting.

I'm sorry he was so cruel to you.

 

[Knak]

I got this gaslighting from my mom, sisters, others along the way, and my husband of 25 years.
Today I told him I can't trust him. I've told him that before and he gets angry.
He grew up with alcohol abuse and considers himself to be above all that.
It is all I can do to believe it was the right thing to do, and not tear myself down.
I want him to realize it is wrong for him to lie to me. He is a Sunday school teacher.
I get migraines, depression and agoraphobia from the stress of living with someone who thinks they can use me and abuse me.
I blame myself for being so weak that I cannot leave him and support myself financially and live on my own.
His basic motive is to appear faultless in public.
It sounds like we are two sick people stuck with each other.

 

[BloomInWinter]

((((((Knak)))))

 

[Deleted member 10686]

(((((hugs to all)))) gaslighting is really a devestating and confusing aspect of abuse to try to wrap your head around, at least for me a lot of it still confuses me. This week my ex set up this whole scheme, where he made it appear that his son had run away to see my son. It was very suspicious and obvious that he had not really ran away but had been hidden and then came here (i.e walking for 2 days barefoot supposedly but absolutely zero blisters, scratches, nothing) and could not recall anything about anywhere he had walked, stores passed, nothing. Everyone could see it. Even the cops seemed suspicious but just said, well good thing he was found, case closed. It makes me so extremely frustrated that he can do these things and even use the children to try and manipulate situations. He is trying to make it appear to court that he should get rights to my child because of this set up incident. I don't know what to do. It is so outrageous that nobody will believe me.

 

[shadowchaser]

Thanks for pointing me here bloom. This sounds just like what has been going on. I don't think it's intentional but she has done this before in the past also. I'm sending her one last e-mail (she just sent me another one claiming I refuse to take responsibility for my part in all of this) telling her about Gaslighting. I'll give her some links and maybe she can better herself. But it will not be with me around.

 

[BloomInWinter]

There is a lot of information on gaslighting as a literary 'trope'...whatever that is, LOL.

Triggering for me.

"Gaslighting is a recognized literary and psychological term for deliberately trying to drive someone mad by altering their environment without their knowledge and denying it. You move their things, transmit noises into their room when no one else is there, change little details about your dress behind their back and so on. Soon they are convinced that they are hearing voices, seeing dead people, hallucinating or whatever. The victim can become so convinced that they are going insane that they do go crazy."

"A subtrope of Driven to Madness. Some of the same tactics can be used in a
Paranoia Gambit"
Source: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Gaslighting

My dad did this...using me against my Mom. He'd have me do something with chores, or the house, or whatever...and forbid me from admitting it. ...then, my older sis would do it, and I'd see her do it, and she'd lie to my Mom about it.

*NAUSEA*

 

[Meadowsweet]

I've never heard of gaslighting. But it seems very relevant to a recurring problem I experience. A man on an internet group who I opened up to about previous abuse, gave guidence using internet or phone sex. I was stupid taking it, but it made me feel better. Several months after I was attacked (by a different person), I started getting distressing images coming into my mind. I told him I couldn't carry on with that kind of guidence, because this was happening to me. He told me he was annoyed that I was comparing him to other men. And after that he was just cold.

But then he stopped talking to me for months. But stupidly I'd email him trying to pacify the situation. He'd ignore me, but every so often, he'd say, it was ok and that he was just having a break. But at the same time, I asked a mutual friend (and manager of the group he worked from) what was going on, and she always said she didn't know. But over time she has accused me of fantasizing. She's talked about him rejecting me and last year she accused me of jealosy. I understand my paranoid questions might give that impression, but she lost her temper and told me that her and this man shared all their emails and he'd told her this.

I find it hard to believe that this man, who knows my issues so well, would imagine that I was just jealous. But she was genuinely angry and seemed to believe that I was interfering in her friendships because of jealosy and fantasies about this man.

The effect is, that I can't talk about my fears of attack or my confusion over sex being used as guidence, because I just dig myself deeper into this myth that I'm a trouble maker. It feels like a gaslighting conspiracy.

 

[maddog]

My father forced me to make up lies to account for and disguise the injuries he inflicted on me. He did this to me from a very young age, almost from as early as I could form language and had the mental capacity to construct an explanation for an event that had occurred.

Not only would he force me to make up the lie in the first place, but he would then question me about it, requiring the creation of more and more elaborate detail and explanation of the lie, so that a tiny lie could grow into an enormous complex story within a matter of moments. He would force me to repeat and explain the lie time and time again, often in public, and wherever possible in contexts in which its validity would be challenged and would need to be defended by me.

The complexity of the mindgames was horrific, chilling, repulsive. I remember the tortured torment of trying to keep mental pace with him, frantic not to be caught out, aware of the vicious ever present consequences if I slipped up.

Shamefully, sickeningly, there comes a time when the truth and the lie begin to blur, and you can almost begin to doubt which is what, what is real, what is not, what happened, what didn't...

The line between sanity and insanity when that begins to happen can blur so quickly, so frighteningly.

It makesme nauseous to think of this now. Gaslighting... I never even knew what the term meant until recently, much less had any knowledge that I had experienced it.

Sometimes, when I'm really scared and dissociated, I still find myself caught in the almost pathological terror of not quite being sure if something was real or not, and sometimes, if I am real or not...

Triggering, God...

Maddog