What does gaslighting mean in a relationship? Signs and examples of narcissistic gaslighting.

#gaslighting #narcissist #abuse

In this video Psychologist Dr. Becky Spelman offers her expertise on the abusive tactic of gaslighting which is most commonly used by Narcissists.

This video is about Gaslighting and if you watch through to the end Dr. Becky will tell you what to do if anyone ever tries to gaslight you.

Topics covered in this video:
Where does the term gaslighting come from?
What is gaslighting?
Common gaslighting techniques (Withholding, Countering, Forgetting/Denial, Blocking/Diversion and Trivializing)
Why do people gaslight others?
Why do narcissists gaslight people?
Parenting styles linked to people who go on to gaslight.
How parents gaslight their children.
Gaslighting in families.
How Therapists can gaslight people.
Who are victims of gaslighting?
Where is gaslighting most effective?
Gaslighting and domestic abuse.
Gaslighting and the law.
How to prevent gaslighting.
How to deal with gaslighting.

Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that's seen in abusive relationships. It's the act of manipulating a person by forcing them to question their thoughts, memories, and the events occurring around them. A victim of gaslighting can be pushed so far that they question their own sanity.

The abuser sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual's mind making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment. Essentially they are being denied what they have seen with their own eyes and know to be true.

Gaslighting behaviour is the result of childhood trauma. Parenting styles linked to developing narcissist personality or narcissistic traits are as follows: neglecting the child emotionally and also cold over-controlling authoritarian parenting. Also over indulging them such as spoiling them with privilege and possessions and promoting entitled attitudes. Or parenting with promotes perfectionism, winning and toughness from a child.

So basically it’s a combination of abuse or neglect along with behaviors that might make a child feel special or entitled and this inconsistent parenting which can lead to developer traits of narcissism. Because of the abusive environment, the child received a message that they are not safe to be vulnerable with other people so the person feels they need to wear a mask at all times which is a psychological defense to feeling vulnerable.

Who is most vulnerable to gaslighting behaviour?
Gaslighting works best when someone is most vulnerable and where intimate relationships are unequal.

How to prevent gaslighting

The first step is to be aware of your own role in being gaslight, the ways in which your own behaviour, desires, and view of the abuser may be leading you to idealize your gaslighter and seek his approval from them.

How to deal with gaslighting.

See the gaslighting, recognizes it for what it is, hold on to your reality don’t let this be swayed by the abuser, don’t try to fight for what you know as the abuser will never agree with you and it's better to step away and protect yourself rather than they stay and fight as your feelings will not be respected.

Please share an example of when you have been gaslighted.
Instagram: @drbeckyspelman

Dr. Becky Spelman is a top Psychologist in London, Becky is the Clinic Director for Private Therapy Clinic which has clinic's based all around central London including; Harley Street, Wigmore Street, Bank, Earls Court & Canary Wharf. Becky uses Psychodynamic Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Mindfulness to treat a range of difficulties with a particular interest in Borderline Personality Disorder and the difficulties that go with this condition such as relationship difficulties, anxiety, depression, low-self esteem, social anxiety, fear of public speaking, fear of intimacy, interpersonal difficulties, anger, body image issues, eating disorders and addictions.

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[tamiz]

My husband rewrites events so he’s always winning. I retell a story and he will change it to make himself the hero. It’s really screwed me up, I’ve been with him for decades. I have wondered if I’m crazy. I am going to stop it. I can’t live out the rest of my marriage like this. I don’t want my daughter to see this. Thank you.

[michaelpowers]

I broke up with my girl friend after 3 years. She was gaslighting me and I wasn’t sure what she was doing. She would say things and weeks later would say…..”you thought that’s what you heard”. She was trying to manipulate me. It didn’t work. She became angry and tension increased between us. It was because I wouldn’t let her control and manipulate me. It was as if she had some long term plan to rewire me. It drove a wedge between us and ruined the relationship. It started out good but went bad in the end. Anytime things didn’t go right she would lash out in rage and try to make me fill guilty. She started to use my personality traits against me like they were flaws. I feel like she played me for 3 years.

[dragonstaye]

"I don't want to argue" or "I'm not gonna argue with you" or "I'm not gonna fight with you" whenever concept of conversation aimed at peaceful resolution comes up." Withholding, yes.

[MsBelinda]

My husband is a narcissist gaslighter. Everything I do is never good enough, EVERYTHING…
I can go into details but won’t . Very sad and very sick . Please talk to your friends about unhealthy relationships. Someone needs your kind words and could change their lives.

[peacenquiet]

Gaslighting example: We were only 40 years old, and my ex husband was a professional executive, but at home, when he was speaking to me, he would just be vague and always mumbling,
and I could not hear his voice clearly and could not understand what he was saying because he was mumbling, so I was always pleading with him to just speak up and say things clearly, like he does when his speaking with his work colleagues.
I felt desperate (because he would get so mean and yell at me, ranting that he hated to have to repeat himself if I had to ask him what he said, yelling, “if you’d just listen better the first time”…) He refused to speak more clearly to me, and actually accused me of not trying to hear him, then eventually insisted that it’s because of me of having hearing problems. He insisted I get my ears checked. I felt utterly disrespected by his refusal to stop mumbling to me, and then yelling at me when, God forbid, I couldn’t figure out what he had said to me.
I was so desperate from this double-bind pattern he had me stuck in, that I went and got my hearing tested. I felt crazy when my ears tested as having perfect hearing. I cried, in fact, when the doctor gave me the “happy” results. The doctor was so confused why I looked so defeated. In my mind I was actually hoping I had hearing problems because at least I could have done something about that! ... When I got home and told my husband that my hearing was 100% he got the most sinister smirk on his face when I told him my results.
I was only 40 years old, a loving wife and devoted mother of our children, and he had me backed into a corner….I couldn’t hear him, so I would inevitably screw up his orders, expectations or instructions, which then made him disgusted by my mistakes, or made him furious if I asked him to repeat what he said, and then I still got his scorn for bothering him by asking him to repeat himself. He spent all this energy to refuse to speak clearly… who does that?…He got some sick thrill out of watching me squirm and beg him for basic common decency and courtesy - just speaking normally to me and not yelling at me when I couldn’t hear him because he was withholding his volume… WTH…that’s gaslighting!

[barrydworak]

Thank you!

My family culture was gaslighting. This blinded me to it later in life. Once I began to see it, the recognition was shocking but a positive life changing thing to suddenly understand.

Details will take time to write.

Hello from the western US. 🤠

[jessroutley]

Thank you so much for this video.You're literally explaining my whole life living with my mum. I also had a similar situation with being diagnosed with BPD. I was diagnosed after one 20 min phone call conversation, despite only having 2 symptoms of BPD. After a long fight with services I was able to get a full assessment and BPD was taken off. This took nearly a year of me being ignored, told I had BPD and in the end me sort of 'accepting' the diagnosis and almost trying to make my symptoms fit into the BPD criteria. .As the daughter of a Narcissist I'm so used to being gaslighted that its almost normal for me and thats defo what that psychiatrist did to me as I really did question myself.

[monie]

My partner of 18yrs is highly narcissistic. A trait that is very strong amongst all of his siblings. He came from a wealthy family and was very spoilt which probably accounts for his mind blowing entitlement.
I believe a lot of the manipulation and gaslighting tactics he uses are learned behaviour. His whole family use these tactics and I don't even think they are aware of it.
Once I became aware of his crazy making tactics, I started calling him out on it consistently.
I would say he has improved about 80%. Maybe because he is more self aware or maybe because he's just realised I see right through the gaslighting.
He used to say really hurtful things and act like he was joking. He'd then gaslight me by laughing and telling me I was being over sensitive and should learn to take a joke.
Here's how I got him to stop...
1. I would look him in the eye and calmly and assertively say "I don't find that funny at all and you know very well that you're just being mean. I think it's low behaviour and I don't appreciate it"
2. End of conversation. Walk away.
3. If he would follow me and start to protest and say it was just a joke blah blah blah.. I would put my fingers in my ears and sing a little ditty I made up about gaslighting at the top of my voice in my finest falsetto (which is incredibly terrible!😂)
That was my way of saying that the conversation is over and I will not allow you to further gaslight me with your excuses. Works a treat. It took a while but I won and I haven't had to sing that tune in years.
BTW, I do have a sense of humour and I can and do laugh at jokes made at my expense when I know they have not been made with ill intentions.

[saskiahuntley]

Really great video, often the term gaslighting gets thrown around without people fully understanding what it means. This video gives a comprehensive explanation that will hopefully increase understanding and awareness!

[karolemcaninch]

Thank you so much. Sometimes we can't get enough validation.

[zoebear]

My soon to be exhusband, is the KING 👑 of gaslighting. Just earlier today, he picked me up from the hospital, I was having heart surgery and for some time now, his cellphones GPS doesn't work consistently, so I knew where I was and said, if you make a right here, it's straight to the house and he looked over at me and said, the GPS is telling me to go a different way, I just wanted to go home obviously and I said it's a straight shot home if you just go right, I have no idea why his GPS sucks but it does. So he yelled at me and revved the engine and almost wrecked my car and then when I questioned his response to a very simple request, I wasn't angry, just miffed that he didn't trust my directions and I live here and he doesn't. So I said why do you react that way and yep...I didn't do anything wrong, I don't know what your talking about, just constantly denied that he 1 reacted like a spoiled brat and 2 he lied and gaslit me, except this time I went ballistic and told him to stay away from me. I really do hate him most times. I'm a pretty good person, I'm bi polar and I don't take meds, but when I'm wrong I can admit I'm wrong and when someone needs to be validated, I validate them. I'm a human being that makes mistakes but I don't go out of my way to hurt or lie or gaslight someone. I just wanted a peaceful marriage after a lifetime of trauma and obviously being alone is better.

[wildrose.]

Excellent description of different types of gaslighting. Thank you.

[littyasasmitty]

Wow. I had just recently been broken up with by my girlfriend of 2 years. We had lived together the whole time and we always fought and broke up and she would kick me out time and time again. After watching this video, she literally did every single one of these things to me. Used all the phrases and everything. And then would always say, “Everything would be find if you just apologized.” And I would always say, I’m sorry that I did this/said that to you, however I only did because of what you did/said to me first. And she would freak out and be like, “That’s not an apology. You don’t get to say sorry I did this but I only did it because you did this first. She would be like that is you never admitting that you are wrong. She would get mad and freak out and throw my stuff out and call me all types of names and just do the most. And I would always stay extremely calm and just try to reason with her and have a rational conversation until after hours I would reach my breaking point, which wasn’t even nearly the level she would get to. I would just say you are so annoying to deal with, or you make me so pissed off. Like that was the worst I’d ever do. And that would be what she would cling to. Disregard everything that happened prior to that and would just be like, “Well I deserve better and I don’t want to be with somebody that calls me annoying or crazy or says that I make them miserable.” So if you want things to work out you need to apologize for calling me those names. Finally the last time that she broke up with me, I had no contact with her for a week and she called me trying to get back together and wanted an apology so that we could move on and work things out. And it broke me. It took everything out of me not to tell her whatever she wanted to hear just so I could have her back. But I didn’t. I said no. Not this time. And then she was like wow so you obviously never loved me. You obviously never cared about me because I’m giving you an opportunity right now to fix things and you wont do it. So you obviously never cared and don’t want to be with me. And that hurt the most. Because I loved this woman more than I had ever loved anybody in my life. And I just wanted her to know that, but I couldn’t get back with her again. No matter how much I wanted to. And for her to then take that as a sign of how much I didn’t love her. It just broke me. She blocked me on everything and its been almost a month now since the breakup. And to wrap this whole thing up, upon discovering this video, it made everything so clear to me as to what was actually going on the whole time in my relationship and gave me reassurance that maybe I wasn’t the whole problem like she made me believe. I had no idea what gaslighting was before this video. And this is how I know God is good and has a plan for all of us...You’ll never believe that this whole relationship, the name of the apartment complex that we lived in, was literally called Gaslight Apartments. I can not make this up

[stardustsparkles]

I wanted tips to shut a gaslighter down. This was more an explanation of what gaslighting is. Please do a video on how to shut down gaslighting. Thank you for a clear concise video though

[realwithshelley]

EXCELLENT 🙏 thank you so much for sharing. The info is very helpful to me understanding the truth of gaslighting & these people &KNOWING I’m not crazy.

[jessicawillis]

Wow so eye opening.. who hasn't tried to gaslight me just to save face...? im sick of people.. ive been gaslite my whole life... my husband trys to but I just bust out... your gaslight me.. over and over until he stops. Lol... not the healthiest reaction but im still learning my trauma and how it has effected me over the years.. and dealing with a family with un-delt with trauma is toxic... my husband was gaslite growing up by his narcissistic parents as well. and he is still waking up to the trauma that they left him with... its a process and I do trust my husband. Our biggest gaslightere our parents and siblings.

[bjmcintyre]

In our last argument my ex literally used 4 out of 5 of these techniques in the same conversation. I was still suffering the effects of her gaslighting so statistically confirming for me that this is what was happening is so powerful for my recovery. Thank you so much!

[gambuccijames]

Thank you for this video. Now I know that every single time I’ve ever heard someone use this term it was incorrect

[dispencer]

Watching this is an awakening for me. My own daughter is gaslighting me constantly. Lies and denies, then it's because of me she has to lie. So my feelings, my hurt about what is happening is invalid I'm not allowed to have feelings. Next it is to divert to rip me apart as a mum and on and on. Brings up my past abuse by my father, whom I removed from our lives when my children were young, to accuse me of alsorts amongst that I'm still messed in my hea about my past abuse when I'm not. God I don't even know who I am anymore.

[rarecoral]

I really enjoyed your content on bpd and narcissism .. instantly subscribed.. you explain well with examples which makes complete sense.