How to understand if you are victim of gaslighting?

Victims of gaslighting may not realize that they are in an altered reality for a very long time. The key problem is the fact everything looks as realistic as possible! It’s like plastic fruits that are lying on a plate. We have a complete sense that they are real. If you only trust your eyes, you will make a mistake. It means that you need to connect other senses and use them to perceive reality. But if in the case of fruits it’s enough to touch them, gaslighting will require more effort.

How to understand that you may have become a victim of gaslighting:

– you ask yourself if you are overly sensitive or really overreact to everything

– you stopped trusting your opinion, you need to ask someone else if black is really black and white is white

– you feel that you are completely confused and sometimes you think that you are going mad

– you often apologize to your partner, manager, or friends

– you hide information from your loved ones so that you don’t have to explain yourself or make excuses

– it’s hard for you to make even simple decisions

– you constantly doubt yourself and the correctness of your actions

– you are afraid to express your opinion or show your feelings

– you feel the need to lie or hide the truth from your partner/family/boss not to get a portion of the judgment in response

– you feel that something is wrong, but you can’t figure out what exactly is wrong

– you used to be a different person; you were more confident, funny and patient

– you are acutely aware of your helplessness, worthlessness, and uselessness

– you know that you are actually guilty in everything

– you constantly doubt whether you are good enough for your partner, family, friends and that you are worthy of something good

If most of these signs can be found in your life, while things only get worse… it makes sense to look around and analyze all the relationships with your partner, parents, friends, colleagues, and so on.

Why is it so difficult to find yourself in an unhealthy relationship and realize that you are being misled?

First of all, this happens due to the fact that it’s difficult for the victim to rely on themselves. Their faith is undermined by repeated pejorative situations where everything looked like a reflection in a crooked mirror.

Sergei Petrovich has an explosive and quick temper. From time to time, he “educates” his ten-year-old son Timofey. However, the most frequent method of “education” is to comment on what his son is doing wrong. He loves to call him “a fool”, and “an idiot.” He loves to use many offensive words. His son tried to object at the beginning of this torture. However, Sergey Petrovich called him “a mother’s son” and “a squishy.” Now Timofey is really sure that he is an incompetent fool and flatly refuses to participate in any school competitions. He doesn’t want to be ashamed, even though the teacher considers him the best student in the class.

The victim first begins to doubt themselves, and then finds confirmation that the aggressor is right. They are really stupid (terrible, unrestrained, hysterical) and self-esteem collapses. As a result, there’s nothing to use to restore it.

The victim becomes dependent on the aggressor, and this is not surprising, because you cannot rely on yourself, you can only look for support from the outside, and there is no one outside except the gaslighter since by this time the circle of communication becomes narrow. The victim no longer believes themselves. Such person doubts everything and is forced to believe the aggressor, since he looks solid and confident as a rock, and the victim feels like a blade of grass in the wind, and even suspects mental problems because by this time he or she starts to have problems with memory, attention, health, various psychosomatic diseases, anxiety, and depression. There may be nervous breakdowns, which will fit very well into the picture of “abnormality” carefully drawn by the gaslighter. She feels bad, irrational, and seriously thinks she’s going crazy.

Inside the gaslighting atmosphere, it’s difficult to defend your position, because one has to face new evidence confirmed by the facts because the aggressor interprets them in the most convenient way for them.

Vera has been married to Andrey for six years, and they have two children. Now the children have grown up and Vera is trying to go to work. The grandmother can sit with the children and she has already agreed. There is a kindergarten where children are happy to go, however, Andrey accuses her of not taking care of him and the children. The conversation resumes and fades out for two months, expressions of Andrew get sharper. As a result, Vera is a bad mother, she doesn’t care that children are suffering, not getting mom’s attention, and he, the husband, feeling useless and abandoned, because Vera tends to run away from home to her “parties” (corporate events). He says that she wants to see her men (colleagues). What was the purpose of having children? In the case of the objections and response of his wife’s indignation, Andrey gets even more excited and declares that she is nervous and overreacts to everything. He reminds her of what happened three years ago when she left the children with their mother (her son fell down the hill, and knocked out a tooth). He asks the key question. Is she really ready to put children’s lives in danger, for the sake of her own wills?

The person with an established psychological control is no longer the master of their own thoughts, states, and feelings. They don’t have their own mental space, while everything is controlled by the aggressor.

Before marriage, Kira was an active and cheerful girl. She could not sit still, mastered the professions, and managed to create an astonishing career from scratch. She was even driving a car and enjoyed her life. Then she married Mitya… He was smart, handsome, older than her, and admired Kira’s activity, beauty, and intelligence. Kira was not going to have children immediately, but Mitya said that a family without a child is not a family. Kira agreed. A year after her son Kostya was born. In just a year, she got pregnant. This was a surprise, while Mitya assured that everything was under control. He forbade her to drink pills (harmful) or use condoms (how can one use condoms with a wife?). Kira burst into tears, she was not ready for a new pregnancy and children, but she resigned herself and set herself up for a new stage. Mitya was pleased. Twins were born. So Kira suddenly became the mother of many children. Kira settled at home, she was constantly cooking, washing, and cleaning. She was the key element of her children (“This is your women’s business, while mine is to earn money). She has no time for herself. When guests came to see them, the hospitable Mitya, while hugging his wife, commented on the lack of culinary talents of his wife, inviting everyone, including Kira, to laugh about it. He did not allow her to work (You are a mother of three children! Who will be with them?). When Kira, in order not to completely fall into depression, secretly began to take design lessons and she began to get amazing works, Mitya devalued all her beginnings, popularly explaining to her why she could not be an artist or a designer (You have no brain and no imagination!). In addition, he took all her money, so she wasn’t able to pay for the courses. By this time, Kira was already sure that she was a bad mother and a woman (Darling, have you seen your body? Well, you can’t get fat like that…). People around them were amazed by their family. They would tell that Mitya does his best to establish such a great family. And then Kira “suddenly” began to suffer from severe panic attacks. She was hospitalized. Fortunately, with the help of a psychotherapist, she gradually began to understand what really happened to her.

Numbness and a deep-rooted sense of helplessness don’t allow the victim to perform any spontaneous action on their own. They are in dire need of help from outside. And this is the answer to the question that is so often asked victims: Why didn’t you leave? They have to face the following comments: “People who put up with this are masochists”, “You just liked it, otherwise you wouldn’t tolerate it!”, “If I were you…”

However, they don’t understand that they wouldn’t survive in the same conditions.