You are sure that you are right, but the partner claims that it seemed to you. You know what exactly you heard and saw, but you begin to doubt, because your husband said that everything was different. In the end, you come to the conclusion: «I obviously have something wrong with my head.» The story of the heroine is about how to recognize gaslighting and stop depreciation.
A XNUMX-year-old woman recently came to therapy. After twenty years of marriage, she felt completely empty, unnecessary and wanted to die as soon as possible. At first glance, there were no obvious reasons for suicidal experiences and a constant feeling of severe mental pain. Wonderful children, the house is a full bowl, a caring and loving husband. From meeting to meeting, we searched for the causes of her depression.
Once a client remembered an incident that happened many years ago. The family traveled around Russia by car, during the day they were “chased” by the driver in the old Lada, and having overtaken, turned around, grinned, showing an obscene gesture. They laughed merrily at the strange driver. Returning home, they invited friends, and the client, as the hostess of the house, began to tell the guests about the pursuer, demonstrating the facial expressions of the man in her faces and colors.
The husband suddenly said that his wife was confusing everything. The driver overtook them only once and did not grin maliciously. My client insisted that everything happened exactly as she described. The husband asked his son, was it the way the mother describes, or the way he says? The son said that the father was right. So the woman was put up «crazy» in front of the guests.
The next day, during breakfast, she again tried to reconstruct the events, but her husband and children claimed that she was fantasizing. Gradually, in the process of psychotherapy, memory pushed out new episodes of devaluation from the subconscious. Her husband ignored her, stressed her inadequacy in front of her children, relatives and friends. The client remembered how she wept bitterly after the parent-teacher meeting, at which the teacher read out a strange essay by her youngest daughter, where the mother’s shortcomings were listed point by point, while other children wrote only pleasant and good things about their mothers.
The main goal of gaslighting is to sow doubts in another person about their own adequacy, self-worth.
Once, during dinner, she noticed that the children and her father were laughing at her: her husband was imitating her manner of eating … The meeting followed the meeting, and we were presented with an unsightly picture of the humiliation and devaluation of a woman by her husband. If she achieved success at work, they were immediately depreciated or ignored. But at the same time, the husband always remembered the wedding day, birthday and other memorable dates, gave her expensive gifts, was affectionate and gentle, passionate in sex.
My client found the strength to speak frankly with the children and found out that her husband behind her back made them accomplices in his game. The cause of the client’s depressed state was found to be systematic covert emotional abuse, which psychologists call gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a specific form of psychological abuse in which the abuser manipulates the victim. The main goal of gaslighting is to sow doubts in another person about their own adequacy, self-worth. Often this cruel game is played by men in relation to a woman.
I asked the client if she had not noticed a tendency to emotional abuse before marriage. Yes, she noticed the groom’s derogatory and dismissive remarks towards her grandmother and mother, but he so cleverly managed to inspire her that his loved ones deserve it, while she is an angel in the flesh … Already in family life, the woman tried not to pay attention to barbs, witticisms and actions that cast doubt not only on its significance and self-worth, but also on its adequacy.
In the end, she herself began to believe that she did not represent anything in society and, in general, was a little “crazy”. But you can’t deceive your soul and body: severe headaches and mental pain brought her to me.
The gaslighter, like Bluebeard, has a secret room where he stores not the corpses of previous wives, but the ruined souls of female victims.
In connection with this incident, I remember how Dunya Raskolnikova, the sister of the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, told her brother about her fiancé Luzhin. Rodion Raskolnikov angrily reprimanded her that, characterizing the groom, she often uses the word “seems”, and it seems that she “seems” to get married for this.
Even more acutely the problem of hidden sadism of a man is raised in the fairy tale «Bluebeard». As a bride, the girl believes that Bluebeard is cute, but with oddities. She brushes off her suspicions, as does my client, and many of us.
But the gaslighter, like the hero of the fairy tale, has a secret room where he keeps not the corpses of previous wives, but the ruined souls of women — victims of psychological abuse. Sooner or later (but better sooner) a woman should think: why is it so painful for her to be next to a man with an outwardly prosperous picture?
It bleeds the key to the secret chamber hidden in the depths of our subconscious, where we send everything that will reveal such an inconvenient truth that there is a sadist nearby, seeking to gain absolute power over us and experience pleasure from our psychological pain.
Healing — confronting the gaslighter — begins with asking the right question to make the invisible visible. An objective perception of what is happening will allow you to develop the right strategy of behavior and build personal boundaries in communicating with a gaslighter.
What to do if you suspect your partner is a gaslighter?
- Learn to distinguish friendly advice and support from criticism with a secret desire to assert yourself at your expense.
- And if you heard the subtle bell of your soul — “it seems that he is so good”, — do not rush to go into a close relationship with this “seems to be”.
- Give time for the secret to be revealed.
- Shake off the charm of projections idealizing a man, no matter how cute he may seem to you at the very beginning.
- Often, a skillfully crafted provocation that allows us to see the true face of a gaslighter helps us to get rid of illusions.
- Don’t ever let anyone call you «darling», this is where a lot of sad stories start.