We all have a general idea of what gaslighting is. Whether you’ve heard about it or experienced it first hand, you can easily recognize when someone’s gaslighting you.
Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to make you or someone question themselves.
There’s a bunch of different ways to be gaslit, like if you know for a fact something happened, but you’re being told that it didn’t; or that it didn’t go down in the way you remembered it.
Am I crazy?
Did I make that up?
Or if you react to a situation in a completely understandable way and you’re being convinced that you’re doing too much, it’s not that deep, and you’re crazy.
Gaslighting is psychological no matter what way you do it. It leaves you feeling unsure of yourself and your feelings; confused, and constantly second guessing yourself.
People who gaslight want control over you and your emotions. That’s why they try to distort your reality into something that they’ve made up.
Gaslighting is annoying- and it’s been done to me for as long as I can remember. Battling with myself in my head about whether I’m truly overreacting or they’re truly just an asshole is exhausting.
Being gaslit so long caused me to gaslight myself. And sometimes, I catch people I talk to gaslighting themselves, too.
Like when I’m talking to my friends about how something someone did made them feel and they follow it up with something along the lines of, “I don’t know why I’m reacting this way. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Obviously it is.
I’m very in touch with my emotions, but that doesn’t stop me questioning them. I know what’ll set me off and while I know some things upset me that wouldn’t upset the average person, I don’t deny it. Initially, at least.
I found a pattern in what leads me to gaslight myself. If I feel like reacting a certain way or saying how I feel will escalate a situation, I ask myself, “Is it worth it? Should I just suck it up?”
Invalidating your own feelings is another way to put self-gaslighting.
You can’t control how a certain situation makes you feel and trying to doesn’t help.
In order to stop gaslighting myself, I had to become comfortable in my emotions. Comfortable enough to say, “Yeah. I feel this way and I can’t do anything about it. I’m gonna react in a way that shows exactly how I feel. Because regardless of how I feel, I feel that way for a reason.”
I gaslight myself because I’ve been gaslit my entire life. That’s where it stems from, for me.
If you’re told your whole life that you’re dramatic, and overly emotional, and that you need to just grow thicker skin, that becomes your norm. When you feel even the slightest bit of discomfort in a situation, you question it.
If I hadn’t felt downsized my entire life, how different would I be today?
Would I have endured so much gaslighting if my feelings were considered and not bashed upon from an early age?
If you’re comfortable in your emotions, will you still allow people to gaslight you?
Will you still gaslight yourself?
Manipulating yourself opens the door for others to do it as well- which is why it’s important to feel secure in your emotions.
When someone comes for the way you feel, back yourself up.
Treat yourself better than how you’ve been treated.
Validating yourself closes that same door for others to invalidate you.
It all comes down to you, you, you.
