re: I never really grasp term gaslighting (NSFW)

quote:

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Sure it’s overused. I’ve overused it. But anyone who has had to deal with an ACTUAL narcissist knows being gaslit basically becomes your reality. You can’t escape it. You either tune it out and defeat it or you become trapped inside it. Your boss, your mom, your wife- everyone runs into it and I’m glad we have a word to describe it.

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Narcissists use it for sure. And I'm not talking about the type of casual narcissist accusations that get thrown around willy nilly these days, but the real deal, emotionally disordered type. It's also a favorite go to of borderlines - again, not the cutesy "i'M sO cRaZy" borderlines in the movies, but the no-shite deeply disordered individuals who are so legitimately crazy that they dont know their OWN reality, let alone yours.

here's what gaslighting looks like in a long term marriage or relationship: it is deep psychological abuse that will seriously frick you up if you dont figure out what is going on. mostly what it has been in my experience has been a fight over a seemingly insignificant issue, usually something that is fairly nebulous and doesnt have a clear solution.

example from my life - my wife put a new bedspread on our bed a couple weeks after we got married, and i didnt particularly care for it. i dont remember my exact reaction, but i'm sure it was negative. nothing over the top, but i'm sure she asked me if i liked it, i probably said "i'm not crazy about it" or something like that, and then she had a deep, visceral reaction to my disapproval of the bedspread.

---note, in hindsight, i should have just said it was fine and STFU, picked my battles, whatever...but i didnt realize what i was dealing with at the time---

this ended up being a HUGE fight. there was yelling on my part, yelling and crying on her part, she kicked a hole in a wall, i'm talking a MAJOR conflict over this stupid arse bedspread (which btw we still have).

over the years, this bedspread has come up time and time again in other fights as examples of my "anger management issues" and "inability to control my anger and emotions" and my "selfishness and control issues" as exemplified by the fact that I had such an over the top reaction to her simply changing the bed spread. and for years, i went along with that narrative because i remember the fight about the bedspread, and i remember being really fricking pissed, but i could never really remember why i was so mad about the bedspread itself. or if i even WAS really mad about the bedspread. but that had sort of become my reality. and i'm using this bedspread fight as an example, but there are literally dozens of these flare ups in the last decade over the most inconsequential shite.

finally i started to talk to a fricking actual therapist about this because i thought i was losing my mind. he told me to start writing down what i remember about our fights and also to document our current fights. once i did that, this shite jumped off the page at me. in every single fight this pattern emerges:

1. issue arises in our marriage, typically nothing that significant in the grand scheme of things
2. i have some sort of negative reaction or emotional about whatever that thing is
3. wife perceives my negative reaction as a personal attack on her, accuses me of being "angry" even when i'm displaying zero or very little actual signs of anger (this is where she likes to pull out the "you're acting just like your father" card bc she knows my dad's temper bothers me, and is something i try to avoid replicating)
4. accusation of anger triggers me to ACTUAL anger, crazy fight ensues as i angrily try to defend my position of not being angry
5. fight ends however it ends, days, weeks, months, years go by
6. wife brings up the time that i was SO ANGRY about ***insignificant issue brought up in step 1***
7. i question my own memory and my own sanity

THAT is what gaslighting is. and if i hadnt started therapy and read a stack of books about this shite, then i seriously would have lost my mind. now that i know what i'm dealing with, i can avoid these fights because i just dont argue, but REAL gaslighting will absolutely frick you up.

anyways, TL;DR - it's a term from a movie