In Flickering Light
One of the most harmful and obtrusive forms of violence an Intimate Partner can inflict on a victim is that of GASLIGHTING - a psychological abuse, where trauma is inflicted, by manipulating a victim’s reality, causing them to question their actions, self-conceptions, and likewise the experiences of abuse they may be suffering from at the hands of the abuser.
GASLIGHTING is a crazy-making technique, in that it seeks induce mild to severe mental illness by confusing and distorting the perceptions of victims, ultimately disorienting them and effectively grooming them to accept abusive behavior, by changing the narrative of what abusive or volatile conduct is. In other words, the abuser gains or elicits the compliance of the victim in the abusive circumstance, by forging the beliefs that the harmful or otherwise traumatizing behavior the victim is experiencing, isn’t really happening they way in which the victim is experiencing it.
Likewise, as we each of us function from our level of awareness, psycho-emotional wellness, and conceptual understanding of beliefs surrounding affirmative vs. defamatory or debasing stimuli from others, when someone gaslights us, it not only threatens our perceptions of those interactions, but it can likewise distort our basil self-preservatory inclinations towards self protection in warding off harmful or defunct behavior from toxic or harmful relationships.
GASLIGHTING is akin to brainwashing a person to accept volatility, and is common amongst abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders, as it is very effective in yielding power and control to predators from an unsuspecting or trusting victim.
SIGNS OF GASLIGHTING
Saying One Thing But Doing Another
One of the primary characteristics or attributes of gaslighting, is when an intimate partner regularly says one thing, but acts adversely to their words. They may deny or forge contextual circumstances as to why their behavior is outside of the milieu of their professed ideologies or affirmations. And while this may be true and valid in some instances, with gaslighting and the abuser, these circumstances aren’t the exception, but instead the norm. People lie, consistent actions and behaviors do not.
Emotional Rollercoasters Of Fluctuating Actions
Our behavior is regulated by chemical peptides within the brain, that serve to keep both our behavior and emotional affect consistent. When we are dealing with gaslighting behavior, the emotional rollercoaster of the inconsistency of the gaslighter can disrupt these peptides, causing us to become destabilized.
For instance, from one instant to the next, the gaslighter might change their mood, tone, behaviors or levels of affection towards us without reason, causing confusion and over time, emotional imbalance, as the relationship dynamics become more and more unpredictable. Gaslighters purposely do this to victims in an effort to keep them uneasy and “on edge”, as they never know what mood, action, or response their communication efforts will elicit from the gaslighter.
Telling Blatant Lies
Even when you know the truth of the matter, a gaslighter will continually lie. This serves to challenge and distort your perceptions of what is real and true. Gaslighter’s are infamous for setting up precedent, in trying to indoctrinate their victims with falsehoods and faulty ideations of reality. And if done long enough, the abuser can effectively succeed in causing the victim not only to question their perceptions and explicit knowledge of a circumstance, but many victims of gaslighting even try to make excuses for the gaslighter to sooth the cognitive dissonance or contradictory behaviors, actions and words they are many times confronted with, within the relationship.
Using Family And Friends As Flying Monkeys
When we are faced with the ever present threat of psychological violence, such as gaslighting, within harmful or otherwise toxic relationships, sometimes the only things that we can depend on for emotional comfort, solace and support is our loved ones. Gaslighters often try to win over or diminish our supportive relationships, by using the tenets of gaslighting and triangulation with them in ways that distort their perceptions of we are, in an effort to keep us from having the love and support of family and friends who can help us ward of the abuse.
The victim’s children or other close family and friends might be used in ploys to keep the victim destabilized and without help and support. This serves to enforce the false or otherwise faulty belief that the victim is within themselves faulty or that the negativity, disrespect, lies and other crazy making or defective behavior waged against them, is somehow valid. Some victims of gaslighting can’t possibly understand why everyone who once professed to love and care for them have now become the supporter of the predator, with many believing that they themselves are to blame.
The gaslighter’s goal is to attack the very foundations of the things that keep their targets whole, centered, and grounded in an effort to forge destabilization to maintain power and control.
Acts Of Attrition To Cause Exhaustion
Anyone who has ever experienced physical, psycho-emotional or spiritual abuses, can attest that it is very tiring. Having to constantly defend our humanness or right to experience affirmations of care, respect and honesty from our loved ones can wear on us in ways that cause us to eventually give up trying to engage in or seek out healthy communions with others. This is exactly what the gaslighter seeks to do. It becomes the repetition of volatile, unruly or otherwise abusive and defunct behavior that enforces the normalcy of abnormalcy. For instance, constantly being confronted with a partner who lies, cheats or steals from us continuously, can eventually fabricate an air of dysfunctional expectations within the relationship, where we eventually quit trying to persuade honesty, monogamy, or reputable dealings with the abuser and instead, begin to develop coping mechanisms that seek to adapt towards the faulty behavior.
For instance, many women try to spruce themselves up, or become excessive shoppers in an effort to make themselves appealing to chronic infidelity, others may discontinue communication, in fear of hearing lies, and yet still, others may start hiding their monies with the hopes that that will dissuade their partners from stealing from them.
Projection
Many abusers who seek to confuse and distort the truth of their own harmful behavior might accuse their targets of doing the very same thing that they themselves are doing. For instance, a gaslighter who lies or cheats might frequently accuse their partner of lying or cheating to project and deflect their own acts of betrayal.
The kicker for them is when you, the victim of such behavior, start to defend your actions by becoming overly explanatory or explicitly appeasing in your behavior in an effort to soothe their fictitious suspicions of you, especially when this is precisely what they themselves are clandestinely doing to you.
Trying To Convince Others That You Are Crazy
The gaslighter’s claim to fame isn't only in the abuses they inflict onto you, but likewise in their aggrandizing ability to turn others against you as well. It isn’t simply enough for them, themselves to confuse, distort or otherwise induce mild to severe psychosis among their victims. They go for the crème de crème in their quest to completely crush you, by eliciting the help of others to help them in their reign of terrorism against you. In this way, they have a far greater likelihood of completely subduing and controlling you for their purposes. Convincing others that you are the problem or somehow crazy, deters them from seeking to provide you help, and likewise serves to distort the dynamic of the relationship with the perpetrator, effectively reversing the abuse dynamic, making the predator the victim and in the eyes of others, the victim the predator.
They may tell blatant lies about you to others, or manipulate and orchestrate circumstances that seemingly corroborate their lies. Thing is, abusers are themselves highly skilled chameleons and manipulators, who are adept in the art of exploiting others perceptions for their own gain. So usually, whatever the gaslighter is professing of others is really a revelation of their own sadistic behavior.
ILLUMINATION
If we aren’t careful, Gaslighters can cause irreparable psychological, emotional, and psycho-social traumatic inductions within us, by circumventing responsibility for their volatile actions, while imposing an unending all out war on our most essential attributes that keep us healthy, well and stable. In abusive or volatile relationship dynamics, especially involving a gaslighter, their sole quest is to infiltrate and absolutely consume their targets, in an effort to repurpose them as a source of narcissistic supply.
It is imperative that we seek help in trying to untangle our lives from the narcissist, abuser, and gaslighter if we are to ever experience any sense of normalcy in our lives.