Are You Self-Gaslighting?

Most of us have heard of gaslighting. Gaslighting is defined as the psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator. 

Self-gaslighting is when you double down on the abuse that you're experiencing from the gaslighter and do the same to yourself. Why would you do that? It is highly likely that you are not aware of the extent of the gaslighting and so you feel that the problem must be you. 

Here are some signs that you are gaslighting yourself. 

1. You make excuses for the bad behavior of someone else. This someone else is manipulating you yet you keep coming up with "logical" reasons why it is ok for them to be doing so. You know it's not right and ultimately you are deceiving yourself.

2. You invalidate your feelings about hurtful events as well as your reactions to what is being done to you. Maybe you feel exceptionally hurt by something they said, but you tell yourself that you're over-reacting. You don't need to feel so hurt. Or you get angry about something that has been done or said to you and you tell yourself that you over-reacted and should not have gotten angry.

3. You tell yourself that things aren't that bad. You minimize past trauma and quite possibly even blame yourself for it. You strongly criticize yourself for wanting to be heard or seen. 

4. You doubt your memories. The gaslighting you were subjected to made you confused about your memories and now you doubt their validity.

5. You are bound to your past. You believe that you are responsible for something that was not your responsibility. It is a distortion of your memories. Yet, you think if only... or I should have..... 

In my own story, it took me a long time to realize and comprehend that I was being gaslit. It had been going on for many years before I even knew what it was. 

When someone close to me passed away the gaslighting began. It caused me to question my own perception of the person that had died.  I questioned whether I ever knew them. I questioned how I could have missed all of what was being said about them. And yet through it all I knew that I had never experienced what was being said. For a long time, years in fact, I was confused. It affected me in all the ways that gaslighting does. I no longer was confident that life really had been the way I remembered it and therefore I questioned everything about the present moment and worried that it too was not as it seemed.

I went through all of the steps of self-gaslighting.

But, I wasn't satisfied with my life's trajectory and I knew even early on that there was a solution and that I needed to get beyond the chaos. I figured it out. I got the help I needed, I worked on what I had to work on and I am whole again. Maybe more so than I have ever been. 

Healing is becoming whole again. It's coming back to your authentic self. It's integrating all of your parts, including the parts of yourself that you have loathed and rejected or tried to run away from. It's recovering from the loss of connection to yourself caused by the emotional abuse. It's the reconnection to the self.

You know that you are healing when the past no longer has the same hold on you. When your mind is clear and you are no longer triggered by the things that used to trigger you. When your reactions are valid and they don't last long.

My healing path introduced me to hypnosis and spirituality. There is no escaping the work that we have to do to heal, but it is so worth it! Hypnosis and self-hypnosis are my way of staying connected to my Self, to my Soul. I practice every day and plan to do so forever. It is why I became a hypnotist. I want to help you get out of your own chaos so much faster than I was able to get out of it.