How To Challenge Self-Gaslighting
February is the month of love but we are also focusing on how to love ourselves more. This requires us to be honest with our behavior and how it enables our shame.
We know and all have heard what gaslighting is. If you don’t, here is the basic definition: someone making you doubt your reality, thoughts, feelings, and experiences as being false and/or minimizing their impact.
If we have had trauma in the past or been in toxic relationships, this might be something you’ve encountered. It is really about gaining power and control over someone. If we deny someone’s experience they will doubt themselves which ultimately leads that person to go to the abuser for clarification and validation of what “actually” happened.
If we are exposed to this, especially at an early age, we will use these same tactics on ourselves! What is even worse, is not even knowing we are doing it.
Have you ever had something happen to you and need to go to people in your environment for affirmation or confirmation that it happened the way you saw it
When something bad does happen, do you minimize the impact and/or try to see it differently because it must not be that way?
These are pretty good indicators that you are actively gaslighting yourself.
We fall on the familiar when we are doubting and questioning our decisions and reality. If we were told consistently that we don’t know what we are talking about and that our perceptions are not as they seem, we will believe it and no longer trust ourselves to perceive reality.
With any type of change that we want to create, we have to first become aware of when we are participating in the behavior. Here are some tips to challenge self-gaslighting:
Write down the phrases/thoughts that happen that enable gaslighting.
These could look like:
“is this happening to me?”
“I need to talk to…. Before I make this decision”
“It really wasn’t that bad”
“You’re over-exaggerating”
“You’re being over-emotional”
“I’m the problem”
“I just need to act like I’m ok”
“I’m being stupid/irrational for thinking/feeling this”
Once you acknowledge your trigger phrases/thoughts, you’ll be able to spot them more frequently and these are the key moments for change.
2. When you catch yourself with a trigger thought/phrase, validate the reality.
Grounding is the easiest way to do this. A grounding skill is looking at the entirety of your environment and acknowledging what is around you.
“I’m sitting with my friend at lunch and I’m having a salad. We are at a restaurant. The sun is shining. I’m warm. It is bright.”
When we acknowledge and validate reality, it is much easier to interpret it. When we fall into gaslighting, we are distorting our reality due to our anxiety/fear, etc. We need to ground and cope with these emotions first.
3. Challenge your thoughts/phrases with compassion. Compassion may be neutral responses, it doesn’t always have to be positive.
“It really wasn’t that bad”
to
“This experience happened to me and it made me feel…”
“You’re over-exaggerating”
to
“I feel…and that is ok.”
“You’re emotional”
to
“I feel…and this is how I feel.”
Repeating these affirmations to these gaslighting thoughts/phrases allows us to create new connections associated with the thought. Right now they are associated with negativity and shameful feelings. We want to work on pairing them with compassion to create a new and healthy experience.
4. Journal the experience after.
Journaling allows us to see things from a different perspective. I feel the most effective journaling is when we mind-dump (write everything in our head) and then re-read our journal entry after we have finished and journal our experience. You’ll be surprised what you will discover with the way you are thinking and feeling. Journaling also validates experiences for ourselves by remembering an event as we remember it.
5. Praise and reward yourself and do not shame yourself when falling into a trigger thought/phrase.
It takes a while to create new connections and habits so be compassionate with this experience.
Remember to always validate your past, thoughts, and feelings.
