You have probably heard the term ‘gaslighting’, and know it is a confusing and manipulative form of abuse.
In today’s Thriver TV episode, I want to go deeply into just how damaging it is.
Gaslighting is so much more than someone trying to be ‘right’ and make you ‘wrong’. Or even having a skewed reality of the world they are trying to impose on you.
It is much more insidious and can be devastating for you.
But just how dangerous IS gaslighting?
Video Transcript
Welcome, dear Thriver to Thriver TV where you learn how to not only survive toxic relationships, but also to truly thrive.
Today I want to talk to you about gaslighting: what it is, how abusive people employ this tactic, and what you can do to take back your power and escape its serious effects.
Before I get started, if you enjoy my work, please share it to spread the word that it is possible to heal and thrive after narcissistic abuse. And if you haven’t yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, please do.
What Is Gaslighting?
A lot of you know about gaslighting, but today I want to talk about it in a deeper way so that you can realize how serious it actually is.
Gaslighting is about confusing you. Toxic people are experts at this. They make ‘up’ seem ‘down’, and ‘good’ seem ‘bad’ and vice versa.
The purpose is to make you doubt yourself, your power and your truth, so that no matter how abusive and outrageous a gaslighter is, they can cover their tracks and make you feel as though there’s something seriously wrong with you.
Let’s look at some examples of this, beginning with taking away your voice.
Depriving You Of Your Voice
You may speak up about something abusive that was done to you, for example a toxic person trying to control you into doing something for their benefit with no regard for you. Or they could be insulting you, demeaning you, being nasty to you. These are the types of experiences with a narcissistic person that make you go “ouch”, and hurt enough for you to eventually say something.
When you speak up, gaslighters assert that they were completely justified in what they did or said and they jump straight to making excuses.
They say things like, “I didn’t say what you mistook it as. You’re confused. You didn’t hear me properly. You didn’t give me time to finish the sentence.” Or “you heard what you wanted to hear.” How many of us have heard a narcissist say that one?
“You caused me to say that because of your behavior, and it’s nothing compared to the things that you say to me. It’s what you’ve done to me that caused me to withhold, leave, not contact you, say no to you, renege on the promise, or do something that you didn’t like.”
A gaslighter righteously declares they’re correct regarding what they said or did that was abusive. You’re wrong, and you are a really bad person because you’re using hateful expressions and accusations against them.
Let’s break down what’s really going on here.
Gaslighters take zero responsibility for their toxic behavior, agendas and self-serving acts. They assert, “No, I haven’t been missing in action. I’m not having an affair. I’m not acting inappropriately. I’m not talking badly to you.” According to them, they were not wrong and you’re wrong for bringing it up.
So not only are you having your trauma invalidated, but you are also degraded and blamed for being difficult, unsupportive, accusatory and out of line. You’re delusional, imagining things, and of course you’re abusive and narcissistic. The list goes on and on.
And it could get worse. You may be threatened with some form of disciplinary action. The abuser may abandon you, cut off your funds or persecute you to others. You may even find yourself framed and prosecuted by authorities for something that you did not do – all you did was try to stand up for yourself.
If you stay with this person, what happens? You’re being trained to shut up. You work out it’s too dangerous to try to speak up and express your feelings and your truth, because it creates drama and is too traumatic. You start to doubt yourself and you lose your voice.
This person has been able to shame you into submission and they can continue doing what they want to do: immoral and narcissistic acts at your expense.
Changing Your Reality
Gaslighters try to change your reality of yourself in life. They push their own crazy version of things onto you and try to pass it off as normal. They convince you that you’re wrong and are going against ‘the norm’ and the majority view. They hope to make you feel alone and bad for thinking the way that you do.
Toxic people create allies, real or imagined. They want to disprove your perception and deny your right and freedoms to have your own mind, opinions, values and truths. They tell you that what feels inherently right to you is fundamentally wrong.
For example, you may believe that in a happy relationship, each person is content for the other to be their own individual.
You want to grant space and have space granted, and you see a relationship as supporting each other’s interests. A narcissistic personality will tell you that you’re selfish and wrong for wanting those things. They’ll tell you you’re out of line, and will cite all sorts of information and people who disagree with you. They could even quote spiritual verses and teachings to back up their version.
The most pathological people will fabricate false information and straight-faced lie to you about it. They enlist others that they’ve brainwashed, blackmailed or bribed into backing them up, to make their deceptions even harder to disagree with. Gaslighting can get to this level.
On the inside, you know something is wrong because you’re inherently coded to know that you are meant to make choices and live your life in the way that feels right for you. This is your Source/ Creator/ God-given right.
You know you’re not bad, malicious, selfish, disrespectful and evil, which is all the things the gaslighter is trying to make you believe about yourself. But because you’re under so much mental and emotional assault, confusion and pressure, you start to lose a sense of what’s real for you.
People who are energy vampires cannot tolerate you having your own power. They need to exploit and parasitise you – your soul, your money, your energy and your resources. If you’re free as an individual in yourself, they can’t control you and they can’t use you for their own purpose – which is to suck you dry, chew you up, spit you out, and discard you when it’s over.
Getting Ahead of the Story
It’s very common for gaslighters to get ahead of the story. Before they’re going to do something horrible, a gaslighter will cover their tracks by saying you are the one doing it, or you’re thinking about doing it.
Before gaslighters take an outrageous deceptive action, they will cover their tracks by signalling that you are thinking about doing exactly what they are planning. This gets the focus off them, onto you – and they’ll also telegraph it to other people. This means that if this happens you’re the one that’s going to get blamed for it, and if you try to blame them, it makes you look even more guilty.
It’s called ‘getting ahead of the story’ and gaslighters are famous for it.
If you get set up in this horrible way, the instinct is to want to fight back and try to convince people that you are innocent. But doing this is futile.
Breaking away is essential. Detaching and leaving is the only way to escape this horrible persecution and cruel abuse.
When you are triggered into persecution programs, your own healing is vital so that you can rise up into being the person you wish to be – without connection to a gaslighter, and without trying to convince other people of your innocence.
Who you ARE is what shows. The spiritual lesson and the growth is the ascended self-determination of “it’s not important what others think of me. It’s important what I think of me”.
Once you lose the traumatic fear and charges of injustice and persecution, you will see who does believe in you and who doesn’t. And those who don’t believe you and believe in you are not your true people.
How To Escape From Gaslighting
Firstly, you need to understand just how serious gaslighting is.
Someone who gaslights is not just an opinionated, difficult or belligerent person. They’re dangerously manipulative and their agendas are much more sinister than purely them being right and making you wrong.
This is about using you as a mere object to twist, turn and confuse, until you’ve lost yourself enough to become their prey, and are powerless to protect yourself against a gaslighter’s malicious intentions for you.
One of the greatest challenges that faces all decent human beings is that we can’t imagine there are people who are capable of such atrocities.
To break free to be healthy, whole, self-actualized and impervious to being manipulated, duped and destroyed by others, requires understanding and accepting that other people are not you. Just because you would never do something doesn’t mean others wouldn’t.
It also involves you staying in touch with you. We all have an inner GPS, which I call a God Protection System. This is your intuition which tells you when things are questionable or not right. We can’t ignore this, otherwise, we can pay a dreadful price. After all, looking back we very often knew something was wrong, but we didn’t honor that feeling.
We must claim this Source / God-given gift, listen to it and act on it. We have to stop believing others when they tell us that they are the authority of our life and they know what’s best for us. Especially when this pings you on the inside, doesn’t land well and doesn’t feel warm, healthy, soft and real.
Your soul and your inner voice is your authority, and we have to give ourselves permission to investigate, critically think, check up on things and search for facts. We need to take the time and have the motivation to do this. Otherwise, we’re negligent in honouring ourselves and we’re guilty of handing our power away out of laziness. We fall asleep at the wheel of our life.
As children, we were powerless with this. But as adults, we’re not. It is key that as we grow up, we take responsibility and control for our own truth in life.
We have to let go of the need for the gaslighter to agree with our version of things. Stop fighting with them. Stop trying to get them to stop their behavior. Stop trying to get them to wake up and see the truth. It is never going to work. They are way too far gone. These people have crossed the line into being soulless. They’re never going to get it. They’re never going to accept your reality. They’re just going to double down on their deceptions.
Their False Self and False Life rely on their deception. If they weren’t gaslighting and deceiving, you would never have signed up for what they were offering and you would never have stuck around for it. You wouldn’t tolerate it. Their deception is their imprinted identity and their inverted version of life. It’s anti-life. It’s a black void that sucks dry and destroys goodness, Life-Force and all things that are Source and Love, including your soul.
There is no way this person is coming back to the light side. In their quest to hang onto power over you, they’re going to use every weapon in their arsenal to get you to acquiesce and fall back into the dark side with them.
So they hurl insults, guilt you, discard you, abandon you and ramp up the manipulations. They will mess with your mind and your spirit. If you didn’t realize until now, it’s a spiritual war you are in. This is about regaining your emotional self.
You have to detach, turn inwards, and heal the parts of you that are giving in. Instead of giving in, it is necessary to go through – meeting and transforming your terrible emotions and yourself.
We have to become insult-proof, abandonment-proof, guilt-proof, and needing-accountability-proof. All this and more is needed to survive, heal, and then thrive from this. And of course, this is all easier said than done, especially after being gaslit, and terrorised mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Gaslighting is a serious issue in our world on a collective as well as personal level.
It requires much healing for us to throw off the shackles and rise up with courage into our own divine truth and light. Then we can be shining examples for others who may be drowning in the fog and the lies. I’d love to help you become such a person – for yourself, for future generations, and for our world.
In Conclusion
The Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP) is far and away the most powerful, direct and fastest way to address this. It reprograms you out of being gaslit, into clarity and your own power. You can check out NARP by clicking on this link.
I also have an upcoming four-hour workshop, which is called ‘Freedom From Relationship Trauma and Toxic People’, which is really relevant right now. If you’re suffering from this, this is going to be a really important event for you.
Regardless of your level of healing, this workshop will provide you with powerful answers about your healing blocks, as well as relief, hope and true processes to start and accelerate healing, without years of painful and expensive contemporary therapy.
This is a low-cost event, with an extremely high-value return, with an informative presentation, a workbook, and 3 soul-changing Quanta Freedom Healing shifts.
All of these materials are yours for life, granting you support and breakthroughs whenever you are in need.
The Quanta Freedom Healing is a forever-resource as well!
If this sounds like the answers, solutions and relief you seek, then this is the workshop for you.
I hope that this has made sense and I hope it has helped you make sense ot this. As always, keep smiling, keep strong, keep healing, and keep thriving because there is nothing else to do. Lots of love.
Like it. I have a gas lighting neighbour who creates problems, which have caused expenditure for me – hundreds of pounds, but it’s never his fault, and when I complain I am described as being ‘unneighbourly’
Dear Melanie!
I don’t know where gaslighting ranks in relationship to all the sinister and horrific things narcissists do but my experience tells me it is up there right at the top!
The narcissists routine practice of gaslighting me over the years HAD a devastating effect on my well-being and my ability to function normally as a human being on this planet!
That was then and now is now!
Becoming and now being a practicing member of the NARP community I am learning to no longer respond or react to any of the cruel and manipulative nonsense that is repeatedly spewed out of her mouth or from anywhere for that matter….
Using the
module on letting go of the fear of “what the narcissist may or may not do” has been a godsend.
I wonder how others feel about this horrible practice which can be incredibly terrifying when it is done in the way that cruel narcissists do it.
Thank you so much for this article, Melanie! I often forget about what I did experience when I was gaslighted…
today you reminded of what I need to do to create for myself the inner strength and ability to no longer let her get to me in that way!
Thank you so much, Melanie! Sending love to you and so much gratitude for everything you do to help so many of us on this earth!
❤️🦋❤️
Always so grateful to you Melanie. Finding your website started my healing journey and what you teach is so powerful. Thank you ✨
Its amazing, you seem to be able to sense exactly what I need to hear at the right time! I ‘allowed’ a N who had started to play his gaslight game, (a few weeks into a relationship) to ‘abandon’ me and immediately blocked him from my life (No Contact). I thought that would be the end of it… but no, he has employed authorities (Lawyers and the legal system) to torture me, with no substance to his Claim. 6 months on, Im still working through how to get him out of my life, without him breaking me spiritually. NARP is helping and Ive been driven to ‘Radical Forgiveness’ as well, which is so challenging, but necessary. I hope the phase the world is going through, where ‘gaslighting’ seems to be more common than ever, can be healed before all innocent people are driven mad!!!
Dear Melanie, I needed to “hear” this today. In these difficult financial times, I have started thinking about giving up on distance from family narcissists because life just seems too hard by myself. Your article reminded me of how much worse it was when I handed my power away for financial security. I might be living in poverty but I fall asleep and wake up feeling safe now I no longer live with or near the narcissists. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the top of my soul.
Hi Judy!
Going through something similar! Sometimes I would compromise myself and give in to ulterior impulses and then realize that I can’t do that! It’s always a struggle with these people and with ourselves to know just what to do at any given time, but, NARP has amazing guidelines which if we follow them we will do the right thing. 🙏🏻
Going to the modules for assistance always helps me although I can’t always do everything right, yet! I hope things get better for you! 🙏🏻
I have experienced that with two young ladies at work and their bosses never did anything about it because they themselves were bullies as well.
Hi Melanie,
After 42 years of this hell I managed to leave him, God knows he wafted in and out of my life since 12 months after we were married so I guess it was my turn.
I was so angry, and things I did and said were so ?stupid/terrifying/dangerous or any other word you like to put there, as I realized my whole marriage had been a lying sham and at that stage there’s wasn’t any Melanie to help.
I dated a few guys, Like Princes Diana I needed to feel like a “real” woman again. Like hers most of them were duds. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to get a Prince.
One of them started to get me out of this horrific place after the Cockroach had rung while I was out with this fellow. I was so angry and embarrassed about the call I asked this guy “when do you ever get past these people?”
His reply was “Not until you make yourself get out.” OMG! how do I do that I that thought?
Well it helped me not to be so outlandish, to slowly understand that what I was doing made people think I was as nutty as he said I was, TIME TO STOP!
So with my limited foresight I started to slowly come to terms with all the horrific things that had been done to me, if I told you it would sound like Science Fiction Porno on one hand and Manipulated Cruelty on the other.
I slowly managed with whatever Self Help was available that I could afford, bottom of the barrel stuff mostly but I utilized what I could and slowly calmed myself down and started to see that he and his mother had used me as their Emotional Punching Bag.
I was happy with my progress mostly but I couldn’t “lean into stuff” like Tapping/EFT and other things, there was always a brick wall blocking me and sometimes the cost was beyond me.
He always made sure we were in deep debt so the little bit I got as Settlement was spent on trying to get me out of that hole I was buried in with limited outcomes, but it was better than I had when I left.
In the last four and a half years since I found Melanie I really don’t recognize most of my past life. No more lies, cheating, debt not to mention Gaslighting and all those other horrific things these Cockroaches enjoy inflicting on others.
Of course in between times, a couple of years after the Divorce I met married another one but he was Covert where the first one was Ultruistic so I hadn’t recognized the signs until after we were married and the “Charm” offensive gave way to the normal crap they go on with.
Now I go to family things, say “hello” and “good bye” also answer whatever dull conversation he may choose to have, and go home in peace not having offended any of my kids.
If his wife is there I say “hello and good bye” to her and that’s all, she was my Orthopeadic Surgeons Office Manager and they cavorted around behind my back for 8 years… only thing was I knew he was tarting around with her.
Life is so good now and although I’m never going to recoup all the money he stole, as well as the affection and my life in general I’m at peace with me thanks to Melanie. Now almost 80yo I won’t be getting a job anytime soon.
I hope all of you can come to this stage of life because it sure beats the crap that came before.
I had no idea what gaslighting was until I came across a definition of it for something totally unrelated to my Narc husband. It would still be several years before I knew about my husbands NPD/ASPD. When I saw that definition of gaslighting I knew like a light bulb went off that he was doing this to me. First, I laughed because I actually thought my husband was getting dementia. He “forgot” so many things and tried over and over to make me doubt reality when I knew my reality was just fine! Then I felt so sad that he was gaslighting me. I started keeping a list I called the “non normal ways” and would add to this list each time my husband did or said something I knew was wrong but he tried to convince me was right. When I discovered a few years later, his secret world of hidden extra phones, multiple affair women, secret bank accounts, secret credit cards and realized our entire marriage was fake, my non normal gaslighting list made perfect sense. A Narc survivor.started me on my Narc education journey. Even though I thought at first my husband had dementia, the constant gaslighting caused me brain fog as I had to decider reality from his lies over and over throughout each day for years. This takes a bit to reverse. Thank you for openly sharing your experience. Education is a key to salvation.
Thank you Melanie…I don’t know how you do it…each subject you write your heart out for us…is perfectly aligned with a present situation I am experiencing…
This time…I think I discovered my first “Altruistic Narc”…
Same characteristics…just more subtly hidden…
I have made the conclusion to go “no contact” in a suitable manner…
Thanks As Always! You are definitely THE BEST!
James
Thank you so much for explaining “getting ahead of the game”. I experienced that a lot. My husband left our family for a Narcissist and she began to control Everything. She won’t even let him speak to me, every thing goes through her. It’s been hard on my daughter, but I’m getting her therapy so hopefully she’ll know how to handle it as she grows up. It has been brutal but it was very interesting when I could predict what “they” (read she) were going to do next because they would accuse me of it first. There is a little feeling of getting your power back when they “get ahead of the game” because at least I could tell what was coming and prep myself and my reaction.
My heart goes out to anyone who has had a narcissist join their family through marriage. When someone else chooses to bring them in and you can see the devastating affect that they have on the member of your family but also on the rest of the family members. It can destroy families. A narcissist destroyed my family.
Thank you so much for explaining “getting ahead of the game”. I experienced that a lot. My husband left our family for a Narcissist and she began to control Everything. She won’t even let him speak to me, every thing goes through her. It’s been hard on my daughter, but I’m getting her therapy so hopefully she’ll know how to handle it as she grows up. It has been brutal.
My heart goes out to anyone who has had a narcissist join their family through marriage. When someone else chooses to bring them in and you can see the devastating affect that they have on the member of your family but also on the rest of the family members. It can destroy families. A narcissist destroyed my family.
Oh my goodness Melanie. You are writing my story of what went down. I ended up believing the narcissists versions of myself and really they had me even worse and I became a much less version of myself. Prior to this horrible experience, I had a lot of similar themed situations be it toxic work to bad friends and displacement let alone so much childhood trauma as little did I know my FOO were narcs too. I found that went you have been gaslit and you have trauma in your being and you experience retraumatization you end up handling the situation poorly and I found that I would react in ways that made me look crazy and I couldn’t speak up when I needed to and felt very shut down even if I was just being attacked by someone who was confused by me in my life. I had narc abuse later down the line but before that just had authoritative others like work mates and people in general reflect back to me these same fears – even if I did try and speak up or say what I needed to I would somehow unconsciously end up shutting down and handing over my power when I needed to honor my anger and say……whatever but couldn’t. What a mess man this does to someone gaslighting you have had to have lived it to know.
Great article. What struck me with gaslighting was once I could see them doing it to me, I could also see that I was doing it to myself. Hard to unravel myself from. Also the systems we’re in at large are very gaslight-y, the culture is always at it. And parents. “You’re not hungry. You don’t need to go to the toilet.” Etc. (Not blaming, it happened to them as kids too)
No wonder were susceptible to this insidious behaviour. Thank u for shining a light on it l, Mel. Your work and effort is invaluable to people like me, trying to sort my emotional and psychological landscape out.
Hi Gemma,
you are 100% correct – no wonder indeed.
Please know how welcome you are and I”m glad this has helped!
Much Love
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Hi Melanie. There was so many truth bombs being dropped in this post. The statement that struck me most is that this is a “spiritual fight” or battle. Sometimes I feel like this person is a culmination of so much dark energy in my family line and there’s a soul tie. The “getting ahead of the story” really resonated. I face a lot of that in the courtroom and at my child’s school. Hearing you say that I shouldn’t try to battle that issue gives me pause on the most recent incident. I’ve been contemplating saying something to the teacher and principal, but I think it’s best to let it lie. There’s also the aspect that we’ve had they system weaponized against us with no accountability for his actions in sight. As a NARPer (when I can because he’s really escalated over the last year as we close in on the end of the trial and his former flying-monkey-in-charge has switched teams), here are things that I wonder about occasionally that you raised:
1. Their ability to change. While I was raised a Christian, I don’t really consider myself one, at this point, and I follow many religious practices in my relationship to Goddess. However, the running message throughout many religious texts is always that God can change PEOPLE and situations. I’ve witnessed the N be who he is and double-down on his behavior as you said over the last 10 years. I believe what he is showing me. I want to confirm because I’ve always believed that he’s incapable of changing. Is it true that we should never ever expect a narcissist to make a turnaround? Are they full stop really incapable of being different or better?
I ask this for my child’s sake because she is forced to have contact with him via the court system. My focus is on protecting both of us, but especially her mental health because he’s really doing a lot of damage.
Hi Beyoutoofullest,
Truly yes you can fight back – but its vital to do NARP healings to release all triggers before doing so – then your actions will be very effective.
Quantum Law is the powerhouse – “so within, so without”.
Re the change – your only power is to change you – your inner vibrational reality and relationship with Source, regardless of needing any condition from any set person outside of you – it’s up to God and the other as to what change can happen for them.
My highest suggestion to you is more of the NARP healings – when you don’t feel like you have the bandwidth or time to do them is when they are needed the most.
They change everything … for you, your life and your child.
I hope that this helps.
Much Love
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Dangerous indeed – being gaslit ate at my soul like acid, insidiously evil and malicious intentional poison that slowly destroys you – done intentionally by a person that seemed like a soul mate at one time, felt like the love of your life –
The narc intentionally destroying you, with a sick glee – serial cheating & serial lying & then putting the blame on you, and telling you you are the crazy one – you are delusional -unbelievable torture of the soul & mind & body
– demented horrible insidious cruelty – leaves a person absolutely shattered & torn to shreds –
Ithat one human could do this to another human being is so hard to believe, like the worst nightmare – the most horrible horror movie,ever
Thank you for calling it for what it is Melanie – dangerous, deadly, spiritual attack – thank God there are people like you out there that can help those of us who were nearly totally destroyed and demolished
Finally, help comes ….
Hi Matti,
there really is a way out – thank goodness indeed!
Senidng you much love and healing
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Thank-you so much for this explanation and for NARP. Bless you and your Wonderful team🤗❤️🦋🌻
Hi Pauline,
it’s our pleasure and much love to you!
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Dear Melanie,
For me, gaslighting is by far the most damaging, sick way of perpetuating co-dependency. In my own experience, the most destructive aspect is this uncanny capacity to re-write history and events as they come. Then lying convincingly about the new improved self-serving version. Mixing artfully undeniable truths with blatant lies.
The way out of this despair is what you clearly explain, trust your gut, pay attention to that nagging feeling that something is off, then trust yourself again. No arguing, no explaining or justifying. Let the chips fall and get out, leave the flying monkeys behind as well.
Thank you for the very clear layout, it really helps consolidate the self trust.
Much love to you and all the thrivers and thrivers-to-be ❤️
Melanie,
Thank you for this important unravelling of what narcs and toxic people do. I had it done to me as a child, so came already primed for more of it in my 43 year marriage to a narc. As Matti put it, it’s like acid eating away at your soul, and the gaslighting acid also completely eats away at your connection to your own thoughts, feelings and version of reality, so you become unable to even feel whether your inner being exists. Then, finding out that narcissists have a secret agenda to break you down and keep you as powerless prey adds yet another layer of mind-bending torture, since they can seem so normal at times.
I am in the process of divorcing the narc while having to live in the same house for now, and still having to deal with gaslighting and being told I’m crazy or creating my own version of things in my mind. I get punished one day, then love bombed the next (which feels like just another form of gaslighting), then twisted round and round into serious brain fog whenever he tries to have conversations with me, even though I always walk away. It just never lets up; he doesn’t know any other way of being no matter how much I stay in modified no contact.
I always retreat into NARP and QFH, and there regain my sanity again. I’m so happy to say he’s losing more and more of his power over me every day!
I love Dawn that you are winning the battle!
You are doing an amazing job!
Lots of love Dear Lady
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Melanie,
Thank you deeply for all your work. This community feels like a breath of air. Dont know where to turn at the moment. Frankly I don’t know what is going on with my current relationship. Ill leave labels out for the moment but Im very confused. Ive had this feeling of invalidation since movin in with my girlfriend. My partner can be very loving and does show self reflection, but there’s something that feels off. She has suffered severe trauma in her life and I tend to give her the benefit because of this. Ive been trying really hard to own my stuff, be honest if Im projecting, try not to trigger her, etc but it feels Im the one seeking to live consciously. Im the one initialing check ins and suggesting better ways to communicate. My partner seems hesitant to engage about relationship topics altogether. It feels like pulling teeth trying to introduce her to psycho spiritual tools to make our relationship better.
Today what really got me was that I broke down and shared I felt invalidated and wanted to explore with her why. However it felt like I was throwing things into a mirror and having them tossed back at me. There was a point I felt so confused and ‘lost my reality.’ We had a civil conversation after and I felt she was honest, but I dont understand why I still have this feeling that something is off. Its a feeling that has me questioning my sanity and position in the relationship.
Is it possible she is unconsciously gaslighting as a defense mechanism? I dont feel she does it intentionally, but the relationship doesnt seem to move forward. Although our check ins seem to resolve with a good outcome, I still feel that something fundamental is unresolved.
I feel dramatic using labels like ‘narc’ in my case, but Unfortunately I dont feel comfortable bringing this up to my partner anymore. I dont know if it just means I need to do more inner work or there’s a fundamental cognitive dissonant nuance to our relationship.