Do You Gaslight Yourself?

I would have reactions if she drank or was drunk. She would react with shame or anger, or with deep disappointment, deep shame, sometimes even terror, especially if she was drinking and driving. And then when I came to therapy, the therapy taught me that she was having normal reactions to a very abnormal situation. It's a really great phrase to reframe our childhood trauma, that we had normal reactions to an abnormal situation. But at the time, we weren't getting any help from healthy adults who could confirm that our reactions were the right size, or who could help us find some meaning, or at least just tell us the truth about what was going on. going.

We didn't understand it. So that's the point of this video: we were excited about what was happening compared to what our feelings were telling us. So, and as a child I was told I was selfish. It was stupid, that I was lame for having those reactions or for mentioning something. And if I brought up her behavior after she was drunk in front of my friends, or drunk with a teacher, or drunk, even in front of a stranger, like at the supermarket, she would have an intense reaction and change things. on me, very intensely and very quickly: 'how could you', 'you're being too hard on me!' 'You're wrong!' You know what I mean?

And it was like reality went from my feelings to this terrible mess of shame, that's where I would end up, which is the point of this video. And later, when I was in my twenties, in my teens and twenties, I waited tables for quite a while. And that's how my brain works to correlate these childhood things with the present focus, meaning, if a restaurant manager came to me and said, you know, 'Mike's sick, you have to take Mike's turn.' tonight'. You can do it?' There would be that pressure, because it's like restaurants are like toxic family systems, where the restaurant comes first.

And if I couldn't take the shift or didn't want to take the shift, I would try to say no, but the vibe from the manager, whether it was his disappointment, or his moral superiority or whatever, would

gaslight

me and then I change my mind and Then I go back to the manager and say, 'You know what? I can make it happen.' That's just how these things work, that is, the shame of our childhood affects the way we deceive ourselves. And it's very true, we can be turned on in the present and later, with intimate relationships.

If a conflict arose, I would convince myself not to say anything, because at that point in my life and to me it was clear that I was selfish and generally did things deeply wrong. Then, with my mother's drinking, I lost perception and intuition. Those are words I'm going to use throughout this video: entitled to the feelings of being deeply ashamed of her alcoholism, and she would trick me by turning those normal reactions into selfish ones. My mother also had a tendency to flat out deny that things happened, even though we had receipts. We had a paper trail.

Mom, you did this yesterday... 'We never went there!' 'We never did that!' 'That is not true!' And it would drive you crazy, to the point where you really started having problems with reality, which is another way to fool someone. With my restaurant managers, I quickly lost the perception that my life should take priority over the restaurant's life or its personnel problems, and later in life I would become angry with friends and associates, vacillate between being upset about something, and then he would hate me for being so upset about that thing, and he would

gaslight

me.

In the first example with my mother, I was conditioned not to trust my intuition or not use my feelings, which function as a compass for us. Gaslighting is manipulation, and the fuel used in that manipulation is shame. That's why trauma survivors are so vulnerable to being gaslit, and that's why I think we tend to gaslight ourselves. So, throughout my entire childhood, I was stuck in this pattern of having normal feelings and reactions, and those turning into shameful, erroneous assumptions. So in this video I'm going to get into that pattern. And we're also going to look at possible childhood trauma factors that cause us to deceive ourselves, as well as go over some exercises on how to avoid doubting ourselves, that is, deceiving ourselves, when these triggering situations arise.

If you're new to me or new to the channel, welcome! If you like this video or think it's interesting, you can press some buttons on your screen. You can't miss any of the buttons. If you find these videos helpful during your recovery, you may consider supporting the work done on this channel on my Patreon. And you can also contact me through my website, which is also a good place to check out some childhood trauma therapy courses I offer there. And this October I'm doing a webinar on shame, which is related to this video. And if you sign up for my mailing list on my website, you'll get all the information, when, how, who, about the shame webinar coming up in October.

And lastly, you can also check out my Instagram or my TikTok, and I'll have all the links in the description of this video. So what I've noticed in the way my clients question or question themselves is that there's a very predictable pattern that I see between their inner adult and their inner child. And there are three steps in the pattern, and it usually goes something like this: The first step is that something arises that we want to address or change. Like we want to have a conversation with our family about that Thanksgiving thing. We want to solve a problem with our partner about some type of problem.

We are trying to make a decision about something, like going back to school, trying something creative, or trying something new in our life. Or we try to set a work limit, like saying no. So we're trying to change things or trying to address them. The second step is that it resolves itself, which means the conversation with our family turns into a finger-pointing rage and shame party. Like in my example, with my mother. Or the clash with our partner falls down the rabbit hole of confusion and just becomes a big, messy disconnect. We either feel motivated or discouraged when taking art classes or considering going back to school.

Either something comes up where we just experience resistance there, or the work boundary we created now has created tension and doesn't feel right. So the third step is what I call the turning point in enlightening ourselves. This is the most important part here, and there is usually some kind of delay between the steps, on what we wanted to address and how it developed. Then there is a delay in what I call this tipping point. This is what I mean: in the family fight, our inner child... a while passes, and our inner child appears and says: 'You know, maybe dad is right... ...maybe I'm too harsh.

In mom?' 'Maybe we're just bad at this?' Or with the crash with our partner. Our inner child can come in and say, 'they're probably going to leave us now because we're asking them to help us pay the rent,' or the inner child and try something new. The inner child might come in and say, "We're horrible, why did we think we could do this?" This is never going to work, we're bad at things like this!' Or in the workplace, our inner child might emerge, as in the case of a restaurant manager, like, 'I should be fired for saying no,' or 'someone else will have to take that shift, and people are going to hate us!' hate!' So the turning point is actually the place where we step out of our natural intuition and perception into our trauma, because of the shame we carried during that period of our lives.

The turning point is also the opportunity for us to do real work with our inner child and discover where we go back to in childhood and how things are really different in the present or how we are different in the present. The turning point is the intersection where we can reclaim, hold onto our truth about our perception, and it's really a moment of opportunity, but it's very hard to do, but you can do it, it just takes some practice. Do you have a similar pattern of starting in one place and trying to address or change something?

And where do you end up? Once things become complicated, difficult or triggering? What got you there between those two points? How did I go from "Sorry, I can't do that shift tonight"? You mean 'you know what? Can I make it work? Like there's a whole inner child process there that will work itself out, if we can find a stronger inner adult to catch these things, when they arise, and then keep them from losing our perception and our intuition. I think it just happens because we get excited and we go back to a place of shame, where we start to doubt ourselves, or we start to back away or whatever.

So let's look at why this happens, or where it comes from, by looking at some toxic family system dynamics. Children who are gaslit will gaslight themselves later in life. A simple way to look at all childhood trauma is that abuse has to do with a loss of our natural intuition or an abuse of our perception, and those things are lost to us. Here are some examples of childhood trauma from being gaslit as a child, which are probably still with us and perform these things when it comes to shame. So an example is having a childhood where you are made to feel like a burden, rather than a child who deserves care and space.

That child will perceive that the world barely tolerates them and will make them vulnerable to gaslighting. So in friendships, jobs, or relationships, when these things come up, they will revert to a vibe of indebtedness, rather than an empowering vibe. Another example: children whose parents model that loyalty to work comes before loyalty to family. They might be hesitant about leaving jobs or advocating for themselves. They will enlighten themselves thinking that their value is wrapped up in achieving, doing or showing up. Another example is children who are excited about not being good at something, instead of having a learning process.

They may get angry about not having the right to try things or not having the right to be good at them. Like, for example, an abusive parent telling you that you're no good at the piano, right after a month of lessons, is saying that there is no such thing as being a beginner, which is not true at all. That's what I mean by that. Another example is children who are told they are too sensitive. This is like the classic example of gaslighting. They may grow up to be adults who question themselves, who are too much, and who also get angry with their reactions, just as I did when I was a child.

Another example is that children who are parented might later think that it is their job to do everything. Like they're bad if they don't bring donuts to work every day. It's your job if no one else is going to do it. We will convince ourselves of those things. Another example is children who grow up with abuse around reality. Parents who say things like 'that never happened!' or 'we are a big family!' or 'you know your mother loves you, you know it!' or "we moved here because you said you didn't have friends," where the reality of the family's existence or functioning is wrapped up in this kind of scapegoating-based meaning-making.

An alarming thought is that in our own childhood, our biology is programmed to seek security in our caregivers and for that caregiver to be abusive is to betray a child's intuition and natural wiring. That's why I say start early. We have to bond with people assuming they are safe, when in reality they are not. For many of us, it all begins by fighting against our own intuition and continues throughout our development. So let's look at how to work on not fooling ourselves and develop a practice related to that turning point example, that third step. As many of you already know, I work from an inner child frame and an inner adult frame.

And if those terms don't resonate with you, you can change them to something like: working with your traumatized brain or working with your shadow self. I could make another video on how to dislike the concept of the inner child. So here are some tips and tools for journaling when you find

yourself

in that self-deception tendency. The first tool is: Make up three examples as best you can of how your own perception was betrayed by being gaslit as a child. So here's an example from my story, around 6th, 7th, 8th grade or something like that, I fell into a group of kids that weren't really good for me.

The neighborhood kids said they're not very respectful. They probably just wanted to hang out with me because I had a Nintendo or whatever. Or, like, I had this room in the basement that we could hang out in. Like, more or less, you probably had things like that in your childhood too. And one of them stole a Walkman that they had just given me formy birthday. It was like a fancy black Panasonic Walkman that I loved and it had this feature called auto reverse. And I'm so old that we probably got it at a store called Lechmere.

That's how old I am and I also listened to Walkmans. And when I went to my mom to talk about it, or ask for help or whatever, she said things like, 'Maybe he needed it more than you?' 'Do you ever think about that?' Or 'maybe he'll bring it back?' Or 'how do you know it was him?' or, like all those things that just weren't useful. And it just made me feel really bad about myself. And that's an example of some kind of gaslighting, and by the way, Eric, if you're there, you owe me a fancy black Panasonic Walkman with automatic reverse, and I'll be waiting in my DMs for your message about it!

So that's what I mean by three specific examples where you went, tried to solve something, and everything turned against you. So that's the first one. The second is, make a list of situations where you tend to get turned on in the present, like pursuing something you want and then talking

yourself

out of it. Give some concrete examples of this. When you're about to finish something, you can sabotage it. That could be kind of like one of your examples of when you gaslight, when you're in conflict and you feel terrible that you got there, or when there's resistance.

That could be an example for you. Or if you set limits and then give in. That could be an example for you. I call this something like Kryptonite, where we become really vulnerable. These are examples where we tend to gaslight or even become paralyzed by indecision. And as you watch this video, are there any situations right now where your inner child has convinced you or discouraged you from dating? Didn't you say no to something? Are you thinking of something you need to discuss with a friend or partner? But do you tend not to? Do you want to do something like go back to school or improve your life in some way, but your inner child shows up and you run out of energy?

Try to think: relate these tendencies to growing problems, like the conflict example: was he embarrassed, like me, for bringing those things up? So the first exercise in thinking about those concrete things is to try to get people to connect the dots between their trauma and why we behave the way we do in the present. What is the truth about something you are actually sitting on? It could be the opposite of what your inner child thinks on the subject. So that's the second one, the third one is, connect with your inner child and ask any of the following questions: what would happen? (These are reflective questions related to how we enlighten ourselves.) What would happen if you said no or disagreed growing up?

What if you needed help from your parents on how to feel or think about something, like my Walkman scenario? What would happen if you mentioned or wanted to mention something that doesn't seem right or right for you? What would happen if you searched for something you wanted as a child? Like trying out for something like an after school thing. What would happen with that? Once you have an idea of ​​what the fears are, here are some helpful new beliefs and ideas that your healthy adult can begin to educate your inner child with. They're almost like affirmations, and by the way, affirmations don't work without the concept of childhood trauma or how these things were lost.

So here's something you can introduce to your inner child. We now have the right to a process, not immediate perfection. We also have the right to how we see things. That wasn't true while he was growing up. We are entitled to our truth on the subject. That wasn't true growing up. Nature gave us a functional intuition and now we are honoring it. That wasn't possible while he was growing up. We can tolerate being misunderstood. We couldn't grow because that wasn't safe. We can tolerate disagreements, because we couldn't grow, because that wasn't safe either. Some last thoughts and suggestions.

This is a complicated problem that requires a process, and the process can be uncomfortable. It is usually uncomfortable to be right, to be in a bad work environment, or to be in a bad relationship, or in a rut. It's uncomfortable because we may have to make an important decision, rather than accepting the old story that we are the problem. It's also uncomfortable to recognize that our tendency to deceive ourselves is rooted in our trauma and that it gets us into situations that aren't good for us, like even if it's having that cranky friend that we always submit to or default to. , Our childhood has prepared us for all that.

But the flip side of overcoming this gaslighting problem or working on it is quite surprising. The greatest feeling I have from my recovery is the ability to know how to be a good judge of character. I've never had that before and I love it! I can usually tell right away if someone or something isn't for me, and that definitely wasn't always true, because I used to be a magnet for dysfunction, before I did my job, I might be involved with those kids in seventh grade. Also, having functional intuition on board is a profound human experience, and I couldn't get it online and make it work, until I unpacked, how I lost it growing up.

Lastly, I will always think about my mentor: when I run into these confusing situations, like with the restaurant manager or whatever, she would be a very helpful person, she would just help me. or ask me... ...she says, 'but what do you really think?' And it was really the first time I really had some parenting, like someone said, 'somehow you know the answer,' and imagine if we had that, you know what I mean, imagine if it was like that. to your mom about your friends being mean to you, and they say, like you know, you're right, or to get that kind of confirmation.

That is why it is also useful to have healthy people around us. We can't do all this alone. That when you're struggling with self-deception or self-doubt, it's really powerful to have a safe friend that you can bounce things off of. So I hope this video was helpful. And the theme of this video is really driven by shame. Doubt and shame are essentially the same thing. If you're interested in working on it, check out my webinar that I mentioned is coming up in October, shame on me, this fall. And if you visit my website, you can sign up for the mailing list at the bottom of the contact page and you will get all the information, date, time and everything related to the webinar.

As always, may you all be filled with loving kindness. Be fine. May you be at peace and at ease. Be happy. Take care and see you next time.