Ask Dr. Ramani: What is Gaslighting?

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or their employees. So first up, Christine asks, why is it so destabilizing to be gaslighted by a narcissist? I find myself feeling grounded and steady, and then one interaction with my narcissistic wife can leave me so lost. Do you have any tips for staying grounded? It's a great question, and I'm going to go backwards on this question a little bit just to sort of set some groundwork here. Let's start by talking about what gaslighting is, because there's

so much misunderstanding about what it is. Gaslighting is a process, right, It's not one thing that a person does. Gaslighting first of all, requires some form of relationship or trust between you and the gaslighter. You don't really know someone, or you don't really believe they have any expertise, they're less

likely to be able to shift your reality. So in that first step, you've got in some form of relationship, someone you're getting to know, someone you want to know, someone you already know, like a family member, and obviously, very commonly it's a spouse or partner, someone you want to believe in, someone you in theory trust. The next step is that they deny your reality, perceptions, experiences, things that literally happened reality in general. So it's a denial

of reality and that can often look like lying. And I'll talk more about that in a moment. Could be anything from you hung the keys on the hook and then they moved them and said no, you didn't. It could be them moving the remote and them saying it is a place that it's not. It could be them saying you can't be hungry, you just ate, but you are hungry. So it could be a denial of anything, not just the reality of the environment, but how you feel.

Even something you may remember. They might say that never happened, and that thing did happen. If it's stopped there, that's not gaslighting, because gaslighting has one more step to it, which is that they dismantle you. They leave you feeling like there's something wrong with you. So it's things like you're really paranoid, always thinking I'm texting someone else on my phone, or you're seeming more and more mentally unstable. Are you okay, It doesn't seem like you're remembering anything

right anymore. They may suggest that you have dementia or paranoia, or that you need therapy. But no matter what they're suggesting, there's something not quite right with you. They've just denied reality or perception. They're doubling down by telling you there's something wrong with you. And the final piece of gaslighting to remember is that it doesn't just happen once. The reason gaslighting works is because it happens repeatedly. It's not one time that they lie about where the remote is

or accuse you of not being hungry. It's over and over and over again every day, sometimes multiple times a day. So that's gaslighting. And a lot of people say, well, isn't gaslighting narcissism? Is that the same thing. No, Narcissism's a personality style. Though we talk about on navigating narcissism. The usual laundry lists are people who have at best

variable or inconsistent empathy, or very little empathy. They're entitled, grandiose, really superficial, chronically validation seeking, need to have a lot of control, They're really insecure. That's the narcissism piece. A great way to remember this is that all narcissists gaslight, but not all gaslighters are narcissistic. You might be wondering, what does it do to us? Oh, my goodness, not good. It leaves you feeling like there is something wrong with you.

You do blame yourself, You doubt yourself. You actually may literally feel like you're losing your mind, and if it happens again consistently and for a long enough time, you completely lose any belief in your decision making abilities. You'll say, don't trust me with that. I don't know what I'm doing,

even though you're an incredibly competent person. So that is why gaslighting is often considered to be a form of emotional abuse, because it is done so inconsistently, and it really really does tremendous psychological and mental harm to the person who is being gaslight at. Christine is asking here, why is it so destabilizing to be gaslighted by a narcissist?

For all of these reasons, because you're going through life and you know what's right, you know what you know, you know what you don't know, you know where you left the keys, you know what you ate for breakfast, you know you're not hungry or hungry or cold or whatever. And now someone's coming along and saying no, you're not,

or that's not when the appointment is. And like I said, it's the repeated nature of gaslighting that it happens so often that when it happens again, even once, even if you're having a good day, the minute you're hit with gaslighting, you again feel like you're walking on really unsteady ground. The final part of her question is is that do

you have any tips for staying grounded. A big part of staying grounded in the face of gaslighting is to know that you are being gaslighted, so to even just simply understand the phenomenon saying I know where I put the keys. I put the keys in the same place every day. If they got moved, they were moved by someone. But I know where the keys are, and this person is messing with me. I'm not disorganized. I know that about myself. It does require, like all forms of healing

from narcissistic abuse, that you understand you. You know what you're about, if you know that you're an organized person, if you know that you're not a paranoid person. These are things you should know about yourself and can give yourself permission to know about yourself. Gaslighting and narcissistic relationships

pull us away from knowing about ourself. So part of the work you can do on your own is how do I get reacquainted with what I know to be true about me, about the world, about my environment, so that when you are being gaslighted, you can be a little bit more steadfast. I'm going to give you an example, because watching an encounter between two people, the person had a doctor's appointment at eleven o'clock in the morning. The gas slighter kept saying, no, it's not your appointments at noon.

The person whose appointment was at eleven was really really careful about these doctor's appointments because they were difficult to get and she knew she was going to be late. She was going to lose the appointment. The gas lighter doubled and tripled down. The person whose appointment it was,

who was being gaslighted, knew what gaslighting was. Instead of getting into an argument, which would have been destabilizing, she had the little card, the appointment card, and on top of that, she called the doctor's office on speaker, got through to the receptionist and said, Hi, it's such and such. I'm just confirming my appointment time today. Through the speaker came the receptionist's voice saying, your appointment's at eleven. Now

you can see the multiple problems here. If this person, if she succumbed to the gas lighter, she would have missed the appointment, which was an important appointment. When the gas lighter heard that, said to the person, so do you feel better because you love making people feel small, don't you? Oh? You're so pompous. You're such a pompous lady, always walking around thinking you're so smart. And I just want you to know, now you've thrown off my whole day.

All I do is for you, and now I have thrown off my day having to take you to this appointment when it works for you. What's the person supposed to do with that? The person who was gaslighted, though, told me later on. She said, as frustrating as it was to deal with him, there was a solidity I felt that I knew when that appointment was and that I knew he would never believe me. So the receptionist's voice coming through, she said, for me, the prize was

getting to the appointment on time. Those kinds of things, remembering those things you're in never going to make them stop gaslighting you, but figuring out the things you can do that will allow your life to run in a through pathway, to be straight and clear, be clear on who you are in this situation, and then not misimportant things to you, like this woman in her doctor's appointment. It still doesn't feel good, but at least it may not throw you off. This next question so good. Next

Sarah wants to know. My friends are always saying that they're being gaslighted. How do we know if they are? Isn't gaslighting just a fancy name for lying. So there's a lot there. Let's start from the top, which is everybody became the word of the year, right, so of course everyone's going to be talking about it. One of the struggles is a lot of people aren't using it the right way. Let me tell you what gaslighting is not. Gaslighting is not a difference of opinion. Gaslighting is not

challenging someone's beliefs. Gaslighting is not Lyinglight is that multi step process I was talking about where a person's reality, experience, or perception is denied, then told there's something wrong with them, rince lather, repeat. It just keeps going and going and going. So it's a process. It's not a one off. So you having a different opinion I love that band, that band is terrible. That's not gaslighting. That's just the two

of you not liking the same band. Now, for example, somebody saying you were late, No I wasn't you were late, No, I wasn't believe it or not. That sequence is also not gaslighting. A lot of people think that that sequence is gaslighting because that person saying they're not late, like, well, we were supposed to start at eight and you came at nine. That makes you late. That other person said, is a party. I thought coming at nine would be fine.

What that person's not doing is saying there's something wrong with you. You're too rigid thinking eight o'clock was on time. If they just keep going back and forth, you were late, No I'm not. You were late, No, I'm not. That's not gaslighting. It's annoying, it's frustrating. But it is two people again having a difference of opinion, even when it's

something as clear cut as a schedule. Another issue that comes up with this idea of what is gaslighting what isn't it is this dynamic of misremembering things from the past, right, And if two people have been witnessed or experienced something, If you had an experience of something, especially when it's very psychologically significant, an experience of abuse so or a really negative experience within a family, or feeling neglected, and the family members say that wasn't true, you were totally

well taken care of. To me, that's in gaslight territory. Because the person saying I had this recollection that X, Y, and Z bad things were happening, the person saying that's not true, and they're over correcting, like you actually had a really great childhood when there's two, if you will,

versions of history that are being put out there. The way for it to not be gaslighting is if that both people in the conversation can hold space for the idea that we may actually have had very different experiences of this, but not negating the experience of the other person. Hey, I remember childhood being this hostile, terrible, neglectful experience, and the parent can say, I am so sorry. That is so hard to recall your childhood to be that way.

It's hard for me. I'm remembering it a different way. But I hear that you had an experience. That's not gaslighting. But for a person to say, what's wrong with you? You had a perfectly fine childhood. Stop complaining everyone on the block was living the way we did, that's gaslighting

that difference in recall. The only way to push back to not have a gaslighted interaction about that is to be able to simultaneously be aware that maybe we did have different experiences and remembrances, but just because you had a different recollection that you never invalidate the experience of another person. Let me tell you, folks, this is a really hard line to toe because our only frame of

reference is our own. But in the healthiest human relationships is they happen when both people feel that their experience can be witnessed by the other person and not questioned, even if the other person didn't have the same experience. And it's tricky, and in families it's where it is trickiest.

But even at a societal level, the way people will look back at periods of our history when things happened, things that relate to race and ethnicity, things that relate to gender, things that relate to sexual orientation, groups of people who have experiences that were absolutely traumatic and that would be minimized by people who didn't have those experiences. Oh, come on, now, get over it. That period of history

is over. That's gaslighting, because those periods of history shape the identity of people who have those shared identities going forward. So this is bigger than just two people misremembering something in a family. This has to do literally with how we hold history within ourselves and how we talk about it. Now we have a question from Grant who asks, how

do you call out a gaslighter? This is tricky? So calling people out is always tricky business, Okay, especially when it's about something as we're learning, is so heated as gaslighting. But I still think actually it's a useful thing to do. People will say, what am I supposed to do if I see someone being gaslighted? Do I get it in there and do I help them? And to which I'd say, absolutely yes if it's safe for you, and like, well, one would it be unsafe? Oftentimes at work it can

be unsafe, But how do you get in there? And it's sort of ungaslight someone in real time? If they're being gaslighted by someone, you can really step in and say, yeah, that's not what I heard her say. She had said this,

that's how I heard it. And so what happens is now you've validated the reality of the person being gaslighted, who believe it or not, just with that little bit of validation, will feel a lot stronger and might even be able to take it from there, because what happens is when we're gaslighted, anybody who has empathy and compassion

is very gaslighted. Bule because they're willing to hold plausibly like maybe I'm wrong, maybe I didn't remember that right right as we're open to that, and the gaslighter runs with that. But if someone else says you didn't remember that wrong, I was there, That's what happened. Boom. It's like putting water on the wicked witch, like you melt it. What if you are in a situation though, where you

can't speak tek out. Where this comes up most commonly is in the workplace, you might see someone more senior gaslighting someone who's more subordinate, and you yourself may be in that same level. You're not as senior as the person doing the gaslighting. Something that can be really useful is if after the meeting you take a side the person who's gaslighted as soon as you can after the meeting and say, hey, I want you to know I heard that and what they did to you was gaslighting.

I was there when we had that meeting. I was there and I read that memo. You were right. I'm sorry that happened to you. I hope you're okay, but I saw that I have actually had that happen in professional settings, and it was a literal game changer for me because I would leave the meeting feeling terrible, and someone once did that. They cut me off of the pass. So I was going to the restroom after the meeting and they said I heard that, and I saw that,

and that wasn't cool, and I'm sorry. The workplace remained toxic, but I went home that day feeling sane, which, let me tell you, there was no gift in the world great than that. So that's the piece about calling out gaslighting. Now, gaslighters gaslight, and they may not want to be stopped in that even if you did it in trying to protect someone, they don't like that. They do not like their process being thwarted, because remember, gaslighting is not just

about saying my reality is better than yours. It's about power, control and dominance. The gaslighter wants things the way they want them. They want to be big and they want everyone else to be small. That's what they're trying to create. So you walking in there with your Google moment and trying to educate them on gaslighting is probably not going

to be well met. If you want to take the argument, then by all means you do you, but keep in mind that they're probably if they really are a hardcore gas lighter, and especially if they're narcissistic, are going to sort of minimize you and say you don't know what you're talking about, and then they might actually start gaslighting you. I think that the more useful play in all of this is to talk with the people who are being gaslighted or who think they're being gaslighted, and helped show

them what's happening, what's what, and what's not what. That might be the best way to approach this. But trying to call out a gaslight er is like trying to call out a narcissist. By and large, it gets you nowhere. It might get you in a big argument. But I have to say, and this came up in a conversation with a friend of mine. She said, you know what, if I'm being gaslighted, I don't like that. I don't want to put up with it. I said, then don't take the fight, and she said, I think I'd feel

sick if I couldn't take the fight. What we're trying to do is keep you from feeling sick. So if you feel ready to take on the gaslight fight, then take it. But understand that it's going to get very distorted and shape shifted and uncomfortable. But if you want to take the argument, take the argument, recognize it's going

to get really confusing. But if you're someone who doesn't like conflict, have really been harmed by long term manipulation, and find these situations to be really unsettling, I would say calling them out is probably not doing you any favors, and trying to educate them on gaslighting is like trying to educate a pickpocket on ethics. You're probably not going

to get very far. So choose your battles, and you may do more in being a real supporter and an ally to somebody who's being gaslighted and letting them know, either in private or in real time, that you see what's happening and that it's not okay. So this is

an interesting one. Gino asks, I was in a coffee shop recently and I saw someone who got really upset when their coffee order came up, but they put the wrong name on the coffee cup, which meant they had to wait a minute before they got their coffee even though it was ready. And then that person got really mad at the barista and said you're gaslighting me. Now, that's not gaslighting. Now, if the Starbucks barista had pointed to the cup and said you must have a reading problem,

that is your name gaslighting. But this person just being the barista making a mistake or something like that, that kind of issue not gaslighting. So if a waiter were to bring someone the wrong meal. Okay, you're in a restaurant, the waiter brings you the salmon and that's not what you ordered and they walk away, that's not gaslighting. That's a mistake. And the overuse of this term in all of these kinds of situations being given the wrong thing.

I saw this actually happen on a flight once when somebody thought they were in a certain seat and the flight attendant said, no, you're one row back, and the person told the flight attendant, you're gaslighting me. The flight attendant actually wasn't gaslighting them. They sat in the wrong seat and they were one row back. I think it was thirteen C fourteen C kind of a thing. That's not someone gaslighting them, it's that someone saying this is

what your boarding pass says. There's a real issue here because a lot of people are using gaslighting as a term for when they're inconvenienced, and being inconvenienced is not being gaslighted. It's being inconvenienced. Always remember denial of reality, perception, experience, and then dismantling. There's something wrong with you. You have memory problems, you're obsessive, you're controlling, you're narcissistic, whatever they're accusing you of.

It's that combination that makes gaslighting. Someone getting your coffee name wrong, while maybe quite upsetting, perhaps it even hurts your feelings, but it's not gaslighting. My conversation will continue after this break. So Michelle wants to know are certain personality types more susceptible to gaslighting? This is such a great question because that's always the issue. Are there some people out there that are gaslight proof? And the answer to that is no. So let's start with some brass

tacks here. The more privileged somebody has the less gaslight of all they are because they've almost been given societal permission for a really long time. That what you're saying is right, and people who have less societal power they're wrong. When we think about the original movie Gaslight, it was an older husband who was gaslighting a younger wife. So there was a gender dynamic, there was an age dynamic because of the era it happened, there was a powered

dynamic difference. So all of those things were happening making him more gaslighty of her, her ability to gaslight him was going to be a lot more limited. Because he did have more societal power, more people were more likely to go along with what he says, which is why many times people who do have more societal privilege and power will often look sideways when somebody says I'm being gaslight and they are actually being gaslighted, because it tends not to happen up, it tends to happen down in

terms of power. So keep that peace in mind. So anyone who holds less power in a situation for any reason, because they literally do because it's work, because of age, because of dynamics in a family, because of money, because of race, because of ethnicity, gender, any of those issues, that more empowered person is going to be more likely to be able to pull off gaslighting someone less powerful.

That's one thing. Second piece, when people have more empathy and compassion, I had to say this, they're more likely to be gaslightable because they're willing to be open to the idea that, well, to be empathic, maybe I am responsible, maybe I did put the keys in the wrong place. Maybe this person has my best interest at heart. There

is an idea that empathy. When you're an empathic person, the baseline assumption, especially when you're agreeable, is that this other person has empathy too, so you're not thinking that

they're going to be trying to harm you. And as a result, empathic, compassionate, and open people hold a lot more space for the idea that the other person is not trying to pull one over on them, so they'll be open to their point of view and subsequently will be more gas light of bull What gets interesting is even empathic, sweet, kind, gregarious, agreeable people early on, when something is patently no, no, no, like no way, I know I didn't put that there, or absolutely not I

have the text here. Gaslighting breaks us down over time. So even the most empathic person out there might take the fight initially, but enough times, after fifty one hundred times of being told you're foolish, you're silly, you're dim, you're dull, you don't know what you're doing, it becomes baked into a person's identity and then couple that with the empathy, and they really aren't likely to take the gaslighter on. Another personality style that would be associated with

a greater vulnerability to gaslighting would be something we call neuroticism. Now, neuroticism is a personality style that's associated with a greater likelihood of things like negative emotions, worry, anxiety, fear, sort of social discomfort. The higher that gets, the more struggle there may be in a social situation, and people higher in neuroticism may be more willing and likely to blame themselves.

So if a person higher in this neuroticism style, and I don't mean my neurotic I don't mean old school like neurotically like you see in the movies. I mean this specific personality style that is more of this negative emotional style, they're more vulnerable to gaslighting because people higher in neuroticism are just simply more likely to doubt themselves

with or without gaslighting being around. But the thing that we need to be clear on is any time there is that power differential, all these personality styles I'm talking about certainly are going to play into that. We're going to see gaslighting so one more place to think about other groups that could be more vulnerable to gaslighting. People have had histories of trauma. What trauma does is it undercuts a sense of trust, not only in the world,

but a sense of trust in oneself. So even you must say, well, the traumatized person doesn't trust the world, wouldn't they stop trusting the people in it. It's really that sense of self doubt that pervades a traumatized person. So there can be a sense of because many traumatized people believe they are at some level responsible for their trauma, especially when it's interpersonal trauma. That's the nature of what

trauma does to our brains. So if a person has experienced interpersonal trauma, family violence, relational violence, child abuse, those sorts of experiences, as they get older and go into an adulthood and they encounter a gaslighted experience, it is much more likely reflexively for a trauma a person with the history of trauma to think, maybe this is my fault,

maybe I'm blame, making them quite gaslightable. People with past histories of gaslighting, who have been gaslighted are more likely to be gaslightable in the future until they learn what it is. So if you're gaslighted as a kid by your parents, you're going to be more vulnerable to that as an adult as well. And then we also have to account for other mental health issues that could be

at play. Depression, other anxiety adjacent patterns like obsessive compulsive disorder, will those kinds of patterns create a person who may also be more gaslightable. The self doubt, the self devaluation, the social anxiety, the lack of belief in oneself that cut through those kinds of patterns means that when somebody is gaslighted, the first thing that that person is going to do is to doubt themselves. So I'm going to give you sort of a doctor Romeny personal moment here.

As hard as it is, I'm a really gaslightable person in many ways just because of my own life histories, stuff that's happened to me in terms of trauma and other stuff, and so I always doubt myself. So when somebody says you didn't put the book back, I'm always going to assume they're right, and I will rifle through my bag endlessly and then able to turn out the book was in the right place all along, and it's

sort of an interest real doctor interesting doctor rominism. It's gotten to the point where anytime I go on a trip, I am convinced I have forgotten one or two. There's specific things I always worry I'm going to forget. The number of Uber drivers I have made pull over four blocks out from my house. Can you pull over? It got so embarrassing that I couldn't evembar it anymore. But you know, to my partner's credit, sometimes we'll get a block out and I'll say can we pull over? And

to his credit, he doesn't get mad at me. And it was years I was in relationships with people who would get really angry at me for doing that. That's what a lifetime of gaslighting has done to me. I no longer trust myself, so that susceptibility. I have a lot of the things we talked about. It has created something in me where I actually have to be almost obsessively organized to feel like, no, I think I put the book away, but if someone say, no, you didn't,

I'd be the first one to unpack her bag. So it's a process, and sometimes these patterns really die hard. So Lee asks. I've had a few situations where I've experienced gas slighting at work where I just need to have peace to do my job. How can I best manage conversations with the gas lighter without first aggravating the situation or second seeming to agree and accept the lies at my own expense. I feel bad for Lee because I don't think there's really a good path forward for

Lee here. And let's talk a little bit about gaslighting at work. Gaslighting is gaslighting. It's emotional abuse wherever it happens. Sometimes it feels a little bit different at work because work may not feel as personal depends on how indo your work you are, but whereas what happens in the family or in an intimate relationship, you might be more

like ah. But when it comes to a workplace relationship, it might even take you a minute to recognize the dynamic because we often view it more as a sort of an intimate kind of a dynamic. But it can make work a very upsetting place because the devil is often in the details at work and gas slightings where people can really catch you and say you didn't do that, and you're saying, I know I did, didn't I save that? And it can really make people run back to their

computer and say, there is the document. And so what Lee is asking is I need to have peace to do my job. How do I manage this without either aggravating them or giving in. Lee's best approach here is actually trying to figure out how to do the job. That's the most important thing here. So, because I don't know what Lee's job is, maybe it's something where you clock in and clock out. Maybe it's how many things get put away in a warehouse. Maybe it's certain documents

getting written at a workplace. It's really really crucial that Lee has some sort of objective place where this work is getting logged in, whether that's a manager, whether that's something that Lee keeps on Lee's phone that Lee is tracking what's getting done. So at the end of that day, Lee has a record. Especially if Lee reports to someone, Lee can say here's the documents, this, here's that. It's difficult when the person who's the gas lighter is the

one who's saying, no, you didn't. Sadly, when you work with a gas lighter, you actually have to do more work because you have to sometimes create an additional record of everything you've done. Documentation is everything when you're being gaslighted in the workplace, the more you have this written proof if you do need to take a complaint to a different level, if it's a large enough workplace where you can do that at least, then you do have

that proof. So those of you who might say, okay, now, I have to sort of over communicate sometimes that's what you've got to do to sort of have that kind of a record of what you've done. But what Lee is trying to do. The more concerning part, if you will, about Lee's question is Lee is trying to manage the piece without either aggravating the gas lighter or not having

to go along with the gas lighter. And that's of the impossible catch twenty two here, you kind of sadly to keep the peace in the workplace other than quitting the job, you're sort of stuck doing one or the other,

and then it becomes a choice. There may be times you do have to aggravate the gas lighter if your job is in jeopardy, if workplace finances are at jeopardy, if people you're working with, or consumers or something aren't jeopardy, you may just have to step up and say here's the documentation, Here are the records, this is what it looks like that is going to aggravate the gas lighter.

If you don't need to do that, If those aren't the stakes, then there are times where you're just going to have to just shut up and put up and just keep moving on, because just like you can't call out a narcissist and they're not going to change, you're also not going to be able to find this meaningful way to interact with someone who gaslights with a gas lighter. Evidence often isn't your friend. You know, you can come up with a wheelbarrow of evidence, like, here's all the

texts you wrote late at night. Don't tell me you don't late night texts. And you know what they're gonna do is they're going to upside down your wheelbarrow and say only a deranged person would save all my texts, And now you're the deranged person who saves texts. There's no winning at this. So you've got to have a bigger goal in mind, which is I want to move to the next level. I want to be transferred to a different division. I got to keep this job until

I can find another job, whatever that may be. To keep the so called peace until you can figure out a way out, because as long as you are working under that condition, there's really no path forward. You either are alternating between aggravating and giving into them. And I think a hard part of all of this is that people are often trying to find isn't there some middle

road we can take? And in healthy relationships there's always a middle road, But in gaslighted relationships, in narcissistic relationships, it's the absence of the middle road that makes it so difficult. The next question is from Keenan, who is wondering when you ignore more a narcissistic person's attempt to gaslight you, what usually happens next. So this is a really really good question because ignoring gaslighting is half the battle, right.

So as I get into this answer, I want to lay one thing out first, because I want to normalize your experience in these relationships. For most of us, in the early days of gaslighting in a relationship, we might even fight back a little bit, say absolutely not, the remote was right here unless there's a ghost in the house, there's no way, or I absolutely know here's the text you sent me the text, or I'm going to go find the picture to show that you were at that part.

Whatever it is, you're going to take the fight because someone's denying reality. We are going to take that fight right over time when they come back twice as hard. If you have any of those personality styles I was talking about, any of those things that make you more vulnerable and somebody telling you you're wrong, there's something wrong with you over and over again, that's going to pull you back. So it goes through phases, and in the first phase there's some clapback, we push back, and then

slowly we don't. Over time, in the worst gaslighted situations, you go from fighting back to giving in to phase three, which mercifully not everyone always gets to. But in that last phase, it's almost like we might see in somebody who's in a cultic community. You look like you're agreeing with the gaslighter. Like to the world, you look like a united front. We might see that in really severely abusive relationships, like I said, cultic systems, it feels like

everyone is on the same page. A gas lighter at that point has achieved full dominance, but before that final really problematic stage because it's really hard to bring people out of that. After people learn what gaslighting is, they learn most cases the best thing to do is not engage. But it's not that simple. It never is. So what happens when you do that, You can expect a series of reactions. In some cases you might see anger or rage where you might say okay, and it's as though

you're not going to get into it with them. Well, they've kind of lost their ability to dominate, and that might get them really angry and they may actually lash out at you. But the way that lashing out can look, it can look like contempt, it can look like mockery. A common thing you might see is a narcissistic person saying, oh, is someone in therapy is your therapist teaching you to say new things? And it's really really sort of cruel

again and contemptuous and just interpersonally unpleasant. But they'll do that. So it becomes almost this experience of baiting, which is very common in narcissistic relationships, where they set you up to get you to bite at some time and have a really strong emotional reaction, and when you have that strong emotional reaction, they'll pull back and say, ooh, somebody's really emotional, aren't they, And that whole sequence sets it up so that you look like you're unhinged and they

look like they're calm, cool and collected. So you're not coming out of this quietly over time by not engaging with the gas lighting. So if they say I never moved to the remote, instead of the getting into the oh yes you did, yes, you did, you quietly go and look for it, and then you find the TV remote and you put it where it belongs, and they'll say, well, this is what we get for you being so disorganized, and then you don't engage in that Initially, they're going

to bait you. What a narcissistic person doesn't like is that idea of disengagement. So gaslighter narcissist. But if you disengage, you don't engage in the gas lighting, you don't engage in the baiting. They experience that as a little bit of an abandonment, and they are not sitting quietly for that,

and they're going to come for you again. They're going to try to get you to react by sometimes even escalating the sorts of baiting things they say, which can get more and more cruel and may start hitting things that matter to you, like I don't know, like your kids or your family, or say something that's so echaly disparaging, like cat, I can't just be quiet in the face of this. Again, then you have the strong emotional reaction.

They paint you out as being someone who is completely dysregulated. So when you don't go with the gaslight, there's going to be a lot of escalation and frenzy initially over time, and you gotta be patient with this. It could take months. In extreme cases, it could take years. You're not an

interesting target anymore. One of the things we tell people to do when they're being gaslighted is to not engage, and in fact, don't engage is probably one of the most primary pieces of guidance given to anyone surviving a narcissistic or gaslighting relationship. It's really good advice under one circumstance. Think for a minute, what's the one time you cannot escape from a gaslighter or a narcissist. Got the answer, Yep, it's in a car. I actually believe cars are every

bit as intimate as beds. It is a very private, closed in place. Assuming you're the only people in the car. Obviously, but unlike a bus or a train or a plane, it's only the two of you, no one else to

hear what's happening. And what that means is a car can be a place you have some of the most intense private conversations of your life, but it's also a place where somebody can brutally verbally abuse you or gaslight you and sort of like you know how in space, there's no one there to hear you scream, it's kind of the same thing in a car. So when people are going through a really gaslighted experience in a car, or even just about of narcissistic rage. I had a

client say this to me. You know, I had put out a YouTube video on this issue, and you know, she said, your advice about disengaging was great, but what about when we're going seventy five miles an hour down the four h five freeway. I didn't know what to do, she said. It was just all this psychological abuse raining down on me. But I couldn't go to another room because I was in a car. It was nighttime. Even if the car stopped, it couldn't safely get out of

the car. The car is a really tricky place It's almost like a lot of the rules about narcissistic abuse and gas lighting and disengagement kind of go out the window. So understand that the car is a unique space, and at that time the guidance I'll often give to people is find a way to almost do like a mini dissociate, like turn away in and disengage from what's happening. Here's the doctor Rominy hack for the car. I devised this when I was being narcissistically abused in the car years ago.

It's still something I do now because I think I can't break the habit, but it actually kind of works. It goes back to a game you might have played on long ca our rides as a kid, but it's a little riff on it to make it easier. Look for letters in street signs A, B, C, D, so as it's like gaslight, gaslight, gaslight abuse abuse abuse, gaslight gaslight, you're like EF. The best thing about exit signs is you're always going to get your ax. You kind of

get worked up oo if I my cueue. But meanwhile this person's like ma, mam, ma mam, and you're focusing on this thing outside of you. It's sometimes enough of a focus outside of you to regulate to get to the other end of that drive. And when you get to the other end of that drive, you've got to understand that your nervous system has just been through something.

If you can get some time and space to yourself, whether that's take a shower, find a room to sit by yourself, something, take a walk if it's safe to do so, but something to help you kind of get out of that sympathetic nervous system arousal and come back down. We will be right back with this conversation. In this question, Kara asks do narcissists believe their own gas slighting? My husband fell in love with a coworker, and when I found out that he maintained that he wanted to stay

close friends with her, the gas slighting was subtle. This is not a problem. You are so sensitive, You are so conservative and closed minded. It is totally normal to be sexually attracted to friends and discuss that openly with them, he said, and he continued with you are so insecurely attached, you are anxious. You have so little empathy. When you ask me to drop this friend who means the world to me. A year later, it still seems he holds these same opinions. Is there a chance he really believes

it or is it conscious manipulation? Woo, that's a doozy, okay, Kara. I hope Kara finds her love story one day because this is really painful. This is terrible on multiple fronts. But let's get to the core of her question. Do they believe their own gas lighting? Narcissism is really about what we could call delusional grandiosity. They kind of believe

their own hype. They have to. Have you ever watched a six year old kid tie a little cape around their neck and say I'm Superman, or a kid put a giant crown on their head and say I'm the Wizard of All Time. It's super cute and a six year old does it, right, Forty six year olds do that too, when they walk around and have those delusions of their own grandiosity and their own gas lighting. Remember what narcissism is. Why is it Let's go back to

that little six year old kid. Why is the little six year old kid running around saying that they're the grand magic, magician, superhero. Why do they do that? Because in their own way, kids feel unsafe in the world, So in that moment, they're creating these grandiose defenses so

they can feel safe. A child who grows up in a healthy, safe, consistent environment no longer needs those infantile grandiose defenses, grows into their sense of self and recognizes that they have the skills they need to make their way into the adult world. What about the children, though, who never feel safe enough to give up those grandiose crowns and costumes and superhero capes. Well, they do the equivalent of that in adulthood, maybe not as obvious as

a superhero cape, but they don't feel safe. So when they get into adulthood, they have to walk around believing I'm the best, I'm the greatest, no one's better than me, no one has better ideas than me. It's no different than the superhero cape. They believe their hype to be an offset to their sense of insecurity, which is the core issue for a narcissistic person and frankly for most gaslighting people. This goes to a bigger question of is

gaslighting conscious? Is the gas lighter rubbing their hands in the corner saying I'm gonna gaslight you and make you feel like you're completely out of your mind, so I can contry all. You know, They're not that sort of doctor evil sadistic stuff. That's not what's happening for gaslighting and narcissistic people. What they're trying to do is maintain their power, dominance, and control in a situation to offset

their insecurity. All of that is happening at an unconscious level, but every play that they engage in at a defensive, unconscious level is to maintain that power. And if anything cracks through so they don't feel powerful, doesn't feel good. That's not helping Cara, right, So one thing we can tell Kara is that is this conscious manipulation. Probably not. There is a subset of gas lighters who may be frankly sadistic, but sadism is actually not a normal pattern

in human beings. It's relatively rare. So it's not like he is setting out to mess with Kara's head. Instead, he simply wants what he wants like a spoiled child, and he wants to maintain his flirty friendship with the with the co worker that he says he's fallen in love with. This is where it's so clearly gaslighting and This is where Kara's given us such a great example of how this can look and how sort of complicated

it is. She's married to this man. You're not supposed to fall in love with a coworker when you're married to someone. And then when she found out, because I'm sure he didn't tell her, what does he do? He gaslights her and says, you're conservative, you're close minded, it's normal to be sexually attracted to friends, you're insecurely attached, you're anxious, you have so little empathy. That's the gaslight. So what he's doing is he's messing with her head

so that she'll sign off on what he wants. But he's not doing this in a linear way. It's more of a I'm going to say whatever I need to do to keep things the way that I want them. And over time, what he has found is that he could do this because the fact of the matter is simply by how he's conducting himself in the work place is showing us a lot about how this guy goes through the world. So does he believe his own gaslighting?

He doesn't think he's gaslighting. He actually has to believe it's okay for him to have this relationship with the coworker. He believes that's okay. What he's not in touch with is he needs the validation. So there's always this thing they believe on the surface, which is already bizarre enough. It's okay for me and be in love with a co worker. Underneath that is I need the validation. The hypocrisy of it is he wouldn't be okay if Kara

fell in love with the coworker. So it gets to be this sort of really jagged edged kind of thing because they have one set of rules for them, one set of rules for you. And even though what they're doing is hurting you, him being in love with this coworker is hurting you. No empathy, so there's no care there, but the gas slighting becomes away for him to push away his shame and be the one who still looks

good in this relationship. It's normal for people be in love with their co workers, paint himself out as the normal one and her as the abnormal one. But believe it or not, folks, this is not a conscious process. So this question was sent in by Susannah dr Rominey. I've heard you talk about people around the narcissist who enable their behavior. Why don't those people see the gas lighting? I am so glad someone asked this because this is going to give me a chance to talk about something

called flying monkeys. Many of you may have heard about flying monkeys. Lots of people talk about this phenomenon, but it relates to this idea of enabling. So let's talk about the flying monkeys are, so there's no misunderstandings there, and then we'll go into this idea of enablers and why they don't see the gas lighting. So flying monkeys, anyone who hasn't seen Wizard of Oz do your homework.

You gotta go see Wizard of Oz. But if you haven't, the flying monkeys were these flying monkeys, winged monkeys who did the wicked witches bidding and would do it by kind of almost like overwhelming them and scaring them, and so people kind of wouldn't engage with the wicked witch. Flying monkeys in the narcissistic relationship, realm are the people whom the narcissistic person is able to get to and

sort of mobilize and turn against other people. So, for example, let's say you were married to someone and they're narcissistic, and then you're gonna end your marriage. The flying monkeys are the people that the narcissists told you. Can't believe the terrible things that this person did to me in our marriage. Can you believe they did this. They might even tell untruths that you might have been unfaithful, all

kinds of things that aren't true. But then all those people hearing these terrible things you do are going to come for you. They may come for you in person, they may come for you online. It'll feel like a smear campaign. This can happen in the workplace, this can

happen with friend groups. But these are people that basically the narcissistic person gets to almost always tells them untrue things or exaggerations of things that happen, or things they should not have been telling other people, and then that sort of turns this angry group of people against you.

And for many people have said to me, the flying monkeys that came for me during my divorce or during this thing that happened at work or even within my family was in a way more devastating than what I was living through in the narcissistic relationship, because I could see that the narcissistic person was just mean to me. But these were people I loved and now I had lost them too, so it can magnify the grief. What Suzanne is asking, though, is why don't the enabler see

the gaslighting? So it means we have to talk a little bit about enabling. Enabling is a word that actually originally came from the alcoholism literature and the substance use literature about people who would often inadvertently and sometimes directly, but often inadvertently enable a person to keep using drugs or alcohol through sort of giving tacit permission, not calling them out, giving them money to get drugs, knuckle, whatever it might have been. But these were the people who

kind of kept that person in that place. And some people would argue that the enablers were getting some secondary gain by keeping someone sort of stuck in that position, that they then could have almost a role in this, and it became a really toxic dance. All of this became the forerunner to what would ultimately be called codependency.

But this concept of enablers is a really important one in understanding gaslighting and narcissism and all of these dynamics These are the people who may not be narcissistic themselves. These may be people who are sort of toxically positive. Everyone has good in them, Let's find everyone's light inside. Everyone is a hero, not a zero. And you read this kind of stuff on social media, you're like, what, No, Actually, some people really kind of are mean all the way through,

but they love everyone's got good. I can't listen to people who say negative things that sort of thing. Those folks are often enablers. People who are pollyannas like I just think everything's going to turn out great. They can often be enablers. People who are mildly narcissistic but not full on might be enablers. People who want to maintain the status quo. They're like, I don't want this tension. I want us all to just have nice holidays and nice Sunday dinners, Like why can't we just figure it

out and don't let him bother you? Like he doesn't mean it, and so we can all just keep things going. Those folks are often enablers, but by and large, enablers don't want their worldview threatened by the ugliness. That is, things like dynamics such as gas lighting or even narcissism, so they will turn away from that not recognize it, so that by not calling out the gas lighter, in most circumstances, things can kind of stay like they always were. So in a way, the enabler is invested in something

we call homeostasis, just keeping everything. Even. The pain of enablers is that they themselves may not be toxic people. They may actually un may be people you're fond of. You know, I've had a few very very dear friends over the years who've really been enabling, and I love, love,

love them, and they are gentle, good souls. The test of the friendship was that when I said, stop, no way, you hear my story, and if my story makes you that uncomfortable, we're gonna have to rethink this friendship because this is my paint. And you know what, to these friends credit, they leveled up and they were able to stay on the wild ride and they said, this broke my heart. I didn't want this to be true of the world, but I love you. That was a real

test of a friendship. Other enably friends they left my life long ago because they couldn't stand to think that some of the things I was telling them were true, we're true. And so again, these are often people in

our lives we adore. So when we feel like they're propping up the narcissist, or they're simply not seeing the gas lighting, ay, they may not know what it is, but when you explain what it is, you're threatening their worldview, which is often one of a little bit, a little bit rainbows and you know, corny, you know from my tastes, but in this case, they really do have this very almost childlike innocence about them, or they just want things the way they want them to be. Not all of

them are innocent. Some enablers are benefiting, and that's the other more difficult side of enabling. There's some people who are benefiting from this relationship. So the person who's enabling your toxic boss maybe getting paid a lot more money than you think. The person who's enabling a toxic parent maybe the sibling that's getting money every month from that parent, or being allowed to use the family cabin more than you even knew that they were. Many times enabling relationships

are transactional. They're benefiting from the narcissist, so they don't want to see what it is because it takes them into a thing we call cognitive dissonance that we've talked about in navigating narcissism, that real discomfort we feel when the pieces don't fit. We don't want to see someone like we're getting money from or a cabin from, as being a rotten person, because what does that say about us? So the enablers just don't want to be with that.

They may be sweet, they may be innocent, they may be manipulative, they may be toxically positive, but more than anything, they do not want to see your pain. And that can be a really painful wake up call because what can happen is if you're surrounded by enablers and you're being gaslighted. What that means is that you feel quadruple or multiplicatively gaslighted, because not only are you being gaslighted and feel like you've lost grip with reality, the other

people around you aren't noticing anything. And that's when you really really feel like you've completely lost grip with reality because you're thinking, nobody is seeing this. This has got to be me. It's like the Emperor not wearing any clothes. To heal from gaslighting is to be the little kid who calls the emperor out for being naked, and that means you have to ignore the choir of voices, all of those enablers that think that the narcissist or the

gas lighter just looks fabulous in their new clothing. And lastly, this question was sent from Patrick. How do you heal and gain your confidence back after years or even decades of gaslighting? This is a fantastic question, and this is the question for the ages. How do you heal? Healing from gaslighting looks a lot like healing from narcissistic abuse. The key, key, key element to healing from gaslighting is actually something that's really difficult to do, which is to

be fully in touch with yourself. What do you like, what don't you like? What are your preferences, what are your beliefs, what are your opinions? Who are you? What are you about? What do you stand for? And to give yourself permission to articulate that in safe places and to yourself. If you've been gaslighted for long enough, or in a narcissistic relationship long enough, you're not going to give yourself the permission to do that. Your true self

was negated and invalidated. A long time ago, and every time you bring your true self out in a gaslighted situation, you're shut down. It's hard to do that. Who are you? What do you stand for? How many times have you asked yourself that question? So start small a few times a day. You can set a little alarm on a phone, or if you have an app that does sort of a mindfulness check or something something that notifies you, and you stop and ask yourself, how do I feel right now?

Am I warm? Am I hungry? These sound like really basic questions if someone else has been telling you for thirty years you're not hungry right now? The thermostat's just fine. You've actually lost sight of even your most basic bodily feelings, and then level up from there. How do I feel about this interaction? Give you doctor Romney. Example, yesterday I had a phone call with someone and it was really uncomfortable and it was meant to be for some work

I need to do. And in the past I would have said, you're just being insecure, you're just self sabotaging. It was really uncomfortable. In the past, I would have pushed hard. It's something I still need to do, but I'm going to really do it carefully. And what it allowed me to adjust to is it's quite possible that

the thing may not work out. And whereas in the past I might have viewed that as a failure on my part, the sort of anti gaslighting work I'm doing within myself is to say that didn't feel good and to trust that feeling. Those moments when you meet a new person, ask yourself how you feel. A lot of us stop ourselves. Back in the day, I would have said, oh, Rameny, you're being so judgmental. Maybe you just didn't like her voice. I didn't like her tone, and that was honest within myself.

Maybe other people like her tone. I'm not making an assessment for the rest of the world. I'm saying what my experience was. It's about you. Is that selfish? Absolutely not, Because the more you get in touch with this internal sense of you, the more you're able to actually hold space for other people's senses of them. You don't need to bring them over to your side of thinking. I think too many people think being a human being is

running around and chronically proselytizing your sense of self. You got to do things the way I do them. No, they don't if you're good within you, you can sit aside someone who's doing things that work for them and you can have that middle ground between the two of you. That is a healthy human relationship, and that is what recovery and healing look like. Another really important thing to do as you evolve past and heal past gaslighting is to have support, support from people who see you. A good,

loving person in your life will not gaslight you. If you have a healthy relationship, the two of you can disagree in a healthy manner. You can have a difference of opinion on really big ticket stuff in a healthy manner. You need those places where you are seen, where you are not gaslighted, so you can slowly again do that internal building of your sense of self. But you have to have those communities, those experiences, and that hard work of looking within you. This is where meditation becomes a

very useful practice too. No, you do not have to sit for two hours in silence. All of us are too busy for that. You know what you can do when you get to work, whether it's on the bus ride to work or whether you sit in the parking lot, give yourself five take the minutes, focus in get connected to yourself and then go into your day, how do I feel, who am I, what do I stand for? What am I about? Touch base with yourself on that

regularly and frequently. And then as you do that and you become aware when you're being gaslighted, when you feel uncomfortable, and you give voice to that, this is where therapy becomes all important. Therapy, when done right, is one of the most turn off the gas line spaces you could ever imagine, because I cannot tell you what the hundreds and hundred n I guess thousands of clinical hours I've done over the years where somebody will tell me something and

I'll say, whew, what was your experience of that? And they'll say, what do you want my experience? I'm like yeah, and they'll tell me. And sometimes if I know them well enough, when we've been working together long and I'll say, ooh, they just gas slighted you, and they'll say what. Just a few of those encounters I've noticed with clients are enough for them to say, are you telling me there's not something wrong with me? I mean, there's absolutely nothing

wrong with you. The number of clients it actually makes me really sad. These are really good people. Who are loving, empathic, compassionate kind people who have come in week over week having lived through being gaslighted for years since they were kids, and their entire identity is caught up and there's something wrong with me. I think we often think we get

into therapy because there's something wrong with us. Maybe the most miraculous thing that comes out of therapy is that you learn that there actually isn't and that is how you heal from gaslighting. Thank you so much for your questions, your emails, your DMS, everything you sent in. These were incredible, thoughtful,

and actually very vulnerable questions about gaslighting. I think if you can understand gaslighting, you can understand sort of one of the core dynamics not only of narcissistic relationships, but of all unhealthy relationships. And also, if you can find it pushes you to sort of do that work of drilling down into yourself that not only benefits you to be able to manage gaslighting in your life, but will

take you into a healthier space. But here we have this word, the twenty twenty two word of the year. Let's make sure we all know what it means. Thanks again,