Gaslighting

Hellooooooo, why have I never heard of this?  Even having my masters in counseling, and my husband getting his PhD in counseling, I had to happen upon it.  I've been having a hard time lately because I start to question myself.  It is soooo hard not to when you have always been bashed and bashed and bashed.  When I was depressed when this all first started happening, I didn't always handle things well.  I rarely reacted at my in-laws; instead, I tended to lash out at my husband and say mean things because it was his family doing all this to me.  Anyway, that was 7+years ago, and it's water under the bridge, just as how the things he did are forgiven and forgotten.  It's a whole lot easier for me to forgive my husband than it is to forgive and forget my mistakes though.  Anyway, I start wondering if my shutting him out and getting mad at him gave my in-laws reason for thinking I'm so crazy.  My husband has to talk me down from this.  I don't know why it's popping up now...all this doubt.  But he reminds me that I wasn't that bad; I was just depressed, and no, I wasn't my normal self, but I was also being abused when I was only 19 (I was 19 when we were married...I know, a baby) and these people were in their 40s.  Most of the time, I feel bad for my poor little 19 year old self...still adjusting to college, then adjusting to being married, and why don't we throw in abusive, toxic in-laws that will destroy you too?  Yikes!  Poor me.  But lately...I have been questioning myself, as the accusations by my in-laws just get to me.

Anyway, I ran across this link:

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html

I know it's for narcissistic mothers, but they pretty much all fit into these traits now (even his sisters, unfortunately), so just change her/she to them/they.  I could certainly highlight on a lot of these, but the big one is this one:

6. She makes you look crazy. If you try to confront her about something she's done, she'll tell you that you have "a very vivid imagination" (this is a phrase commonly used by abusers of all sorts to invalidate your experience of their abuse) that you don't know what you're talking about, or that she has no idea what you're talking about. She will claim not to remember even very memorable events, flatly denying they ever happened, nor will she ever acknowledge any possibility that she might have forgotten. This is an extremely aggressive and exceptionally infuriating tactic called "gaslighting," common to abusers of all kinds. Your perceptions of reality are continually undermined so that you end up without any confidence in your intuition, your memory or your powers of reasoning. This makes you a much better victim for the abuser.

Narcissists gaslight routinely. The narcissist will either insinuate or will tell you outright that you're unstable, otherwise you wouldn't believe such ridiculous things or be so uncooperative. You're oversensitive. You're imagining things. You're hysterical. You're completely unreasonable. You're over-reacting, like you always do. She'll talk to you when you've calmed down and aren't so irrational. She may even characterize you as being neurotic or psychotic.

Once she's constructed these fantasies of your emotional pathologies, she'll tell others about them, as always, presenting her smears as expressions of concern and declaring her own helpless victimhood. She didn't do anything. She has no idea why you're so irrationally angry with her. You've hurt her terribly. She thinks you may need psychotherapy. She loves you very much and would do anything to make you happy, but she just doesn't know what to do. You keep pushing her away when all she wants to do is help you.

She has simultaneously absolved herself of any responsibility for your obvious antipathy towards her, implied that it's something fundamentally wrong with you that makes you angry with her, and undermined your credibility with her listeners. She plays the role of the doting mother so perfectly that no one will believe you.

Because, I mean, good gracious, that is exactly what they have done to me!  Perfect description.  So perfect it's almost scary.


Okay, while I'm at it, here's another good one:

20. She is never wrong about anything. No matter what she's done, she won't ever genuinely apologize for anything. Instead, any time she feels she is being made to apologize she will sulk and pout, issue an insulting apology or negate the apology she has just made with justifications, qualifications or self pity: "I'm sorry you felt that I humiliated you" "I'm sorry if I made you feel bad" "If I did that it was wrong" "I'm sorry, but I there's nothing I can do about it" "I'm sorry I made you feel clumsy, stupid and disgusting" "I'm sorry but it was just a joke. You're so over-sensitive" "I'm sorry that my own child feels she has to upset me and make me feel bad." The last insulting apology is also an example of projection. 

We have heard pretty much those exact things!  "I'm sorry you feel that way."  "I'm sorry if I upset you."  "I'm sorry, but we have done nothing wrong."  "I'm sorry you think I did that."  "I'm sorry you feel like we are terrible parents; we did everything the best we could and tried to teach you; we will work harder to be better with the rest of them; it's sad you repay us by disrespecting us."

Sometimes, it's just too much for me, but it's always good to educate myself.