How To Deal With People Who Gaslight. Feeling Confused? Spot and Handle Gaslighters Like a Pro. Signs of Gaslighting & How to Safeguard Your Peace. Your Guide to Recognizing and Confronting Gaslighters.
Gaslighting is a harmful and manipulative tactic that can make you doubt your reality, memories, or perceptions. Learning to recognize and address it is crucial for maintaining your mental well-being and boundaries. Here’s a guide to help you understand gaslighting, recognize the signs, and protect yourself.
How To Deal With People Who Gaslight
What is Gaslighting?
- Definition: Gaslighting is a form of emotional manipulation where someone makes you question your reality, memories, or perceptions to gain control over you. This tactic can be subtle but can lead to self-doubt, confusion, and emotional exhaustion.
- Origin: The term comes from the 1938 play Gas Light, where a husband manipulates his wife into thinking she’s losing her mind by dimming the gaslights and denying it’s happening.
- Importance (How To Deal With People Who Gaslight): Recognizing gaslighting is essential because it can undermine your self-confidence, mental health, and autonomy if left unchecked.
Why It’s Important to Know You’re Being Gaslit
- Protect Your Mental Health: Gaslighting can lead to anxiety, depression, and self-doubt if you’re constantly questioning your reality.
- Set Boundaries: Understanding when you’re being gaslit allows you to set boundaries that protect your emotional well-being.
- Regain Control: By recognizing these tactics, you’re better equipped to regain control over your sense of self and choices.
Signs You’re Being Gaslit : How To Deal With People Who Gaslight
- Constantly Doubting Yourself: You feel unsure about your own memories, thoughts, or feelings, often after talking to this person. Inside, you know it happened, but someone, or even the people that you surround yourself with somehow makes you doubt what you are feeling, or what you felt.
- Feeling Confused: You frequently feel disoriented or unsure about what’s true, even regarding things you know you saw or heard.
- Apologizing Excessively: You find yourself apologizing a lot, even when you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s one thing to admit mistakes, but it’s another thing that you’re always feeling that you have done something “wrong” when you really haven’t even done anything to hurt anyone.
- Feeling Isolated: They may convince you that others don’t care or don’t understand, making you feel alone. This is really one of the most dangerous signs because this somehow shows you that it’s not just “them” who thinks you’re wrong, but even others.
- Questioning Your Sanity: You wonder if you’re being too sensitive, irrational, or losing your mind. When you no longer trust yourself, you will eventually lose yourself.
How to Deal with Gaslighters
- Acknowledge What’s Happening: Recognize that gaslighting is occurring. Remind yourself that your experiences and feelings are valid, and you don’t need someone else’s permission to feel what you feel.
- Set Firm Boundaries: Politely but assertively communicate boundaries, such as, “I’d like to keep our conversations respectful and focused on the facts as I understand them.” I’ve learned lately to say “We remember things differently because we’re different people, the only way we can move forward is not to invalidate each other’s experiences. If that’s not possible, we can leave it as is.”
- Limit Interactions: Reduce your exposure to the person when possible, especially in emotionally charged situations where they tend to gaslight. Sometimes it’s the closest to us that tend to gaslight and it’s hard to set a “safe distance” so you won’t feel like you’re being gaslit. I found that heading out to do other activities and picking up other hobbies outside your current space will help you expand your reality. Protect your peace and do things that bring you joy, even if that means you’ll have to do it alone in the beginning and eventually you’ll meet the right people to do it with.
- Document Incidents: Keep a record of events, including dates, times, and details of conversations. This can help reinforce your memory and provide evidence of patterns if needed. Now that I have grown a “backbone”, I found that at the moment that things happen, I tend to provide a “loud assessment” about it. This means, that after an interaction or an event, I literally say what happened aloud. It can sound something like “To be clear, you raised your voice at me because I disagreed with your opinion on something?” Usually, they will say that they didn’t mean to or maybe even apologize, but what this does is it confirms your experience.
What to Say When Confronting Gaslighting
- Stay Calm: Gaslighters may escalate if they sense confrontation. Try to stay calm and avoid defensive responses. Engaging in an argument with gaslighters usually does not lead anywhere. It is an unproductive exchange that is not worth getting into. A “neutral” demeanor has helped me deal with gaslighters. Sometimes I even joke about it and say “Wow, you have the potential to be a fictional writer..” Before I can’t even joke or even respond, I just freeze and somehow defend myself. But I’ve grown over the years, and now I can joke about it and leave them to their own devices.
- Use “I” Statements: Keep the focus on your feelings without accusing. Say something like, “I feel hurt when you say I’m imagining things because it makes me doubt myself.” To a decent person, that statement will make them realize that your experience is yours alone and will be different from theirs. But from a serial gaslighter, there is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, that will make them realize anything. They’re like brick walls. You can say your piece and leave, do not engage.
- Ask Direct Questions (How To Deal With People Who Gaslight): Questions like, “Can you help me understand why you’re saying that?” can place the focus on them and make them clarify their intentions. I found that I also say “What do you think we should do to have a more productive and safe discussion?” – and no, this is not you giving up control, this is you letting them drive themselves to their crazy town. You are now essentially just the audience as they talk themselves into whatever they are trying to make you believe, becuase no, you are not buying whatever their saying.
- Politely Refuse to Argue: You can say, “I’m not interested in debating what I know to be true. Let’s move on to a different topic.” I also try and include adjectives there that elevate the vibe like “I know we respect each other enough not to get into something unproductive and unsafe.” Gaslighters love to see that you “look” and “feel” invalidated, and the best thing you can do is to not give them that. It can be hard, but you know your experiences and it’s about time you trust yourself.
Create a Safe Space for Yourself
- Seek Support from Trustworthy People: Talk to people who validate and support you, like friends, family, or a therapist. It is important that you don’t get straight to the point when trying to open up for the first time. Come up with conversations and see how they will react and you can gauge from there if they can actually “be bothered” to understand you and help you through what you’re going through.
- Practice Self-Validation: Regularly remind yourself of your worth and trust your own judgment. Positive affirmations can help build this self-confidence. Remember how earlier, you wrote down and documented your experiences? You can go through those and remind yourself that you were not dreaming and that no one can tell you you were wrong.
- Limit Emotional Availability: Don’t allow the gaslighter access to your vulnerabilities. The less they know about your insecurities, the less they can manipulate you. Over the years, I’ve learned that there are certain people in my life that no matter how much I love them, I will not share some things so that I can keep them and enjoy them fully without hearing other people invalidate them.
- Develop Coping Strategies: Practice mindfulness, journaling, or breathing exercises to stay grounded and emotionally resilient. Picking up hobbies that bring you joy and give you confidence helps. Not with their gaslighting but it helps you be solid enough to stand up for yourself and set boundaries. Once you feel joy and excitement about other things, it will be hard to go back and spend time with people who make you feel otherwise.
Remember, You’re Not Alone
- Therapy Is a Safe Space: Talking to a licensed therapist can be incredibly helpful. They can provide validation, support, and strategies to cope with gaslighting. In this economy, paying a therapist hourly can put quite a ding on your budget, we get it. But when you write down your budget and what you spend on, you might find that you are spending money on other things to “cope” – whether it’s eating excessively, shopping more than usual, eating out more than needed, etc. When you see where your money is going, you can redirect it and invest it in something for your well-being and someone to talk to and support you.
- Practice Compassion for Yourself: Gaslighting can shake your confidence and emotional stability. Be kind to yourself, allowing time and space to heal. I use “FutureMe” and I write myself letters. This helps me embrace the present, thank my past, and meet my future self. I found it made me more kind and more importantly, thankful, to my past, present, and future self for always showing up compassionately and being there for me. Self-care routines will also help you feel more loved.
- Trust Yourself: Over time, work on trusting your instincts. The more you listen to yourself, the stronger your defenses will become against emotional manipulation. Nothing happens overnight. Instead of trying to “change” the opinion of the gaslighter, you can adjust your own approach. Once you get hobbies you enjoy, activities that bring you joy, doing things you promised yourself you would do (however small!), and maybe even having a great therapist, you will find that the way you feel and see yourself changes. You end up being a more confident person enabling you to face the gaslighters head on and protecting your peace.
How To Deal With People Who Gaslight
Handling gaslighters in your life is crucial for protecting your mental and emotional well-being. When someone constantly makes you doubt yourself, it chips away at your confidence and sense of reality, which can lead to stress, anxiety, and even depression.
Addressing gaslighting helps you regain control over your thoughts and emotions, reaffirming that your perceptions and experiences are valid. Setting boundaries with gaslighters prevents them from manipulating you and creates a healthier environment for you to thrive. Learning to recognize and respond to gaslighting also strengthens your resilience, making it easier to handle difficult people in the future. Ultimately, dealing with gaslighters is about reclaiming your power and safeguarding your peace
