Month: February 2018

Gas lighting is when an abusive person tries to shift your perception of events so that they can undermine your confidence.  It makes you question yourself (as the narcissist will give their version of events with absolute unwavering certainty) and this uncertainty will make you much easier to manipulate and abuse.

Gas lighting comes in many forms such as moving or taking your things or telling you that they told you something important when they didn’t.  If you confront them on it, they will say things like “it is not my fault you have a bad memory” or “you cannot expect me to be responsible for your things”.

The natural default position of narcissists is to lie about everything.  Even when the truth would have served better.  It is a way that parent(s) create conflict between their children, the way a narcissist will split their friends and colleagues, and will wear down their partner.  They will lie about what other people said and did, what they have done, the intensity of their relationships with various people, compliments that people have paid on brilliant accomplishments etc.  They will lie to justify their actions, lie to deny other actions, lie to protect themselves if they feel that there is even the slightest threat to their perceived unblemished public image.

They are masters in the art of lying, s/he does it with total confidence and completely without shame.  It is for this reason that narcissists pass lie detector tests.  There are no sweaty palms or an increased heart rate as they probably believe their own lies.  If you pick her up on a lie and give a factual version she might say “that is what I said”, so you are wrong again.  If she cannot back out she might say that she “might” have done something but it will be followed by “I have no memory of it” or “that really doesn’t sound like me” or “I wouldn’t do something like that – why would I?”.

They also use your insecurities against you.  They will find out what you are unconfident about listening to you with feign concern and then they will use those very insecurities to bring you down (“Anything that you say can and will be used against you”).  They can do this by saying that someone said something about you like “so and so said that you are really unstable” or “so and so is so interesting” inferring by inflection that you are not.

They will repeat their lies over and over again so that you actually start to believe them, they will also tell the same lie about you to others, so that the people who believe them will treat you “as if” and this will further send their negative lies about you further home.

They will diagnose you with having major issues around trust for example when you question their lies, or for being depressed or paranoid because their abuse it getting to you.  Very often a narcissist will suggest therapy for their victims to sort their issues out, the narcissist will rarely go to therapy, but if they do it is just for show and they will finish after a few sessions saying that their therapist said that there was nothing wrong with them, the fault lies with you.

You start to lie to keep the peace, this is because you feel like you are walking on eggshells with the narcissist because they flip into rage.  The narcissist expects you to live by their rules and any behaviour that you do that they see as not in their favour will make them attack you (they do not have to abide by the same rules, because they are better than you).

After narcissists have got sufficient information to use against you they stop listening to you, because what you want and need is completely irrelevant to them.  So for example they might say “shall we invite six people here for dinner tomorrow?”, if you say “no not tomorrow, I have a long hard day at work” half an hour later they “will say I have invited them and they are all coming” you say “I asked you not to” they will say “well I cannot un-invite them, that would be really rude”.  The narcissist will also then expect you to cook the dinner.  The effect of being constantly ignored is that after a while you stop trying to be heard because what you say or want does not matter to them.

The narcissist will also throw a “bad behaviour” of yours (that might or might not have happened) at you in the middle of an argument to bully you into doing what they want.

Why it is so easy to gaslight a child?

A child’s relationship with their parent is not an equal one.   Children are frequently referred to as hostages to their parents in the literature about dysfunctional parenting.  All of the power is in the hands of the parents and where there is total power there is also the potential for abuse.  Parents not only “rule” the household but they also tell their children (either directly or indirectly) how to interpret the events, people and places that are around them.

This makes gaslighting a child very easy.  Children look to their parents for an understanding of how things work.  From social/relationship situations to using domestic appliances.  For this reason it is easy for a parent to take their vulnerable child and manipulate any given situation to be seen through their own perspective, thus gleaning solidarity from their children, giving the parent control and getting reinforcement of the parent’s perspective from their children (even though they were told what to think).

If a child is feeling unloved, they will do anything to get their parent’s love, if it means denying their understanding of “what just happened” (even if it was a physical action and they saw it with their own eyes), then that is what they will do

The narcissist’s brain served human kind well in the long distant past.  It is completely selfish, reactive and lives in the moment (no capacity for future planning).  That was great when we were more “primitive” and constantly under attack from predators. It is a primitive primeval brain that is focusing on getting what you can get (from others), where you can get it and by whatever means.  This type of behaviour simply isn’t appropriate any more.  It is an attitude for the unevolved; people without a sense of community or society, with no emotional intelligence or conscience.

They genuinely do not know what is going on in their own heads and can flip and contradict themselves in an argument without even noticing that they have done it.  Deep down they must know that they are not who they say they are, otherwise they wouldn’t need such a highly charged and explosive defence system.  No one with a true sense of self would think that it was okay to put on haughty airs and graces, acts of grandiosity, arrogance and constantly state that they are superior to others.

Narcissists have completely numbed out from their emotions (with the exception of emotions like anger and jealousy).  It is as though someone has pressed their emotional mute button.  As a consequence, they do not have access to the colourful emotional palette that the rest of us experience.  They completely miss subtle nuances in communication between people, they are never absolutely certain about how they should act and are hyper vigilant about taking cues from others.  Because they cannot feel they are never satisfied so they are either on a perpetual quest to find admiration or drama of some sort.  The drama always has to be turned up high, because that is where they get their buzz.  If getting drama into their lives involves abusing someone (either to their face or behind their back) starting gossipy rumours or doing something illegal, it is deemed okay in the mind of the self-righteous narcissist because they are always right.  When face to face they get satisfaction from seeing pain on someone else’s face after they have offended them in some way and many narcissists prefer the look of pain to happiness, because pain makes them feel powerful, whereas happiness could be just seen as the other person being in a good mood.

The reality of course is that they narcissist cannot love themselves and as such they can only “love” their projected image and to do this they have to be masters in the art of self-deception. Part of this self-deception is being very judgemental and using their projected low opinions of others as a tool to buoy their own fragile ego up.

If someone even accidentally says or does something that the narcissist finds offensive, they will go on a “counter attack” with a ridiculous amount of rage.  Because narcissists are so fragile, those around them will usually try to avoid confrontation and stay away from controversial arguments and opinions.  So they stay with superficial topics and ideas because it is just not worth arguing with the narcissist.  Their inability to delve deeper into their conscience and their lack of curiosity also feeds their boredom.  They do not have an “inner life” as such.  For them it is all about maintaining their self-image and being judgemental and critical of others. It is not good enough for a narcissist to be good enough, they always have to feel that they are vastly superior to others, as you can imagine this takes a lot of work, which is one reason why they are so determined to preserve their false persona at all costs.

They will often talk about something with total conviction that they know absolutely nothing about.  They may try to give lessons to a French teacher in their woefully poor French and be oblivious to how inappropriate they are being.  They might assume path finder on a mountain trek without having any idea where they were or where they were going.  Reality, and what they are actually capable of doing are completely disconnected.  However, they will enjoy the drama of getting lost on a mountain at dusk, pretending that they are in control, and bickering, all stories long and short will be shared about the “adventure” at a later date.  The conviction with which they say that they know what they are doing makes people believe them, why would you say something like that unless you were absolutely sure, the answer is attention, it is always about attention.