Normal people gaslighting you

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League_Girl
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24 Nov 2016, 3:48 pm

When I say normal, I mean people without any disorders and those who are not narcissist or abusive.


My mom keeps gaslighting me. She will deny things ever happened. Just today my mom and my brother were talking and he then says how he can't afford to feed his kids if he had more and he doesn't get foodstamps. I jump in saying he can apply for them and then he starts explaining why he can't and he mentions his ex claimed their kids so she gets foodstamps and is unemployed. I start asking questions to try and understand and then my mom gets mad at me because she raises her voice. She also yelled at me to stop asking questions and to not ask any and she said this is not to talk about in front of the kids. His kids were here and in the room. I mentioned my brother brought it up but she said I brought it up and the custody stuff. I told her it was my brother who brought it up when he started talking about foodstamps and explaining why he couldn't get any and my dad cut us off before our argument escalated before I could even say when my brother brought it up. I said quietly to myself to my mother "don't gaslight me." I don't think she heard me because my dad was talking loud to quit the conversation because it was turning into an argument because my mom was gaslighting me so I was fighting back.

Does anyone ever gaslight you? They will say you were the one who started something or the one who brought something up or say you were the one who kept something going or deny they ever told you something, etc.?

I am starting to get sick of this and it's starting to make me mad. There is going to come a point where it will become an argument every time she gaslights me and then I will end up shouting "don't gaslight me." I swear to god my mom is starting to scare me and give me more anxiety when she denies or spins things around and then it doesn't help when I hear that about narcissists so this is very frightening stuff. Maybe I should quit reading posts from raisedbynarcissists and narcissistabuse and Nrelationships and raisedbyborderlines and BPDlovedones on Reddit and reading other websites that talk about narcissism and abuse because it will always talk about gaslighting. Then it feels my mom is turning into a narcissist.


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Last edited by League_Girl on 24 Nov 2016, 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tiankay
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24 Nov 2016, 4:42 pm

What does "gaslighting someone" mean? Based on the post I just assume it has nothing to do with setting someone on fire with a gas lighter. Kinda confused now..

Peace
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League_Girl
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24 Nov 2016, 4:54 pm

Tiankay wrote:
What does "gaslighting someone" mean? Based on the post I just assume it has nothing to do with setting someone on fire with a gas lighter. Kinda confused now..

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

It's normally associated with abusers because they do it for control but I think anyone does it because they don't want to accept responsibility or admit their own mistakes and because they might regret what they have done or said so they pretend it's never happened by denying it. Why my mother was trying to pass something onto me saying I was the one who brought up custody and not my brother is beyond me.


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slw1990
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24 Nov 2016, 6:13 pm

It happens with me too, especially with my dad. I might tell him something and then later he tells me that I never sad it when I did and sometimes I tell him things and later he tells me that I said the opposite to him. Also, if we disagree about something and I try to explain it to him he later acts like he agreed with me. I've been more distant from him because of it.



drlaugh
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24 Nov 2016, 6:52 pm

In families there are labeled scapegoats or identified patient.

Looking at Family History usually show other things.

Thanks for this post
I had never heard of Gaslighting.

8)


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League_Girl
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24 Nov 2016, 7:17 pm

drlaugh wrote:
In families there are labeled scapegoats or identified patient.

Looking at Family History usually show other things.

Thanks for this post
I had never heard of Gaslighting.

8)



Hearing stories from my mother, there seemed to be narcissism tenancies in her family. Her mother would just throw stuff out like one time my mo had a cat and one day she came home and the cat was gone. her mom told her that maybe it ran away. Also her stuff would disappear too and one day their swingset was gone. My mom hated this so she decided she would never do it to us kids and she didn't. Instead it would be going through our stuff together and selling it at a garage sale and telling us to go through our things and get rid of things we don't play with anymore. She didn't just go behind our backs and get rid of it.

Also my oldest aunt was the golden child so she got everything she wanted and always got my mom into trouble and my grandparents always believed her. They never even took her to a psychiatrist but my mom says her sister was very manipulative. So I thought "so she tricked her parents that she was normal?"

My mom once got her face slapped for telling her mother how her oldest sister gets to go out and have fun and she always has to be home from school to take care of her siblings and can't do any school activities or even be with friends. Her mother did eventually quit her temporary job but never apologized to my mother for hitting her when she had told her something that was true. Her mother never knowledge that she was right so she had quit her job.

Her family was pretty dysfunctional but she denies it was dysfunctional and it was just her sister that was manipulative. To me that was still dysfunctional if she caused that much havoc in the home because of the drama she had created and my mom being abused by her and getting into trouble by her with her lies. Then her other older sister was mean to her because their oldest was mean to her so she passed it onto my mother but my mother decided to break that cycle when she realized that wasn't normal so she treated her younger siblings better and didn't do that stuff to them her sisters did to her. It was like Malcolm in the Middle but real life. If I had to live in that environment, I would probably have behavior and be a problem child because of the abuse and because of anxiety and who knows what might have happened to me in the 1960's.


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drlaugh
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24 Nov 2016, 8:43 pm

Wow
Just jogged a memory of my mom telling me our dog ran away.
Later I found out she gave him away.

8O


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League_Girl
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24 Nov 2016, 10:04 pm

drlaugh wrote:
Wow
Just jogged a memory of my mom telling me our dog ran away.
Later I found out she gave him away.

8O



My mom realized that when she was maybe an adult. I am not sure how old she was when she realized that is what happened. But I have seen those similar stories on raisedbynarcissists and I was realizing my mom's parents had characteristics.


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YippySkippy
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24 Nov 2016, 10:11 pm

Gaslighting is emotionally abusive behavior. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to say someone gaslights you but isn't abusive.



League_Girl
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24 Nov 2016, 10:22 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
Gaslighting is emotionally abusive behavior. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to say someone gaslights you but isn't abusive.



Because she isn't abusive but sometimes she will do gaslighting like she did today.

Put it this way, everyone might do something that is abusive but it wouldn't make them an abuser just like you can do something that is rude and still not be a rude person if that makes sense. You would have to do it all the time to be an abuser or do it often enough. I don't think my mom shows enough for me to see her as an abuser.


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BeaArthur
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25 Nov 2016, 6:33 pm

League_Girl wrote:
My mom keeps gaslighting me. She will deny things ever happened. Just today my mom and my brother were talking and he then says how he can't afford to feed his kids if he had more and he doesn't get foodstamps. I jump in saying he can apply for them and then he starts explaining why he can't and he mentions his ex claimed their kids so she gets foodstamps and is unemployed. I start asking questions to try and understand and then my mom gets mad at me because she raises her voice. She also yelled at me to stop asking questions and to not ask any and she said this is not to talk about in front of the kids. His kids were here and in the room. I mentioned my brother brought it up but she said I brought it up and the custody stuff. I told her it was my brother who brought it up when he started talking about foodstamps and explaining why he couldn't get any and my dad cut us off before our argument escalated before I could even say when my brother brought it up...

As you describe the situation, it seems to me you were unable to take the hint that you should stop talking because the children were there. This made your mom escalate giving you the message, by shouting and accusing and denying.

But I don't think she was gaslighting, which means intentionally denying reality to make you doubt your own sanity.

Be careful reading about narcissism and gaslighting on consumer or survivor sites. That is mostly pop psychology and can cause destruction of your family relationships. When I say pop psychology, I mean analysis of behavior that is not strongly based in research so it can often be misleading.


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drlaugh
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25 Nov 2016, 6:53 pm

Bea and others.

Yes a little knowledge can be misleading.
I was training an intern who was shadowing me as I talked with clients.

One of my clients asked her why she was nervous.
This MS level SW told me after the session she had her arms folded because of the chill in my office. Temperature not emotions.

8O


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naturalplastic
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25 Nov 2016, 9:32 pm

On the other hand there is benign, or even benevolent, "gas lighting" of small children (santa and the tooth fairy).

This other boy in my third or forth grade class did this thing: he would take his fingers and turn his upper eyelids inside out. The grossist thing you ever saw. He would do it get the loud reaction (girls especially screamed the loudest, but I was as grossed out as they were). After a couple days of this the teacher gave the class, and this boy a stern lecture. Told us all the sad tale of this boy named "Jacob" who would did that too. Then one day his eyelids just froze up and wouldnt come undone. So forever after "Jacob" (she said they now call him "Jake Look Up") lives in isolation ( in an institution, or something) because he cant be seen in public because of his inside out eyelids. You could hear a pin drop in the class room (thats how moving the story that she sternly told us). The boy in our class never did it again. I soon forgot all about the incident. But as an adult every decade or so something like this thread comes along to remind me of it. And I start to friggin laugh at how well our teacher delivered that total cock-and-bull story about "Jacob", and managed to keep a straight face the whole time! I couldnt do that (even in front of children) without cracking up. :lol:



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25 Nov 2016, 10:01 pm

I was gaslighted by my now-ex husband for several years. I didn't realize what it was until after his departure and I began researching psychological abuse in relationships. I also realized that his childhood was horribly influenced by being a child of an alcoholic father and a very passive mother.

Gaslighting is a deliberate emotional abuse tactic. It's a sustained attempt over time to influence the targeted person to question his/her own perceptions of events and even his/her own thoughts.

The film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman, gave this tactic its name. The story was set when electric lighting simply didn't exist yet in private residences. Gas lights were the standard means of lighting at that time.

The character's husband, while searching for hidden money in the attic, manipulates the gas lighting in the residence. He then tells his wife that the flickering of the lights didn't actually occur.



League_Girl
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26 Nov 2016, 12:04 am

Quote:
Gaslighting is a deliberate emotional abuse tactic. It's a sustained attempt over time to influence the targeted person to question his/her own perceptions of events and even his/her own thoughts.


I felt that is what my mom was doing, spinning it around on me and saying I was the one who brought it up when I didn't and she argued with me that I did and before I could tell her how it got brought up, my dad interrupted both of us with his loud voice to quit our argument because it was getting loud. I don't know why she did it but BeaArthur thinks I probably wasn't getting the hint so she did what she did. I don't know what else to call it then if it's not gaslighting so I will say it's like a form of it except it's not done in a abuse tactic way just like how we don't call it murder when we do executions nor call it an execution when we put an animal to sleep. We used different terms for the same thing but for a different situation.


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29 Nov 2016, 6:46 am

search psychological manipulation in Wikipedia...and you'll probably find what actual techniques abusive people use to manipulate their victims....I think what differentiates normal people doing such things versus really disturbed people is the level of planning, relentlessness, and ruthlessness....your mother only did it once on the heat of the moment while abusers will do it to you for long periods of time with cold calculating efficiency..... Unless you observe a long standing pattern then I would put on hold any judgements....."just because I punch you once it doesn't automatically makes me a boxer"... :D


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