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Gaslighting
Gaslighting: Preying on the Vulnerable
One woman's story.
Posted May 19, 2020 Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
During one of our sessions, June said she thought she was going crazy and losing touch with reality.
As she relayed her story, June anxiously twisted the tissue in her hand with her fingers. She shared that her 3-year-old son, Zach, was running toward her when he tripped, fell on the floor, and split his lip. He was bleeding and crying. June said she “thought” she saw her boyfriend Luke trip him. When she asked Luke if he had put his foot out to trip Zach, he denied it and screamed, “What’s the matter with you? You are really sick; you are seeing things. I love you and I love your son. I would never do anything to hurt either of you. I don’t know what your problem is. You need to see a therapist.”
At the beginning of their relationship, Luke was loving, attentive, and generous to both June and her son. She was happy when Luke came into her life. He was charming and seemed kind, caring, and understanding.
However, over time, under the guise of offering “support,” he would coach June on how to parent her son, stating that she needed to stop coddling him, set more boundaries, discipline him more, and give him more restrictions. Under the guise of “love,” Luke offered June gratuitous feedback and critiqued her behaviors. He was judgmental about her conversations with others and would frequently criticize her in front of friends.
Eventually, the happier moments occurred less and less. June stopped questioning or challenging Luke because he would become volatile and engage in extended arguments. Typical of gaslighters, Luke made himself the victim and June the perpetrator, blaming her for his frustration and anger. He would tell June she was crazy, a bitch, ungrateful, and had insatiable needs.
On more than one occasion, he would punish and manipulate her by staying away for a few days and not responding to her texts or cell messages. At home, he would ignore her as if she was invisible. Tired of the fruitless fighting and to keep the peace, June avoided conversations that would trigger and escalate tensions between the two of them. In time, the relationship became a roller coaster ride of quarreling and distancing, intermingled with glimpses of loving moments.
Believing that she could save the relationship and rekindle the happier times of the past, June continued seeking Luke’s approval by surrendering her personal power and giving Luke the power in the relationship — a power he misused. After meeting Luke, June became a shadow of her former self and she lost both her self-esteem and confidence.
In therapy, June began to deal with the causes of her deep sadness and fears that had their roots in her childhood experiences; experiences that happened long before the birth of her son, and before she met Luke. June worked on getting in touch with her buried memories and feelings from the past, buried in order to survive her overwhelming and violent childhood.
T - What are you feeling?
J – Sad.
June shut down, her breathing slowed, and her shoulders dropped. To contradict the collapse, I reminded June to breathe and to stay with the feelings. The breathing fostered June to experience the sadness.
T - Where in your body do you carry the sadness?
J - In my heart.
T - Breathe into your heart. What is happening in your heart?
J - My heart is beating fast and it is dark and heavy.
T - Your heart is beating fast and it is dark and heavy. Can you remember another time in your life when you were sad and your heart was beating fast and was dark and heavy?
J – Yes.
T – How old were you?
J - I was about six. My dad was very abusive to my brother. I can remember being in the bedroom and I could hear him beating my brother. I was curled up in bed under the covers and trying to hold back my tears. It was not the first time my father beat up my brother.
T - What did the little girl under the covers, who was listening to her dad beat up her brother feel at that moment?
J – Scared.
T - What did you decide about yourself in that moment?
J - I decided I was powerless and I could not make a difference. I could not help my brother and I could not stop my father from hurting him. I felt very alone and I was in a lot of pain with no one to go to.
T - How does not speaking up for yourself and your son with Luke resemble the 6-year-old? Who is your father and who is your brother?
J – It is the same exact experience. Luke is my father and my son is my brother. I became the scared little girl that could not stop my father from hurting my brother. That same fear stopped me from protecting my son and myself from Luke. It is exactly the same.
June started to cry. Her tears were long overdue.
Many women with histories of child abuse come into my office with low self-esteem and long for a sense of connection and purpose in their lives. In our culture, women are taught that closeness will help them feel complete, and being in love will take them out of their personal pain.
However, another person cannot make you feel whole or make up for past unhealed wounds. It is important that trauma survivors do the work necessary to claim the silenced and imprisoned parts of the self and heal childhood injuries. Unlocking and facing the past is a critical goal in therapy. In this way, dysfunctional patterns of the past do not become unconsciously re-enacted in current relationships.
The words of her boyfriend, “I love you both,” overshadowed the reality and the truth of what June saw and knew — that is, Luke did trip her son. June’s desire to be loved and to have a man in her son’s life, to have a family, overrode her ability to trust her intuition, and led her to distrust and question herself.
Luke psychologically and emotionally exploited June’s vulnerabilities so he could manipulate her. His manipulation started by exploiting June’s core vulnerabilities. We all have desires to be loved, to be attached, and in affirming relationships. In fact, it is a human biological need to be in reciprocal caring relationships with others. There is nothing wrong with June’s desire to have warm and loving connections with others. Luke could confidently influence June because she was isolated, young, and a single mother who was susceptible to his manipulation.
Therapy included healing June’s past and rebuilding her self-esteem and confidence, as well as recovering from the relationship with Luke. While unraveling the dynamics in her relationship with Luke, June was able to comprehend and realize the insidious nature of gaslighting and how Luke was able to wear down her confidence and esteem. This helped her to reclaim and retrieve her authentic self — a self that was muted and restricted by the many incidents in her life, starting as a child listening to her father beat her brother and ending with the harmful relationship with Luke.
