Ask Dr. Ramani: What is Gaslighting?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Navigators, you ask for it. Now here it is
on this episode of Navigating Narcissism. I'm answering all of
your burning questions about twenty twenty two's word of the
Year gaslighting. Now, hundreds of you send us emails, comments,
and even slid into our dms, and we have a

(00:21):
lot to get through as a result, So let's get
right to it. This podcast should not be used as
a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are
advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy
from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition,

(00:42):
mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on
this podcast. The views and opinions expressed are solely those
of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia,

(01:03):
or their employees. So first up, Christine asks, why is
it so destabilizing to be gaslighted by a narcissist? I
find myself feeling grounded and steady, and then one interaction
with my narcissistic wife can leave me so lost. Do
you have any tips for staying grounded? It's a great question,

(01:26):
and I'm going to go backwards on this question a
little bit just to sort of set some groundwork here.
Let's start by talking about what gaslighting is, because there's
so much misunderstanding about what it is. Gaslighting is a process, right,
It's not one thing that a person does. Gaslighting first
of all, requires some form of relationship or trust between

(01:49):
you and the gaslighter. You don't really know someone, or
you don't really believe they have any expertise, they're less
likely to be able to shift your reality. So in
that first step, you've got in some form of relationship,
someone you're getting to know, someone you want to know,
someone you already know, like a family member, and obviously,
very commonly it's a spouse or partner, someone you want

(02:09):
to believe in, someone you in theory trust. The next
step is that they deny your reality, perceptions, experiences, things
that literally happened reality in general. So it's a denial
of reality and that can often look like lying. And

(02:31):
I'll talk more about that in a moment. Could be
anything from you hung the keys on the hook and
then they moved them and said no, you didn't. It
could be them moving the remote and them saying it
is a place that it's not. It could be them
saying you can't be hungry, you just ate, but you
are hungry. So it could be a denial of anything,

(02:51):
not just the reality of the environment, but how you feel.
Even something you may remember. They might say that never happened,
and that thing did happen. If it's stopped there, that's
not gaslighting, because gaslighting has one more step to it,
which is that they dismantle you. They leave you feeling

(03:13):
like there's something wrong with you. So it's things like
you're really paranoid, always thinking I'm texting someone else on
my phone, or you're seeming more and more mentally unstable.
Are you okay, It doesn't seem like you're remembering anything
right anymore. They may suggest that you have dementia or paranoia,
or that you need therapy. But no matter what they're suggesting,

(03:34):
there's something not quite right with you. They've just denied
reality or perception. They're doubling down by telling you there's
something wrong with you. And the final piece of gaslighting
to remember is that it doesn't just happen once. The
reason gaslighting works is because it happens repeatedly. It's not
one time that they lie about where the remote is

(03:58):
or accuse you of not being hungry. It's over and
over and over again every day, sometimes multiple times a day.
So that's gaslighting. And a lot of people say, well,
isn't gaslighting narcissism? Is that the same thing. No, Narcissism's
a personality style. Though we talk about on navigating narcissism.
The usual laundry lists are people who have at best

(04:20):
variable or inconsistent empathy, or very little empathy. They're entitled, grandiose,
really superficial, chronically validation seeking, need to have a lot
of control, They're really insecure. That's the narcissism piece. A
great way to remember this is that all narcissists gaslight,

(04:42):
but not all gaslighters are narcissistic. You might be wondering,
what does it do to us? Oh, my goodness, not good.
It leaves you feeling like there is something wrong with you.
You do blame yourself, You doubt yourself. You actually may
literally feel like you're losing your mind, and if it
happens again consistently and for a long enough time, you

(05:05):
completely lose any belief in your decision making abilities. You'll say,
don't trust me with that. I don't know what I'm doing,
even though you're an incredibly competent person. So that is
why gaslighting is often considered to be a form of
emotional abuse, because it is done so inconsistently, and it
really really does tremendous psychological and mental harm to the

(05:27):
person who is being gaslight at. Christine is asking here,
why is it so destabilizing to be gaslighted by a narcissist?
For all of these reasons, because you're going through life
and you know what's right, you know what you know,
you know what you don't know, you know where you
left the keys, you know what you ate for breakfast,
you know you're not hungry or hungry or cold or whatever.

(05:47):
And now someone's coming along and saying no, you're not,
or that's not when the appointment is. And like I said,
it's the repeated nature of gaslighting that it happens so
often that when it happens again, even once, even if
you're having a good day, the minute you're hit with gaslighting,
you again feel like you're walking on really unsteady ground.

(06:08):
The final part of her question is is that do
you have any tips for staying grounded. A big part
of staying grounded in the face of gaslighting is to
know that you are being gaslighted, so to even just
simply understand the phenomenon saying I know where I put
the keys. I put the keys in the same place
every day. If they got moved, they were moved by someone.

(06:31):
But I know where the keys are, and this person
is messing with me. I'm not disorganized. I know that
about myself. It does require, like all forms of healing
from narcissistic abuse, that you understand you. You know what
you're about, if you know that you're an organized person,
if you know that you're not a paranoid person. These

(06:52):
are things you should know about yourself and can give
yourself permission to know about yourself. Gaslighting and narcissistic relationships
pull us away from knowing about ourself. So part of
the work you can do on your own is how
do I get reacquainted with what I know to be
true about me, about the world, about my environment, so
that when you are being gaslighted, you can be a

(07:14):
little bit more steadfast. I'm going to give you an example,
because watching an encounter between two people, the person had
a doctor's appointment at eleven o'clock in the morning. The
gas slighter kept saying, no, it's not your appointments at noon.
The person whose appointment was at eleven was really really
careful about these doctor's appointments because they were difficult to
get and she knew she was going to be late.

(07:35):
She was going to lose the appointment. The gas lighter
doubled and tripled down. The person whose appointment it was,
who was being gaslighted, knew what gaslighting was. Instead of
getting into an argument, which would have been destabilizing, she
had the little card, the appointment card, and on top
of that, she called the doctor's office on speaker, got

(07:56):
through to the receptionist and said, Hi, it's such and such.
I'm just confirming my appointment time today. Through the speaker
came the receptionist's voice saying, your appointment's at eleven. Now
you can see the multiple problems here. If this person,
if she succumbed to the gas lighter, she would have
missed the appointment, which was an important appointment. When the
gas lighter heard that, said to the person, so do

(08:17):
you feel better because you love making people feel small,
don't you? Oh? You're so pompous. You're such a pompous lady,
always walking around thinking you're so smart. And I just
want you to know, now you've thrown off my whole day.
All I do is for you, and now I have
thrown off my day having to take you to this
appointment when it works for you. What's the person supposed
to do with that? The person who was gaslighted, though,

(08:40):
told me later on. She said, as frustrating as it
was to deal with him, there was a solidity I
felt that I knew when that appointment was and that
I knew he would never believe me. So the receptionist's
voice coming through, she said, for me, the prize was
getting to the appointment on time. Those kinds of things,
remembering those things you're in never going to make them

(09:00):
stop gaslighting you, but figuring out the things you can
do that will allow your life to run in a
through pathway, to be straight and clear, be clear on
who you are in this situation, and then not misimportant
things to you, like this woman in her doctor's appointment.
It still doesn't feel good, but at least it may
not throw you off. This next question so good. Next

(09:25):
Sarah wants to know. My friends are always saying that
they're being gaslighted. How do we know if they are?
Isn't gaslighting just a fancy name for lying. So there's
a lot there. Let's start from the top, which is
everybody became the word of the year, right, so of
course everyone's going to be talking about it. One of
the struggles is a lot of people aren't using it

(09:45):
the right way. Let me tell you what gaslighting is not.
Gaslighting is not a difference of opinion. Gaslighting is not
challenging someone's beliefs. Gaslighting is not Lyinglight is that multi
step process I was talking about where a person's reality, experience,
or perception is denied, then told there's something wrong with them,

(10:09):
rince lather, repeat. It just keeps going and going and going.
So it's a process. It's not a one off. So
you having a different opinion I love that band, that
band is terrible. That's not gaslighting. That's just the two
of you not liking the same band. Now, for example,
somebody saying you were late, No I wasn't you were late, No,

(10:34):
I wasn't believe it or not. That sequence is also
not gaslighting. A lot of people think that that sequence
is gaslighting because that person saying they're not late, like, well,
we were supposed to start at eight and you came
at nine. That makes you late. That other person said,
is a party. I thought coming at nine would be fine.

(10:54):
What that person's not doing is saying there's something wrong
with you. You're too rigid thinking eight o'clock was on time.
If they just keep going back and forth, you were late,
No I'm not. You were late, No, I'm not. That's
not gaslighting. It's annoying, it's frustrating. But it is two
people again having a difference of opinion, even when it's
something as clear cut as a schedule. Another issue that

(11:16):
comes up with this idea of what is gaslighting what
isn't it is this dynamic of misremembering things from the past, right,
And if two people have been witnessed or experienced something,
If you had an experience of something, especially when it's
very psychologically significant, an experience of abuse so or a
really negative experience within a family, or feeling neglected, and

(11:39):
the family members say that wasn't true, you were totally
well taken care of. To me, that's in gaslight territory.
Because the person saying I had this recollection that X, Y,
and Z bad things were happening, the person saying that's
not true, and they're over correcting, like you actually had
a really great childhood when there's two, if you will,

(12:02):
versions of history that are being put out there. The
way for it to not be gaslighting is if that
both people in the conversation can hold space for the
idea that we may actually have had very different experiences
of this, but not negating the experience of the other person. Hey,

(12:25):
I remember childhood being this hostile, terrible, neglectful experience, and
the parent can say, I am so sorry. That is
so hard to recall your childhood to be that way.
It's hard for me. I'm remembering it a different way.
But I hear that you had an experience. That's not gaslighting.

(12:48):
But for a person to say, what's wrong with you?
You had a perfectly fine childhood. Stop complaining everyone on
the block was living the way we did, that's gaslighting
that difference in recall. The only way to push back
to not have a gaslighted interaction about that is to
be able to simultaneously be aware that maybe we did
have different experiences and remembrances, but just because you had

(13:13):
a different recollection that you never invalidate the experience of
another person. Let me tell you, folks, this is a
really hard line to toe because our only frame of
reference is our own. But in the healthiest human relationships
is they happen when both people feel that their experience

(13:34):
can be witnessed by the other person and not questioned,
even if the other person didn't have the same experience.
And it's tricky, and in families it's where it is trickiest.
But even at a societal level, the way people will
look back at periods of our history when things happened,
things that relate to race and ethnicity, things that relate

(13:55):
to gender, things that relate to sexual orientation, groups of
people who have experiences that were absolutely traumatic and that
would be minimized by people who didn't have those experiences. Oh,
come on, now, get over it. That period of history
is over. That's gaslighting, because those periods of history shape
the identity of people who have those shared identities going forward.

(14:19):
So this is bigger than just two people misremembering something
in a family. This has to do literally with how
we hold history within ourselves and how we talk about it.
Now we have a question from Grant who asks, how
do you call out a gaslighter? This is tricky? So

(14:41):
calling people out is always tricky business, Okay, especially when
it's about something as we're learning, is so heated as gaslighting.
But I still think actually it's a useful thing to do.
People will say, what am I supposed to do if
I see someone being gaslighted? Do I get it in
there and do I help them? And to which I'd say,

(15:03):
absolutely yes if it's safe for you, and like, well,
one would it be unsafe? Oftentimes at work it can
be unsafe, But how do you get in there? And
it's sort of ungaslight someone in real time? If they're
being gaslighted by someone, you can really step in and say, yeah,
that's not what I heard her say. She had said this,
that's how I heard it. And so what happens is
now you've validated the reality of the person being gaslighted,

(15:26):
who believe it or not, just with that little bit
of validation, will feel a lot stronger and might even
be able to take it from there, because what happens
is when we're gaslighted, anybody who has empathy and compassion
is very gaslighted. Bule because they're willing to hold plausibly
like maybe I'm wrong, maybe I didn't remember that right
right as we're open to that, and the gaslighter runs

(15:47):
with that. But if someone else says you didn't remember
that wrong, I was there, That's what happened. Boom. It's
like putting water on the wicked witch, like you melt it.
What if you are in a situation though, where you
can't speak tek out. Where this comes up most commonly
is in the workplace, you might see someone more senior
gaslighting someone who's more subordinate, and you yourself may be

(16:08):
in that same level. You're not as senior as the
person doing the gaslighting. Something that can be really useful
is if after the meeting you take a side the
person who's gaslighted as soon as you can after the
meeting and say, hey, I want you to know I
heard that and what they did to you was gaslighting.
I was there when we had that meeting. I was

(16:29):
there and I read that memo. You were right. I'm
sorry that happened to you. I hope you're okay, but
I saw that I have actually had that happen in
professional settings, and it was a literal game changer for
me because I would leave the meeting feeling terrible, and
someone once did that. They cut me off of the pass.
So I was going to the restroom after the meeting
and they said I heard that, and I saw that,

(16:51):
and that wasn't cool, and I'm sorry. The workplace remained toxic,
but I went home that day feeling sane, which, let
me tell you, there was no gift in the world
great than that. So that's the piece about calling out gaslighting. Now,
gaslighters gaslight, and they may not want to be stopped
in that even if you did it in trying to
protect someone, they don't like that. They do not like

(17:13):
their process being thwarted, because remember, gaslighting is not just
about saying my reality is better than yours. It's about power,
control and dominance. The gaslighter wants things the way they
want them. They want to be big and they want
everyone else to be small. That's what they're trying to create.
So you walking in there with your Google moment and

(17:34):
trying to educate them on gaslighting is probably not going
to be well met. If you want to take the argument,
then by all means you do you, but keep in
mind that they're probably if they really are a hardcore
gas lighter, and especially if they're narcissistic, are going to
sort of minimize you and say you don't know what
you're talking about, and then they might actually start gaslighting you.

(17:56):
I think that the more useful play in all of
this is to talk with the people who are being
gaslighted or who think they're being gaslighted, and helped show
them what's happening, what's what, and what's not what. That
might be the best way to approach this. But trying
to call out a gaslight er is like trying to
call out a narcissist. By and large, it gets you nowhere.

(18:16):
It might get you in a big argument. But I
have to say, and this came up in a conversation
with a friend of mine. She said, you know what,
if I'm being gaslighted, I don't like that. I don't
want to put up with it. I said, then don't
take the fight, and she said, I think I'd feel
sick if I couldn't take the fight. What we're trying
to do is keep you from feeling sick. So if
you feel ready to take on the gaslight fight, then

(18:38):
take it. But understand that it's going to get very
distorted and shape shifted and uncomfortable. But if you want
to take the argument, take the argument, recognize it's going
to get really confusing. But if you're someone who doesn't
like conflict, have really been harmed by long term manipulation,
and find these situations to be really unsettling, I would
say calling them out is probably not doing you any favors,

(19:01):
and trying to educate them on gaslighting is like trying
to educate a pickpocket on ethics. You're probably not going
to get very far. So choose your battles, and you
may do more in being a real supporter and an
ally to somebody who's being gaslighted and letting them know,
either in private or in real time, that you see

(19:22):
what's happening and that it's not okay. So this is
an interesting one. Gino asks, I was in a coffee
shop recently and I saw someone who got really upset
when their coffee order came up, but they put the
wrong name on the coffee cup, which meant they had
to wait a minute before they got their coffee even
though it was ready. And then that person got really

(19:44):
mad at the barista and said you're gaslighting me. Now,
that's not gaslighting. Now, if the Starbucks barista had pointed
to the cup and said you must have a reading problem,
that is your name gaslighting. But this person just being

(20:06):
the barista making a mistake or something like that, that
kind of issue not gaslighting. So if a waiter were
to bring someone the wrong meal. Okay, you're in a restaurant,
the waiter brings you the salmon and that's not what
you ordered and they walk away, that's not gaslighting. That's
a mistake. And the overuse of this term in all

(20:30):
of these kinds of situations being given the wrong thing.
I saw this actually happen on a flight once when
somebody thought they were in a certain seat and the
flight attendant said, no, you're one row back, and the
person told the flight attendant, you're gaslighting me. The flight
attendant actually wasn't gaslighting them. They sat in the wrong
seat and they were one row back. I think it

(20:52):
was thirteen C fourteen C kind of a thing. That's
not someone gaslighting them, it's that someone saying this is
what your boarding pass says. There's a real issue here
because a lot of people are using gaslighting as a
term for when they're inconvenienced, and being inconvenienced is not
being gaslighted. It's being inconvenienced. Always remember denial of reality, perception, experience,

(21:17):
and then dismantling. There's something wrong with you. You have memory problems,
you're obsessive, you're controlling, you're narcissistic, whatever they're accusing you of.
It's that combination that makes gaslighting. Someone getting your coffee
name wrong, while maybe quite upsetting, perhaps it even hurts
your feelings, but it's not gaslighting. My conversation will continue

(21:39):
after this break. So Michelle wants to know are certain
personality types more susceptible to gaslighting? This is such a
great question because that's always the issue. Are there some
people out there that are gaslight proof? And the answer

(22:01):
to that is no. So let's start with some brass
tacks here. The more privileged somebody has the less gaslight
of all they are because they've almost been given societal
permission for a really long time. That what you're saying
is right, and people who have less societal power they're wrong.
When we think about the original movie Gaslight, it was

(22:24):
an older husband who was gaslighting a younger wife. So
there was a gender dynamic, there was an age dynamic
because of the era it happened, there was a powered
dynamic difference. So all of those things were happening making
him more gaslighty of her, her ability to gaslight him
was going to be a lot more limited. Because he

(22:45):
did have more societal power, more people were more likely
to go along with what he says, which is why
many times people who do have more societal privilege and
power will often look sideways when somebody says I'm being
gaslight and they are actually being gaslighted, because it tends
not to happen up, it tends to happen down in
terms of power. So keep that peace in mind. So

(23:08):
anyone who holds less power in a situation for any reason,
because they literally do because it's work, because of age,
because of dynamics in a family, because of money, because
of race, because of ethnicity, gender, any of those issues,
that more empowered person is going to be more likely
to be able to pull off gaslighting someone less powerful.

(23:30):
That's one thing. Second piece, when people have more empathy
and compassion, I had to say this, they're more likely
to be gaslightable because they're willing to be open to
the idea that, well, to be empathic, maybe I am responsible,
maybe I did put the keys in the wrong place.
Maybe this person has my best interest at heart. There

(23:51):
is an idea that empathy. When you're an empathic person,
the baseline assumption, especially when you're agreeable, is that this
other person has empathy too, so you're not thinking that
they're going to be trying to harm you. And as
a result, empathic, compassionate, and open people hold a lot
more space for the idea that the other person is

(24:11):
not trying to pull one over on them, so they'll
be open to their point of view and subsequently will
be more gas light of bull What gets interesting is
even empathic, sweet, kind, gregarious, agreeable people early on, when
something is patently no, no, no, like no way, I
know I didn't put that there, or absolutely not I
have the text here. Gaslighting breaks us down over time.

(24:34):
So even the most empathic person out there might take
the fight initially, but enough times, after fifty one hundred
times of being told you're foolish, you're silly, you're dim,
you're dull, you don't know what you're doing, it becomes
baked into a person's identity and then couple that with
the empathy, and they really aren't likely to take the
gaslighter on. Another personality style that would be associated with

(24:59):
a greater vulnerability to gaslighting would be something we call neuroticism. Now,
neuroticism is a personality style that's associated with a greater
likelihood of things like negative emotions, worry, anxiety, fear, sort
of social discomfort. The higher that gets, the more struggle
there may be in a social situation, and people higher

(25:20):
in neuroticism may be more willing and likely to blame themselves.
So if a person higher in this neuroticism style, and
I don't mean my neurotic I don't mean old school
like neurotically like you see in the movies. I mean
this specific personality style that is more of this negative
emotional style, they're more vulnerable to gaslighting because people higher

(25:41):
in neuroticism are just simply more likely to doubt themselves
with or without gaslighting being around. But the thing that
we need to be clear on is any time there
is that power differential, all these personality styles I'm talking
about certainly are going to play into that. We're going
to see gaslighting so one more place to think about
other groups that could be more vulnerable to gaslighting. People

(26:04):
have had histories of trauma. What trauma does is it
undercuts a sense of trust, not only in the world,
but a sense of trust in oneself. So even you
must say, well, the traumatized person doesn't trust the world,
wouldn't they stop trusting the people in it. It's really
that sense of self doubt that pervades a traumatized person.

(26:27):
So there can be a sense of because many traumatized
people believe they are at some level responsible for their trauma,
especially when it's interpersonal trauma. That's the nature of what
trauma does to our brains. So if a person has
experienced interpersonal trauma, family violence, relational violence, child abuse, those
sorts of experiences, as they get older and go into

(26:49):
an adulthood and they encounter a gaslighted experience, it is
much more likely reflexively for a trauma a person with
the history of trauma to think, maybe this is my fault,
maybe I'm blame, making them quite gaslightable. People with past
histories of gaslighting, who have been gaslighted are more likely
to be gaslightable in the future until they learn what

(27:10):
it is. So if you're gaslighted as a kid by
your parents, you're going to be more vulnerable to that
as an adult as well. And then we also have
to account for other mental health issues that could be
at play. Depression, other anxiety adjacent patterns like obsessive compulsive disorder,
will those kinds of patterns create a person who may
also be more gaslightable. The self doubt, the self devaluation,

(27:34):
the social anxiety, the lack of belief in oneself that
cut through those kinds of patterns means that when somebody
is gaslighted, the first thing that that person is going
to do is to doubt themselves. So I'm going to
give you sort of a doctor Romeny personal moment here.
As hard as it is, I'm a really gaslightable person
in many ways just because of my own life histories,

(27:56):
stuff that's happened to me in terms of trauma and
other stuff, and so I always doubt myself. So when
somebody says you didn't put the book back, I'm always
going to assume they're right, and I will rifle through
my bag endlessly and then able to turn out the
book was in the right place all along, and it's
sort of an interest real doctor interesting doctor rominism. It's
gotten to the point where anytime I go on a trip,

(28:18):
I am convinced I have forgotten one or two. There's
specific things I always worry I'm going to forget. The
number of Uber drivers I have made pull over four
blocks out from my house. Can you pull over? It
got so embarrassing that I couldn't evembar it anymore. But
you know, to my partner's credit, sometimes we'll get a
block out and I'll say can we pull over? And
to his credit, he doesn't get mad at me. And

(28:39):
it was years I was in relationships with people who
would get really angry at me for doing that. That's
what a lifetime of gaslighting has done to me. I
no longer trust myself, so that susceptibility. I have a
lot of the things we talked about. It has created
something in me where I actually have to be almost
obsessively organized to feel like, no, I think I put
the book away, but if someone say, no, you didn't,

(29:00):
I'd be the first one to unpack her bag. So
it's a process, and sometimes these patterns really die hard.
So Lee asks. I've had a few situations where I've
experienced gas slighting at work where I just need to
have peace to do my job. How can I best
manage conversations with the gas lighter without first aggravating the

(29:21):
situation or second seeming to agree and accept the lies
at my own expense. I feel bad for Lee because
I don't think there's really a good path forward for
Lee here. And let's talk a little bit about gaslighting
at work. Gaslighting is gaslighting. It's emotional abuse wherever it happens.
Sometimes it feels a little bit different at work because

(29:43):
work may not feel as personal depends on how indo
your work you are, but whereas what happens in the
family or in an intimate relationship, you might be more
like ah. But when it comes to a workplace relationship,
it might even take you a minute to recognize the
dynamic because we often view it more as a sort
of an intimate kind of a dynamic. But it can
make work a very upsetting place because the devil is

(30:05):
often in the details at work and gas slightings where
people can really catch you and say you didn't do that,
and you're saying, I know I did, didn't I save that?
And it can really make people run back to their
computer and say, there is the document. And so what
Lee is asking is I need to have peace to
do my job. How do I manage this without either
aggravating them or giving in. Lee's best approach here is

(30:30):
actually trying to figure out how to do the job.
That's the most important thing here. So, because I don't
know what Lee's job is, maybe it's something where you
clock in and clock out. Maybe it's how many things
get put away in a warehouse. Maybe it's certain documents
getting written at a workplace. It's really really crucial that
Lee has some sort of objective place where this work

(30:53):
is getting logged in, whether that's a manager, whether that's
something that Lee keeps on Lee's phone that Lee is
tracking what's getting done. So at the end of that day,
Lee has a record. Especially if Lee reports to someone,
Lee can say here's the documents, this, here's that. It's
difficult when the person who's the gas lighter is the

(31:13):
one who's saying, no, you didn't. Sadly, when you work
with a gas lighter, you actually have to do more
work because you have to sometimes create an additional record
of everything you've done. Documentation is everything when you're being
gaslighted in the workplace, the more you have this written
proof if you do need to take a complaint to
a different level, if it's a large enough workplace where

(31:34):
you can do that at least, then you do have
that proof. So those of you who might say, okay, now,
I have to sort of over communicate sometimes that's what
you've got to do to sort of have that kind
of a record of what you've done. But what Lee
is trying to do. The more concerning part, if you will,
about Lee's question is Lee is trying to manage the
piece without either aggravating the gas lighter or not having

(31:57):
to go along with the gas lighter. And that's of
the impossible catch twenty two here, you kind of sadly
to keep the peace in the workplace other than quitting
the job, you're sort of stuck doing one or the other,
and then it becomes a choice. There may be times
you do have to aggravate the gas lighter if your
job is in jeopardy, if workplace finances are at jeopardy,

(32:19):
if people you're working with, or consumers or something aren't jeopardy,
you may just have to step up and say here's
the documentation, Here are the records, this is what it
looks like that is going to aggravate the gas lighter.
If you don't need to do that, If those aren't
the stakes, then there are times where you're just going
to have to just shut up and put up and
just keep moving on, because just like you can't call

(32:40):
out a narcissist and they're not going to change, you're
also not going to be able to find this meaningful
way to interact with someone who gaslights with a gas lighter.
Evidence often isn't your friend. You know, you can come
up with a wheelbarrow of evidence, like, here's all the
texts you wrote late at night. Don't tell me you
don't late night texts. And you know what they're gonna

(33:02):
do is they're going to upside down your wheelbarrow and
say only a deranged person would save all my texts,
And now you're the deranged person who saves texts. There's
no winning at this. So you've got to have a
bigger goal in mind, which is I want to move
to the next level. I want to be transferred to
a different division. I got to keep this job until
I can find another job, whatever that may be. To

(33:25):
keep the so called peace until you can figure out
a way out, because as long as you are working
under that condition, there's really no path forward. You either
are alternating between aggravating and giving into them. And I
think a hard part of all of this is that
people are often trying to find isn't there some middle
road we can take? And in healthy relationships there's always

(33:46):
a middle road, But in gaslighted relationships, in narcissistic relationships,
it's the absence of the middle road that makes it
so difficult. The next question is from Keenan, who is
wondering when you ignore more a narcissistic person's attempt to
gaslight you, what usually happens next. So this is a

(34:08):
really really good question because ignoring gaslighting is half the battle, right.
So as I get into this answer, I want to
lay one thing out first, because I want to normalize
your experience in these relationships. For most of us, in
the early days of gaslighting in a relationship, we might
even fight back a little bit, say absolutely not, the

(34:30):
remote was right here unless there's a ghost in the house,
there's no way, or I absolutely know here's the text
you sent me the text, or I'm going to go
find the picture to show that you were at that part.
Whatever it is, you're going to take the fight because
someone's denying reality. We are going to take that fight

(34:51):
right over time when they come back twice as hard.
If you have any of those personality styles I was
talking about, any of those things that make you more
vulnerable and somebody telling you you're wrong, there's something wrong
with you over and over again, that's going to pull
you back. So it goes through phases, and in the
first phase there's some clapback, we push back, and then

(35:13):
slowly we don't. Over time, in the worst gaslighted situations,
you go from fighting back to giving in to phase three,
which mercifully not everyone always gets to. But in that
last phase, it's almost like we might see in somebody
who's in a cultic community. You look like you're agreeing

(35:34):
with the gaslighter. Like to the world, you look like
a united front. We might see that in really severely
abusive relationships, like I said, cultic systems, it feels like
everyone is on the same page. A gas lighter at
that point has achieved full dominance, but before that final
really problematic stage because it's really hard to bring people

(35:54):
out of that. After people learn what gaslighting is, they
learn most cases the best thing to do is not engage.
But it's not that simple. It never is. So what
happens when you do that, You can expect a series
of reactions. In some cases you might see anger or
rage where you might say okay, and it's as though

(36:18):
you're not going to get into it with them. Well,
they've kind of lost their ability to dominate, and that
might get them really angry and they may actually lash
out at you. But the way that lashing out can look,
it can look like contempt, it can look like mockery.
A common thing you might see is a narcissistic person saying, oh,
is someone in therapy is your therapist teaching you to

(36:42):
say new things? And it's really really sort of cruel
again and contemptuous and just interpersonally unpleasant. But they'll do that.
So it becomes almost this experience of baiting, which is
very common in narcissistic relationships, where they set you up
to get you to bite at some time and have
a really strong emotional reaction, and when you have that

(37:04):
strong emotional reaction, they'll pull back and say, ooh, somebody's
really emotional, aren't they, And that whole sequence sets it
up so that you look like you're unhinged and they
look like they're calm, cool and collected. So you're not
coming out of this quietly over time by not engaging
with the gas lighting. So if they say I never

(37:25):
moved to the remote, instead of the getting into the
oh yes you did, yes, you did, you quietly go
and look for it, and then you find the TV
remote and you put it where it belongs, and they'll say, well,
this is what we get for you being so disorganized,
and then you don't engage in that Initially, they're going
to bait you. What a narcissistic person doesn't like is

(37:45):
that idea of disengagement. So gaslighter narcissist. But if you disengage,
you don't engage in the gas lighting, you don't engage
in the baiting. They experience that as a little bit
of an abandonment, and they are not sitting quietly for that,
and they're going to come for you again. They're going
to try to get you to react by sometimes even
escalating the sorts of baiting things they say, which can

(38:07):
get more and more cruel and may start hitting things
that matter to you, like I don't know, like your
kids or your family, or say something that's so echaly disparaging,
like cat, I can't just be quiet in the face
of this. Again, then you have the strong emotional reaction.
They paint you out as being someone who is completely dysregulated.
So when you don't go with the gaslight, there's going

(38:30):
to be a lot of escalation and frenzy initially over time,
and you gotta be patient with this. It could take months.
In extreme cases, it could take years. You're not an
interesting target anymore. One of the things we tell people
to do when they're being gaslighted is to not engage,
and in fact, don't engage is probably one of the

(38:51):
most primary pieces of guidance given to anyone surviving a
narcissistic or gaslighting relationship. It's really good advice under one circumstance.
Think for a minute, what's the one time you cannot
escape from a gaslighter or a narcissist. Got the answer, Yep,

(39:12):
it's in a car. I actually believe cars are every
bit as intimate as beds. It is a very private,
closed in place. Assuming you're the only people in the car. Obviously,
but unlike a bus or a train or a plane,
it's only the two of you, no one else to
hear what's happening. And what that means is a car

(39:33):
can be a place you have some of the most
intense private conversations of your life, but it's also a
place where somebody can brutally verbally abuse you or gaslight
you and sort of like you know how in space,
there's no one there to hear you scream, it's kind
of the same thing in a car. So when people
are going through a really gaslighted experience in a car,

(39:54):
or even just about of narcissistic rage. I had a
client say this to me. You know, I had put
out a YouTube video on this issue, and you know,
she said, your advice about disengaging was great, but what
about when we're going seventy five miles an hour down
the four h five freeway. I didn't know what to do,
she said. It was just all this psychological abuse raining

(40:14):
down on me. But I couldn't go to another room
because I was in a car. It was nighttime. Even
if the car stopped, it couldn't safely get out of
the car. The car is a really tricky place It's
almost like a lot of the rules about narcissistic abuse
and gas lighting and disengagement kind of go out the window.
So understand that the car is a unique space, and

(40:36):
at that time the guidance I'll often give to people
is find a way to almost do like a mini dissociate,
like turn away in and disengage from what's happening. Here's
the doctor Rominy hack for the car. I devised this
when I was being narcissistically abused in the car years ago.
It's still something I do now because I think I
can't break the habit, but it actually kind of works.

(40:57):
It goes back to a game you might have played
on long ca our rides as a kid, but it's
a little riff on it to make it easier. Look
for letters in street signs A, B, C, D, so
as it's like gaslight, gaslight, gaslight abuse abuse abuse, gaslight gaslight,
you're like EF. The best thing about exit signs is
you're always going to get your ax. You kind of
get worked up oo if I my cueue. But meanwhile

(41:19):
this person's like ma, mam, ma mam, and you're focusing
on this thing outside of you. It's sometimes enough of
a focus outside of you to regulate to get to
the other end of that drive. And when you get
to the other end of that drive, you've got to
understand that your nervous system has just been through something.
If you can get some time and space to yourself,
whether that's take a shower, find a room to sit

(41:42):
by yourself, something, take a walk if it's safe to
do so, but something to help you kind of get
out of that sympathetic nervous system arousal and come back down.
We will be right back with this conversation. In this question,

(42:03):
Kara asks do narcissists believe their own gas slighting? My
husband fell in love with a coworker, and when I
found out that he maintained that he wanted to stay
close friends with her, the gas slighting was subtle. This
is not a problem. You are so sensitive, You are
so conservative and closed minded. It is totally normal to

(42:23):
be sexually attracted to friends and discuss that openly with them,
he said, and he continued with you are so insecurely attached,
you are anxious. You have so little empathy. When you
ask me to drop this friend who means the world
to me. A year later, it still seems he holds
these same opinions. Is there a chance he really believes

(42:45):
it or is it conscious manipulation? Woo, that's a doozy, okay, Kara.
I hope Kara finds her love story one day because
this is really painful. This is terrible on multiple fronts.
But let's get to the core of her question. Do
they believe their own gas lighting? Narcissism is really about

(43:05):
what we could call delusional grandiosity. They kind of believe
their own hype. They have to. Have you ever watched
a six year old kid tie a little cape around
their neck and say I'm Superman, or a kid put
a giant crown on their head and say I'm the
Wizard of All Time. It's super cute and a six

(43:25):
year old does it, right, Forty six year olds do
that too, when they walk around and have those delusions
of their own grandiosity and their own gas lighting. Remember
what narcissism is. Why is it Let's go back to
that little six year old kid. Why is the little
six year old kid running around saying that they're the
grand magic, magician, superhero. Why do they do that? Because

(43:48):
in their own way, kids feel unsafe in the world,
So in that moment, they're creating these grandiose defenses so
they can feel safe. A child who grows up in
a healthy, safe, consistent environment no longer needs those infantile
grandiose defenses, grows into their sense of self and recognizes
that they have the skills they need to make their

(44:08):
way into the adult world. What about the children, though,
who never feel safe enough to give up those grandiose
crowns and costumes and superhero capes. Well, they do the
equivalent of that in adulthood, maybe not as obvious as
a superhero cape, but they don't feel safe. So when
they get into adulthood, they have to walk around believing
I'm the best, I'm the greatest, no one's better than me,

(44:31):
no one has better ideas than me. It's no different
than the superhero cape. They believe their hype to be
an offset to their sense of insecurity, which is the
core issue for a narcissistic person and frankly for most
gaslighting people. This goes to a bigger question of is
gaslighting conscious? Is the gas lighter rubbing their hands in

(44:52):
the corner saying I'm gonna gaslight you and make you
feel like you're completely out of your mind, so I
can contry all. You know, They're not that sort of
doctor evil sadistic stuff. That's not what's happening for gaslighting
and narcissistic people. What they're trying to do is maintain
their power, dominance, and control in a situation to offset

(45:15):
their insecurity. All of that is happening at an unconscious level,
but every play that they engage in at a defensive,
unconscious level is to maintain that power. And if anything
cracks through so they don't feel powerful, doesn't feel good.
That's not helping Cara, right, So one thing we can
tell Kara is that is this conscious manipulation. Probably not.

(45:37):
There is a subset of gas lighters who may be
frankly sadistic, but sadism is actually not a normal pattern
in human beings. It's relatively rare. So it's not like
he is setting out to mess with Kara's head. Instead,
he simply wants what he wants like a spoiled child,
and he wants to maintain his flirty friendship with the

(45:59):
with the co worker that he says he's fallen in
love with. This is where it's so clearly gaslighting and
This is where Kara's given us such a great example
of how this can look and how sort of complicated
it is. She's married to this man. You're not supposed
to fall in love with a coworker when you're married
to someone. And then when she found out, because I'm

(46:21):
sure he didn't tell her, what does he do? He
gaslights her and says, you're conservative, you're close minded, it's
normal to be sexually attracted to friends, you're insecurely attached,
you're anxious, you have so little empathy. That's the gaslight.
So what he's doing is he's messing with her head

(46:41):
so that she'll sign off on what he wants. But
he's not doing this in a linear way. It's more
of a I'm going to say whatever I need to
do to keep things the way that I want them.
And over time, what he has found is that he
could do this because the fact of the matter is
simply by how he's conducting himself in the work place
is showing us a lot about how this guy goes

(47:02):
through the world. So does he believe his own gaslighting?
He doesn't think he's gaslighting. He actually has to believe
it's okay for him to have this relationship with the coworker.
He believes that's okay. What he's not in touch with
is he needs the validation. So there's always this thing
they believe on the surface, which is already bizarre enough.

(47:23):
It's okay for me and be in love with a
co worker. Underneath that is I need the validation. The
hypocrisy of it is he wouldn't be okay if Kara
fell in love with the coworker. So it gets to
be this sort of really jagged edged kind of thing
because they have one set of rules for them, one
set of rules for you. And even though what they're
doing is hurting you, him being in love with this

(47:46):
coworker is hurting you. No empathy, so there's no care there,
but the gas slighting becomes away for him to push
away his shame and be the one who still looks
good in this relationship. It's normal for people be in
love with their co workers, paint himself out as the
normal one and her as the abnormal one. But believe
it or not, folks, this is not a conscious process.

(48:08):
So this question was sent in by Susannah dr Rominey.
I've heard you talk about people around the narcissist who
enable their behavior. Why don't those people see the gas lighting?
I am so glad someone asked this because this is
going to give me a chance to talk about something
called flying monkeys. Many of you may have heard about

(48:28):
flying monkeys. Lots of people talk about this phenomenon, but
it relates to this idea of enabling. So let's talk
about the flying monkeys are, so there's no misunderstandings there,
and then we'll go into this idea of enablers and
why they don't see the gas lighting. So flying monkeys,
anyone who hasn't seen Wizard of Oz do your homework.
You gotta go see Wizard of Oz. But if you haven't,
the flying monkeys were these flying monkeys, winged monkeys who

(48:52):
did the wicked witches bidding and would do it by
kind of almost like overwhelming them and scaring them, and
so people kind of wouldn't engage with the wicked witch.
Flying monkeys in the narcissistic relationship, realm are the people
whom the narcissistic person is able to get to and
sort of mobilize and turn against other people. So, for example,

(49:16):
let's say you were married to someone and they're narcissistic,
and then you're gonna end your marriage. The flying monkeys
are the people that the narcissists told you. Can't believe
the terrible things that this person did to me in
our marriage. Can you believe they did this. They might
even tell untruths that you might have been unfaithful, all
kinds of things that aren't true. But then all those

(49:37):
people hearing these terrible things you do are going to
come for you. They may come for you in person,
they may come for you online. It'll feel like a
smear campaign. This can happen in the workplace, this can
happen with friend groups. But these are people that basically
the narcissistic person gets to almost always tells them untrue
things or exaggerations of things that happen, or things they

(49:57):
should not have been telling other people, and then that
sort of turns this angry group of people against you.
And for many people have said to me, the flying
monkeys that came for me during my divorce or during
this thing that happened at work or even within my
family was in a way more devastating than what I
was living through in the narcissistic relationship, because I could

(50:20):
see that the narcissistic person was just mean to me.
But these were people I loved and now I had
lost them too, so it can magnify the grief. What
Suzanne is asking, though, is why don't the enabler see
the gaslighting? So it means we have to talk a
little bit about enabling. Enabling is a word that actually
originally came from the alcoholism literature and the substance use

(50:43):
literature about people who would often inadvertently and sometimes directly,
but often inadvertently enable a person to keep using drugs
or alcohol through sort of giving tacit permission, not calling
them out, giving them money to get drugs, knuckle, whatever
it might have been. But these were the people who
kind of kept that person in that place. And some

(51:05):
people would argue that the enablers were getting some secondary
gain by keeping someone sort of stuck in that position,
that they then could have almost a role in this,
and it became a really toxic dance. All of this
became the forerunner to what would ultimately be called codependency.
But this concept of enablers is a really important one
in understanding gaslighting and narcissism and all of these dynamics

(51:28):
These are the people who may not be narcissistic themselves.
These may be people who are sort of toxically positive.
Everyone has good in them, Let's find everyone's light inside.
Everyone is a hero, not a zero. And you read
this kind of stuff on social media, you're like, what, No, Actually,
some people really kind of are mean all the way through,

(51:48):
but they love everyone's got good. I can't listen to
people who say negative things that sort of thing. Those
folks are often enablers. People who are pollyannas like I
just think everything's going to turn out great. They can
often be enablers. People who are mildly narcissistic but not
full on might be enablers. People who want to maintain

(52:08):
the status quo. They're like, I don't want this tension.
I want us all to just have nice holidays and
nice Sunday dinners, Like why can't we just figure it
out and don't let him bother you? Like he doesn't
mean it, and so we can all just keep things going.
Those folks are often enablers, but by and large, enablers
don't want their worldview threatened by the ugliness. That is,

(52:31):
things like dynamics such as gas lighting or even narcissism,
so they will turn away from that not recognize it,
so that by not calling out the gas lighter, in
most circumstances, things can kind of stay like they always were.
So in a way, the enabler is invested in something
we call homeostasis, just keeping everything. Even. The pain of

(52:55):
enablers is that they themselves may not be toxic people.
They may actually un may be people you're fond of.
You know, I've had a few very very dear friends
over the years who've really been enabling, and I love, love,
love them, and they are gentle, good souls. The test
of the friendship was that when I said, stop, no way,
you hear my story, and if my story makes you

(53:16):
that uncomfortable, we're gonna have to rethink this friendship because
this is my paint. And you know what, to these
friends credit, they leveled up and they were able to
stay on the wild ride and they said, this broke
my heart. I didn't want this to be true of
the world, but I love you. That was a real
test of a friendship. Other enably friends they left my
life long ago because they couldn't stand to think that
some of the things I was telling them were true,

(53:38):
we're true. And so again, these are often people in
our lives we adore. So when we feel like they're
propping up the narcissist, or they're simply not seeing the
gas lighting, ay, they may not know what it is,
but when you explain what it is, you're threatening their worldview,
which is often one of a little bit, a little
bit rainbows and you know, corny, you know from my tastes,

(54:00):
but in this case, they really do have this very
almost childlike innocence about them, or they just want things
the way they want them to be. Not all of
them are innocent. Some enablers are benefiting, and that's the
other more difficult side of enabling. There's some people who
are benefiting from this relationship. So the person who's enabling
your toxic boss maybe getting paid a lot more money

(54:23):
than you think. The person who's enabling a toxic parent
maybe the sibling that's getting money every month from that parent,
or being allowed to use the family cabin more than
you even knew that they were. Many times enabling relationships
are transactional. They're benefiting from the narcissist, so they don't
want to see what it is because it takes them
into a thing we call cognitive dissonance that we've talked

(54:45):
about in navigating narcissism, that real discomfort we feel when
the pieces don't fit. We don't want to see someone
like we're getting money from or a cabin from, as
being a rotten person, because what does that say about us?
So the enablers just don't want to be with that.
They may be sweet, they may be innocent, they may
be manipulative, they may be toxically positive, but more than anything,

(55:07):
they do not want to see your pain. And that
can be a really painful wake up call because what
can happen is if you're surrounded by enablers and you're
being gaslighted. What that means is that you feel quadruple
or multiplicatively gaslighted, because not only are you being gaslighted

(55:29):
and feel like you've lost grip with reality, the other
people around you aren't noticing anything. And that's when you
really really feel like you've completely lost grip with reality
because you're thinking, nobody is seeing this. This has got
to be me. It's like the Emperor not wearing any clothes.
To heal from gaslighting is to be the little kid
who calls the emperor out for being naked, and that

(55:51):
means you have to ignore the choir of voices, all
of those enablers that think that the narcissist or the
gas lighter just looks fabulous in their new clothing. And lastly,
this question was sent from Patrick. How do you heal
and gain your confidence back after years or even decades

(56:12):
of gaslighting? This is a fantastic question, and this is
the question for the ages. How do you heal? Healing
from gaslighting looks a lot like healing from narcissistic abuse.
The key, key, key element to healing from gaslighting is
actually something that's really difficult to do, which is to
be fully in touch with yourself. What do you like,

(56:37):
what don't you like? What are your preferences, what are
your beliefs, what are your opinions? Who are you? What
are you about? What do you stand for? And to
give yourself permission to articulate that in safe places and
to yourself. If you've been gaslighted for long enough, or
in a narcissistic relationship long enough, you're not going to

(56:59):
give yourself the permission to do that. Your true self
was negated and invalidated. A long time ago, and every
time you bring your true self out in a gaslighted situation,
you're shut down. It's hard to do that. Who are you?
What do you stand for? How many times have you
asked yourself that question? So start small a few times

(57:20):
a day. You can set a little alarm on a phone,
or if you have an app that does sort of
a mindfulness check or something something that notifies you, and
you stop and ask yourself, how do I feel right now?
Am I warm? Am I hungry? These sound like really
basic questions if someone else has been telling you for
thirty years you're not hungry right now? The thermostat's just fine.

(57:43):
You've actually lost sight of even your most basic bodily feelings,
and then level up from there. How do I feel
about this interaction? Give you doctor Romney. Example, yesterday I
had a phone call with someone and it was really
uncomfortable and it was meant to be for some work
I need to do. And in the past I would
have said, you're just being insecure, you're just self sabotaging.

(58:05):
It was really uncomfortable. In the past, I would have
pushed hard. It's something I still need to do, but
I'm going to really do it carefully. And what it
allowed me to adjust to is it's quite possible that
the thing may not work out. And whereas in the
past I might have viewed that as a failure on
my part, the sort of anti gaslighting work I'm doing
within myself is to say that didn't feel good and

(58:29):
to trust that feeling. Those moments when you meet a
new person, ask yourself how you feel. A lot of
us stop ourselves. Back in the day, I would have said, oh, Rameny,
you're being so judgmental. Maybe you just didn't like her voice.
I didn't like her tone, and that was honest within myself.
Maybe other people like her tone. I'm not making an
assessment for the rest of the world. I'm saying what

(58:49):
my experience was. It's about you. Is that selfish? Absolutely not,
Because the more you get in touch with this internal
sense of you, the more you're able to actually hold
space for other people's senses of them. You don't need
to bring them over to your side of thinking. I
think too many people think being a human being is

(59:10):
running around and chronically proselytizing your sense of self. You
got to do things the way I do them. No,
they don't if you're good within you, you can sit
aside someone who's doing things that work for them and
you can have that middle ground between the two of you.
That is a healthy human relationship, and that is what
recovery and healing look like. Another really important thing to

(59:32):
do as you evolve past and heal past gaslighting is
to have support, support from people who see you. A good,
loving person in your life will not gaslight you. If
you have a healthy relationship, the two of you can
disagree in a healthy manner. You can have a difference

(59:52):
of opinion on really big ticket stuff in a healthy manner.
You need those places where you are seen, where you
are not gaslighted, so you can slowly again do that
internal building of your sense of self. But you have
to have those communities, those experiences, and that hard work
of looking within you. This is where meditation becomes a

(01:00:15):
very useful practice too. No, you do not have to
sit for two hours in silence. All of us are
too busy for that. You know what you can do
when you get to work, whether it's on the bus
ride to work or whether you sit in the parking lot,
give yourself five take the minutes, focus in get connected
to yourself and then go into your day, how do
I feel, who am I, what do I stand for?

(01:00:38):
What am I about? Touch base with yourself on that
regularly and frequently. And then as you do that and
you become aware when you're being gaslighted, when you feel uncomfortable,
and you give voice to that, this is where therapy
becomes all important. Therapy, when done right, is one of
the most turn off the gas line spaces you could

(01:01:01):
ever imagine, because I cannot tell you what the hundreds
and hundred n I guess thousands of clinical hours I've done
over the years where somebody will tell me something and
I'll say, whew, what was your experience of that? And
they'll say, what do you want my experience? I'm like yeah,
and they'll tell me. And sometimes if I know them
well enough, when we've been working together long and I'll say, ooh,

(01:01:22):
they just gas slighted you, and they'll say what. Just
a few of those encounters I've noticed with clients are
enough for them to say, are you telling me there's
not something wrong with me? I mean, there's absolutely nothing
wrong with you. The number of clients it actually makes
me really sad. These are really good people. Who are loving, empathic,

(01:01:43):
compassionate kind people who have come in week over week
having lived through being gaslighted for years since they were kids,
and their entire identity is caught up and there's something
wrong with me. I think we often think we get
into therapy because there's something wrong with us. Maybe the
most miraculous thing that comes out of therapy is that

(01:02:05):
you learn that there actually isn't and that is how
you heal from gaslighting. Thank you so much for your questions,
your emails, your DMS, everything you sent in. These were incredible, thoughtful,
and actually very vulnerable questions about gaslighting. I think if
you can understand gaslighting, you can understand sort of one
of the core dynamics not only of narcissistic relationships, but

(01:02:28):
of all unhealthy relationships. And also, if you can find
it pushes you to sort of do that work of
drilling down into yourself that not only benefits you to
be able to manage gaslighting in your life, but will
take you into a healthier space. But here we have
this word, the twenty twenty two word of the year.

(01:02:49):
Let's make sure we all know what it means. Thanks again,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Dr. Ramini Durvasula

Popular Podcasts

40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season

Dateline NBC

The Bobby Bones Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ask Dr. Ramani: What is Gaslighting?