Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / The Psychology of Control. Ep 8. Gaslighting

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The Psychology of Control. Ep 8. Gaslighting · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy, and this is episode eight in the Psychology of Control series.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in this episode, I'm going to explore the term gaslighting some while back.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you can find the exact episode if you go to thechildren's consultancy.com and look at our podcasts.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right the way back when I first started, I did a series on control, coercion, abuse, narcissistic behavior.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And one episode in particular was called Extinguishing the Gaslighter, which you're very welcome to find and listen to.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm looking at this this time around from a slightly different perspective because I want to look at it in terms of its effects within the family system.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: But in order to do that, we have to understand what this term really means.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now it has its roots in the film Gaslight, which was produced in the 40s and had to do with the serial dismantling of a woman's psychological and mental health state in order that the abuser could capitalize on her wealth and status.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't quite so dramatic, nonetheless.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's something which I think people are very familiar with as a concept in relationships.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So at first, you might think it's just a misunderstanding, but you remember the conversation clearly, you remember the tone, the words, the feelings that were evoked.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But when you raise it, the other person looks at you with complete certainty and said, That never happened.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And something inside you shifts.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not immediately, not necessarily dramatically, but subtly and dangerously.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: You begin replaying the moment internally, questioning yourself, re-examining your memory.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you misunderstood, maybe you exaggerated, maybe you are too sensitive.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where the process begins.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not with control of your behavior, but with control of your reality.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now this is one of the most psychologically destructive forms of control because, unlike overt aggression, gaslighting doesn't attack you directly.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: It attacks your confidence in your own perception, your memory, your interpretation, and your emotional reality.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And once those things begin to weaken, something profound happens psychologically.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because the individual becomes increasingly dependent upon the controlling person for orientation.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Gaslighting is often misunderstood.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not simply lying or not simply disagreement or ordinary relational conflict.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a repeated process through which another person's reality is destabilized.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is important because we're not talking about a one-off misunderstanding or occasional misunderstanding.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about a pattern that has to do with reframing the other person's perception of themselves, the other, and of the events themselves.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this happens through denial, as I said, reframing, contradiction, minimization, false certainty, emotional invalidation, the persistent distortion of events.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: But also we see this in anxious avoidant personality types, where the gaslighting comes about not so much through direct challenge, but through avoidance.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, the individual begins doubting themselves more than they doubt the manipulator.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it this doesn't happen all at once, it happens over time, and that's what makes it so dangerous.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because at first, the small contradictions that that's not what I meant, or you're remembering it wrong, or you always twist things, or you're too emotional to think clearly right now, these things may seem minor, but psychologically they accumulate, and gradually the individual's internal system begins to erode.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is because of what we call normalization.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: The pattern is something we organize ourselves around.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And gaslightings work, sorry, gaslighting works because human beings need coherence.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: We need continuity, stable reality, and psychological orientation.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So when somebody repeatedly contradicts our perception with confidence, either verbally or behaviorally, the mind begins trying to resolve the discrepancy, especially within emotionally important relationships.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually, many people reach an unbearable conclusion.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: It must be me.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now real life expressions of gaslighting significant, and this is this is real.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: A partner humiliates you publicly, then later insists you completely imagined the tone of my behavior.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: A parent screams at a child, then hours later behaves affectionately and says, You're far too dramatic.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: A person repeatedly disappears emotionally and then tells you you're creating problems where none exist.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: There isn't a problem.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are you left to do with that?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: An individual lies openly, then shifts the focus entirely onto, oh, this has to do with you and your inability to trust.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or they don't tell the whole truth.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: You conceal the bits that you don't want me to know about.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in its own way, this is another form of control and manipulation.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in its own way, it creates exactly the same internal emotional environment as being told that your perception of reality is wrong in some way.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And notice something important here.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: The original behavior is never genuinely examined.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: The focus moves onto your reaction, perception, or emotional legitimacy.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, it stops being about whatever the disagreement, the the episode was, and it starts to become, I'm okay, you on the other hand, you always do this.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: You always misunderstand, you always mishear.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you do that?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in one of my podcasts, I I talked about control and coercion as being a bit like a chess game, where actually the controller has control over all the pieces.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the simple outcome of that is the only there is only one solution.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Just stop playing the game.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just no, say, okay, you win, I'm not playing anymore.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not giving up, that's walking away.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, gaslighting creates a very particular kind of psychological state because the person becomes uncertain, hyper-vigilant, mentally preoccupied, and emotionally dependent upon external validation.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this means they might begin to check conversations repeatedly, seek reassurance constantly.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: They might even start documenting events or apologizing for things they are no longer even certain they did.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps most disturbingly, they may lose contact with their own instinct entirely.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now gaslighting in family systems can become even more psychologically profound because children depend upon caregivers to help organize reality itself.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if a child repeatedly experiences emotional invalidation, contradiction, denial of lived experience, or punishment for truth telling, the child often learns something devastatingly psychologically painful, which is what I feel can't be trusted.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And from that point onward, the child may begin organizing their identity around external approval rather than internal reality.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why do people gaslight?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we need to approach this honestly and carefully, because what we don't want to do, as much as it may be tempting, is to vilify people who do this because, to be honest, it doesn't really accomplish anything.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some gaslighting is deliberate, but often it's psychologically defensive.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because reality threatens something important.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Shame, control, self-image, accountability, or emotional stability.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So distortion becomes a protective mechanism.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not protection of truth, but protective of the individual's self.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why some people will defend false narratives with extraordinary intensity, because psychologically, acknowledging reality feels intolerable.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Curious just thought came to me the thought of acknowledging reality is intimate.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when one is intimate, one becomes vulnerable.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not really vulnerable, but that taking away of defenses and showing yourself for who you really are, that's that's vulnerable making.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So a person who gaslights a person who behaves in this way is fearful of their own sense of vulnerability and exposure.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, as much as we might understand the psychological structure that underpins this behavior, it's damaging.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's horribly damaging.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I have worked with many patients who I am trying to help through or have tried to help through the recovery process of recognizing, realizing what has happened, being able to name it and to make sense of it.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next stage of the reckoning, what changes inside the individual and what they do, in order that we can move on to the final phase of recovery.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: But recovery itself doesn't start with a bang, it starts with quiet but profound moments.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because the individual begins recognizing the pattern, not simply the individual incidents.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: They recognize the structure.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I consistently leave interactions feeling psychologically disorientated with this person.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's very, very telling.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I only feel this way with this person.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's telling you something powerful.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that recognition matters enormously because once the pattern becomes visible, self-trust slowly starts returning.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the person starts separating reality from distortion.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: An emotional truth from the imposed narrative, the instinct from manipulation.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the separation of reality and distortion, truth from imposed narrative, instinct from manipulation.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is a kind of undoing.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think the deepest damage caused by gaslighting isn't confusion, it's self-alienation.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because the gradual separation from instinct, emotional reality, memory, perception, and internal authority have been so badly damaged that we end up separating ourselves internally.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: The individual stops orientating themselves around what they know and begin orientated around what they're permitted to believe.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for children, this is hugely damaging because, in fact, good parenting relies heavily upon enabling the child to develop their sense of self.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about right and wrong, the capacity to learn how to trust instincts, reactions, feelings, thoughts, behaviors, how to progress those things into a coherent psychological state.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: But as people walk away in whatever form, the nervous system begins to settle because the nervous system is in a constant state of arousal when you're in the company of somebody, even when you're not, you only have to think about what would that person say?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness, I've heard that so many times, mostly from women saying, Oh, but he would say, and I often say, So you have his voice in your head, where's yours?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a rhetorical question, obviously.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But slowly perspective returns, the contradictions become more visible, and the person realizes something profound.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Confusion was never proof that they were irrational.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was evidence that they were inside a psychologically disorganizing system.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, perhaps the cruelest aspect of gaslighting is that it teaches people to participate in their own psychological erasure, to silence instinct, to mistrust memory, to abandon emotional truth.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: But reality has a remarkable quality about it because even when it's distorted repeatedly, parts of the mind continue to recognize that something is wrong, and eventually that recognition becomes pressing towards consciousness again.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because however sophisticated psychological control may become, it depends upon one thing above all else: your continued doubt in yourself.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment self-trust begins returning, that structure starts to weaken.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because the most dangerous person to a controlling system is somebody who can finally say, I know what I experience.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I defined my own reality.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: We make statements, we don't ask questions, we're not seeking validation, we are informing, we're beginning the separation process, even if we're saying it to ourselves at first.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Very often these relationships are so entrenched that the only way they can conclude is by one person walking away.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is healthy because it's not about punishment, it's about reaching clarity and realizing that this person is not good for me.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: I deserve better than this.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen situations where people have given everything they have on a repeated basis, unquestioned, received nothing in return, and have been used in ways that are quite unimaginable.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yet somehow they've stayed, because the emotional attachment has been encouraged.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And although this strictly speaking isn't gaslighting verbally, it is a kind of behavioral form.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, whatever form it takes, walking away is often the healthiest thing you can do.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Such people who are walked away from will quite often say that this is how their relationships have ended, or they don't know why.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what that demonstrates is that, well, it's two things.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, it firmly demonstrates it it's not you.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing it demonstrates is that this is a pattern in a behavior, in a person, a pattern of behaviors, relationships, how they developed and how they ended, which says something about the manipulator.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, there's such people quite often will use control in a way that is seemingly subtle.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's called help rejecting complaining.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: A help rejecting complainer is somebody who seeks help, which you offer in abundance, which they then reject, but continue to complain about the things that they were originally seeking help for, albeit that they were trying to elicit help rather than directly be open about it.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: We also call those people's victims, but nonetheless, it's a form of control because that person will maintain the narrative even when the other person has gone above and beyond.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we come back to the notion of checking your own reality.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: You are not seeking validation.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's nice if you had it, but with it with somebody who is gaslighting, that will never happen by its very nature.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this has been helpful and I'll be back soon.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also going to do a series on attachment types, how they form, what they are, how they play out in relationships, and what the key characteristics of different attachment styles are.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.