Spotlight on Gaslighting

You feel confused and crazy. You’re always apologizing, wondering if you are good enough, can’t understand why you feel so bad all the time, or know something is wrong but can’t put your finger on it. You thought one thing, they say another; you can’t figure out which is right.
~"How to Survive Gaslighting: When Manipulation Erases Your Reality" by Ariel Leve, The Guardian

I was the most selfish, self-centered child in the world. I never thought of anyone but myself. Those were the words my mother flung at me, often enough that I could recite them by heart. And often enough that they made their way into my heart and began to feel like truth. 
Once, at the age of 12 and coveting a pair of shiny black shoes like the popular girls wore, I went shopping with my best friend and her mother. My father had given me money to buy shoes. The ones I wanted were a bit more money. I called him and he gave me permission to get the ones I wanted. I returned home to a drunk mother who took one look at the shoes and began her mantra. "You are the most selfish, self-centered child in the world. You never think of anyone but yourself." I fought back, insisting that dad had said it was okay. She took the shoebox and hit me over the head with it. Those shoes that I had loved, that had felt like a key into a world of popular kids, became something else. Evidence of my shortcomings. An attempt to fit into a world that didn't want me. 
It didn't end there, of course. I would refer to an argument that had happened when my parents were drunk. "What are you talking about?" my mother would ask. "There was no argument." 
I would make mention of events that had taken place only to be told that I "had such an imagination." That I "loved to tell stories."
To complicate things, I did love to tell stories. I was a devoted reader and dreamed of being an author. Was I making things up? Did it happen like I remembered? Or was I a liar, so pathological that I couldn't discern between fact and fiction? 
I still struggle. Despite working as a journalist for three decades – including a stint as a fact-checker at a magazine where my job was to, literally, discern fact from fiction – I can easily mistrust myself. Not because I've often been wrong. But because my mother's gaslighting was so effective.
So effective that when I could see – it was obvious! – that my husband was hiding things, I still trusted his version of events over my own. 
It's crazy-making. And nobody felt crazier than I.
Or, perhaps, you.
"The term “gaslighting” refers to when someone manipulates you into questioning and second-guessing your reality," writes Ariel Leve in her story for The Guardian. Leve grew up with a narcissistic mother, classic training ground for gaslighting. 
It's a world where up is down, where black is white. You make a complaint, you're accused of being ungrateful. You ask for something, you're selfish. 
Lots of us subjected to gaslighting learn to become small, almost invisible. Easier to erase ourselves than draw attention.
Others fully absorb the message of our gaslighters. We are selfish. We are ungrateful. We aren't worthy of love. 
And still others, like me, cling like hell to our version of events. I suspect part of what saved me was that I kept a journal. And within those pages, lay the truth. Well, my truth based on objective facts. There had been a fight. These words had been spoken. These things had been thrown. Whatever my mother (or my father who mightn't have been a ringleader but was certainly complicit) said, I had documented what really happened. And I could reassure myself that I wasn't crazy. 
I survived though it took plenty of therapy to deprogram some of those internalized messages. And I still struggle. It has only been recently that I feel comfortable giving myself certain luxuries. I don't expect myself to "earn" nice things like I used to. It's okay to want things because I want them. It's okay to give myself what I need even before making sure that everyone else is taken care of. It's called self-care. And it don't come easy...
These days though, when my husband insists to our children that he wasn't late leaving to take them to school when to any one of us who can tell the time, he was, I tend to over-react. I've talked to my kids about refusing to accept another's version of events over their own but to rather look at objective facts. My husband's tendency to defend himself no matter what (thanks to his highly critical mother) met my tendency to question myself no matter what (thanks to my gaslighting mother) and created a marriage primed for conflict. But we've both worked hard to change those old scripts. I point out (sometimes rather loudly) when he's gaslighting. He points out (sometimes exasperatedly) when I'm over-reacting.
We're living in an upside-down world right now. Objective facts are called fake news or alternative facts. Truth is twisted more than ever, it seems.
But we can learn to trust ourselves and what's right in front of us. We can challenge those other versions of events, whether they're happening in our homes or on the front pages of newspapers.

Seizing Power from the Gaslighters

After a weekend taking to the streets with so many incredible sister warriors who refuse to any longer tolerate a culture that asks us to sit down and be quiet, that tells us we have to endure disrespect of our bodies, that says we should be grateful for the strides women have made even if we're still not making the same money as a man for the same job (women of colour have an even larger wage gap), I'm more ready than ever to push back.
Let's start, shall we, with this notion of "alternative facts".
How many of us were treated to "alternative facts" in our marriage? Such as, "you're being ridiculous. We're just friends." Or "I was at the office. I can't believe you're giving me a hard time for putting a roof over our heads." Or "you're acting crazy. There's nothing going on." Check out our Stupid Shit Cheaters Say thread for plenty of "alternative facts".
But though we can sometimes laugh, let's not overlook how dangerous and destabilizing this behaviour this. Gaslighting is emotional abuse.
It creates an alternate reality in which one person is told that they can't trust their eyes, their ears or, especially, their intuition. It is crazy-making and I can remember wondering if I was, literally, losing my mind. Because what was coming out of my husband's mouth just didn't match up with what I was seeing play out in front of me.
The gaslighter knows we want to believe that we're wrong. We want reassurance that things aren't what they appear to me. We want to be told that, despite evidence or intuition to the contrary, everything is just fine and the person we trust most in the world is, in fact, worthy of that trust.
Some of us do sit down and be quiet. We endure the disrespect we get in our own homes and the larger world. We swallow our resentment and try to be grateful for the strides women have made.
But then we reach a tipping point and we just can't tolerate it any longer. Not in our homes. Not in our culture. Not in the world.
I'm having a visceral response to the public gaslighting we're seeing because it has triggered that same sense of helplessness and frustration, that fear that I'm the only sane one. Or am I the crazy one?
There are times, of course, when we're wrong. When the lunch with a co-worker really is innocent. When coming home late really is because of an accident that tied up traffic.
But there are times, oh don't we all know it too well, when we're right but being told we're wrong. When we're told that those texts don't mean anything when they clearly do. When we're chastised for being nosy even as we're turning up proof that he's lying. When we're told we're the crazy ones.
Challenge that with every ounce of strength you have. Challenge anyone who responds to your suspicion with empty platitudes or who turns it against you. Challenge anyone whose response to your genuine fear of betrayal is anything other than, what do you need from me to trust me? Let's work together to build trust of each other. 
And watch carefully what's playing out in front of your eyes on the public stage because it gives you a gaslighter's playbook. Watch provable facts become twisted. Watch as people who know better change the subject or turn the question back on the questioner. Watch as self-righteous indignation – "how can you even suggest such a thing" – is employed to imply that WE are the crazy ones for questioning any of this. Watch as "fake news" is used as a shield against any information that the gaslighter doesn't like.
Watch as "alternative facts", which are, of course, lies, are presented as simply a difference of opinion. Facts aren't opinion. They are facts.
And then refuse to tolerate it in your marriage.