I would have reactions
to her drinking or being drunk.
I would react with shame or anger,
or of deep disappointment,
deep embarrassment, sometimes even terror,
especially if she was drinking and driving.
And later, when I got to therapy,
therapy taught me that I was having
normal reactions, to a very abnormal situation.
It's a really great phrase
to reframe our childhood trauma,
that we were having normal reactions,
to an abnormal situation.
But at the time,
we weren't getting any help from
healthy adults, that could confirm
that our reactions were right sized,
or could help us through and find some meaning making, or
at least just sort of tell us the truth
about what was going on.
We didn't get that.
So, that's the point of this video is,
we were gaslit about
what was going on compared to
what our feelings were telling us.
So, and being told growing up,
I was told that I was selfish.
That was silly, that I was lame
for having those reactions,
or bringing anything up.
And if I brought up her behavior
after she was drunk in front of my friends,
or drunk with a teacher,
or drunk, even in front of a stranger,
like at the grocery store,
she would have an intense reaction,
and turn it around on me, very intensely
and very quickly that: 'how could you',
'you're being too hard on me!'
'You're wrong!' You know what I mean?
and it was just like, it would, reality would go from my feelings
to this awful shame mess,
is where I would end up in,
which is the whole point to this video.
And later in my twenties,
in my late teens and twenties,
I waited tables for quite a while.
And this is kind of how my brain works
about correlating this childhood stuff,
with present focus stuff, is,
if a restaurant manager came to me
and said, you know, 'Mike's sick,
you got to take Mike's shift tonight.
Can you do it?'
There'd be that pressure, because
it's like, you know, restaurants
are a lot like toxic family systems,
where the restaurant comes first.
And if I couldn't take the shift
or didn't want to take the shift,
I would try to say no,
but the manager's vibes,
either their disappointment,
or their self-righteousness or whatever,
is, I would gaslight myself and
then change my mind and then
go back to the manager and say:
'You know what, I can make it happen'.
Is, that's how this stuff works
is sort of the shame from our childhood
affects the way that we gaslight ourselves.
And it's very much true,
we can gaslight ourselves in the present,
and later, with intimate relationships.
If conflict came up,
I'd talk myself out of saying anything,
because it was clear at that point in my life,
and to me, that I was selfish,
and I usually got things deeply wrong.
So with my mother's drinking,
I lost perception and intuition.
Those are words I'm going to be
using through the course of this video-
of a having the right to the feelings
of being deeply embarrassed by her alcoholism,
and she would gaslight me turning those normal reactions,
into selfish ones.
My mother also had the tendency
to just flat out deny that things happened,
even though that we had receipts.
We had a paper trail.
Mom you did this yesterday...
'We never went there!'
'We never did that!'
'That's not true!' And it would drive
you insane, to the point that you
really started to have issues with reality,
which is another way to gaslight somebody.
With my restaurant managers,
I would quickly lose the perception
that my life, should take precedence over the
restaurant's life or their staffing problems,
and I would gaslight myself
and with friends and partners
later in life, I would vacillate between
being upset by something,
and then hate myself for being
so bothered by the thing,
and I would gaslight myself.
In the first example with my mother,
I was conditioned to not trust my intuition,
or to not use my feelings,
that operate like a compass for us.
Gaslighting is manipulation,
and the fuel that is used in
that manipulation is shame.
That's why trauma survivors are
so vulnerable to being gaslit,
and that's why I think we tend to gaslight ourselves.
So throughout my whole childhood,
I was caught in this pattern of
having normal feelings and reactions,
and those would get turned into being
shameful and wrong assumptions.
So in this video I'm going to be
getting into that pattern.
And we're also going to look at
potential childhood trauma factors
that cause us to gaslight ourselves,
as well as go over some exercises
about how to avoid second guessing ourselves,
which is to gaslight ourselves,
when these triggering situations come up.
So what I've noticed in how my clients gaslight
or second guess themselves,
is that there's a very predictable pattern
that I see between their inner adult and the inner child.
And there are three steps to the pattern,
and it usually goes something like this:
The first step is something comes up that
we want to get addressed or get changed.
Like we want to have a conversation with
our family about that Thanksgiving thing.
We want to work through a bump with our partner
about some kind of issue.
We're trying to make a decision
on something, like going back to school,
or trying something creative,
or trying something new in our life.
Or we try to set a work boundary,
like, sort of saying no.
So, we're trying to change things,
or trying to get things addressed.
The second step is, that thing plays itself out,
meaning the conversation with our family
just becomes like a finger pointing
rage and shame-fest.
Like in my example, with my mom.
Or the bump with our partner goes down
the rabbit hole of confusion, and it just
becomes a big, messy disconnection.
Or we get triggered or discouraged
at taking the art class,
or looking at going back to school.
Or something comes up where we just
experienced resistance there,
or the work boundary that we created,
has now created tension
and it doesn't feel good.
So step three is what I call the
tipping point to gaslighting ourselves.
This is the most important part here,
and there's usually some kind of delay,
between step, like sort of what we wanted
to get addressed, how it played out.
Then there's a delay in what I call this tipping point.
Here's what I mean: in the family fight,
our inner child....some time goes by,
and our inner child pops up and says:
'You know, maybe dad is right...
...maybe I am too hard on mom?'.
'Maybe we're just bad in this?'
Or with the bump with our partner.
Our inner child might pop up and say:
'they're probably going to leave us now
because we asked them to help us pay for rent',
or the inner child and trying something new.
The inner child might pop up and say:
'We're awful, why did we think we could do this?
This is never going to work, we suck at stuff like this!'
Or in the work boundary, our inner child
might pop up, like in the case of
that restaurant manager thing, like,
'I should be fired for saying no', or
'someone else is going to have to take that shift,
and people are going to hate us!'
So the tipping point is actually
the place where we shift out of our
natural intuition and perception,
into our trauma, due to shame that we
carry from that period in our lives.
The tipping point is also the
opportunity place for us to do
some real inner child work,
and figure out where we go back to in childhood
and how things are actually
different in the present or
how we're different in the present.
The tipping point is the intersection
where we can reclaim, like,
sticking to our truth about our perception,
and it's really a moment of opportunity,
but it's really hard to do, but you can
do it, it just takes some practice.
Do you have a similar pattern
of starting in one place of trying to
get something addressed or changed?
And where do you end up?
Once things get complicated, or rocky, or triggering?
What got you there between those two points?
How did I shift from 'I'm sorry I can't take that shift tonight'.
to like, 'you know what, I can make it work'?
Like there is a whole inner child process
in there that is going to get resolved,
if we can find a stronger inner adult
to catch this stuff, when it comes up
and then prevent it from losing
our perception and losing our intuition.
I think it just sort of happens
because we get triggered and
we go right back to a place of shame,
where we start to second guess ourselves,
or we start to back pedal or whatever.
So let's look at why that happens,
or where it comes from,
from looking at some toxic family system dynamics.
Children who are gaslit, will gaslight
themselves later in life.
A simple way to look at all childhood trauma
is that the abuse is around losing
our natural intuition or an abuse on
our perception, and having that
those things become lost to us.
Here are some childhood trauma examples
of being gaslit as children,
which are most likely still with us and
run this stuff when it comes to shame.
So an example is having a childhood,
where you're made to feel like you're a burden,
rather than a child deserving of care and space.
That child will perceive the world as barely tolerating them,
and make them vulnerable to gaslighting.
So in friendships or jobs or relationships,
they will gaslight themselves back
to an indebted vibe,
rather than an empowered vibe,
when these things come up.
Another example: kids whose parents model
that loyalty to work, comes before loyalty to family.
They might second guess themselves around
leaving jobs, or advocating for themselves.
They will gaslight themselves around their
worth being wrapped up in achieving,
or doing, or showing up.
Another example is children who are gaslit
around not being good at something,
versus having like a learning process.
They may gaslight themselves about
not having the right to try things,
or not having the right to be good at things.
Like, for example, being told you're
not good at piano, by an abusive parent,
just after a month of lessons,
is being gaslit that there's
no such thing as being a beginner,
which isn't true at all.
That's what I mean by that one.
Another example is children who
are told they are too sensitive.
This is like the classic gaslighting example.
They might grow up into adults
who second guess themselves,
about being too much,
and they may also gaslight themselves
around their reactions,
just like I did growing up.
Another example is, children who are parentified,
might later gaslight themselves
around it being their job to do everything.
Like they're bad if they don't bring
donuts to work every day.
It's their job if no one else is going to do it.
We'll talk ourselves into those things.
Another example is children who
grow up with abuse around reality.
Parents who say like 'that never happened!'
or 'we're a great family!' or,
'you know your mother loves you, you know that!'
or 'we moved here because you said you had no friends'
where the reality of existence
or the functionings of the family
are kind of wrapped up in this
scapegoated sort of meaning making.
An alarming thought is that in our own infancy,
our biology is wired to seek out safety
from our caregivers and
to have that caregiver be abusive,
is to betray a child's
natural intuition and wiring.
So I'm saying it starts early.
We have to bond with people assuming
that they're safe, when actually they're not.
For many of us, it starts with fighting our own intuition,
all the way through our development.
So let's get into how to work on not gaslighting ourselves,
and develop a practice related to that
tipping point example, that third step.
As many of you know by now is
I work from an inner child and an inner adult framework.
And if those terms don't resonate with you,
you can flip it to something like:
working with your trauma brain,
or work with your shadow self.
I could do a whole other video about,
like, not liking the concept of the inner child.
So here are some journaling prompts
and tools when you find yourself
in that tendency to gaslight yourself.
The first tool is: come up with three examples
as best as you can, about how your
own perception got betrayed
by being gaslit as a kid.
So here's an example from my history,
around the 6th or 7th or 8th grade
or something like that,
I fell into a group of kids that
weren't really good for me.
Kids in the neighborhood,
and they were like, they're not really respectful.
They probably only wanted to hang out with me
because I had a Nintendo or whatever.
Or, like, I had this basement room
that we can kind of hang out in.
Like, kind of like, you probably have stuff
like that in your childhood, too.
And one of them stole a Walkman from me
that I had just gotten from my birthday.
It was like a fancy black Panasonic Walkman that I loved,
and it had this function called auto reverse on it.
And I'm so old, probably we got it at a store called Lechmere.
That's how old I am, and that like I also listened to Walkmans.
And when I went to my mother to sort of talk about it,
or get some help around it or whatever,
she said, stuff like:
'Maybe he needed it more than you did?'
'Do you ever think about that?'
Or 'maybe he'll bring it back?'
Or 'how can you know it was him'
or, like all that stuff that was just, like, not helpful!
And just made me feel awful about myself.
And that's an example of sort of being gaslit,
and incidentally, Eric, if you're out there,
you owe me a fancy black
Panasonic Walkman with auto reverse,
and I'll be waiting in my DMs for your message on it!
So that's what I mean about, sort of, three concrete examples
where you went, tried to get something resolved,
and it just got turned around on you.
So that's the first one.
The second one is, come up with a list of situations that you
tend to gaslight yourself in, in the present,
like going after something you want
and then talking yourself out of it.
Give some concrete examples of that.
When you're getting close to finishing something,
you might sabotage it.
That might be sort of in one of your examples
of where you gaslight yourself,
when you're in conflict and you feel awful
for going there, or that there is resistance.
That might be an example for you.
Or if you set boundaries and then give in.
That might be an example for you.
I kind of call this stuff like the Kryptonite,
like where we become really vulnerable.
These examples, where we have a tendency to gaslight ourselves in,
or even getting paralyzed in indecision.
And as you're watching this video,
is there a situation right now
that your inner child has sort of talked you into,
or talked you out of?
Did you not say no to something?
Are you sitting on something that you need to
bring up with a friend or a partner?
But you just tend not to?
Do you want to do something like go back to school,
or better your life in some way,
but your inner child pops up,
and you gaslight yourself out of it?
Try and think about:
relate these tendencies, to issues growing up,
like the conflict example- were you
shamed, like me, for bringing stuff up?
So the first exercise of coming up
with those concrete things is
I'm trying to get people to connect the dots between their trauma,
and why we behave the way we do in the present.
What's the truth about something
that you're actually sitting on?
It might be the opposite of what
your inner child thinks about the issue.
So that's the second one,
the third one is, connect with your inner child,
and ask any of the following questions-
what would happen? (These are reflective
questions related to how we gaslight ourselves).
What would happen if you said no,
or disagreed growing up?
What would happen if you needed help from
your parents about how to feel or think
about something, like my Walkman scenario?
What would happen if you brought up,
or wanted to bring up something
that didn't feel right to you, or wasn't right for you?
What would happen when you go after
something you wanted growing up?
Like trying out for, like, some kind
of like after school thing.
What would happen with that?
Once you get a sense
about what the fears are,
here are some helpful new beliefs
and ideas that your healthy adult
can start to reparent your inner child with.
These are almost like affirmations,
and incidentally, affirmations don't work,
without the concept of childhood trauma
or how these things got lost.
So here's something you can present to your inner child.
We now have the right to a process, not immediate perfection.
We have the right to how we see things too.
That wasn't true growing up.
We have the right to our truth about the issue.
That wasn't true growing up.
Nature gave us a working intuition,
and we are now honoring it.
That wasn't possible growing up.
We can tolerate being misunderstood.
We couldn't growing up, because that wasn't safe.
We can tolerate disagreements, because we couldn't growing up,
because that also wasn't safe.
So some last thoughts and pointers.
This is a tricky problem that requires a process,
and the process can be uncomfortable.
It's usually uncomfortable to be right,
that we're in a bad work environment,
or we're in a bad relationship, or in a bump.
It's uncomfortable because we might need to make a big decision,
instead of buying into the old tale that we're the problem.
It's also uncomfortable to recognize our tendency to gaslight
ourselves is both rooted in our trauma,
and that it gets us into situations
that aren't good for us, like even if
it's having that moody friend that we always default to,
or submit to, our childhoods have set us up for all that.
But the flip side of overcoming this gaslighting thing
or working on, it is pretty amazing.
The greatest feeling that I get from my recovery
is the ability to know how to be
a good judge of character.
I never had that before, and I love it!
I can usually immediately know if someone,
or something isn't for me,
and that definitely wasn't always true,
because I used to just be such a magnet for dysfunction,
before I did my work,
might be related to those kids in the 7th grade.
Also, having a working on board intuition,
is a profound human experience,
and I couldn't get it online or get it working,
until I unpacked, how I lost it from growing up.
So lastly, is, I'll always think about my mentor
is that when I would come in with these confusing situations,
like with the restaurant manager or whatever,
is, she would be such a helpful person
to kind of, she would just kind of ask me...
..she's like, 'but what do you really think?'
And it was really the first time that I really got some parenting
around, like someone sort of saying,
'you kind of know the answer',
and imagine if we got that,
you know what I mean,
imagine if sort of like you go to your mom about
friends being mean to you,
and they kind of say, like you know, you're right,
or to get that kind of confirmation.
So it's also helpful to have healthy people around us.
We can't do all of this alone.
That when you're struggling with gaslighting yourself,
or second guessing yourself, it's really powerful to have a
safe friend that you can bounce things off of.
