All About Gaslighting ... Myself

It was a lot of years ago, but it’s still a story I tell: I was skiing fast, right at my edge, which is on the high side. I snagged my ski in a bit of soft snow and went down hard onto my shoulder and my head. It was the second day in my life that I ever wore a helmet, inspired my then-young children who wondered, reasonably, why I made them wear helmets when I didn’t sport one myself. Despite my new red helmet (decorated lovingly by my children with cool alien stickers), I hurt myself pretty badly. In fact, I later – like a couple days later – learned that I had a severe concussion and a broken arm, but, believe it or not, I popped up out of that snow immediately, attuned only to my bleeding fat lip.

I skied down, took the lift back up and went to lunch. I was having a little trouble carrying my tray, but still didn’t accept the fact that I was hurt. I headed down, again on my own power, only a bit dizzy. Later, I went out to dinner, but couldn’t eat because I felt like throwing up.

Maybe it was the head injury that kept me in such an abysmal absence of self-care. But I think there was more at play.

Recently, it seems like the word “gaslighting” has become part of our vernacular.

A Google search reveals that this term originated in the 1944 film Gaslight in which a husband uses trickery to convince his wife that she is mentally unwell so he can steal from her. It’s more commonly used to describe a specific way one person manipulates a second person to deny that person’s reality and make them start to doubt their own truth and ground.

I’ve seen it at play often, and it’s pretty toxic. An example is when, say, I communicate an ouch to another person, maybe some feedback about the negative impact of something they’ve done or said, and they respond either by communicating to me that it’s actually my fault, that I’m over-reacting or overly sensitive, or perhaps that a more “normal person” would have understood they were joking.

So, it was kind of a “drop mic” moment when someone listened to my story about my ski crash, and observed, “Wow, it really sounds like you were gaslighting yourself.”

Wait, what? Gaslighting myself? Is that even a thing?

Well, yes. Yes, it is.

Stay with me here: I fell skiing and didn’t really want to be injured. It didn’t line up with my identity of being a good skier. The implications of it on my ability to mother and work would have been very inconvenient. I needed to be able to GO, and so my brain decided that my reality did NOT want to be hurt.

So, rather than taking a moment on the snow to take inventory, to be kind to my body, I developed a narrative around the SHOULD (or, in this case, the SHOULD NOT). I should not be injured, I decided, and then I marched ahead with the reality I preferred, that I wasn’t hurt.

And ultimately, we can’t deny broken bones. They are real, and I had to succumb. But there are many ways we can “gaslight” ourselves with our language. The other day, someone close to me talked about himself as being in stagnation. He hasn’t had or looked for a job in a few months. I suggested he might be gaslighting himself: what if he was wisely taking time, feeding a need for quiet and space and hibernation? The word “stagnate” argues a different reality, a giant SHOULD, a lot of judgment …

Any hits here for you? When might your Good Sport override your Exhausted One? When might you say things to yourself like, “I’m probably being dramatic” or “I am being rude if I say something here” or “I’m probably being too sensitive”?

Need some help finding a kinder voice to speak to yourself? Reach out to schedule a free sample session.