Ok, let’s first start with the definition of “gaslighting”
to manipulate (someone) using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning - Oxford Dictionary.
So it stands to reason that if you can do this to others, then you can also do this to yourself, but instead of it being gaslighting, I am pretty sure we call this delusion. Gaslighting self inflicted is really just plain, old delusion.
We, internally create situations with our minds that do not comport with the reality that exists outside us. We ascribe people traits, motives and attributes they don’t actually possess because we want them to be that way. This is delusion from start to finish. The fact that we do not know we are doing it, or refuse to stop doing it despite the fact we know we are doing it, is a next level break with reality.
But gaslighting is something that we cannot really do to ourselves...except we do. We manipulate ourselves into questioning our own sanity by the psychological method of denial. It is the only way gaslighting works. And as with anyone one else - it is highly effective to those with a need for reality to be something other than it is.
The term gaslighting comes from the 1938 British play of the same name whereby the Husband attempts to make his wife go insane by manipulating the gaslights in their home. Now why anyone would want to drive their spouse mad, is a whole other question. But the idea has totally taken hold in our society and is now a commonplace occurrence in our daily lives.
And what is most upsetting to me, is that we all feel like everything everyone does to us is an attempt to gaslight us into some altered reality whereby those people closest to us have motive and opportunity to drive us mad, on purpose.
We are all out there trying to alter reality to suit us. We all want things to go our way and to be the way we need and want them to be. But it is another thing all together when you willingly and with intention alter and manipulate reality in order to drive someone else mad. And I am not sure you can have that same intention with yourself. I mean, we already do this with the method of denial...I am not sure that anyone willingly tells them self something different in order to make themselves go mad. Gaslighting isn’t needed because delusion picks up that particular mantle and obviates the need for any further psychological manipulations purchase.
We don’t need to gaslight ourselves. We just need to accept the way denial and delusion show up and we can see what a fine mess of things we make of our lives with that. I think someone who is truly willing to alter their own reality in order to drive themselves over an edge, is next level fucked up. And I don’t know anyone, and I do mean anyone, who is that sick. Thankfully.
So instead of getting swept away on the narcissistic bandwagon and label everything another gaslit phenomena, perhaps we can just take a look around our lives for evidence of our delusion and denial operating. And perhaps, if we owned how we fuck up our lives in these areas, then perhaps, we will be less susceptible to being gaslit by some random person in our lives.
For me, it always begins and ends with me. I am the one that would allow someone who would manipulate and alter my reality with lies and psychological warfare in the first place. People show you who they are, they really do. We just have to be conscious enough and present enough to be aware. And we have to stop being willing to accept so much less from the people we allow in our lives.
We get the people in our lives that we allow. No other way. No narcissist remains without our permission and consent. And the only way a sane person allows someone like that in their lives is by using their own delusion and denial to keep them in everlasting ignorance. Trust me on this, I fucking know!
So if you want to skip being gaslit by someone else, do not allow yourself to be delusional or in denial about with whom you are engaging, people do show you who they are...believe them. That is the only way to ensure you are not gaslit into psychosis by someone else, you must first and always be accountable to your own perhaps overdeveloped self protective measure of denial and delusion. Keep those fuckers in check, and you will fare far better with the narcissistic abusers that currently abound...
Again, still.
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