[TrailRunner14]

This is heavy on my mind.

OK........

I've typed and retyped too many times!!!

This is hard to put here without the background, but maybe it doesn't need it.

What is your description of dealing with gaslighting with dissociation involved?

Have you had to deal with it?

These are the words that are mine.

Disturbing

Vulneralbe

Victimized

Abandoned

Shifting ground

Alone

I don't know if anyone else has had to deal with this, but it is very disturbing.

I'm so tired of looking for truth and absolutes to give me peace and resolution of what I'm looking for healing from.

Without an ending to my fragments and someone telling me, "It wasn't that bad."

I don't know where to go with it. I just know the words that I I feel.

Does anyone else relate?

[possum220]

Originally Posted by TrailRunner14

This is heavy on my mind.

I'm so tired of looking for truth and absolutes to give me peace and resolution of what I'm looking for healing from.

Without an ending to my fragments and someone telling me, "It wasn't that bad."

I don't know where to go with it. I just know the words that I I feel.

Does anyone else relate?

I can relate to what you said. I hate the phrase "It wasn't that bad" ( My response to that person would be maybe it wasn't for you. )

I hate the phrase 'there are plenty of other people who have it worse". Grrr. How would they know

Very much alone. So much so that I cannot find enough words to describe it.

[L.P.]

Yeah. I relate. My mom used to do that to me as a child... well, she still does as an adult, but it's not so bad now since I rarely see her. At some point I really did wonder if I had imagined all these things. I was lucky to have two adults tell me later in life that some of what I recalled was in fact correct because they were there to see it happen.It felt both good and heart breaking to hear them say those things to me... hard pills to swallow, you know.

I put my husband out of the house a few months back. One of the things he admitted to doing was gaslighting me about things he was doing and about how I was feeling, my head stuff. It hurts.

I have yet to figure out how to deal with it. I struggle to be able to gauge the accuracy/validity/reality of my own thoughts without other people throwing wrenches into my tick tock workings. I'm not stable enough for that.

Sorry you have to deal with this. It's a form of emotional abuse and it is in no way, shape or form, alright. You so deserve better than that.

-Avery

[katydid777]

I can very much relate. All of my life, before my parents passed away, when ever something good would happen in my life, my mom would always say It Must Be Nice. Like she never had any good happen in her life, when she had so much, and could have had a very good life. Instead her, and my dad drank there lives away.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by TrailRunner14

This is heavy on my mind.

OK........

I've typed and retyped too many times!!!

This is hard to put here without the background, but maybe it doesn't need it.

What is your description of dealing with gaslighting with dissociation involved?

Have you had to deal with it?

These are the words that are mine.

Disturbing

Vulneralbe

Victimized

Abandoned

Shifting ground

Alone

I don't know if anyone else has had to deal with this, but it is very disturbing.

I'm so tired of looking for truth and absolutes to give me peace and resolution of what I'm looking for healing from.

Without an ending to my fragments and someone telling me, "It wasn't that bad."

I don't know where to go with it. I just know the words that I I feel.

Does anyone else relate?

I have never had anyone tell me things like .... thats not so bad, in regards to my dissociation problems. for me it was all normal so yea even if they had said it I would have agreed with them. but I did have a problem with people saying the opposite. people would point out to me..... um that not normal is it if they happened to discover I had a dissociation problem. I would look at them and say um no its just how I am, I just happen to have a bad memory or something. I was the one that had to explain to them after being diagnosed that they were right it was abnormal. and I was the one thinking everythings fine everything is normal everything is not so bad. it really shocked a few who I went to and said guess what you were right lol

on the other hand I have had medical doctors , nurses saying that to me for things like getting shots, taking meds and all the tests that needed to be done to diagnose my MS. I would come out from under the machine and hear someone say... that wasnt so bad.. and I would quip right back at then

[TrailRunner14]

Here is a link to a utube video that I watched yesterday. I had to go back and retrace my steps to figure out how I wound up here.

Here is an article from The Guardian that repeats the video in writing.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...chanisms-trump

I made some notes as I listened on her 4 strategies to deal with gaslighters.

How to Deal with Gaslighting, by Ariel Leve.

4 Stratagies

1. Remain Defiant (Personally I would prefer the word determined, since I was always punished because of my defiance.)

Refuse to change your truth to their story

Trust your version of reality

I know what I know. It cannot be erased.

2. Recognize there will never be accountability

They will never be able to take accountability for their actions.

They will never get it.

Acknowledgment was never in the cards.

You cannot apply logic or reason because they cannot respond to it.

With this recognition you are no longer powerless.

3. Letting go of the wish for it to be different

The wish for it to be different is very powerful.

It allows you to prevent the belief that logic and reason will prevail.

The person gaslighting you makes it feel like the ground beneath you is always shifting beneath your feet and you have no center of gravity.

4. Develop a healthy detachment

Back and forth and push and pull of affection was/is emotional whiplash.

You’re wonderful - You’re horrible

I love you - I hate you

You protected yourself by believing nothing meant anything.

If you can’t invest in anything the other person says, what happens?

There is a price.

Trusting is very difficult - always needing verification

Vigilant about clarity.

Certainty - certainty was needed

Detachment from the gaslighter does not mean total detachment.

It means distinguishing between the world of the gaslighter and the real world.

Let them have their alternative facts – I will stick with reality.

I liked her points of strategy.

As I was looking over them, it dawned on me that I really don’t have certainty of any truth that I absolutely know, because I struggle with dissociation.

Dissociation has only been known to me for the past 5 years of my life. To try and sort that out and also deal with trying to find out the truth and piece it together has been really hard.

How would I really know the truth, when what I get are fragments that I struggle to make sense of?

The only sure thing I have is the emotional responses that I have to the fragments. I do know that is real and cannot be pushed aside or silenced.

My analogy of trying to piece them together is like a blind person trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle.

When you add the gaslighting from family members, people who you are supposed to be able to trust, it compounds the loneliness, vulnerability and the feeling of being a victim all over again.

Also, because that is what I experienced growing up, I was pulled into relationships with people who did the same thing. I believe that they can spot victims quite easily.

The detachment part is a hard boundary to work on. I want to go there, to those people, and find verification for reality, but I have to realize that it's not going to happen. That is almost a crushing feeling to me and calls the loneliness forward.

Thank you for hearing me and your replies.

i definitely relate.

[Amyjay]

I relate too. I have read about strategies to address it or deal with it but i am just not able to be present enough yet. I go. Another other comes. It all gets lost in someone else's reality.

[elevatedsoul]

i have a problem with this...

i just keep setting myself up to be a target for these people

You know....this is my take....gas lighting sounds manipulative and intentional.

My experience though is more that I was dished what they experienced...more like passing the buck. The dif was, they weren’t DID as where I was, so what they dealt with was deemed normal everyday life craap, but to me it was traumatic and life destroying.

Sorry if I’m way off base and topic, but this has triggered recollections of where many people innocently tell me it wasn’t that bad. Was it? To me it was horrendous and mine splitting....but to a normal... Nothing but a thing?

To discredit me out of contemp is one thing, but to discredit me out of blindness based on previous personal experience of a normal person’s objectiveness....I hold them forgiven for ignorance.