Internalized Gaslighting
Internalized gaslighting is essentially when we’ve been gaslit so much (by the world, our community, rape culture, an abuser) that our mindset has shifted, and we begin doing it to ourselves. Our automatic thoughts end up being ones that question our sanity or sense of reality. Gaslighting is a transactional process in a relationship where, by means of psychological manipulation, someone is deliberately and consciously trying to make another person question their sense of reality or their sanity. This tactic is something we commonly see in abusive relationships, and it is considered to be a method of psychological abuse.
Internalized Gaslighting
Today, I am discussing internalized gaslighting, what it is, how we understand it, how it operates as a part of rape culture, and how to dismantle it. I will also offer some skills you can practice when you feel internalized gaslighting is happening.
Everything outlined in this blog will hopefully allow you to walk away with confidence and ideas on how to regain your footing right now.
What is gaslighting?
The phrase gaslighting is a colloquialism. It refers to a transactional process in a relationship where, by means of psychological manipulation, someone is deliberately and consciously trying to make another person question their sense of reality or their sanity.
The phrase “gaslighting” was coined to describe this process based on the 1944 film Gaslight. It was a psychological thriller where the husband purposefully tried to make his wife believe that she was going insane as a way of getting out of the marriage.
We now have the term “gaslighting” to refer to this form of manipulation.
This tactic is something we commonly see in abusive relationships, and it is considered to be a method of psychological abuse.
Gaslighting Behavior Examples
Gaslighting is a conscious effort to make someone question their reality. Some of the ways it shows up or how it may sound in practice:
“Are you sure you’re okay because that’s not what happened?”
“You’re just saying this because you’re trying to get attention.”
“It actually didn’t happen that way.”
“Do you really understand who that person is? I don’t think that he’s the kind of person who would do that.”
These are all gaslighting examples because they ultimately convey that your sense of reality is unreal. Gaslighting phrases also have the added impact of implying that your sense of reality is inherently flawed or wrong.
Part of why this can be so damaging to people is not just because it invalidates our experiences, but gaslighting also starts to make us believe that our sense of the world, perceptions, what we know and believe, and how we receive information is wrong or inaccurate.
When individuals have been extensively gaslit, they begin to believe they are crazy or their brain is telling them things that aren’t true.
As you can see, this is something prevalent for survivors, particularly in rape culture.
What is rape culture?
Rape culture is the culture of sexist, misogynistic, and hateful mechanisms in our world that not only enable rape and sexual violence but also reinforce it or cause it to increase.
Gaslighting functions as a tool of rape culture to suppress victims, make them not believe themselves, not come forward with their stories, make the world unsafe, and perpetuate misinformation around rape.
All of which further enable perpetrators.
A very commonly held lie is that which claims there’s a high risk of survivors purposefully making false allegations. This just isn’t true. That is gaslighting by rape culture, and it is one way to continue reinforcing an environment where rape culture can continue to exist.
Gaslighting is the method through which we start to doubt reality. This can look like feelings of unease, not knowing what’s happening, anxiety, not trusting your instincts, not being able to trust people fully, etc.
This abuse can cause us to be vulnerable to people who would pray upon the vulnerable because we’re left without any kind of connection to ourselves, our senses, our intuition, or our boundaries.
Gaslighting is also utilized as a tool for other systems of oppression, including white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, etc. They are all reinforced with an immense amount of gaslighting.
Gaslighting vs. Invalidation
I want to reiterate that gaslighting is psychological abuse. It does not happen in healthy relationships, and there’s a difference between gaslighting and invalidation.
Invalidation can be painful and can happen easily and commonly in normal, healthy relationships, but it’s easier to repair when it does occur. Invalidation is essentially someone telling you they don’t understand or disagree with your thoughts and feelings, or your thoughts or feelings are not accurate.
Gaslighting, however, is doubling down on invalidation by saying not only is what you think and feel too much or wrong, but it’s also saying that the reason you’re wrong is because you’re crazy, your brain doesn’t work correctly, or what you believe to be true is not true.
There’s also the added deliberate piece of the puzzle because gaslighting is a genuine effort to make the victim believe they’re crazy. When this happens, the perpetrator of the abuse/gaslighting ultimately gets put in a position of power in the relationship (or so they think).
This often happens in romantic partnerships and parent/child relationships, where it’s a way for one person to assert their power or control over the other person.
When someone (the victim) is doubting their sense of reality, they’re going to start relying on the person (the abuser) they believe knows the truth.
Trauma responses will keep them scared, unsure of what’s going on, and unable to take action. This is one key way people can get stuck in abusive relationships.
Invalidation is common and can happen in any relationship where there’s conflict. It can be painful because the person doing the invalidating is not accepting that our feelings are valid and trying to circumvent addressing them. However, it is reparable through healthy communication.
Gaslighting is not reparable because it contributes to functional changes in how the brain operates and perceives the world. This form of abuse requires, at times, some pretty substantial psychological intervention to restore a sense of trust within the self and to repair the wounds inflicted by chronic gaslighting.
In regards to sexual violence, perpetrators of gaslighting will often gaslight the people around them in addition to survivors by calling the survivor names, telling people they deserved what happened to them, saying they were asking for the attack, continuing to try and have a relationship with the survivor, or blaming them in any way.
These tactics can contribute to and compound the trauma the survivor is experiencing from the assault.
What causes gaslighting?
Gaslighting comes from people who intentionally try to gain a sense of control or power over another person through means of psychological manipulation and make that person believe they are crazy and, therefore, rely on the abuser more.
The victims of gaslighting will ultimately become ineffective in what they want to accomplish in the world because they’re questioning their every move.
Internalized Gaslighting or Self Gaslighting
Internalized gaslighting or self gaslighting is essentially when we’ve been gaslit so much (by the world, our community, rape culture, an abuser) that our mindset has shifted, and we begin doing it to ourselves.
Our automatic thoughts end up being ones that question our sanity or sense of reality.
Internalized gaslighting examples:
“I have a terrible memory, so maybe I remember this wrong.”
“I tend to overreact to things, so maybe what I’m feeling is another overreaction.”
“Well, I thought this is what happened, but this other person seemed okay with it, so it probably wasn't that big of a deal,”
“I’ve had a lot of mental health issues in the past, so it’s probably due to that.”
I’ve had clients attribute certain things to their mental disorders. This is concerning because it’s a way of totally invalidating the self and claiming that what you think and feel is not only invalid but also due to a problem within your brain, so you now cannot trust how you assess the world.
For survivors specifically, internalized victim-blaming comes up a lot. This can be where we blame ourselves for what happened, for not protecting ourselves, for not preventing the assault from happening, or reminding ourselves that we knew there was a risk.
Some of this gaslighting is perpetuated by how we attempt to protect survivors.
There’s a lot of messaging out there that communicates to survivors and the public how to prevent rape, but there’s not a lot of messaging that communicates how to stop raping.
This is one of the many ways we passively communicate that it is the victim's fault.
Another example of rape culture gaslighting survivors, one that’s a bit more sneaky, is the way people will idealize perpetrators of sexual assault. This is when our conversations around allegations, especially against public figures or celebrities, there’s so much defense that arises on the individual and what they’ve done for the world.
Many fans and supporters of these people will frequently come forward to fight and protect them from these awful allegations. This ultimately communicates to people, particularly survivors, that what they have experienced - this obliteration of their life, more or less - is not nearly as important as this idealized figure remaining perfect in their minds.
I’ve talked before about how holding figures in our mind as whole, complete, and comprehensive human beings who have also sometimes done horrific and terrible things can actually be a much healthier practice for all of us.
People will grasp for any explanation to defend this person they’ve held on an imaginary pedestal. They will make claims that the survivor is speaking out to get attention, that rape isn’t that big of a deal, or that people (perpetrators) should still be allowed to move on with their lives and have successful careers and accolades.
This allows perpetrators to live without the consequences of their actions, despite the survivor having to deal with the consequences of the perpetrator’s actions for the rest of their lives.
Rape culture gaslighting sends a message to survivors that if they’re struggling in the aftermath of sexual violence, there’s something wrong with them.
We internalize this gaslighting, and it inevitably gets in the way of our recovery.
Ultimately, we want to work on how we process through and release this internalized gaslighting to return to who we are. The survivor community is fierce and powerful. When we harness that power to the fullest, we can mobilize and make significant changes, but this requires us to connect back with who we are.
Skills to help with internalized gaslighting:
Internalized gaslighting is something that can be effectively identified and repaired through therapy. With trauma focused therapy and skill building, you can reclaim your inner wisdom.
Some skills that can help with repairing internalized gaslighting include:
Daily practice of centering yourself
Thought defusion/Mindfulness of thoughts
Daily practice of centering yourself:
I believe mindfulness to be a vastly important component of healing and recovery. When thinking of mindfulness, many people imagine sitting in meditative poses, focusing on their breath, silencing thoughts, and sitting in pain. For individuals who have experienced trauma, that may sound terrifying. It can also be difficult for trauma survivors to create mental visualizations until their trauma symptoms have reduced.
A daily practice of centering yourself or practicing mindfulness does not have to look like what we stereotypically think meditation is. It can be something simple that you do every single day to pull your focus into that moment, a moment when you are not thinking about your to-do list, past traumas and experiences, embarrassing moments, worries, etc. It’s a moment when you are paying attention to the present moment on purpose without any distractions.
Some examples include:
Traditional meditation or guided meditation (if that floats your boat)
Breathwork
Gratitude exercises
Washing the dishes and focusing on the temperature of the water on your hands, the smell of the soap, the sound of the water trickling down the drain
Playing a musical instrument - especially one you don’t know how to play- and connecting with the sensations of the sounds and feelings.
Taking your dog for a walk and listening to the birds chirping, feeling the air on your skin, assessing the neighborhood's energy, evaluating the emotions/feelings in your body as you stroll.
Listening to music and focusing on a single instrument the whole time
Exercising: yoga, pilates, running, stretching, etc.
Prayer or ritual.
Your mindfulness practice can be 20-30 minutes, or it can be something that you only spend a couple of breaths with.
Doing it daily starts to build a connection with yourself consistently. When we connect with ourselves regularly, we can practice being in our observer mind without being caught up in our thoughts. In doing so, we can easily observe when internalized gaslighting is happening, and we can notice those senses that we were doubting before and reconnect to our sensations, emotions, and intuition.
2. Thought Defusion:
This practice comes from both Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), taking this observer mind and noticing what our thoughts are doing. It’s observing our thoughts, so we’re not thinking our thoughts, but we’re looking at them, trying to examine them, understanding them almost as though we are an alien from a different planet.
Thought Defusion is the idea that we can sometimes get overly fused with our thoughts when we buy into them or try to resist specific thoughts.
For example, when we start ruminating or having racing thoughts on a particular theme, we may blame ourselves or feel ashamed. This is likely because we are fused with these thoughts and can employ certain skills to defuse them.
Mindfulness is part of this practice. How do we pause and observe our thoughts without getting overly attached to any of them? This can look like spacing out your thoughts by pausing and saying, “I’m having the thought that ___,” or, “My mind is telling me that ___,” and examining such thoughts.
We can also examine a specific thought as if it is a creature. Does this thought have a physical form? Does it have a tone of voice? What is its general attitude? How does it act?
We can visualize our thoughts as clouds passing by in the sky or leaves flowing down a stream.
You can apply a category or label to a thought. Some categories include judgments, body sensations, emotions, worry thoughts, task thoughts, future thoughts, memories, etc.
Thought Defusion allows us to pause and examine the internalized gaslighting that comes up. When we have a gaslight-y or victim-blame-y thought, we can pause and ask ourselves, “Where is this thought coming from? Have I heard this thought before? Is this thought accurate?”
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As we can see, gaslighting is a sinister tool of rape culture and all other systems of oppression alike. It is only natural that we, being susceptible to social conditioning that exists in a world with rape culture, internalize these gaslighting tendencies.
I hope this blog post helps you better understand this manipulation tactic, its severity, how it presents itself, and how we can combat it better as a collective.
Please remember that if you ever find yourself having self-blaming thoughts or wondering what you could have done to prevent your rape, that is internalized gaslighting speaking. You are never to blame.
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You can listen to this episode on my podcast, “Initiated Survivor.” The episode is titled “What Is Internalized Gaslighting?” and is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!
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Thank you for reading. Until next time!
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