About Gaslighting.....????????

[lizzie20]

Being able to do it with a work colleague is one thing.  He's not a bad person and he's not 'out to get me'.

The care home is another thing altogether!  The fear they have instilled in me is still overwhelming.  They'll stop at nothing to undermine my sense of reality.  I feel. Well, that's actually true of the care home manager.  I just feel humiliated and foolish in respect of everyone else involved.  Going anywhere near the care home would be like putting my hand in the fire.  I feel robbed of energy at the thought of going anywhere near it.

And it's not actually true of the care home manager that she'll stop at nothing to undermine my sense of reality.  It's what I experience, not what she does.

What IS she trying to do???

I'm far more intelligent than she is.  I should be able to beat her hands down.  In fact, I can.   Intellectually.  But she...does evil things back.

She is mistaken in her beliefs.  She treats me with contempt.  She refuses to treat me professionally.  She blanks me out.  I speak and she is a brick wall.  If I challenge her to answer a question truthfully and straightforwardly, she attacks.  I am sent into a spin, dizzy, lose track.  She leads me into an argument and I find myself taking a side I have no interest in.  It's another smokescreen.  She is...defending herself, her position, her staff.  It pains me and humiliates me to be treated with contempt.  She does that because she truly believes I am mistaken (I think) - but she doesn't say she believes I am mistaken.  She ignores what I put in writing.  She is ANGRY that I have been asked to write up a care plan by the MHA.  She is perhaps angry that he (half) believes me as that would mean she and her staff are mistaken.

She has to fight me because I have already proven that they are wrong.  This is not acceptable to them.  I think it is possible that I (inadvertently) humiliated her in front of someone else through a letter I wrote which was read alongside a mental health worker.  I don't know what the MHW said or how she reacted.  I am too frightened to find out.  I can't cope with someone else having a go at me, bullying me, messing with my mind.

Well, that's it, isn't it.  The care home manager is messing iwth my mind.  It seems silly to say so.  But she IS messing with my mind.  She's all over the place, on the run.  But she's not messing with my mind, she's on the run.  Hiding behind obfuscation.  She's hiding, not messing.  Just like my mother.  Just like my husband.  They have learnt to deal with their fear and confusion by creating smokescreens.  Just like my colleague.

But *I* experience it as 'messing with my mind'.

Great analysis but I'm no further forward.

They are wrong but so am I.

I can't blame them cos my mind/emotions cannot cope with their coping mechanisms.  I think the book on gaslighting which is quoted here on the forum misses this fact.

Hello Rosencrantz,

I have been deliberating the care home manager, & trying to put myself in her shoes. If she could not possibly have had any reason to 'have it in for you' then there must be other reasons for her attitudes. Unless of course she's just a garden variety psychopath.

So firstly, can we eliminate the obvious? Is it possible that a type of 'triangulation' has taken place?

Is it possible that your mother has set you up for a difficult time with the care home manager and staff? Perhaps unintentionally, whereby she has made unkind & or untrue comments about you, possibly flippantly, to the manager/staff? Sometimes people who love us still say things they shouldn't behind our backs. Is it possible she has carelessly or even slyly presented herself as a 'victim', or has spoken 'out-of-line' by discussing personal aspects of your joint life that a mother is privvy to, but which should never go any further? Can that be eliminated?

As far as the care home manager is concerned, it's possible you are dealing with typical cold-blooded bureaucratic obfuscation, which as you would probably know, is a highly crafted corporate system implemented to avoid litigation and compensation.

Managers and staff in many industries are constantly updated & trained in the art of obfuscation & mind-games. I've known staff who have been threatened by their superiors to never admit liability, & definitely never admit repsonsibility. Never. Sometimes, even violating the employee/managers own moral standards. Many are 'forced' to conform to the system they work in by having to do such things.

Obfuscation, smoke-screens, crazy-making, blocking, ridiculing & even completely denying the truth is fairly standard business practice, which is probably why ethics is taught less & less at university . 

As far as care homes go, to make even the slightest admission can have major legal consequences regarding liability. I imagine in this particular 'care home' this would be an area where they would need to be eternally vigilant, from what you've detailed. Especially when dealing with someone like you, who sounds like no dummy.

As far as your own built-in triggers & how this common (unfortunately) type of business practice 'messes with your mind', I haven't had too much time to think about it, beyond wondering how possible it is for you to be cold-blooded by refusing to take any of it personally, & take a 'business as usual' approach. Practice the art of switching these things 'off' in your head after business hours.  It just takes a little practice.

I believe when we find ourselves connected somehow to someone who isn't dealing fairly with us, or is messing with our head, & if we've attempted to address it numerous times without success, then we need to take a very cold-blooded, unemotional, adult, almost deaf-like position ourselves, because I believe in reciprocal relationships.

Until we learn to do this, our internal child will easily panic & even trigger crazy thoughts of shame, self-blame and guilt. When this happens we often aren't able to deal with the real problem out there in the real world. Instead we'll find ourselves caught up, once again, in pain & conflict in our inner-world. Sometimes wandering, lost, even for years, in a heavy fog - on the moors of self-recrimination.

We have to start somewhere. I always find a good place to start is with this - I can never know for sure what is motivating another person to do what they are doing to me. And even though there's really never much point in speculating, we humans still like to chat and mull till think we've worked it all out.  So I try not to speculate. And then I move on to this - 'One thing I can know for sure is this, how badly this thing is affecting me'.
If we've explained how badly something someone is doing is affecting us to that person enough times, and yet they continually disregard us, it's time to stop explaining and start planning how to change the situation to suit our needs. This is very adult, & by doing this our internal child can take a well-deserved rest in back-seat while our 'adult' steers our ship into port. 

So my final step is 'What am I going to do about it?' And then I set about, very deliberately, machine-like, considerately & humanely to do what is the very best for me.

I incorporate 'considerately and humanely' intentionally, and make sure it is my mantra in times of conflict. It is too easy for our 'wounded child' to feel justified in going overboard when we feel that we've been 'done in' by somebody.

Ultimately, it's all about finally being an adult. And dealing daily as an adult deals, building our own self-respect, self-appreciation and self-reliance along the way.

Lizzie20

[Hopalong]

Isn't it about keeping our thoughts in check?

Well PUT, Rose. I should write this on every mirror in my house. Thanks.

And Lizzie...can't tell you how much I appreciate this before going to work tomorrow:

I believe when we find ourselves connected somehow to someone who isn't dealing fairly with us, or is messing with our head, & if we've attempted to address it numerous times without success, then we need to take a very cold-blooded, unemotional, adult, almost deaf-like position ourselves, because I believe in reciprocal relationships.

And this, too:

I try not to speculate. And then I move on to this - 'One thing I can know for sure is this, how badly this thing is affecting me'.
If we've explained how badly something someone is doing is affecting us to that person enough times, and yet they continually disregard us, it's time to stop explaining and start planning how to change the situation to suit our needs. This is very adult, & by doing this our internal child can take a well-deserved rest in back-seat while our 'adult' steers our ship into port.

This, I think, is HUUUUUGE.

I try not to speculate.

That's enormously helpful to me.

thank you!

Hops

[rosencrantz]

That's amazing, Lizzie20.  Wow!  This is language I understand and connect with.

Triangulation?  Only in the sense that she hides everything from everybody else but shares it all with me (dumps it all on my shoulders).  So she gives the appearance of being 'fine'.  The social worker knows otherwise but she also prefers the quiet life and if I was the one creating the waves - however right I was - then she agreed with the care home that i should be 'removed'.  That was the killer.  No, the killer was that I colluded with my own 'death', paid an awful emotional price for putting my mother through hysterical terror in order to do so, and then began to ask questions to finish up a job I'd been asked to do - only the care home wanted me to 'lie down and die'!!! They really, really, really wanted to destroy my credibility and chose my weak points.  Under better circumstances I'd have welcomed the opportunity to stand up for what I believed!! But they were actually using smoke screens for their own misbehaviour.  It was so very complicated.

I understand about 'not admitting liability'; I can understand that many employees at senior level may be unable to handle it in order to deliver it professionally.

I can recognise that I threatened everything everyone knew about dealing with elderly people (they lump 'old people' together as one 'entity') and they were hugely resistant.  Partly because of poor leadership and management.  Just like my son's school.

I just assume everyone else knows what I know, even tho once upon a time I didn't know. I assume they want to learn and grow. I've been so preoccupied with fighting my mother's outward nastiness (childishness) for so long with 'tough love' (parent) that I have completely missed this 'innocent child'/understanding parent relationship I try to have with the world.  I am at a complete loss as to how to protect myself. 

It's taken me a lifetime to become a good 'parent', soothing emotional angst in other people, terrified at the blame which will be heaped upon me for having created the angst in the first place (whether I did or not!).  Meanwhile the child in me never grew up. Is this the 'parentified child', I wonder.  My teenage son is more worldly-wise than I am.  I feel ashamed that he sees me so traumatised by other people.  He simply tells me that I'm 'naive', having become convinced by his own experiences that the world is full of sh**-bags.  We need to meet in the middle somewhere because not everyone is so wrapped up in their own interests. Oh dear - perhaps we are.  Even 'giving' is 'taking'.

Thank you for the golden common sense, the strength, in your reply.

Obfuscation, smoke-screens, crazy-making, blocking, ridiculing & even completely denying the truth is fairly standard business practice

I found it difficult to accept this when I first read it.  I don't treat people that way and never would.  I spend my time listening.  Being open.  It's what I strive for.  I purposely came to work in the 'real world' many years ago in order not to stay in a closed and protected world of touchy-feely, humanistic, wholistic etc etc in order to grow.  (I forgot to go back.   Tho I'm sure I'd have found the same 'unethical' - all-too-human - practices sooner or later even in that 'touchy-feely' world.  I know that I would.)

You have given me a new handle on all this.

I was looking after my own interests - my mother's interests, my son's interests - not the interests of the school staff or care home.  And I somehow expected they would want to have my mother's and son's interests at heart even tho it means thinking the unthinkable, not least that they may have got it wrong or made mistakes.  I wasn't interested in litigation, I just wanted understanding and recognition for my family so they wouldn't feel pain.

I can say clearly that the care home is inadequate for my mother's needs and move her to a new one (which had been my intention until this rucus).  Except I never know what SHE is going to do or decide at the last minute so I'm on shifting sands.  That's what makes it worse.  She could at any moment pull the rug from under me and thereby prove me wrong (and the care home right).  And I haven't been feeling strong enough for that final wound. (I now picture myself as the bull at a bullfight with all those spears sticking out of me and my mother producing the final sword to the neck which fells the beast!)  In the past, she'd have done that to express her anger at me (because I moved on and left home like normal people do!) no matter that it might actually be against her own interests.  She did it on Xmas Day when her most hated nurse engaged me in conversation!  We all had a miserable day because she was angry with me and expressed it by being as ornery as possible for the whole day. I actually thought I'd be severely punished in this way for not having been able to be in touch with her for so long.  She's veering both ways at the moment!!  The wild animal with a thorn in its foot. 

So partly my troubles have included fear about how my mother will react to me for having played (as she puts it) into the care home's hands.  Although I do occasionally remind myself that I wouldn't be quite so vulnerable if she hadn't spent a lifetime of acting unreasonably towards me.  Let alone the gaslighting.  I often likened my childhood to a combination of the films Gaslight and Sybil without any recognition as to why.

Apologies to Lupita for possibly having hijacked this thread - I should perhaps have gone back to a couple of threads where I originally started a discussion about these issues (Voiceless Again!) but it flowed unexpectedly from your comments...

lizzie20 - you said (my emphasis) 'One thing I can know for sure is this, how badly this thing is affecting me'...it's time to stop explaining and start planning how to change the situation to suit our needs. This is very adult, & by doing this our internal child can take a well-deserved rest in back-seat while our 'adult' steers our ship into port.

I am so driven to understand. And i seem to find it impossible to find solutions, to 'start planning'.  To remain a victim (sharp shamed intake of breath) and be played with is my role in life. It's almost how I show love (eek) and compassion for others.  I don't come across as someone like that, I know.  You wouldn't look at me and think I was a pushover. I was horrified by some recent 'feedback' from someone else who has been 'playing' with me.  It wasn't exactly overt feedback.  But I 'heard' it.  I was horrified.  It hurt my pride so much that it was unbearable to believe.  I don't want to know that this is what *they* see.  'There's a bit of the victim in you'.  And he referred obliquely to his own part in 'almost' playing with me because he could get a rise out of me.  My frustration because I wasn't being listened to or acknowledged drove him to 'play' with me and 'almost' ignore me on purpose.  (But that's exactly what WAS happening)  Shiver.

Be adult, not frustrated. Never, ever, ever be frustrated.  There's a link between being frustrated and being powerless for me.  I bang on the door but I don't open it myself! *They* won't open it so I bang even harder until I'm afraid of what might happen if I *do* open it so I'm not sure I want my frustration to end.  Even if I wasn't afraid when I first knocked on the door.

But hey - here I am again in 'understanding/analysing' mode. 

So my final step is 'What am I going to do about it?'  And then I set about, very deliberately, machine-like, considerately & humanely to do what is the very best for me.

Yeah, well - don't much want to be considerate and humane by this stage!!   I want to rage and be completely hysterical and accusatory.  But I won't let myself so I stay outside the door, frustrated and getting sick.

I'd like to say that a solution is to pick up the phone and talk to people more but i found with the care home that I was too vulnerable and it was THAT which finished me off.  The more I stood my ground and managed to keep to my own path, the more it drove them to behave more badly.  But I remind myself that I WAS vulnerable.  My mother had been dying, I felt I'd failed her, I had mild concussion (!), I was reminded of the awfulness of my father's death, I had been very ill, my marriage had broken up, I was living on my own in a strange town, my 'best' (and only) friend had betrayed me and then disappeared out of my life, my therapist had a cancer diagnosis and ignored my request to help me find a replacement, my business was sapping my confidence.  Too many tipping points.

So I'm going to say there should be 'hope' in here that I can, in better circumstances, find a better way, be more resilient, less prone to being toppled.  I have faced similar things and each time (surely) I have become stronger. No, let's be real and awful.  I have become weaker and 'it' has become stronger and more visible.  But perhaps now 'it' has been outed.  I am at the centre.  I will never change other people - they don't actually merit my time and effort anyway.

Here's the truth.  I am vulnerable. That is so hard to say.  My pride hurts (tough!).  I am vulnerable to other people's mischievousness and power plays. ALL I can do for now is build boundaries and NEVER let the drawbridge down to invite people in.  For goodness sake - I challenge people AND drop the drawbridge at the same time.  How insane is that!!!  I trust them to do the decent thing with no thought of whether they are likely to or not.

Build boundaries, practice keeping the drawbridge up, watch the world from my parapet instead of encompassing people with my heart and soul, and then see where I can go from there.  A new route.  The bear hunt song : 'We can't go round it. Oh no, we gotta go through it.' I respect my ex-husband but he isn't a good example.  He doesn't do anything - he just stays home.  So how do you 'go through it'?  Becoming more touchy feely isn't going to do it.  Reaching out isn't going to do it.  Staying centred - in me, for me - might just help.  I don't know what I want - other than to make other people feel hsppy (because then they'll love me!). (Der!)  Following through on what I plan to do, when I first think of it might help (remembering that's not the same as a knee-jerk reaction to circumstances)!

Thanks for your help.

[Lupita]

Dear Heartofp, thank you for taking the time to respond. It would be wonderful to have somebody to interchange looks and support. To feel that you are not alone. That would be so helpgul. I can think of one coworker that might do that with me. That would be a nice friend to me. I will try. It is not going to be easy. I dont know. But thank you.

[Lupita]

If we've explained how badly something someone is doing is affecting us to that person enough times, and yet they continually disregard us, it's time to stop explaining and start planning how to change the situation to suit our needs. This is very adult, & by doing this our internal child can take a well-deserved rest in back-seat while our 'adult' steers our ship into port. 

this is just great.

I have spoken so many times with the people in the church about the way the choir director treats me and nothing changes that it is about time that I have to amke some changes.

[lizzie20]

Hello again Rosencrantz,

I've had time to consider your very interesting post. One area interested me most, & I hope you are fine with me just jumping in with a brief response. 

It's a big cross to bear, this 'heal the world, make it a better place' burden that many of us suffer. Even though we may have better ideas on how to make people happy, is it really our business?

If we make a smooth path for others, by encouraging them to walk along our nicely worn path, when will they walk their own path?

And one day, when they realize they've been walking our path, not their own, they'll only resent us for it.

Do I really want to change anybody? Think about it.....seriously. Do I want that 'godlike' responsibility' for someone else's life. If I change you, then by default - I become responsible for you, and what you do. No thank you!

The only person I have a duty to change or reform is myself. If somebody is doing something I don't like, or agree with, I have a multitude of responsible choices available which don't include
forcing them to agree with me or understand my point of view. Well - What a relief! Thats' good to know.

That's what 'resilience' is all about, & why it is such an important characteristic to develop. It's about being adaptable & flexible, & then being confident in stepping up to the plate when confronted with an obstacle or challenge. It's about feeling confident that I can navigate through life's storms by way of my creative powers, & at the same time remain true to my beliefs, and then humanity at large.

I believe this is the main reason why it is so important that I know my boundaries. I need to be comfortable with the knowledge that your problems are not my concern, unless we have agreed that you want my help with 'xyz', & I've agreed to assist you. And the upside of that for you is you too are free - my problems are not your concern unless....(ditto)

Lizzie20

[rosencrantz]

By the strangest of coincidences, an email arrived in my inbox from my work colleague at the same time as your post Lizzie20. I had challenged his behaviour and then decided it was completely pointless. And he completely avoided any responsibility for his 'misbehaviour'.  And I felt sick.  And I just want to fall down and cry with the sheer misery of it all (which has to be a stage forward I think as I'd normally just stay strong and impervious which is the way I spent my childhood in order to cope with my mother's behaviour. It's sounds the wrong way round doesn't it? I'm much more vulnerable now. It HAS to be a good thing. Or maybe (also) I'm just worn out with illness and worry.) There is another side which feels total annihilating rage!!! 

I want to write some more but I feel completely confused so I'll come back later.

Actually - outside the confusion, I've decided that I'll have to treat him like an employee/servant and think in terms of 'delegating' work to him with all the 'checking in' and accountability that delegating requires en route. It's odd but that's how I had to think of my husband in the finish in order to get along and work together.  It goes against MY values to do that and it means feeling a certain amount of contempt for them.  So the choice is misery (I'm not OK) or contempt (You're not OK). Sigh.  Don't anyone tell me the obvious!!!   If I don't feel contempt, the only other option is 'looking after' the other person's interests (which is also You're not OK but just from a parenting point of view). Sigh!  Maybe I do need someone to tell me the obvious.

Why do I want to change people (these particular people)? - because I want to trust them and like them.  I don't want to know that they can't be trusted, that they betray my trust, that they hate me so much they have to act out and so afraid to be open and honest that they have to lie to me.  Being adult, it seems, means giving up too much : it means giving up the faith that (some) other people will care about me and my needs as much as I (have cared) about them. 

I'm so fed up of crying.  I do see the links to my mother.  I've only recently realised how much she manipulates - no, I still don't really know.  But she can be incredibly childishly mean for no good reason and really pull out the stops to make me suffer.  I don't think she really considers the suffering, only the need to be mean in order to take revenge for imagined slights.  Her perceptions are irrational and inappropriate and I understand her.  But quite why she still needs to inflict so much hurt on the one person who pulls out the stops to help her and understand her is a mystery.  She doesn't have much sense of consequences. She is totally unpredictable. The frog and the scorpion. 

Anyway, the good news is that sanity has been restored.  I feel much more 'normal'.  But frighteningly vulnerable and dependent on the very few people who do support me.  Was I always like this?  My mother made the comment that I had always been so shy as a child but then became so strong and that she had put me on a pedestal.  I wasn't paying full attention because I thought she was about to go down the well-worn track of rage and blame (because, as an adult, I had weaned myself away from her) but no...'a pedestal' - ?????