7 Gaslighting phrases narcissists use to manipulate you

7 Gaslighting phrases narcissists use to manipulate you.

What is Gaslighting ?

Gaslighting is a form of constant manipulation and brainwashing that makes the victim suspicious of herself and ultimately loses his sense of perception, identity and self-worth. The manipulative person’s statements and accusations are often based on deliberate falsehoods and calculated marginalization.

When a narcissist gaslights you, he engages in insane discussions and personal assassinations as he challenges and nullifies your thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and mind. Gaslight enables narcissists and sociopaths to tire you out to the point that you are unable to resist. Instead of finding ways to detach healthily from this toxic person, your efforts to find a sense of certainty and validation are sabotaged.

Gaslighting can take many forms, from questioning your mental health status to challenging your own experiences

The term Gaslighting is derived from the 1944 movie Gaslight, in which the husband tries to convince his wife that she is crazy by making her question herself and her reality. 

The phrases listed below, are used systematically and extensively in the context of an abusive relationship, in order to insult, diminish and distort the reality of victims of abuse

1. You are extremely sensitive / you overreact.

Hidden meaning: It does not mean that you are very sensitive, but that I am not sensitive, cruel, and unsympathetic. I don't care about your feelings unless they serve me in some way. Your negative reactions give me motivation and pleasure, so please keep going. I enjoy being frustrated by my legitimate responses to the abuse. 

One of the effects of gaslighting includes asking yourself Am I too sensitive? Twelve times a day. Claiming that victims overreact or are hypersensitive to emotional abuse is a common way for narcissists to get beyond your certainty about the severity of the abuse you have been subjected to.

2. You're crazy / have psychological problems / need help.

Hidden meaning: You are not the sick person here. You're just picking up who I really am behind the mask and trying to hold me responsible for my questionable behavior. I prefer questioning your sanity until you think the problem is really you, not my cheating and manipulation. As long as you think you are the one who needs help, I will never have to take responsibility for changing my troubled ways of thinking and behaving.

3. It was just a joke. You have no sense of humor. 

Hidden meaning: I like to hide my abusive behavior as just jokes. I like calling you names that bother you, frustrating you, and then pretending that you are the one who lacks the sense of humor to appreciate the corrupt "intelligence". Making you feel flawed allows me to say and do whatever I want, all with a smile and a wry laugh. Jokes only "are also used to test boundaries early on in an abusive relationship; what you may initially interpret as something normal or unintended can escalate into psychological violence very quickly in the hands of a narcissist."

4. You're just insecure and jealous. 

Hidden meaning: I enjoy sowing seeds of insecurity and doubt in your mind about your attractiveness, competence, and personality. If you dare question my many flirtations, affairs, and inappropriate interactions, I will be sure to return you to your place for fear of being lost. The problem, as I'll convince you, is not my duplicitous behavior. It's your inability to remain confident while always frustrating you, comparing you in ways that are demeaning to others, and ultimately throwing you aside for the next best thing.

5. You're the problem here, not me. 

Hidden meaning: I'm the problem here, but I'd be damned if I told you that! I prefer to expose you to personal attacks so that you spend most of your time trying to fix your fabricated flaws while you always think I'm a "worthy" person, only then can I just sit back and relax and continue mistreating you the way I feel. You won't have any energy left to summon me.

It is common for abusive partners to engage in false projections - even to the point of describing their victims as narcissists and abusers, and casting their malicious traits and behaviors on their victims. This is a way for them to illuminate their victims into believing they are at fault and that their reactions to the abuse, not the abuse itself, are the problem.

6. I've never said or done that. You are imagining things.

Hidden meaning: Having you question what I did or say allows me to question your perceptions and memories of the abuse I was subjected to. If I make you think you are fantasizing about things, you start to wonder if you are going to go crazy, rather than fixing the evidence that I am abusive.

Many victims of chronic gaslighting experience cognitive dissonance that occurs when an abuser tells them they haven't done or said something. 

Researchers Hasher, Goldstein, and Toppino (1997) call this "delusional truth effect" - they discover that when lies are repeated, they are more likely to be assimilated as true simply because of the repetition effects.

This is why constant denial and belittlement can be so effective in convincing victims of invasive illumination that they are actually imagining things or experiencing amnesia, rather than standing firmly in their beliefs and experiences

7. You have to forget about it. Why are you talking about this?

Hidden meaning: I haven't even given you enough time to tackle the latest gruesome incident of abuse, but you have to actually give it up so that I can proceed with your exploitation without facing any consequences for my behavior. Allow me to give you some false feelings until you think things will be different this time. In order not to mention my previous patterns of abusive behavior, because you will then realize that this cycle of abuse will continue.

How to protect yourself

In order to resist the effects of gaslighting,

• You must connect with your own reality and prevent yourself from falling into the traps of an endless cycle of self-doubt. 

• Learn to recognize the red flags of narcissists and their manipulative tactics so that you can exit confused, insane conversations with narcissists before they escalate into wild accusations, expectations, shifting blame, and mockery that will only exacerbate your feelings of disorientation. 

• Develop a sense of validation and self-confidence so that you can connect with how you really feel about the way someone treats you, rather than getting bogged down in trying to explain yourself to a manipulator with an agenda.

• Get a safe space from the person who attacks you Make sure you document the events as they happened, rather than the way the person who offended you told you they happened. Save text messages, voicemail messages, emails, and audio or video recordings  that can help you remember facts in times of mental fog, rather than subscribing to the distortions and delusions of the abuser

• Engage in extreme self-care This is by participating in mind-body treatments that target the physical and psychological symptoms of abuse. Recovery is important for achieving mental clarity. 

•  Ask for help from a third party, As a trauma-aware therapist, go through incidents of abuse together to anchor yourself back to what you've been through. Malignant narcissists may try to rewrite your reality, but you don't have to accept their twisted narratives as reality.

 
Sources:

Shahida Arab
psychcentral.com/recovering-narcissist-gaslighting-phrases-malignant-narcissists-sociopaths-and-psychopaths-use-translated