Monday, April 09, 2012

On Being Gaslighted (or Gaslit?)

Reading up on the topic today. http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/11/16/more-on-gaslighting/

And holy shit, it's a pattern that repeats itself, ironically, REPEATEDLY, in my life.

The whole formula of it is just so patently obvious, which seems to be three-pronged: shock (of the abuse), more abuse when you defend yourself, ending with depression.

Glad to know this type of abuse actually has a name and is a known entity. Sick, but glad to know.

I've seen this pattern with my mother and my sister, and most-recently someone with whom I was cultivating a friendship with. Granted, I cannot really cut off my mother and my sister as they're family, but I cut off toxic non-family eventually, and when I do, it's usually with spectacularly bitter results. The need to control me or try to control and/or rewrite our common narrative seems to be the main theme I've encountered.

I have no visions of grandeur or an over inflated sense of who or what I am. I know Im not perfect, but by and large, I certainly don't deserve to be treated with cruelty.

Not sure of the purpose of today's blog post, but I just feel my sense of perspective is just so undermined by this abuse. Hell, even in a FB thread I started which was a poll about my sister :

Poll: If my sis doesn't keep in touch w/ me, does she have the right to bitch when I don't go out of my way to keep in touch w/ her?

And one of my replies in the thread just summed up how perverse the abuse is:
The thing I find so twisted about the gaslighting abuse is... the cycle of self-doubt and depression that takes place, because SURELY there can't be THAT MANY folks gaslighting me... could there? See? I just did it again! Drat!
In the end, if I cannot have my sister as I knew her, as an ally back, then I'd just assume be on the receiving end of "being ignored."

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