Recovering from gaslighting is becoming more frequent. Gaslighting is happening on wide scale. You are being told lies from mass media as well as your cheating spouse.
It’s happening so often, that it seems like those doing it don’t even plan it out. Things just come out of their mouths that put the blame on you or put you down. If there’s any ill, they have ways of leaving you feeling like you’re the cause.
With the cheater, they make you believe “you drove me to this” in reference to the affair. Given your overdeveloped sense of responsibility, there are moments you believe what they’re telling you.
Although they may not have used those exact words, there are many variants of blaming you for what they did. They made the choice and now they are throwing excuses at it and seeing which one sticks. The more responsible you are, the more vulnerable you are to their gaslighting lies.
It would be nice if you can just turn off your mind to those lies. They don’t just turn off like that. It’s as if you have to defuse those toxic statements one at a time.
One of the habits needed in moving past the affair is ‘Telling yourself the truth’. In the case of gaslighting, you have to tell yourself the truth about what happened which includes who to blame. In this case, they made the choice to cheat. They stepped outside of their marriage to you.
After telling yourself the truth, you’ll need to cancel out the lies as well. This means invalidating their gaslighting statements. When they say “You drove me to this“, start by telling yourself the truth. They made the choice. Follow that up with telling yourself that you refuse accepting blame for their choices.
Getting past the gaslighting requires both ‘telling yourself the truth’ and ‘invalidating their lies’. Its essential that you stop letting their blaming take up space in your head. The more you practice these techniques, the less power the gaslighting will have on you.
I go into greater detail about this in the video, “Overcoming the Affair Crisis”. You may need to remind yourself about telling yourself the truth. You didn’t get into this mess overnight and it will take a while for you to clear the lies out of your head along with stopping the self-blame.
You can move past this and do so without additional emotional baggage. Just because they believe the lies they are telling you doesn’t make them true.
Take the step of starting change today. Click and download the video.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
