Gaslighting: The false narrative called out

Have you ever had someone call out a narrative to you that is so far from either what you remember or know to be true, that you have had to fall back on noting and thinking it was a perspective different to your own? Let alone what you took in or your own recall of the situation, and give you a version that they insist is true? Well, it wasn’t.

There is a whole lot of other 'felt experiencing' that goes alongside this too. As in felt, but you don’t seem to have the vocabulary for it. Perhaps it just felt kind of “uncomfortable”; the feeling will be familiar, but unnamed.

The likelihood is that you will also be feeling in this strangely uncomfortable place with those people who have an intermittent connection with you, but enough to fool you into believing it is constant and something to rely upon.

It isn’t.

So it will be a letdown, and in this one-minute-on, one-minute-off scenario, you might also believe it’s either imagined by you or it’s your fault. What did you do? You didn’t do anything.

Here, inconsistency is confusing for you, but it will be a constant unless you turn the tables on it.

When the connection is only felt as an ephemeral connection that is wholly conditional, it will feel like an unsolicited disconnect by you, and the other person who plays this game will be telling all kinds of rubbish, yes, I do mean rubbish, convincing you that you are the one who has lost the plot. 

Where does this all come from, this uncomfortable yet familiar place?

The answer is childhood. When you lived in a feeling world but lacked the vocabulary to be able to identify your own feelings. And, or, maybe where you were silenced or disregarded when your hope of being able to self-care or defend yourself was limited and posed a threat for you to employ.

You are somehow run down, diminished

With the people or person who does this around you, if you reflect on recent interactions, you will find it is only equal and even when you are giving and useful. 

Outside of this, there will be this once again felt but not accompanied by vocabulary, these feeling states:

• distance
• condescension
• absent connection 
• physically present yet emotionally absent
• indistinguishable disregard
• downgrading to an outsider
• something changed, but hard to identify 
• things feel dissolved 
• coldness 
• no eye contact 
• nothing that you were led to believe when you are useful 

Not a great list of feeling states, and frankly, who would want any of them!

So, what is this?

Well, firstly, it is absolutely not your issue, but theirs. It’s not about your value; it is a control. You are somehow perceived as a threat.

Sometimes this is done without awareness. It is, though, always about this person needing to make you feel less so that they can feel more. Often this can be a window into their world, which will be about many insecure perceptions and totally about their own low self-esteem and lack of interpersonal skills.

How to protect your own integrity 

One of the ways of dealing with this belittling is by asking them to repeat what they said. Why? Because it lowers the intended spike and foils their intention if it is called out. Also, it lowers their credibility and increases yours.

Ask them what their intention was by saying that; was it to embarrass me, maybe, or hurt me? This will cause them to flounder because they want a reaction, not a question. The spotlight will now be on them, not you. You are standing your ground by asking them to see themselves. Once you have an answer, meet this with silence.

Your silence will be your best ally here. Once they have been asked to repeat their put down and they have then been asked about their intention. Their negative conduct around this will be evident. Exposing someone’s bad or poor behaviour will be something very uncomfortable for them, not you. Remember, their intention here is to make you feel small, not to highlight their shabby behaviour.

Displacing their own distress

This can also be called projection. Another reason people behave negatively in this way is that instead of “owning” their own uncomfortable feelings, they project them onto somebody else by creating distress for someone. Somehow, this for them is a temporary way to relieve their own feelings of inadequacy; the behaviour becomes a conduit for their own anger and attempt at controlling it.

Maybe also the other person they are attempting to victimise is the epitome of what they never feel they can become. Which brings me to the next possible reason for wanting to make someone feel insignificant and small, or outmoded. Jealousy.

Jealousy 

Although l personally believe the motives are a mix of quite a few things, you can find the reason for put-down behaviour more easily if you know a little about the background of both people. This is or can be particularly true in family situations. They are also, l think, a great deal more “ugly” in their origin, as they are more often presented as something that is deserved.

But l have found that jealousy is more often than not a large part of the reason behind those who take any opportunity they can to diminish in the name of the false narrative, both felt and projected onto another.

A large part of the resolve

In summary, it is self-reliance and self-acceptance, once found, that will ultimately be what creates the shield to protect you from the false narrative of the put-down. It then becomes noise that you can either choose to address or ignore.

Review the causation of your own decisions and why and where they came from so that the navigation of your own internal emotional territory becomes a known, and accepted part of you, raise you own self belief and l have found that the energy changes and it will be felt by those attempting to put you down as something that is not going to be possible.