How To Deal With Gaslighting - Ariel Leve

Ariel Leve speaks here about the instinctive survival tactics she used to survive an abusive gaslighting mother. She speaks of a woman who had no boundaries and could not control her moods.  How many times have I said that crusaders are totally out of control?

Some of what she says hits home hard.

"Everything is upside down. Reality is being cancelled, nothing means anything." 

She defines gaslighting as when someone manipulates you into questioning your own sanity. I'd add health to that-defined though that is by Munchausens-by-Proxy. In case that doesn't make sense to anyone. 'Obesity' is a largely meaningless construct now being used to pretend disease that doesn't exist. That is the features of the above disorder and no one has to accept this, unless they wish to enter into this fiction.

It wasn't just that my reality was cancelled, but my perceptions of reality were overwritten. and one of the most incidious things about gaslighting is the denial of reality. Being denied what you have seen with your own eyes and you know to be true. Being denied an experience that you have had and you know is real. 

And, something I've often felt,

For me, the erasure of the abuse was worse than the abuse.

Remember you Are not the one(s) with the problem. 

It can make you crazy, but you are not crazy. 

Ariel Leve

The lessons are;

1. Remain Defiant

Don't give up or compromise your experiences and/or what you know to be true. Don't try to meet the gaslighter halfway. If the gap between reality and their stories is wide. Let it be, stop trying to close or reconcile it by bending the truth. Women especially are rooted to a performance of the latter to an absurd degree. You are not Gandhi, give it up.

2. Recognise there will never be accountability

The miscreants concerned will never accept accountability for what they have done and what they are doing to you. Cultists could very easily begin to make amends by telling the truth and sticking with it. They chose not to. 

3.  Let Go of the Wish for Them to be Different

Stop trying to make the wrongdoer be different. That's not your responsibility-it will drain you dry and leave you hollow. Instead, change your reaction to and estimation of them [even if only on this matter].

4.  Develop a Healthy Detachment

Distance yourself from cultists. Learn that there are two worlds - reality and the world of the abuser. You have to make a choice. Don't try to enter the abuser's world assuming they've made a space for you there because they're using terms like; "science, treatment, medicine or health". They haven't.