When applied
to a family, the gaslight treatment is a special form of dysfunction. It
happens when you, a child, receive messages or encounter experiences within the
family which are deeply contradictory. Messages which are opposing and
conflicting; experiences which can’t both be true. When you can’t make sense of
something, it’s natural to apply the only possible answer:
“Something
is wrong with me.”
Today,
scores of children are growing up under a gaslight of their own. And scores of
adults are living their lives baffled by what went on in their families, having
grown up thinking that they, not their families, are crazy.
I have seen
gaslighting cause personality disorders, depression, anxiety, and a host of
other lifelong struggles. Receiving contradictory messages that don’t make
sense can shake the very ground that a child walks on.
The Four Types of Child Gaslighting:
1.
The Double-Bind Parent: This type
was first identified by Gregory Bateson in 1956. The double-bind mother
has been linked by research to the development of schizophrenia and Borderline
Personality Disorder. This type of parent goes back and forth unpredictably
between enveloping (perhaps smothering) the child with love and coldly
rejecting him.
The
Message: You are nothing. You are everything.
Nothing is real. You are not real.
1. The
Gaslight Effect: As an adult, you don’t trust yourself, your validity asa
human being, your feelings, or your perceptions. Nothing seems real. You stand
on shaky ground. You have great difficulty trusting that anyone means what they
say. It’s extremely hard to rely on yourself or anyone else.
2. The Unpredictable, Contradictory Parent: Here,
your parent might react to the same situation drastically differently at
different times or on different days, based on factors that are not visible to
you. For example a parent who is under the influence of alcohol or drugs one
day and not the next; a parent who is manic at times, and depressed other
times, or a parent who is extremely emotionally unstable. Whatever the reason
for the parent’s opposing behaviors, you, the innocent child, know only that
your parent flies into a rage one moment and is calm and seems normal the next.
The Message: You are on shaky ground.
Anything can happen at any time. No one makes sense.
The Gaslight Effect: You don’t trust your
own ability to read or understand people; you have difficulty managing and
understanding your own emotions, and those of others. You struggle to trust
anyone, including yourself.
3. The Appearance-Conscious Family: In these
families, style always trumps substance. All must look good, or maybe even
perfect, especially when it’s not. There’s little room for the mistakes, pain,
or natural human shortcomings of the family members. The emphasis is on
presenting the image of the ideal family. Here, you experience a family which
appears perfect from the outside, but which is quite imperfect, or even
severely dysfunctional, on the inside. This can stem from Achievement /
Perfection focused parents (as described in Running on Empty), or from
narcissistic parents.
The Message: You must be perfect. Natural
human flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses must be hidden and ignored. You are not
allowed to be a regular human being.
The Gaslight Effect: You feel deeply ashamed
of yourself and your basic humanness. You ignore your own feelings and your own
pain because you don’t believe it’s real, or that it matters. You tend to see
and focus on only the positive things in your life, which fit into a particular
template. You are extremely hard on yourself for making mistakes, or you put
them out of your mind and simply pretend they didn’t happen. You may be missing
out on the most important parts of life which make it worthwhile: the messy,
real world of intimacy, relationships and emotion.
4. The Emotionally Neglectful Family (CEN): In
this family, your physical needs may be met just fine. But your emotional needs
are ignored. No one notices what the children are feeling. The language of
emotion is not used in the home. “Don’t cry,” “Suck it up,” “Don’t be so
sensitive,” are frequently uttered by the CEN parent. The most basic, primary
part of what makes you you (your emotional self) is treated as a burden or
non-existent.
The Message: Your feelings and needs are bad
and a burden to others. Keep them hidden. Don’t rely on others, and don’t need
anything. You don’t matter.
The Gaslight Effect: You have been trained
to deny the most deeply personal, biological part of who you are, your
emotions, and you have dutifully pushed them out of sight and out of mind. Now,
you live your life with a deeply ingrained feeling that you are missing
something that other people have. You feel empty or numb at times. You don’t
trust yourself or your judgments because you lack your emotions to guide you.
Your connections to others are one-way or lack emotional depth. Even if you are
surrounded by people, deep down you feel alone. None of it makes any sense to
you.
Were you born under the gaslight? If so, you are
not alone. You are not invalid or crazy or wrong. it’s vital to realize that
you have been, by definition, deeply invalidated. But “invalidated” and
“invalid” are not the same. “Invalidated” is an action, and “invalid” is a
state of mind. You can’t change what your parents did and didn’t do, but you
can change your state of mind.
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