Recovering From Gaslighting

#shorts

I didn’t erase the story completely.

I always knew what happened and I knew it was bad. But I minimized the impact. I doubted the severity. I stayed in relationship to the number-one offender from my childhood &
subsequently got into new relationships that mirrored his abuse.

I couldn't put myself back in the narrative until the abuser died, It was as though his death
finally allowed my nervous system to process things differently.

Then I started writing my story …. for years, chipping away at what REALLY happened, the toll it really took.

Only then could I see what I'd been carrying for decades: symptoms of complex trauma.
Trauma from growing up with a narcissistic stepdad, from his and my mother's Gaslighting:
Changing the way I saw what happened and the way I saw myself.

When I put my symptoms in the context of Complex PTSD (see link in bio to my blog on
Psychology Today), I finally had to acknowledge that the emotional abuse WAS THAT BAD. Look at what it did to me. It made me doubt myself about the abuse, and then doubt everything else in my life because that's what gaslighting does. It's like a poison that changes us on a cellular level.

I just watched #theshrinknextdoor on AppleTV, based on a true story and podcast with the same name. The way this psychiatrist groomed his patient into a decades-long, psychologically
abusive relationship was so brutal & heartbreaking. They portrayed the gaslighting so
accurately it was difficult to watch but I couldn't take my eyes off it. Watching the victim
abandon himself, his family, childhood memories, his money, his LIFE under the guise of love ... I saw yet again how powerful and destructive this type of abuse can be.

I don’t live in that toxic environment anymore. But I believe my cells will be in detox for a very long time. I am unraveling a lifetime of relationships, choices, consequences and confusion but I am finally at the center of it, no longer doubting. I’m privileging my healing over anyone’s remaining denial. Privileging my healing over anything else. It feels really hard and there’s a lot to grieve in the story - but it’s very much worth telling. I am worth putting in the center of my own life.


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