Episode Transcript
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You're listening to an audio recordingby Change My Relationship, featuring
licensed marriage and family therapistand author Karla Downing.
These audios are designed to provide youwith practical solutions
based on biblical truthsfor all your relationships.
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So I have an important question for you.
Are you gaslighting yourself?
We know that when you arein a relationship with a narcissist,
a manipulator, an abuser, a liar,a cheater, or any other destructive person
who is gaslighting youthat it is not okay?
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The definition of gaslightingis when somebody does or says something
to get you to questionwhether what you did, what you saw,
what you felt,what you perceived was wrong.
And it is for the purposeor the intent of getting you
to believe that the gaslighter was rightand you were wrong.
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So something interesting happens though,
when you have been in a dysfunctional homeor dysfunctional relationship.
After a whileyou begin to do something very odd.
You gaslight yourself.
And the reason that that happensis because when the gaslighter
is gaslighting you, you beginafter a while to question yourself.
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Exactlywhat the gaslighter wants you to do
is to question yourselfand to conclude that you're wrong.
That what you felt,what you did, what you saw,
what you perceive, what you believed, thatthat was incorrect.
After a while, you buy into that,
and then you begin to dothe very same thing to yourself.
So you can answer these questionsto find out
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if you're gaslighting yourself.
Do you doubt what you feel?
Do you doubt what you see?
Do you doubt what you think?
Do you doubt what you perceive?
Do you doubt what you hear?
Do you doubt what you believe?
Do you doubt what you remember?
Do you doubt what you need?
Do you doubt what you like.
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Or whatyou should like. Or what you should want?
So if you answered
yes to any of those, you’regaslighting yourself.
You are questioningif all of those things are true or not.
Now, this does not meanthat you cannot say to yourself like,
am I consideringwhat the other person is saying?
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Or am I consideringan alternative explanation for this?
Am I healthily questioning myselfand making sure
that what I said wasokay given the situation?
It's far beyond that.
That's a healthy balancebecause if you are someone
who never questioned yourself,you're a narcissist.
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You're an abuser.
You're somebody who is abovehaving to have any self
introspection or self-evaluation,or to give the other person's
opinions, experiences, feelings, beliefs,needs, any weight at all.
So it is a balance.
But if you go to the other extremeand you doubt everything that you feel
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and needand see and perceive and hear and want,
if you do all of that, then regularly
you are gaslighting yourself.
And that is just as unhealthyas the abuser or the narcissist
who is always rightand never self questions.
So if you answered yes to those questionsand you know that you're
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gaslighting yourself, what can you do?
Well, you've got to start outrecognizing first,
we cannot change anythingthat we do not recognize.
So recognizing,oh my gosh, I'm gaslighting myself.
I hate it when other people do that to me.
It just absolutely infuriates me.
And I just want to do everything I canto call them out.
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But oh, I'm doing that to myself.
I want to stop that.
You have control over you.
You don't have controlover the other person.
So you can stop gaslighting yourself.
So the first thing is you recognize it.
The second thing isyou have to affirm yourself.
What does that mean?
That means you are going to say outloud or read,
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or maybe you're going to put it onyour phone.
You're going to put iton the corner of your mirror.
You're going to put it on your onthe console of your car,
just something that you see regularly,or you're going to have a little script
that you're going to read maybe onceevery hour at the beginning, or,
multiple times a day,
or you're going to start your day outreading it and you're affirming it,
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saying it into the mirror is fantasticbecause you see yourself saying it.
You hear yourself saying itand you're saying it.
So you go through thatfeeling in your body.
So you're going to state
anti gaslighting affirmations.
And this is how it goes. It's very simple.
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I see what I see.
I believe what I believe.
I felt what I felt.
I feel what I am feeling.
I perceived what I perceived.
I saw what I saw.
I need what I need.
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I like what I like.
I don't like what I don't like.
I did what I did.
I said what I said.
I heard what I heard.
Any of those things you can just keep.
You can go on and on with those.
And basicallywhat you're saying out loud is, okay,
I believe myself now.
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Validation is simply this,
when something is valid,it means it is true.
It is correct.
So if you were to go downto the registrar, county registrar
where you live and you were just saying,
I need a valid birthcertificate for myself or my child
yourself, if you were born in that county,
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you got to get it fromthe county that you were born in.
So let's say you were born there
and you went to go get one, you would askfor a valid birth certificate.
It would be the paper,and it would literally
have either a seal or a stamp on it
showed that it was an originaland it came from the county.
You can trust it.
That is what you doingwhen you are affirming yourself.
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That is what you are doingwhen you are validating yourself.
Affirming is just another wayof saying validating so or to validate.
So you're going to basically affirmor validate that.
Yeah, I felt what I felt.
Now when does this come up.
Well here's some examples.
You're talking
to the difficult person in your life,that dysfunctional toxic person.
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Call him whatever or her or whatever youwhatever you want, whatever.
Or if you know that they're struggling,if they're lying or whatever, you're just
going to say,
okay, you're having it.
Let's say you're having an argumentwith that person,
or that person is saying something to youand getting you to doubt yourself.
So set a lie, okay?
If they said something that youthat first you're like, that's not true.
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And all of the sudden you say toyourself, is it?
Is it true?
Wait a minute,was I wrong to doubt that person?
Oh, maybe I shouldn't doubt that person,
but maybe this timethis person is telling me the truth.
What you're going to do when you affirm isyou're going to say, okay,
I feel like it's lying.
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It felt like a lie to me.
I believe it's a lie.
And like I said,doesn't mean you never question yourself,
but you do not have to invalidate yourselfby going, oh, could it?
Maybe it's true.
Maybe, maybe this time,maybe this time it is true.
Maybe this timeI should believe this person.
No, I don't trust this person.
I don't trust.
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And instead of saying should I trust,maybe I should trust.
You said, I don't trust you.
And theperson can say, well, you're wrong.
You should trust me. I don't trust you.
That is affirmingor validating your feeling or like
I didn't like being yelled at.
I didn't yell at you.I didn't yell at you.
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I didn't really didn't really raisemy voice.
I felt yelled at.
I don't like being yelled at.
That is basically what it is now.
Do you have to justifyremember the acronym don't Jade, don't
justify,don't argue, don't defend, don't explain.
We're talking about you
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and what you feel and need and believeand perceived and experienced
and heard how it how it affects you.
That's it.
This is not having to make a case.
Prove this in a court of law.
This is you in a relationshipor you experiencing something
and you validating yourself
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instead of gaslighting yourself to say,I saw that.
I felt that it didn't feel good.
It felt harsh to me.
Well, but I wasn't harsh.
I didn't say anything harsh.I didn't do anything.
It felt harsh to me.
Therefore it felt harsh to you.
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Now remember the you versus I statements.
I made this mistake last week where I said
you were being harsh to someone instead ofI felt like it was harsh.
That threw out more defensiveness.
So I made a mistake.
I didn't own it as myself.
But years ago, many, many years ago,I would have gone
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through this whole thing of saying,oh, well, maybe I overreacted.
Maybe I interpreted it.
I don't have to do that now.
I know what I like and what I don't like.
I know what I feel and what I don't feel,and I can stick with that.
And I don't have to gaslight myselfnow, you know what's really cool
benefit of thisis that when I'm not gaslighting myself,
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it is much harderfor people to gaslight me.
Does that mean that they never sayanything that is gaslighting,
or that doesn'ttry to get me to doubt myself,
or doesn't disagreewith what I'm feeling or saying?
Oh my gosh, no.
It happens a lotas it does for most of you,
but I don't buy into it like I used to.
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I don't do thatruthless like rigorous like
turn myself inside and out and questionover and over again.
I just know that I trust myselfnow, occasionally I'm wrong.
Okay, like I said,that's that amount of self introspection.
So what you need to dois you're going to continue
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to work on affirming yourselfinstead of gaslighting yourself.
That's much simpler than trying to changethe person who's gaslighting you,
because that will not workand you will just get into an argument.
So here are some versesif you want to think about James 1.
James
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1:5-8 talks about a man who goes to Godand asks for wisdom.
And yes, we need wisdomand understanding ourselves and
and understanding other people,but that when you go to God that you go
kind of not believingand that you go back and forth
and you're like a wave tossed on the sand
and the shore, and then it pulls backand goes there, pulls back.
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I always think of a ragdollin those waves,
and it's just so limp and so lightthat it gets thrown on the beach,
and then it gets pulled backand thrown on the beach and pulled back.
I don't want to be like that.
And when we're gaslighting ourself,that's how we are.
We're literallyjust throwing ourselves all over
and not believing anythingabout ourselves.
The next one is 2 Timothy
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1:7, New King James Version,one of my very favorite verses for this
it says, For Godhas not given us a spirit of fear,
but of power, of love and a sound mind,
a sound mind does not question itself.
A sound mind does not go,oh my gosh, am I right, am I wrong?
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Did I, did I think that?
Should I think that should I feel that?Is that wrong?
Maybe I shouldn't feel that.That's not a sound mind.
That's an unsound mindand that affects us in so many ways.
And then the last one, and I love thisbecause they were kind of gaslighting
Jesus.
And Jesus spoke back strongly to them.
And this is the New Living Translation.
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Translation. It's John 8:12-14.
It says, Jesusspoke to the people once more and said,
I am the light of the world.
He knew who he was.
If you follow me,you won't have to walk in darkness
because you will have the lightthat leads to life.
The Pharisees replied,You're making these claims about yourself.
Such testimony is not valid.
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In other words,you can't testify about yourself.
Jesus told them these claims are valideven though I make them about myself
because I know where I came fromand where I am going.
But you don't know this about me.
Now I am not equating any of us to Jesusor to God.
I am just showing you that principle
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another person cannot know about you,
cannot tell you what is going on with you,
but you can tell youwhat is going on with you.
You can affirmwhat is it that you're feeling,
thinking, believing, experienced, sawwhat you meant.
Somebody.
That's another thing
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that gaslight us about they gaslight usand tell us that we didn't mean that
or we meant something else.
No, we you know what you meantwhen you said something.
I know what I meant when I said something.
Somebody else cannot testifylike that about you or about me.
We can only testify each of usabout ourselves, what we meant
and what we intended and what we believeand what we were thinking
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and what we were feeling
and how something feltwhen it was done to us or said to us.
No one else can have that testimonyabout us.
And that'swhat's so crazy about the gaslighter,
because the gaslighter is saying,I am going to tell you how you felt
and how you thoughtand what you were doing,
and what you were sayingand what how you were affected.
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And we're saying, no,but let's not do that to ourselves.
Let's affirm what we know.
Let's stand by ourselves and validate
what is going on with usthat will give us so much more stability.
You, so much more stabilityin your relationship and me in mine.
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I can tell you it can happen because I was
I really gaslit myself when I was aboutsix years into my marriage.
I had a sponsor and a 12 step program.
And I'm telling you,this is absolute truth.
She said to me, Karla,
if you were told that your hair was black,
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you would go to the mirror to find outif it was.
Now, I've always been blond,but she was right.
That is how much I gaslit myself.
And I do not do that anymore.There is hope.
So one of the things that you can do,that could help you.
This book is my Change My Relationship.
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It's, 365 Daily Devotions for Christiansin Difficult Relationships.
It has a wonderful index at the back.
Whatever it is that you're dealing with,this is one way to become wise
and to validate yourself in your thoughtsand know truth and stand in your truth.
So I would highly suggestthat you get this
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and begin reading it daily and go to it.
When you're questioning yourselfand your gaslighting yourself
or somebody else gaslights you.
Go to the back of the book, look it up,and just, make it your affirmation
and you will begin to be ableto stand in your truth
much, much more,just like I have learned to do.
So God bless you.
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Thank you so much for watching. Thanks.
Thank you for listeningto Change My Relationship.
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Karla would love to hear from you.
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on how the podcasts have helped your lifeand relationships.
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You can email her at.
karla@changemyrelationship.com
For more informationon Change My Relationship and Karla
Downing's ministry, including her books,studies, devotionals, podcasts
and YouTube videosvisit changemyrelationship.com.