4 Ways Narcissists Gaslight You

Have you heard the term ‘gaslighting’ but wonder what it really means?

If you find yourself in confusing situations that make you doubt your own reality and that are accusatory, hurtful or painful for you, you may be being gaslit.

You can be especially suspicious if you don’t have these confusing times with other people. And if the person in question is unsupportive, tries to sabotage you and the things you love, is pathologically jealous, or incredibly angry when not the centre of attention, then you can be sure it’s gaslighting.

In today’s video I give you a detailed account of the 4 main ways narcissists gaslight their victims. I also provide you with examples of real-life gaslighting situations from my own personal experience and those of my clients.

There is a way to remove yourself and recover from the malicious effects of these tactics so please watch the video or read the transcript to gain clarity, healing and strength.

 

 

Video Transcript

Today I want to help you recognize when a narcissist is gaslighting you, because if you don’t know that they are, you won’t know how to deal with it. Also, you’re going to think that you’re the one who’s going crazy.

You may have heard the expression gaslighting, but what is it?

It’s a tactic used by a narcissist to confuse situations and make you doubt your own reality. Gaslighting is manipulation. It’s actual psychological warfare to get control of you, make you doubt your own sanity, your truth, and your decisions, which makes you hand over more of your Soul, your life, and your boundaries to the narcissist.

It also allows them to get away with a whole heap of misdemeanours and cruel acts and deceit against you.

Gaslighting happens bit by bit with a narcissist, but where it becomes really accentuated is when you’re in the discredit and the discard stages with a narcissist. It’s when the cracks have appeared and there’s lots of obvious problems.

This is when you’ve started to question things and you’re trying to seek accountability. You want to get sensibility and sanity, and you’re starting to demand some answers to the crazy, horrible things that are happening.

It’s important to know that as disgusting as narcissistic behaviour is, all narcissists pretty much operate in identical ways. They twist, they turn, they project, and they lie all to gaslight you. In fact, it’s such an automatic response that it really is second nature to a narcissist. It’s just what they do. As long as they’re taking another breath, they’re lying and they gaslight. It’s just a narcissistic thing.

Let’s look at some of the common gaslighting tactics.

 

Number One – Cruel Counter-Accusations

The number one tactic that I want to share with you is the cruel counter-accusations. I really think that this is the number one tactic that a narcissist uses to gaslight, and they do it when you’re confronting them and you’re seeking accountability.

They’re going to hit you with a personal counter-attack on your character. They’re going to go for something that is going to hurt you. So it’s a slur against your very person. So it’ll be things like, “You’re crazy. You’re mental. There’s something wrong with you.”

They’re going to tell you, “You’ve got it all wrong. You need therapy. You make mountains out of mole hills.” Or maybe, “You’re really selfish. You’re making this all about yourself just because I don’t do what you want when you want me to. You’re jealous. You’re insecure.” It’s things like that, and I’m sure you’ve heard some of these.

So, what is the narcissist doing? They’re trying to cover their tracks and divert away from their wrongdoing by discrediting and demonizing you.

A NARP member once told me how she walked in on her husband with another woman. This woman was half naked on the couch, and he told her she had it all wrong, that it was just a purely innocent massage for a friend in need.

Because she’d been gaslit for so many years and she’d lost faith in her own sense of reality, her own sense of truth, she was actually questioning, “Have I got this right? Maybe these are my insecurities. Maybe this is my inability to trust him.” Because, of course, that’s what he told her.

She was questioning her own sanity, and she very nearly believed him. Thank goodness she’d already started with NARP, and she started working diligently on what all that gaslighting brought up for her.

She was able to clear out her confusion and not trusting and not believing in herself, and she came to her senses. She found her own pillar of truth, and then came self-love. She realized what a lying bag of repeat adultery this man had been for years, and she ended her marriage with him. Thank goodness.

 

Number Two – Pathological Denial

Personally, this is one of the gaslighting tactics that used to do my head in. I know it would’ve made your hit spin as well. Here’s what happens, the evidence could even be right there in front of you, there it is in an email or a text or a piercingly clear memory that you have of what happened, and yet the narcissist will declare, “I never said or did that,” when they have said or done that. It’s a blatant lie.

Here’s the crazy part, you know they said or did that, and yet they proclaim, and they grandstand that they didn’t. They threaten to leave you for not believing them. They tell you you’re abusive because you are saying they did.

They may stonewall and refuse to communicate. As far as the narcissist is concerned, their word is final and if you challenge it, you’re the one that’s wrong.

Of course, you are all for the truth, that’s what a normal human being is looking for, because we need truth to feel safe in our reality. But the narcissist stands for anything but the truth because he or she can only have the upper hand in the shadows of deceit.

Your head is spinning trying to work out whether or not the narcissist knows they’re lying, or they’re really so disordered that they’re believing their warped version of things. Or maybe, just maybe, you are going crazy and you do have it wrong.

I really want you to know that none of that is important. What is important is understanding that it’s drastically abusive and unhealthy, and the only truth and safety possible is getting away from this person, living your truth, and detoxing them from your life.

 

Number Three – Using Allies Real Or Imagined

The ex-narcissist in my life used to say things like, “I was told that you were seen in the supermarket talking to a man.” And when I would ask him who told him that, because I couldn’t remember doing that, he would declare that he promised this person he would not divulge who it was, and my head was going into overdrive thinking, “Did I say hello to somebody? Maybe this person who thought they saw me saw somebody that they thought was me.”

It didn’t occur to me for a very long time that this was a purposeful fabrication to try to catch me out or justify jealous, insecure behaviour. At that stage of my life, I believed that if somebody looked you in the eye and told you something, it was truthful.

But with narcissists, that’s not the case at all. All bets are off. They will literally say anything to try to achieve their agenda, and they don’t care if they’re lying. They’re amoral. They know they lie, and they don’t care.

Using allies to make you believe others see you in a certain way or think something about you is all about stripping your credibility, your confidence and your belief in yourself.

A client of mine once told me this horrific gaslighting story. It’s one I’ve never forgotten.

Somebody close to her had died and in her grief ­– she had family members come over to her home that evening for support – she’d had too much to drink, and the narcissist accused her of acting sexually with her cousin. He told her that other family members had left the house disgusted. Because of the lack of food and the grief and the alcohol, she had no recollection, she couldn’t remember.

My client, thank goodness, had started working with Quanta Freedom Healing in our sessions, and she was also working with NARP on herself. She’d been working on detangling her hook so that she could get her power back and leave him. So, she went inside, and she confronted all of that confusion and the shame and the horror of what he’d said, and she let it go and brought in Source.

Then she absolutely stood in her truth. He had not expected her to not buy into that shame attack on her.

She reached out and she contacted the other family members that were present. He was busted. It was all a cruel lie on his behalf. Nobody knew anything about what he’d said. It was a nasty, nasty gaslight to try to punish her because she was getting the attention that he wasn’t and that’s why he lashed out in that disgusting way to try to punish her.

 

Number Four – False Promises / Moving The Goalposts

The thing is narcissists are gaslighting you even at the very beginning of a relationship. It’s just not obvious because it’s nice lies and it’s alluring lies. They’re false promises. They’re telling you what you want to hear, making out that their interests are the same as yours, that your values are aligned and they want in the future the things that you want.

None of this is actually true. The narcissist doesn’t want a future of love together, happiness, cooperation, and partnership with you. These things actually make a narcissist nauseous because it would mean that they’re like everybody else and their False Self, their ego, feels horrified about that – literally.

What the narcissist really wants is stuff, acclaim, significance, an ego feed, control, the ability to stay separated from you because then they can maintain the upper hand so as to keep devaluing and discarding you to punish you if you don’t serve the False Self sufficiently. That gives them vindication to feel better about themselves and blame you when things go wrong.

The narcissist was always making false promises. When you’ve had enough and you’re ready to break away and walk away, the narcissist may make false promises again, gaslight you again, especially when this is the only way that they can keep you hooked in as narcissistic supply. So, they’re going to dangle the carrot again.

Narcissists also gaslight by changing the rules. They may say, “If you do this, I’ll give you that.” Then they will pull the rug out from underneath you and then blame it on you. It was something that you did or didn’t do that means the rules got changed.

Maybe the promise of the dangling carrot was, “Okay, we’ll have a baby together,” or “We’ll get married,” or “We’ll move house,” or the narcissist will go get a job or the narcissist may stop the affair that they’re having on the side or they’re going to get back together with you or they’ll give you a fair settlement of the property or they’ll let you see the children or they’ll pay you back the money that you gave them …

The truth is this, the narcissist is playing with you. You are the mouse, and they’re the cat. You can’t negotiate fairly with a narcissist.

Many of my clients over the years have wanted to work things out pleasantly with a narcissist. Dangerously and horribly, they found out that trying to do the right thing and lead the way by being the nice person by giving the narcissist what they want and then expecting the right thing to be done in return, has blown up in their face.

Again, a narcissist is amoral. They don’t care about doing the right thing. They don’t want to do the right thing. So you need to understand that when you acquiesce to a narcissist and you play that game of, “If I give you this, you’re going to give me this back,” it’s not going to end the abuse. It actually cements you deeper into the abuse until you’re emptied out. You cannot acquiesce to a terrorist and not get more terrorized. It doesn’t work that way.

Fortunately, many of my clients did the inner work – which is why I’m so passionate about promoting it – and took back their power. They were able to line up powerfully with their own truth and proactively take action to walk it against the narcissist for powerful and real results. They took their lives, their rights, their property, and the custody of their children back.

The biggest takeaway I want you to know with this section is, words mean nothing. It’s not what somebody tells you they’re going to do, it’s their actions that count. The best indication of future behaviour is past behaviour. If you know somebody has been a pathological liar, they’re never to be trusted again. They’re not. So, get everything sealed up in iron-clad writing in any contract that you are ever going to sign with a narcissist.

 

In Conclusion

I hope that this has helped you understand how a narcissist can gaslight you so that you recognize it. I want you to know that the more that you come home to your own healing and making your sovereignty and your truth your whole focus by letting go of what you’ve been trying to get from them and get it directly from yourself and true Source, you’ll see through it really easily and you’ll stop handing your power away to it. I really hope that helps.