Lived Experience Forum

[Fredd50]

Thanks for your latest post @Hope4me always great to trade musings :-).

My experience with gaslighting started with my mum .Bless her. My mum is an amazing person but there was a lot of intergenerational trauma in the family that led to difficulties with connecting. I don't like to use the word "dysfunction" because to me (though of course we all get different associations) it feels like a judgement word - the kind of word professionals use to try and imply there is some perfect "functional" way of being and I disagree with that 😉 but I digress.

My mum bless her socks would fly into a rage sometimes and say some rather nasty things. But when trying to speak to her about it she would claim it never happened. Similarly she would strore info I gave her in a time when she was being nice, such as the names of friends, and then use it against me to gain the upper hand in and argument (eg. She would deliberately try to undermine me by claiming a friend had told her some horrible thing about my nature or character when all she had to go on was a name and a quasi-convincing air).

I love my mum, we have finally been able to talk about a lot of this stuff and understand that she was doing what she thought she had to to survive.

As for genes and coping, we all muse through things I suppose. But morally I look at that situation and I know that it would put obscene pressure on anyone and the attempt to claim some people are just born less strong and everyone should be able to cope just doesn't ring true. I have four siblings, every one of them was affected by this and other things that happened in different ways.

It was a complex dynamic of interpersonal relationships, as all things are. I think genes only have as much impact as any starting conditions have. I used to work in a molecular biology lab so genes dont look quite so easy to blame they are a huge library of codes, whose expression gets turned on and off, depending on the presence or absence of other compounds in a cerv, very complex dynamic and interactive way. Each gene codes for a family of polypeptides (protein strings) they don't contain pre-set recipes for complex things like personality and brains - all brains form in concert with the environment, this starts in the womb. 

My siblings and I did react differently to my mum, then she reacted in turn. Other things came into it too like timing or the outside world the stress mum was under the lack of support etc.

But being hurt by what she did wasn't a lack of "coping" it was a natural reaction. We all need love and affection and safety in our important relationships growing up. I stand by it. It would affect anyone. They just get affected and show those effects diffently because no two people ever experience the same thing.

That's how it is with genes and other starting conditions in any species even where they do make a contribution what contribution they make depends on the environment. That was always Darwin's theory. So those people who say "genes made you not cope and the abuse you received doesn't matter" are not acknowledging Darwin. They are seemingly twisting it around to not acknowledge that there might be wonderful characteristics in the person that aren't developing because if the abusive environment.

In my opinion professionals or parents who say this (my mum loved to say it, bless her, whenever I pointed out the effects of our relationship/her behaviour she would retort that I was born horrible) later professionals tried to point to my genes.

In the end I decided that they just had some emotional hurt of their own and were were trying to discount and reframe my experience to suit their agenda. I decided I wasn't going to play their game. The evidence did not stack up and it was rather in favour of my reacting to circumstances in order to survive. And that heartbreak was part of the normal human reaction and far from a sign of "weakness" or "not coping".

Rather it was a period of letting go and reforming, of finding vulnerability and truth towards compassion and healing where previously I had thought I had to "cope" in a dog eat dog world.

I'm pretty good at eating dogs, it turns out, given the right allies and circimcircums. But I try to eat the platforms out from under the meanies rather than just lash out in defence. I'm learning more every day and always will.

But the important thing I realised was that any professional who calls me or anyone else "flawed", "sick", "less able to cope", "dysfunctional" etc, was actually the pot calling the kettle black.

Again, I understand that some people find these things helpful and that's cool. But they aren't for me. 

In my world everyone is both imperfect and perfect. Entirely beautiful, incredible beings capable of great kindness, great cruelty, great insight, great ignorance and everything around or in between.

🙏💜

[IntheZone]

The one defense against pathalogical gaslighters is assumption, assume they are never telling the truth, because even when they are there is a dishonest motive for it if only to disarm you long enough to begin warping your realities with lies. Learn to take pleasure in the knowing. Knowing that anytime they are interacting with you they are trying to create the gaslighting narrative.