Participant 1 (4:04)

Hey, everyone.

Katie (4:05)

Glad to be here and thank you so much for the warm welcome. It feels amazing. So it's incredible to me how long it's taking me to, like, really unpack how deep the gaslighting was in my family, because we definitely present as, like, put together functional, you know, functional alcoholics, functional narcissists. Like.

Participant 2 (4:33)

And.

Katie (4:36)

My parents got divorced when I was 7. And I was so good at being the poster child for, like, the good divorce. Like, I get two Christmases. This is awesome. And no one explicitly told me to do that, but, man, I intuited this marching order is to just be, like, keep up appearances, everything is fine. Like, don't cry about it. And I was in my 30s, like, fully an adult, when I finally bluntly asked my mom why the divorce happened. And she finally told me the truth, which was my dad had had an affair with my stepmom. So seven, mid-30s. I didn't know that the narrative was, oh, they just didn't get along anymore.

Participant 3 (5:29)

And.

Katie (5:29)

And all of a sudden it's like, oh, is that why my, like, covert narcissist stepmother is emotionally abusive to me and, like, hates me and has, like, done everything she can to, like, evict me from my own family? Like, huh, I wonder. I wonder. I wonder if that has anything to do with that. And I'm still just like, I just. When I was in the process of coming to terms with needing to go no contact with my dad, I. After deciding to go no contact with my stepmother, I literally made a fucking outline of all of the proof of the emotional, financial, narcissistic abuse because I didn't fcking believe myself. That it was bad enough, like, a good little type A student, like, had, like, Roman numeral one, like, financial abuse, Roman numeral two, never, ever, ever, ever, ever prioritizing seeing me From Roman numeral 3, withholding relationships with my half siblings and, like, went through and put in fucking date. Like, bitch, like, it happened. It was bad. There's a reason every time you went home, you wanted to fucking throw up. Like, your body knows that this is poison. But I just couldn't believe myself. Fuck. So also, apologies for the swears. I know we do that here, but, like, oh, my God.

Participant 3 (6:51)

So.

Katie (6:52)

Oh, I'm still unlearning it. And especially, oh, my goodness, that, like, confusion about needs hits hard, hard. Because I am in a caregiving profession. I am a very kind of, like, overtly affectionate, loving person. I have, like, 10,000 animals in this house, like, inadvertently trying to be a Disney princess, apparently. And, like, I have such a hard time, especially when I meet new people, knowing how much I can expect love back. Like, knowing how much I can expect any of the immense empathy and compassion I offer back. Because I'm like, oh, am I being, you know, am I doing this contingently? Am I being a narcissist? Basically? It's still so hard for me to know that my needs are reasonable. So, yeah, I'm really grateful to be here. So grateful to join this community. Thank you so much, everyone, for greeting me and letting me share.

Kristen (7:49)

I'm so glad you're here, Katie. That was such a great share and so relatable. And I did a very similar thing when I went no contact, because I didn't believe it, you know, because I compared my husband. He was horribly, horribly abused by his biological father. And so I always compared my experiences to him and was, you know, I know at least that. At least that that didn't happen to me, you know, or my dad told me and my sister growing up, at least I'm not beating the out of you guys like my dad did. Like, yeah, I'm. I'm drinking, but at least I'm not doing this, you know? So, like, there's that gaslighting, like, right there. And going to my mom so many times for help and her telling me, it's not that bad. You just. You're the one starting it. Why can't you just be agreeable? You know, saying things to my sister and she'd be like, no, it's not. He's not that mean. And like, every. A lot of people have shared that daily gaslighting that we receive from our family.

Participant 3 (8:55)

It.

Kristen (8:56)

I mean, you know, speaking for myself, like, my God, it completely brainwashed contributed to the brainwashing, I think. And like I've shared before, I will never forget the day that I realized that I was abused. You know, sitting in that therapy session. And it took several sessions for my therapist to gently kind of make me aware of it. But because I didn't think it was that bad, I told myself that my whole life, you know, and again, we were the perfect billboard family. So playing part of my role. And you drink the Kool Aid and you start. Start to believe, okay, well, maybe I am the bad person. Maybe it is me. And I was looking through these lit, you know, this list that you have. I mean, I hate to say this, but I can relate to every single one. And you know, self gaslighting is something that I really struggle with. And I mean, I feel like it's getting better, but there are still so many sessions where my therapist will have to just be like, kristen, that's bad. Like, that's bad. You know, and it's still hard. It's still hard to accept it. And it makes. Makes me really sad because, like, accepting that is really is like really hard. When you told yourself your whole life that it wasn't that bad, but then when you tell it like, then when you realize it was bad and it was bad, that's really hard. So, yeah, minimizing pain. Did that question my. Your perception? I always, always think that I'm blowing things out of proportion, going back and replaying. God, the amount of. I don't know if other people do this, but the amount of time and energy that I waste on a daily basis of replaying conversations that I've had with somebody or the way that I handled a situation or a text that I send, it's. It's fucking exhausting and it drives me insane. And I mean, I feel like it's gotten better. And I noticed that I do it a little bit less now that I've been no contact with my family because I feel like that was a big part of it because there were so many times when I would say something and it would be twisted and you're like, you know, in your core that you're right, but everyone's telling you that you're not, you know, invalidating the emotions. I feel like that goes into it as well. Blame shifting towards myself. Does that do that all the time writing Abuse is love. I did that a lot in my relationships. Pick terrible partners, even in my marriage. I mean, it's it's so much better because we're both working towards it. But I've talked about it before, you know, and when there, when things are really bad and he was wanting a divorce, I told my therapist, she was trying to get me to realize the emotional and verbal abuse. And I said, well, at least he doesn't hit me. And she was like, well, that bar is pretty low, Kristen. So like again, confusing what love is. Kind of even going back to the topic that we were talking about the other day, but rewriting abuse is love, doubting that intuition. And I definitely gaslight my progress because I get hard on myself that I have hard days and that I can't show up for my kids in the way that I. I need to. And I think that that bleeds into that confusion about needs because I don't know what I want and I don't know if anyone else can relate to this. But I hate when people ask me what do I need or what do I want? Because I don't fucking know. And it's hard and I'm really trying to work on that. But like I hate when my husband asks me what do I want for dinner? Or like where do I want to go for dinner? I'm like, I don't know. It's so much pressure, like just make a decision. But I know that's something that like I need to practice because like it's okay, like I could say a certain meal or restaurant. But you know, again, as I'm talking about this, I'm realizing how it really has just completely become a part of my daily life. You know, a simple thing of asking what I want for what I want for dinner and not knowing and being so overwhelmed by that. So yeah, this is something that I struggle with a lot. And I'm glad that we're talking about this because again, as you all know, I have therapy on Fridays, so. So group is always great about setting up for therapy and this is really great because I need to stop settling for breadcrumbs and ignoring red flags.

Participant 4 (13:29)

So yeah, thank you and definitely relate but I just want to kind of update on what's been going on. Life's been really, really good and I am so grateful for program because of how up my life was before this. Not that it's perfect now, but that it's. It's so much more beautiful than I thought. Even with the conflict and the hard stuff, like all these growth moments that are happening. Last week I wasn't here. I was out two stepping and line Dancing with my boyfriend before we went on this trip up to the mountains with my queer sober, a group that was really cool because I told you guys. We went back in June on our first camping trip and it was this first experience to like sit in on an AA meeting. Like, that was a big deal. So when I came back, I was very much an emotional hangover of like, holy shit. This is like showing my. My family, like not my actual parents, but like my version of what it's like to meet my family of my queer homos that are sober like me that are fucked up and weird and, and cool and great and awesome. But like, just sharing that with someone else was really intimate. And so this was like round two. And I was really hopeful for it and it turned out great. And it was like very Brokeback mountain because I used to ranch and we went horseback riding, like way up in the mountains up to this like lake. That was really cool. And he's like a farm boy from Iowa. So like, it was just very fucking cute. It was real fucking cute. Okay. Got a lot of great pictures and it was very. It felt very me. And I felt like I was getting to share myself. And we not in a overly fantasy kind of way, but talked and dreamed. And here's what fucking could be crazy. Like, what if it could actually work? Like we're like, what if we could have, down the road, way down the road, own a ranch or something and do like events and have queer groups and sober groups and like corporate events and like have a ranch with horses and grow our own crops and food and like have people and do group therapy types. Because that's the kind of stuff that I want to do an update that I'm really trying to not shame myself. I fucked up this semester and I don't have a class to go to this semester. So that's a really hard thing not to feel like I really, I waited too long and I got wait listed and I got bumped out and it just didn't work. So my goal is this semester to really focus on how I'm going to pay for school and get my credits lined up to continue going. So I really like that of taking what I thought was a huge negative of like, I really fucked up and it's all my fault. I'm going to be so behind and everyone's going to think I'm stupid because I just took one class and now I fucked up and I can't even take a second class. Turning it into a growth thing of like, this is all For a reason. I'm learning how to do stuff. I'm learning. I got a promotion at work. I can put my head together. I got my permanent teeth. These are permanent veneers. And I'm really, really, really happy with them. And that's, like, it's been, like, 15 years in the making. And, like, God, it feels really good to be able to smile again. And I can chew gum again, because I couldn't, because my other teeth would pop out when I did that. But they're real, and they're going to last me my lifetime, and I'm going to take care of them. And that feels good to be an adult that can, like, take a problem that I fucked up. Like, I fell in love with a cowboy and started chewing Copenhagen, and that's not good. And you can fuck up your teeth and you can get sober, and then you can figure out how to unfuck up your life, and it's gonna be expensive. But we learned to. To handle these things as they come at us. We learned to tackle these big things that were, like, so overwhelming to me. And we got to go on a trip, and it led to some really great conversations, like, on the trail, and I heard this glimpse my boyfriend's life. He was talking to someone else of, like, yeah, just the family I grew up in. We really didn't show many signs of affection and, like, outward expressions of, like, love and care for each other. And it really helped give me a glimpse of. To, like, when he is able to do that, that it's a big growth moment for him, and I don't have to be in charge of it. I. You know, we're as, like, emotional beings, and I, like, get off on, like, deeper conversations and stuff, but I don't have to control it and manipulate it and, like, make it happen. But I can be a part of these events and these, like, campfire AA meetings where he just gets to hear people in our community that are, like, growing and learning and working on some hard shit. And it was just really beautiful for me to realize that I'm able to be patient and give him space to be like, here's a growth moment. I'm waiting because I feel like I'm kind of ready to say, I love you, but I'm gonna wait until he feels ready for it, because I think that's a bigger growth moment for me, to be able to be like, I can be patient enough to wait for. I don't need it. I am loved in and of myself. I'm loved by my Community. I'm loved by my friends. I don't need the reassurance of like a label. Like we're in love, like we're boyfriends, we're whatever. Like, it's great to have that, but I don't need it to function and survive. Like, I am thriving on my own and getting to experience my life with them. We did have like a hard thing come up two weeks ago that kind of, kind of triggered me with like just a situation that involved drinking that just, you know, when you get triggered and you don't want to be triggered and the more you try not to be triggered, the more you are. And I hated. Something similar kind of happened last night to a lesser degree. But I got, I shut down. I got really quiet and weird and I could tell I was, and he could tell I was, but I couldn't articulate it. And I was able to. He texted me this morning, but like, hey, I just am kind of feeling sad this morning. I knew you were really distant and I don't know what I did wrong. I apologized for like being late to dinner, this, that and the other thing. And I was able to not ideally, but, you know, give like a three paragraph text like we do. But I was able to articulate some of the stuff of being like, it's really hard for me to speak up when I. When my brain tells me that if I speak up I will make this worse. It will be worse if I speak my truth, if I say what actually happened, to say I'm a weirdo and I'm sober. And sometimes when you drink a little bit, it can trigger me and take me back to my like DUI days and really fuck with my head. But that's not a you thing. That's a me thing. And I'm working on it. And I'd like to share that with you. And he responded in a great way that was just like, you can share anything with me. I really appreciate that. I am sorry that happened. Like, let's move forward and that it felt so good, like a burden lifted of I'm able to speak my truth and I am learning to build that and I'm learning that it's a safe person to do that with. And that is just like mind blowing to have that and not get ahead of myself. Like, this is my soulmate. Like, it's going really good and that's enough for today. That is enough for today. That I am taking care of in my life by myself, by my higher power, by my community. And then I get to have this extra relationship, like, this relationship on top of that. Like, it is extra. But I am loved, I am valuable, I'm accepted. I am enough. And that's all things that I learned in this room. So I'm so glad. If you're new, welcome to the shit show. It's fucking really hard, but it's so, so worth it. So thank you all for listening. I super appreciate you.

Participant 1 (20:54)

I don't remember much of anything that I was going to say because I get so engrossed in listening to other people. But I know that we were talking earlier about narcissistic parents and gaslighting, and the thoughts that were coming up at that time were around how it's almost like, vital for a narcissist to gaslight the people around them, because they have to believe that they're projecting a perfect image in all things at all times. And they have to believe that they're right all the time. They have to believe that they knew the information before you did. It's just like, narcissists need to be in control and need to be perfect. And so they project everything out onto those, you know, closest to them. And that's very much my experience with. With a dad who was a malignant narcissist. There was a bit in the reading about pain described as instead of love. I can't remember the exact wording, but the memory that that brought up was a really brief one. I was born in 1970, and my parents were like the straightest, squarest straight arrows you could ever imagine. And years after, some really bad, like, punishment stuff had happened. That's another gaslighting term. When you're beating your child to teach them a lesson, that's not punishment, that's abuse. But I would reiterate the punishment line. And years later, my dad made this statement that you don't understand what it was like. You were born right after the Summer of love with all the hippies, and I had to be hard on you. I had to be strong because you just don't know what the world was like. Like, even at, like, 14, 15, whatever I was, I knew that was like, so don't even try to give me that. Like, I wasn't exposed to hippies and free love. Like, that wasn't gonna happen. But anyway, there's just. There is a need within them that they cannot tolerate being wrong or being out of the loop. So it's always going to be projected onto. And I think the thing that has begun to help me the most in this Work and in recognizing when I'm doing it to myself, is finally getting in touch where my head and my body are kind of in the same plane, you know, where I can start to pick up on when something doesn't feel right in my gut or when something just sets me off. I'm beginning to understand that that's. That's a flag. There's something going on you need to pay attention to. And, you know, those of us who have survived childhood trauma, we're usually very disconnected, brain from body. And that is a real process for us to learn how to get in tune with that. So, sorry for the disjointedness of this, but these are some awesome shares. It's a great topic. Thanks for letting me participate.

Participant 3 (24:11)

So I thought of a couple things as far as as a kid being gaslit, you know, growing up in a home where there was constant chaos and fighting and no one ever talked about it, and it was as if it never happened. Like, I've heard mentioned already. I mean, I can remember and I know I've talked about this before. Being young, I don't know, I don't remember how old I was, but I can remember watching my parents physically fighting and listening to screaming and things being thrown. And I remember, like, seeing all this happening and then probably within like 20 minutes after all of it, watching the two of them hugging each other. And I was probably, I don't know, maybe 10, 11 years old. And I can remember at that time thinking, like, this is really fucked up, like, what just happened? And there was never any apology or acknowledgement or this shouldn't have happened. And I was also thinking, as a couple people were sharing, I saw a therapist. So, you know, I have a therapist now and then. I had a therapist up until a couple years ago that I had had for 10 years. And, you know, I loved my relationship with the therapist. He was great. I trusted him. But when I think about it, like, we talked about things and I almost feel like he gaslit me because he never, like, never once did anything come out of his mouth that I was, like, abused and, like, the words were never said. And I always minimized what happened in my home because I wasn't sexually abused. And, you know, the big T. Although what I. What I live through is a big T. I'm sorry, I live through people physically abusing them, each other, and us every day pretty much. And I still want to call it, like, little T. And it's not. So why would I not have gaslit myself pretty much for my Entire life. And, you know, when I think about it now, I think a lot of it had to do with just not trusting myself, not listening to myself, not not believing myself, because I've always known when it was right or wrong or like, I've always felt the truth. But I spent so much time just not believing myself because I didn't want the truth to be the truth. So, you know, I'll use my first marriage to my kid's dad. Like, I knew from the very beginning that that was just a reliving of my childhood. Being in a relationship with an alcoholic who was an alcoholic. But I just wanted so much to be in a relationship and to be loved. I gaslit myself into believing that it was as good as it was going to get. And then relationships after that. The same thing. Like seeing the writing on the wall. But not just seeing the writing on the wall, because seeing it is up here, but the feeling, the. The. The feeling it inside and just telling myself, I'm overreacting. Nothing's perfect. What are you looking for? What are.

Participant 5 (28:34)

You?

Participant 3 (28:35)

All of the things that I knew deep inside were not that I wasn't being true to myself.

Participant 1 (28:39)

So.

Participant 3 (28:41)

And then I got sober and I was in, you know, 12 years sober and from day one, being told for the most part that my intuition is in overdrive and maybe I shouldn't always trust it or that my first thought is wrong and having to speak to someone before I make any major decisions because I can't trust myself. And all these suggestions that were good for me at the time think because I'm still sober. However, now in retrospect, I think I was continuing to be allowing what my truth and my authenticity to be crushed. Because I think I always. I'm saying I think. I know, I feel, I feel it. I feel when it's right. I feel when it's wrong. And maybe I feel it's wrong and I do it anyway, but it. But I. But it's wrong. Okay, so I'm at a point right now where I really am starting to listen to myself more. And it's not always easy to listen to myself because my go to is to question myself, to look for outside validation. You know, am I crazy? Did I overreact? Let me run this by you. Tell me what you think when in reality, it doesn't matter what you think because you didn't experience what I just experienced. What matters is what I think and how I feel. So I think gauging my feelings on other people's thoughts, opinions, suggestions is Just another form of not being true to myself. And it's just taking me a long time to understand that and to get that. But this doesn't happen overnight. I can tell you that. I feel better today than I felt in such a long time. And I know that this is just from this group doing this work, having some self compassion which I haven't had for myself in my entire life. I'm 63 years old. It's just, I'm just starting to touch the surface of self love and self compassion compassion. And it takes time, it takes time to deprogram myself, if that's the word to use. So thanks for the topic. Thanks for being here, all of you.

Participant 6 (31:43)

I don't, I don't really want to speak but you know, I'm. I'm really trying to stay committed to showing up for myself. So, you know, I've been like on and off this journey and I'm, I'm really slow with my realizations and recognitions of what's going on and why things are the way they are within me. And I had a pretty big unlock this week. So I've been with my wife for 12 years and we do not have hardly any emotional safety between us. And conversations that I fantasize about being normal, healthy conversations are really hard. And we got into this conversation last weekend and the question was, who are the people in your life that you feel like you are your authentic self with? And this is the first time in 12 years we've ever had this type of a question conversation. And it was a really hard conversation. And it was hard for me, I think, because I felt comfortable and confident in myself, to be honest, which is new. And I felt confident and comfortable within myself to be vulnerable and true, which is also new. And one of my answers, and I have a short list, one of my answers is the shit show community. And my wife said to me, those people you've never met. And I really quickly caught myself from gaslighting myself. And I said, yeah, I've never physically met any of them, but I felt really confident in the way that I.

Participant 3 (33:31)

Felt, the way that I feel in.

Participant 6 (33:33)

That this is a place I'm not. I actually just remembered that Andrew is recording this. This isn't like a paid promo ad. It feels like it right now, maybe. But I, I realized that, that that was true and that I wasn't in that split moment when I so quickly could have all could have gone to. Yeah, gosh, isn't that so stupid, Silly. Gosh, I'd never met These people, how could they really know me? Sometimes I show up, sometimes I don't. I'm on the sideline. I'm there. I don't know what am I here, am I not? But it. It. It is true. And for where I am, that's enough for me and a lot for me, and I take a lot of solace in that. And then the other thing I wanted to share, which was another unlock for me this week, was so I was sharing this same conversation with my therapist, and I was saying how I'm coming to this realization, and one of the things I said to my wife was, yeah, I really don't have. It's really hard for me to be vulnerable. I don't trust a lot of people, even my two closest friends. I only would say one of them. Am I really my authentic self with. I play this role in all of these different arenas of my life, and I don't think I'm being fake. This was the other thing that I clarified. I don't feel that I'm being fake, but I'm not. I am always operating in a really guarded fashion. And so I was sharing this with my therapist, and I was sharing it very similarly to how I'm sharing it with you. But I also had this belief that there's something wrong with that there's something wrong with me, that this is how I operate. And the unlock for me was, oh, and if you don't know me, the other side of my story is I'm very, very successful in my career. And I thought that was everything. And then I got to be, like, 40, and I was like, well, this doesn't feel like this is all there should be in life. So my therapist said to me, it makes so much sense based on the relationships that you had with your parents and your brother and what was prioritized and what was not prioritized in your family of origin, that you have operated with this sense of survival and that you are very successful in your career, and yet you don't have any relationships where you're feeling comfortable and safe, to be vulnerable, be authentic, be yourself, be unguarded. And it was that validation that I did need to stop gaslighting myself. And to have that unlock and say, there isn't anything wrong with me. It all makes complete sense. I did what I needed to do. And again, like, I'm very slow with this. I've heard this in this community many times. We do what we need to do to survive, to get by. It's what it's Learned behavior. But for the first time I feel like I arrived at this moment, moment on Wednesday where I said, yes, I did all of that and that's okay. And I, I can start to pack that away. There is nothing wrong with me, but I can really, truly start to choose a different lane and I've got a couple toes in that other lane and it feels safe and okay. And I'm really proud of myself. Paid advertisement has ended.

Participant 2 (36:57)

So gaslighting, that's huge part of my family system. But the example I want to give you is in third grade when I turned nine. My sister was born in March and then in June I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle in Virginia and we're in New York, so it was eight hour drive because I was a bad kid. I had started stealing from Storts because as an elementary school child I walked, I don't know, a quarter of a mile up to the bus stop and right next to the bus stop was Storts got built when I was in like first grade. So it was like this cool thing and I go over there and whatever, you know, candy. It was stupid shit. But they made, made me feel like, like I was such a bad person. And like the comments, I mean I always knew that I had a different dad and I knew that my, my biological father spent time in prison and had a lot of problems. So there was a lot of comments made to me at 9 years old that sticky fingers, just like your father going to end up in jail, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle for the summer. And I loved it. Probably the best summer of my life. They brought me to the beach, they put me in dance class. I, I come from an atheist household and my aunt and uncle put me in like a Sunday school program for kids. And I loved it. I came home with my children's Bible and my parents laughed in my face about it. But that's, that's huge. Gaslighting. Like I held onto that for so long and it was drilled into me all these years like I was a bad person. Like my father who I didn't know, I just knew of. And it's like, no, I was fucking nine. You just had another child, okay? It was already me and my five year old brother who I was mothering already. And like you shipped me away and then got pissed off when I didn't want to come home at the end of the summer. And I was just, I just reconnected with my aunt and we were talking about it, and I told her, like, that was one of my best summers. And she was like, yeah, it was great until we had to send you back. Like, I wish we could have kept you. You would have had a lot better, you know, a very different life. But she congratulated me on my sobriety. And it just like a full circle kind of moment, talking with her about it. And now this gaslighting topic I've been gaslit about a lot.

Participant 5 (39:57)

Hi, everyone. So just like everything that's been read, I relate to most of it, but the one that stand out to me the most was how I would, like, fuse love as something that's conditional. And one scenario I remember was when I had dated an addict and it was my birthday, and it was like we were like in our three months in dating, and he had asked me if it was my birthday, and I asked him, oh, how did you know? And even so I told him. Even when we met, he was like, oh, I saw on Facebook. And I was like, okay, never wish me happy birthday. And so I called him later on that day, never answered. And at the time, I was telling myself, oh, he's probably just really high. Like, he. He's like, that's explainable. That's like a good excuse as to why he hasn't been picking up or even wish me a happy birthday. And then the day goes on, and then I'm like, looking back and I'm like, I've been self abandoning myself, and I've, like, forgiven myself for those moments where I just made excuses for not just him, but people in my life that had treated me very poorly, including my parents. And I've gotten to the point where I've accepted that I won't have the relationship that I want with my mother that most normies would have with their parents. And it's really hard because I think that, like, growing up as a child, you think that you can't live without your parents. But in this case, I actually did live without my parents after not talking to them for a couple years. And then now that they're back in my life, I've been so disorientated. And now I know why I stopped contacting them and why they haven't reached out, and it was for the better. And I used to blame myself for being, like, shunned and being this scrape goat of my family. But if anything, I feel like I've been giving people the advice that I should be giving myself. Like, rejection is. It's redirection, and it's like the trash took itself out. And that's literally what's going on with the people that I used to make excuses for that treated me poorly. And I'm trying my best to own it and be more confident and with, like, decisions I make moving forward and taking control of my life. So I'm really happy to be here.