Gaslighting - What Does it Really Mean? All About Women and Gaslighting

"Gaslighting" has been ubiquitous in common language recently, but it is often misused from its original meaning. True gaslighting is a form of a emotional abuse...what do you within one of these relationships? Listen to learn about the origins and uses, how gaslighting is encountered in the medical community, red flags to identify gaslighting, and how to cope with gaslighting in a relationship or work environment.  https://bit.ly/4d1aUhJ

#gaslighting #emotionalabuse #trauma #hysteria #manipulation #disenfranchisement #gaslit #grief #poetry #birds #eagles #wildlife #condensedmilk #dulcedeleche #everyonedies #everydayisagift #oprah #women #mindfulness #deathpositive

In This Episode:

• 06:18 – Surviving the Storm – Eagles, Grief and Survival
• 09:12 – Eagle Brand Condensed Milk, and Recipe of the Week
• 12:03 – What Does Gaslighting Really Mean, and What to Do About It?
• 33:38 – Poetry by Jessica Jocelyn – a Characterization of Grief

Transcript

Gaslighting-what-does-it-really-mean-all-about-women-and-gaslighting

This podcast does not provide medical nor legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. Hello, and welcome to Everyone Dies, the podcast where we talk about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement.

I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I used my experience from working as a nurse for 46 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast. We are both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions.

Welcome to this week's show. Please relax, get yourself some cold tea and cake, and thank you for spending the next hour with Charlie and me as we talk about what gaslighting is and how it affects women and their health care. Like the BBC, we see our shows offering entertainment, enlightenment, and education, and divide that into three halves to address each one of these goals.

Our main topic is in the second half, so feel free to fast forward to that patter-free zone. In the first half, Charlie has a story about loss following a June storm. In the second half, I'm going to talk about gaslighting, and in our third half, Charlie has a poem about grieving from Jessica Joslin.

So Charlie, how is it in the Big Apple? Well, I took a bite of it recently, and I don't know, there are just so many tourists here. And I know that's great for the economy, but there are just so many tourists here. Even in the summer? I'm never a fan of New York City in the summer.

Oh, yeah, I mean, year-round now. Yeah, I mean, New York has really bounced back from the pandemic. Yeah, and also just in places where people are not known as tourist attractions, but people are just going all over to just check out parts of Brooklyn, Queens, up in the Bronx, just places where people had traditionally, tourists, had not gone to.

So what brought on that change, do you think? I'm sorry, what? What brought on that change, do you think? Something about having an experience, I think. You want to experience something new. But in, for example, in Times Square, I mean, there are, I forgot how many daily, but I mean, well over 100,000 people on Times Square, but daily.

And Times Square, when I say there's nothing there, it's, well, there's nothing there. I mean, it is the center of Broadway. Yeah, it's not all, it's not old New York.

Like I go there and it just annoys me what they've done to it. Yes, and I know there's always been, you know, billboards and stuff like that. But now it's just like commercial city.

Every billboard is hawking something. And I mean, there are lots of, you know, restaurants and things like that, but restaurants that are, you know, chain restaurants. I don't know, people just seem to go flock there.

And again, other places as well, just to have that quote experience of it. But I don't see anything there to experience. You could go to Vegas and see the M&M store.

You don't have to go to Times Square. Well, there is an M&M store on Times Square. No, that's what I'm saying.

You don't have to go to Times Square to see that. You can go anywhere to see that. Like what happened to the things that were just unique to New York City? Oh, yeah, those are disappearing.

Yeah, you're right. They're either gone or disappearing. So a place like Rockefeller Center became, was just simply this astonishing building for business.

And then at the time, also for radio and then television. But that's what it was. It was just a place to work, but it was a spectacular place to work.

Now it's an event and year rounds and Christmas. Oh, no, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting somebody at Christmas. It's just, I just, I just don't go there anymore.

Yeah. Last time I was in New York and we stayed in Times Square area. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, right. Yeah. I just bitched the whole time.

Poor David. It's like, you know, like, where's the strip clubs? And the bad Greek food. It's like, it was just so sanitary.

Yeah, there's. So multiply that by three. There we are.

Multiply that by three. Yeah. So basically the area from Fifth Avenue to about roughly Eighth Avenue.

Just. Of course, the Rum House is still there, which dates back to the 1930s. And of course, Sardi's is still there, which dates back to the 1930s.

So, I mean, there is still little small little places. Oh, and Jimmy's Corner, the last dive bar in the area. Yeah.

But then, of course, they're always packed. So. For our first half.

Folks, do you have a bird cam? Me neither. But I hear it is quite the past time for people to watch birds feather their nests with very little time to rest. See the eggs laid, the babies hatch, and take their first flight.

But there is a darker side to this past time that involves the violent spring weather we have had. And that is the nests or babies or both being ripped from their trees and tossed to the ground. We have some videos in our resources that you can watch of this, but they are not for the faint of heart.

The most current storm related bird devastation storm story comes from Dallas. Three years ago, a pair of mating bald eagles moved into White Rock Lake in East Dallas. They built a nest and laid their eggs only to have a storm blow both the nest and the eggs away.

In 2023, the couple shopped for a new location to build their nest, but never laid eggs. In 2024, they found a new nesting site, laid eggs, and hatched two eaglets that were a week or two away from being able to fly on their own, when in early June, a storm struck. The nest and the eaglets were flung to the ground while their parents were out hunting for food.

The people in the area had been watching the eagles for three years and rejoiced when the babies were born. They named the parents Nick and Nora, after the husband and wife detective characters in the 1934 film, The Thin Man. The community chronicled their lives and grieved when the babies were taken by the storm.

They watched as Nick and Nora spent the days following the storm circling and searching and squawking for their offspring. Earlier in the week, Scott Merrill, a retired medical doctor, came to the nesting area to capture photographs of the mourning eagle parents. The images show one of the eagles squawking into the sky with its head tilted back in a pose that seemed to capture the bird's desperation.

Immediately after the storm, community members searched for the eaglets and found one shivering and soaked from the rain, but seemingly not severely injured, even eating a fish it had caught in the floodwaters. It was taken to a rehab facility and within days returned to the area for Nick and Nora to care for it. The other eaglet has never been found.

So in honor of Nick and Nora, our recipe this week is made from Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk. Great segue. Thanks.

You know how many things you could make with Eagle Brand. Let's see. There is actually no, I know.

But I have heard you can boil the can to make caramel. My mom used to do that. Really? Yes.

Oh, yeah. It was great. It was a treat for my sister and I. We were little kids and my mother knew just how much time the can needed in a pot of boiling water.

It's when I got older and I realized what she had done. I think I asked her, how did how did you know when to take it out so the thing would not explode? She didn't know, but she just knew when to do it. And wow, that that taste that both my sister and I have tried to do it on our own.

We just never have the timing right. Mom just knew when to take that damn can out and that that taste, that flavor, that caramel. Wow.

Yep. Yeah. Oh, dear.

So this week. So your mom, your mom was very adept at boiling a can. She just knew.

Yes. Not just any can. Yeah, I don't remember her ever sticking any other can in there.

And I don't remember how she even came to that. To to do that. But it was.

Yeah, it really was spectacular. No other caramel like that. Just absolutely great.

Yeah. So all you need is some chocolate chips, a can of Eagle Brand and some heat, and you can make fudge that may put everyone at your next funeral lunch into a sugar coma. Bon Appetit.

Please go to our Web page for this week's recipe of Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk and additional resources for this program. Everyone dies is offered at no cost, but is not cost free to produce. Please contribute what you can.

Your tax deductible gift will go directly to supporting our nonprofit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone. You can also donate at www.everyonedies.org. That's every the number one dies.org. Or at our site on Patreon www.patreon.com and search for everyone dies. Marianne.

Thanks, Charlie. How often do you hear people misusing or overusing words like I'm literally falling apart here? Oh, no, you're not. Or you'd be a puddle on the floor.

Other words like trauma, gaslighting, narcissism and depress when misuse muddy the water is about what we're really talking about. Misuse word that I want to talk about today is gaslighting. This word has become so much a part of our vocabulary that it was the 2022 Miriam Webster word of the year.

Gaslighting, by definition, is a form of emotional abuse in which the gaslighter uses psychological manipulation to undermine the gaslighting, causing the person to question themselves and their reality. It's difficult to recognize and even harder to break free from because it plays into our worst fears of being abandoned. And many of our deepest needs to be understood, appreciated and loved.

The gaslighter needs for control and power in a relationship is a key component of gaslighting, as well as avoiding accountability for their own bad behavior. In gaslighting, the target is left feeling confused or even insane, which was dramatized in the 1944 movie Gaslight starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. People may misuse gaslighting for disagreement.

People don't have to agree with us and we are not gaslighting each other when we don't. Mislabeling and name-calling can break down communication. It can also lead you to think you're in an emotionally abusive relationship when you're not.

Now, women have experienced gaslighting behaviors from their healthcare practitioners since the 18th and 19th century. Women's health concerns are often dismissed as hysteria, a catch-all diagnosis blamed on women's supposed fragile and emotional nature. The first hysterectomy was performed in 1843 in Manchester, England.

The word hysterectomy means surgical excision of the uterus and comes from the Greek hysteria, which means womb, and ectomy means cutting out of. The word is related to Latin hystericus, which was a term for a condition that was believed to cause women to go insane due to the dysfunction of the uterus. Our healthcare practitioners may seem to participate in a form of gaslighting if they don't take our symptoms seriously.

Studies have been conducted regarding women seeking care but encountering health dismissals and minimizations, blaming and shaming, and normalizing of their pain. Known as disenfranchising talk or communicative disenfranchisement, it is the process by which individuals' identities, relationships, and experiences are treated as not real or of value. It's produced and sustained through disenfranchising talk that discredits, silences, and or stereotypes one's identity, relationships, and or experiences, and can result in women feeling like they're crazy, dehumanizes them, and inflicts shame and loss.

Women often will respond to disenfranchising talk with silence. In medical settings, communicative disenfranchisement is sometimes called medical gaslighting, being met with disbelief about your own experiences of your body and mind. It emphasizes the power of a balance characteristic in these interactions where the opinions of medical practitioners are often thought to be more real than the lived experiences of women.

I know from my own experiences that when your symptoms are not easy to pinpoint, that healthcare practitioners can act like what you're saying is not real. For the past two years, I've been in extreme pain in my right ankle, making walking unbearable at times, and the pain persistent. It's been a pain hard to find an exact cause of, leading to trying a wide range of interventions to try to manage it.

I had one practitioner tell me to be patient and that Kevin Duran had to sit out basketball for six months because of an injury. I told him I was trying to walk without pain, not play basketball. I don't respond to disenfranchising talk with silence.

Another used unnecessary roughness to prompt the pain, causing my husband to have to restrain himself in responding to her. Whatever was causing the ankle pain progressed over the last two years, and I have just had my ankle replaced because of extensive osteoarthritis and malplacement of my ankle joint. In other words, without surgery, I was not ever going to walk normally again.

Do I know how to advocate for myself and speak the language of medicine? Yes. And it took over two years to get beyond what was considered conservative and inefficient treatment. Was it because of communicative disenfranchisement or gaslighting? I'd like to think not.

So how might we know that gaslighting may be present in our relationships? And the relationship could be with your spouse, your child, co-worker, friends, or your healthcare practitioner. Check for the following red flags. Feeling confused or crazy in the relationship.

Having trouble walking away from a conversation when this person accuses you of something you didn't do or being someone you're not. Avoid talking about the person with others. Feeling anxious and not enough with the person.

Thinking you're not the same person as when you entered the relationship. If you've been gaslit, you may experience these three noteworthy effects. One, a reduced sense of self with increased uncertainty.

Two, increased guardedness, the feeling like you have to walk on eggshells around the person. Or three, increased mistrust of others. If you're experiencing gaslighting in your life, no matter the source, what do you do? Stern and Brackett in their Washington Post article offers some advice.

They identified three levels of gaslighting as emerging, moderate, and severe gaslighting, along with five factors that contribute to the severity of the gaslighting experience. These are frequency, intensity, extensiveness, intentionality, not all gaslighting is conscious, and the victim's ability to handle adversity. So the first is emerging gaslighting, which often starts slow and may almost be undetectable.

The gaslighter will make occasional critical statements. Things you might hear are, you're too sensitive, or sorry you can't take a joke, you have no sense of humor. You may be accused of being crazy, overly reactive, overly emotional, or overly sensitive, or accused of memory problems or infidelity.

Gaslighters demean and insult their targets by calling them dumb, stupid, selfish, or criticizing their physical appearance. Often victims will perceive these statements as ridiculous or minor annoyances and mostly ignore them. But the seed is planted if a gaslighter persists and triggers self-doubt.

So how do you deal with emerging gaslighting? You could write down a list of things you know to be true. Get support from trusted friends and family. Sharing how it feels to be around the gaslighter can provide grounding perspective.

Tell the gaslighter you don't like the way they speak to you or the way they are twisting things. In moderate gaslighting, the gaslighter's language is more accusatory, frequent, and intense. The gaslighter will bring in what they say is evidence to confirm what they are insisting.

For instance, saying, You're always missing deadlines and blaming it on someone else. Hard to admit you're unreliable, isn't it? You may feel the need to defend yourself and get the gaslighter's approval. You might think about your interactions and wonder, What's happening? Are they right? Maybe I am doing something wrong.

To deal with this is to choose to stop the power struggle or the endless back and forth with the gaslighter. Don't attempt to negotiate. Remember that a gaslighter's permission to walk away is not required.

Phrases such as, We'll have to disagree. I hear you and I don't agree. Or, I know you feel strongly about this, but I'm not going to continue this conversation.

It may help you disengage. If it continues, consider ways to limit or get support to end the relationship. Lastly, there's severe gaslighting.

A gaslighter's attacks feel inescapable in severe gaslighting as the verbal assaults continue. For example, they might say, You never bother to remember anything. You can't seem to hold anything in your head.

You really don't care about your job or our company, do you? Or, You don't know where I was last night. Come on, you're a paranoid wreck, just like your mother. Targets of gaslighting may feel they are no longer the same person as when they entered the relationship.

Any sense of personal decision-making is gone and the gaslighters need to prioritize over their own. You feel as though you've lost yourself. But remember, life doesn't have to be like this.

If the gaslighter cannot be avoided, for example, if they're a colleague or a partner, then limit contact and set clear boundaries. It can be psychologically excruciating to stay with a gaslighter, yet simultaneously painful to think about leaving. While not a cure, adopting a mindfulness practice to cultivate self-compassion can help you navigate severe gaslighting.

And we have quite a few podcasts that do discuss mindfulness for you to listen to. Resist the urge to isolate and pursue opportunities to connect and share feelings with a support system. The perspective of trusted individuals can offer a necessary wake-up call to name what is happening.

No one deserves the soul-destroying effects of extreme gaslighting. Gaslighting is abuse. Do not wait for the moment that finally seems good enough or bad enough to leave.

Call on friends and family for support and healthy connections. And if it's occurring with your healthcare practitioner, you can fire them and find a new one. Gaslighting occurs within relationships that can be characterized by a combination of affectionate and abusive behaviors extended over the course of a relationship.

Gaslighting victimization may be associated with a reduced sense of self, mistrust of others, and sometimes post-traumatic growth, which is establishing healthier boundaries or having a clearer or stronger sense of self. Those who recovered from gaslighting often stress the importance of separation from the gaslighter, prioritization of healthier relationships, and engaging in meaningful and non-embodying activities. And these are, for example, yoga, meditation, sports, and creative hobbies such as writing, journaling, and creating art.

You don't have to be a victim. Charlie, have you ever felt like you were being gaslighted by somebody? Yes, I'd forgotten about this. Yes, it was someone I met, we started going out, and by about the second get-together, just what you were describing, the person started saying that I was exaggerating, that that's not what she meant, do I always do that, and by about the third or fourth date, it was like, yeah, I know I'm not crazy, and the relationship was just off.

And I didn't think about it as gaslighting, but that's exactly what was going on. So very early in the relationship, I just cut it off. I told her just what you were saying, I feel this, you're not listening, you twist things around, and I don't remember exactly what I said, but then as soon as I said whatever it was, she immediately turned that around as it's me.

You know what, I'm not interested in this. And I walked away, and I told her, lose my number. And she contacted me a couple times, and I just did not respond.

But yeah, and especially nowadays, people just fall into that. Why do you think that people do fall into that? I think a lot of it is just the times we live in. I mean, people, especially younger people, let me be specific about this, especially younger people just have grown up on social media, they take on ideas and everything from what other people say instead of turning off the computer and their phones and just going out and experiencing life.

They take their cues from what everyone else says. Whereas people like us who are older, I don't know, we've now had a lifetime of experience, most of it, thankfully, without social media, and just feel more comfortable in our skins. Mo Rocca, you know, we've discussed Mo before with his thing called Mobituaries.

He has now, oh crap, what's it called, a new book out, Rock. Basically, this is about people who, much later in their lives, created a new career for themselves, found something new to do for themselves. And just celebrating that, because we're older, we just take, a lot of people just take more chances.

It's that, we just take more chances, everything's not dependent on what social media has to say. And yeah, I'm just glad I was born in the time of Sinatra. As opposed to the time of cholera? Yeah, or the time when you just can't live without your iPhone or cell phone or whatever the hell people use.

I appreciate it as a tool. It's always great, I can just whip it out. Like, oh yeah, where's that bar that I heard about? And there it is, I can find it.

Or discussing with somebody, we can't remember the Beatles' first album, then I find an iPhone and the internet, very useful. Apart from that, no. And the other thing too, with Gaslight, I don't know if you've noticed this, and I understand everything you're saying about Gaslight, I've also heard people use it as, well you know, I was seeing so-and-so, and I never hear from so-and-so anymore.

This guy or this woman is gaslighting me. And I've said, that's not exactly what it means, but I had to stop saying that, because for people, it's not just everything you describe, but it's also someone who just ignores you. Doesn't return your calls, doesn't return your email, just appears to fall off the map, and you have no idea why.

Isn't that called ghosting? Oh. Yes. Yes.

But I've heard people say gaslighting. No, you're right, you're absolutely right, ghosting. Yes.

Okay, good. Put that off my list. Good.

If I'm using that word incorrectly. You know, the other thing, with the examples you use, for example, one of the things you said was about somebody saying, oh, I'm falling apart. I'm literally falling apart.

Yeah, I don't know, doesn't that become self-fulfilling prophecy, if you say that enough? I mean, I know people love to exaggerate, but with some people, yeah, doesn't it just become self-fulfilling prophecy, and then you start doing that to yourself with no one else's help? I don't know. I don't know. But I think my thing for years has been the language we use matters.

Oh, absolutely. Yes. That's what I'm trying to say.

And you're not literally falling apart. You're not, you know, it's like, let's just say what we mean, and not try to make people figure out what we mean. I think we make things harder.

Yeah. And I have found times, you know, I have said something, and I don't know, later that day, I realized that's not exactly what I meant, and just go back to the person and say, listen, I know I said A, B, and C, I really meant B, C, and D. I mean, yeah, clear the air. Geez, don't keep stuff, you know, bottled up inside.

Okay. It's so complicated. I know, and it really shouldn't be.

I mean, look at our friends, the bald eagles. So, yeah. Sometimes you just have to sit in a tree, throw your head back, and scream.

Yes. And speaking of screaming owls, you know, screaming birds, of course, Flaco. Oh my gosh, you are obsessed with Flaco.

Well, you know, Flaco keeps coming in the news. And folks, Flaco was an owl who escaped from the, was it the Children's Zoo in Central Park? I believe it was the Children's Zoo in Central Park. Escaped.

And just made Central Park its home. And, yeah, basically, you know, Flaco was free, but unfortunately, Central Park on either side is covered by these big glass buildings. And, yeah, Flaco, like, flew into a glass window and died.

And there was somebody, I don't know, was talking about making some sort of memorial for this bird. I just, yeah, it's New York. In our third half, our poem today is by Jessica Jocelyn, a 30-something author of four poetry books, a proud mother, and a nemophilist, which means a lover of the outdoors.

By sharing her lived experiences, she strives to deeply connect with her readers and remind them that they are not in this alone. Jessica's poetry may be hard to hear at times, but it's always healing to read. In the same vein, her past may be dark, but writing serves as her spark of sunlight.

When she isn't storytelling, you can find this free-spirited goth spending quality time with her family that inspire her every day. I have one foot stuck in sadness while the other foot is in the doorway to happiness. Parts of me dance in the sunshine while the other parts drown in the rain.

I am the one in the room who laughs the loudest while the grease stings and pulls me backward. I exist simultaneously, happy and sad, and at any given moment, either one can take over. Don't try to pull me one way or the other because one can't exist without the other.

Don't you think that's a good characterization of grief? And I was thinking not only of grief, but, I'm sorry, unless you're some maniac, no one is, you know, people are not black and white. So, yeah, but even just beyond grief, yeah, yes. When I was in graduate school, one of the first lectures was from this professor who said that graduate school shows you the shades of gray.

And it's so true. Like, with my kids, I see they're still in the black and white mode. Things are or they're not.

And they really haven't started to see the shades of gray. And the older I get, the more shades of gray come into that spectrum. Do you find that? Yes, absolutely.

Yeah. That's another thing I enjoy about getting older. Those shades of gray.

Yeah. It's not black and white. It's shades of gray.

And that's it for this week's episode. Thank you for listening. And stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies.

This is Charlie Navarette. And from the one, the only Groucho Marx, I intend to live forever or die trying. And I'm Marianne Matzo.

We'll see you next week. Remember, every day is a gift. This podcast does not provide medical advice.

All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast.

If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. Everyone Dies does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, practitioners, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned in this podcast. Reliance on any information provided in this podcast by persons appearing on this podcast at the invitation of Everyone Dies or by other members is solely at your own risk.