Notes and Gaslighting

I thought I’d get a little more personal with this post and give you a glimpse of my own experience. Part of the emotional predators pattern is to blame everything on those around him. He has mastered the art of gaslighting and making himself look like the brightest star in the room, even if there are only 2 of you present. I found the only way for me to deal with the really tough moments was to begin taking notes (some call this a journal).

If you’ve never heard the term ‘gaslight’ let me share what I have learned. The word is referenced often when describing the behavior of a narcissist and is a ‘go-to’ action they often use on those they have targeted. Once the first ‘honeymoon’ or ‘love bombing’ phase has passed, the narcissist is ready to begin devaluing his target. This is the time he uses all the important information he has learned in the first phase to tear you down and make you look inferior to him. He will steal your best qualities (mimicking them as his own) and use the intimate vulnerabilities that you shared with him against you. He is so calculated and subtle with his tactics, that you leave each conversation/argument thinking that maybe there really IS something wrong with you. Enter the term ‘gaslighting’.

Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines the verb gaslight as, “To attempt to make (someone) believe that he or she is going insane (as by subjecting that person to a series of experiences that have no rational explanation”. This happened to me often and is common in relationships with a narcissist. I can give you an example of an instance of gaslighting that my daughter recently shared with me to paint the picture.

Feeling a need to protect me and unable to process her emotions during the separation, my daughter is just now sharing moments that she had to deal with. A week ago she shared this story:

“One time when we were waiting for you at drop off, dad turned off the car so I couldn’t see what time it was. Remember, it was the time we got there early and he was parked in a different place and turned around so we couldn’t see you coming? I asked him what time it was and he got mad and told me to quit stressing over the time. I knew it was getting late, so I started to worry about you. You’re never late, so I thought maybe something bad happened. So I asked if he would text you. He started yelling at me that he wasn’t going to text you. When I started to get upset, he started recording me with his phone. He acted calm the whole time on the recording and just kept recording me crying. I cried to see what time it was and told him I just wanted to go home. Later, after he stopped the recording, he told me that he was going to show my counselor the video of me getting upset and stressing so much about the time.”

I was also frequently recorded during this same time. He’d start a fight or drop by unannounced holding his phone down by his hip, trying to get the most unflattering but clear angle of his target. Recording our angry outbursts after he instigated a fight was not the only way he would gaslight us into believing that we were the crazy ones. I have thousands of other stories I could tell, many much more covert in nature.

I can’t say that the notes helped me realize that I was not crazy at the time the incident occurred. Emotions would be so heightened from being triggered, that it was always hard to see clearly for days or even months after. However, going back to my notes as I began my healing journey (with minimal exposure to my Ex) really helped me see first hand the patterns and manipulation of the man who labeled ME as ‘crazy’. It also helped me express the feelings that I was not ‘allowed’ to express during arguments with this man.

I stopped writing down my thoughts during the break up for a period of time, so there are many thoughts and emotions that remain only in foggy memories. Did I stop because it was to painful or I just didn’t make the time? Not exactly. One night, my daughter was angry at me and I wasn’t sure why. After talking for awhile, she shared that she was afraid that I was saying bad things about her in my notes. What? Probing further, she told me that her dad had seen the notes I had written about Jane (the neighbor down the street that he had recently began an affair with) and her two daughters. She told me that he was talking about the notes when she was over there today visiting after school. At this time, we were separated but he still had full access to the house.

After bringing up the incident, he acted as though it was his right and I was to blame for documenting such awful thoughts. He twisted the thoughts I had shared into a straight attack on two defenseless children and their mother, who was struggling to get by. I had been noticing things that I wasn’t sure about when I took the notes. He had been agreeing with me at the time, but insisting that there was nothing wrong with what I was seeing (that I was over reacting). Protesting that they were private and never meant to be seen by anyone did nothing. He felt that the violation to my privacy was warranted, and even expressed so in our next couples counseling session. Another example of gaslighting, he used my clear violation of privacy to refocus the blame back to me for thinking and documenting such awful things about an innocent family who were “our daughter’s only friends”.

I stopped taking notes once I learned that he had hacked into my computer, searched it for anything incriminating, found my private notes (not easy to find without a thorough search). and was likely sharing my private thoughts with his entire fleet of flying monkeys. I refused to let him use my notes as a triangulation tool any longer and as further ‘proof’ of the ‘crazy ex who continues to torture him’. Recognizing this man was beginning to show stalker type tendencies, I will admit I might’ve gotten a little paranoid and ‘to careful’, but hitting the pause button on note taking was what I needed to do at the time. This was not long before I took the boldest step I have ever taken by kicking him out for good. Poking the bear meant I’d need help and I’m so blessed to have a strong, loving family who stepped in and helped me ensure that I could regain a peaceful, safe, narcissist free home.

I started taking notes again after my lawyer suggested it was a good idea to document everything. The notes were mostly factual at first, but morphed again to ‘journal format’ as time went on. I’ve found with little interaction with him these days, my note taking has again tapered off….this time for a MUCH better reason.