!!! Trigger Warning: Emotional abuse and neglect / discussion of childhood trauma !!!
This is a purely informational post. I’m not going into any details of abusive behavior here and am not recounting my personal story. You should be fine. But if you are sensitive to the topic of childhood trauma in general, please make sure you are in a good headspace before going forward.
You can find the list of resources on the very bottom if you want to check them out without reading the rest of this.
me, but cute, with a demon tail and a flower crown because why not? >:D @o3o-nightowl @ardentknight @biexual-phantom @zodiacathena1903 @ghost-maya @perezosblog @idiotic–fangirl @kingdomheartstrash
If you've experienced gaslighting or this is your first time learning about it, you need to read this. This abuse is hard to heal from, but you're not alone, and this little-known info can help.
There Are Distinct Stages
A gaslighter doesn’t simply need to be right. They also need for you to believe that they are right.
In stage one,
you know that they’re being ridiculous, but you argue anyways.
You argue for hours, without resolution. You argue over things that shouldn’t be up for debate – your feelings, your opinions, your experience of the world.
You argue because you need to be right, you need to be understood, or you need to get their approval.
In stage one, you still believe yourself, but you also unwittingly put that belief up for debate.
In stage two,
you consider your gaslighter’s point of view first and try desperately to get them to see your point of view as well.
You continue to engage because you’re afraid of what their perspective of you says about you.
Winning the argument now has one objective : proving that you’re still good, kind, and worthwhile.
In stage three,
when you’re hurt, you first ask, “What’s wrong with me?”
You consider their point of view as normal. You start to lose your ability to make your own judgements. You become consumed with understanding them and seeing their perspective. You live with and obsess over every criticism, trying to solve it.
Looking back, I see that I was deep in stage two when I left the relationship. However, I continued to try to have a friendship with him for months after. I longed for resolution, understanding, and forgiveness.
And when I finally went no contact, instead of healing, I actually moved into stage three. I didn’t understand, nor did I know how to solve, the gaslighting that I continued to do to myself after the relationship was over.
If I could go back and give myself one piece of advice, it’d be to go no contact immediately for at least a year. And maybe that’s what other might need, too.
It’s really, really hard. It’s hard because it may still feel like that understanding and resolution is right around the corner. It’s hard to let go of that.
But think: You don’t have to yet. Just commit to a year. Because anyone who isn’t abusive won’t punish you for the space you need to heal.
And when I say “no contact,” I mean complete no contact.
Distance yourself from mutual friends.
Block your gaslighter on social media.
Ask your friends not to give you any new information about them unless it directly pertains to your safety.
Fuck anyone who says you are being unreasonable.
You need this to heal, and you need the space to learn how to stop gaslighting yourself.
This is so important. My bff wanted to be frIends with his toxic ex and it just…made their whole dynamic even more toxic and it started to bubble with hatred and resentment but also an inability to move past it.
Eventually they agreed to no contact, although his ex can’t stop ever checking his account and sometimes sending messages, even years later.
This is painfully accurate. I’ve both experienced and witnessed the results of gaslighting first hand. It’s more common than you probably think. And if it isn’t identified and curbed early, it can and often will destroy lifes. It really does.
Just noticed - thank God - that I wrote “story-telling” instead of “storytelling” in my paper about dialogue systems in video games in the section where I establish that video games are a storytelling medium.
HEY GUYS I’ve updated my commission info with picture examples that are at least A TINY BIT newer than in the last post! Don’t be surprised if I redo this every other month…
i never realized how much i hate modern art until i took a class in modern art
it’s so pretentious. like half of the pieces we’ve looked at have been purportedly commenting on elitism in art and income disparities when the piece itself sold for thousands of dollars to be put in a museum for rich people to look at. you’re supposed to look at barren canvases with vague splotches of color and meditate on the nature of life, navelgazing for an hour. bitch I can do that in my own home for free. most of the time the pieces themselves don’t require any skill, it’s just an asshole with some bright idea that ~~~no one has ever thought of before~~~ (which is bullshit, originality is a myth) and the gall to pretend that they’re saying something meaningful. A bunch of postmodernists specialize in literal plagiarism but with a different title. wow so edgy. really thought provoking. you sure are making a statement that’s relevant and people care about.
the most egregious example is this bullshit:
this is an overhead view of a plaza wherein some famous guy was commissioned to design a public art piece for. The brick and nonfunctional fountain was already there. The sculpture? a literal wall of iron bisecting the courtyard. this guy was paid over 100k to design this.
Now, this is located in a city, smack dab in the middle of a bunch of office buildings. Workers who had to spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week doing menial desk jobs had to look at this ugly piece of shit. You want to have a nice picnic during lunch break with your work buddies? tough shit. You get tilted arc instead fucko. You can’t see from one end of the courtyard to another because some dick thought rebar sheet metal was more important. It also impeded movement between the buildings so that you have to go around this fucking obstacle instead of just fucking walking from one side to the other.
So yeah, these workers got pissed, because you’re making an ugly place even uglier for obscene amounts of money without thinking about the ppl who actually have to look at it every day (who had no say in the design). There have been countless studies done on stress and related health problems in office workers and having to look at ugly as sin shit like this piece of work actually contributes to stress and decreases mental and physical health (as opposed to pretty scenery or plants etc).
When the designer was told what people thought of his masterpiece, he threw an absolute shitfit. “art doesn’t have to be pretty”, he said. “art isn’t for the public”.
while it is absolutely true that art doesn’t have to be aesthetically pleasing to be meaningful or relevant, putting this fucking monstrosity in a place where people are forced to look at it day in day out, in addition to the ugly buildings and streets and shit that comprises the rest of their lives is just kind of a dick move. Yes, people are painfully aware that life and art and all that shit isn’t always pretty. they’re the ones who have to live with that fact, not some pompous asshole who thinks he’s god’s gift to man because he put some metal wall in a plaza.
And yeah, not all art is for the public. Art can be self-expression or just for your own enjoyment. But if you are being commissioned by the state, paid hundereds of thousands of tax dollars to make a PUBLIC art piece, yeah, it’s for the public! saying that other people have no say in what that public art piece looks like, implying that if other people don’t like your art that they just Don’t Understand True Art TM, is this hugely egotistical self-masturbatory elitism that puts the artist above the working people (when like the whole point of art is supposed to be disrupting this kind of bullshit thinking).
But that’s not even the best part. This fucking douchebag, upon being told that people don’t want this metal wall in their courtyard and that they want him to move it, freaks the FUCK out about how he “designed it just for this space and taking it out of its context would destroy it”. Which like, yeah context is important when understanding the meaning of a piece. but literally the only meaning of this piece was “i got paid obscene amounts of money and im gonna use it to make the ugliest thing i can think of literally just because”. If you move it out of the context of the plaza it wouldn’t be impeding foot traffic or being an eyesore to the workers who are forced to spend their days there, which is destroying the purpose of the work. So in the end this guy opts to have the piece destroyed rather than moved because he can’t stand to have his ~~~high art~~~ removed from its PurposeTM which is to be unpleasant. i dont give a single goddamn fuck about ‘advancing sculpture’ or whatever the fuck, if it’s causing people stress on top of their already stressful lives just because you thought it would be great to create this atrocity in a place where no one can escape from, you’re not ‘advancing’ anything, you’re just being a dick.
So now the space has been converted to a rather plesant little oasis with plants and lots of benches.
anyways thats my dissertation on how much i hate contemporary art and find it to lack relevance or meaning to the people it supposedly represents or defends. it takes itself too seriously and imposes arbitrary and hypocritical statements on the nature of art at the expense of any real substance. in the world we live in, pretty things for the sake of being pretty, having stories that are entertaining and engaging and relatable, having fun and feeling good in a world that devalues those things, etc. are far more impactful and radical than anything sitting in a museum created by some millionaire who jacks off to their “fine art”. thanks for coming to my ted talk have a good night
You know the joke in Men at Arms about the billiard balls? They’re made of “elephantless ivory” by the alchemists, but they have a nasty habit of exploding when used.
This was an actually real-world thing.
Owing to the high price of ivory (and, y’know, the over-hunting of elephants to the brink of extinction), in 1869 a billiards supply manufacturer offered $10,000 to whoever could make a synthetic ball that met the same specifications as ivory. A guy named John Wesley Hyatt came up with a nitrocellulose ball – nitrocellulose being both the basis of celluloid film and certain kinds of rocket fuel. Hyatt’s balls were extremely flammable, and even hitting them together too hard could cause a small explosion that sounded like a gunshot.
(Yes, in hindsight, that sentence was hilarious.)
So Discworld’s exploding alchemical billiard balls had a Roundworld equivalent, albeit not as dramatic. God damn it, Pterry.
“Oh yeah, every time that dad forgets mom is dead, we head to the cemetery so he can see her gravestone.”
WHAT. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of this awful story. Stop taking people with dementia to the cemetery. Seriously. I cringe every single time someone tells me about their “plan” to remind a loved one that their loved one is dead.
I also hear this a lot: “I keep reminding mom that her sister is dead, and sometimes she recalls it once I’ve said it.” That’s still not a good thing. Why are we trying to force people to remember that their loved ones have passed away?
If your loved one with dementia has lost track of their timeline, and forgotten that a loved one is dead, don’t remind them. What’s the point of reintroducing that kind of pain? Here’s the thing: they will forget again, and they will ask again. You’re never, ever, ever, going to “convince” them of something permanently.
Instead, do this:
“Dad, where do you think mom is?”
When he tells you the answer, repeat that answer to him and assert that it sounds correct. For example, if he says, “I think mom is at work,” say, “Yes, that sounds right, I think she must be at work.” If he says, “I think she passed away,” say, “Yes, she passed away.”
People like the answer that they gave you. Also, it takes you off the hook to “come up with something” that satisfies them. Then, twenty minutes later, when they ask where mom is, repeat what they originally told you.
I support this sentiment. Repeatedly reminding someone with faulty memory that a loved one has died isn’t a kindness, it’s a cruelty. They have to relieve the loss every time, even if they don’t remember the grief 15 minutes later.
In other words, don’t try to impose your timeline on them in order to make yourself feel better. Correcting an afflicted dementia patient will not cure them. They won’t magically return to your ‘real world’. No matter how much you might want them to.
It’s a kindness of old age, forgetting. Life can be very painful. Don’t be the one ripping off the bandage every single time.
I used to work as a companion in a nursing home where one of the patients was CONVINCED I was her sister, who’d died 40 years earlier. And every time one of the nurses said “that’s not Janet, Janet is dead, Alice, remember?” Alice would start sobbing.
So finally one day Alice did the whole “JANET IS HERE” and this nurse rather nastily went “Janet is dead” and before it could go any further I said “excuse me??? How dare you say something so horrible to my sister?”
The nurse was pissed, because I was “feeding Alice’s delusions.” Alice didn’t have delusions. Alice had Alzheimer’s.
But I made sure it went into Alice’s chart that she responded positively to being allowed to believe I was Janet. And from that point forward, only my specific patient referred to me as “Nina” in front of Alice—everyone else called me Janet, and when Alice said my name wasn’t Nina I just said “oh, it’s a nickname, that’s all.” It kept her calm and happy and not sobbing every time she saw me.
It costs zero dollars (and maybe a little bit of fast thinking) to not be an asshole to someone with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Be kind.
