Talk to me about gaslighting. Am I guilty?

[BrightSideOfTheMoon]

My adult child has said I gaslight her. I don't recognise it at all. I am distraught. She wants me to talk to her about it so I need to understand more. I do not want to brush what she says aside.

She is vulnerable. And almost certainly neurotypical. Going through hell.

She hasn't given me any examples that I can give to make this more comprehensible - what she gives me is generalised and abstract.

I am not going to post identifying details on a public forum, but if anyone can help me to understand what might be going on, I would appreciate it.

Gaslighting is something you deliberately do to someone else in order to make the other person think they are going mad.

You couldn't do it without realising it, and even if it were accidental it couldn't be gaslighting, because it wouldn't be done on purpose.

So no, you are not gaslighting her.

If she is in significant distress then I don't think debating the exact technical differences between lying and gaslighting are likely to improve your relationship.

One of the hard truths I have had to learn as a parent of children who are now adult is that there are things I did in fully good intentions that caused them significant upset and problems.

It did, and does upset me, but I'm also aware that while I did the best I could at the time neither justifying my decision or simply apologising is going to help my kids deal with it.

Sometimes what they need is someone to listen.

Yeah, that's just straight-up lying. Gaslighting would be "what chocolate biscuits? there weren't any chocolate biscuits" possibly even "you said you'd given up buying biscuits for Lent"

But what happens in the events leading up to her saying you're gaslighting her?

She has only just started saying this. I don't know what she's referring to.

The example you give with the biscuits isn't gaslighting - it's just straight up lying. Gaslighting is more devious and manipulative than that. It leads the person on the receiving end to question their own judgement.

For example: You checked the biscuit tin and there were five biscuits, enough for the people who are visiting. But when your partner gets the tin out for the visitors. There are only three.
'I thought you checked this.'
'I did.'
'Well you can't have done, because there are only three. You're so bloody useless, you can't even do a simple task.' (with partner having eaten the two and knowing full well they did).

You begin to question what happened. Did you actually check? Were there three all along? You must have got it wrong when you thought there were five. You start to question your judgement and become very anxious.

Later on, partner may follow this up with 'there were five biscuits, I was just testing you to see what you'd do, I can't believe that you were that stupid that you didn't realise.'

You know there was a twenty pound note in your purse, but when you got to the shop it was gone. You ask your partner if they took it. 'No. You must have spent it and forgotten. You're always doing that. You really need to be more careful with money.'

Knowing full well they stole it.

I think the important element is the intent to achieve some kind of advantage by casting doubt on the facts.

When I was gaslit I got to the point that I refused any communication that wasn't in writing because of the endless disputes over what had or hadn't been said, whether vital information had been passed on or not. It's extremely exhausting and debilitating. The worst thing was feeling that my mental health and wellbeing was so completely dispensible to them, as they struggled to be the dominant person in a situation that demanded cooperation.

Well tell her to stop calling you names/accusing you if behaviours if she can't even explain what it is she thinks you're doing

I think invite her to have an open conversation about why she feels unhappy without referring to therapy speak to e accusations of same. Listen to any examples, don't jump to justifying yourself or apportioning blame on her. That can feel manipulative even if it isn't gaslighting proper.

The chocolate biscuit example I would say is plain old lying unless followed by 'no, you ate them. Have you forgotten?' or 'no, we haven't bought biscuits in years' or similar. It's about making the victim question their sanity, not just get away with wrongdoing.

@Waterboatlass I have tried many, many times to talk. It always collapses into anger. But yes, persevere.

I agree about avoiding therapy-speak. I try to avoid that anyway - far too easy to fall into the vocab and intensify everything. Words like 'narc' are bandied about far too easily in my opinion.

I find a lot of young people are using gaslighting incorrectly. It's an extremely abusive behaviour and shouldn't be used lightly.

What I suspect is happening here is different recollections of events. She is remembering a particular event and how she felt and what she thought was happening, however, children can remember events very differently and not understand nuance. It doesn't make their feelings any less valid but it does not make you a gaslighter.

My DC will swear blind their father attended all their school events and even when I say he didn't they have utterly convinced themselves that he did - they have completely false memories. One of my DC who is ND picks up on the slightest tone shift and claims that someone has shouted at them when I was there and saw it (they did not).

I do think the ND thing is significant here. I had no inkling about this until she was well into her 20's and all this started. Then it came up in counselling.

What do you say immediately before? Could you keep a reflection journal with brief jottings and perhaps see a pattern? There may be an unintentional pattern. Conversations can go quickly and especially when emotional can 'drag along' people into shapes they don't intend or want.

She is usually ok for a bit and then explodes. There is obviously something going on, originally a few years back, but now massively amplified by our inability to get to what the real issue is and all the difficult conversations.

There's a big difference from gaslighting someone and disagreeing with them, or not understanding their point of view very clearly.
But I think sometimes people can see a lack of understanding of a situation as 'gaslighting'.
With no examples to go by it's impossible to say if it's true or not.
But definitely talk to her and listen to what she's saying to you.

It sounds as if the conversation that is ok for you as it goes along might not be as ok for her? Could you have a 'safe word' or some code that she could use to point out when pressure is building up, before the explosion? And both stop at that point, maybe reflect together, make a cup of tea or take a time out separately then resume the call?

What things does she keep bringing up and what is your response to them? That could be a clue. Blaming these confrontations on her ND could be another reason she feels you're gaslighting her.

I don't blame her ND at all. I just wonder if that's contributing to her way of seeing things, and if it is, |'d like to understand it better.

She may see it that way though.

As she brings up the same things over and over it seems that she isn't happy with your response to them and they're clearly not resolved. You don't see them as the real issue but maybe they are and you not seeing them as such is why she thinks you are gaslighting.

It's hard to tell without more details but I do hear that a lot of estranged parents ignore their children telling them the problem over and over as they don't see those things as problems or feel that as they have addressed them at some point so their child should move on. Not always easy to overcome unfortunately.

Ok - so I've actually had a very positive response from her regarding the conversations I have had about the possibility of her being ND.

But she is adamant. She is quoting texts at me from books about this sort of thing. And she's saying the intent doesn't matter. Which I fundamentally disagree with!

Gaslighting term is thrown round at the drop of a hat
we can all be guilty of doing something that pisses someone else off and causes a frustrating negative reaction

Then you need to look into why your daughter would bring up the same things over and over again if the weren't the real issue.

@FjordPrefect her ND isn't the issue. It's her assertion that I gaslight her.

As I have no intention of hurting her and she won't give me any examples I am left in confusion.

I've been gaslit in the past as well. One of the side effects of this, that I only worked out after a lot of self reflection and therapy was that I had unconsciously adopted some of the behaviour that I disliked myself.

Could this be what your daughter is meaning? You don't intend to hurt her but you are behaving in ways that do hurt her because you are used to acting in a certain way (quite possibly as a defence mechanism to the way you have been treated in the past) and are doing that without realising this. The result is that she's hurt whether that was your intention or not.

One example that springs to mind is that if someone asks me about something that I perceive as "bad" I always instantly deny it as a reflex because I'm so used to being blamed and am warding off the expected verbal attack. Even if I rationally know that won't now happen

So for example DH will ask if I've seen his keys. I instantly say that of course I haven't and they should be where he left them. I'm expecting him to blame me for not knowing where they are/hiding them (because of past experiences with others, not based on anything he's done), but actually he just wants to find his keys.

But when I actually think about it properly, I realise that I did find his keys when I was tidying up and I moved them onto the coffee table. So I'm certainly not intending to gaslight DH, but when there are a lot of instances like this I can see how it seems like it. And the fact I'm not doing it with malicious intentions doesn't affect how he sees it. And just mentioning this as a single example probably would sound petty. It's the pattern of behaviour that's an issue.