Bringing Empowerment to Gaslighting: Your Experience is Valid
I hope you had the opportunity to hear the audio-version of last week's email. It's the precursor to today and just a 14-minute listen.
Last week we discussed how gaslighting is the act of invalidating (or disempowering) another person's experience.
This week, we'll bring empowerment back into the fold.
And it's really as simple as embracing the belief that every person's experience (including yours) is valid. Always. No matter the context.
Now, please remember: as long as this email may seem, it's painting 'broad strokes.' Gaslighting happens in so many different contexts and there's no one-size-fits-all solution for them all. The tools I give you will make a HUGE impact on your mental health, but full conflict-resolution requires more depth.
How to: protect YOURSELF against gaslighting:
If someone is invalidating your experience with language like "you're overreacting" or "you don't know what you're talking about" or "that's not true," the most effective way to stay in your power is to remind yourself that your experience is valid.
Your nervous system is activating for a reason. You are reacting to a perceived threat. The threat, itself, may not be real, but it doesn't matter. Your nervous system's reaction IS real. And it's probably reacting to a memory of a threat that was real once, too. Something about the situation you're in is triggering that memory.
The goal is to find safety in the moment. Sometimes it's as simple as saying, "my experience is valid" or "what I'm experiencing is real" or even just stating the fact, "my nervous system is activated."
You're giving yourself permission.
The enemy of big feelings is judgment. Judging whether or not your feelings are acceptable invites shame into your experience. And it is going to inflame your nervous system even more and make everything worse.
When you say things to yourself like, "maybe I am overreacting" or, "omg this person thinks I'm crazy," your body is going to drive itself further into fight, flight, or freeze mode. It's not going to regulate.
But permission and validation are the antidote to shame. So when you say, "I give myself permission to feel this because what I'm feeling is real," you are inviting safety into your experience. You are removing the threat of shame.
Next, express that you care (about you).
What your body is craving when your nervous system is activated is faith that somebody will take care of you. Your body seeks safety. Unfortunately, when someone is brushing you off, it's safe to assume they aren't it.
Best to avoid wasting energy trying to get them to tend to you.
This is where you remind yourself that you are fully capable of tending to your needs.
You don't have to say it out loud, but YOU care about your feelings. YOU trust yourself to take care of you. This doesn't mean you can't count on anybody else, ever—but in this particular experience you're best qualified to care for you.
Your nervous system doesn't care who's going to swoop in to take care of it—it will relax so long that it trusts that someone cares.
Notice what happens in your body when you hear yourself say you care.
Finally, step away from the heat of the moment and use the "I have to process" prompts we talked about a couple weeks back to walk yourself through self-empathy and regulation.
This way, if you have to return to the conversation for some reason, you'll be able to do so from a grounded place because you'll have a logical understanding of what is really going on for you, which will help you stay in a relaxed state.
Standing in your power when someone is invalidating your experience is also known as "holding space" for your experience. They may not value what you're feeling, but YOU do. This allows you to mentally press pause in the middle of conflict and reconnect to the sensation that "I'm safe in my feelings, even if this person doesn't validate them."
to sum it up: 4 steps to empowerment
1. give yourself permission to feel: "my experience is valid"
2. remind yourself that YOU care about your experience: "I care about me and I'm going to tend to this."
3. step away: "I need to process."
4. walk yourself through the processing prompts to self-regulate.
How To: Empower someone else:
When you find yourself wanting to brush off someone else's experience, it's usually because it's too triggering for you. You feel attacked or blamed and once again shame shows up.
So, oddly enough, if someone is approaching you with big feelings and you are not in a position to receive it, you'll actually follow the same basic steps I listed above.
First, give the other person permission to feel. Let them know their experience is valid. You recognize that their nervous system is activated—and that activation is real.
Next, let them know that you CARE about their feelings. As we just talked about, their nervous system just wants to be held. It wants somebody to care and tend to its needs.
Simply saying "hey, your experience is valid and I care about your feelings—I do want you to feel cared about," is going to make a HUGE impact on that person's ability to regulate.
Next, press the "pause" button so you can walk through the processing prompts for self-regulation. Receiving big feelings is triggering, so this will help YOU to ground. That way, if the conversation comes up again, you'll be able to dive in without that itchy "get me out of here" sensation that made you want to brush this person off in the first place.
Unfortunately, in some cases, pausing is where things can get messy. So I'm going to throw in a big ol' disclaimer...
It's not your job to fully regulate someone else's nervous system.
What we're addressing today is simply how to avoid gaslighting. I don't want you to think it's your role to walk everyone in your life through full regulation. It's not.
In most cases, when you give permission and express that you care about the person you're talking to, that's enough to help that person relax and discuss from a more grounded place.
From there it's relatively easy to suggest, "let's press pause on this for a while so I can process what you've just shared with me."
But sometimes, you'll be talking to someone who continues to prod for you to "fix" their feelings. They don't want to press pause and they'll pressure you to keep talking.
You have every right to remind them that while you do care about them, you need time to regulate or else this conversation isn't going to be productive.
If that doesn't work, it's usually an indication of codependency, where they don't feel like they're able to regulate on their own.
This can get really overwhelming if it's a pattern that happens a lot. Depending on the nature of your relationship, it might be worth outsourcing for extra support so this person can learn tools to self-regulate without relying on you. If that's not possible and this person is constantly pushing for you to manage their feelings, you're going to have to decide for yourself whether it's worth carrying that burden or if it makes sense to create an even stronger boundary.
That's the end of my disclaimer.
Let's recap how to empower another person's experience and call it a day:
steps for empowering another: (1) give permission, (2) express that you care, (3) request a pause, (4) self-regulate.
Walking through these steps will ensure that both you and the person you're talking to leave the conversation feeling empowered.
It may not resolve the specific conflict at-hand, but it will set the groundwork for a more calm approach to repair.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you found this email useful, please consider sharing with like-minded friends who are interested in self-connection, expansion, growth, and all sorts of other wellness buzzwords. ;)