Autogaslighting: what it is and how it affects mental health

Psychological abuse is not seen, but it leaves a very deep emotional imprint. The dynamics of psychological abuse can be so intense that they change the psychology of the victim, believing the hurtful comments made to them, such as, for example, that it is worthless or that it is a exaggerated.

There are malicious people who are capable of causing you to question your emotions, memories and reality. They are people who apply gaslighting, manipulating the minds of their victims in such a way that even their memory changes.

Worse than gaslight is Autogaslighting, which is when that malicious voice is now your own. Your inner voice discredits you, downplaying the suffering you have endured. Those who have psychologically abused you have put it there, convincing you to doubt your own reality. We discover them below.

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What is autogaslighting?

In recent years, a relatively new term has become popular: gaslighting. This refers to a type of psychological abuse, in which a person is manipulated in order to make him doubt his own perception, judgment or memory. Some typical phrases that a “gaslighter” uses to make his victim doubt himself are: “you are too sensitive”, “that never happened”, “you are an exaggeration” ...

Although it is usual for gaslighting to be done by an abusive partner, friend or relative, sometimes we are the ones who exercise this type of psychological abuse with ourselves. Happens that we internalize those toxic claims, who question what we have lived and how we are, and we direct them to ourselves. This is called autogaslighting.

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How does it manifest itself psychologically?

As we were saying, autogaslighting occurs when one internalizes typical expressions of abuse from the manipulator. As they have been heard so many times, one comes to believe them and makes them part of their own thinking. We assume the damaging and critical stance of our psychological abuser and gaslight ourselves.

In these cases, people who suffer from autogaslighting often tell themselves affirmations such as the following:

• "Maybe it wasn't that bad"
• "They didn't believe me because I don't deserve to be believed"
• "What I experienced was not a real trauma"
• "I shouldn't feel like this, I'm an exaggeration"
• "I'm making a mountain out of a molehill"
• "I should have been over this by now ..."
• "If I was stronger I wouldn't feel this way"

As we can see, it's about embracing the abuser narrative and applying it to yourself. This makes us minimize our emotions and self-perception of personal situations, with the purpose of convincing us that an experience from the past may not have been as traumatic or serious as the we remember. If it becomes a habit, this dynamic of autogaslighting will make the person completely distrust his own thoughts. And the worst thing is that one is not aware that he is committing it.

This phenomenon it is usually common in those who have grown up in a very abusive and unsympathetic family or environment. By not having a parent or adult who recognizes and validates the child's own thoughts and emotional states small, the person is believing already from his earliest childhood that the problem is not outside, but that it is him herself. The reality is that she is being a victim of psychological abuse and, it can also happen, physical abuse.

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The invisible nature of autogaslighting

Although it is a concept that has received a name recently, the truth is that gaslighting and, by extension, autogaslighting, are phenomena that have always occurred. Both forms of psychological abuse are very common, but since they are also a very invisible nature, difficult to identify if the victim's traumas and way of thinking are not studied in depth, they go very unnoticed. It is very easy to question the emotional wounds of others, even though it comes at great cost for the victims and that questioning itself is, in one way or another, a form of abuse psychological.

When the victim internalizes the position of the manipulator, she begins to question everything bad that happens to her and she reaches the point of doubting herself. Even You may wonder if you are really worthy of care and good thingsHe believes that the bad thing that happens to him may be worth it or that it is simply that he is exaggerating things. She believes that the problem is with herself, that it is her fault.

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Consequences of this phenomenon

Seeing what autogaslighting is, it is not difficult to assume that it can have dire consequences for the self-esteem and mental health of those who suffer from it. Both people who suffer from gaslighting and those who do it to themselves tend to suffer anxiety disorders, depression, personality disorders and, at the very least, self-esteem problems.

One of the people who has best explained what autogaslighting is has been the transpersonal psychologist Ingrid Clayton, who has not only given her visibility in recent months but has also shared her testimony of her. Clayton confesses that she herself suffered from this problem, a consequence of a hard childhood where she was abused by her stepfather and her mother ignored her help. Even the social worker who intervened as a child told her that the emotional abuse was not reportable, devaluing her pain.

This phenomenon is so harsh that its symptoms are experienced as impostors, causing the person to believe that they are not related to anything "real", nothing tangible, and therefore he assumes that he should not feel them in absolute. This phenomenon feeds a lot on the idea that abuse and mistreatment can only be physical, not emotional or psychological and that if there are no injuries, they have not been mistreated. But there are wounds, they will not be seen, but there are. They are psychological, deep, and if left untreated they will remain open for life.

Clayton comments that the psychological abuse suffered by others and continued by oneself can create a division within the mind of the victim. It is as if two people coexisted within the same mind: on the one hand, there is the one who is certain of what happened and who feels a wealth of emotions; but on the other, there is the one that questions the facts, minimizes the emotions and holds the victim responsible for everything.

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It can be overcome?

Psychological abuse requires a lot of therapy to be overcome, especially if one has already internalized the comments of their abusers as is what happens with autogaslightning. It takes a lot of effort and time to get the victim to stop being their own perpetrator, to change their thinking and make them stop doubting the seriousness of the damage received.

People are not capable of changing our past. Those of us who have been mistreated cannot make them disappear from our life history. Fortunately, we can change the way we respond to your memory. Clayton believes that the ideal is to stop recognizing yourself as the problem, not to accept responsibility for the damages that we have done and not doubt their own value or instinct just because in our lives there were people who never they validated. The damage we received was their fault, not ours. The victim is never the culprit.