Autogaslighting: what is it and how does it affect mental health?

Autogaslighting occurs in people who psychologically abuse themselves without realizing it.

The psychological abuse is unseen, but leaves a very deep emotional imprint. The dynamics of psychological abuse can be so intense that it changes the psychology of the victim, making them believe the hurtful comments made to them, such as, for example, that they are worthless or that they are an exaggerator.

There are malicious people who are capable of making you question your emotions, memories and reality. These are people who apply gaslighting, manipulating the minds of their victims in such a way as to change even their memory.

Worse than gaslighting is autogaslighting, which is when that malicious voice is now your own.. Your inner voice discredits you, downplaying the suffering you have endured. You have been put there by those who have mistreated you psychologically, convincing you to doubt your own reality. We discover them below.

The autogaslighting what is it?

In recent years, a relatively new term has been gaining popularity: gaslighting. This refers to a type of psychological abuse, in which a person is manipulated with the aim of making him doubt his own perception, judgment or memory. Some typical phrases used by a "gaslighter" to make his victim doubt himself are: "you're too sensitive", "that never happened", "you're an exaggerator"....

Although gaslighting is usually done to us by a partner, friend or abusive family member, sometimes we ourselves are the ones who engage in this type of psychological abuse. It happens that we we internalize these toxic affirmationsWe are not only the ones who question what we have lived and how we are, but we direct them at ourselves. This is called autogaslighting.

How does it manifest psychologically?

As we were saying, self-gaslighting is produced when one internalizes typical expressions of abuse of the manipulator. Because they have been heard so many times, one comes to believe them and makes them part of one's own thinking.. We assume the harmful and critical stance of our psychological abuser and become gaslighting ourselves.

In these cases, people suffering from self-gaslighting often tell themselves statements such as the following:

• "Maybe it wasn't that big of a deal."
• "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 this way, I'm an exaggerator"
• "I'm making a mountain out of a molehill"
• "I should be over this by now..."
• "If I were stronger I wouldn't feel this way."

As we can see, it's about adopting the abuser's narrative and applying it to oneself.. This causes us to minimize our emotions and self-perception of personal situations, with the purpose of convincing ourselves that a past experience may not have been as traumatic or severe as we remember it. If it becomes a habit, this dynamic of self-gaslighting will make a person completely distrustful of his or her own thoughts. And the worst part is that one is unaware that one is committing it.

This phenomenon is often common in those who have grown up in a very abusive and unempathetic family or environment.. Not having a parent or adult who recognizes and validates the child's own thoughts and emotional states, the person believes from early childhood that the problem is not outside, but is him/herself. The reality is that he or she is being psychologically abused and, it can also happen, physically abused.

The invisible nature of autogaslighting

Despite the fact that it is a concept that has only recently received a name, the truth is that gaslighting and, by extension, autogaslighting, are phenomena that have always occurred. Both forms of psychological abuse are very common, but as they are also of a very invisible nature, they are difficult to identify. of a very invisible nature, difficult to identify without delving into the victim's traumas and mindset, they go largely unnoticed.. It is very easy to question the emotional wounds of others, even though it comes at great cost to the victims and that very questioning is, in one way or another, a form of psychological abuse.

When the victim internalizes the manipulator's position, she begins to question everything bad that happens to her and comes to the point of doubting herself. She may even she may even question whether she really deserves care and good things, she believes that the bad things that happen to her may be deserved or that she deserves them.She believes that the bad things that happen to her may be deserved or that she is simply exaggerating things. She believes that the problem is in herself, that it is her fault.

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 the person who suffers from it. Both people who suffer from gaslighting and those who do it to themselves often suffer from 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 been giving it visibility in recent months but has also shared her own testimony. 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 refused to help her. Even the social worker who intervened when she was a child told her that emotional abuse was not reportable, devaluing her pain.

This phenomenon is so harsh that her symptoms come to be experienced as impostors, causing the person to believe that they are not related to anything "real," nothing tangible, and therefore assume that she should not feel them at all. This phenomenon is very much fueled by the idea that abuse can only be physical, not emotional or psychological, and that if there are no wounds, one has not been abused.. But there are wounds, they will not be seen, but they are there. They are psychological, they are deep, and if left untreated they will remain open for life.

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

Can it 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 the case with autogaslightning. It takes a lot of effort and time to get the victim to stop being his or her own victimizer, to change his or her thinking and to make him or her stop questioning the seriousness of the harm received.

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