Your experience in Mormonism wasn't that bad according to many TBMs. Welcome to gaslighting.

Gaslighting. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t say that. I don’t know what you’re talking about. It wasn’t that bad. You’re imagining things. Stop making things up.”....

Result: Her or his gaslighting behavior may cause you to doubt your own sanity. It’s crazymaking behavior that leaves you feeling confused, bewildered, and helpless.

Here are the signs:

1. You are constantly second-guessing yourself

2. You ask yourself, "Am I too sensitive?" a dozen times a day.

3. You often feel confused and even crazy at work.

4. You're always apologizing to your mother, father, boyfriend,, boss.

5. You can't understand why, with so many apparently good things in your life, you aren't happier.

6. You frequently make excuses for your partner's behavior to friends and family.

7. You find yourself withholding information from friends and family so you don't have to explain or make excuses.

8. You know something is terribly wrong, but you can never quite express what it is, even to yourself.

9. You start lying to avoid the put downs and reality twists.

10. You have trouble making simple decisions.

11. You have the sense that you used to be a very different person - more confident, more fun-loving, more relaxed.

12. You feel hopeless and joyless.

13. You feel as though you can't do anything right.

14. You wonder if you are a "good enough" girlfriend/ wife/employee/ friend; daughter.

15. You find yourself withholding information from friends and family so you don't have to explain or make excuses.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-in-relationships/200905/are-you-being-gaslighted

Of course, you will also be told or you'll tell yourself that these are symptoms of a lack of faith brought on by not doing your part right. You may even condemn yourself for having a spirit of contention, and if you believe D&C 82:7, 10 or other church leaders, you even begin to believe that by some action the condemnation for your old sins is again upon your head.

When you go to your Bishop with these concerns, the answer will be that 'the adversary' is trying wear you down, and the only defense is to submerge yourself into the gospel.

Thus the hope becomes a distant speck and you again repeat the cycle of trying to recapture that hope, failing, being counselled that it is all in your head, and around it goes.

The plot is about a husband who manipulates the environment with the purpose of driving his wife crazy. The name comes from the husband dimming the lights which the wife notices but which he maintains she is imagining. It's a kind of dark, psychological drama.

The process of gaslighting is to make the other person think they are going crazy, loosing their mind, by giving false information, and false claims -- manipulating their environment purposely by moving things, blaming them for things that did not happen, etc. so they will doubt their memory,sanity, perspective etc. The point is to disorient the victim.

It later became a term for a specific kind of psychological cruel trick of abuse.

At no time have I ever experienced anything even close to this, and I don't know anyone who has.

PS: If you've seen the movie, and I have, you can easily see that the psychological field has expanded the meaning of gaslighting to something very different.

When I say I never experienced gaslighting or know anyone who has I am referring to how it is used in the movie.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2011 12:31PM by SusieQ#1.

That woman is a master at it. I doubt it's a calculated thing with her, at least she doesn't dim the lights. She does alter reality in her mind though. She changes past conversations and agreements, she will agree to something then do the opposite and somehow forgets about the previous agreement. If you call her on it she gets very defensive and acts all scandalized.

You beat me to it. I was going to say you've never seen it? Look in the mirror woman!

+1

PS: If you've seen the movie, and I have, you can
> easily see that the psychological field has
> expanded the meaning of gaslighting to something
> very different.
>
> When I say I never experienced gaslighting or know
> anyone who has I am referring to how it is used in
> the movie.

PS#2
I would guess that only a few people that post here have seen the movie.

I am a purist. I am not impressed by how the psychological field, decades later, expanded the meaning of the plot in the movie Gas Light and called it "gaslighting". I shake my head at how they come up with their definition.
Their list only slightly hits on a few of the ideas in the movie, and seems to miss the point of how and why it is done.
That's my opinion! :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2011 12:48PM by SusieQ#1.

"The process of gaslighting is to make the other person think they are going crazy, loosing their mind, by giving false information, and false claims -- manipulating their environment purposely by moving things, blaming them for things that did not happen, etc. so they will doubt their memory,sanity, perspective etc. The point is to disorient the victim."


Keep digging!

They think that they can read your mind and somehow understand you. Most people get over the feeling that they have this power when they get rid of Mormonism. Apparently they didn't.

You are just fine.

A gaslighter or an undercover TBM?

We can't read people's minds, and we don't know their motivations. Why accuse someone of something like this unless you are sure?

Perhaps you just don't like the opinions being presented?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2011 01:52AM by snb.

My husband and I joke about it still in regards to my family, where it's still alive and well, saying "As long as I pretend it didn't happen, it didn't! Case closed."

The problem lies in that I'm the "truth-teller" in my family, and that disrupts the "happy flow of things" (hah! happy for who?)

I could either accept the fantasies and happily eat the bullshit politely with a knife and fork, OR

Jettison all the happy horseshit, move far away and see them for limited periods of time, taking it all with a grain of salt, and enough alcohol to lubricate everything!

SusieQ dearie, really... Your blinders are certainly firmly in place!

I have experienced it from a bully boss at work.
They try to make you think YOU are the crazy one and they are normal, when in fact they are being abusive and horrible.
It happens, Susie, to lots of people.
Not everything is about YOU

I have experienced this and years down the line I wake up every morning what on earth has happened to me. I think there is other material out there that has closer links with the movie but I would vouch for the manipulative, crazy making behaviour and the impacts of this.

In a broader sense, there is a lot of information about emotional/psychological abuse within relationships and many of the features described here are included within the definitions.

You're screwed. ;-)

How interesting. That's something my exhusband would do. He would unscrew lights so you always thought they needed to be replaced. It was often timed so the porch light was not lit at night. Then he would move furniture or nice nacs or personal items. Sometimes I caught him in the act and he would says I was paranoid. This behavior was often a precusor to what I now know as a schitzophrenic episode. After our divorce he would unscrew the porch lights or move plants as history calling card.

Yikes, Taddlywog! Your post gave me the chills (the bad kind).

I think it was in "Helter Skelter" that I read The Manson Family would creep into houses and move their furniture around just to screw with people's minds.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2011 07:55AM by longtimegone.

Me too. Poor guy was loosing his mind. Now I honestly think if we'd stayed my son and I would be one of those murder suicide news stories. I felt so helpless but I couldnt go to my family they were bent on proving how miserable life was without the church.... which meant them too. I was so ashamed of not being enough woman to manage my family. I blamed myself when my husband had crazy out bursts. Skitzo behavior is boarderline normal to what I saw in the church. When I reached out for help I found a loving supportive network of strangers who were very honest about my warped thinking about how to handle/control my first husband.

Loved the movie. Ingrid Bergman was a goddess. And I think it was Angela Lansbury's first.

I experienced this in my former marriage. I started recording all conversations and reviewing them to be sure I wasn't losing my mind when the story kept changing. That worked, and I realized soon what was going on. Soon I got out, and I'm much happier.

I used to have stuff moved on me all the time sometimes out of my reach. It was just one of the behaviours theu used to make me look lke I was just the litlte stupid one in the family. It's how some of my family delbt with things. Now i'm geting told its not so bad just like always. I think it's a lerned behaviour and mormons as with other large organisaions create a kind of pit for it all to go into and brew. People that feel powerless often do this kind of thing to feel they have power. In mormon culture it may be the only way some of these people feel they ahve any pwoer over thair lives to have power over others. Maybe the gaslighter actualy has a mental dissorder.

When you think about it, Mormon so-called theology is something like this.
Member: "We believe XYZ"
TSCC: "No, no, we never said that, it's not true"
Member: "But I was taught that in SS class."
TSCC: "Well, you must have heard it wrong, or the teacher was only giving his opinion, this isn't a teaching of the true church"
Member: "But....but....well, you're probably right and I'm wrong."

Think of GBH in the Time Magazine interview:

Q: ... about that, God the Father was once a man as we were. This is something that Christian writers are always addressing. Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?

Hinckley: I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don't know a lot about it and I don't know that others know a lot about it.

Sort of like moving the knick-knacks around, eh?

That reminds me of a church I wonce attended, and we are supposed to maybe be allowed to walk away for and not talk about in a way taken as offensive or anti.

I agree. When you realise the church is a cult that has lied to you, you are expected to pretend it's perfect so it can do the same thing to other people.

Now, again, to make myself perfectly clear:
1. If you have not seen the movie, you don't have a reference for my points or the points of the movie.
Clearly, this movie is about something specific. It was not what I experienced in the LDS Church.

2. I am not a supporter of how the term has been changed and expanded to mean almost anything.
The lists of definitions in the article are only vaguely close, in some instance, and in others not even close to psychological ploy in the movie. Now people are taking it even further, which is way beyond anything the movie ploy entailed.

And, no, nobody in anyway in the LDS Church ever tried that psychological ploy from the movie on me, or anyone I know.
And, no, I am not impressed by denigrating people.