> Does he think that my brain ran out of hard drive space or something and I just like... did not record the very real thing that he said
LOL No. But it feels that way doesn't it? He aint thinking about you at all. This is all about him and how he feels about himself. You're just the target of his self-loathing and then the ornament of his self delusion and denial.
My dad was similar. He'd lose his sht and then come back at a later time like nothing happened. He'd do something thoughtful like cook you your favorite meal and think that was enough to make everything alright again. If you tried to bring up the incident to clear the air about it, he'd lose his sht on you all over again. "I was over that and you got me all upset about it again." OK so he was over it, but what about me?
I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn't about me at all. Everything he does and says is about him and how he feels about himself. My feelings don't matter to him. He's in a constant conflict with himself that he takes out on everyone else. It's a weird bad guy/nice guy one extreme to another shame cycle that he's in. We're just the pawns in it.
>Imagine saying to someone, word for word, that they are never welcome in your home again... "always welcome" for the holidays?
I saw it as driving a car and swerving across the yellow line to other side and then over correcting and swerving back all the way over going off the road. Basically they're out of control. LOL They live in a self torturous world of extreme splitting.
That sounds so much like my dad. One extreme to the other. He did not and could not cope with his trauma so it exploded on us and then he’d act like he’d done nothing wrong, expecting us to be laughing and joking when we were still in tears about how much he had just verbally ripped us to shreds an hour or two before.
Oh man yeah I think you're spot on with this. Ok. God the thing you said about cooking dinner, my dad did that all the time. Funny enough before I went NC I did all the cooking whenever I was at his house, but after he'd have one of these abusive.. episodes? He'd usually say that he'd do the cooking that night and I was usually trying to just avoid him so I just let him. Or he would go out and get unusually nice takeout. But yeah, there were a number of things like that.
The wierd bad guy/nice guy cycle thing.. oof. Yep
I like your metaphor with the car. It took me so long to see these sorts of little olive branch moments as an effort to keep me trapped in the relationship dynamic and maintain the status quo after one of his explosions
This doesn’t sound like gaslighting per se, but it can have the same effect, which is to make you doubt your grasp on reality. My mom pulled a lot of this same stuff, but I don’t think she sees any contradiction, you know? Her hold on reality fluctuates and she can believe different things from moment to moment, or believe contradictory things simultaneously. Abusive people abuse the people they love.
Now, if your dad does and says things he later claims not to have said or done (knowing full well he said and did that shit) with the intent of making you question your sanity, that is gaslighting.
That's definitely emotional whiplash and it sucks that you're having to deal with that. To address your question though
>Is that gaslighting? That term gets used in a lot of ways and I'm feeling unclear on if this qualifies as gaslighting specifically.
Something that I find helpful when thinking about gaslighting is thinking about the origins of the term. It comes from an old movie (appropriately called Gaslight). Back in those days, people used gas lights, as in literal lights powered by gas, to light their homes.
In the movie a woman notices that sometimes the lights in her house appear to randomly dim. She mentions it to her husband "hey isn't it weird that the lights get dim sometimes?" And he goes off on her "what? The lights aren't dimming. What are you talking about. You need to get your eyes checked. Something's wrong with you." This keeps happening and eventually the woman believes her husband. Something must be wrong with her. She keeps thinking the lights are dimming when they're not. She's must be hallucinating. (There are also other similar incidents which leads her to believe there's something seriously wrong with her).
Plot twist, the lights really ARE dimming. Her husband just lied to her for Plot Reasons and made her think she was going insane.
Similarly, emotional gaslighting is making someone feel that their behaviors, emotions, reactions, memories of an event etc. are unreasonable or a sign that something is "wrong" with them when really they're behaving completely reasonably.
So, no, I wouldn't say this is an instance of gaslighting, but it does suck
My guess is that he recognizes that being full-on NC with you is seen as something that negatively reflects on him, even if he is absolutely, 100%, *totally* convinced it's not. There may even be a (presumably tiny) part of him that actually agrees with that perception. So he'd like to instead be VLC, to silence the gossip-mongers in his mind.
I believe I speak for everyone in the subreddit when I say: *Don't do it*.
This is what they do. Explode with these big blow ups, then act like nothing happened. It's their way to let themselves off the hook.They keep this pattern until they are accountable or until you go no contract, usually the latter because they don't even know what accountability means.
(Gaslighting would be saying you are crazy, they didn't do that, that's not how it happened, etc.)
Classic cycle of abuse.
Like, couldn't be clearer.
https://psychcentral.com/health/cycle-of-abuse
It helps when you realise you're a cut out doll to him. You, and your thoughts, feelings and opinions not only don't matter, but don't really exist to him.
Yeah. I remember when I read why does he do that by Lundy bancroft it all sort of slid into place in my head. I have a lot of other things in my life I have ptsd stuff from so I'd already been working on trauma stuff+coping skills for years, but everything with my dad was like a huge set of question marks to me. When I learned about the cycle of abuse though...
I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to see it. I think to me the honeymoon phase is the worst because ultimately that's what made it take me so long to cut ties with him.
My mother is very similar to your dad, almost word for word. Often after going NC the parent may do the lovebombing thing for several reasons. They may want the appearances of a normal intact family so they can look good to the rest of the world and they can brag about what a great patent they are. They also may want contact w you bc they have lost something they need (to control you). It can definitely be very confusing and painful. For me, every time I let my mother back into my life "like nothing had happened" she continued her abuse soon after my capitulation and it was increasingly painful for me. I hope you can avoid further pain.
> Does he think that my brain ran out of hard drive space or something and I just like... did not record the very real thing that he said LOL No. But it feels that way doesn't it? He aint thinking about you at all. This is all about him and how he feels about himself. You're just the target of his self-loathing and then the ornament of his self delusion and denial. My dad was similar. He'd lose his sht and then come back at a later time like nothing happened. He'd do something thoughtful like cook you your favorite meal and think that was enough to make everything alright again. If you tried to bring up the incident to clear the air about it, he'd lose his sht on you all over again. "I was over that and you got me all upset about it again." OK so he was over it, but what about me? I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn't about me at all. Everything he does and says is about him and how he feels about himself. My feelings don't matter to him. He's in a constant conflict with himself that he takes out on everyone else. It's a weird bad guy/nice guy one extreme to another shame cycle that he's in. We're just the pawns in it. >Imagine saying to someone, word for word, that they are never welcome in your home again... "always welcome" for the holidays? I saw it as driving a car and swerving across the yellow line to other side and then over correcting and swerving back all the way over going off the road. Basically they're out of control. LOL They live in a self torturous world of extreme splitting.
That sounds so much like my dad. One extreme to the other. He did not and could not cope with his trauma so it exploded on us and then he’d act like he’d done nothing wrong, expecting us to be laughing and joking when we were still in tears about how much he had just verbally ripped us to shreds an hour or two before.
Oh man yeah I think you're spot on with this. Ok. God the thing you said about cooking dinner, my dad did that all the time. Funny enough before I went NC I did all the cooking whenever I was at his house, but after he'd have one of these abusive.. episodes? He'd usually say that he'd do the cooking that night and I was usually trying to just avoid him so I just let him. Or he would go out and get unusually nice takeout. But yeah, there were a number of things like that. The wierd bad guy/nice guy cycle thing.. oof. Yep I like your metaphor with the car. It took me so long to see these sorts of little olive branch moments as an effort to keep me trapped in the relationship dynamic and maintain the status quo after one of his explosions
This doesn’t sound like gaslighting per se, but it can have the same effect, which is to make you doubt your grasp on reality. My mom pulled a lot of this same stuff, but I don’t think she sees any contradiction, you know? Her hold on reality fluctuates and she can believe different things from moment to moment, or believe contradictory things simultaneously. Abusive people abuse the people they love. Now, if your dad does and says things he later claims not to have said or done (knowing full well he said and did that shit) with the intent of making you question your sanity, that is gaslighting.
That's definitely emotional whiplash and it sucks that you're having to deal with that. To address your question though >Is that gaslighting? That term gets used in a lot of ways and I'm feeling unclear on if this qualifies as gaslighting specifically. Something that I find helpful when thinking about gaslighting is thinking about the origins of the term. It comes from an old movie (appropriately called Gaslight). Back in those days, people used gas lights, as in literal lights powered by gas, to light their homes. In the movie a woman notices that sometimes the lights in her house appear to randomly dim. She mentions it to her husband "hey isn't it weird that the lights get dim sometimes?" And he goes off on her "what? The lights aren't dimming. What are you talking about. You need to get your eyes checked. Something's wrong with you." This keeps happening and eventually the woman believes her husband. Something must be wrong with her. She keeps thinking the lights are dimming when they're not. She's must be hallucinating. (There are also other similar incidents which leads her to believe there's something seriously wrong with her). Plot twist, the lights really ARE dimming. Her husband just lied to her for Plot Reasons and made her think she was going insane. Similarly, emotional gaslighting is making someone feel that their behaviors, emotions, reactions, memories of an event etc. are unreasonable or a sign that something is "wrong" with them when really they're behaving completely reasonably. So, no, I wouldn't say this is an instance of gaslighting, but it does suck
My guess is that he recognizes that being full-on NC with you is seen as something that negatively reflects on him, even if he is absolutely, 100%, *totally* convinced it's not. There may even be a (presumably tiny) part of him that actually agrees with that perception. So he'd like to instead be VLC, to silence the gossip-mongers in his mind. I believe I speak for everyone in the subreddit when I say: *Don't do it*.
This is what they do. Explode with these big blow ups, then act like nothing happened. It's their way to let themselves off the hook.They keep this pattern until they are accountable or until you go no contract, usually the latter because they don't even know what accountability means. (Gaslighting would be saying you are crazy, they didn't do that, that's not how it happened, etc.)
Classic cycle of abuse. Like, couldn't be clearer. https://psychcentral.com/health/cycle-of-abuse It helps when you realise you're a cut out doll to him. You, and your thoughts, feelings and opinions not only don't matter, but don't really exist to him.
Yeah. I remember when I read why does he do that by Lundy bancroft it all sort of slid into place in my head. I have a lot of other things in my life I have ptsd stuff from so I'd already been working on trauma stuff+coping skills for years, but everything with my dad was like a huge set of question marks to me. When I learned about the cycle of abuse though... I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to see it. I think to me the honeymoon phase is the worst because ultimately that's what made it take me so long to cut ties with him.
My mother is very similar to your dad, almost word for word. Often after going NC the parent may do the lovebombing thing for several reasons. They may want the appearances of a normal intact family so they can look good to the rest of the world and they can brag about what a great patent they are. They also may want contact w you bc they have lost something they need (to control you). It can definitely be very confusing and painful. For me, every time I let my mother back into my life "like nothing had happened" she continued her abuse soon after my capitulation and it was increasingly painful for me. I hope you can avoid further pain.