Tag Archives: recovery

Gaslighting Recovery: The List

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I have briefly mentioned a few times in this blog that I have been gaslit in the past by my ex-husband. A lot of people have not heard this term before, not even some of the people it actually happens to. A quick Google search says that gaslighting is: to “manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity”. When they put it that way, it sounds insane. Like what kind of person could actually fall for that?

Well, me for one. I went into that relationship a strong, independent, often stubborn woman. I left in a massive depression. I had low self-esteem, emotional issues, trust issues, and an inability to make even the simplest decisions without needing a second opinion. I felt like I lost almost all of my friends along with my favorite hobby. I left that relationship over 5 years ago, but it still affects me today. In working my 4th step in OA, I realized that about half of my grudges were held either against my ex or because of my ex. It has brought the issue back to my mind lately. I joined a gaslighting support group on Facebook. Someone mentioned making a list of all of the things that your gaslighter did so you don’t go back to him. There’s no danger of that for me. But I figured it might be therapeutic for me to make a list of ways my ex used to mess with my mind and the end result.

  • He corrected my manners, often in public. This happened a lot in our early relationship.
  • He told me that I was not behaving like I should, again in public. This also happened a lot in our early relationship.
  • He did things to deliberately make me jealous (like I walked into a party and saw a girl on his lap, for example). He also claimed that he never got jealous.
  • He found ways to make me ashamed for taking joy in whatever made me happy, often the little things. This happened often.
  • He argued with me, told me that things didn’t happen how I remembered them. This happened often.
  • He told me that I would never be good at the things that meant a lot to me.
  • He withheld sex unless it was under circumstances where he would try to bait me with sex instead of going out.
  • I had another blog at the time. He told me how I ended up painting others in a bad light with my wording. He proofread every blog to “help me” prevent this.
  • Just when I was fed up with his shit and contemplated leaving, he would make some grand gesture, apologize, and tell me how much he loved me, couldn’t live without me, etc. This happened several times.
  • I did many things to make him happy. He did very little for me.
  • Whenever I cried, he walked away letting me cry rather than hold me or comfort me in any way.
  • I was bedridden for a few weeks. He wouldn’t even get me a glass of water, much less walk me to the bathroom (which I needed). My mom and sister had to come and help take care of me.
  • He told me the negative things our mutual friends “said” about me.
  • He said mean things to me, then told me he was just kidding. This happened a lot.
  • His actions never matched his words.
  • He rarely kept his promises.
  • He invalidated my emotions.
  • He rarely supported me in anything.
  • He told me I was not attractive to him anymore because I had gained weight (maybe it’s not gaslighting, but it didn’t help matters).
  • He often ignored me when he was home and then told me I was too needy because I wanted to spend time with him.
  • After we split up, he told half of our mutual friends that I cheated on him and the other half that he was concerned about my mental well-being. He seemed to know which ones to tell which.
  • He made me feel unwelcome in a hobby we both enjoyed because when we split up, most of the friends from that hobby believed him and abandoned me.

To the outsider, this might seem like a list of little things. But these “little things” added up a lot — especially after over 7 years together. Also remember that I loved and trusted him to know and do what was best for me. I feel like a sucker now. All of these things resulted in the following long-term problems for me:

  • I don’t react well to being corrected.
  • I second-guess my manners and ability to act correctly in public.
  • I get jealous and now have a fear of being cheated on.
  • I take don’t take joy in the little things anymore. When I do, I tend to keep my pleasure to myself.
  • I get overly bothered and emotional when someone tells me something is not the way I remember it.
  • I got emotional about trying to be good at the things I aspired to. I eventually gave some of them up because the emotions were too much and too embarrassing.
  • I have issues making decisions sometimes. I sometimes call it “chronic indecision”.
  • I had to ask other people to validate my decisions for years. I still have to fight the urge sometimes.
  • When I am fed up with someone’s shit, I just leave and never turn back. It’s not even an option to go back. My brain is now hard-wired to not give second-chances in relationships.
  • I get angry and emotional if I think that my current relationship is lopsided in its affection and in doing things for each other.
  • If someone I am in a relationship with doesn’t comfort me when I am upset, he isn’t worth my time.
  • If I legitimately need help and someone I am in a relationship with doesn’t help me (unless they can’t), he isn’t worth my time.
  • I have serious trust issues about friendships. I also don’t see myself as someone who makes friends easily, but I am unsure if that is due to the gaslighting or not.
  • I “can’t take a joke” now. I don’t appreciate abrasive or mean jokes and get “overly sensitive” about them.
  • I no longer believe people when they say something about themselves.
  • I no longer expect people to keep their promises.
  • I often don’t know what I am feeling because I forget that it’s important
  • I tend not to seek out others for support, even if I really need it.
  • I am overly sensitive about my weight. I also suspect that I was keeping it on to purposely look disgusting to him and keep him away.
  • I am often afraid to ask for time or affection in relationships, even today.
  • I still don’t know who of our mutual friends is actually my friend. I have mostly dropped them all. There are a few I keep in touch with, but I still question their friendship in my mind and hang out with them rarely.
  • I have attempted to return to that hobby multiple times. Each time I feel awkward, emotional, and friend-less, so I have stopped returning. It also doesn’t help that I see him every time. And every time I see him is this pang of emotional rage — at both him for what he did to me and at me for allowing it.

Recovery – 33 Days of Abstinence

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I got started with a new sponsor. She seemed to be very thorough and to-the-point (which I like). She gave me a list of eating behaviors and asked which ones I did. She then gave me a bunch of rules that I needed to follow in addition to abstaining from sugar. I don’t remember all of them because many were non-issues for me. The ones I do remember are: don’t eat standing up, eat slowly, do not do anything else while eating (like play on your phone or watch tv), do not take seconds, do not hide your eating, do not eat in the car, and only weigh yourself once a week. I argued for weighing daily and for our movie night once a week where we share a big bowl of popcorn. She was willing to allow movie night, but not weighing more often than once a week. She did not ask that I provide her with my food ahead of time and seemed to trust that I was following the guidelines, which I was. There was one exception, but I figured it wouldn’t count. I wanted a banana for a snack. However, my son loves bananas and would want one if he saw me eat it. We only allow him one banana a day because they make him constipated and he already had one that day. So I ate a banana while standing and hiding so my son wouldn’t put up a fuss (he’s only one and a half).

With this new sponsor, I was flying through the steps. She had me read each step in the book and then discuss the step with her. There seemed to be some pivotal questions to answer and then I was onto the next step. Today I reached step 3: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”  I knew I would have to deal with this eventually. I prayed and meditated for weeks hoping to find a deity willing to take on me and my recovery. Instead, I was met with silence. I finally decided to use “my-best-and-highest-self” or “Goddess-within-me” as my higher power. I’m glad I did, because when I thought about turning my will and life into the care of an outside deity, I think I would have had a more difficult time doing it. Instead, I could definitely turn my will and life over the best version of myself. Gods know, I am certainly not the best version of myself right now, but she is in there somewhere.

I attended my fourth meeting today. I had even convinced my husband to attend (albeit in the back). He has eating issues but is still convinced he can handle them on his own. Even so, he was curious about what happened at these meetings. He was called out at the beginning of the meeting for not being part of it. The woman who did this was the only sponsor in the room (what a great example). She claimed she was concerned about anonymity (even though this was an open meeting) and told him to go sit in another room. I was annoyed but stayed because I am abstinent for 33 days today and was looking forward to getting my coin for 30 days of abstinence.

The meeting continued with their usual announcements at the beginning, including “children are welcome so long as they are supervised”. My 1.5 year old son was there, giggling, running around and smiling at everyone. He was never an issue before. In fact, I was told to bring him back because he was a sweet boy. Now I am not one of those parents who is deluded in thinking that my terror of a son is a sweet boy. My son did not scream or cry. He didn’t even babble much and when he did it wasn’t that loud. They asked if my husband could look after my son. I said he could for today, but that there were days when I would have to bring him. I brought my son to my husband in the other room who suggested we leave. I agreed with him and started crying because I really felt unwelcome. One woman came out and apologized for the others and begged me not to give up OA because of it. I told her I didn’t intend to, but that I wasn’t going to drive an hour to go to that meeting again either. I was livid. There were no other meetings within an hour drive of me (except for the ones that met when I was at work). I never did get my coin.

I received a phone call from one of the members of the meeting about an hour later. Apparently after I left, they were all discussing how they could have handled it better. They decided to add language at the beginning of the meeting to mention that all who were interested in OA were welcome at the meeting. Unfortunately, they also changed the language at the beginning of the meeting from “all children are welcome if they are supervised” to “all children are welcome, but they must be in a different room from the meeting.” There is no way in hell I’m putting my one and a half year old in another room by himself (or with another child). So basically I can only go when I had child care, meaning my husband would stay at home with him when he could. That also meant that he could not come to meetings with me. I am very angry that this happened. I resent them for the way they treated my family today. I also resent them for changing the rules so I could no longer attend regularly. I am told that the next step is all about resentments, so this next step should be fun.

Recovery – 21 Days of Abstinence

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I have now been abstinent from sugary foods for 21 days now. It has been one hell of a journey so far. For the first two weeks, I was detoxing from all of the sugar. I wanted it. I craved it. Because I couldn’t have it, I overindulged on other foods. I was concerned for a time that it might be another food issue I have, but then after about day 15, I stopped wanting extra foods at meals.

That was around the first time that I managed to make it to an OA (overeaters anonymous) meeting. I had tried a few times, but due to the holidays and meetings that were no longer active, I finally found this meeting (and made sure to call first). It started with the serenity prayer and a bunch of other stuff that was read. It seemed like a ritual, so I guessed it was said every time. The best part was when people shared. One of them mentioned that after the physical detox was over, I would have emotional issues to contend with. She said that all of the feelings and issues that you ate to cover up would now show up and need to be dealt with. I had no idea how right she would be.

For the past week, I was angry, sad, depressed, but most of all I was distracted. My work started to suffer because I was having problems planning my lessons and getting things done that needed doing. It was a struggle, but I think the idea of having made it so far that I didn’t want to start over again helped.

I also had problems with my first sponsor. She wanted me to tell her what I was going to eat each day before I ate it. I really struggled with this for a few reasons. First, there are so many different resources out there with conflicting statements about “good” and “bad” foods, so I found myself in a state of chronic indecision about what to eat. Second, not knowing what to eat, we didn’t end up picking up any foods for me for lunch and so I didn’t have anything to eat, so I never knew what I was going to have. I found out later that this is a common tool for people to tend to overeat in general, but since my issue is with a specific food, it really didn’t apply to my situation. She also wanted me to fill out this checklist every day. I found out later that it was part of the 10th step and I was on step 1. I thought. I wasn’t sure because she sent me these lengthy emails with a ton of reading to do and questions to answer. She contacted me and said I needed to start doing those things on a daily basis (which I really struggled with doing) or she would drop me as a sponsee. She was doubtless doing what she thought was best for me. Some people need the “tough love” approach, but I was doing fine, so I found another temporary sponsor online.