Gaslighting & ADHD
The popular 1944 film Gaslight brought the insidious behavior known as "gaslighting" into the public consciousness. But what exactly is gaslighting, and what does it have to do with ADHD? We explore this in today's episode of Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
Dr. Deborah Vinall, author of the book Gaslighting: A Step-By-Step Recovery Guide, describes gaslighting as a pattern of behavior where one person systematically undermines another, typically as a means of gaining control. It goes beyond an occasional contradiction to a consistent effort to erode the other's confidence in their own perception of reality.
So, what does this have to do with ADHD? As it turns out, quite a lot. People with ADHD are more vulnerable to gaslighting attempts for several reasons. Their symptoms of inattention, disorganization, and impulsivity are often used by gaslighters as ammunition to undermine their confidence. Being manipulated into questioning one's own memory and perception can then exacerbate ADHD symptoms like confusion, self-doubt, and struggles with focus and recall.
At the same time, some behaviors driven by ADHD, like forgetfulness, tardiness, and fidgeting, can be misconstrued by others as deliberate gaslighting rather than unintentional neurological symptoms. It's important for others to understand ADHD is not an intentional or conscious effort to manipulate.
Many with ADHD have experienced the painful effects of gaslighting. They describe feeling trivialized when their real daily struggles are dismissed as "dramatic" or something "everyone deals with." They feel overgeneralized and defeated when told they "never" follow through or "always" mess up, ignoring their successes. And they feel bewildered and betrayed when facts about their lives or promises made to them are denied outright by gaslighters insisting "that never happened."
The good news is there are effective ways to maintain confidence and counter gaslighting with ADHD. Seeking external validation from professionals, friends, and family who understand the condition can provide reality checks when self-doubt creeps in. Setting boundaries and directly challenging false claims are also important strategies. Ultimately, it comes down to trusting your instincts, focusing on the future, and relying on facts over emotions when it comes to combating gaslighting with ADHD.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright, and right over there is Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Oh, hi, Nikki. Hi. Are you okay?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I feel like this is going to be a heavy topic.
Pete Wright:
No, no.
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
No. I'm sure it won't.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
No, I'm sure you're crazy.
Nikki Kinzer:
How could you say that?
Pete Wright:
Because you crazy.
Nikki Kinzer:
I'm crazy.
Pete Wright:
We are talking about gaslighting today and gaslighting's relationship to ADHD, and this is a really,-
Nikki Kinzer:
And you just called me crazy, which is kind of little,-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that was it. That's part of, I'm leaning into the bit.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay, good.
Pete Wright:
If you don't question your own reality by the end of this show, I'm not doing my job.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I see where you're going with this.
Pete Wright:
So yeah, we're talking about gaslighting and ADHD, and I think it's one of those topics that is problematic. It is something that we as humans do to one another, intentionally or not. And when it is used, when it is used intentionally, it is weaponized. It is psychological abuse. And the challenge that we have is that it exists for people with and without ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
The challenge is that with ADHD, I'll say symptoms of gaslighting can be exacerbated in a really negative and damaging way. And so we're going to talk about trying to figure out a way out of this and how we can build some psychological resilience to the effects of gaslighting in an era where every institution we have seems to be out to gaslight us in some way, shape, or form. Right. So let's see if we can talk our way through this.
Nikki Kinzer:
Sounds good.
Pete Wright:
Before we get started though, happy news. We're going to be happy for just a little bit longer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
You can get to know us a little bit better over at takecontroladhd.com, where we don't talk about gaslighting all the time. You can listen to the show right there on the website, but the best way to do it is to subscribe to the show in one of your favorite podcast apps. You could choose Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or Overcast, or Pocket Casts or YouTube, whatever you want. You can listen to the show in all kinds of different ways, and we encourage you to do that. You could also subscribe to the mailing list, and we'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. Finally, head over to Discord. Our Discord, the ADHD Discord server is awesome, and it's full, just chalk a block with awesome people living with ADHD too, and trying to figure out how to do it a little bit better, a little bit smarter, and you can jump into our free channels over there if you just head to takecontroladhd.com/discord.
Or if the show has ever really touched you and you would like to touch the show back, weird. Head over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. For just a few bucks a month, you can get access to extra super secret channels in Discord. You can watch the live stream of the podcast as it happens with extra stuff. We have the ADHD entertainment clutch at the beginning, that's members only, and we take listener questions at the end that the public feed just does not have. So head over there and patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Lots of great things, depending on what level you sign up to support the show.
And let me just say again, when I say listener supported, I really, really mean that. This show exists because of Patreon. All the other stuff that happens at Take Control ADHD, this show is connected inseparably to Patreon. So if you love this show, if you love the resources we've created over the last, I don't know how many years, 13. Holy cow.
Nikki Kinzer:
Almost 15.
Pete Wright:
Almost 15, yeah. Who's even counting at this point?
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't know. Long time,-
Pete Wright:
It is because of the Patreon that keeps this show afloat. So if you've ever thought about it, we sure appreciate it. The whole team appreciates your participation in the community and your contribution to keeping this show alive. Thank you. Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. And now let's gaslight. Okay, Nikki, we have to talk about the movie. Have you seen the movie Gaslight?
Nikki Kinzer:
No. I didn't even know there was a movie.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Nikki. It's actually a play. It was first a play called Gas Light, two words that was adapted. The play was from 1938, and then it was adapted into a film by director George Cukor in 1944. And it's a classic. It's an Ingrid Bergman film.
Nikki Kinzer:
Ooh.
Pete Wright:
Right. And she's so good.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And Angela Lansbury's 19 in this movie, and she plays a smarmy maid.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, interesting.
Pete Wright:
And so the whole deal with Gaslight, the story of the movie of Gaslight and how this term originated is that Ingrid Bergman's character is an opera singer, and her aunt dies and her aunt was really, really wealthy, and she had this house, and the word is that she hid a bunch of jewels and treasure in the attic of the house. Now, this was in the day when all of the homes were lit with gas lamps, right? So all the fixtures in the walls had gas coming out of them. And when you wanted to turn on your lights in your house, you had to light a match, turn the gas on and light them. And if you wanted them brighter, you turn the gas up to make the lights brighter, turn the gas down or off to turn it off. Right. So there's constantly gas in your house.
So this guy played by Charles Boyer, marries her because he wants the jewels. Every night, he'll go up into the attic and turn on the gaslight up in the attic. And when he turns on the gas light up there, the gas lights where she's sitting, go dim, and she starts saying, "I think there's something wrong. What's going on with the gas lights, they're dimming." And he starts saying, "You're crazy. You're crazy. You're seeing things." And that is the origin of the term to gaslight, is to take the reality and make someone question their own reality through a set of alternative facts.
Nikki Kinzer:
Interesting. I had no idea.
Pete Wright:
News. Right. You didn't know that.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, I didn't. I didn't know that that's where it came from.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's really interesting.
Pete Wright:
And I think it's fascinating because,-
Nikki Kinzer:
It is. It is.
Pete Wright:
I thinks it is a really interesting thing, and it's even more interesting that the term has taken hold, particularly now in our media era.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, it seems really, I mean, I could just be noticing it more now in the last few years with working with ADHD, but it feels like it has more attention to it now. But I don't know, maybe it did back in the 80s. I don't know.
Pete Wright:
No. That's the thing that surprises me so much. And you know what? Realtime research, so the Google Ngram Viewer tells you how popular words are in literature because Google scans books. Right. And so you can search for terms like Sherlock Holmes, and you can see that Sherlock Holmes was popular in 1900, but became very popular in the 2000s, right? Because it just, more and more people are writing about him. So if I do a Google Books Ngram Viewer for gaslight, I can see that it's fascinating. In 1880, it reached its peak of interest. Check this out in the live stream. This is the term gaslight. So you can see here when it came up, actually, the term started being used in the 1800s, likely referring to lights with gas. Right. And then in 1880, reached its peak and then fell, because I imagine this vol is electrification, right? People stopped writing and talking about gas light, and then look at this, after 2000, it comes right back up again and it's on an upward trend. And this is because of social media, the modern media landscape.
Nikki Kinzer:
And the books that you were referencing, and yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Isn't that fascinating?
Nikki Kinzer:
That is interesting.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Wow.
Pete Wright:
So that's the idea of gaslighting, as a psychological sort of, as a tool of psychological manipulation. I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Deborah Vinall, and she wrote the book, Gaslighting: A Step-by-Step Recovery Guide. Now, her perspective is on dealing with gaslighting as a tool used between couples on their way toward divorce, right? It's psychological manipulation. And when you wake up, one of the partners wakes up and says, "Oh my gosh, I've been gaslit." That leads to divorce.
And so her entire practice is devoted to healing from gaslighting or narcissistic abuse and some really horrible things that humans do to one another. But this is what she says, "Gaslighting is a pattern of behavior where one person tries to undermine another, typically motivated by a desire to control. It's not so much about contradicting someone once or twice, but about a consistent pattern that works to undermine the other person's confidence." Right. So I would love you to start thinking about the experience of ADHD and just how much confidence you already have before you start to wonder are you being gaslit by someone or another.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Already shaky ground and then you start looking at some of these things. Now, there are four types of gaslighting as defined by Dr. Vinall. Sadistic, this is somebody who derives pleasure from making others doubt themselves, sadistic gaslighting. We're not generally talking about that. That's a rare bit of maladaptive behavior and it's horrible. So we're going to move on from that. Narcissistic gaslighting. Now, this is a slightly, I don't know, do you want to call it a more gentle form of gaslighting, where it's focused on keeping the attention on themselves, the person performing the gaslighting behavior, and always validating their own narrative.
So this is somebody who, for some reason or another, lack of confidence, poor ego, poor self-image, is constantly using gaslighting manipulation to inflate their own place in the world. And you can see this in a number of celebrities and CEOs and things like that who are, and I think this is where retroactive continuity comes in to retcon a prior story. Retroactive continuity, they talk about it in comics and movies and books where you have a long series where they reach a point where something happens in a present that contradicts something in the past. So you have to rewrite the past essentially. You're reframing the past in order to make today look okay and look rational. And that happens all the time. Once you see the pattern, you kind of can't not see it anymore, particularly in politics.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right. So the third type, so we have sadistic narcissistic, the third type is defensive gaslighting. This is somebody who engages in this behavior as a means to always be right, and typically to protect their own actions. Right. You might see somebody gaslighting at work to say, yeah, no, I totally made that deadline, but my phone,-
Nikki Kinzer:
The computer, there was a glitch in the computer.
Pete Wright:
There was, yeah. The dog ate my computer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Something like that. Right. And then accidental gaslighting, that's our fourth major type. You may not even realize they're doing it because of memory problems or similar issues. Right. They have fractured attention, fractured focus. You don't even know you're doing it and,-
Nikki Kinzer:
I'm guilty of that.
Pete Wright:
It's just, right. This is when I talk about, like you say the word gaslighting, and now it's so inflated because it's such a damaged term. And yet when I say everybody does it, I think this is what everybody does. Right. You don't even know. But our memories suck as humans.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, so bad.
Pete Wright:
Right. And there are stories that we tell ourselves that we start to believe. So I ask the question often, who are you lying to? Are you lying to me or are you lying to yourself? That's gaslighting, right? You can gaslight yourself all the living long day if you believe the story well enough. Right. So I mean, I don't know. Do you want to take a breather and just talk a little bit about how you see some of these behaviors in your work?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, it's interesting because I did a session, or I attended a session at the ADHD conference several years ago about gaslighting. And Stephanie Sericus, Sarkis, Sarkis.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
She has written a book about gaslighting and ADHD as well. And there were just certain things that really grabbed my attention when she was talking about this. And I want to just focus a little bit on the narcissistic one, because she was saying that when someone is a narcissist, you can't cure that. There isn't anything that cures that. So if they're in therapy, it's because they want to blame the other person and they want to prove that they right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. They're looking for a scapegoat.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Or they'll stop therapy and think it's stupid. So that was just a really interesting thing. And one of the things that really, that I carried away from it too is, and I'm sure I'll do this with this show as well, from what you're going to teach us, I went home immediately and talked to my young daughter at the time. And I was like, "You have ADHD. You're a young woman. You need to know that this happens and these are the things you have to be aware of." Because one of the things that Stephanie said that really rings true to me is that when a narcissist gets into a relationship, if you push back, they will end that relationship because they'll know that they can't control you. And so I'm teaching my daughter at the time, this is what gaslighting is, and push back. Push back.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
So.
Pete Wright:
Which is why, and I'll say as an aside, right, you and I talk about recent events and dating life of our children, and I immediately said in that last event, stop doing it because that's gaslighting behavior, what just happened.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
So I mean, I think that is a great sort of behavior to model just because I think talking about it and continuing to talk about it helps you recognize patterns. And we are at our best when we're recognizing patterns as human organisms, so. So let's talk a little bit about the relationship between gaslighting and ADHD. I think as I start doing the research and calling impressions together, people with ADHD are more vulnerable to gaslighting because inattention and disorganization and impulsivity can be used against them by gaslighters to make them doubt themselves.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
And we already doubt ourselves, left and right we doubt ourselves. Right. So it's really important to understand when you are being manipulated like this. Gaslighting can exacerbate ADHD symptoms because when you are manipulated into questioning your own reality and memory, that increases confusion, self-doubt and struggle with focus, right? It's not going to get any better,-
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
When you lose confidence because you're being manipulated in some way, shape or form. On the other hand, ADHD symptoms can be misunderstood and misconstrued as gaslighting, right? If you forget promises that you made or obligations, if you're late because of time blindness, that may falsely appear as intentional manipulation to other people. So it's really important to have a clear line between ADHD behavior and symptom and what others might perceive as manipulation. And I'm sure we've run into that in our conversations over the years.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I'm still really hung up. I'm just really glad that you put the accidental type because that is so what happens, is that it's certainly not intentional. It's not manipulative, it's not being defensive. It really is just truly having a poor working memory or being distracted and not focusing on the right thing at the right time. It's not intentional, and yeah, that's just really interesting. I think it's important that we remember that some of this is very accidental.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, hardwired, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
That's something that's going to take a lot of work to kind of reframe our own wiring about how we relate to the world and information and the way we communicate. So when you think about, I just started thinking about how we might have gaslighting used against us, right, these techniques that exist to erode confidence and trust in our own perceptions and our own memories and our own sense of reality about our ADHD. You'll hear it. I mean, see if you hear some patterns here. Trivializing struggles by saying things like, oh, you're so dramatic or everyone else is dealing with this. You just have to try harder. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
I was just being funny. It was just a joke.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hate that. I hate that one.
Pete Wright:
Those are always to demean the experience of ADHD, to minimize it. Right. Or to make you question whether you have ADHD at all. Right. Those kinds of things, especially when your requests for accommodations are denied for some reason or another. Now, I think you just need to maybe get in a little earlier or maybe just try a little harder, or you really just need to focus, are all different forms.
Nikki Kinzer:
A of justs in there, isn't there?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Just try harder.
Pete Wright:
The next one is overgeneralizing, right? Overgeneralizing someone's mistakes by saying they never follow through. They always screw up, right, totally ignores instances where someone with ADHD has actually succeeded and further exacerbates that condition where we focus on the one negative thing in spite of all of the other successes that we might be having or feeling.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, this is where people are gaslighting themselves,-
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
All the time, is they feel like they're never following through, they're always screwing up, and then they ignore just what you were saying. They ignore the,-
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. That's really interesting.
Pete Wright:
To use someone's ADHD symptoms against them is huge. It's like the greatest of ADHD sins, right, that sort of manipulation. To criticize normal behavior like fidgeting or disorganization as something that is abnormal, right? There are people without ADHD who have never been diagnosed, who fidget, who have leg twitches, who have disorganized offices and,-
Nikki Kinzer:
Who are late.
Pete Wright:
Who are late. Right. There are absolutely individuals like that, but to use that sort of judgment and label it as abnormal is another way of gaslighting someone who's living legitimately with ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
There's one here in this note that you took about denying promises were made or facts that they stated by insisting like, I never said that, or that's not what happened.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that's interesting too because I wonder how often that happens where you swear they said something and they promise something and they're saying they didn't. I can just imagine the conversation that's in your head around that. I know they said it. You wish you had, like check the tape. You wish you had that, right, to go back and say, but you did, you did say it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. It's interesting.
Pete Wright:
It's so hard to do that because, and some of the tricks that people recommend, that professionals recommend to get to the other side of some of these struggles are exactly that, right? You just dropped it. Record it, record everything, right? Take your phone out, assign a little shortcut to voice memos, and when you're in an important conversation that's going to have detail, you say, I'm going to record this conversation because I forget things and I want to make sure I don't forget anything. Or immediately take notes and go back to your computer and write down notes from key meetings and send them to everybody who was in witness of these conversations so that there's a trail, there's a reporting trail. If you find yourself subject to this sort of manipulation, that's one of the key, key objectives to get yourself out of that habit or out of the cycle of manipulation, is to just make sure it's public.
What do we say? Shame hates the sun. If you are feeling that you're in the shame cycle because somebody else is manipulating you, going public with all of your work, and all of your deadlines, and all of the notes that were taken, and having so that even the person who's manipulating you knows out in public that there is a recording of that conversation, that behavior may stop. If you're dealing with a narcissistic gaslighter or a sadistic gaslighter, it won't stop. They'll find new ways to figure it out. And I'm no expert on that side of stuff. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
But I'm glad that you mentioned the work side of it too, because I think that sometimes, for me anyway, when I think of gaslighting, I always think of romantic relationships, which I know that's not the case. These kinds of things can happen in the workplace, and I wonder if they don't happen. I mean, this is just me wondering honestly, like how often they happen because there's more at stake for someone at work. It's a different stake, right? I'm not saying, they're two different contexts, but at work somebody might feel the more pressure to do this to make sure that they're right and they don't get in trouble. Right. They're going to go above and beyond to make the other person look like they're the one or whatever it is, that the situation is. So I'm just glad you bring it up because it can happen in any relationships, probably even like family relationships too.
Pete Wright:
Oh, absolutely.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Absolutely. And in public, I mean, as we record this, we're in the middle of this storm of frankly corporate gaslighting between Alaska Airlines and Boeing and the FAA, because sections of planes are falling off because there are no bolts on them. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
All of that sort of PR speak is a form of gaslighting manipulation, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
I'm talking to you over here. Don't look at this over here. That is all a form of manipulating what you believe is reality. And it's only when the actual service engineers come out with their direct reports observing the reality that in fact, there were no bolts in there that we start to see truth. But all of that, I'm sure there's somebody out there listening to the show saying, yeah, but Pete, everything is manipulatable. Everything is manipulative. And to an extent that's true. That's why you have to build the muscle to regain confidence that what you see is true and that you're not using your ADHD symptoms against you.
Nikki Kinzer:
Against you.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
At least figure out how to even the playing field. If we're all being manipulated, don't be someone who's duped more.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Wow.
Pete Wright:
So that is the last, kind of my last little segment here. Right. And the first one, like how do you build confidence and counter gaslighting living with ADHD man, if I can't think of a better excuse to build a network of close friends, right, and colleagues and,-
Nikki Kinzer:
Community.
Pete Wright:
People that you trust. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
The ADHD community.
Pete Wright:
To be able to reflect for you what reality is. Someone you can say, "Hey, here's a story. Does this sound right to you? Because it's starting to sound right to me, and I think there's something that's causing me to doubt." Right. Keeping a journal, right? Look, we just talked about keeping some sort of a journal where you are writing down immediately what is going on in your world. So you have essentially a paper trail for your own perceptions. Same thing, audio, video recordings of conversations where you believe gaslighting occurs. Right. Document what is truly, truly said. Continue to educate yourself. It's why you're here. Educating yourself thoroughly about ADHD symptoms and managing your own ADHD symptoms with great techniques. Right. Just understanding how your ADHD works will help you understand when it runs headlong against somebody trying to manipulate it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. And I just want to say something to that because I think that acceptance of ADHD and understanding what it is, and then being able to come back and be confident that, well, this is part of my ADHD and being able to separate your ADHD from who you are as a person, but you can only do that when you understand how ADHD affects you and that you're open to seeing that and not denying that. And I think that sometimes we get so stuck into the shoulds, like we should be able to do this regardless that I have ADHD, but that's not true. You have ADHD, and so the more you understand how it affects you, the more you can actually, I think fight back.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And be confident about what you're saying, is that well, wait. Yeah, you're right. I was late that day.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I have ADHD, and that happens,-
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Very factually.
Pete Wright:
Factually. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Factually.
Pete Wright:
I think the next one is talking about boundaries, right, setting clear expectations and boundaries around behaviors that you will not tolerate from gaslighters. And I want to recommend a book that I haven't read only because my daughter recommended this book, and this is my little familial win. My daughter comes home, read this book, raves about this book and recommends it to my son and my wife, but not to me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Really?
Pete Wright:
Power move. Am I right? Power move.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh wow. Okay.
Pete Wright:
So only after we had a laugh about that, did they actually come back and say, "Hey, you know what? You should read it too." So I get it. That's fine.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right, so you weren't really purposely left out.
Pete Wright:
Right. Right. The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free by Melissa Urban. And Melissa Urban was the co-originator of Whole 360 and has been around a while, but this book of boundaries has been transformational for people who I'm pretty close to. So I drop it there thinking we need to read it and maybe talk to Melissa because it sounds like it could be a really interesting conversation about boundaries. And I put it here because having healthy boundaries and knowing when your boundaries are being trot upon is another really good way to understand when you are being gaslit, when somebody is trying to manipulate you.
Nikki Kinzer:
What was the book? Boundaries, what?
Pete Wright:
The book is called The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free by Melissa Urban.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
So as we wrap up, right, I think the trick is if there's another part of the muscle that you really need to develop, it's being able not just to recognize, but to challenge when you are gaslit, right, to be aware of it enough to say, hey, that's not right. What you said is not my experience. And I think we need to address the gap between those two. Trust your gut. Your gut generally works. Right. If something,-
Nikki Kinzer:
It's there for you for a reason.
Pete Wright:
And even if your gut isn't right, your gut will tell you. You have instinct. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And finally, and this was advice that we got directly on the show from the attorney that was on the show who said, "Whenever you're being gaslit, stop focusing on the gaslighting as much as you can and focus on what comes next." Right. Stop yourself from your deep desire to litigate past complaints, accusations, claims that try to adjust your reality and focus as much as you can on the one next step for you in a project, in a relationship. If that relationship is, I feel like I've been gaslit and the next step is I need to end the relationship, or you're trying to change history on a project that we've been working on together. I'm not going to address that. I'm going to move forward and see what is the next thing I need to do to do this project.
And often just ignoring the gaslighting behavior and not giving it oxygen to burn will help to alleviate it from somebody who is maybe accidentally or defensively gaslighting. Again, narcissistic and sociopathic, sadistic gaslighting. That's going to take a different thing, but you're dealing with a different issue there. What do you think? How'd we do?
Nikki Kinzer:
I think that's great, and I think that's a great point to end on because it really is the focus of the future and what's going on in the moment. We can't change the past, and it doesn't matter how we perceive it or how somebody else perceives it. The only thing that matters is what's going to be next. And I really like that. I like that that's where we end it. I think that's good.
Pete Wright:
Fair enough.
Nikki Kinzer:
And there's a lot of information. I mean, this is a very brief conversation between you and I, but I think if this is something that is hitting home to you and you feel like you're in a situation that is not healthy for you, please check out these books, check out the resources, get the support you need. Because leaving, this is one of the things that Stephanie really put in my mind, is that leaving is really hard to do. And so often if you don't, and this is for the bad ones, the sadatic. I can't say the word.
Pete Wright:
Sadistic and narcissistic.
Nikki Kinzer:
And narcissist. Yeah. That those end up, and this is really sad, but will end up in death because they're that bad.
Pete Wright:
They can. That's pretty dark for an ADHD podcast.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is dark. It is. But this is what I want to say, is that I think there's a bit of awareness there though. If you're in that situation where you feel like you can't get out, you're not crazy. So get the support. It's not Pete and I, we're not that support.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
But get the right support to help you because that's what really just hit me so hard, is that it is hard to get out of these relationships.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Whatever they are.
Pete Wright:
You're talking about even not the ADHD relationship, we're talking about romantic relationships. And that point is hammered home. Because when you're dealing with a narcissistic or sadistic gaslighter, that's emotional abuse. And what is often paired with emotional abuse is physical abuse and your relationship, like there's a continuum.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
And that's a,-
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and think about the boss and the employee too. That can be dangerous because what if you feel like you're never going to get another job? Like this person is threatening that your career is over.
Pete Wright:
Career threatening, abuse. Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
There are so many things that can be scary. So yeah, just something to be thoughtful of and to look for that support. For sure.
Pete Wright:
Well, and often, I will just say this again, it's okay to leave the job. It's okay to leave a damaged relationship. It's okay to move forward in order to protect yourself.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
It's okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Yep.
Pete Wright:
There are other jobs, there are other relationships. What'd your mom always say?
Nikki Kinzer:
"It's just a job, Nikki. You can always change it."
Pete Wright:
There you go. See right off the dome. All right. Thank you everybody for hanging out and talking through gaslighting with us. We sure appreciate your time and attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, head over to the show talk channel in the Discord server and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. Thank you so much, Patreon's patrons. Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
