Episode #132

Self-Gaslighting & CBT

Many people have heard of or experienced gaslighting from others. But did you know it’s possible gaslight or manipulate yourself?

What does self-gaslighting, or self-doubt, or self-manipulation look like?

How can you use CBT tools to help you recognize and deal with self-gaslighting?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you how you can use CBT to validate your own experiences & emotions.

Click to listen now!

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, it's Dr. Julie, and I'm a doctor of psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

So I'm happy that you're here with me listening and I wanted to share a message I received on my Facebook page.

You can follow me on Dr. Julie Osborn.

And one of my listeners and family friends, Lynn, said,

“Thank you for all the wonderful eye opening podcasts. I start my day with a podcast and discover something new each day. Your podcast prompted me to find a therapist in the CBT community and to finally find the quote me I want to be. It's a pleasure meeting with you and the entire Osborn family.”

So we just got to meet each other recently and I appreciate that Lynn. I'm so happy that you're finding it helpful and um, post it on my page cause it just helps it get out to more people and hopefully encourages people to take the time for themselves to learn CBT and to feel better and make the changes in their life and find the real them that they want to be just like you've been able to do that for yourself.

So thanks again and again, I love hearing from you guys. You can always reach out to me and I'll talk to you more about, um, how to find me at the end of the podcast, but I do respond to everybody's messages they send and it really makes a difference. So I do appreciate that. So today I'm going to do a podcast on self gaslighting.

I did a podcast on gaslighting quite a while ago, but I was meeting with a client one day. We're talking about some issues and she's like, it's like self gaslighting. And I'm like, I never really thought about it in those terms, how we can gaslight ourselves. My podcast was how you get gaslighted by others, which is a real thing as well.

So let's talk about what is self gaslighting and then talk about, The specifics of it and how you can use your CBT tools to help you and hopefully you may relate to this or you may be with someone that does self gaslighting and you really didn't know how to kind of pinpoint that or be able to share that with them so they could make some positive changes for themselves.

So, I think in many ways you'll find this information helpful. And again, we can always use our CBT tools so we'll talk about that. What is self gaslighting? Um, it's also known as self manipulation or self doubt. So, it's kind of the psychological phenomenon, you know, where you'll undermine your own perceptions, your own beliefs, and your experiences, leading you to doubt your own thoughts and feelings.

Right, which is what CBT is all about. So it really involves internalizing the tactics of gaslighting, which is a form of emotional abuse, where one person manipulates another into questioning their own sanity, their own perceptions, or their memories. So you're really doing this to yourself, which is really a shame because it's enough when we have to deal with it from other people that are trying to gaslight us.

The last thing we need to do is be doing this to ourselves. So what are some aspects of this to get a little more specific? Um, because we want to talk about in the context of this self gaslighting, you might engage in behaviors or thought patterns that invalidate your own experiences and emotions. Um, and it can occur for lots of reasons.

So one of the reasons is internalized criticism. So this is where you may internalize negative messages or criticisms from others, such as maybe parents, caregivers, authority figures, friends. And over time, you come to believe these criticisms and doubt their own worth, feelings, or perceptions. Right? So when I say friends, you might be like, well, my friends aren't criticizing me, which hopefully not.

But, you know, they might, like, give some constructive criticism. Right? Or if there's other negative people in your life that have said things to you, and instead of being able to brush that off or be like, well, that's not true, you start to internalize it and start to believe this, and that's where you'll start doing this self gaslighting.

So that's the internalized criticism that a lot of people create. And, um, with depression and anxiety, uh, one of the symptoms that comes up a lot is being self critical. So this kind of feeds into that. And a lot of times that's from messages we've received from others. So we want to be mindful about our environment, which we know is part of CBT, right?

You have your environment, you have your thoughts, which creates your moods, which affects your behaviors, and your physical reactions. And I've talked many times about how important your environment is, and to really assess What those environments look like? Are they positive? Are they negative? Do you need to set better boundaries?

Do you need to leave the environment? Whether that be homework, school, relationships. So, that's a really important aspect to always keep in mind. Who's in my life that I'm internalizing these criticisms from, if that's happening. Another reason why you may be self gaslighting is having low self esteem. So, this can definitely contribute to gaslighting.

You may not trust your own judgment or believe that your thoughts and feelings are valid. So you end up dismissing your own experiences or you defer to others opinions instead of trusting your own instincts. When you have low self esteem, It's going to make it even harder for you to really trust yourself and be like, Oh yeah, I know that to be true, or I know that not to be true, or you know, this is something I've dealt with before.

It didn't come from a good, um, supportive person in my life. Like good self esteem, you know, you're able to deflect and say, that's not really my truth. Even if someone's saying that to me. So you really want to work on building up your own self worth, your own self esteem. Which can help you feel better, right?

And if your self esteem is low, as I was mentioning, you know, you're going to dismiss your own experiences and not even believe that your thoughts and feelings are valid. Right? So, how do I know if my thoughts and feelings are valid? By really using my CBT tools, doing a thought record, you know, what is this thought?

What's the evidence for? What's against it? Why is it creating these feelings I'm having? So, again, it's not always that our feelings or thoughts are rational, but we want to at least balance them out and say, you know, what part of them is rational? What part of them is true? Instead of just being kind of this black and white and not If you believe in your own thoughts and feelings, just saying that out loud, I can only imagine how anxious you would feel if you can't validate what you're thinking and how you're feeling and questioning everything that you're believing, um, taking in all of this negative energy from outside of yourself.

So you can see how easy it could be to self-gaslight if this is what you're doing, but you can also see how crippling it can be to your own self. Another reason why you may be gaslighting is perfectionism. So, if you have perfectionistic tendencies, this can lead you to set unrealistic standards for yourself, and then you're constantly criticizing or doubting your own performance.

You also may discount achievements or attributes. and successes to external factors rather than acknowledging that you have these abilities and you have actually succeeded on your own. So for perfectionism is a really tough character trait that you really want to change. It's tough to change. You want to, it's tough to have and you really want to work on it and you definitely can, right?

We want to change perfectionism to, you know, progress, not perfection is what I say. And to get to a place where you feel like you're good enough, but you can imagine that if you have these tendencies to be a perfectionist, right, you're going to set these unrealistic standards, right, because you want to be perfect.

And most of us never get to perfection, don't even know what that looks like, you know, so subjective. So then you always end up feeling bad, you always feel, feeling humiliated, you always feel, feeling less than, because you never reach that. So you're going to self gaslight, you know, I'm really not good enough, I can't even reach these goals.

So we really want to look at, say, is that part of, um, you know, some characteristics you have that you want to change? And I want to, you know, as I'm thinking, as I'm talking to you guys, you know, I have a podcast on, um, it's called Got Self Esteem, so that would be the self esteem issue. I have one on perfectionism.

That's another one you can listen to, to get more information about how to be able to change the perfectionistic traits you have and how to use CPT tools. So you know, most of my podcasts, you know, can be connected to other podcasts I've done to get more specific information. So those are just a couple there.

Another reason why you may self gaslight, right, is what I would call invalidation, right? So where you experience invalidation or again dismiss your emotions in the past. And by doing this in the past, you end up internalizing these messages, and you doubt the validity of your own feelings now. Right?

Sounds a little bit like the self critical, self criticism, where they kind of overlap, right? But you end up minimizing your emotions again, you know, and then convince yourself that you're overreacting, right? Like oh no, I shouldn't be upset that, you know, I found out they lied to me. I shouldn't be upset they went behind my back or, you know, maybe I haven't always been honest so they deserve to do that.

Like, you're going to end up self gaslighting and allowing others to hurt you, you know, when you invalidate yourself and your experiences and your emotions, right? So sure, we can have catastrophic thinking, that is true, and then we can also minimize too much and we want to find a balance, right, that your feelings are important, what you think.

Could be hot thoughts, but that doesn't mean they're completely false, right? A hot thought's a thought that's not 100 percent true, right? I need to kind of maybe pause, instead of just invalidating myself and say, Okay, what am I thinking that's causing me to feel this way and reacting this way? Right? So invalidating is like the behavior part of CBT.

That's your behavior that you're saying, Nah, that's not true. Or, I'm just overreacting because everybody tells me I overreact. Right? Most people don't always overreact. Some people do overreact, but not always. So we want to be able to, you know, decipher what's real, a good, a good reaction, right? And maybe what isn't, but not just to gaslight and say no, and ignore it, and maybe continue a bad relationship, or stay in an unhealthy environment because we're just blaming ourselves and saying, oh, I'm overreacting because that's what everybody tells me.

So it's really important. And you can see, like, each, The first thing I'm talking about here, each reason, can be a lot just on its own. So it's not that you're going to relate to all of these and be like, Oh, I'm self-gaslighting. It could just be one. Another reason why you may self gaslight is because of trauma, right?

So traumatic experience can definitely distort your perceptions, and it can lead you to question your own memories or your interpretations of the event. Many times when people have gone through trauma, they may dissociate from their emotions, and they convince themselves that the trauma did not happen as they remember it.

For many reasons, it might be too painful, it might just be too overwhelming, it's easier to try to push it aside and just move forward. Other people might minimize your trauma experiences, right? And, so again, just, I want to re read this one more time, because a lot of people have had different types of traumas that Having a traumatic experience, you might be distorting your perceptions and you may be questioning your own memories or interpretation of events.

Now it is true, there's a lot of research that we don't always remember everything correctly. But overall, when people share with me their traumas, overall they can remember what happened, how it affected them. Right? They don't, might not remember every moment, day, you know, all those things, but it doesn't mean it doesn't still affect you.

Right? And you don't want to gaslight yourself by like, Oh, maybe it didn't happen that way, because I can't remember all the specifics. It's affecting me, and it's a big deal. And there's all, like I said, all different types of traumas, different levels of trauma, but they all affect us, and we don't want to minimize those.

And, and not honor ourselves by saying, Yeah, this is something I went through, instead of, instead of just self gaslighting, and moving on, and not really processing it. And one other reason why you may be self gaslighting is your own cognitive distortions. Right, so I do have a podcast on this as well. And there's ten different cognitive distortions.

So I'm going to go through these ten cognitive distortions that, um, It happened all the time. Um, I just did this exercise with a client on one thought. And she had all ten cognitive distortions connected to this one thought. And understanding how our thoughts are distorted can really help us start changing and even letting go of those thoughts.

Because we realize that They're distorted, right, in that they're not serving us and they're not helping us. So, um, the ones I'm going to share, um, are from Dr. David Burns, which I talked to you guys about him as well, and his book, uh, Feeling Good, Feeling Great, is his other book. He has many books, but, um, on my, um, website at MyCognitiveBehavioralTherapy.

com. If you go to the page where it says Store, you scroll down to the bottom, you'll find the Mind Over Mood book and the Feeling Great book if you want to purchase those. You can just click on them and it'll take you to Amazon. So, it's an easy way to find it, but the ones I'm going to share are from Dr.

David Burns. So, the first one is the All or Nothing Thinking. Right, so that's kind of, um, like, black and white thinking, some people use that term. So that's why I'm saying we always want to look for shades of grey, but this is when you look at things in absolute black and white categories. Right? So, either I'm going to have my job or I'm going to get fired, there's no in between.

And that's something a lot of people struggle with. That's actually the one I used with my client the other day, thinking that, you know, she's always worried about getting fired. So we were like, yeah, nothing thinking works with that. That's that self gaslighting, right, saying that to herself.

Overgeneralization is number two. So we're, this is where you view a negative event as a never ending pattern of defeat. Right? Everything's terrible. It never works out well. That's overgeneralizing. Number three is mental filter. So that's where you dwell on the negatives. Number four is discounting the positives.

You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities don't count. Total self gaslighting, right? You can hear, just, there's the definition, discounting the positives. Number five of the cognitive distortions is jumping to conclusions. This is a two parter. The first is mind reading. So you assume that people are reacting negatively to you when there's no definite evidence.

And we're looking for evidence with CBT, right? And fortune telling is the second part where you arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly. Right? So that's that self gaslighting. No matter what I do, it's not going to work out. I know what they're thinking. They don't want me around. They don't want me to be their friends.

They don't think I'm a good employee. Right? Here's all the self gaslighting. Number six of the cognitive distortions is magnification or minimization. So you either blow things way out of proportion or you shrink their importance. So, using the example that I'm going to get fired, we talked about how that blows things out of proportion.

Right? And the minimization and shrinking their importance is, you know, my client now looking at the good stuff she's done, and that she got a raise, and that she got a good review, and she's never been ridden up. And they keep giving her more work to do. So that's minimizing the importance, but it's just kind of that self gaslighting of like, oh no, but I'm gonna be fired because one thing, you know, went wrong.

That's magnifying it too much. Number seven of the cognitive distortions is emotional reasoning. So you reason from how you feel, which you know I don't want you doing that. I feel like an idiot, so I really must be one. I feel like I'm not good enough, so I must not be good enough. Right, we want to make decisions based on what's best for us, not how we feel.

So emotional reasoning is always going to get you in that bad spot, right, that self gaslighting like I'm not really good, I'm really not as good as I even thought I was or what they're telling me because I made this one mistake. Right, or this one relationship didn't work out, so none of them are going to, so I must be a loser, because I feel like one.

So that's the emotional reasoning. And then we have should statements. So you guys know I've talked to you about should statements, that the root word of should is scold. So whenever you say, you know, I should have, you're scolding yourself. So you criticize yourself, or others maybe also, right, with shoulds, oughts, musts, and have tos.

So I, I really try to eliminate the shoulds for my life, my vocabulary, and my clients. I, it's great when they start catching themselves, Oh, I just said should, yeah, like, we want to replace shoulds with I wish dot dot dot, or I would have preferred to handle it this way. But shoulds don't get you anywhere and it's a really cognitive distortion, right?

So with the, with I'm going to get fired, you know, my client was, Oh, I should have done this. I should have done that. I should have done more. I shouldn't have, you know, taken more, the, my vacation that I earned, right? Those are all the should statements. Number nine is labeling. So instead of saying, you know, I made a mistake, you tell yourself, I'm a jerk, I'm a loser, I'm a fool, right?

Instead of just saying, okay, I made a mistake and I'm going to do better next time because I know better. Instead, you label yourself. That's that self gaslighting, right? I'm not good enough, right? I'm a failure. I'm not worthy. All these labels we put on ourselves that really just self sabotage what we're trying to accomplish in our lives.

Growing as a person, changing our core beliefs to feel better about ourselves, that I am worthy, that I am good enough. So labeling, um, is really common and that's definitely that self gaslighting. And then number 10 with the cognitive distortions is personalization and blame. So, this is where you blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible for.

Or you blame other people and deny your role in the problem. Right? So, you're either personalized, like, oh, I'm blaming myself, I have to take all responsibility, you know, it was all my fault, you know, um, I could have done this or that, I should have fixed it, all this stuff, right? Going back to that perfectionism we spoke about a little earlier, you know, or denying your role in the problem.

Right? So, I know I've shared before on some podcasts, you know, that, um, You know, blaming is a real issue when you blame others for problems in your life because I always say, you know, Blamers don't change because it's not their fault, right? So if it's always somebody else's fault that I don't have to take responsibility.

I don't have to grow. I don't have to be uncomfortable Right? I can just go blame other people instead of looking at your part. Now sometimes, you know, other people have definitely a part in what's going on, but You want to have that balanced out? thinking that you can do with your CBT tools, right? So the self gaslighting is more of the personalization, cognitive distortion, where, again, you think you're entirely responsible for it.

So, I know those were a lot. Again, you can always listen to this again. I have my podcast just on cognitive distortions. That you can listen to. Um, again, it's a great tool that when you identify your hot thoughts, the ones that are not 100 percent true, right, and say, okay, what kind of distortions are connected?

So, again, when I was working with my client the other day, and she was like, oh my gosh, every kind of distortion are related to that one thought, right, that I'm going to be fired. So, is there any truth in that? Nothing we could come up with, but she, you know, makes herself anxious on a daily basis and it affects her life negatively in so many ways, holding on to this, this extremely hot thought, extremely hot thought because of the distortions that are connected to it.

And she's self gaslighting on a daily basis. And when you think about that, if you can think of an example for yourself, you can just see the damage that you're doing to your own emotional health. And how you're just digging this hole deeper and deeper that's going to take even more work to get out.

Because it's one thing for someone to try to gaslight you and make you question yourself. And it's harder to identify, I think, that at first and then be able to say, like, Okay, this person's out of my life. The good news with self gaslighting is you have control over that. You're doing it to yourself and you can make changes.

So you can make, you know, you have control regarding identifying someone else gaslighting you and saying, I'm not going to have you in my life anymore, right? And moving on. But the self gaslighting, we can really say, Oh yeah, I can really make some changes. And what I've been telling myself isn't true, right?

And I've been making decisions based off how I feel and then making myself feel bad. So the good news, as always, is there's so much we can do to change the way we think about ourselves, which will then help us feel better, change our behaviors and our physical reactions. Right? And looking at our environments to see if that's part of the problem.

So, I want you to start asking yourself these questions, you know, Do I self gaslight sometimes? Again, it could just be one of the things that I mentioned, right? It could be cognitive distortions. It could be past traumas. It could be if you're a perfectionist. If you have low self esteem. If you're invalidating yourself.

Right? So, these are all different ways where you could self guess. So I wanted to be really specific with you so you're not like, well, I don't really know how I'm doing that. Now you do. If that's something you're doing. Or again, if it's somebody in your life. I've had people in my life that are very negative.

And I'm like, why are you so negative about yourself? Stop beating yourself up. Right? We say that to people. Stop beating yourself up. You're so hard on yourself. Now maybe you could be a little more structured conversation. Say, you know what? I think you're self gaslighting. Well, what's that? This is what it is.

This is what I've learned. And you can give them specific examples of what they do. Right? I think this comes in handy with all different relationships, but I know as a parent, this would have been a great way for me to, and I still can, even though my kids are adults, right, is say, you know what? You're self gaslighting.

You're being super critical. You're wanting things to be perfect. You know, you're not validating what really happened here. Even if you could have handled things better, that wasn't okay, that person treated you that way. And now you're personalizing it and taking it in. Right? So, I'm going to, use these specific tools, or I do use these specific tools, I should say, right, with people in my life other than just my clients, to be able to be more specific.

And when you can be more specific, I think with yourself or with others, people will listen more like, Oh yeah, that is true. That is evidence. I have done that. I say that to myself. I have said that out loud. I am self gaslighting, and I don't want to do that. So, I can start making changes. And again, other people may listen, especially those in your life you love, and you want to be there for them and help them, right?

And show support and give them some guidance. Like, oh, these are some ways you can really address this and then maybe they can start working on their own, uh, self gaslighting and be able to use their CBT tools. So I mentioned a lot of CBT tools here today, which is identifying your cognitive distortions, again, doing your thought record.

Right? Being able to identify your negative behaviors towards yourself. Right? Looking at your environments that you're in. Maybe where you've gotten these criticisms from other people in your life and you're internalizing them. So, I can always find ways to get your CBT tools working for you. Because, remember, when we have 80 or 90 thousand thoughts a day, they're always going to be coming up, and we can be able to use our tools to say, Ah, that's probably a hot thought.

Most of my thoughts are not facts, and I need to really challenge my hot thoughts so that I can start feeling better. And I can always make decisions based on what's best for me and not how I feel. So I hope you found this helpful. Please share with anyone you might, and who might benefit. And you guys know how you can find me at my website at mycottonbehavioraltherapy.com.

You can also follow me on Instagram under my CBT podcast and Dr. Julie Osborn on Facebook.

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And I've mentioned to you guys before, but now on my website, I have a store with all different merchandise that you can take a look at and It's a way for you to continue with your CBT journey with different designs and my mantra is on all different T shirts and mugs and fun stuff that you can have for yourself or share so you can find it at mycbt.store. Or just go straight to my website at mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com and you'll see the tab for store. So I just thought it'd be a fun thing to put out there for everybody and just reminding you guys that it's there.

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And as always make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel