He told me I was overreacting, and I believed him. Already, he’d learned just enough about my past relationships to know that they were a sensitive subject for me. So, when I reacted to what was going on in our relationship, he was quick to remind me that I had never been in a healthy relationship and couldn’t help but overreact to everything.
He was gentle and understanding. It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t been treated well. I couldn’t navigate a healthy relationship because of my history. So, I believed him. I felt guilty for the way I had acted. I apologized. I tried to do better. And the cycle repeated.
But I wasn’t overreacting. Looking back, I can see that my reactions were reasonable. I wasn’t shouting at him or calling names. My reactions weren’t out of proportion to what was happening. I would draw attention to something in the relationship that made me feel uncomfortable, and he would spin it so that I was the problem.
I wish I’d gotten out of that relationship the first time he tried to make me think I was crazy. The abuse started with gaslighting, but it got worse. A lot worse. And by then, I didn’t trust myself enough to know how to feel or what to do. Although I was later able to leave the relationship, it did a lot of damage.
Gaslighting and Overreactions
Gaslighting is a complete and total mindf*ck. We’re being told that what we know and feel to be true isn’t real at all. We’re made to doubt our own lived experience. It can be easy to believe because we trust the person making us doubt ourselves. We trust them more than we trust ourselves.
Societal Implications
Women are easier to gaslight for one reason: We live in a society where men are seen as reacting while women are seen as overreacting. We’re told that our reactions aren’t proportionate to the situation when the reality is that feminine rage is often extremely appropriate to what’s happening. It’s an everyday reality, and what seems like an overreaction is likely an underreaction.
I’ll give an example. When I was in college, I was on a weekend trip with friends in Savannah, Georgia. We were on River Street having a drink and enjoying our conversation when a group of men walked by. One of them grabbed my ass while all his friends laughed and laughed. I yelled at them, and they laughed some more. My friends thought I was overreacting. The police officer I found nearby also thought I was overreacting, although he still attempted to locate the perpetrator. My friends went to sleep after having had a fun night on the town, and I stayed up in the bathtub crying because I couldn’t understand why no one thought my anger was justified.
I had been having fun with friends. I wasn’t bothering anyone. My body was violated, and a group of people witnessed it and laughed at my distress. It was a horrible experience made worse by the fact that his behavior was normalized and mine was billed as an overreaction. It was an assault, but he walked away laughing with friends, and I spent the night crying and being told to get over it.
Rape culture often gaslights women by telling us that some things are normal behavior we should just accept and get over. “Boys will be boys” after all. But when we begin to confront the injustices of rape culture, it makes many people uncomfortable — not just men either. To admit that these behaviors are wrong, some women would have to acknowledge that they were victims, and frankly, many of them are still in denial about their pain and rage and would like to stay that way. It’s also painful for men to be held accountable for behaviors that have been normalized. It’s much easier to uphold the status quo of our culture than to dismantle it with all the messy feelings that come with doing so.
Reacting v. Overreacting
To determine if we’re reacting or overreacting, we need to be able to trust ourselves. Trusting ourselves is our baseline. Self-doubt is something that we learn. When we make mistakes, we may assume that we’re not capable of making good choices when the reality is far more complex. At some point, we stop trusting ourselves, and it can have real-life consequences.
Reacting, Not Overreacting
I’m a self-aware person who is capable of accountability. In all the situations where I was accused of an overreaction, I wasn’t yelling. I wasn’t calling names. I wasn’t throwing around outrageous accusations. I was telling him that his behavior was hurtful and why, and he made me think I was crazy. I was recognizing red flags, and he was busy trying to convince me that I wasn’t seeing them at all.
It took a long time after that relationship to trust myself again. I had to build up that self-trust over time by making good decisions and advocating for myself. I also built safer support systems with trustworthy people. Over time, I learned that I was never overreacting. I was just reacting, and he didn’t like being held accountable for his actions.
Gaslighters are usually people avoiding accountability by turning the tables on us. They want us to feel like we’re in the wrong so that they don’t have to address their behavior or make any changes. It benefits them to do this, just as it benefits us to trust ourselves and hold others accountable.
To take the power away from them, we have to refuse to doubt ourselves. We have to trust ourselves more than we trust them. We need to be able to call out the gaslighting behavior and not let them get away with it. While we can’t handle what they do, we can decide what we will and will not put up with in our relationships.
Overreacting, and Why We Do It
Some people do overreact. There’s a reason for it. Overreactions tend to be triggered by past trauma. Until we heal from that trauma, we’re likely to have disproportionate reactions to the current situation that are perfectly appropriate to whatever it is we experienced in the past. What seems like an overreaction on the outside is actually our bodies trying to protect us with a survival skill that once proved effective. Those responses to a past trauma come across as a present overreaction.
Trauma therapy is one of the most effective ways to address a tendency to overreact. A few years ago, I participated in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, therapy. It’s a proven treatment for PTSD and complex PTSD. It can even treat early trauma that doesn’t meet the official requirements for a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
If we realize we are overreacting rather than reacting, we can seek out trauma therapy or other healing modalities to address our reactions. If we’re willing to work on it, we can improve our lives and relationships. Becoming accountable for our responses can be terrifying at first, but it can be an empowering experience to realize that we’re capable of change. Those overreactions once served us well. They protected us. They were learned behaviors for stressful situations. Just as we learned them, we can learn new, healthier ways to respond to what’s happening.
Trauma therapy is also a good way to build up that self-trust. As I went through the process, I realized that I wasn’t overreacting to anything happening in that relationship. Everything I felt was a reasonable reaction to the subtle signs of abuse creeping into that partnership. I might have a delayed response to dealing with it, but I knew that I wasn’t responsible for the abuse that happened in that relationship. I feel confident that I’ll make different decisions going forward because I know my gut feelings are trustworthy and accurate. I won’t be tricked into doubting myself again.
On Reacting, Overreacting, and Gaslighting
Sometimes, we’re reacting appropriately and being gaslighted into thinking that we’re not. Other times, we’re truly overreacting and having that pointed out to us. The only way to know for sure is to have enough self-awareness and self-trust to know the difference.
It can be helpful to get some time and space away from the situation to fully process it. It’s also helpful to have a trusted support person in our lives who won’t hesitate to tell us when we are having a reaction that’s out of proportion to what’s happening. If we don’t have a person like that, seeing a therapist can be a great way to sort through our thoughts and feelings in a non-judgmental, unbiased environment.
If we trust ourselves, no one can gaslight us. They can certainly try, but they will fail because we have the maturity to know that a reasonable reaction to their behavior isn’t an overreaction simply because they feel defensive. Perhaps their defensiveness is the overreaction, which is usually an indicator of a need for healing from the past.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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