Gaslighting, Betrayal Blindness & Self-Deception w/ Michelle Mays

In this episode, host Tara McCausland speaks with Michelle Mays about the complex and harmful phenomenon of gaslighting. Mays explains the four types of gaslighting—lying, reality manipulation, scapegoating, and coercion—and the impact each has on those who experience betrayal trauma. The discussion delves into the mental health ramifications, the stages of gaslighting, and the journey of healing for both the gaslighter and the gaslighted. Emphasizing the importance of self-awareness and professional support, the episode offers valuable insights into overcoming the layers of self-deception and relational harm caused by gaslighting.

Connect with Michelle at www.michellemays.com or www.relationalrecovery.com

00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:53 Podcast Update 
01:57 Introducing Michelle Mays
03:07 Understanding Gaslighting
03:47 Types of Gaslighting
04:29 Impact of Gaslighting on Mental Health
06:14 Scapegoating and Coercion
10:15 Recognizing Gaslighting in Relationships
14:39 Addicted Partner's Perspective
20:46 Stages of Gaslighting for Betrayed Partners
22:38 Stage Two: Defense Mechanisms
23:51 Stage Three: Depression and Despair
27:50 Understanding Betrayal Blindness
37:08 Healing from Gaslighting
46:12 Final Thoughts and Advice

Transcript

Gaslighting, Betrayal Blindness & Self-Deception w/ Michelle Mays

Tara: [00:00:00] Hello, Pathway to Recovery listeners. So happy that you're here with me today. Before I introduce our guest for today's episode, which I'm really excited to share with you, this was an excellent episode about gaslighting. But I wanted to just give you a little heads up. Justin and I have been putting out episodes faithfully every week for about a year [00:01:00] and a half with a few breaks here and there. 

I've decided that we need to simplify a little bit. And so that's going to look like  putting out two episodes a month. However, we would love to hear from you. If you have questions that you would like Justin and I to address in a Q & A, please reach out. You can do so via our website at salifeline.org, or you can also go to Apple podcasts. There's a place where you can send a text to us directly and you could just email me at tara@salifeline.org. 

We want to answer your questions, but we're looking for ways to simplify. I think you can all appreciate that. So I look forward to two episodes a month here on out, unless we hear from you. And if there are topics that you'd like us to address, or individuals you'd like us to reach out to so you could hear from them on the podcast, we are all ears. 

Now to introduce our guest for this [00:02:00] episode, Michelle Mays is a licensed professional counselor and supervisor in both Virginia and Washington DC and a certified sex addiction therapist and supervisor. She was trained by Pia Mellody in the post induction therapy model for treating developmental trauma and is currently completing her PhD in clinical sexology and certification in emotionally focused therapy for couples. 

She is a member of the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health, the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals, the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy, the American Counseling Association and the Northern Virginia Licensed Professional Counselors Association. So we're excited to have Michelle and to share this episode with you. 

Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery podcast. I'm your host Tara McCausland, and I'm so excited to have Michelle Mays here with me. Welcome, Michelle. 

Michelle: Hi, [00:03:00] thanks for having me today. 

Tara: Yeah. I know that you've done a lot of great work in the field of sexual addiction and betrayal trauma. And today we're talking about a buzz topic, gaslighting. This is a skill, if you want to call it that, that many addicts have, that they develop over time to protect themselves. And it's very harmful to those who suffer from betrayal. 

So with that, I would love for you to start out telling us a little bit about the four types of gaslighting that you've talked about. Can you give us an explanation of those four types? 

Michelle: Yeah, I sure can. I think it is like a, almost at this point, I think everybody's heard the word gaslighting, right? But not always understanding all of it. So I always break it down into four types. 

The first one is lying. And lying is the most straightforward type of gaslighting. And it's basically, “I was at work when I was really with the affair partner. I was doing this [00:04:00] when I was doing that.” And then lying also covers omission.

So I think for a lot of betrayed partners, it can feel like, “I have to ask the question in the exact right way and say the exact right words. And then I can maybe get an answer.” And that again, that's part of the lying too. And it's lying by omission. So that's the most straightforward, least harmful type. Though it is still harmful. 

And then the second type is what we call reality manipulation and reality manipulation is basically trying to convince somebody that what they have seen, heard, observed and experienced is not true. So it's trying to alter their reality. And the big issue with reality manipulation is that, the way that we perceive our reality is through our five senses. It's what we take in, how we take in our [00:05:00] worlds and our ability to perceive our reality accurately is the basis of our mental health. 

So we need to perceive reality accurately to be physically and mentally healthy. And when you have somebody actively trying to undermine that and telling you, “No, you didn't really see that text. No, you didn't really see me have that conversation. No, you didn't really experience this. No, that isn't,” then they are undermining your mental health in a very serious way. Because they're undermining your ability to perceive your reality accurately and trust that you are perceiving your reality accurately.

So I would actually consider reality manipulation a form of emotional abuse because of that piece of it. And in reality manipulation, there's also often an attack on the dignity of the person. So there can be a twisting it around and saying, “It's this, you're so sensitive.” [00:06:00] Or “Oh gosh, it seems like you've really got some self-esteem issues. Maybe you need some help.” And turning it back on the person in a way that sort of attacks their dignity and sense of self. So those are the first two types. 

The third type is scapegoating and scapegoating is when your partner blames you for their behaviors. So scapegoating can look like, “If you were more attentive to me, if you gave me more attention, if we had sex more frequently, if you weren't like this, if you didn't pay so much attention to the kids, you're not really available….” It can look like a million complaints, but it is somehow saying it's your fault that I have gone outside of the relationship and been unfaithful in some way. 

And so scapegoating could come in a lot of different forms. I think the thing that [00:07:00] makes scapegoating just really hard for betrayed partners is that if you are a healthy person in the world, if you're a healthy individual in a relationship, you actually want to be open to feedback from your partner. You want to consider, you're not a perfect person, you have stuff going on. And so you want to consider what they're saying to you and you want to consider their feedback. 

And where scapegoating can be really deadly is that openness to receive feedback can make you accept responsibility for things that actually aren't yours or believe things about yourself that actually don't apply to you. Your partner doesn't even really believe them. I've worked with a million people who down the road have said, “I didn't even believe that. I was just trying to get her or him to not know about the secrets.” 

Tara: Right. 

Michelle: “...to leave the secrets alone and think that it was something with them.” [00:08:00] So it really takes advantage of the open heartedness of wanting to be a good partner in a relationship, the scapegoating piece.

So then the last one is coercion. The last form of gaslighting is coercion. And coercion runs on a continuum from lighter to very severe. So on the lighter end, you're going to have what I call the charm offensive. You're going to have coercion that is like love bombing and gift giving and seduction. And all of these things to say, “No, there's nothing happening here. All is well in this relationship. You don't need to be concerned about that. You don't need to be aware of it. Oh, you found something out. Let me distract you by having the relationship feel amazing for a while. I'm going to show up as the partner you were wishing you had for a little bit and that way you'll forget about this over here.”

So that's one form of coercion. And then it can go all the way down the [00:09:00] continuum until we're really layering interpersonal violence on top of it. We're layering domestic violence on top of it, where it's, “I'm intimidating you. I'm emotionally abusing [you]. I'm giving you the silent treatment. I'm stonewalling, I'm crossing boundaries.” 

This is where we get into things like marital rape. We get into sexual assault within the relationship. All the more severe things can fall under this coercion, but often that is also a form of gaslighting. And it exists to try to get the partner to either accept behaviors they're unwilling to accept.

At first, like for example, “You need to be okay with me, going out drinking with this person. You need to be okay with the fact that I'm at happy hour four days a week while you're home with the kids. You need to be okay with the fact that you can't ever get me on the phone. You need to be okay with whatever..” Or trying to get the betrayed partner to [00:10:00] participate in behaviors that they don't want to participate in.

I just said a lot, but those are the four types of gaslighting and kind of the way that I break them down and think about them in relationships that are dealing with infidelity and addiction. 

Tara: So with the people coming to you, would you say, is there a specific form that happens more often of those four types, or is it pretty much across the board? All of these methods are being used at one time or another? 

Michelle: Yeah. Honestly, I see all of them showing up. I would say this, the thing that I don't see show up across the board is the more severe forms of coercion. I see that show up only for some of my clients. But the other forms, the reality manipulation and the lying and the scapegoating show up pretty consistently across the board. 

Tara: As people are coming to you for help, I'm sure there's a variety of [00:11:00] people asking questions like, “Is this gaslighting?” or are people coming in sharing what's happening in the relationship and you're pointing it out?

Like how does that conversation go when you're dealing with couples or just individuals walking into your office? Is it people normally seeing [it] themselves or do you point it out to them? Do you have a discussion about these four types of gaslighting? I'm just really curious how this goes over.

Michelle: Oh yeah, absolutely. And honestly, it's all of the above. Sometimes you have somebody coming in and they are aware that the gaslighting is going on. And they are saying, “This is what's happening in my relationship.” And for them, they're often caught in what I call the gaslighting dance, where they're in a really toxic dance with their partner around the gaslighting.

And then you have other people come in and they're telling you the things that are happening, and they're not really aware that they're being gaslighted. Or they're [know] something doesn't [00:12:00] feel quite right, but “I don't know, maybe he's right. Maybe she's right.” They're not quite clear yet on what's happening.

And so in that case, we're really unpacking it and looking at, “Let's look at the facts of what has happened. Let's look at the facts of what you know. And if these are the facts, what do you make of that?” and trying to help them kind of land. Because they're often very confused because gaslighting makes you feel incredibly confused, like you're losing your grip on reality and going crazy.

And if you've been gaslit for a really long time you can almost need to hear the spirit, which I say this word. It's almost like helping somebody be deprogrammed, helping them come out of the confusion and start to trust themselves again and start to trust reality again, like trust that they can see reality accurately.

Tara: Which I'm sure is a really complex process if it's been [00:13:00] years in the making. And I can only imagine again, how damaging this is for partners. As you said in specifically talking about reality manipulation. That's the basis of our mental health, right? So some people may show up with depression or anxiety, but a lot of this is having to do with the toxic relationship that they're in and the gaslighting that's been done to them.

Michelle: Yes. And it creates enormous amounts of anxiety. When you're being gaslit, often what I see happen for people is, our gut instincts are in our bodies and our ability to perceive reality is in our body. And then our mind gets involved with things, and I often see that for people that are being gaslit, their mind feels super busy and confused and swirly and [they] can't land anything. Or they're up here believing what they're being told, and they are [00:14:00] also ignoring what their body is telling them.

So they could be at the doctor for gastro health issues. They could be saying, “I need something to help me with anxiety. I've got chronic this or autoimmune this,” or they could have all these bodily based things happening that are responses to the inordinate amount of stress that's being created by having their reality attacked consistently and betrayal in the mix, but not really know it. So disconnected. Does that make sense? 

Tara: Yeah. Perfect sense actually. So I'm curious then for the addicted partner and I have my suspicions, but what is driving the gaslighting behaviors for them? Why are they using this tactic? 

Michelle: Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things. Like for the addicted partner, one of the things that happens when you are doing behaviors that are outside of your own value system. So very [00:15:00] few people are like, “My goal is to basically break all the sexual agreements and emotional agreements in my relationship and damage my family.”

That's not their goal. That's not what they're trying to do in life. That's not who they are. It's not consistent with who they are. So they're caught in the cunning, baffling, powerful grip of an addiction. And they're doing behaviors that contradict how they see themselves, their own self concept, and also their value system. And so in order to keep doing these behaviors, but also feel okay about yourself, you have to create a story of why it's okay that you're doing these behaviors. 

Tara: Yeah, 

Michelle: And you have to first tell that story to yourself. So that story might be, everybody really does this. This isn't a big deal. Or, I just have really special needs or a high libido. Or, if my partner were X, Y, and Z, I wouldn't have to do this. So you've got this whole story that you're telling [00:16:00] yourself about why this isn't really that bad, why it's okay.

Nobody's going to get hurt. It's a secret. It's not that big a deal. Nobody's ever going to find out about it. You've got the whole story that you're telling yourself that allows you to still function in your, what I call your front facing world, where you are husband, dad, father, coach, employee, wife, mother, et cetera.

And then you've got this secret world over here. But telling yourself this story lets you keep showing up in your front facing world and feel like you are congruent with this person somehow. So it's a really strong defense mechanism. It's what are called self manipulation defenses. And then that gets turned outward. Once you've told yourself the story, you've built a mental scaffolding to support your behavior because this thing that you're telling yourself also is what lets you keep going back and doing [00:17:00] the behavior. 

And then it gets turned out on others. So now your partner starts to notice that things are off. Ask questions. They can feel things aren't okay. They're confronting different things. They're finding different things. and now the story you tell yourself starts being lobbed at them. So now everything you tell yourself about, “If my partner were like this and I wouldn't have to do this,” you now tell them. 

“You're like this and you're like this and you're like this,” or “No, you didn't see that. No, that didn't happen. No. I don't know what checks you're talking about. You look at my phone. They're not there now. They never were there. You're making it up.” All of that is to continue to protect this secret world over here. And it also protects them from their own shame about it. 

Because again, you didn't set out in life to do what you're doing. And it's not usually congruent with who you think you are, who you [00:18:00] believe yourself to be and your value system. So you're also doing all of this gaslighting so that you don't come into contact with your own shame that you would feel if you did get connected to what you're really doing, what is really happening in this secret life and how much damage it is actually causing to yourself and everybody you love. 

Tara: That is so interesting and it makes perfect sense. But the way that you articulated that idea that you called self manipulation defenses - they've told themselves this story for so long. It becomes this really powerful defense mechanism. So just layers upon layers of justification and denial so that they don't, as you said, come in contact with the shame that could break them. 

Michelle: Yeah, you're defending your self concept. Like “I get to keep my idea of who I am,” and you're defending against shame that you would feel if you did let yourself really know about this. [00:19:00] So it is a defense system that you have going on. 

Tara: So my dad is a recovering addict. I've often described him as Jekyll and Hyde and I think that's a very fitting term for a lot of people that deal with sexual addiction because they are so good at putting on this front public face. They can be very successful professionally. They can appear to be excellent fathers and husbands. They just seem to manage life so well until you get closer to them; they're hard to connect with. And that was my experience as the daughter of an addict. I couldn't connect with my dad.

Michelle: No, imagine you're juggling a whole secret life. This is also how you manage your emotions, right? So you don't really connect to them. You're not really connecting fully to yourself because you’re so split off and dissociated. It's really hard to connect to somebody who's in that state. [00:20:00] 

In our coaching program for betrayed partners, it's a running eye roll among the whole group because new people will come in and be like, “But you guys, my husband is the nicest, most charming…Everybody says he's the nicest guy!”

And everybody, there's 60 people on screen all going, “Yeah, ours too.” So yeah, it's not that. And the thing is they are great people. You know what I mean? Addiction is doesn't care who you are, and you can be a fabulous person and also really be dealing with this really challenging addiction.

Tara: So let's talk now about the betrayed partner for a second. What are the stages of gaslighting that they can get caught in? 

Michelle: So I always use the stages from Robin Stern. She wrote a book called The Gaslight Effect, and I really like her stages. And so what she talks about is [that] the first stage is disbelief.[00:21:00] 

So this is when, I'm just going to go back to my text example, because this is such a good common example. Like you saw a text exchange, you happen to pick up your partner's phone for whatever reason. You saw this text exchange. You sat on it for 24 hours trying to figure out what to do about it. You go to have the conversation and your partner says, “Doesn't exist. Never happened.” 

And you're like, “I saw it. I read it.”

“No, you didn't. It didn't happen. It didn't happen.”

And you're like, “Let me see your phone.” Of course, it's been erased. 

“I don't know what to tell you. It was never here.” And they are sincere and they mean it when they're telling you. And the disbelief for the betrayed partner is “I cannot believe that my partner is lying to me like this.” It's this shock that the person I love and the person who's supposed to have my back and the person who's supposed to be the most [00:22:00] trustworthy for me is looking me eyeball to eyeball and with enormous conviction, lying straight to my face. And so it creates this swirl of shock and disbelief. And I also think about this from an attachment perspective.

It also creates primal panic inside of us because we're facing a tremendous threat of relational disconnection because our partner is showing us that we can't trust them. And that feels scary. It feels really scary. So that's the first stage. 

The second stage is defense. And so I'm going to stay with the same example as we go along here. Okay, now I'm arguing with you. “No. I saw the text. It was there. Let me see. Let me see your history. Did you wipe it? Did you wipe the text off your phone? You can wipe the text off your phone. So you must've wiped it off your phone because I saw it. [00:23:00] And I saw the name of the person.” And so now you're in this argument.

The person who's gaslighting you is arguing back. “It was not there. I don't know what to tell you. I did not wipe my text. You can search through my phone. Do whatever you want to do with my phone. I don't know what to tell you. It wasn't there. You're making it up. I don't know what's wrong with you.” So now you're in a conflict and you're in this going around and around and you as a betrayed partner are trying to get to the truth.

And you're also, and this is where I think Stern's language is really brilliant. You're also defending against the reality. So the defense here is if I can just get my partner to tell me the truth, then I don't have to face the fact that they're lying to me like this because that is going to shatter my world. That is scary. So you're defending. 

And then the third stage is what she calls depression. And so let's say now you've had a two hour go around [00:24:00] about this, and usually when you're in the defense stage, you wander to a lot of topics. Most of the time, a conflict just morphs and morphs, what you are arguing about, right?

And at the end of it, guess what? Your partner's still lying to you. You can't prove the text is there. They're not willing to tell you the truth. And so what happens for betrayed partners when they're running into the stonewalling on the gaslighting, where the gaslighter is just sticking with continuing to gaslight them and will not be moved from it no matter what kind of evidence is presented.

Then the choice for the betrayed partner is I can either stick to my guns and know what I know, but if I do that, I am now in this incredibly terrifying world where not only is there cheating happening or something is going on, but also my partner is lying to me. And for most people, that's so [00:25:00] scary and dysregulating and creates so much primal panic in your attachment system and threat system that instead what happens is people go into what Stern calls depression, which is just, I can't figure it out. I don't have anywhere to go here. 

There's despair, a collapse and I guess I'm just going to brush this under the rug and move on because there's nothing else to do here. So I'm going to just move on in the relationship, get over it and keep going. And in that depression, there's often the big thing to be aware of as a betrayed partner is there's a walking away from yourself that happens, there's an abandoning your own reality and your own ability to know and perceive your reality because it's too scary to hold on to it, given what your partner's doing. 

So you can walk away from that, abandon yourself, and then [00:26:00] usually do what I call rug sweeping, sweep it under the rug and move on in the relationship. And when you go through cycle after cycle of these three stages, think about the amount of walking away from yourself that's happening and you're starting to form a habit of mistrusting yourself. You form a pattern of not trusting yourself and not knowing how to listen to yourself and what's going on for you.

Tara: As you explain this, I understand better why when people walk in the doors of a recovery room or a therapist's office and they're like, “I don't know up from down. I don't know, I don't even know what food I like or what color was my favorite because I'm so detached from myself.” And I'm sure that those are pretty extreme cases, but I've heard women talk about that, that they've abandoned their reality to such an extent that they don't know who they are anymore, which is heartbreaking.

Michelle: [00:27:00] Yeah, it's very interesting to me because I work with both people who are in relationships with addicts and people who are in relationships where there's what I would call traditional cheating, somebody had an affair. And it is interesting to see the difference between somebody who's been living with 25 years of gaslighting, or long term gaslighting around an addiction versus somebody who has experienced like 12 months of it.

And there is a difference between the amount of loss of connection to self and confusion and, crazy making. that the person feels based on how long they've been in that soup that I just described. 

Tara: So you've written about betrayal blindness. And so I'm curious, how does betrayal blindness [00:28:00] amplify gaslighting?

Michelle: So betrayal blindness is a term that was first coined by Jennifer Freyd, who's the founder of betrayal trauma theory. And she worked with children who are experiencing trauma to understand what happens to us when we're experiencing harm at the hands of a primary attachment figure. So basically, the person that we depend on most in the world for our sense of safety and security and that we want to be around and all of that. 

And of course, when we grow up and become adults, our primary attachment figure is no longer our parents, it's our romantic partner. So the dynamic is very similar. And what Jennifer Freyd found as she was doing that work is that in order to survive in those families, children had to go blind to the dangers that their parent might represent or the disappointments that they might [00:29:00] experience in a traumatic family because they needed to stay bonded to that parent.

They needed to stay bonded to that parent in order to get their needs met, in order to survive, in order to get love and affection and attention and care. They had to stay bonded to the parent, no matter how inept or neglectful or abusive the parent might be. And so to do that, children would go blind to what the parent was doing to keep the attachment. And children often do that by blaming themselves for what's happening. 

And so Freyd then took this concept and applied it also to adults and said, in our adult relationships, we also tend to go blind to things that would threaten our attachment. So if we go back to what I was saying about the argument with the texting, when you're in that depression stage where you're just like, you can't make any progress, the person's not going to tell you [00:30:00] the truth.

Your choice is to know that you did see something and know that means there is trouble in the relationship and there's not just the trouble of what you saw, but there's the trouble of the lying and to stick with that and to know that means that things are changing in the relationship and you've got a big thing to deal with. That takes a lot of inner resourcefulness and resilience to hold that, especially in the face of your partner gaslighting you and stay with it.

For a lot of people that's just too scary because it threatens the relational attachment. And so what happens is we tuck it out of our awareness. So over time, we might just forget it even happened, not be aware. We remember it happened, but we're just tucking the meaning of it away. We're not letting ourselves know what it means. We're not letting ourselves know how it's impacting us. So this is what Freyd talks about in terms of the knowing, but not [00:31:00] knowing of betrayal blindness. Like we know, but we don't know, and most betrayed partners have some level of betrayal blindness that they have dealt with along the way in the whole process. 

We often do an exercise in our program where we ask our clients to actually write a letter to betrayal blindness. We ask them to start the letter by thanking betrayal blindness. Because betrayal blindness is a protection. So what Jennifer Freys’ theory on it is that it is a freeze state. We have fight, flight and freeze state when we're threatened and freeze is what we do when fight and flight are not available to us.

So if you think about the stages of gaslighting, we've already had the fight. Didn't help. It didn't help us. Didn't get us anywhere, right? We can't really go anywhere. So what are we going to do? We're going to collapse into [00:32:00] freeze because we're stuck in this. And we're going to freeze. And then we're going to go blind.

And the going blind is protective. It lets us keep functioning in our life. It lets us keep moving forward at a time when it feels too threatening to really let ourselves know what's happening in our relationship. So we always ask them to start that letter by thanking betrayal blindness, because it usually has played an enormously protective role.

And we want them to understand the dynamic of it because you do want to move out of betrayal blindness, but also to have so much compassion and understanding for why this happened, and how it protected and why I actually needed it back then. So over and over again, when I read these letters, I often post them and I'll see, so many like, “I had three children under five and I needed to survive and parent my children and thank you for giving me the time and space [00:33:00] that I needed to do that. I couldn't have dealt with this too.”

So it's really looking at how it protected you and then looking at how you want to move out of that and learn to really embrace your reality and deal with your reality in a different way as you're growing and healing. 

Tara: I can see how self compassion in that as you're trying to transition and come to an awake space would be a really good place to start, because if you look at that as a defect or that there was something wrong with me that I went into freeze mode, that I chose the blindness, right?

That's so different from thanking betrayal blindness and moving through it with compassion. So there's a lot of wisdom in that. I'm curious when women are moving out of that betrayal blindness into acceptance of reality, or not just women, when people are moving out of that, what does that often look like as they enter this [00:34:00] open eyed space?

Michelle: It's really interesting because for a lot of people there, first of all, you don't come out of betrayal blindness until you have the resourcefulness and resiliency inside of you to handle it. This is a survival mechanism, so just the fact that people are able to start coming out of it means they're building this inner strength.

And I watch this process happen all the time with people where they start and then as they start to have the inner strength to see things and stay in the reality, what happens is they start to connect a lot of dots. They start to go, “Oh, wait a minute. Okay. Now that makes sense in a different way. Or “Oh, You know what? I tucked that away. Now I remember it,” or “Oh I did not let myself see what that actually meant. That thing that happened back there means this.”

So there's often a lot of [00:35:00] excavating and it happens without even, it's not like people go looking for it necessarily, but just as the ability to come into awareness comes online, because you have the strength to do it, all of a sudden your story starts to shift and change because you're able to look at things differently. And you're able to see things differently and the dots start connecting and you start to understand what was going on in a whole different way. 

Tara: What's the predominant emotion that you see come out of people? 

Michelle: All of it. I see shock.

Tara: Yeah. 

Michelle: Often a lot of shock at their own ability to hide that from themselves. So when you come out of betrayal blindness and you're able to look in the rear view mirror and see things differently, it shocks you how much you were tolerating or living in that you weren't letting yourself be aware of.

So I see shock. I see anger, like a lot of anger at the amount of gaslighting, the [00:36:00] lying, the manipulation, a lot of anger around it. And then an enormous amount of sadness, because with that awareness, when you're doing that look in the rear view mirror, what you're often seeing is how much of yourself you lost. And you're seeing how it ate away at your sense of self over the years. 

And so there's grief in that. There's grief and there's sadness about what it cost you and what it took from you and what life would have looked like if that hadn't happened. And now I have this task of rebuilding myself and reclaiming myself that I'm involved in and it's sad that I have to do that. So also a lot of grief and sadness. 

Tara: A necessary but painful experience for many, I'm sure. 

Michelle: Really important, because honestly you don't want to stay in this place where you keep staying in the erosion of the self. So [00:37:00] important to do the work and come out of this and learn how to do it differently. But yeah, painful too, for sure. 

Tara: So let's talk then about how do we work with and heal from gaslighting, both as the person doing the gaslighting and the person who is the gaslightee?

Michelle: Okay. So I've said some about being the gaslightee. I always ask my folks to really identify what they do in the gaslighting dance. How do you start to buy into getting stuck in these three stages? Like how do you argue, defend? How do you get into all of that? How do you then doubt yourself? I want them to map out what has happened for them in the process, because often you're very fixated on your partner and how your partner is gaslighting you, but you're not really looking at, okay wait, when I [00:38:00] am gaslit, what I do first is I argue and then I start to maybe doubt myself and then I start to go into a collapse and then I walk away and I just ignore it.

You don't really track all that for yourself. So I think the very first thing you have to do is track it and really start to understand this is what's been happening for me. And now I want to change this. And so a lot of the work, and I don't think this is work you can do on your own very well.

I think you need help and support with this work, but a lot of the work is I have to get the inner strength. I have to build inner strength to the place where I can hold my reality. Even if my partner is telling me it's not true. And that means you have to tolerate distance in your relationship, anger from your partner, disagreement from your partner.

You have to tolerate something that is really scary. And so you [00:39:00] need somebody to help you build those inner resources to the place where you can hold that. Once you can hold that though, now you can do some things with it. So now that you can hold your truth, like “I did see those texts,” then you have the ability to say to your partner, “I hear that you want to keep lying to me about this. And I'm really sad about that. I know I saw those texts and I know that means there's trouble here. And that's not going to change for me. That’s why I'm paying attention to what's happening.”

So you can't solve it with your partner, but you're basically saying, “Hey, I'm staying in my reality and I'm now paying attention differently to what is going on here. And I'm going to keep paying attention until I get more information. I understand this fully. I'm not walking away from myself.” And that may feel like you're not really doing anything, but you're actually doing a lot. You're holding onto your own reality and you're trusting yourself. [00:40:00] 

And for betrayed partners, one of the skills is being able to hold your reality and wait and see. We talk about this a lot with our clients. You’ve got to be able to wait and see. You've got to be able to say, “I know I saw this text. I know what I saw. I know something is happening. I'm going to wait and see, because more will be revealed here. As I continue to pay attention and trust my gut, more will be revealed and I'll eventually know what's going on here.”

And again, that takes enormous inner strength because you're tolerating a ton of relational uncertainty and scary stuff. So that's a lot of work to do that, but that's the path. And then being able to use your voice, when you're being gaslighted and hold your reality in the face of it. So that would be the path that gives you, that's not the whole thing by any stretch, but that's a piece of it for betrayed partners. 

Tara: Yeah. I appreciate that we're addressing the person that's doing the gaslighting. [00:41:00] Because we know that this has been for self preservation, most of the time, a powerful defense mechanism. Hopefully people who are listening to this are moving into a space where they want to overcome this skill, if you'll call it that, of gaslighting. What would you tell them?

Michelle: So I think for that person, often I always say, “When you're coming into treatment for dealing with an addiction, the very first thing you're doing in treatment is working on this because until you stop lying to yourself about it, you will not stop the behaviors.”

The lying to yourself and the self manipulation are what facilitate the behaviors. No amount of focus on the behaviors without dismantling the lying is going to be effective, right? And lying supports all the double life. 

So to me the work that we are doing in early therapy and early treatment is, [00:42:00] “Let's start to look at what's really true. Let's start to look at what's actually happened in your addiction. Let's look at where it has taken you.”

And in our counseling center, every office has a whiteboard. And we all use the whiteboard and make a list on the whiteboard. Let's list out what's happened. Let's list out the secrets. Let's list out the problems that it's created. We're listing it out.

And the reason for that is that you actually then sit back and look at it. And then you process what you're looking at together and it has a different impact when you're not just talking about it, but you're seeing it, right? You're seeing it up there. And so there's a lot of just doing that kind of work. 

And then there's the work of, I always do parts work with my clients. So working with the part of you that wants to lie about this and tell you lies about it. And the part of you that can see that you're seeing the lying, the healthy part [00:43:00] that can see what's happening. 

So for example, I'll have clients come in and I'll be working with them in this stage of recovery and I'll hear them saying things to me that are just full on gaslighting, full on lying to me, lying to themselves. And I say, “Okay, we're going to have the healthy part of you sit in this chair and we're going to have the addicted part, or the part that's lying about things and wants to manipulate you, sit in this chair. And I'd like you to sit in the chair you're talking from, the rest of the hour. You're going to feel foolish, but I want you to move chair to chair all hour.”

And then they do it, and we do it, and it's “You should be in that chair right now. Okay, so now you should move back over here, and then you should move back over there.” And it's a silly exercise, but it's a very visceral exercise. Because it helps a person start to go, “Oh my gosh, okay I am buying what I am selling, but I am selling myself a whole bunch of stuff to facilitate getting to my addiction.”

And it's so important that they begin to [00:44:00] see that and have their healthy part be able to start identifying how they're manipulating themselves. And work with it in that way, so I do a lot of parts work in different ways. Such as, “You be the addicted part. I'll be the healthy part. You be the healthy part. I'll be the addicted part,” and role play it back and forth, different things to separate that out and help the healthy part really start to see what's happening because then you can start to create change with it. 

Tara: I can see how valuable that would be because when you have used this self manipulation defense mechanism for so long it's almost as if you are talking to two people in one body, right? And to have that physical movement, to be in this space. I am one person in this space. I am another [over here]. That's actually really fascinating. 

Michelle: It’s very interesting. And one of the things that happens, but it's happened so many times now that I'm like, this is just part of it. The person often, because this has [00:45:00] been going on so chronically for them, they also get confused about when the healthy part is talking. You're like, “Hey, that's actually the healthy self. You should go over there. He should be in the healthy chair right now.” And it's “Oh, okay.” Because they're so lost in it too. It really just helps it get clearer. 

Tara: Yeah. Huh. This has been so fascinating. I've just enjoyed this so much. Thank you for spending this time with me. And before I let you go, we do have a final question. But if people want to connect with you, what's the best way to do that? 

Michelle: They can go to the website michellemayes.com. That's our coaching side of things. And then there's also relationalrecovery.com, which is the counseling center, institute side of things. So both of those and they'll find a whole world of things. 

Tara: So awesome. We'll put that in the show notes and I'm sure that there will be people interested in connecting with you. This has really been so informative and helpful. And honestly, there've been a couple of times where I [00:46:00] felt like crying. Oh, this is reality for a lot of people and good education is so helpful in helping us see the reality of our situations and what we can do about it. So again, thank you for your time.

But before I let you go, what would you tell a newcomer who just started this path of healing, both someone that's dealing with an addiction and someone that's been betrayed. And what would you tell someone who's been doing this work for a while?

Michelle: Gosh, what I would tell a newcomer is healing is completely possible and it's not healing like, “Oh, my whole life is going to be a half life. I'm never going to fully get over this. I'm never going to really flourish again.” No, you absolutely can. And you can have a full and flourishing life and it takes work and it takes time. You have to be both feet in, but healing is absolutely possible. So that's what I would say to a newcomer. 

And then I think somebody who's been doing the [00:47:00] work for a while, I think what I would say to them is the tools you needed at the beginning are not the same tools you need halfway through, or three quarters of the way through. You've got down the road, like once you're two years in, three years into recovery, you have to pivot to relational tools. You have to really make a pivot and start to work on doing relationships with yourself and others very differently in a deeper way. And that's a different tool set. And I think people get bogged down. They keep thinking they only have the early recovery tool set.

And so I would want to say to people who have been doing the work for a while, make sure you're using the right tool set, and pivot to a more relational set of tools as you get on the road, because that will help your healing advance enormously. 

Tara: Excellent. Thank you again so much, Michelle. Appreciate your time today. 

Michelle: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me on. [00:48:00]