Gaslighting is a hot topic these days. Many people are victims of gaslighting without even knowing it. It affects your sense of self-worth, your confidence, and your sanity.
Have you ever spent time with a narcissist or a sociopath? You can sense them from their cunning and self-importance. They are the opposite of fine wine. They get worse with time!
Spend enough hours with those folks and soon you will begin to question your sanity.
Like Don.
He called me requesting some meds for anxiety. As a psychologist, I do not prescribe medication. As his executive coach, we agreed to dig a bit deeper. It soon became clear that he was moving far south of healthy functioning from mixed messages at work.
In my book, Don’t Bring It To Work I talk about the 13 most common behavior patterns we learned as children that we bring into the workplace. The one that is always considered the most difficult to work with, the most difficult to change, I call The Splitter.
Don soon learned that his boss, the CEO of the company was making Don question his own sanity.
Splitters are master manipulators. They are the best of the best in the narcissist and sociopath realm. Splitters are masters at deflecting problems onto others and knowingly give wrong information. They convince you that you just didn’t listen to the right information. They have the ability to really drive you nuts, as in totally crazy and you begin to question everything you say and think.
These Splitters, narcissists, and sociopaths are also the best of the best at gaslighting.
Gaslighting is making the rounds these days and an old film from 1944 gives us the story. Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer is a classic worth watching. It’s like an older version of Game of Thrones showing the misuse of power, revenge, murder, and intrigue.
It’s all about human behavior that seems to be part of our human destiny (until we finally say stop). So, read on and learn.
Gaslighters are compulsive liars (think about any you know personally). My best is a woman who worked for us years ago named Janet. She was a master manipulator and it took some time to figure out what was really going on. I owe her a debt of gratitude since the term Splitter came from her insane behavior. It took time for our entire staff to see how destructive she was (and sadly still is).
Here’s what the Splitters, narcissists, and sociopaths do:
They use gaslighting to gain power and control
They convince you they are right and what you think happened was wrong
They minimize their role to one of being insignificant (“no big deal”)
They conveniently forget and never can remember what they did as abusive
They play the victim while inside they are smirking at you
They are never accountable for their actions
They always vote by including others to convince you they are right
They will back out on promises and say they never ever agreed
They make up conversations that make them look good and you look awful
Problem is they dress well, speak effectively, and will talk to others about you and tell you they “have your back” while they tell you that others don’t care for you.
Want to know how to handle splitters (aka narcissists and sociopaths)? Please read my book, especially pages 83-84 and 156-157.
Now, there is some good news. Splitters who can transform their very destructive behavior become Peace Makers. It takes work to drill down to the root of where and how this started. Then it takes time to change behavior. It can be done.
No Janet never changed and she has had maybe 5 more jobs since she left out organization. However, I can spot a splitter, gaslighter, narcissist, sociopath within minutes these days. If you are working (or living) with a gaslighting splitter, give me a call and I would be honored to help you find your way out of the maze of misery they create.
Call 570 233 1042 to set time to talk.
