Author Archive: directorifi
Forgiving Those Who Gaslight Your Character and Ghost You
“It is difficult to truly defend yourself when your character is assailed.”
The theme of gaslighting has become popular in the psychological literature. It now is well known that the word “gaslighting” comes from a 1938 play, Gas Light, in which the female character is continually falsely accused of wrongdoing, which causes her considerable emotional distress. Gaslighting is present when there are false denials by the other or false accusations toward you by the other. At least 4 kinds of gaslighting are described in the current literature:
2) The other person has a character flaw, an ongoing pattern that is denied. “You keep saying that I neglect the children. Look. I am playing with them now. You do have a way of exaggerating.”
3) The other person accuses you of an act or a series of acts you did not commit. “You skimmed funds from our checking account.”4) The other person accuses you of a serious character flaw. “You are so continuously angry that I can’t stand it any more. I am out of here.”
Ghosting occurs when the other ignores you, abandons you, and shuts off all communication with you.
I have had people approach me for advice when they are the victims of the 2 G’s, both gaslighting and ghosting, a particularly difficult combination because the victims cannot defend themselves as the other accuses and then leaves. The victims are left alone to wonder and to doubt their own perceptions of themselves.
The 4th kind of gaslighting above, the assault on one’s character, is particularly difficult because there is no one concrete piece of evidence as occurs in points 1 and 3. Either the accused person did or did not steal, for example, in point 3. It is easier to verify a one-time behavior as having occurred or not than to defend an accusation of an ongoing character flaw. After all, if one is accused of being overly angry, the victim probably can remember once or twice being too upset or having a bad day. These occasional imperfections, of course, do not constitute a character flaw, but nonetheless might lead to some level of agreement with the accusation, even though it is false.
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Martha sought help because her husband, Samuel, was constantly accusing her of being insensitive to his needs. “You are always wrapped up in your own issues. I try and try to make time for you and yet, when I do, you push me away,” he would say. Martha was astonished by this because she truly tried to focus on him and his needs when he came home at night. He used this accusation as an excuse to leave the home and stayed away for 8 months with no text, email, or phone contact. Martha was left to wonder with no way of working this out with him. “Was I insensitive?” she wondered. “Might I have tried harder?” Her self-doubt led to low self-esteem. She started to lose weight and have depressive symptoms.
Josh approached me because his partner Abby was constantly accusing him of being overly angry. She said that she cannot take all of the anger any more and so she is leaving, which she did. As in the above case, Abby shut off all communication with Josh. Before she left, he asked her for instances in which he had been too angry to the point of fault. She said this before leaving, “Do you remember two years ago when we were having an argument and you put your fist down on the car’s hood? That scared me and I just can’t take that sort of thing any more.” When Josh was about to rebut the accusation, Abby was gone. He was left to think this through by himself.
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As Josh realized that his resentment was getting too high, he asked me for advice on forgiving Abby.
The preliminaries when forgiving involve:
1) seeing that as you forgive, you are not excusing;
2) understanding that you may never reconcile with someone who accuses and distorts deeply and consistently;
3) further understanding that you can and should seek fairness. This is especially important if the abuse is ongoing or even deepens.
A beginning part of forgiveness is to concretely explore the other person’s injustice. What, exactly, is the injustice? When did it occur, how frequently did it occur, and how serious is it? As we explored Abby’s accusations, Josh realized the following:
- Abby’s final accusation was of an incident that occurred 2 years ago, not at all recently.
- His “putting his fist down on the car’s hood” was not a pounding of the fist at all, but a gesture of emphasis over yet another accusation she was making at the time.
- Abby could not come up with even one anger-incident in the past two years other than the false accusation about the fist and the hood.
When Josh more clearly saw all of this, he realized how seriously unjust were Abby’s accusations.
Josh then began to explore more deeply Abby’s own life and the challenges she faced. For example, when growing up, her mother faced serious healthissues and so the mother had little time for Abby, who felt worthless. Next, Josh examined Abby’s earlier relationship which ended in divorce. Abby back then was accusing her first husband in a way that Josh now was experiencing.
This exploration set Josh free from his own self-doubts, from his own subtle self-accusations of “if only I had done more.” He could see Abby’s pained life which opened him to forgiving her, not because of what she did, but in spite of this. The process of forgiving uncovered Abby’s gaslighting. The process of forgiving uncovered Abby’s ghosting which was not Josh’s fault. He was able to see her confusions, her pain. Thus, he forgave her from his heart and, of course, he could not discuss this forgiveness with her because she had abandoned him. Yet, the gaslighting and ghosting did not destroy his integrity and his psychological health. Forgiving helped him to identify the problems and to find a healthy solution to the effects of those problems, the primary effect of which was unhealthy anger and a developing low self-esteem.
Martha had a similar outcome. As she freely decided to forgive and as she looked more closely into Samuel’s life, she discovered, through talking with some of his colleagues and friends, that his accusations and abandonment were hiding a serious drug habit which started a year before leaving. Her examination of his unjust behavior not only uncovered that he was gaslighting and ghosting but also that he was living a lie and was using the gaslighting and ghosting as a coverup. As his drug habit continued, he asked Martha to be his partner again, which she refused given his lack of insight into his own behaviors. Seeing his pain helped her to forgive. Forgiving, which took many months, set Martha free from anxiety and self-recrimination. Not everyone would be ready to forgive in this situation, but it was Martha’s choice to do this.
In both cases, reconciliation did not occur. A person can forgive without seeking to reconcile if such reuniting could be very harmful to the victimized person.
If you are the victim of the double injustices of gaslighting and ghosting, consider the process of forgiveness if you choose to do so. It may help you see more clearly that, in fact, you have been treated unjustly. It may help you to label the other’s behavior as unjust, to see the pain in the other that has led to the 2 G’s of gaslighting and ghosting, and allow you to escape the harmful effects of these dangerous behaviors.
Posted in Psychology Today May 08, 2018
Forgiveness, like Dr. Enright’s Model, should be Cultivated on National and International Scales
According to an editorial in the February issue of an international humanities journal, forgiveness interventions like Dr. Robert Enright’s 20 Step Process Model, should be employed on a much broader basis and, in fact, national leaders should be assessing “when or how it might be appropriate to cultivate forgiveness on national and international scales.”
The influential American Journal of Public Health, continuously published for more than 100 years, further editorialized that:
“If forgiveness is strongly related to health, and being wronged is a common experience, and interventions. . . are available and effective, then one might make the case that forgiveness is a public health issue. . .
“Because being wronged is common, and because the effects of forgiveness on health are substantial, forgiveness should perhaps be viewed as a phenomenon that is not only of moral, theological, and relational significance, but of public health importance as well.”
“Forgiveness promotes health and wholeness; it is important to public health.” AJPH
The editorial cites Dr. Enright’s Process Model (also called his Four Phases of Forgiveness) as one of only two “prominent intervention classes” now available. “Interventions using this model have been shown to be effective with groups as diverse as adult incest survivors, parents who have adopted special needs children, and inpatients struggling with alcohol and drug addiction.
“Forgiveness is associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and hostility; reduced nicotine dependence and substance abuse; higher positive emotion; higher satisfaction with life; higher social support; and fewer self-reported health symptoms. The beneficial emotional regulation (results in) forgiveness being an alternative to maladaptive psychological responses like rumination and suppression.”
Read the rest of this compelling editorial: Is Forgiveness a Public Health Issue?
Learn more about Dr. Enright’s Four Phases of Forgiveness
I have forgiven my partner, but I find that I am constantly being careful around him. Am I not forgiving? Should I practice re-forgiving him or is there some other process going on?
Your question focuses on the classic distinction between forgiving and reconciling. When you forgive, you are practicing a moral virtue in which you try to reduce resentment and show goodness of some kind to your partner. You try to do these unconditionally while, at the same time, striving for fairness (exercising the moral virtue of justice alongside forgiveness). In contrast, when you reconcile, you are not exercising a moral virtue, but instead are engaging in a negotiation strategy of working your way back to mutual trust. When you say you are “being careful,” you are showing that your trust is not yet strong. Do not expect the trust to be re-established immediately. Try to see instances of when your partner now is being trustworthy. Let these instances grow in you until you see that your partner has changed and can be trusted. Of course, given that we are all imperfect, no one will behave in such a way as to earn perfect trust in all areas of life. Use your wisdom here: Is he sorry for the past hurt? Is he trying to change? Is he making progress? Your forgiving may help you to be patient as he changes.
A New Approach to School Bullying: Eliminate Their Anger
“Introducing Forgiveness Counseling to the Schools”
If you do an electronic search for anti-bullying programs, you will see three prominent approaches, the 3 P’s:
- Peer mediation
- Persistent norms. (This is a “no-bully zone;” we do not tolerate bullying in this school)
- Punishment.
What makes people so angry that they:
a) retain the anger for a long time, sometimes years;
b) find no solution to that anger; and,
c) give the never-say-die anger to others?
We find that unfair treatment from other people is the source of so much anger in this world (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). Anger as a source of inner disruption in the form of anxiety, low-self esteem, and pessimism all too often goes unrecognized. After all, if a person with high anxiety comes to a mental health professional, it is natural to focus on the presenting symptom. Yet, our research and the clinical work connected to it suggest that toxic anger, the kind that is deep and long-lasting, often is at the heart of many psychological symptoms for those who have a history of being treated unfairly.
Forgiveness therapy, as an empirically-verified treatment, reduces and even eliminates the toxic anger (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). This is a paradoxical psychotherapy. As the client discussed the unfair behaviors coming from others, the treatment focus shifts from the client’s symptoms to an exploration of who the offending person is, what emotional wounds this person has, the vulnerabilities and doubts and fears that person brought to the painful interactions with the client.
As the client realizes that to forgive is not to excuse or forget or abandon the quest for justice or necessarily even reconcile with the other, then forgiveness therapy can proceed without distortion of what, exactly, it means to forgive. To forgive is to offer goodness to those who have not been good to the client. It is the offering of a virtue that has been around for thousands of years across many philosophies and religions and worldviews. To forgive offers the client a way to eliminate resentment by offering goodness…and it works (see, for example, Lin, Mack, Enright, Krahn, & Baskin, 2004).
When a student in school begins to aggress onto others, those who use the lens of forgiveness therapy start to ask these questions:
- Does the one showing the bullying behavior seem to be particularly angry?
- What is the source of this anger? Might it be unfair treatment from others in the past, perhaps at home or in school or in the peer group?
- Might this student be in pain, which emerged from the injustice, and might that pain now have turned to a toxic anger?
- Might this student be willing to examine who perpetrated the injustice and the subsequent hurt and ask, “Can I forgive this person (or persons) for what they did to me?”
School counselors now have a resource for taking this kind of therapy directly to those who bully (Enright, 2012). Rather than focus on the symptoms of aggression, disobedience to school expectations, or even the student’s own anger, the treatment shifts: Who hurt you? Is this person hurting and vulnerable and confused? Do you know what forgiveness is and is not? Would you be interested in trying to forgive the one who caused you so much pain? This kind of therapy can take up to 12 or more weeks, but that is the blink-of-an-eye relative to anger that can last for years.
As the student’s pain subsides by seeing the inherent worth in the one who was cruel and by fostering compassion toward that person (not because of what was done but instead because of whom the other is as a person), so too does the anger within the one who bullies start to fade, and this takes away the incentive to bully. The focus is not on the symptoms exclusively any more, nor is it on only creating school norms (which are all too easily ignored by those who bully when they are nurturing a rage inside).
To reduce bullying, we need to see the anger inside those who bully and have a plan to reduce it. Forgiveness therapy, as empirically shown, already has done its job. Now it is time to transport such therapy from the clinician’s office into the school setting for the good of those who bully and for the good of those who are the unwitting recipients of their pain.
Posted in Psychology Today December 17, 2016
References:
- Enright, R.D. (2012). Anti-bullying forgiveness program: Reducing the fury within those who bully. Madison, WI: International Forgiveness Institute.
- Enright, R.D. & Fitzgibbons, R. (2015). Forgiveness therapy. Washington, DC: APA Books.
- Gambaro, M.E., Enright,R.D., Baskin, T.A., & Klatt, J. (2008). Can school-based forgiveness counseling improve conduct and academic achievement in academically at-risk adolescents? Journal of Research in Education, 18, 16-27.
- Lin, W.F., Mack, D., Enright, R.D., Krahn, D., & Baskin, T. (2004). Effects of forgiveness therapy on anger, mood, and vulnerability to substance use among inpatient substance-dependent clients. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(6), 1114-1121.
- Park, J.H., Enright, R.D., Essex, M.J., Zahn-Waxler, C., & Klatt, J.S. (2013). Forgiveness intervention for female South Korean adolescent aggressive victims. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 20, 393-402.
- Reed, G. & Enright, R.D. (2006). The effects of forgiveness therapy on depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress for women after spousal emotional abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74, 920-929.
What can one do to get rid of guilt?
You first can become ready to approach the one whom you hurt. The point of approaching the other is to seek forgiveness. Seeking forgiveness includes: 1) remorse or an inner sorrow for having hurt the other; 2) repentance or saying you are sorry (apologizing); and 3) making recompense within reason. If you are a person of faith, then seeking forgiveness from God is important. Finally, practicing self-forgiveness should reduce the guilt. Self forgiveness is not letting yourself off the hook, but instead is unconditionally loving yourself despite what you did. When you seek forgiveness from the other, when you seek forgiveness from God, then you are not engaging in letting yourself off the hook when you self-forgive.
