Gaslighting.  I usually think of gaslighting in terms of intimate relationships.  But, like any negative behavior, it can manifest in just about any type of relationship.  Including work relationships.  The hallmark of gaslighting behavior is when one person (or group) works to make another person (or group) doubt their own memories, experiences, judgement, and even feelings.  On an ongoing basis.

Gaslighting doesn’t only affect the person who’s targeted.  It also alters the relationships between the target and others, who may believe the gaslighter or at least wonder if there isn’t a kernel of truth in what they’re saying, or who are afraid of the gaslighter and back away (and don’t support) the targeted person, or (and perhaps some cynicism is showing) can see a benefit to themselves to support the gaslighter and knowingly join in.  

One very essential key to remember about gaslighting.  It’s not about what’s true.  It’s not about if you really have proof that you did deliver on your job, that you are a top performer, that your clients love you.  It’s about manipulating the social relationships around you to create an unhealthy workplace and turn around and blame you.  You can have all the solid evidence in the universe, the whole idea is the gaslighter is manipulating the social environment so their lies are, well, if not believed, they form the basis for action going forward.  Who gets promoted, or choice clients or assignments, or financial rewards.  Who gets to literally define reality.

What to do?  Well, the solutions are pretty simple, yet not at all easy.

First, and maybe not so simple, is to recognize it.  Gaslighting happens gradually, over time.  Anyone can be susceptible.  Read a bit about it.  You may be inclined to think, well everyone has some flaws, this isn’t really gaslighting because they are sometimes so nice and complimentary and it all will be OK, and I can do better too, and maybe they will change.  Nah.  The best predictor of a person’s future actions is their past actions.

Make powerful friends.  Or a large number of friends, who actually would recognize that it could have been them and who will be visibly supportive.  Violence thrives in silence.

Be one of those friends.  It could just as easily have been you.  

Document.  Keep a log of what the gaslighter said and did, when, who else was around.

Consider if it is safe to call the gaslighter on their behavior.  If you do, consider NOT using words like “gaslighter,” rather stick to the actual behavior.  “Gaslighting” and “gaslighter’ are interpretations of that behavior, and using them can backfire on you, and can be used against you as evidence of your own “agenda.”

And maybe it’s time for a reality check.  Many of us cannot marshall that army of supporters.  And many people end up  finding another job.  Gaslighters will try to wear you down over time, and limiting your exposure may be your healthiest option.

Well, that’s it for today.  Please check out our summer class offerings.  I now have put two more six-week courses on the calendar, one begins Aug 4 and the other Sept 11.  And they are both in-person classes.  If you’re registering, please be vaccinated before the start of class.

Stay safe, find options, live life.

Today is June 24, 2021.  We’re just in the first week of summer, and I already am sunburnt.  This weekend the temperature is expected to hit over 100° Fahrenheit.  Yes, here in the glorious Emerald City, in June.

Regardless, June is a great month for grilling (ok, maybe not this weekend).  One of my favorites is grilled peaches.  Find some freestone peaches, cut them in half and get rid of the pit, oil them a bit, and put them on a hot grill. I do cut side down first, then flip them over and move them off direct heat so juices can accumulate in the little well.  After they are nice and soft and smokey I let them cool down, slice them, and stir in some dessert wine vinegar or good balsamic.

Speaking of peaches.  Maybe about nine years ago one of my students in the six-week self-defense course came to class beaming.  She got to use some of what she learned.  She was grocery shopping in the early evening.  She was picking out some nice peaches, ripe ones, ready to eat.  As she contemplated her choices, she felt an odd sensation, like someone standing right behind her.  There was someone standing behind her.  She glanced over her shoulder, and described to us in the class a man, kind of tall and wide.  He was wearing a faded T shirt and sweatpants.  She thought he hadn’t bothered combing his hair before leaving his house.  The image of Jabba the Hut popped into my head.

She then took a look at the cart next to him.  What would Jabba the Hut eat?  Beer.  Pretzels.  Chips.  Beer.  Twinkies.  Did I say beer?

A little voice in her head whispered, “He’s not here for the peaches.”

My student said that before taking this class she would have made herself smaller, said in a soft yet high-pitched voice “oh, am I in your way, I’m so sorry!”  She would have slinked away, without ever having looked at his face.  She decided to do different.

She extended her elbows so they were sticking out to the sides.  Then she turned.  He was so close that one elbow got him in the ribs.  Not hard, but just enough to make him take a step back.  Then she looked him in the face and said, in a voice just loud enough for anyone in the produce section to hear, “Oh, you were standing so close!”

Did you notice what she did NOT say?  I’ll tell you at the end.*

She could tell he was angry.  And other people in the produce section were staring at them.  So he just glared, grabbed his cart, and huffed away.

Just about as soon as he left, she felt twinges of regret.  What if she was wrong?  What if he wasn’t simply trying to harass her?  She fretted as she continued shopping.

But just a few minutes later he was back.  He didn’t see her, but she sure noticed him.  And she saw him do the SAME THING to two other women.  One woman was selecting green beans, and the other strawberries.  Both of those women did what she said she would have done, made themselves smaller, apologized for taking up space in a public grocery store, and slinked away.  Did he then avail himself of the green beans and strawberries?  No.

By the time she found the store manager, it was too late.  He had checked out and gone.

She decided that she’s spend more time practicing with and trusting her instincts.

So she’d be better able to stay safe and live life.  You too can do that.

[*Oh, right, she did not say “sorry.”]

 

Today I’m talking about another book:  Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout, PhD.  Dr. Stout is a clinical psychologist who was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, and specializes in recovery from psychological trauma and PTSD.  I read one of her earlier books, The Sociopath Next Door, a number of years ago, and after reading James Fallon’s book decided it was time for an update.

Outsmarting the Sociopath Next DoorIn this book, Dr. Stout focuses on the very practical concerns of managing the effects on your well-being of those in your life, from whom you cannot just walk away, who lack a conscience and cannot form emotional bonds with others.  Whose mode of operation is treating life as a zero-sum game, where there are winners and losers and they are determined to be winners and rub in that you are the loser.  The three groups she looks at are 1. your own children, 2. people you have to work with, and 3. exes involved in child custody battles.  She offers very specific recommendations about how to structure your interactions with these individuals, once you recognize them for what they are.  

A big barrier is likely just recognizing someone as a sociopath, with its implications for how to work with them.  They won’t “get better” if only you were a better parent, better spouse, better employee.  That their behavior is not your fault, no matter how much blame they try to hand off to you.  That you have to pay attention to your own emotional welfare.

One phrase in this book that caught my attention is “closed system.”  In our self-defense classes I refer to this as “social isolation.”  You and the sociopath are in a relationship that may be covert, and you may be embarrassed or afraid or insecure and not talk about it. Or the relationship may be well-known, but what goes on behind closed doors is kept mum.  Dr. Stout points out (as do we in our classes), that violence thrives in silence, and she suggests that you find a person you trust, and who would be supportive, someone to confide in, who is also outside the social group you share with the sociopath.  So if the sociopath is a co-worker, talk with someone not at your workplace. 

Dr. Stout believes that with diligence, persistence, and planning, you can be outsmarting the sociopath next door.  Sociopaths, according to her, have a limited range of motivation and pretty much stick to their script.  Can you work around that, as they are trying to push your buttons for the reaction they want?

Dr. Stout also strongly suggests that when dealing with agencies such as law enforcement and the courts, you refrain from using the word sociopath (or psychopath, or any other clinical diagnostic labels) to describe that person.  That will not get you the support you’re seeking, and in fact may get YOU labeled as the trouble-maker.  How’s that?  Read the book.

And that’s all for today.  Be sure to check out the summer schedule for LIVE IN-PERSON classes.

Stay safe, live life.

Today’s topic may seem a little tangential, but bear with me. CVS Pharmacy, a large nation-wide chain, announced just a couple of weeks ago that it reached its goal of full transparency for beauty imagery produced by and for CVS. Apparently they made a commitment to educate its customers about the difference between “authentic” and “digitally altered” photos.  Apparently they are committing to reducing the overall use of highly photoshopped images in marketing.

It’s not exactly a secret that advertising images are highly edited, to the extent that the person depicted is not physiologically possible. (Generally that person so objectified is female.) And CVS has cited studies that point to a connection between the prevalence of such images and a negative impact on the mental health of women, particularly those ages 18 – 35. That seems to have been exacerbated the past year by the pandemic, which saw many women spending more time online, seeing more images of themselves via Zoom-like platforms, and being exposed to more online marketing.

OK, so about 1 in 3 women are less confident in their appearance now than they were a year ago. That’s an issue, and what does it have to do with your personal safety?

Confidence. Self-confidence.

A colleague, Dr. Jocelyn Hollander at the University of Oregon, has just written an article (soon to be published) on the connection between taking an empowerment self-defense class and interactional expectations. Interactional expectations meaning expectations we have of what other people should be like, how they should feel, and how they should behave. What are our expectations going into any interaction with another person. And she found that learning self-defense not only changed students’ expectations of what they were capable of doing, it also changed their expectations of behavior from others and their ability to hold people accountable for actions and words. In other words, it shifts students’ thinking from a more passive, consumer focus to an active participation in making choices in their own lives. Taking that self-defense class taught them skills that spilled over into improving their quality of life, and the confidence to use them.

What does this have to do with beauty products and marketing images? When we buy products, we’re not just buying material stuff. We’re also buying the branding, the mystique, allure, the promises and hopes that using this product will improve our quality of life. When our media environment is flooded with imagery of women who look more like fantasy role-playing than reality, well, studies noted by CVS show the effect increases feelings of discouragement. CVS also noted that most women who spend at least an hour a day seeing their own image (i.e., on a Zoom call) report feeling more inspired when the see UNALTERED images of models online. Beauty practices is one way of practicing self-care, which should be empowering. Encouraging women to know they can reach out for their expectations and dreams.

My favorite self-defense book of all time is Self-Defense:  The Womanly Art of Self-Care, Intuition, and Choice by Debbie Leung. And one of the reasons it’s my favorite is the photos, which are of real women (rather than the tall and limber 20-something women wearing workout leggings that seem to be in most photos). This says to me, hey YOU can do this! This is for YOU!

Stay safe, and live YOUR life.

Today we’ll look at numbers.  Yes, more fun with statistics.  Not crime stats like I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, but what Americans overall think about crime stats.

Most students in most of my classes initially think the rate of crime has gone UP over the past 25 years. At the beginning of class we do a little “pop quiz” about beliefs around crime rates and violence. When asked, the majority who thought the rate of violence had gone up cite the prevalence of violence in the media. The Gallop Poll too tracks this kind of opinion but in a more rigorous way and over the nation; they’ve found that most Americans believe the rate of crime nationally has gone up just about every year over the past 25 years. For instance, in 2016, 70% of respondents believed there was more crime in the US than there had been the prior year. Despite the fact that the actual rate of crime has gone DOWN overall over the past 25 years. The most dramatic drop, BTW, was seen between 1993 and 2000.

A couple of more numbers: Back to 2016, 60% of Americans said that the crime rate was either “extremely” or “very” serious, and 79% reported that they worried about the rate of crime and violence. Yet in that same year only 14% of Americans felt that the rate of crime in their area, where they lived, was either “extremely” or “very” serious.  You can find these numbers, and many many more, at https://news.gallup.com/poll/1603/crime.aspx.  These Gallop people have serious fun with statistics.

Why do so many of our neighbors believe the crime rate is increasing when it was in fact decreasing? The prime suspect is likely mass media reporting. Violence sells, violence leads, and in our current 24/7 news cycle over myriads of channels, the theme of violence gets ingrained. Something repeated over and over and over, true or not, seems to take on a life of its own.

This is not news. This was discussed decades ago, before there were hundreds of TV channels, cable channels, and social media to disseminate highly lucrative disinformation. Crime sells.

Way back in the 1970s, Dr. George Gerbner at the University of Pennsylvania put forward “cultivation” or “mean world theory,” proposing that prolonged exposure to violence on television gives rise to increased fear of crime and a view that the world is a more dangerous place than it really is.

Gerbner testified before a US House of Representative Subcommittee in 1981 about possible political effects:

“Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong tough measures and hard-line postures,” Gerbner said in 1981. “They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities. That is the deeper problem of violence-laden television.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/study-tv-violence-linked-mean-712890/

And it’s not just the news, fictional programs too contribute to this “mean world” approach. How about social media?

Back to the beginning — what do Americans think of crime stats? Mostly we don’t.  Most people are uninformed, rely on information several times removed from sources, and spun to sell something.

Are better sources hard to find? No. And I’ll leave it at that today.