I believe my ex gaslit me a lot during our relationship and is continuing to do so in court by calling me the abusive one.
I’ve thought long and hard and I just can’t see how she gets that I’m abusive, I can’t say I was perfect or anything, I could have done better on some things.
But my motives were NEVER anything like she’s claiming. I know this in my heart.
But the first couple nights after the hearing my head was spinning and spinning and spinning…
Am I abusive? Am I the crazy one??
Things like that. Constantly for 2 days straight.
My psychosis is now really bad.
It sounds like the situation is stressful and causing depression and that can also trigger that stuff, like self-hating thoughts that are not true. Maybe you should see a counselor. It sounds traumatic too that doesnt help with having all this drama…if you can write down things about efforts, or simple things you did to remind yourself what was real and what wasnt…then put it away and not think about it. Like keep a log basically of your thoughts to help you think or sort things thru.
It’s really traumatic this whole break up. I left her because she (again) threatened to kill herself after I told her she had hurt my feelings, then she screamed and banged on a door to get to me and punched a hole through a door. Now we’re in court because I filed a protective order, and when it was granted ex parte she started carrying keys around with her that had weapons on them. Would jingle them loudly when I walked by. ■■■■ like that. Because I didn’t kick her out because I couldn’t make her homeless over this she xould stay. She then filed her own protective order and is claiming emotional abuse (which isn’t even covered by protective orders to begin with). It’s been absolute hell and I have to do it again in two.months.
Sorry for the long rant. But I really like your suggestion! I’ll definitely get a journal.
You might actually be a victim of emotional and mental abuse. Maybe look into support for abused people. The places helping people in your situation may have good advice for you
Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that’s seen in abusive relationships . It’s the act of manipulating a person by forcing them to question their thoughts, memories, and the events occurring around them. A victim of gaslighting can be pushed so far that they question their own sanity.
This happens a lot, unfortunately, in situations where a woman is being abusive. My best friend in college was a guy who had a girlfriend who was just terrible to him. Like, hitting him, screaming at him, etc. He never hit back or screamed back, but after they broke up she told people how abusive he was to her and unfortunately a lot of folks believed her and cut ties with him. He lost a lot of friends over it. I know she was lying because I was her roommate and was present for a lot of the incidents she talked about, and i know she was wildly misrepresenting them and in some cases blatantly reversing their roles.
I did notice something interesting though. She seemed to genuinely remember things the way she described them. Like, I don’t think she was trying to be vindictive or manipulative or gaslight. I think she honestly thkught he was the abusive one. She also later got diagnosed as borderline. I think it is a common self-preservation tactic gone wrong.
People with borderline as a diagnosis are most frequently people who have survived long-term childhood abuse. It is a common abuse tactic for an adult to blame a child for the way the adult treats them, and say things like “well if you didn’t behave this way, I wouldn’t have had to punish you” and such things. Or to, when the child says something isn’t fair, go off on a guilt trip (“I’m trying my best! You just hate me I’m the worst parent ever I should just kill myself and then you’ll finally be happy!”) to get the child to stop trying to fight back and focus instead on comforting the abuser.
Some children take this mindset and internalize it, and then when they grow up they realize “No that stuff wasn’t my fault, I was innocent” but then take it a step too far with “Nothing is ever my fault, I’m always innocent” and then get into relationships. But we learn all our behavior from the world around us. So if someone grew up learning that as a method of conflict resolution, that might be what they default to in conflicts. And they have the mental protection they built for themselves of “remember it isn’t your fault you didn’t do anything wrong you’re a good person” so they don’t think critically about their own behavior, and will even misremember how things happened. And that’s how abuse is often cyclical. It takes a lot of hard work and access to mental health resources to unlearn that behavior.
I could go on a longer discussion about this. I don’t want to derail your thread, but if you want to talk more about it you can PM me
Oh yeah I ended up using the protective order to.move out. But I have to see her in court which is why my mental health is so bad. But yeah I moved cities not that long ago. Got a new job and everything.