If you find yourself in a relationship, workplace, or political environment that is constructed more on lies than truth, it is helpful to use psychological research to remain safe and sane. Lies target our mental health, yet we receive little training on how to keep our brains protected from this kind of abuse.
Our brains were not designed to pour resources into trying to figure out if someone is telling the truth or not. We evolved to need connection and community to survive. In general, our brains give people the benefit of the doubt to preserve cognitive resources for many other cognitive demands.
We are gullible by nature, and even highly educated and advanced individuals can be manipulated by falsehoods. That said, there are strategies that all of us can use if we are concerned that someone is trying to mislead us. These strategies can alert us to liars before our brains get traumatized.
Abuse Culture
Outlined in detail in The Gaslit Brain, six strategies can protect you from the lies of bullying, gaslighting, and institutional complicity. In essence, bullying hinges on two foundational lies:
- You’re not worthy.
- You don’t belong.
Those who tell these lies apply a superficial rationale for why they target and harm others. The rationale is frequently fabricated, and yet others accept the lie. Others “believe” the lie because it’s often dangerous to resist it in abuse cultures that are built on humiliation, fear, favoritism, and retaliation.
Gaslighting further undermines targets by making them wonder if, in fact, they deserve the abuse, perhaps the maltreatment is their fault. Self-doubt creeps in, further destabilizing and stressing the brain. A once competent person starts to falter. They hesitate, freeze, or suffer anxiety or depression. They second-guess themselves. The brain wastes precious resources in perseveration.
Gaslighting works effectively to distract from the abuser and make the target turn inward to figure out what’s wrong. When one’s safety is under threat, the brain prioritizes security rather than separating fact from falsehood. The brain lasers in on self-accountability mixed up with self-protection. Often, without consulting the mind, the brain has an autonomic response. It succumbs to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
The brain’s activated stress response means it could “fight” the bully, but might be destroyed. It could take “flight” from the bully to escape the threat. It could “freeze” and hope that the bully does not notice it. Or it could “fawn” and take the role of beneficiary or favorite, still fearful that it could, at any moment, be shunted into the role of target.
Six Strategies to Resist Gaslighting
What if, instead of having an automatic stress response to those who create abusive cultures, we were prepared? What if we trained our brains to prevent being pulled into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode? There are six strategies we can put into action that can place us in a stronger position when it comes to the lies of bullying, which all too often are followed by the lies of gaslighting and then institutional complicity.
1. Sharpen your senses
We tend to take our brain’s ability to process a great deal of sensory data for granted until we get older. Research shows that the more we concentrate on the fundamental intake of our environment, the better our higher-level cognitive functions perform. Putting deliberate practice into our focus and attention, working memory, processing speed, navigation, people skills, and intelligence strengthens our cognitive abilities and makes us sharper when faced with manipulation.
2. Build vocabulary for your intuition
The more accurately we identify and name the emotion-concepts brought to us by our embodied experience, the better we are at recognizing when someone wants to make us question our own reality. Bullying and gaslighting both grossly mislead the community and ourselves to gain status and control. Having self-awareness of our own physiology and effective terminology to describe it puts us in a more stable and confident position when faced with bullying and gaslighting.
Gaslighting Essential Reads
3. Hone your threat detector
Many of us underestimate that our brain’s primary concern is our safety. It is always scanning the environment for signs of danger. Being informed about how our brain assesses danger—frequently based on experience—helps us recognize what poses a real threat and what is a false one. We can become more intentional about present threats, such as those that come from bullying and gaslighting, through coregulation, turning to others to create a feeling of shared reality and safety.
4. Bypass position, and assess the person
Our brains have a bad habit of mistaking positions of power, credibility, and social standing for trustworthiness. A glance at recent reports of abuse cultures as well as historical ones reminds us that oftentimes those who bully and gaslight held respected and powerful positions where a combination of cognition and language is used to manipulate and alter reality. If you want to stay safe, focus on actions, not words, to cut through the illusion of an esteemed position.
5. Avoid mental shortcuts
We have wired into our brains that those in power are committed to our best interests. Too often, that’s not true. Psychological studies show that leaders protect their own legacy. If you disrupt their self-image or expose them for being negligent, they will oust you, not the perpetrator. Mental shortcuts make us mistake our beliefs for reality. Taking time to think slowly and factor in difficult truths, such as the leader’s self-focus, can save you in an abusive culture.
6. Balance your perspective
Our brain lateralization—having different left and right hemispheres—is an advantage. The left focuses on opportunity, necessary for survival. The right is more expansive, altruistic, and empathic. The left cares about the self; the right cares about connection. If navigating a bullying and gaslighting crisis, allow both hemispheres to advise and help you craft a strategy that keeps you safe while maintaining your care for the community.