Narcissism and gaslighting

Let’s talk about narcissism and gaslighting. If you’ve been on the internet at all since the Trump Administration, you know that there is regular and ongoing discussion of narcissism and gaslighting, because there’s been ongoing speculation that Trump is a clinical narcissist and would routinely gaslight people. So let’s talk about what those terms actually mean, and particularly, I’m going to talk about when use of these terms can be an overstatement of harm that ends up escalating conflict in your relationships, rather than what I presume we all want—to deescalate conflict.

Clinical narcissism is a personality disorder involving self-aggrandizement, a need to always be the best, associate with the best people, to be special. There will be no admission of fault. There is no recognition of the needs of others. A full description is available here, from the Mayo Clinic.

“Gaslighting,” according to Google, is “to manipulate someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.” There was a movie in the 40s called “Gaslight” in which a husband intentionally tried to drive his wife crazy by lowering the lights in the room—which were controlled at the time by gas—and when she talked about how dim they were, he’d say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He did this on purpose, to psychologically manipulate his wife into questioning reality.

Narcissism and gaslighting are terms that are being thrown around more and more in popular culture--and they’re not always being accurately applied, which means that sometimes conflict is increased rather than diffused.

In this podcast episode, I break down these two terms and how we can be aware of narcissism and gaslighting behaviors, and apply these terms accurately to resolve, rather than inflame, conflict in relationships.