Deconstructing Gaslighting™

Gaslighting and our children… is there any place that feels more critical than this for those of us who are parents?  Have you ever wondered about any of the following? Am I gaslighting my kid? Did my kid just try to gaslight me? What does that mean if they did? How can I help my kid be “gaslighting resistant”? I’ve heard every single one of these questions over the years and asked myself each and every one of them. So today, my guest and I are going to share stories and tips to help address these questions.

Welcome to Deconstructing Gaslighting®, the podcast. I’m your host, Sarah Morales. If this is the first time you’re listening to the pod, welcome! If you are looking for help around gaslighting issues, I encourage you to check out my website where I have a number of self-paced programs designed to help you find your answers around gaslighting, find clarity and shift into a place of feeling more empowered.

My guest today is Lauren Hagen.

Story Time: Sarah and Lauren talk about the ways they've gaslit their kids, and the lessons they've learned about themselves, their kids, and parenting along the way.

Top take-aways:

• Not all people who do gaslighting behaviors are doing it for nefarious reasons. It's important to take a look at our own motives for gaslighting our kids, with compassion and WITHOUT judgement. This is how we learn how to meet our needs in parenting, while behaving in ways that are staying in alignment with the way we want to parent our children/our values.

So, dear listener, my and Lauren’s conversation about this very important topic was SO good, that I’ve done something I’ve never done before, and I’ve edited this podcast into two episodes so that it’s not 70 minutes long.

So please come back in two weeks, when Lauren and I talk about when our kids try to gaslight us, and when we see someone else gaslighting our kids.

I invite you to follow me on your preferred social media platform… I’m Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

If you’d like to get in contact with Lauren, you can reach out to her for a free consultation at [email protected] or call or text her at 512-739-6759. 

Thank you, my listener, for listening to today’s episode.  If you found it helpful and want to help me get it in the hands of more people who could benefit from it, please leave a review and subscribe.

Additionally, if you can think of one person in particular who could benefit, please share it with them. 

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broken and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.

It’s back to school season, and as such, this month my two podcast episodes are going to be focused on supporting all the parents out there.

One of the most difficult places we can experience GASLIGHTING is when we are having to “parallel parent” with a GASLIGHTING ex. The stories I’ve heard throughout my career of how this has played out would break your heart. So today I’ve invited someone near and dear to my heart to help me talk about this very difficult topic and give you some ideas of how to handle this if you are one of the many who don’t get to walk away from your gaslighter like I did.

Welcome to Deconstructing Gaslighting®, the podcast. I’m your host, Sarah Morales. If this is the first time you’re listening to the pod, welcome! If you are looking for help around GASLIGHTING issues, I encourage you to check out my website, where I have a number of self-paced programs designed to help you find your answers around GASLIGHTING.

My guest today is Lindsay - a therapist and mother to five boys.

Story Time: Sarah and Lindsay talk about a variety of ways parents who have divorced their gaslighter, but still share children, experience GASLIGHTING. From "love-bombing" to undermining, they share many relatable stories and a few tips and tools to help you if you can relate.

Top Take-Aways:

1. Give yourself permission to prioritize yourself so that you can be fully present for your kiddos.
2. Remember this important FACT: It’s NOT your job to “cover” or “protect” that gaslighting parent.
3. Remember the goal: stay connected to what you know to be true.
4. You don’t have to prove yourself to your ex/validate why you want the boundaries/”rules”, etc. – if they don’t agree/wont’ comply, you get to differentiate, etc.
5. Remember this statement: "If it's important to me, then it's important".

I wanted to invite you to follow me on your preferred social media platform… I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Thank you, my listener, for listening to today’s episode.  If you found it helpful and want to help me get it in the hands of more people who could benefit from it, please leave a review and subscribe. Additionally, if you can think of one person in particular who could benefit, please share it with them. 

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broken and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.

I saw a picture of a sign that read, “better to admit you walked through the wrong door than spend your life in the wrong room”. I felt that. There have been big and small ways I’ve LIVED that.

We ALL have ended up walking through the wrong door a time or two in our lives. Being able to recognize when we’ve ended up in the wrong room is crucial to living in alignment with our values in a way that is authentically us, rather living in alignment with what others want of us.

Today I’m going to use this context to get political. I can’t stay silent about what I’ve seen with my brain that is SO attuned to recognizing the gaslighting that happens. Not when I’m seeing such huge and harmful impact because of it.

What I want to do today is speak to those of you who may be experiencing cognitive dissonance because you are beginning to realize that you walked through the wrong door. I want to help you understand how that happened. I want to help you feel seen and understood. And I want to help you find the clarity and power to get out of the wrong room.

I’m Sarah Morales, the host of this podcast, and I’m so glad you’re here! If you’re new to the pod and want to know a bit more about me and the offerings I have to help people recognize the patterns of gaslighting and what’s more - heal from the effects of chronic gaslighting, please check out my website.

Story Time: Sarah deconstructs the "how" and "why" we end up walking through the wrong door; shares a concept she found in a Dr. Ramini video, shares a non-political example so we can see it in action, shares a personal example from her own life of walking through the wrong door, and then gets a bit political... all from a place of grace, yet wanting to speak out about the political abuse she's seeing, so that the USA can heal.

Top Take-Aways:

For those who may be in the wrong room:

1. Give yourself grace. You were lured in because you trusted someone who used your values against you.
2. Pay attention to when and how FEAR is guiding your decisions. When we are guided by fear, we are vulnerable to coercion.
3. Look for the ½ truths – especially with exaggeration and distortion, and when you are noticing extreme fear.
4. Get clear on your values and get curious around how they may be being manipulated through the aforementioned coercion.
5. Give yourself permission to leave the room.

For those who love someone that’s stuck in the wrong room:

1. Approach them from the place of seeing them – their values, their fears, etc.
2. Know it’s okay to have boundaries with them.

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broke and hurt, walked through the wrong door - but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we get some freedom and fly.

Life can be really, really hard sometimes. Trauma. Betrayal. Gaslighting… fear, pain, abandonment… it can be immobilizing. It’s not surprising that these things can (and often do) lead to depression. I remember being in some pretty dark places after the discovery of my ex’s deviant sexual behaviors – especially in the early days.

One thing that I learned, quickly, that had the possibility to bring me out of those depths of despair, was laughter. Cultivating experiences where we can laugh and/or feel joy is often overlooked and not truly understood. So today, I’ve invited Dr. Jessica Lamar onto the pod to talk about why these things are so important for us.

Welcome to Deconstructing Gaslighting®, the podcast. If this is the first time you’re listening to the pod, welcome! If you are looking for help specifically around gaslighting issues, I encourage you to check out my website, where I have a number of self-paced programs designed to help you find your answers around gaslighting.

My guest today is Dr. Jessica Lamar, Co-Founder and Director of Business Development and Strategy at the Bellevue Trauma Recovery Center (BTRC) in Seattle, WA.

Story Time: Sarah and Jessica geek out about the science behind laughter and smiling, talk about the difference between faking it til you make it and toxic positivity, and share tips on how to nurture laughter and joy.

Top Take-Aways:

1. Start small and safe
2. Be intentional/choose to give yourself opportunities to laugh/find joy
3. Look out for toxic positivity by being aware of "but" vs "and" (you want to be using the "and").

If you'd like to follow Dr. Jessica Lamar and the Bellevue Trauma Recovery Center (BTRC), you can do so on Instagram where you can sign up for the email list, find resources, and learn more about their intensives.

I invite you to follow me on your preferred social media platform. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Thank you, my listener, for listening to today’s episode.  If you found it helpful and want to help me get it in the hands of more people who could benefit from it, please leave a review and subscribe. Additionally, if you can think of one person in particular who could benefit, please share it with them. 

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broken and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.

Along my journey of deconstructing and unpacking all the ways gaslighting had impacted me throughout my life, there’s one key lesson that, if I hadn’t learned, I don’t think I’d ever have found the ability to stay connected to my authentic self, nor live from the place of authentic power. That lesson can be summed up in these three words: sacred self-responsibility.

Welcome to Deconstructing Gaslighting®, the podcast. If this is the first time you’re listening to the pod, this month, while summer is in full swing, I’ve ventured away from exclusively gaslighting-themed topics, and instead am bringing topics that will help you fill your toolbelt. If you are looking for help specifically around gaslighting issues, I encourage you to check out my website.

Bio: My guest today is Bethany Ellen. Bethany is an award-winning mentor, best-selling author, and founder of Permission Granted.

Story Time: Sarah and Bethany get into the details of what sacred self-responsibility is, and how we can learn to ride the swings of the pendulum and come back to our authentic self by leaning into our core values.

Top Take-Aways:

1. Check in with yourself, specifically regarding "Villian/Victim". Am I making myself the victim or villain, or is someone else trying to convince me that I am the victim/villain?
2. Use the concept of the grandfather clock pendulum and be curious about the extremes of compliance & defiance.
3. Give yourself permission to be on a journey towards sacred self-responsibility, starting with simply getting curious about what responsibility means, then moving into what do you want to be responsible for/whom to, and then moving into owning that "sacred" aspect of using self-responsibility to help you step into "wholeness".

If you want to understand more about the ways gaslighting has shown up in your life and robbed you of being able to live from a place of sacred self-responsibility, check out my website. I have offerings that will help you break the hold self-gaslighting has had over you and help you step into that Radical self-love.

I invite you to follow me on your preferred social media platform… I’m Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

If you'd like to follow Bethay, you can do so on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. AND, if you'd like to get any of her Masterclasses (they are SO good!), you can use the coupon code: PODCASTSarah to get 50% off ANY masterclass Bethany has in her store (live in a few weeks).

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broke and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.

There are a lot of words these days that are misunderstood. “Triggered” is one such word. It’s also a very important word, as it’s one of those words that can help us both recognize what’s happening to us, as well as help us communicate to others what is happening to us. So today, my guest and I are going to help bring clarity to the things surrounding the experience of being triggered and leave you with some helpful tips on how to recognize and deal with triggers.

Welcome to Deconstructing Gaslighting®, the podcast. I’m your host, Sarah Morales. This month, while summer is in full swing, I’m venturing away from specifically GASLIGHTING-themed topics, and instead bringing up topics that will hopefully help you fill your toolbelt. If you are looking for help specifically around GASLIGHTING issues, I encourage you to check out my website.

My guest today is Tammy Gustafson. Tammy is a trauma-informed Licensed Professional Counselor, coach, EMDR-certified clinician, and speaker. She is the founder of Betrayal Healing and is the host of the annual Betrayal Healing Conference.

Story Time: Sarah and Tammy talk about their own journey of healing and dealing with triggers, what they've seen as some of the most common struggles around triggers, and how we can "reduce or remove" triggers as we are healing.

Top Take-Aways: (5-10 min)

1. Reverse engineer – if you can identify when you have been triggered, work backwards. Ask your who/what/where/when. Who was around you? What did they say/do or NOT say/do? Where did it happen? When did it happen?
2. Ask: can I remove the thing that is triggering me? If not, can I minimize an aspect of it somehow – less time around a certain person/environment; boundaries around places/things; grocery shopping example.
3. Ask: is what I’m experiencing big feelings/activated or triggered? If it’s connected to a traumatic experience and we are in fight/flight/freeze/fawn, then we need to get to safety and get grounded/brain body connection back online. If activated, get curious - identify what feeling, what needs do I have? What values are being infringed upon, etc.
4. Try using the "How we feel" app to identify and track your feelings/triggers.

If you want to connect with or follow Tammy, you can go to her website, or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

As I wrap up today, I wanted to let you know that if you want to understand more about the ways GASLIGHTING has shown up in your life, and robbed you of knowing yourself, loving yourself, and trusting yourself, check out my website. I have offerings that will help you break the hold self-GASLIGHTING has had over you and help you step into that Radical self-love.

I invite you to follow me on your preferred social media platform… I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broke and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.

Where on your list of priorities is doing things to care for yourself? How much time and energy do you put into things that bring you joy or “fill your bucket”? How you answered these questions likely reflects your beliefs – conscious OR unconscious – about self-care.

And of course we struggle to give ourselves permission to do self-care. We’ve been told that self-care is everything from “selfish” to “lazy”. Additionally, most of us, when we most need it, can’t even think of HOW to do self-care because of being in trauma-brain.

 So today I’ve invited Adrianna Lewis of The Heartbreak Box, who is doing amazing work in the area of self-care, to be on the pod so that we can debunk the GASLIGHTING around self-care AND learn both truths and tools to step into transformative, radical self-love through self-care.

Welcome to Deconstructing Gaslighting the podcast. If you’re new here, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. I hope that the resources I have help you find clarity, empowerment, and healing.

Story Time: Sarah and Adrianna talk about the journey Adrianna has been on that led her to not only realize how crucial self-care is but find her passion in helping others embrace a lifestyle of self-care.

Top Take-Aways:

1. Make a pie chart of where/to whom you give your time and energy. Reflect on how much you give to yourself. Now ask yourself, how much of the pie chart do I believe reflects the values I want to live by? What would my pie chart look like if it was reflecting my values?
2. From Adrianna - remember PIESS. These are the areas we GET to do self-care: Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Social and Spiritual. Take account of where you are lacking and try doing some self-care to fill the void.

If you want to get on Adrianna's Heartbreak Box waitlist, you can do so here. You can follow her on Instagram or follow her Facebook page.

As I wrap up today, I wanted to let you know that if you want to understand more about the ways GASLIGHTING has shown up in your life, and robbed you of knowing yourself, loving yourself, and trusting yourself, check out my website.

I invite you to follow me on your preferred social media platform where we can interact… I’m mostly on Facebook and Instagram, though I do have a cache of videos on TikTok.

Thank you, my listener, for listening to today’s episode.  If you found it helpful and want to help me get it in the hands of more people who could benefit from it, please leave a review and subscribe. Additionally, if you can think of one person in particular who could benefit, please share it with them.  And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broke and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.

A few years ago, I had my founding members group for my Empowerment program. Before we began, I asked them to share the songs that helped bring them back to themselves. Some truly amazing songs came of that. One of the songs that I found that captured the journey the group was going on was Masterpiece, by Jessie J.

The chorus says: I still fall on my face sometimes and I can't color inside the lines, 'cause I'm perfectly incomplete - I'm still working on my masterpiece. And I - I wanna hang with the greats, got a way to go, but it's worth the wait, no - You haven't seen the best of me, I'm still working on my masterpiece.

In today’s episode, I’ve asked one of my founding members, who is kinda the poster woman for this energy, to come share what she’s been doing and HOW she’s been doing it. It’s going to be an epic show!

Welcome to Deconstructing Gaslighting the podcast. I’m your host, Sarah Morales. And if you’re new here, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. I hope that the resources I have on this podcast and my website help you find clarity, empowerment, and healing. Check it out, or better yet – schedule a free consultation call with me! Side note – that list of songs is on spotify.

My guest today is no stranger to the pod, as she was in season one at least twice. She is truly a magical person. Lauren is this incredibly fierce powerhouse of a woman who is a fighter and a queen who has survived significant betrayal and gaslighting trauma along with a total loss of self-worth. Over the years she has worked tirelessly to reclaim herself, her peace, and her power.

Story Time: Sarah and Lauren talk about the journey Lauren went through to get to the place of freedom and confidence that allows her to be "creating her masterpiece.

Top Take-Aways:

• Create your own (or borrow mine) “creating my masterpiece” playlist you can listen to.
• Find your “movement”/body experience that helps you feel groundedn and/or empowered – like dancing, or running, etc
• Create a mantra, and state it in the present tense: “I am creating my masterpiece” vs “I will create my masterpiece”.

If you want to understand more about the ways gaslighting has shown up in your life, and robbed you of knowing yourself, loving yourself, and trusting yourself, check out my website. I have offerings that will help you break the hold self-gaslighting has had over you and help you step into that Radical self-love. I’ll have the link in the show notes.

As always, I invite you to follow me on your preferred social media platform where we can connect and interact… I’m on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broke and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.

Have you ever seen that Dove “Real Beauty” sketches campaign video – the one where the women met a stranger, and after some time talking, that stranger gave their description to an FBI forensics artist. Then the women described themselves to that same artist. AND THEN, they had the big reveal of the difference between the stranger’s description and their own description. WITHOUT FAIL, the more accurate picture (and more flattering picture) was the one that came from the description of the stranger. Big forehead; small eyes; too many freckles; big nose. These women tended to focus on the things they believed were negative about themselves AND saw them as a bigger deal than they actually were. Why do we do this? AND how can we STOP doing this?

In today’s episode, during this month of focusing on self-worth, I’ve asked the amazing Leslie Jordan to come back to the pod and help us understand our body image issues and the thief of self-love that comparison can be.

Welcome you to Deconstructing Gaslighting the podcast. I’m your host, Sarah Morales. And if you’re new here, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. I hope that the resources I have on this podcast and website help you find clarity, empowerment, and healing. Check it out, or better yet – schedule a free consultation call with me!

Bio: My guest today is Leslie Jordan Garcia, MBA, MPH, CEDRS, CPT (she/her), a dedicated Eating Disorder Recovery and Body Liberation Coach.

*In case you missed it, Leslie and I had an amazing conversation back in season 1, where we talked about the struggle of how we view our bodies – especially when it comes to the concept of being “overweight. That episode was season 1, episode 33, titled, “I was overweight by THEIR standards”.   

Story Time: Sarah and Leslie talk about what body liberation is, why it's such hard work, and WHY IT'S SO WORTH IT!

Top Take-Aways:

• Follow Leslie on Instagram
• If you struggle with feeling self-acceptance and self-love when it comes to your body and want to experience body liberation - get on Leslie's wait list!

If you want to understand more about the ways gaslighting has shown up in your life, and robbed you of knowing yourself, loving yourself, and trusting yourself, check out my website. I have offerings that will help you break the hold self-gaslighting has had over you and help you step into that Radical self-love.

I invite you to follow me on your preferred social media platform where we can connect and interact… I’m on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broke and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.

Do you remember what your dreams were when you were a kid… or maybe when you were a teenager. How about as you entered into your mid-twenties? Were you encouraged to dream, or told dreaming was foolish or a waste of time?

And here’s the big one: were your dreams crushed by betrayal and/or gaslighting? Any number of these things can disconnect us from this thing I believe all humans have initially – the ability to dream audaciously. So today, my guest and I are going to have a chat to connect the dots of what causes this, and how we can begin to dream again – no matter the reason that was taken from you.

I’m Sarah Morales, the host of this podcast, and if you want to be in the know about special deals on my programs, new things I’m launching, conferences I’ll be speaking at, and lots of other helpful information and tools, sign up for my newsletter by visiting my website: deconstructinggaslighting.com

My guest today is my very good friend and amazing colleague, Rae Gaelyn Emerson of healing talks back.

Story Time: Sarah and Rae geek out over the intersection of dreams and values. Their discussion leads them to a variety of connecting points, with all roads leading back to how brave it is to continue to dream after betrayal/trauma.

Top Take-Aways: How can we be audacious dreamers?

1. Balance safety with audacity
2. Play – you don’t have to take action... yet or ever.
3. Self-talk: “I am worthy of having beautiful dreams and seeing them come true.”
4. Self-talk: “I give myself permission to dream. It is an important part of being human.”

If you want to understand more about the ways gaslighting has shown up in your life, and robbed you of knowing yourself, loving yourself, and trusting yourself, check out my website, and Rae's website. We both have offerings that will help you break the hold self-gaslighting has had over you and help you step into Radical self-love.

Follow me and Rae on your preferred social media platform… I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. Rae is on Facebook.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode.  If you found it helpful and want to help me get it in the hands of more people who could benefit from it, please leave a review and subscribe. Additionally, if you can think of one person in specific who could benefit, please share it with them. 

And remember – you may have crashed and burned; been broke and hurt, but damn it, you’re a phoenix and you’re rising again. I think it’s time we fly.