Gaslighting, Therapy, and Fanfic
Feb. 7th, 2019 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingGaslighting is the process of attempting to convince someone that their accurate perception of a situation is incorrect; and, moreover, that their supposedly incorrect perception is the result of something being wrong with them.
Based on what I've seen, a lot of the disagreement over this definition has to do with how many people need to be involved in order for an interaction to be "gaslighting" and not basic rudeness or dismissiveness. For example, if Person A says, "There's a strange smell coming from the kitchen," and Person B says, "No there's not, you're just crazy," then that's probably not gaslighting.
I would contend, however, that there is so much atmospheric discrimination against certain groups of people that even an isolated accusation of "you're just overreacting" contributes to a larger system of societal gaslighting. As a result of this atmospheric gaslighting, people in marginalized positions can sometimes feel that there's something inherently wrong with their point of view, especially during times of stress and vulnerability.
With that in mind, I want to talk about something that many American therapists do, which is to try to guide a patient to arriving at a revelation on their own, generally over the course of several sessions. I understand the theory behind this, but I still think it might not be effective in situations involving atmospheric gaslighting.
In order to explain what I mean, I'd like to give a personal example. I was in a toxic romantic relationship for more than a year when I was in college. Even now I feel as though I've been conditioned to claim partial responsibility and say that the abuse went both ways, but that wasn't what was going on. Essentially, the boy I was dating would push me until I snapped and reacted, at which point everything that was wrong with the relationship would become my fault because I had gotten upset. I had never been in that sort of unhealthy relationship with anyone before, so I had no idea what was going on. I therefore went to a therapist and told her that I was somehow causing my boyfriend to abuse me verbally and physically, and that I needed her to help me figure out what was wrong with me.
If a frightened and vulnerable young woman came to me and said this, my first response would be, in no uncertain terms, "You need to leave that relationship, because no one should treat you like this for any reason. We can unpack your feelings later, but you are in real danger and right now you need to get out. Unfortunately, what that therapist - and then another therapist, and then another therapist - said to me was, "Well, what do you think is wrong with you? Why do you think he hits you and calls you a dumb cunt?"
Even if this sort of thing isn't technically gaslighting, it still feeds into the pervasive social narrative that young women are crazy and irrational and deserve whatever happens to them if they don't follow an unspecified set of rules about dating and relationships. Between one thing and another, I had never found myself in a safe space where I could talk to other people my age about romantic relationships without being judged or causing drama, which is why I didn't immediately jump to the obvious conclusion that the reason why a man would want to strike his partner or call her a cunt has nothing to do with me, and that this is a conversation that needs to happen between him and his therapist.
Around this time I got on LiveJournal and discovered fanfic. What this meant is that suddenly I was exposed to all sorts of models of romantic and sexual relationships, good and bad. This was when I started to understand what was going on in my life. It's not so much that the fanfic I was reading explicitly said, "this is what a healthy relationship looks like" or "this is what abuse looks like." Rather, what I got from reading and discussing and eventually writing fanfic was that women's stories are valid, and young women's stories are valid, and queer women's stories are valid, and nonbinary femme people's stories are valid. No matter how transgressive or "problematic" any given piece of fanfic may have been, it was no less worthy of being taken seriously because you specifically wrote it.
That sense of being taken seriously and feeling valid is, in my opinion, an effective antidote to atmospheric gaslighting. I don't think fandom is or ever was an inherently activist space or even a safe space, but I do think it's a place where a lot of female and transgender and nonbinary people first get the sense that it's okay for them to exist in the world as themselves, no matter how weird or strange or non-normative or queer they might be.
I think this is one of the main reasons why the purity culture of anti-fandom bothers me so much. If people are only supposed to write "pure" relationships, and if they're supposed to be so enlightened about up-to-the-minute social justice issues that they need to tag everything they write with all applicable content warnings, then this is tantamount to being told that they need to police themselves at all times in fandom, just as they do in real life. In addition, because the rules about "safe shipping" are so arbitrary and contradictory, this feels very much like the sort of "Well, what do you think is wrong with you?" gaslighting that I got in therapy as a college student.
If we can call fandom a safe space, and if we can think of fandom as an activist space, it's because it's a space where the voices of people who are so often silenced, marginalized, and discounted in the real world are allowed free expression. In this sense, a sentiment such as "don't like, don't read" can be a powerful and transformative expression of tolerance and empathy.
I should probably conclude by saying that I understand that not all therapists reinforce atmospheric gaslighting through poor professional practices. Many of them do, however, and finding one of the good ones is not just a difficult and time-consuming process but also a community effort in many cases. I don't want to suggest that fanfic is an alternative to therapy... but it sure is a hell of a lot cheaper and more accessible.
Based on what I've seen, a lot of the disagreement over this definition has to do with how many people need to be involved in order for an interaction to be "gaslighting" and not basic rudeness or dismissiveness. For example, if Person A says, "There's a strange smell coming from the kitchen," and Person B says, "No there's not, you're just crazy," then that's probably not gaslighting.
I would contend, however, that there is so much atmospheric discrimination against certain groups of people that even an isolated accusation of "you're just overreacting" contributes to a larger system of societal gaslighting. As a result of this atmospheric gaslighting, people in marginalized positions can sometimes feel that there's something inherently wrong with their point of view, especially during times of stress and vulnerability.
With that in mind, I want to talk about something that many American therapists do, which is to try to guide a patient to arriving at a revelation on their own, generally over the course of several sessions. I understand the theory behind this, but I still think it might not be effective in situations involving atmospheric gaslighting.
In order to explain what I mean, I'd like to give a personal example. I was in a toxic romantic relationship for more than a year when I was in college. Even now I feel as though I've been conditioned to claim partial responsibility and say that the abuse went both ways, but that wasn't what was going on. Essentially, the boy I was dating would push me until I snapped and reacted, at which point everything that was wrong with the relationship would become my fault because I had gotten upset. I had never been in that sort of unhealthy relationship with anyone before, so I had no idea what was going on. I therefore went to a therapist and told her that I was somehow causing my boyfriend to abuse me verbally and physically, and that I needed her to help me figure out what was wrong with me.
If a frightened and vulnerable young woman came to me and said this, my first response would be, in no uncertain terms, "You need to leave that relationship, because no one should treat you like this for any reason. We can unpack your feelings later, but you are in real danger and right now you need to get out. Unfortunately, what that therapist - and then another therapist, and then another therapist - said to me was, "Well, what do you think is wrong with you? Why do you think he hits you and calls you a dumb cunt?"
Even if this sort of thing isn't technically gaslighting, it still feeds into the pervasive social narrative that young women are crazy and irrational and deserve whatever happens to them if they don't follow an unspecified set of rules about dating and relationships. Between one thing and another, I had never found myself in a safe space where I could talk to other people my age about romantic relationships without being judged or causing drama, which is why I didn't immediately jump to the obvious conclusion that the reason why a man would want to strike his partner or call her a cunt has nothing to do with me, and that this is a conversation that needs to happen between him and his therapist.
Around this time I got on LiveJournal and discovered fanfic. What this meant is that suddenly I was exposed to all sorts of models of romantic and sexual relationships, good and bad. This was when I started to understand what was going on in my life. It's not so much that the fanfic I was reading explicitly said, "this is what a healthy relationship looks like" or "this is what abuse looks like." Rather, what I got from reading and discussing and eventually writing fanfic was that women's stories are valid, and young women's stories are valid, and queer women's stories are valid, and nonbinary femme people's stories are valid. No matter how transgressive or "problematic" any given piece of fanfic may have been, it was no less worthy of being taken seriously because you specifically wrote it.
That sense of being taken seriously and feeling valid is, in my opinion, an effective antidote to atmospheric gaslighting. I don't think fandom is or ever was an inherently activist space or even a safe space, but I do think it's a place where a lot of female and transgender and nonbinary people first get the sense that it's okay for them to exist in the world as themselves, no matter how weird or strange or non-normative or queer they might be.
I think this is one of the main reasons why the purity culture of anti-fandom bothers me so much. If people are only supposed to write "pure" relationships, and if they're supposed to be so enlightened about up-to-the-minute social justice issues that they need to tag everything they write with all applicable content warnings, then this is tantamount to being told that they need to police themselves at all times in fandom, just as they do in real life. In addition, because the rules about "safe shipping" are so arbitrary and contradictory, this feels very much like the sort of "Well, what do you think is wrong with you?" gaslighting that I got in therapy as a college student.
If we can call fandom a safe space, and if we can think of fandom as an activist space, it's because it's a space where the voices of people who are so often silenced, marginalized, and discounted in the real world are allowed free expression. In this sense, a sentiment such as "don't like, don't read" can be a powerful and transformative expression of tolerance and empathy.
I should probably conclude by saying that I understand that not all therapists reinforce atmospheric gaslighting through poor professional practices. Many of them do, however, and finding one of the good ones is not just a difficult and time-consuming process but also a community effort in many cases. I don't want to suggest that fanfic is an alternative to therapy... but it sure is a hell of a lot cheaper and more accessible.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-07 02:47 pm (UTC)and stay tuned for an Actual Reply maybe this weekend).no subject
Date: 2019-02-08 10:30 pm (UTC)The world is a wide place, and my experience is narrow, but I'm going to tell you something I've noticed. Maybe you've noticed the same thing? Despite social media making it seem as if everyone and all their cousins are creatively inclined, I think the pool of creative people who are still serious about what they do over the age of 25 isn't actually that large. Like, I was so weirded out yet oddly gratified when I learned that I had once shared a hotel room at a con with someone who turned out to be one of my favorite Zelda authors on FFN, and the two of us only figured this out about two years later when we randomly met at some work thing. Or when I started reading N.K. Jemisin's novels and realized that she's someone I used to be sort-of friends with when she was writing fic on FFN. There are all of these connections all over the place, and...
...and it genuinely bothers me that it's mostly men who make careers out of their fannish hobbies and connections. Not that you or me or anyone needs to be a "pro" in order for their work to have value, of course, but still.
Anyway, sorry, what I meant to say is that I'm sure our paths will cross. It's so funny, like, I had at least a dozen people message me when I posted this commission of WW Ganondorf holding a pig, saying that they had seen it on the table of the artist who drew it at the convention where I commissioned it and immediately thought it was the sort of thing I'd be all over, but SURPRISE I WAS IN THE ROOM THE WHOLE TIME.
And that's such a lovely aspect of fandom, that you're secretly surrounded by casual friends who don't give a shit about who your parents are or where you went to school or how you pay the bills but still think kindly of you and want to see you succeed in the world.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-14 08:27 pm (UTC)Therapy is one of those things where I both love and hate it. I've been going ever since I was roughly 12. I've seen the same therapist for the past 8 years now after being hospitalized and am happy our twice a week sessions are now down to once a month. I remember being an angry, gothy teenager and flipping out at my therapist about more or less why was she always doing that whole "and how does that make you feel?" thing, because damn, were you not listening??? And she told me something that didn't make sense to me then, but definitely does now that I'm older. More or less, she said it was less about her comprehend the issues I was struggling with and more about giving me agency to voice these frustrations when I spent my whole life bottling them all up. And I think that's something a lot of people, especially women and female-presenting folks, struggle with - the whole trying to express yourself without being handwaved at and shoved aside.
That said, I've also been in a similar situation to you when I was younger where abuse unfolded with a damn spotlight on it and again... "but how does that make you feel?" Like no, stop. This is not ok. How about we not ask that and actually do something that will help.
I also read an article last year about anger management and therapy. Something about how not only are a lot of therapists not equipped to properly handle it, but also the psychology of the more abusive clients can make therapy sessions just... not effective. And therapists being treated no differently from said abuser's victims. It's just a mess no matter how you look at it.
And then there's the fact that if you don't have a therapist, getting one that's not booked out to the following year is like finding a unicorn, let alone scheduling time that actually fits in your schedule.
Before ever seeing a therapist, I saw someone when I was really little (like 5 or 6) who was like... not a doctor, but like a sleep therapist? I don't know I lived in a super rich, white neighborhood for 8 years and they had access to shit like this. Anyhow, I've probably mentioned this before, but I had extremely vivid nightmares as a kid for no reason. I'd be terrified to go to sleep and wake up most nights crying. And not like scary monsters under my bed types of things. Like... some Twin Peaks-y bullshit rolled with eldritch horrors and stuff. And everything was so real, even down to the sounds and sensations. And this sleep person tried to help me cope with it by drawing pictures of what happened in my dreams and then crumpling up the paper. It was to help teach myself that it wasn't real, that by recreating it and getting comfortable with those dark parts of my mind, I could come to terms with the nightmares and be less petrified by them.
It helped me so much. I was so happy to sleep again and have fewer nightmares. And even the ones I did have, it was less intense than before.
Even when I dove into fandom, I found comfort in those unsettling stories. Not because I wanted my faves to be miserable and suffer forever, but because it was so damn comforting to see someone I admired also struggle with something I dealt with. I felt so much less alone in those moments and that meant more to me than millions of fluffy novels.
And with so many people lately coming out to blow their purity whistles from the purity police, it makes me livid.
We all live differently, come from various walks of life along with having wildly different interests. To command anyone how they should go about it, whether it's ships or what you're ordering for lunch, is not ok.
I love fandom. I've been able to explore my sexuality and gender identity through it. I've met fabulous people such as yourself through it. I've found solid ground when everything else was collapsing. I've never felt more accepted anywhere else but fandom. Hell, when I told my therapist like... 4 or 5 years ago about fanfics when I got back into writing them, she thought it was AMAZING. She loved to know there were supportive communities like that where we could create and share with one another. Legit every sessions she asks about my fics. It makes me so happy.
And I know my version of fandom isn't the same blend everyone else consumes. I find comfort in those shadows now, because I made friends with the monsters that horrified me. It's not about being edgy or whatever to me; it's about reminding myself I'm not the only one struggling with reality and if those other characters made it, then maybe I can, too.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-07 03:40 pm (UTC)My dad was really good at this. When I was little, he'd gently explain how my upset didn't really count because I didn't really understand the situation, so I had no basis for my feelings. To this day, my father still takes apart anything that I say, interrupting every fact to show that I'm wrong, so I avoid any discussions like that. Gah. I let my daughter vent about anything, no matter how wrong. I won't put her through that.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-08 10:08 pm (UTC)Figuring out how to deal with kids is such an adventure, though. It's really cool that you've been brave enough to have a child of your own, and it sounds like you're being an actual decent parent. That is so punk rock! Stay awesome, stranger.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 05:00 am (UTC)