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.
