Abused: Is This Real life?

By C.L. Kent

Do you want a better life, free of your abuser? Are you questioning if what you are experiencing is abuse? Do you want to leave, but you don't know how? Are you living your life in survival mode? Do you even know your true self anymore?

Abused: Is This Real Life?  is about recognizing gaslighting and psychological abuse, gaining the courage to leave, and finding who you are again.

You will find practical advice, guidance on setting boundaries, and rediscovering who you were before your abuser took away your self-concept and identity.

Through traumatic, moving, and impactful personal details, the author shares how she came to recognize the insidious gaslighting, emotional abuse, and psychological manipulation happening in her own marriage, along with how she overcame years of childhood sexual abuse and rape.

The author includes lists of questions to help identify mental abuse and to stop living in survival mode, so that you can create a life in which you can thrive, not merely survive.

Abused: Is this Real Life? provides encouragement, hope, direction, and resources available to you when abuse is all too real in your life, and you don't know where to turn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.L. Kent
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201220082

Book preview

Chapter 1:

Gaslighting and Survival

The 1944 film, Gaslight, directed by George Cukor, tells the tale of a young bride, Paula, and her husband, Gregory. Gregory sets about to make Paula feel like she’s losing her mind. He starts with isolation, and then he dims and brightens the gaslights daily. If she notices, he tells her she is imagining things. He does this because he wants to erode Paula’s sense of self and life, and to confuse and twist her reality into something unrecognizable. As he continues this vile endeavor, Paula grows to accept Gregory’s reality as her own, while losing her identity in the process (Sweet, 2019).

Psychotherapist Paige L. Sweet, author of The Sociology of Gaslighting, defines gaslighting as the concerted effort by the abuser to create a surreal social environment meant to make the victim feel like they are insane. The abuser will twist the truth and confuse a victim’s thoughts, recollection, and reactions on a routine basis. This alters the victim’s sense of reality, creating an ‘unreality’ (Sweet, 2019).

In my experience speaking with domestic abuse survivors, many do not realize they are experiencing psychological abuse until late in the relationship. I left an abusive marriage after years of not understanding that what was happening to me was gaslighting, narcissistic manipulation and psychological abuse. Survivors report feeling as if they are going crazy; they often say, I don’t know what’s real anymore. I can attest to this. I used those very words, and I questioned my sanity many times because my abuser constantly told me that I had imagined the abuse. He would say things like I didn’t say that, It didn’t happen that way, or You are imagining things. Even small, insignificant, everyday chores like going to the bank or dry cleaner could be used as an attempt to gaslight me. You told me you would go to the grocery store, why didn’t you go? The point is, he actually made me question my own mind! After this happens over and over again, you do begin to wonder if you really are imagining things. It is terrifying. You feel hollow inside, and you begin to lose your sense of self. You are made to feel like you cannot trust your own memory, actions or thoughts. I actually began to think I might have a brain tumor or Alzheimer’s Disease! The goal is to manipulate you into believing you cannot function without them until you relinquish all control over your own life. To me, nothing is more frightening than questioning your own mind, your own reality.

When my ex and I first went for counseling, it became evident that he was intent on highlighting my flaws and how I was wrong in my perception of our issues. The gaslighting was really ramping up now, although I didn’t know what gaslighting was at the time.

He announced to me in his all-knowing way that as soon as the therapist explained how wrong I was about our problems, she would then teach me how to work on all my issues in order to improve myself, thus improving our relationship. I would get the professional help I so desperately needed to stop causing all the problems I had been causing in our marriage. He would put up with me until I learned how to deal with my issues because Catholics don’t get divorced and by God, he made a vow and he is a man of his word. Divorce is not an option and how selfish I must be to even think of doing that to the kids.

As unreasonable as it now sounds, I believed that the best interest of my children was for me to make my marriage work. He threatened to tell them I was crazy, that I am the reason for the divorce, and that everything was all my fault if I tried to leave. I kept a journal at the time which he found and promptly read so that he could use my own words against me if I ever made him look like the bad guy to the kids. He assured me that he would not hesitate to share with the kids my journal in which I write about my traumatic, childhood sexual abuse. So, yes, I thought it was in their best interest to stay married to this psycho. That is how I thought at the time.  

The truth is, I was happy to go to therapy alone. It was the best part of my week. I got to vent to someone who could understand and validate that what I was experiencing was not normal and that I was not the one with all the problems. During one particularly profound session, she mentioned the term gaslighting. She thought it encompassed my experience in this marriage and she explained why. She had noticed my body language and behavior during visits when my ex-husband was present, identifying his dominance and arrogance in these sessions. Not only that, but she observed his attempts to convince me I was remembering situations incorrectly or insisting that I flat-out made situations up. He accused me of being bi-polar, delusional, and paranoid in multiple instances. She later explained to me that those are precisely the words and accusations that gaslighters will use, noting that this was textbook gaslighting. She explained how