How to Ungaslight Your Children

When we see our children being gaslighted, we tend to act from a place of fear, anger, grief or any other complex emotions. Specially, if we have been gaslighted ourselves, we are likely to be triggered and act from a place of dysregulation. 

 

This does not help if we want to help our children to come to terms with their own experiences and reality. So, instead of acting from a place of trigger, we can support our children from a place of calm and connection to ungalsight them. 

 

One thing that we must never do is to tell children that they are being gaslighted. We must not make the other person look bad in front of the children either. There are subtle and skillful ways of gently getting your children to accept their reality without causing more damage. 

 

Why is it important to ungaslight your children?

A child's baseline assessment is that they can trust the parent or closest adults in their lives. So, they will believe and will protect the narcissistic parent/adult who gaslights them. As they grow up, they will tend to remain loyal to their friends and this may cause them to be subject to gaslighting by their peers. 

Children who are gaslighted grow up believing that everything that happens in their life is their fault. They become extremely good at rationalising abuse that's going on in their lives and as a result they fail to see abuse for what it is. This keeps them trapped in trauma bonded, unhealthy relationships. In addition to that, children who grow up being gaslighted may live with severe impacts as listed below. (This is not an exclusive list) 

 

-  Experience depression and anxiety

- Have trust and intimacy issues

- Don’t trust their own intuition

- Behavioural issues at schools

- Self-esteem issues

- Make them more vulnerable to entering into narcissistic relationships i.e. friends, partners etc.

 

I am going to leave you with a few tips for the time being. If you can’t make the workshop, I hope the following will help.

 

- Don't gaslight children yourself

- If you see it happened, just acknowledged their feelings and what's just happened

- Don't call the gaslighter out in front of the children

- Check in with the children

- Safeguarding and protecting children is everyone's responsibility

- Offer therapy for children

- Heal yourself in order to break generational cycles

 

This workshop is ideal if you resonate with the following. 

 

• You are excited to build a lasting, trusting relationship with your children

 

• You want to support your children attract healthy relationships in their lives despite having a narcissistic parent

 

• You feel exhausted and you want your energy back for you and your children. 

 

• Your children know that your partner/ex partner is hurting you. That’s painful for them and they feel like they have to protect you.

 

• You can’t remember the last time you had fun with your children and you want to enjoy them by being present in their lives

 

• You feel sick worrying about the same, doubt, manipulation, fear and inferiority that your children are experiencing when they are with the narcissistic parent and you want to be present for yourself and create a healthy environment when they are with you

 

• You are worried about the fact that the narcissistic parent is installing opposite values and engaging in extremely permissive parenting to offset your best effort in parenting. You want to role model trusting relationships and boundaries so that your children grow up feeling confident and contained.

 

• You find your children’s needs overwhelming and then you feel guilty, worried and sad when you have lost your patience with them. You want to stop this cycle from happening frequently.

• You have been taking talking therapy but it feels like nothing is changing. You are looking for approaches that have the capacity to help you.

 

This workshop is Not for you if you are

 

• Looking for quick fixes

• Looking for medical or legal advice

• Looking to offload your issues and talk about it 

• Looking to blame the narcissist and not take any responsibility for your own power in parenting

• Your children have grown up and they are living their own lives

• You are in immediate danger of domestic abuse

• You are experiencing acute depression and other mental health concerns that needs medical attention

• You believe your calendar is fully booked all the time and you won’t have time to put actions into practice. 

• You are one of those individuals who likes to attend workshops and gain knowledge but not want to do anything to change the circumstances.

• Looking for answers for all your problems. 

• Averse to holistic therapy. I use holistic tools, life coaching and NLP. I am not a clinical psychologist or a licensed mental health practitioner. I am an advanced EFT and a Matrix Reimprnting Practitioner, ICF accredited Life Coach and an NLP Practitioner. I was in teaching for almost 20 years and still do teaching occasionally with an EU funded charity. I hold three university degrees, all related to teaching in addition to my coaching and holistic therapy training.