Gaslighting,

 

I was not surprised to read, in the daily news feed on my computer, that gaslighting is in 2022 the word of the year. If you consider what it is, you are bound to get a better picture of what Disembodied Language (DL) is. Like virtue-signaling and cancel-culture (two other popular buzz-words), gaslighting has to do with how we deal with our own and each other's language.

 

When you discover, you can also have Embodied Language (EL), you cannot miss the realization, that you have been engaging in DL, all the time, and, unknowingly, you were undermining all your relationships by gaslighting, virtue-signaling, and cancelling. Generally, people do not want to admit, that they are lying about something, that they are denying something, even if it is obvious, in the sound of their voice, that they do. This is a perfect example of gaslighting. When you bring attention to how they sound, they turn you down or refuse to talk.

 

Refusing to talk is a version of gaslighting, which is gaining more and more popularity these days. Our technology facilitates this cowardice. When what we see or hear, on a small screen, matters more to us, than what we ourselves can experience and express, we begin to doubt and reject ourselves and we dissociate from what is happening to us. An event or behavior, we witnessed ourselves, supposedly never happened and while nobody tells us in our face, we seem to remember wrongly what has happened and, therefore, we abandon our verbal descriptions and, we turn away from our language.

 

The essence of DL, our common way of talking, is that we keep telling ourselves and each other, that it is not really happening... If you insist on bringing it up, people will treat you, as if there is something wrong with you and, obviously, we end up suffering a variety of so-called mental health issues, because of this gaslighting.

 

The other day, a former class mate, contacted me and asked me how I was doing. We had not spoken with each other for more than thirty years. She had recently reconnected with a few other people, we both knew back then and was excited to find out, they were all, according to her, still the same. Then, she bragged about her children, her marriage, and her professional life, but also casually mentioned, she was recovering from a nervous breakdown, as she proudly stated, she had overworked herself. She talked non-stop, for about fifteen minutes, before I was able to get one word in, about how things were going with me. I spoke briefly about the fact, that my life has been shaped by EL and tried to describe to her, that in EL we listen to ourselves while we speak. Alarmed, she interrupted me and assertively insisted, she was already doing that, but it was very clear to me, she was not listening to herself at all. As I calmly told her that, she totally denied what I just said and argued adamantly I was wrong. Our short reunion ended shortly afterwards and I have not heard anything from her (or the others) since.   

 

Another aspect of gaslighting is that people spread rumors and gossip about you or tell you, that other people are saying negative things about you. This is the reason why, I stopped having contact with my family members. In one way or another, I already knew, as a kid, there was a difference between EL and DL, but my clumsy childish attempts to address this were always explained, as if I was a bad kid. I did many wrong things, which were bad and I often wondered, why I was doing these things, because I did not really want to do them? I now know, I acted on what was expected of me, as I was set up for my failures. For instance, I got caught lying again, but I felt envious of those kids, who got away with their lies. I wished, I could one day be like them, but did not know how to. I always admitted and was many times beaten and humiliated, to confess my faults, which made me the black sheep of the family. It was only after I immigrated to the United States, that I became aware of the dysfunctional family I grew up in. For me, it was the hardest thing to acknowledge that my EL could only continue, after I was, at long last, able to permanently reject my own family, instead of constantly feeling rejected by them. I strongly believe that millions of people are gaslighted by DL just like I was. 

 

If you explore, on your own, why your EL, even after you have acknowledged its benefits, cannot and does not continue, you eventually will conclude that others continuously change the subject and deflect from talking about DL. This is because we cannot talk about DL with DL. We can only sensibly talk about our DL with EL. People always change the subject and have forever refused to talk about DL, it is really is the history of mankind. To prove that they are right, they even insist that EL does not exist and fabricate a so-called higher power. Surely, confronting people on their DL never works and only makes things worse. We refuse to listen, if we do not listen to ourselves. Everyone wants others to listen to them, while they engage in DL, but the reality is that they do not listen to themselves. We can only listen to ourselves and to each other, if we are no longer forced to listen to others and have ongoing EL.