I always think of this scene when I’m emotionally triggered. For me, it’s an accurate metaphor for how it feels to become hyperactivated in response to a perceived threat. It is very easy to interpret what’s really in front of you (toy gun) as something far more threatening (real gun), and react more violently than the situation requires. The scene further represents to me how those reactions can have consequences, particularly in our intimate relationships.

…

In recent decades, the term trigger has been co-opted by popular culture to mean any type of strong feeling in the face of an uncomfortable or unpleasant experience.[2] Social media accounts use it for example to mock “woke” people who get offended, and educational “trigger warnings” promise to protect us from potentially disturbing content.

Yet these mainstream uses of the term fail to capture its original meaning, and don’t necessarily cater to the needs of those most prone to feeling triggered: survivors of serious trauma.[3]

As therapists Sue Marriot and Ann Kelley describe, being emotionally triggered occurs when an implicit traumatic memory from our past “flood[s] [us] with a feeling that doesn’t make sense in the present.”[4] This “memory” is not experienced as such, but rather as a sudden physiological experience of acute emotional distress.

While we may be on the right track about what’s actually happening to us (something uncomfortable is most likely taking place), our sympathetic nervous system feels that discomfort at a disproportionate level to the current situation.[5]

To quote Marriot and Kelley, “the channel is right, but the volume is too high.”[6]

Doctor Ramani, an author and clinical psychologist, describes the experience of being triggered using a slightly different metaphor. She explains that when we encounter a situation that evokes our original trauma, we may feel “plucked’ like a guitar string.”[7] Once plucked, that guitar string continues to vibrate long after the threat has passed. As a result, survivors of trauma who are triggered may appear to the outside world as though they are overreacting or having a hard time “getting over it.”

The truth is it simply takes time for that vibration–originating from deep, nervous system-held emotional wounds–to come to an end.[8]

The experience of being triggered or plucked becomes uniquely complicated in response to relational trauma. While episodic traumas–a serious accident or natural disaster, for instance–are also extraordinarily painful, the source of the triggers associated are usually a bit easier to demarcate, such as a particular location, activity, or time of year.[9] Relational traumas, by contrast, can be more nuanced and less clear, making it harder to anticipate potentially triggering events.[10]

Additionally, the intense reactions that result from relational triggers get played out in relationship, meaning that survivors may misattribute the source of their distress to the very people with whom they desire safety and closeness. What’s seen as an overreaction to the non-triggered person then leaves the survivor feeling alone and ashamed, unable to communicate the depth and significance of their experience.[11]

It is essential to understand, however, that emotional triggers do not only stem from “negative” experiences. Survivors of relational abuse may feel triggered by “positive” interactions with an intimate partner because they mimic the love bombing and honeymoon stages in their previous toxic relationships.

Therapist Nadine Macaluso, in her book Run Like Hell, explains how our nervous systems become addicted to the cycle of abuse: “Because of the ongoing manipulative love tactics, your nervous system becomes ungrounded. Love-bombing is so extreme that it creates a flood of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain…the same neurotransmitter that…drives the addictive cycle of cocaine.”[12]

Psychotherapist William Brennan in turn explains that survivors may find positive moments therefore “traumatic to experience because of fear and powerlessness…the fear of relapse, craving, difficulty in error monitoring, [and] longing.”[13] In other words, the entire abuse cycle–love bombing, devaluation, and discarding–becomes triggering to the survivor in the aftermath of the relationship.

…

The good news for survivors of trauma is that, with therapy, mindfulness, self-care, and other forms of healing, the pluck becomes smaller, the string tighter, and the vibration shorter.[14] Like the giant, we may still have moments that take us out of ourselves, but we can begin to build the tools of self-awareness and self-regulation that makes repair possible.

Our nervous systems, so easily wired for threat, can thankfully be re-wired to incorporate feelings of safety and connection.

As Hogarth reminds the giant at the end of the film, “You are what you choose to be.”[15] No matter how reactive or powerless our emotional triggers make us feel, we indeed have a choice in how we respond to our trauma. And in fact, with intention, care, and support, the learning that comes from trauma can even become our superpower.

[1] Bird, Brad, director. The Iron Giant. Warner Bros., 1999.

[2] “Understanding Emotional Triggers – Why Your Buttons Get Pushed and What To Do About It.” Therapists Uncensored, episode TU08, 28 Sept. 2016.

[3] Jones, Payton J., et al. “Helping or harming? the effect of trigger warnings on individuals with trauma histories.” Clinical Psychological Science, vol. 8, no. 5, 1 June 2020.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Doctor Ramani. Why You Should STOP Saying the Narcissist TRIGGERED You… 20 Feb. 2023.

[6] “Understanding Emotional Triggers.” Therapists Uncensored.

[7] Doctor Ramani. Why You Should STOP Saying the Narcissist TRIGGERED You.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Macaluso, Nadine. Run like Hell: A Therapist’s Guide to Recognizing, Escaping, and Healing from Trauma Bonds. (Greenleaf Book Group, 2024), 62.

[13] Brennan, Will. “Intensive Training on Narcissistic and Psychopathic Abuse | Part II.” PESI.

[14] Doctor Ramani. Why You Should STOP Saying the Narcissist TRIGGERED You.

[15] Bird, Brad, director. The Iron Giant. Warner Bros., 1999.

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

Sophia Rehmus

Centuries later, the myth of Cassandra lives on in contemporary culture not as legend, but as the very real phenomenon of gaslighting. Gaslighting, a term that developed from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play, Gas Light,is a form of emotional and psychological abuse that manipulates victims into doubting their thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and memories.[3] Like Apollo, abusers use gaslighting to “undermine self‐confidence” and “cause victims to doubt their sense of reality and/or sanity.”[4] In particular, abusers use gaslighting to cause their victims to “back down, withdraw complaints, and assume responsibility for conflicts in the relationship.”[5] In Cassandra’s case, Apollo undermined her right to bodily autonomy (and moreover, her right to assert that right) by discrediting her ability to tell the truth and be believed. In doing so, he stripped away her power and her integrity. Ultimately, by driving her to madness, he turned her against herself.

If this dynamic sounds familiar, it’s because gaslighting is an ancient method of manipulation used not only by individuals, but by oppressive systems like patriarchy, racism, and capitalism (though that is by no means an exhaustive list). It is a darkly brilliant one–what better way to control people than by making them question their own self-preservation instincts? What evil genius, to make them believe there’s something wrong with them if they advocate for themselves!

The phenomena of gaslighting and, therefore, cognitive dissonance are especially present in pathological love relationships

Philosophy professor Cynthia A. Stark, in her article “Gaslighting, Misogyny, and Psychological Oppression,” remarks on gaslighting in the context of patriarchy: “[m]isogyny is enacted…primarily through the displacement component of gaslighting: men who are credibly accused of abuse by women (or the allies of those men) punish women for those accusations by ascribing defects to them to ‘explain’ their accusations…the stronger the evidence of abuse…the more sinister is the attribution of the defect.”[6]

She goes on to say that “gaslighters adopt the plainly immoral assumption that a female victim of grievous harm has no right to complain if the perpetrator is a high-status male.”[7] Today, this tactic remains effective and pervasive. People are willing to have opinions as to the reasons for why women come forward with alleged abuse (they’re needy, mentally ill, selfish, etc.). Other, that is, than the obvious one: they’re telling the truth.

With regard to racism, examples of cultural and collective gaslighting are equally infinite. Consider the psychiatric diagnosis drapetomania, or runaway slave syndrome, which was used to diagnose and pathologize runaway slaves in the Antebellum period, or the fact that psychiatrists in the Civil Rights Era used the concept of schizophrenia to portray Black Americans as “violent, hostile, and paranoid” (to this day, Black and African American people are diagnosed with schizophrenia more than White people).[8] These “diagnoses” represent just one of many efforts to pathologize and stigmatize the very appropriate fight or flight responses–the righteous anger and desire for freedom–that ensure black people’s survival in a racist society.

And then there is capitalism, which is “the biggest gaslighter of them all,” according to the science, psychiatry, and social justice journal Mad in America. In their article “Capitalism and Coercive Control,” they write that “most people recognize that the system is unfair and brutal, but authority figures of various sorts keep telling us how great it is, how lucky we are to have a job and how free we are.”[9] Personally, I have tried to opt out of the rat race as much as my circumstances allow–partly because of lifestyle preferences, and partly because my C-PSTD brain simply can’t take it. I am easily overwhelmed by highly competitive atmospheres, harsh or unforgiving communication styles, any real or perceived violation of personal boundaries, and authoritarian bosses who make me walk on eggshells. As such, I have chosen an untraditional, lesser-paying career path to protect my peace and mental health. This is a choice I often have to remind myself is the best choice for me.

In short, we as a global society feel the effects of structural gaslighting through oppressive systems like racism, capitalism, and patriarchy. But how are we affected on a personal level? What does the experience of being gaslit actually feel like? How does gaslighting occur in relationships? Why exactly is it so damaging?

In short, we as a global society feel the effects of structural gaslighting through oppressive systems like racism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

The most overarching answer to these questions lies in the term cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when one is faced with two sets of competing and dichotomous relationship experiences, memories, and opinions and/or emotions.[10] When an abuser gaslights their victim, they are causing that person to feel cognitive dissonance–a sense of deep, often surreal, inner conflict of contrasting perceptions about the partner, the relationship, and themselves.[11] This inner confusion and conflict, if ongoing, can lead to severe impairments to a victim’s functioning, including chronic second‐guessing and doubting one’s decisions, overthinking and analysis paralysis, extreme guilt about setting boundaries, and rigid expectations of self and others.[12]

The phenomena of gaslighting and, therefore, cognitive dissonance are especially present in pathological love relationships. The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction and Public Pathology Education revealed in their 2007 Aftermath Symptom Survey that cognitive dissonance is the number one symptom survivors feel after a relationship with a pathological abuser. Narcissists and psychopaths, who have naturally dichotomous Jekyll-and-Hyde personalities, force their victims to navigate their inherently contradictory and crazy-making behavior. In turn, survivors experience their pathological partners as sources of both immense validation and extreme punishment, of generosity and encouragement yet horrible degradation and cruelty, and of both the best and absolute worst experiences of their lives.[13] Victims come to expect extremes in a relationship, and often view themselves in similarly extreme and contradictory ways.

…

The myth of Cassandra parallels the gaslighting that oppressed and abused people face. However, there is a hopeful difference between the myth and reality. While Cassandra was never believed (her accurate predictions of the fall of Troy and the death of the Greek king, Agamemnon, went unheeded), victims of gaslighting can take comfort in the knowledge that, even when they feel most insane and alone, there is always someone who believes and understands. And sometimes it only takes one person to pull us out of the fog.

I recently finished Shari Franke’s memoir, The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom, which chronicles her adverse childhood under the control of her vlogger mom, Ruby Franke. In it, she describes one of these “being pulled out of the fog” moments. For the first time, an adult in her life, her therapist, tells her that her mom is emotionally abusive. The word “abusive” at first feels exaggerated and extreme to Shari, and she can hear her mother’s disdainful voice in her head telling her she’s being dramatic. But then…

“It felt like I was waking up from a long, hazy dream. The fog was lifting, and in its place was a blinding, brilliant truth: It wasn’t me. It had never been me. The dysfunction, the chaos…it was all Ruby. It always had been.”[14]

Shari’s epiphany in this moment mirrors my own experience, when my therapist became the first person to call my father’s behavior abusive, and when I finally realized that there was never anything wrong with me. When I started to distance myself from the lie that was causing me so much pain and suffering. It touched me that in both stories, one person had such an immense impact in relieving our gaslighting symptoms.

In her essay, “Testimonial Injustice,” Miranda Fricker defines testimonial injustice, a similar concept to gaslighting, as “a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower.”[15] I wish for every survivor that they can break free from the influences of gaslighting and testimonial injustice, and rebuild, with the help of those who believe them–their capacity as knowers.

[1] Rajan, V. G. Julie, and Sanja Bahun-Radunović. Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text: New Cassandras. (Routledge, 2016), 1.

[2] Ibid., 1.

[3] Marlow-MaCoy, Amy. “Narcissistic Abuse for Therapists Empower Clients to Break Free and Recover from Gaslighting, Emotional Manipulation and Coercion.” (PESI), 22.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Stark, Cynthia A. “Gaslighting, misogyny, and psychological oppression.” (The Monist, vol. 102, no. 2, 9 Mar. 2019), 227.

[7] Ibid., 229

[8] Dr. Corey Williams, opinion contributor. “Black Americans Don’t Trust Our Healthcare System – Here’s Why.” The Hill, 25 Aug. 2017.

[9] “Capitalism and Coercive Control.” Mad in America: Science, Psychiatry, and Social Justice, 10 Aug. 2022.

[10] Brown, Sandra L. “Narcissistic and Psychopathic Abuse: Clinical Tools, Techniques, and Trauma-Informed Treatment Protocols.” (PESI), 23.

[11] Ibid., 26.

[12] Marlow-MaCoy, Amy. “Narcissistic Abuse for Therapists Empower Clients to Break Free and Recover from Gaslighting, Emotional Manipulation and Coercion,” 63.

[13] Ibid., 24

[14] Franke, Shari. The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom. (Gallery Books, 2025), 258.

[15] Fricker, Miranda. “Testimonial Injustice.” Epistemic Justice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2007), 20.

Photo by Taras Chernus on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Sophia Rehmus

In July 2020, eleven months since we first went no-contact, my father wrote me his own obituary.

Entitled “Who I Am on the Way,” my father described in the third person his early profound religious experiences (“[a]s if he’d written John 21:25” himself), how for him, “making love was a continuous, collaborative art form,” and even included a suspiciously short list of his flaws, such as his ability to “speak truth to power” and “yell without raising [his] voice.” Most disconcerting to me still is his choice of words when he wrote that he “shared Thoreau’s aim to ‘suck the marrow out of life.’” One thing is certain. My father always sucked the life out of me.

At the time, his latest attempt to hoover me back into a relationship with him was traumatic in the extreme. Reading it now, “Who I Am on the Way” is, more than anything, educational. Painstakingly self-aggrandizing (I can just imagine him hunched over the blue light of the laptop he claimed to hate, typing away with two fingers at three in the morning), my father’s obituary is an admission, an unwitting invitation to bear witness to the insecurities that corrode his soul. It is also – in all its entitlement, grandiosity, and lack of insight or boundaries – my original case study of narcissism and narcissistic abuse.

Contemporary research defines narcissism as a chronic set of personality traits characterized by significant impairments to interpersonal functioning, primarily resulting from insecure attachments in early childhood. Dr. Ramani Durvasula defines narcissistic personality disorder (or NPD) as a learned behaviour pattern that causes harm to others.[1] Unlike most personality disorders, in which the person most negatively impacted is the person with the disorder, narcissism has the most profoundly negative impact on those affected by the narcissist, as the traits they exhibit are, by definition, interpersonally antagonistic and damaging. Experts characterize narcissistic traits as including, but not limited to, entitlement, grandiosity, lack of empathy, validation seeking, superficiality, interpersonal antagonism, insecurity, hypersensitivity, contempt, arrogance, and poor emotional regulation (especially rage). [2] These traits act as shields against narcissistic injury (i.e., a narcissist’s hypersensitivity to signs and indications of feeling undervalued or unappreciated) and internalized shame. While they may succeed in the short term, these traits lead to considerable difficulties in making and sustaining healthy relationships as an adult.[3]

These traits further make pathological narcissism extremely difficult, if not impossible, to treat. Mental health clinicians agree that, so far, no empirical studies have successfully identified a reliably effective psychotherapeutic or psychopharmacological treatment for narcissism.[4] For one thing, narcissists’ bullying behaviour extends to their therapists, considering the unlikely event that they are willing to seek help in the first place. Giancarlo Dimaggio observes that:

“[Narcissistic] [c]lients may involve therapists in different maladaptive relational patterns, pushing them to feel angry, devalued, helpless and inadequate and to disengage from the therapy process…Very often patients barely accept they are in treatment to deal with their own personality issues and only ask for symptom relief. This is one source of impotence and frustration in therapists, who eventually ask themselves: ‘Is this person really suffering? And if he does, is he willing to helped?’”[5]

Bottom line, narcissists are so interpersonally difficult and so unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions that they alienate even trained professionals. It is my belief, therefore, that we should focus on prevention, not treatment, of narcissism, the most effective method being psychoeducation.

Psychoeducation refers to psychological or therapeutic interventions presented in an educational format. These interventions can take the form of ‘passive materials’ such as pamphlets, informational websites, social media posts, and email listservs, or more ‘active’ methods like group exercises, workshops, therapy sessions, and training.[6] Psychoeducation has been proven in many contexts to be effective in both treating and preventing mental disorders[7] and, in the case of narcissistic abuse, “may be the most important part of the treatment.”[8] As Durvasula notes, “[m]any clients just don’t know how narcissistic patterns work – they often fall unto attribution biases and blame themselves.”[9] Given that narcissistic abuse also occurs in cultural contexts where abuse, particularly of marginalized people, is often normalized and romanticized, psychoeducation in narcissism does the powerful work of de-normalizing these behaviours and uncoupling them from cultural images of power and success. As the Hans Christian Anderson story famously said, the emperor has no clothes.   

At the dawn of Donald Trump’s second U.S. presidency, we are entering a dangerous era of narcissists in power. Given that, I argue that we must include another component in regular discourses on narcissism: gender. Despite growing awareness of narcissism, issues of gender and misogyny continually go unaddressed and unchecked. In a recent profile of mass shooters on The New Yorker Radio Hour,[10] which cited drug use, access to weapons, mental health issues, and fame-seeking among some of the main factors in an individual’s propensity to commit a mass shooting, profilers failed to account for gender as the single biggest factor (99% of mass shooters in the U.S. are male).[11] Traditional masculinity, as this example illustrates, is so interchangeable with violence that we often fail to see it as the threat it undoubtedly is. As Clare Bielby notes, “because masculinity and violence so often mutually constitute each other, masculinity has tended to be ignored in discussions of so-called political violence and perpetration, functioning…as the unmarked gender.”[12] Yet violence is gendered, and until we as a global community challenge gendered concepts that devalue male emotion and vulnerability and overvalue power, our world will continue to be a violent place.

My father was a narcissist, but he was also a man. A man who had learned – from his father and his father’s father and anyone else who subscribed to the patriarchy – that vulnerability equaled weakness, dominance equaled strength, and that, as a husband and father, he was entitled to control the women in his life. And yet, he would have been so much happier, so much more loved, if he hadn’t. My mother, sister, and I, feeling safe, would have loved him.

In Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That, he says, “[t]he better we understand abusers, the more we can create homes and relationships that are havens of love and safety.”[13] Psychoeducation in narcissism is a crucial step toward that goal, and I welcome the difficult walk ahead.  

[1] Durvasula, Ph.D. “Don’t You Know Who I Am?”: How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. (Post Hill Press, 2021), 5.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Flett, Gordon L., et al. “The Anti-Mattering Scale versus the General Mattering Scale in Pathological Narcissism: How an Excessive Need to Matter Informs the Narcissism and Mattering Constructs.” (Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, vol. 41, no. 6, 27 Oct. 2022), 621.

[4] Caligor, Eve, et al. “Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Diagnostic and clinical challenges.” American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 172, no. 5, 1 May 2015.

[5] Dimaggio, Giancarlo. “Treatment principles for pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder.” (Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, vol. 32, no. 4, Dec. 2022) 409.

[6] Donker, Tara, et al. “Psychoeducation for depression, anxiety and psychological distress: A meta-analysis.” (BMC Medicine, vol. 7, no. 1, Dec. 2009), 2; Burman, Erica. “Fanon, Foucault, Feminisms: Psychoeducation, Theoretical Psychology, and Political Change.” (Theory & Psychology, vol. 26, no. 6, 1 Aug. 2016), 707.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Durvasula, Ramani. “Navigating Narcissism: Giving Our Clients a Compass.” (Psychology Today, 5 Dec. 2019), Paragraph 4.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Remnick, David, et al. “What Makes a Mass Shooter?” The New Yorker Radio Hour, 27 May 2022.

[11] Martin, Michel, and Emma Bowman. “Why Nearly All Mass Shooters Are Men.” All Things Considered, NPR, 27 May 2021, Line 6.

[12] Bielby, Clare, and Jeffrey Stevenson Murer. Perpetrating Selves: Doing Violence, Performing Identity. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 4.

[13] Bancroft, Lundy. Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. (Penguin Random House, 2008), 36.

Photo by Scott Warman on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Sophia Rehmus