Self-compassion is the next step in the healing journey. As professional counsellor Amy Marlow-MaCoy writes in The Gaslighting Recovery Workbook,28
Acknowledging you have experienced emotional abuse may bring up feelings of shame. Gaslighting damages your self-esteem and distorts your self-perception. For this reason, learning to practice self-compassion is critical to your recovery. With self-compassion you offer yourself kindness, understanding, and recognition of the pain you have suffered, without criticism or self-blame.
Detaching from self-criticism, and moving towards kindness, is an essential part of healing: it helps us to love into the places where we were hurt.
This isn’t a step that should be rushed or bypassed. Take the time required, and follow a pace that’s true to who you are and what you need. It takes time to rewire old patterns.
Relaxation and Reframing
Self-compassion, as a recovery practice, restores body and mind. One way it does this is through relaxation techniques that calm the nervous system. This part of the practice addresses anxiety.
Another technique, reframing, involves shifting self-critical thought patterns to make room for healthy forms of self-understanding.
Relaxation Techniques
YouTube is an excellent resource for guided relaxation exercises. Exercises that focus on deep rest and relaxation settle the nervous system and are especially helpful when recovering from the anxiety caused by narcissistic abuse.
Yoga nidra and Non-sleep deep rest exercises focus directly on the nervous system. There are quite a few people posting these kinds of exercises; find the ones that work for you. There are also a number of well-established meditation apps, including Headspace and Calm, which provide guided relaxation activities. Try to build at least one deep relaxation session into each day.
Physical exercise is another cornerstone in reducing anxiety. Try to incorporate some focused physical activity into your daily routine. The exercise doesn’t need to be strenuous; walking for 10 minutes can help lift your mood and has a positive effect on the central nervous system. As a baseline, try to walk at least three times per week for 10-30 minutes at a time.
Last, devote some time each day to a calming activity that you enjoy. Pay attention to how you feel when you do it. Watching TV can be a nice distraction, but it can also get your heart pumping. Do things that slow you down—things like reading, knitting, and drawing. Find your catnip.
The two following exercises offer a good starting-point for a self-guided relaxation practice.29, 30 As always, use what works and leave the rest behind.
Exercise #1: Listen to Your Body
Learning to trust your gut or other physical reactions is essential to getting in touch with your core self. Doing this practice daily will help you relax and connect with your body and what it’s telling you.
1. Lie down, or sit comfortably with your feet firmly on the floor.
2. Starting from the top of your head, imagine a healing light working its way from your head to your neck, then shoulders.
3. Take time to recognize where there may be tension and notice it, then relax the muscles related to that tension (unclench your jaw, release your shoulders).
4. Release tense muscles as you work down through your torso, hips, arms, legs, and feet.
Exercise #2: Tuning In to Sensations
1. Set a timer for five minutes.
2. Sit comfortably or lie down in a quiet place, close your eyes, and pay to attention to what it feels like to be in your body. Be with the physical sensations as they come and go without choosing to stay with any particular one. Perhaps you’ll feel the weight of your body and how it’s positioned. Notice the temperature difference where there’s clothing covering skin. If the sensation is pleasant, let it go. If the sensation is unpleasant, let it go.
3. Notice these sensations as if you were watching over a beloved sleeping baby, wondering what they’re feeling. All you need to do is notice one sensation after another. Take your time.
4. When your timer goes off, open your eyes.
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Reframing Techniques
Reframing is about shifting away from self-blame, towards healthier forms of self-understanding. As Marlow-MaCoy puts it, it’s about healing our self-talk, which is how we talk to ourselves about ourselves. Self-talk can be kind, compassionate, and positive; or it can be harsh, critical, and negative.
It’s important to nurture positive self-talk because this enables us to move past self-criticism and into self-compassion. This shift is especially important for anyone who’s faced gaslighting, which relies heavily on blame and devaluation.
There is a wide range of ways in which one can practice reframing, including journal or story writing, painting, music, collage, daily logs, conversation, therapy, visualization, or personal reflection.
The key is to find the modalities that best suit your own style of thought and self-expression, so that you can engage in the healing process in a way that’s in line with your inclinations. With that caveat in place, here are four reframing techniques:31
Exercise #1 (Writing): Say It to Your Bestie
Pretend you’re listening to your best friend about a time they were gaslit. Imagine they tell you they feel stupid for letting themselves be manipulated and fear they’ll never recover from the abuse. How would you respond to them? Now imagine giving yourself the same kindness. Write out your response.
Exercise #2 (Collage): Visualize a Compassionate Future
Create a vision board to represent your journey toward self-compassion.
On one side, the collage will have pictures, words, interesting textures, and other materials that represent a relationship characterized by gaslighting. The relationship can take place in any context (family, personal, professional, romantic, etc.). The words and images you choose should illustrate the confusion, lack of self-confidence, anxiety, and other side effects you experience in that relationship.
On the other side, you can represent your post-gaslighting self. This board should illustrate your awareness and self-compassion. Create an image that speaks to your commitment to recover from abuse. If you’re still struggling to let go of the gaslighter’s influence, think of your second side as aspirational. How do you want to see yourself?
Put your vision board in a visible place so you can get regular reminders of how far you’ve come.
Exercise #3 (Ritual): Give It Away
On a scrap of paper, write down a word, phrase, memory, or image associated with your gaslighting experiences. Read the message, and then fold the paper up as small as you can. Dispose of the paper by releasing it to the elements—bury it in the earth, shred it and throw it to the wind, float it out to sea, or burn it. As you release the words, say to yourself “I don’t need to carry this gaslighting with me anymore.”
Exercise #4 (Daily Log): Self-Compassion Log
For one week, keep a daily log of how you treat yourself throughout the day. Read each question carefully before responding. For each day, rate how often you felt compassionate or critical. Use of a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “Hardly Ever” and 5 being “Always.”
Prompt
| I was kind and gentle toward myself today. |
| When I had problems today, I was very hard on myself. |
| I saw my mistakes as normal and human today. |
| When something hurt me today, I tried to be openhearted and curious toward myself. |
| I was loving and nurturing to the parts of me that were hurting today. |
| I was harsh, distant, and unloving toward myself today. |
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