Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying Free Now, and you're listening to the Flying Free

podcast, a support resource for Women of Faith, looking for hope and healing from hidden

emotional and spiritual abuse.

Welcome to episode 92 of the Flying Free Podcast. Today I have with me Amy Marlow McCoy.

She's a licensed professional counselor and author of the Gas Lighting Recovery Workbook.

Welcome Amy to the Flying Free Podcast.

Thanks, Natalie. I'm so happy to be here today.

Well, I'm excited to ask you some questions about gas lighting because I think everybody listening to this

podcast has experienced gas lighting one or five million times in their life and let's talk about it and let's start off though first of all if just in case just in case

there's someone that's tuning in that's never heard of the word gas lighting before.

Can you tell us what that is and also maybe give a few examples of how it might

show up in a family system.

Sure.

So, Gaslighting is a term for a specific type of mental and emotional abuse

in which one person tries to make the other person doubt their sanity,

their experiences, their thoughts or feelings.

So the phrase came from a play written back in the 30s called the Gaslight that's also been made into I think two different movie versions the more famous of which starring Ingrid Bergman.

And in that movie, there's a husband and wife couple. The husband is out, I believe, is out to steal the wife's

like diamonds or something.

And while he's rooting around looking for them, he

keeps dimming the gas lights in the house. And when the wife asks, what's up with

the gas lights, he tells her she's going crazy. There's nothing going on with the lights.

...