Podcast Player Episode 012

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome to The Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm Robin Stern, co-founder and associate director of the Yale Center For Emotional Intelligence, and author of the bestselling book, The Gaslight Effect. I'm an educator and a psychoanalyst, but first and foremost, I'm a wife, a mother, a sister, aunt, and healer. And just like many of you, I was a victim of gaslighting. Please join me for each episode as I interview fascinating guests and explore the concept of gaslighting. You'll learn what it truly means to be gaslighted, how it feels, how to recognize it, and how to understand it, and ultimately how to get out of it.

Dr. Robin Stern: Before we begin, I want you to know that talking about gaslighting can bring up challenging and painful emotions. Give yourself permission to feel them. Some of you may wanna go more deeply with your emotions. While some of you may hold them more lightly, no matter what you're feeling, know that your emotions are a guide to your inner life. Your emotions are sacred and uniquely you respect and embrace them for they have information to give you. If you want to listen to other episodes of The Gaslight Effect podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for being here with me.

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome everyone to this episode of The Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm really thrilled today to have with me a colleague and friend many years Rachel Simmons, and I know Rachel, um, as the expert in helping women, helping girls develop their leadership skills, their integrity, their resilience, their strength as they become young women and then older women. And I understand now that Rachel has started a new part of her career that I know also will help people with integrity and strength and building their best selves. So Rachel, please tell us a little bit more about what you're doing now, and then we'll get into gaslighting.

Rachel Simmons: You bet. Well, I'm delighted to be here with you and, um, to my great surprise, after 20 years of working with girls and then graduating to college students, um, first writing books about girls and, uh, the psychology of young women, um, which is when I met you Robin, and then transitioning to developing leadership programs for college students and having co-founded a a girls leadership organization, I was tapped to come in and start facilitating leadership development programs for women in tech companies. And I really didn't think that I would, um, be good at that because I thought, oh, I'm just a girl person. And it turned out that not only was I good at it, but I was really taken with helping women in the trenches of leadership, especially in an industry where they're underrepresented and where they encounter, um, not only bias, but the challenge of, um, taking up space when so many of them have been socialized not to do that. So it creates a lot of challenges for the women, for the leaders who want to advance them. Um, and of late I've been working to train men to advance women and to really work on fixing the system instead of fixing the women, which is what many programs have done, uh, up until now. So it's been a, a great ride and it's definitely given me a, a, a quite a view from girlhood to adulthood of, of, of all the different stages and challenges that, that females face a along their road to leadership.

Dr. Robin Stern: Thank you for, for up that update. Really wonderful to hear that you're working with the men and the women as well, but we all benefit from your great work

Rachel Simmons: Also, men men, men enjoy my sense of humor, uh, which I really appreciate. So turns out, turns out I can, I turns out I make guys laugh, and that's been, that's been working for me. So not that, not that women don't think I'm funny, uh, and all folks, but, uh, it's been very funny and fun to, to explore what it's like to hang out with men and teach them.

Dr. Robin Stern: That's very cool. Because, you know, of course science tells us laughter is a wonderful way to connect between people. So I don't know if you know Rachel, but our conversations about Odd Girl Out and your writing Odd Girl Out was, um, has been very important in my work in gaslighting and in explaining it to people, when people say, well, like, I don't know, do you know where do you learn how to do these things? And, and like, where do gas sliders learn? And like, who are gas sliders are there if they're not born, then, um, I can't even think of an example of a Gaslight or in high school. And so I refer them immediately to the film Odd Girl Out, um, where you can see the Mean Girls and you can see that moment of gaslighting where the, um, I can't remember your, your protagonist, your main character's name, but she says, well, are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong that you didn't save me a seat at the table? And, and instead of responding, the mean Girl says, oh, whatever. You're just so sensitive, or something like that. And I think that that moment is so classic in the experience of teens. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about, uh, how you came to, to represent that so beautifully and accurately and, and keep the integrity of the mom the moment and not, and also not make it a funny, um, haha moment for people to laugh at.

Rachel Simmons: Yes. Well, I think Robin, I feel like maybe, um, you're referring to the conversations you and I had about the ways that, um, representations of Girls' Aggression are often made into jokes, like they're often turned into comedies and, um, in Odd Girl Out, my goal was to really bring a level of serious attention to something that was always made fun of like, oh, look at those catty mean girls. And one of, when I interviewed the hundreds of girls that I spoke with for the book Odd Girl Out, which actually came out exactly 20 years ago, which is kind of nuts, um, but has since been updated. But in any event, what I really saw over and over again in the stories of girls who talked about being targeted were two things. One, they had often been targeted by their friends. And so contrary to the stereotype of the bully as someone you don't know, well, kind of a stranger who harms you, it was the people who were closest to them that were doing the, that were committing acts of cruelty, that were demeaning them.

Rachel Simmons: And of course, that's what made it even more painful and more injurious to the targets. But what also was coming forward in these stories was exactly what you described from the movie Odd Girl Out, which was a continual gaslighting. The, um, target would say to the person who was being mean to the perpetrator, she would say something like, you know, why are you doing this to me? And the, the bully or the mean girl would say, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, you're just being sensitive. Everything's fine. Mm-hmm. and Cause the girls were friends. You know, if, if, if it were someone that you didn't know, well, you'd probably less inclined to believe the person who's lying to you and telling you that everything's fine. But because you know that person well, because maybe on some level you want to stay connected with them, you wanna believe them when they lie to you and when they gaslight you. And so these girls, these targets who would say, please stop, and whose perpetrators would say, I'm not doing anything, would remain ensnared in these relationships. And it was the gaslighting that really pulled them along and, and really lengthened these episodes and turn them into even more impactful and painful experiences for the targets.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah, and you did such a great, great job of talking about that and, and showing that. And in your experience and interviews, um, and your relationships with these young girls and women, young women, how did they free themselves? What was that something or who was that someone who helped them to liberate themselves or stop the gaslighting?

Rachel Simmons: That's a good question. There was never one, you know, template for, to, for getting out of it. I think it was different factors that played in. For some girls it was the repetition, you know, it was that through experience, they just realized over and over again, what this person is telling me is actually not what is coming forward in their behavior. So the what I'm being told, there's a mismatch between the line I'm being sold and the actions that I'm seeing. And for some of them, the pain was so overwhelming that they finally realized they just had no choice but to disengage. Um, and, and it was that that allowed them to see, because some of this is about not seeing, so the, the pain kind of pushed them into seeing, um, I think for some, you know, having a supportive parent or a teacher who consistently tried to remind them that what they were seeing meaning what the target was seeing was real and true, and that they should trust their own experience. I think that made a difference. But I would gather at this point that for most people, it's, they have to come to that realization and that decision to stop kind of playing into the gaslighting themselves because the gaslight never stops. It's only, and you can't usually control them, it's you who has to make the decision to control your own boundaries with them. And I think that's what would often happen just through like experiential learning, frankly through practice. Like you just did it so many times and you realize there's nothing, there's no there, there.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes. And I, I think that, um, what you said is so true, number of things. One, that there is often someone else who is a supportive person noticing things, confirming your reality. Uh, and two, importantly that getting away even for a short time and getting some distance, when you actually look at what's going on and you realize, wait a minute, I do know what I'm talking about. And in fact, I've always known what I'm talking about, and in fact I believe myself. But somehow in that moment, in that engagement where the relationship takes primacy and your feelings about that person and your feelings that you want the other person to have certain feelings about you takes over. Right? So it's very hard to disengage from that. As you said, ensnaring, ensnare meant, you know, if that's a word, being ensnared in that relationship in that moment, very hard. Um, and that perspective is, is so valuable and that repetition over and over, you know, no, wait a minute, that isn't what happened. And the misalignment.

Rachel Simmons: Yeah. Um, and, and I think we do have a deep longing for connection. And I think that the longing for connection is so deep and so strong, and the hope that it will survive whatever moment it's in sometimes is what blinds us. Like we just want to be connected to the person. So we're willing to defer our own disbelief or defer our own anger because the connection is what matters. And for girls relationship is so important. Connection is so important. Same for women. I mean, same for all of us, but we know that girls and women receive a lot of strong messages about defining their own self-worth in terms of their connection to others. And so you can, you know, that there's that extra kind of layer of incentive and cultural pressure. We also know that, you know, girls get a lot of value and women too. I mean, you know, I'm a hundred now and I still am like, do I have enough friends and are people wanting to hang out with me? I mean, we get a lot of, um, self-worth from how connected we are to others. And so you can see why we might feel this extra incentive to stay in snared or to keep lobbying somebody, um, to, even though we know they're not telling us the truth on some level.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah. And it's been very hard for the people I've worked with to take that step away and to tolerate the disconnection to, um, to tolerate the fact that the, their gas cider is never going to think well of them. Their gas cider is never going to agree with them, but that's okay anyway.

Rachel Simmons: Yeah, and that's a good point, Robin, because I think it points to, there's an element of trying to win them over, which I'm sure you've seen with your, with your client. Like, you, you want to win, you want to think, if I just say it the right way or if I show up in the right way, or I, I don't know, I, I hit the right button, they will see what I see. They will admit to what they're doing, they will. And it's like, and I'm sure that that our tendency to try to win and to keep reapplying ourselves even though we're, um, you know, looking into an empty bucket like that comes from something earlier in our lives where we kind of got the message that by sheer force of our will, we should be able to make things bend to our, our wishes. And, um, I can imagine that there's a piece of that in play for the people who have a particularly hard time letting go. Yeah,

Dr. Robin Stern: Most definitely. And as, as we're talking, I'm thinking about as girls grow up to be women, to be the women who you've been working with most recently, are you seeing elements of gaslighting and that kind of, um, I need to win, I need to do any, anything I can, I need to be anything I can in order to keep the relationship?

Rachel Simmons: I think so, although I would imagine the relationship now isn't necessarily with a person as much as it might be with a particular organization or a company or, uh, something like that where, I mean, I think if I can make a slight shift here to what happens when you become an adult woman, and when you're ambitious and upwardly mobile and really, you know, have a great vision for yourself and your career, you may have come into your working life with the belief that if I do, if I work hard, I should be able to make anything happen. And, and a lot of, a lot of high achieving women were raised in families who told them that, who said, you can do anything. And especially, you know, if you were born after 1974 or you know, title IX time, it's like you can really do anything except that of course, especially if you're working in industries in which women are, are really underrepresented, um, you in fact can't do anything if you put your mind to it.

Rachel Simmons: In fact, when you, you can work very, very hard and still hit a very low ceiling, um, and then you can imagine that there could be an effect where you, you sort of say to yourself, well, why isn't this, you know, I'm gonna keep trying. I'm gonna keep trying, but I can't get ahead what's going on? There's a kind of gaslighting that happens at the hands of the, of the institution that's telling you that this is a meritocratic equitable place, but in fact, that's not really the case. And what I see happening with, with some women is that they blame themselves and they think, well, why can't I use the sheriff force of my will and ambition and intellect to make this change? Well, you can't because there's a level of institutional bias and discrimination that is just never going to be a match for your will. And, um, it will always out, it will always out, um, outwit your will. And, and so I think there's some gaslighting there. I don't know, what do you think? Does that, does that make sense to you?

Dr. Robin Stern: That makes total sense, absolutely. And I think that, um, I've certainly seen it in the, in organizations that I've worked alongside of and worked in, uh, through the years. And I, I think it is that same kind of noticing of the mismatch as we were talking about, and you noted a few minutes ago where over time you think, but wait a minute, they're telling me this, but it's really that, and yet that, and also that same kind of, if I just did this differently, if I just was a little bit more forceful, if I, if I connected with more people, I could change that.

Rachel Simmons: Yeah, I think, I think that's right. And I've just been, as you're talking, I was thinking about how whoever's doing the gas lighting has a commitment to protect something that is really intense for them. So like the mean girl needed to protect an an, an image of herself that was like, I'm, I'm not mean I'm nice mm-hmm. , or maybe she needed to protect the sense that, um, we were still friends because she didn't wanna have to have a conflict. So she was protecting her conflict avoidance, and of course, an organization's trying to pro protect and is committed to this, um, perception of itself as a meritocratic institution. So usually I think when there's gaslighting happening, it's because the gaslight is engaged in, in a commitment to something that it's trying to either shield, um, from view or protect for itself so that it can survive. And, and that's where I think that battle of the wills of who is right, um, really kind of stems from.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah, I think that's well said. And I know that in relationships, uh, often the gas sider is just trying to protect the truth with the truth is that they don't want, and I'm thinking of odd girl out, the truth is that she didn't want her to sit at the table, and she didn't want her to know that. Because the other truth was she did wanna hold on to that connection and seemed like, um, she was the good person who the target thought she was.

Rachel Simmons: Yes. Yes, exactly. And, um, and, and yeah, I never really thought about it until now, just that, that there is some deeper process happening, uh, for the person who's doing the gaslighting. So thanks, didn't, didn't really think about it like that until now.

Dr. Robin Stern: Well, thank you for bringing us there in organizations. What I've seen is that the, um, again, the people who are doing the gaslighting are often trying to protect the truth at or protect secrets and, um, and keep the person on the string at the same time.

Rachel Simmons: Yeah, absolutely. And, and also protect a certain structure of power and of, um, you know, not wanting to disrupt norms, because I think, uh, that oftentimes when we challenge an institution's equity and justice practices, it's be, there's a lot at stake for that organization to own that things might not be as equitable as, as they'd like to believe. It can be incredibly disruptive and scary for everyone,

Dr. Robin Stern: And they don't wanna be seen like that. They wanna be seen in a particular way. Right. And that's very important, holding on to that reputational, um, piece of it, how do I wanna be talked about outside of this institution or outside of this relationship, and how do I want, um, people to, to see me?

Rachel Simmons: And I also think, like going back to interpersonal gaslighting, I mean, I don't wanna diminish it, but I think that there are kind of minor episodes of gaslighting where you tell someone something that's not true because you don't wanna fight with 'em, you don't wanna have a conflict, you're not ready to talk to them. You, you do want to kind of put them on hold for a little while and have them hold in place and not necessarily get into it with them. And so in that sense, I can, can, maybe gaslighting is a way of preserving relationship while somebody figures out what they actually feel and think before they talk to you about it. Um, I know that's a bit of a pivot, but I'm just thinking about maybe a more like, uh, relationship preserving kind of gaslighting. I can just see doing that. I have done it right. I have been like, yeah, everything's cool when it's not, but I'm not ready to talk to you about that.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah, yeah. What do you think would've happened, um, or what were you afraid would've happened if you said, well, things are not cool, I'm just not ready to talk about it.

Rachel Simmons: Well, and instances that I'm thinking about, it's like I don't know what to say, and so I'm afraid if I say the wrong thing, the relationship will be terminated or will fall apart in some, in some really important way. Uh, yeah, I'm afraid. I think that's the fear. And so you think, well, maybe this is a way to keep the relationship, uh, together or connected, even though possibly what I'm doing to keep it connected is gonna ultimately blow to smithereens anyway. But, but I think we sometimes use gaslighting, maybe as a crutch to get us through those moments of not knowing how to, how to proceed in a conflict.

Dr. Robin Stern: I completely agree with that. And I think that that's also true in the workplace where, um, somebody approaches their boss or a colleague about something, the, and they, the person who they're approaching is not necessarily out to undermine the person's sense of self, but rather just to get themselves outta that difficult moment. And I see that with parents all the time, and I am a parent, and certainly I, you know, on the other end of it, my kids have said, uh, mom, I think that's gaslighting. You know, ,

Rachel Simmons: I'm sure they take great pleasure in pointing that out to you.

Dr. Robin Stern: Oh, yes, it's their job as they tell me to, to do those things, . And, uh, you know, in one of the things that I say all the time to people when they say, well, how, but how do you lose contact with what's really important to you? And if you go to the grocery store at five o'clock, and I probably said this on this podcast, any number of times you hear a mom saying to their child, you're not hungry, you're tired, get your hands off that cookie we just ate, can't possibly be hungry. And you imagine this child is thinking, no, wait a minute, I am hungry, but my mom knows best. And so maybe, maybe she's right. I'm not hungry, I'm just tired. And so those gaslighting moments may be difficult, but they're not going to be soul destroying. They may over time cause you to not trust yourself as much as you would like to and as, or even as much as you need to.

Dr. Robin Stern: So that's problematic. And I see women coming to me, um, in my therapy practice with, yeah, I, I don't really know what I think, you know, or Can you help me think this through? Or maybe I need to wait through three menstrual cycles to see if I still feel the same way. You know? Um, but when women are at the hands of someone who is intending to undermine them, um, or even not even, um, consciously undermine them, but just to promote themselves in the relationship and, um, to control the moment, then those relationships end up being really devastating. And women at the other end of that, the targets of the gaslighting really end up feeling like something's wrong with them, radically wrong with them. And in fact, that they, they're the people who are, are, um, they start to join their gaslighting in thinking terrible things about themselves, that they're incompetent, that they're crazy, that in fact they are paranoid.

Rachel Simmons: I, well, I, I think that, um, when we disconnect from the feelings and thoughts that are most, um, important and salient for us, that that's how we disconnect from, in many ways our power source. Because thinking and feeling, as you well know, Robin, is the raw material for figuring out what we want and acting on it and taking care of ourselves. And it's the, it's the genesis for self-preservation. So once you begin to disconnect from what you think and feel most strongly and you disconnect because you may allow yourself to have those thoughts and feelings defined by someone else, not you by someone else who says, no, you don't really feel this way, you feel that way, or you don't really think that you think this, that is how that is. That's just a critical source of power and, and self, um, and, and the authentic self. And so you, you, you can really understand how people become diminished and lose sight of, of, of the answers to those questions. What do I feel? What do I think?

Dr. Robin Stern: Exactly. And, and often the gas slider is using reality like what actually just happened against the target, so, well, but of course, honey, if I, if you didn't say that thing to me, if you weren't so paranoid, wouldn't have had a, I wouldn't have had to slap you. I wouldn't have had to leave the table, I wouldn't have had to call you those names. So can you see honey that you did that? Remember you said that thing and that, and so that, that twist in a moment, especially when you are very activated and you are flooded so that you can't really think straight and you can't in fact contact your emotions as well as you might if you disengage in the way that we talked about just a, a little bit ago. You're saying to yourself, he's right.

Rachel Simmons: I was thinking about, um, when people have affairs and they say, I, and I'm admittedly, I, I, I was, uh, watching the Showtime series, the Affair, uh, I'm a little late to that, to that party. It came out several years ago. But just watching how they negotiate the married couples negotiate, you know, why did, why did one of them step out? And there is a little bit of that that goes on where it's like, well, the reason I had to cheat is because of you, because of what you did, as opposed to taking responsibility for their own actions. So it is a, it is a really effective way to actually not have to own your own behavior, um, of like why, why somebody would do it. It's just a, it's just really, really effective at turning the attention on the other person and completely taking it off yourself.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah. And one of the reasons that people, um, are successful in gaslighting and it keeps going is because it's effect. It is in fact effective. It is. I mean, that is a very classic, uh, couple scenario that I see. Well, you know, if you traveled with me, I wouldn't need to see someone else while I was away. You can't travel with me. I'm a man, I need to have sex. I mean, that , you know, given that you're working in gender .

Rachel Simmons: Yeah. Now I, i familiar with that stance

Dr. Robin Stern: And it is so, um, tragic in many instances that women end up turning their finger to point at themselves.

Rachel Simmons: Yes, I think so. And um, and, and I do think that's actually one of the most dangerous side effects of gaslighting, as I'm sure you do as well. I think women are, are often already primed to blame themselves, um, for various reasons, partly because it gives them control in situations when they may not have any to begin with. Um, partly because they have been socialized to please others. And the desire to please ha then makes it, uh, very easy to, um, take that to a place that is self-blaming because I have somehow let you down. And so you can just see how, um, women are primed to, to turn, uh, the blame on themselves and, and how toxic that is and how ultimately it just reinforces what's happening. Maybe com accomplices in, in, in the behavior in some ways.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah. And pleasing other people can go so far also as, um, okay, well, you know, if I really want him to like me, if I really want him to plea to please him, I'll join. I have to join his perception. And so the minute you join his perception, the minute you step inside and stand in his shoes, you see yourself in a totally different way.

Rachel Simmons: Yeah, that's a really good point that, that there's a kind of conflation of pleasing someone with thinking like them or that or that to please to think, to think like someone or to agree with them or to inhabit what they think and feel is a way of pleasing and connecting. And in that's a real absence of boundaries and an opportunity to, to really talk about and teach boundaries and to say, you can be connected with and love someone and, and please them in many ways, and also feel and think differently from them and disagree with them. And, and that is a hard calculation for some people to make.

Dr. Robin Stern: Absolutely. I'm, I'm thinking as you're talking that I wonder if gaslighting in industry or gaslighting in the workplace is something that you actually learn from your mentor. You know, whether you've grown up in a workplace where that's the party line when um, you don't wanna communicate with your team or you don't want to, uh, give out information or you don't wanna take responsibility, that there is no, there's no one as of yet, or very few people, or actually teaching the skills that you need to have those hard conversations. So without the hard conversations that you may think nothing of them turning the tables or simply denying responsibility or deflecting what's going on. And while you may not intend to harm someone in the same way that we were just talking about, uh, in relationships, um, you do def you do intend to, uh, not tell the truth.

Rachel Simmons: Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Robin Stern: I would ask you, um, well, so first of all, something that I just occurred to me not having thought, nodding known of your new work before, what about the men you're working with? Does this come up with men? The idea of either, um, being in positions where they can't tell the truth and they know that, uh, they're, um, undermining people or that not in that way at all, but simply that they're victims or they're the targets of gaslighting as well? Um, or do you feel like there is, um, let me say it, let me ask it in a different way. When I think about your work, I'm imagining, oh goody, here you are, you're going to help men stop gaslighting women. And that that a big piece of what I see in the workplace when it comes to men being in a role where they could either promote, sponsor, mentor, um, put out in front, put women out in front, but instead of doing that, they're there saying they're doing that, but they're not doing that and they're blaming it on women. Well, of course you can't. Why would I promote you? You know, you haven't produced, but wait a minute, look at this and look at this. Well, but that wasn't what I expect was expecting. What I was expecting was something else.

Rachel Simmons: I'm not sure if this fits the bill, but I am thinking about something that I try to teach men about, which is the importance of when you are giving feedback to a woman, whether she's in your presence or not, and you're about to zero in on something, she is an individual could or should be doing differently, it's really important to remember her context. So if you say something like, well, she's not that technical, she's not technical enough, or she's not strategic enough that it's really easy to just zero in on blaming the individual and, and not actually thinking about the context in which this woman is pursuing technical expertise or is pursuing strategic expertise. And in fact, what often happens is, you know, when women are underrepresented in a technology environment, they get labeled as not being technical. Instead of recognizing that the system in play is, has an attitude towards women who are, who are technical, which says there's no way they could be as competent as men.

Rachel Simmons: And so that pivoting towards, well she's not technical as opposed to she's going to work every day in an environment where she's the minority and where her competence and likeability are constantly questioned. That can have a gaslighting effect because again, it's putting the onus on the woman, I think what you're instead of the system, right? Instead of thinking about the system. So that is something that, that I work with men on. I think you're talking about something different, which is acting like saying that you are a committed ally but not actually delivering on that in terms of your actions. And you know, are there men who think that they're kind of, we, you know, we might call that virtue signaling, that sort of talk about what great allies that they are, but maybe aren't actually doing it or anchor too much and talking and not enough and doing Yes. Um, sometimes that can be cuz they just don't understand what allyship actually is and means. Um, and sometimes that could be some maybe something a little bit more invidious. Um, but I think, you know, uh, certainly you would see that happening.

Dr. Robin Stern: I was afraid you would say that, but I already knew it so

Rachel Simmons: . But I would say most guys wanna do the right thing and they just don't know how. And that's one of the reasons I really enjoy working with men is for that reason. Like there's a lot of interest in being good allies.

Dr. Robin Stern: I think that's wonderful perspective. And, and, um, the men I know who I wanna introduce you to in the, in those roles are definitely those men, you know, they, uh, there are certainly enough of the other where they're not interested and they just wanna keep everybody quiet about it. But, um, they're really are men who really want something different in their workplace and want something different for women. And you're right, they just don't know how to do it. I guess the other thing I would um, ask you is I, how hopeful do you think it is to, to work with someone on their gaslighting behavior? Not for the target, but for the gaslight? Do you have hope

Rachel Simmons: blur? Uh, do I have hope for the person doing the gas lighting? Uh, I mean depends like, especially if they're narcissists, I feel like narcissists are pretty impervious to, um, seeing things in a way that's different from how they see it. I think it depends on the profile of gaslighting. It truly does. Cuz I, I do think some, some people have kind of a lockbox around that ability to rethink their perceptions or to rethink how they're communicating. But if somebody's open to feedback, then I'm always hopeful. But I think if you're not open to feedback about yourself and you're not curious and you're not flexible in your thinking, it's very hard to change anything.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah. I think that when gaslighting is more a product of social learning and the gaslighting is inadvertent rather than, um, deliberate and, uh, designed to destroy, then than it is the person can be open to doing something different.

Rachel Simmons: Yeah, I would agree with that. Especially if it's inadvertent.

Dr. Robin Stern: What are you looking forward to in the next few years of your career?

Rachel Simmons: Wow. Well, I'm really looking forward to being in person with more people after two plus years of virtual facilitation, which is exhausting. I really like being in person with people. Um, I'm looking forward to seeing how much change we can actually make by working with men and because I just think men are formidable, um, energetic change makers, and to turn that on to in the direction of gender equity is really exciting to me. Um, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to exploring different industries and moving beyond technology to see, to learn about the experience of women in, in other industries like banking and, and law, um, finance and, uh, and we'll see, we'll see what happens, but gosh, there's a lot of change out there to make. So gotta get to it.

Dr. Robin Stern: How will you know if the change has been made?

Rachel Simmons: Well, I keep pretty good data on, on my program so I can see certain things. I can see how many women are getting new roles because of the programs that I deliver. I can see how many women, um, are, um, um, changing the way that they operate themselves. So whether how their networks have changed, if their networks have become more robust and more productive for them, I can see if they feel that they have advocates working on their behalf. Um, I can see how they define themselves as, um, as, as networkers and as people who are, uh, um, navigating like their own, uh, path as professionals. So I'm able to see kind of a lot, I'm also able to see sponsors, the pe the men that I'm working with change and think differently. Uh, and that's, that's very gratifying. There'll always be things I can't see. But, um, the question is, you know, how many, how many men can we get to is my, is my question.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah, I think that's wonderful goal to keep, do, keep going and getting to more and more men and more and more industries and, um, their leadership as well. This has been really fabulous. First of all, I'm just so happy to connect with you. We look wonderful and, and I'm so happy to hear about the change in, in your life and, and your career and to know that you've been so influential in the thinking about young girls and turning, uh, becoming women and leadership and that you're doing incredibly influential and, and really fascinating work now with men to help women.

Rachel Simmons: Well it is, I was delight to talk to you, Robin. I'm glad that you called me up. Always happy to, to talk with you anytime recorded or not, and I'm just really excited that my pandemic puppy didn't bark and holler during this recording, so I'm gonna consider that a major plus that's a win for everybody.

Dr. Robin Stern: Wonderful. Well thank you Ryan, for helping me put together this podcast and invite Rachel and thank you Rachel Simmons and, uh, all of you listeners, thanks so much and looking forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for joining me for today's episode. I hope you found today's podcast helpful and meaningful. If you want to listen to other episodes of The Gaslight Effect podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with the handle at Dr. Robin Stern. The Gaslight Effect podcast is brought to you by the Gaslight Effect Production Company. This podcast is produced by Ryan Changcoco, Mike Lens, and me. The podcast is supported by Mel Yellen and Gabby Caoagas, Suzen Pettit and Marcus Estevez from Omaginarium Marketing.