What Is Gaslighting?

Gaslighting is a common negative strategy that toxic people use to exploit fellow human beings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that 43 million women and 38 million men would encounter gaslighting at some part of their lives.

And you know what?

Chances are that you and I are either experiencing it right now or could experience it in the future. So it’s better to equip ourselves before we do, by gaining knowledge about this behavior so we can identify it and counter it effectively.

So let’s jump straight into the topic.

What Is Gaslighting?

Gaslighting is a psychological trick that a gaslighter uses to make you doubt your own emotions, perception, and reality, when in conflict. When you accurately remember something and still someone makes you question your memory, that’s gaslighting.

The core objective of the gaslighters is to keep you under their control. These types of situations often arise when someone questions the gaslighter’s belief, decisions and behavior. When you question their story, when you question their doings, that’s when they become naive and blame you for your own ‘misjudgment’.

The underlying issue is that the gaslighters don’t think they are answerable to anyone. And being questioned about their behavior puts them in an uncomfortable position and this is where they employ gaslighting to run from accountability.

So you’d never find a gaslighter apologize for their misactions. That’s because in their own reality, they are always right.

Where Does The Word Gaslighting Come From?

This term ‘gaslighting’ was taken from a British play “Gas light” released in 1938. The story of the play is about a man who adopts this technique to manipulate his wife. He does this by fluctuating the intensity of his house’s gas lights. And when his wife expresses that there is something wrong with the lights, he shuts her off by saying that lights are all working fine, rather she has vision problems.

As a result, his wife starts doubting her own capability of perceiving things. That’s exactly what any gaslighter today would do to make you question your abilities.

Examples Of Gaslighting

After we’ve known the theoretical concept of gaslighting we need to look at some real-life examples to identify gaslighting in any situation. So here are three examples of gaslighting:

1. Belittling or Dismissing Feelings

Here a gaslighter would easily dismiss the other person’s needs and feelings. They’d make you feel like you’re overreacting. For example, in a relationship if the victim confronts their gaslighter partner on their flirtatious attitude with a stranger, they might reply by saying that “you’re thinking too much” or “you’re making it a big thing”. Even though you know the difference between romantic flirting and friendly flirting, you might still start to question your analysis.

2. Twisting The Truth

In this example a gaslighter twists the truth with the intention of denying your conclusion. For example, if you hold a gaslighter accountable for their rude behavior with your friend they might say things like, “your friend started first” even though they didn’t. This way they deny your conclusion that the gaslighter should apologize.

3. Blaming others

Let’s look at an example in a working environment. A gaslighter boss might forget to give you clear instructions on the task. And when the results are not up to the mark, they’d blame you for their own mistakes.

How To Know If I Am Being Gaslit?

Now that we’ve understood the basic concept of gaslighting, it’s time to diagnose if you’re being gaslit. So how do you know that?

There are several signs that can indicate gaslighting. If you are familiar with any of these signs, then it’s more probable that you’re a victim of gaslighting.

These signs are:

• Feeling confused about your own feelings
• Low self-esteem about oneself. You don’t give importance to your own opinion.
• Questioning your own judgment. Doubting your ability to judge between right and wrong.
• Cross examining your own memory often.
• Hearing phrases like ‘you are crazy’, ‘you don’t remember vividly’, ‘I didn’t mean that’, ‘my intentions were different’.
• You have to apologize for your partner’s behavior.
• And they never apologize. Instead, they always have an excuse for their actions.

If you’re experiencing more than three of these signs, then you are definitely being gaslit. So, you need effective solutions to counter these strategies of a gaslighter.

How Do I Prevent Being The Victim Of Gaslighting?

You need to establish a few new habits to prevent yourself from gaslighting. These are clever techniques suggested by the experts in the field of psychology.

The first and the most important one is to start a daily journal. Write about your highlights of the day daily and you will always have a written account of all the events that you can revisit in the future, if someone makes you question your own recollection of events.

Another way you can verify what happened in the past is sharing your life episodes with your friends or other family members so they can help you remember vividly.

These two are excellent tips to counter a gaslighter but I still think that you learn to stand for yourself. You see that a person is able to gaslight you only when they detect an element of low self-esteem in you. They feel that this person is open to question his or her own feelings, memory or judgment, therefore is an easy target for manipulation.

But if you are confident in your own judgment then these problems won’t arise in the first place. That’s why I believe that the root cause of gaslighting is the low self-esteem in the person being gaslit.

Final Words

If you ignore this type of behavior from a gaslighter, then your mental health is bound to decline. You’ll feel lonely and unappreciated which will result in you thinking of yourself as a loser.

To avoid that, a person needs to learn more about gaslighting to identify this behavior and then counter it with the help of modern solutions.

In this article, I’ve tried to explain in detail about gaslighting and how you can resist it.