Gaslighting

What is Gaslighting?

Definition

An action that attempts to create self-doubt, and confusion, in the victim, through questioing their reality.

In relationships

Gaslighting is a well known, and extremely common, feature of abusive relationships.

The abuser creates doubt and confusion in the mind of the victim, through questioning their reality, to the point that they are unsure whether to trust their recollection of events anymore.

Despite appearing to be so simple, it is one of the hardest abusive behaviours to spot when you are in the "bubble" of an abusive relationship.

My experience

The real evil behind gaslighting, and why I think it is one of the cruelest forms of emotional abuse, is that it creates a false reality for the victim. In this reality, they are constantly incorrect, and their thoughts are untruethful. It sets up a situation where the victim doesn't trust themselves to have true thoughts, and therefore relies on the abuser to dictate the validity of their thoughts and feelings. By design, gaslighting creates the perfect dynamic for the abuser.

I started by being sure I was being lied to and manipulated. However, that changed over time, and I began to doubt myself.

Was I being gaslit? Or was I just wrong? Could I trust my own thoughts anymore?

In my relationship, this lead me down a path of staying silent about my partners abusive behaviours, as I had so little trust in myself that I did not trust myself to be right about their behaviours being abusive. I ended up with the belief that their behaviours were normal, and I was the one being abusive.

Why is it done?

Gaslighting is a behaviour that is usually present in combination with other abusive behaviours. It acts as a sort of safety net for the abuser.

Imagine this scenario:

You are at a shop and have just been caught stealing.

You could:

• Own up to your actions, and face the consequences.
• Convince the security guard that they are making it all up.

You choose to gaslight them.

You tell the security guard they are wrong. You make them doubt what they saw, doubt their ability to percieve reality, and doubt their own thoughts.

• You get away with stealing.
• Next time you get caught, you can refer back to this time to make them doubt what they saw.
• After a few times, they'll just assume you didn't steal, as they were "wrong" all the previous times.

After a prolonged period of gaslighting, they won't bother you anymore, and you can continue your behaviours without interruption.

The safety net

The abuser in the relationship doesn't want the victim to realise they are being abused.

Gaslighting is used to convince the victim that their thoughts are based on a false reality. From this point, the abuser can start to create their own reality, and force it upon the victim as the "true reality".

In my relationship, this stopped me talking to anyone. I was convinced that I was the "crazy" one in the relationship, and that everything was my fault. So I felt ashamed and embarassed that I had been so wrong about everything in the past, and did not want to risk embarassing myself more by complaining about things that were, inevitably, "my fault".

Examples

Outright lying

It seems too simple, but it works.

In my relationship, there were many instances of my partner completely denying things had ever happened or been said.

The thing with this form of gaslighting is it doesn't work all the time, but it doesn't need to work all of the time.

It started with the most innocent of things, like denying that their phone lockscreen was ever a picture of me.

Little lies like this seem pointless in isolation. But when they are part of a constant stream of lies, they come together to have a huge impact.

Each time my partner was able to convince me that I had remembered something incorrectly, it added to a pool of times i was "wrong".

Over time, as this pool grew, it became easier and easier to convince me that I was wrong again. After all I had been "wrong" all those other times, so why shouldn't I be wrong this time as well?

This opened the door the them being able to gaslight me into believing more serious things never happened.

Bending the truth

In my experience of gaslighting, I often found the true reality of situations being altered, through a series of convoluted mental-gymnastics by my partner, to reach a point at which I could be blamed.

Take this situation:

• I had spoken to my partner about getting back from a social event by 7pm, as I had something planned with them later.
• They agreed and said they would let me know when to pick them up.
• They then repeatedly delayed this time, and eventually ended up being unable to do the planned activity.

When I confronted them about this, and said it was pretty disrespectful, I had the situation completely flipped to become my fault, and place me as the one acting weird.

Wanting them to do something with me became "not letting them see their friends".

Wanting them to let me know when to pick them up was "controlling".

From outside that relationship, I can see clearly that I was being pretty reasonable with my expectations, but in the moment I was made to believe I was being controlling and abusive, and that's the power of gaslighting