I still don’t really understand “gaslighting”

[Ginevra]

Like, I don’t recognize it as, “Oh, that person is gaslighting.” I can tell when people are employing psychological warfare; I used to notice my sister in law doing certain “crazy” stuff but it was usually something else, like projection. She would often project things and say, for example, “Sue is trying to make me jealous by posting those pictures on Facebook,” when in fact, *she* was doing that. 
 

But gaslighting - I have read the definition a hundred times but I still don’t *see* it when people do it. 

[KungFuPanda]

That’s because it’s not real. People are just trying to convince you that it is.  Nobody really gets gas-lit. 

[Guest]

Just now, KungFuPanda said:

That’s because it’s not real. People are just trying to convince you that it is.  Nobody really gets gas-lit. 

Is that gas-lighting? 😄

[Alicia64]

My boys' latest joke:

Son: "Did I tell you that joke about gaslighting?"

Me: No.

Son: Yes I did.

Get it? He was gaslighting me in the joke.

The term gaslighting comes from a 1940s movie with Ingrid Bergman. One of the things the husband does is continually dim the lamp lights all while telling his wife that the the lights are totally fine. She thinks that her eyes are playing tricks on her or that she going insane. Which is what he wants her to think.

It's supposed to be a good movie.

I hope that helps.

[Tap]

7 minutes ago, Quill said:

Like, I don’t recognize it as, “Oh, that person is gaslighting.” I can tell when people are employing psychological warfare; I used to notice my sister in law doing certain “crazy” stuff but it was usually something else, like projection. She would often project things and say, for example, “Sue is trying to make me jealous by posting those pictures on Facebook,” when in fact, *she* was doing that. 
 

But gaslighting - I have read the definition a hundred times but I still don’t *see* it when people do it. 

I think that is kind of a parameter of gaslighting. The perpetrator makes the victim think that events are real, that are indeed made up or altered. They manipulate the situation to appear different that the victim would expect it to be. Which, then over time, makes the victim question thier own sanity because event are contrary to what they know. 

If you are on the outside, looking in, you may not see it because one or two times of events appearing different that expectations, are easy to dismiss. But the victim, isn't living on the outside. They are fooled over and over, until they feel like there is something wrong with reality. 

It would be like if someone put dye in your orange juice to make it green. If you saw green orange juice, you would know it was dyed that color. You would assume it was joke and casually dismiss it. You wouldn't see the gaslighting, because you know it was wrong. But in a gaslight situation, the perpetrator will tell the victim, that orange juice is always green and they don't know what they are talking about. The perp may even go so far as convince the person that they have mixed up the color names. Saying green is orange and orange is green. They would likely produce 'proof' that they were wrong, and make sure that there was supporting evidence. That is why it is considered insidious. It isn't casual....is planned and predatory. 

[Katy]

Say you’re going for Christmas at your mom’s and she insists that what wouldn’t be enough food to serve one teenage son for one day is enough for the entire extended family for 36 hours so you’ve allocated less food than you would serve a toddler for one meal per person for the whole day. Any questions are met with an angry insistence that you’re being unreasonable. The person insists that something you know is crazy or completely insane by acting like you’re the crazy one.  That’s gaslighting.  In skilled manipulation you actually believe you’re the crazy one. It’s an extremely common tactic in abusive relationships of all kinds. 

Edited December 25, 2021 by Katy
Weird autocorrect issue

[*****]

Good explanation by Tap.   Or see Dr. Ramani's videos on Youtube.    I think it takes awhile to fully understand and see it.  I know it took me awhile, but now I am better at recognizing it.   Like when someone told you, "I told you that before."  And you wrack your brain and are sure you remember the details of the conversation, but they insist. But you are positive they didn't tell you what they said they did.    Usually it is done by the same person over a period of time, so don't think it is a casual thing by everyone, because sometimes some people do tell us something and we forget.  It is an intentional thing by someone who has a problem. 

[Guest]

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

[Farrar]

I feel that way about passive aggressive behavior to some extent. Like, I realize it later, but in the moment, I'm often like, what is happening, why is this person being weird, what do they want from me?!? And then later, I think it through and I'm like, oh, they wanted X, but instead of saying, "hey, I need you to X," they stood there saying, "isn't X such a problem?" "have you heard of X?" and random stuff where I'm like, um, whatever.

[Faith-manor]

4 minutes ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

Not really. It is like other forms of abuse when you think, "Why doesn't that person just leave?" And they do not. Tone of reasons including staying for the kids because of not being sure of getting custody, financial dependency, religious beliefs that make one feel it is a sin to leave the marriage or sometimes "honor thy father and mother" used to justify abuse and make a person again think they face the wrath of god for leaving, or nowhere to run, no one to take them in. A gaslit spouse/SO who is not experiencing physical abuse many times does not qualify for domestic abuse shelters. Modern times have not automatically equated to it being easier to leave, and especially true if that person is a stay at home parent or has been out of the work force a long time.

[Slache]

25 minutes ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

Because it starts small and gets bigger over time or because they're used to psychological abuse.

Examples from my life:

1. Telling me to ensure I had a certain day off to help with something, then when the day came she claimed she never would have asked for my help because it's something she likes doing alone and I should have known that.

2. Walking out of the room when I'm talking or interrupting me and claiming I wasn't talking, it must have been in my head. 

3. Cutting me off in the middle of a story to ask if I'm ok. When I say that I'm fine she looks really concerned and says "You really worry me sometimes," and then moves on as if I wasn't in the middle of talking. If I try to finish she acts like the first part of the conversation never happened.

4. Calling me into a room and acting like she didn't.

5. Throwing away food I had bought claiming I never bought it.

In all of those examples she was trying to prove that my brain wasn't trustworthy and I should accept her reality over mine.

Edited December 25, 2021 by Slache

[Garga]

28 minutes ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

In the movie, a sassy 17-year-old Angela Lansbury was also undermining the wife, so that added to why the wife didn’t go. It wasn’t just the husband telling the wife she was going insane…someone else was saying it, too, until the wife believed it. 

The main character is a young Ingrid Bergman who is wooed by a sophisticated older man. But he’s a con artist. And he knows of an inheritance that Ingrid doesn’t know about.

So, he woos and marries her so he can slowly drive her insane and keep her inheritance for himself. Angela Lansbury is the, well…horny teenaged 17 yo maid in the house who is interested in the sophisticated older man of the house and flirts with him and hates his new wife. So, she does whatever she can to undercut the confidence of Ingrid Bergman.

The husband will take a picture off the wall and hide it then start asking, “Who took that picture?” Ingrid Bergman is confused, “I don’t know…where is that picture?” They look for it, and it’s found in Ingrid’s room (the era when husbands and wives have separate rooms.) The husband asks, “Darling, why did you hide that picture there?” And Ingrid is all, “I didn’t hide it there!” 

But it happens over and over, with various things going missing and being found among Ingrid’s things, until she begins to believe that she’s somehow doing these things without knowing it.  The part about the gaslight is that he is snooping around in the attic turning on the attic lights when no one knew he was up there snooping—and the technology of the day was that if the lights were turned on in one area of the house, they would dim in the rest of the house.  So, Ingrid keeps seeing the lights dim and can’t figure out why and when she tells people something’s wrong with the lights, everyone says, “We don’t see the lights dim. What are you talking about??” And the husband seems so loving and concerned that Ingrid begins to believe she really is going insane and she needs to depend on her husband to take care of her.

He’s hoping to drive her nuts enough to send to the asylum and take her inheritance. 

It’s a really good movie. If you liked movies, I’d say you should watch it. 🙂

 

Edited December 25, 2021 by Garga

[Rosie_0801]

33 minutes ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 

Sometimes it is hidden behind memory loss (real or not) on the part of the perp, or dressed up in magical thinking like "it wasn't anyone's fault the fire happened" as though matches take themselves out of cupboards and leave themselves lying around, etc.

It doesn't have to be the victim thinking they are the problem. It can just be utter confusion that stops you in your tracks and leaves you nowhere to go. Ex's mother used to do that to him all the time. She'd be plain nasty to him, and when he objected, she'd back track or be "just joking." Then he felt he couldn't pursue it, because she'd taken it all back. Lucky her, allowed to be as emotionally abusive as she liked without consequences. Abuse is easy enough to see when it is overt, but when the abuse is made of neglect or absence, it is much harder to deal with, especially when there is a power imbalance already.

[ktgrok]

46 minutes ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

Often the person really is confused, wondering if they ARE the problem, and the gaslighter is correct. It starts small, things that are sort of blown off, and turns into a boiling the frog slowly type situation. it is very effective with compassionate, empathetic people because we honestly can't imagine the other person is doing this on purpose. Usually the only way to see what is happening is to have an outside perspective. My therapist was the one who pointed out to me that no, I was NOT crazy, nor was I overly sensitive or anything else my husband at the time was tryng to convince me I was. 

[catz]

My brother is a gas lighter if we try to talk about anything serious which took me years to recognize.  It's like a manipulative tactic to turn things around on you to make YOU always the source of the problem. Discussions with him would go kind of like this (this is an annual one it seems lol) ...

Him: Why don't we get together Christmas eve for the holidays?

Me: We've been doing Christmas eve at home since my kids have been infants so that doesn't work (mentioned EVERY year, he knows).  I know you like to be at home the 25th.  How about the weekend before or the weekend after?  Or maybe dessert later in the day on the 25th?  I know mom would like to get everyone together.   

Him: Wow - I can't believe you won't get together the 24th?  What is wrong with you?  You are so selfish.  

Mercifully, covid and a teenager's non-covid (yay! tested 3X) cold kept us home this year so I didn't have to play this game with him.  As someone who can have anxiety or borderline depression at times (and ugh, covid has been hard!) I think it can be hard not to take words like this on board because you regularly are second guessing your own thoughts about reality.  It works best on the emotionally immature and/or vulnerable and it can start small and build up over time.  I can see it from a mile away now.   Like if you are raised in a home where your thoughts and feelings are regularly minimized and pooh-poohed, it's not a stretch.

[Melissa Louise]

56 minutes ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

Well, for me, because I'd been previously primed by an abusive parent that, in general, I was the problem. Like, explicitly. "You are bad, mad and no good, and no-one will ever want you."

So instead of immediately seeing it as lunacy, I was primed to think "it might  be me, maybe I am crazy?" 

 

[Slache]

10 minutes ago, FuzzyCatz said:

My...

That's DARVO. Defend, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

I don't think it's gaslighting. I am no expert though.

[catz]

7 minutes ago, Slache said:

That's DARVO. Defend, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

I don't think it's gaslighting. I am no expert though.

My understanding is that darvo is a type/method of gaslighting, but I'm no expert either.  

Edited December 25, 2021 by FuzzyCatz

[Tap]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

I think it is because it can be mixed with truth in the beginning. Especially if they are trying to convince someone that an event did or didn't happen. Like maybe the perp is trying to convince the victim, that they had amnesia and didn't remember something. (making up a senerio) The perp goes and buys a different color car, and says "don't you remember, you had a car accident, and you hit your head. I had to go buy a new car, I picked it out just for you! Your favorite color ect....The doctor said your memory would come back soon. Just give it a few days and you will remember". Maybe the perp actually set up the scenario ahead of time, by getting victim to take a 'vitamin' but it is actually another med that makes them drowsy and loopy. Then the perp can say, things happened during those hours, that didn't happen. The victim, knows they felt woosy, and they trust this person who is telling them a story, one in which they drove the car during those hours and crashed. So, facts and lies are intermingled, with a blurred mental state. When someone they trust, tells them that something that is possible, (even if it isn't probable), they want to believe the person they trust. Especially if the victim feels vulnerable. Then, once the seed is planted, the perp can continue to encourage the wrong events into the victim's memory. The best lies one can tell, are usually half truths. So, the perp slowly diminishes the victim's known reality, with the distorted reality the perp is feeding them. 

[Guest]

@Rosie_0801 

[Drama Llama]

2 hours ago, Katy said:

Say you’re going for Christmas at your mom’s and she insists that what wouldn’t be enough food to serve one teenage son for one day is enough for the entire extended family for 36 hours so you’ve allocated less food than you would serve a toddler for one meal per person for the whole day. Any questions are met with an angry insistence that you’re being unreasonable. The person insists that something you know is crazy or completely insane by acting like you’re the crazy one.  That’s gaslighting.  In skilled manipulation you actually believe you’re the crazy one. It’s an extremely common tactic in abusive relationships of all kinds. 

I thought an element of gaslighting was that the person doing it knows they are wrong.

I have a loved one with delusions.  He strongly believes something that isn’t true.  But when he tries to convince other people, I don’t consider that gaslighting.

[Amy Gen]

1 hour ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Sometimes it is hidden behind memory loss (real or not) on the part of the perp, or dressed up in magical thinking like "it wasn't anyone's fault the fire happened" as though matches take themselves out of cupboards and leave themselves lying around, etc.

It doesn't have to be the victim thinking they are the problem. It can just be utter confusion that stops you in your tracks and leaves you nowhere to go. Ex's mother used to do that to him all the time. She'd be plain nasty to him, and when he objected, she'd back track or be "just joking." Then he felt he couldn't pursue it, because she'd taken it all back. Lucky her, allowed to be as emotionally abusive as she liked without consequences. Abuse is easy enough to see when it is overt, but when the abuse is made of neglect or absence, it is much harder to deal with, especially when there is a power imbalance already.

My 15 year old was teasing me because I have learning disabilities to begin with and I also went through 12 rounds of chemo.  She has a credit card in her name and she was saying, “It is no issue to confuse you, because I only have to say, ‘Don’t you remember telling me to order this for myself? You were absolutely adamant that I do it immediately.’ “
 

It isn’t true gaslighting, because she isn’t really trying to trick me, just pointing out how absolutely easy it would be to do so.  

[Slache]

 

[catz]

13 minutes ago, Baseballandhockey said:

I thought an element of gaslighting was that the person doing it knows they are wrong.

I have a loved one with delusions.  He strongly believes something that isn’t true.  But when he tries to convince other people, I don’t consider that gaslighting.

I don't disagree someone with delusions or dementia is not gaslighting and that is different.  But I do think some people who gaslight may not have solid self awareness about their intentions.  My relatives who have done this definitely seem to actually consider themselves victims.  They tend to be very self involved and just live in their own bubble.  Any questioning their thought process just turns it right back around to being someone else's fault.  

[Katy]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

So in my case, my college boyfriend had borderline personality disorder.  At first, he put me on a pedestal. He told me everything I wanted to hear.  It was a whirlwind of wonderful, and his family was even better than he was.  It took two years for me to see that some weird things that had happened were red flags, and he was mentally ill.  But in the mean time I loved him, I thought he loved me, I trusted him, and when he was critical about tiny things at first, I took it for granted that he was right.  It was only later when he was accusing me of things that were definitely not true that I could see there was a problem.  And then I got to know other people in his life and realized he was a pathological liar and the person he'd been with me was a lie.  There was some mental illness there too, but basically by the time I knew for sure there was something terribly wrong I loved and trusted him so much I assumed I must have equal blame.

We have got to do a better job of teaching young people, male and female, to have better boundaries and to know the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships, and to see red flags for what they are.

 

20 minutes ago, Baseballandhockey said:

I thought an element of gaslighting was that the person doing it knows they are wrong.

I have a loved one with delusions.  He strongly believes something that isn’t true.  But when he tries to convince other people, I don’t consider that gaslighting.

I don't know if that's gaslighting or not.  I'm not sure we always know when someone is mentally ill vs having a personality disorder, and I'm sure they can be overlapping. There is definitely a sort of narcissist who KNOWS they are being evil and enjoys the emotional charge they feel from hurting someone.  But everyone has some spectrum of narcissistic behavior from time to time, and I'm sure some of them aren't conscious of trying to hurt someone. They're just stuck in a selfish pattern.

[Starr]

Wrong thread.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Starr

[Melissa Louise]

40 minutes ago, Slache said:

 

It's funny how there's a script.  Even now, I feel anxious if I accidentally make eye contact with anyone who isn't a old woman over 70. Because doing so was a sign of ongoing infidelity, lol, with a night's worth of haranguing. 

That was less gaslighting and more DARVO though. 

The friend's reaction was a bit OTT. Like, what she overhead wasn't good, but it wasn't superbad. I doubt in real life it would make a friend cry. 

 

[Rosie_0801]

2 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

Well, for me, because I'd been previously primed by an abusive parent that, in general, I was the problem. Like, explicitly. "You are bad, mad and no good, and no-one will ever want you."

So instead of immediately seeing it as lunacy, I was primed to think "it might  be me, maybe I am crazy?" 

 

This ^

Then add a few generations on top of it. Intergenerational trauma. You've been trained right from the beginning that the problem is you, by people who were trained that the problem was them and they sure as hell don't want to take more responsibility for any of that thankyouverymuch. Who are the perps and who are the victims gets muddled because most of the family are both, basically everyone is oversensitive and all are rivals. My mother's family were like a pack of pirañas and flipped alliances all the time.

Then throw in an undiagnosed Aspie who really is the exception to the family rule, and it'd have been a miracle if they hadn't graduated into an adult round of abuse victim. Even knowing that was likely to happen, I still fell right into it despite my best efforts not to, because I didn't know how it worked. You couldn't just google 'how to avoid marrying my father' back then. 😂
(Not that my father was the worst offender, which I didn't really know back then either.)

Then there's that religious favourite of using religion. My mother's favourite was a joking "the devil made me do it" which could have just been a joke if it wasn't for the double standard. She is not culpable if the devil made her do anything, but I am supposed to be able to tell if a devil makes me do anything and prevent it. Even though they are invisible so how are you supposed to know they are lurking? Even though she was an adult and I was a kid. (Not that she would ever have made that connection the way I did, because she's neurotypical and I'm not, and until recently she'd have been horrified if she'd ever known that's how I experienced that dynamic.)

[Tanaqui]

People don't leave because it starts slowly, and innoccuously at first. We all know, even if we don't think about it much, that human perception and memory isn't really like a video camera. Our ideas of what happened and what are happening are very much shaped by our thoughts and feelings - and then, on top of that, we're sometimes unobservant or we forget things!

So it's perfectly normal for two people in a normal, healthy relationship to disagree about objective reality. That happened to me today - I was sitting down to watch a movie with my mother and my sister and the younger kid, and I suggested The Rescuers, and my mother said "I've never seen that". And I say "Yes, you have, we watched it so often when I was a child" and she said she didn't remember. And I told my sister, and she said "But we watched that so much as children, she must have seen it with us!" and my mother doesn't remember. Is she gaslighting me? Not really. I believe she sincerely doesn't remember watching it with us. And you know, maybe my sister and I are the ones in the wrong. Maybe we remember her as being there but, somehow, she never did watch the entire movie with us or even any part of it. Maybe we just sort of slotted her into our memories because it makes  sense for her to be there, but she wasn't really.

And of course, the more emotional things are getting, the more likely this is to happen. Perhaps you got into a really heated discussion and you swear the other person cursed at you, and they swear they didn't, and then a bystander says "No, they didn't say that". But you thought they did, because it made sense for them to have done so and you were just so upset.

Happens all the time. We've all seen Rashomon - or, anyway, we've all seen things that were influenced by Rashomon. This sort of storytelling is popular not just because it's interesting, but because it's common. Everybody has been in a situation like that, where two or more reasonable people just could not agree on basic details of an event they both were part of.

Abusers don't start out being awful, and they aren't abusing 24/7. You hear it all the time - "my partner is amazing, wonderful, it's just that...." and then you know whatever follows is something terrible. But when he's not hitting her, it's great! When she's not destroying his property, she's amazing!

The first time a gaslighter gaslights, you don't think anything of it. Because it's probably nothing, just like it's nothing 99% of the time it's happened to you before. Sometimes people disagree! By the time they're gaslighting nearly constantly, their victim has been worn down by all of this and can't help but believe it. They really are ditzy, dumb, a nag, whatever it is their abuser keeps saying. They really can't trust their own perceptions.

With all that said, some people say a gaslighter has to be doing it intentionally. I don't think that's a useful metric, simply because we never can know what's going on in another person's mind. It does seem to me, based on what I've read about people subjected to a lot of this, that many toxic gaslighting people have great difficulty separating their perception from objective reality. They tend to assume that if they feel a certain way, that means it IS a certain way. If later they feel differently, then that means things were different. Their memories adjust to their feelings to a much greater extent than they do for the rest of us. Do they know what they're doing? Perhaps on some level - but that level is just not meaningful to them. And even if it is, you'll never know for sure.

[Rosie_0801]

27 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

The first time a gaslighter gaslights, you don't think anything of it. Because it's probably nothing, just like it's nothing 99% of the time it's happened to you before.

Yeah. 

How many isolated incidents does it take to form a pattern of behaviour?
Then how long does that pattern have to continue until you notice it is one?
Then how much longer until you figure out what that pattern *means.*
And that it isn't just a pattern, it's a web.
Then what do you do? You're old enough to know you get into more trouble for reacting to abuse or even trying to have healthy boundaries than the perp ever will. Especially when the perp isn't really doing anything, and the bystanders only see an isolated incident, if they see anything the perp does at all, not the web you've found yourself in.

[Slache]

8 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Then what do you do? You're old enough to know you get into more trouble for reacting to abuse or even trying to have healthy boundaries than the perp ever will. Especially when the perp isn't really doing anything, and the bystanders only see an isolated incident, if they see anything the perp does at all, not the web you've found yourself in.

This is EXACTLY why estrangement happens. You get put into situations that are so extreme and so frightening that the only thing you can think to do is walk away. I know gaslighting isn't always extreme or frighting, but when it is you have no recourse. 

[gardenmom5]

7 hours ago, Quill said:

Like, I don’t recognize it as, “Oh, that person is gaslighting.” I can tell when people are employing psychological warfare; I used to notice my sister in law doing certain “crazy” stuff but it was usually something else, like projection. She would often project things and say, for example, “Sue is trying to make me jealous by posting those pictures on Facebook,” when in fact, *she* was doing that. 
 

But gaslighting - I have read the definition a hundred times but I still don’t *see* it when people do it. 

DoctorRamani - YouTube

this is a link to her videos on gaslighting.  JUST gaslighting.

You don't know you're being gaslit.  For those who grew up with it - it's normal.  Including the "if you question them, you're a bad ungrateful person."

some of my grandmother's favorite sayings were:

you don't think that,

you don't know that

 you don't like that

you don't want that

you don't mean that.

and on and on.

You honestly question your own thoughts, because you've been told from toddler hood, not to trust your eyes. Not to trust your own perceptions, etc. And when you have a thought to which they object, they will twist it around as thought you are bad, and they are a victim.  Eventually, you do not know what is up and what is down.  If you show signs of backing away - they will "love bomb" to get you back under their thumb.  And again, you question your perceptions some more, you question your own sanity.   

While the movie Gaslight is where the term comes from, and is an excellent resource, there is a scene/episode in a STNG where Picard is being gaslit by a Cadassian that is torturing him.  He questions his own sanity, and perceptions of what he can see because he's constantly being undermined.

Words cannot describe the validation that comes the day you KNOW - it was them, not you.  that your perceptions were real, and they were lying to you.  That you're NOT *crazy*!

And NOTHING they have ever said or done, can be trusted because you don't know what was real, and what was part of their mind game.

- Michelle Duggar, stating "Jinger doesn't mean that.  She doesn't want to go to NYC, she just wants to go to a big town where there is a walmart/et.al.".  On camera for TLC viewers to see, right after Jinger has said she wants to go to NYC.  She has publicly told everyone, that Jinger - doesn't mean that.  doesn't want that. Doesn't know her own wants or desires because M didn't approve of them.

6 hours ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

Why doesn't an abuse victim leave?  For those who grew up with it - they think it's normal.  To reject it requires a paradigm shift, and other family members will view them as heretical.

For those who encountered it later - they are sucked in drop by drop, love bombed, and the abuse starts later, and it starts small.  The victim thinks they're imagining things. They make excuses. Eventually, if the victim actually does recognize something smells in Denmark, the victim thinks they deserve this.  Most, the pattern has become so normal, they don't think about it, or they're stuck because they're legally married, or have kids and all these other ties that make escape more difficult.

 

[gardenmom5]

16 minutes ago, Slache said:

This is EXACTLY why estrangement happens. You get put into situations that are so extreme and so frightening that the only thing you can think to do is walk away. I know gaslighting isn't always extreme or frighting, but when it is you have no recourse. 

They call it Dogwhistle.  By standers don't hear it, the "dog" does.  

The gaslighters' "victim" hears it, because they've been trained.  Pavlov was an amateur. 

[SoCal_Bear]

8 hours ago, FuzzyCatz said:

My brother is a gas lighter if we try to talk about anything serious which took me years to recognize.  It's like a manipulative tactic to turn things around on you to make YOU always the source of the problem. Discussions with him would go kind of like this (this is an annual one it seems lol) ...

Him: Why don't we get together Christmas eve for the holidays?

Me: We've been doing Christmas eve at home since my kids have been infants so that doesn't work (mentioned EVERY year, he knows).  I know you like to be at home the 25th.  How about the weekend before or the weekend after?  Or maybe dessert later in the day on the 25th?  I know mom would like to get everyone together.   

Him: Wow - I can't believe you won't get together the 24th?  What is wrong with you?  You are so selfish.  

Mercifully, covid and a teenager's non-covid (yay! tested 3X) cold kept us home this year so I didn't have to play this game with him.  As someone who can have anxiety or borderline depression at times (and ugh, covid has been hard!) I think it can be hard not to take words like this on board because you regularly are second guessing your own thoughts about reality.  It works best on the emotionally immature and/or vulnerable and it can start small and build up over time.  I can see it from a mile away now.   Like if you are raised in a home where your thoughts and feelings are regularly minimized and pooh-poohed, it's not a stretch.

I do Christmas Day with my in-laws every year going on almost 25 years since before I was married. My brother STILL does this to me and asks why I'm never around on Christmas Day. I so feel you! Every single year! This year, he had the nerve to fly across the country on a visiting college trip returning on Christmas Eve (got his flight cancelled 2x) and had the nerve to get annoyed at me for not being with my dad all day. I've staying with my dad for for the last two days, spent all Christmas Eve with him, and had breakfast with him this morning. He wants me to cancel on the 20 other family members on my DH's side because he thinks I'm being selfish. If I was selfish then I wouldn't have driven 12 1/2 hours to spend Christmas away from my own home! I never get to spend Christmas in my own house except last year because of Covid.

Edited December 26, 2021 by calbear

[Guest]

you don't know you're being gaslit.  For those who grew up with it - it's normal.  Including the "if you question them, you're a bad ungrateful person."

some of my grandmother's favorite sayings were:

you don't think that,

you don't know that

 you don't like that

you don't want that
 

 

I do get that, and I grew up with that also. It’s like Michelle Duggar explaining that Jinger doesn’t mean she wants to live in the city. When I see that, I recognize that it’s abnormal behavior, but I never think, “Oh, she’s gaslighting.” 
 

I also had an abusive boyfriend who played head games with me all the time - and I was an excellent victim because I had been trained not to have an opinion - but I never recognized anything he did as being a particular kind of abuse. He did the kinds of things in the video Slache posted - “How can you go out with Stephanie when it’s our night to eat crabs?” And so on. 
 

Now I’ve just learned there’s something called DARVO, which I won’t be able to identify either. 

[BlsdMama]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

 

you don't know you're being gaslit.  For those who grew up with it - it's normal.  Including the "if you question them, you're a bad ungrateful person."

some of my grandmother's favorite sayings were:

you don't think that,

you don't know that

 you don't like that

you don't want that
 

 

I do get that, and I grew up with that also. It’s like Michelle Duggar explaining that Jinger doesn’t mean she wants to live in the city. When I see that, I recognize that it’s abnormal behavior, but I never think, “Oh, she’s gaslighting.” 
 

I also had an abusive boyfriend who played head games with me all the time - and I was an excellent victim because I had been trained not to have an opinion - but I never recognized anything he did as being a particular kind of abuse. He did the kinds of things in the video Slache posted - “How can you go out with Stephanie when it’s our night to eat crabs?” And so on. 
 

Now I’ve just learned there’s something called DARVO, which I won’t be able to identify either. 

I understand what you’re saying. Now imagine this - you can’t tell the difference between a weasel, a mink, and a marten. So, how do you learn? You look at pictures/videos. In situations where you only get a glimpse, you ask an expert. When you get outside verification affirming or explaining what you saw or experienced, you are that much closer to understanding and recognizing. 

Edited December 26, 2021 by BlsdMama

[Indigo Blue]

Here’s an example:

Say a conflict arises between you and your mom where you end up feeling really hurt. It makes you feel sad inside, but you know if you say more in your defense it will just get worse. You are genuinely hurt and feel close to tears and stay in your room for awhile reading a book until you feel better. You have thoughts like, “Does my mom even actually like the person I am? Am I so weird/bad/selfish that I keep setting her off? Is it me? Was I to blame for what happened? My brother never gets treated this way. There has to be something wrong with me..” Then you rehash everything in your mind and try to be as objective as possible. You end up concluding that, no, that was indeed mean of her to do or say what she did. 
 

Later, when things are calmer, she senses that you are quiet and withdrawn. She KNOWS that she has upset you. She most likely realizes she was a bit harsh or unfair. But she can’t be wrong. She will never admit that. She will never apologize. It can’t be her. She can’t be the person who was “bad” in the situation. So, she seems calmer and nicer now, but she gently says to you that you are just too sensitive, implying that’s why the whole misunderstanding elevated to what it did. Implying that it’s you. A personality problem that YOU have that you need to be more aware of and work on. Also, there may be a side of “you are so ungrateful” thrown in. 
 

Wait. It’s me? Is it? You think to yourself: Well, didn’t I just spend two hours on my bed wallowing in my emotions and feeling sorry for myself? Is that what I was doing? Being too sensitive? Wallowing in my emotions, feeling sorry for me, and being selfish? What happened to her being mean and my thinking it was her being unfair and unempathetic?

Well, you were never sure of it and your mom is now telling you that you are too sensitive, so that must be it. Now you are doubting yourself and what REALLY happened, and you are second guessing your reaction to the situation. 
 
This is gaslighting. And you can bet a few months later, what happened will be brought up and used again later, except the details will change to suit your mom. She’ll say, “I didn’t say that. You’re the one who said…..”. And again, you try to pull it out of your memory, but you can’t now be sure. It was six months ago after all. You feel angry all over again, because you feel your words are being twisted and history is being rewritten, but you now know better than to make a thing of it. You just decide to try to be “not too sensitive” and let it go. 
 

When you’re old enough, one day you get it. You realize it wasn’t you. You learn what gaslighting is. And projection.  And you won’t always see gaslighting in the moment when it is happening, unless you are very vigilant and observant.  It catches you off guard, and it’s very insidious/seemingly invisible sometimes. 
 

It does always have you checking your perception of reality and wondering if you are the one who is crazy and/or isn’t remembering the facts correctly. It causes you to question your perception of who you are on the inside. It really messes with your head. 

[Scarlett]

My SIL’s husband, 2 years ago was talking to Dh (SILs oldest  brother who adores her).  In the course of a discussion about their marriage Dh said something along the lines of ‘well I know sister can be emotional.’  In the two years that have followed the husband has told SIL scathingly ,at various times and in various forms  ‘even your brothers think you are the problem.  That you are crazy.  That you are overly dramatic’.  It crushed her……she has 4 brothers and she had no idea which one said that and so could not ask them…and no reason to think he was lying……because she knows there is a kernel of truth——she IS an emotional person….and she basically just believed it.  It took many discussions with her younger sister to realize her husband had twisted someone’s words.   When it got back to Dh he immediately said, ‘yes I said XYZ but never ABC and of course I don’t think she is the problem’. Dh also knew he would NEVER discuss anything of substance again with her husband.  
 

When they were picking up SIL’s things the husband told Dh, ‘I really feel blindsided here because you are the head of your house and I would have expected you to give me the courtesy of knowing wha my wife is planning’.  What in the actual heck dude?  I don’t know what kind of twisted version you have of headship, but that is not in any way scriptural.  Actually Dh did not say that…..he grey rocked him and said politely ‘we are just here to get her things’ 

This guy is super twisted up though.  He accused my SIL of ‘enjoying’ her gyno exam.  

Once during a family reunion she came downstairs to us in the middle of the night because he was fighting with her…..Dh told her to go sleep in one of the other bedrooms and we would talk in the morning.  Ds18 (at the time) was asleep on a sofa outside the bedrooms.  The husband comes down and stands in our doorway and wants to discuss it all with Dh…..lots of ‘I don’t know what is wrong with her….she gets this way…I did not do anything blah blah blah’   Dh was just trying to kindly get him to go back up to their room……the husband says, ‘well I am just worried about her being down here because I don’t know what might happen, I mean ds18 could rape her’.  I about fell out of the bed.  To suggest that anyone in the house would rape anyone was horrible…but to suggest SILs own nephew would….just beyond the pale.  Dh did not even address it really…..he said ‘she is safe down her with us’ But wow…..that is the day we all knew for sure he has issues.  
 

People have all kinds of issues……I think many of my examples cross over between gas lighting and something else….the main point though…..get away from those kinds of people.  
 

 

[Indigo Blue]

37 minutes ago, BlsdMama said:

I understand what you’re saying. Now imagine this - you can’t tell the difference between a weasel, a mink, and a marten. So, how do you learn? You look at pictures/videos. In situated stone where you only get a glimpse, you ask an expert. When you get outside verification affirming or explaining what you saw or experienced, you are that much closer to understanding and recognizing. 

This. For me, it was reading a book about daughters of NPD parents and having the biggest light bulb moment of my life.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Indigo Blue

[Slache]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

Now I’ve just learned there’s something called DARVO, which I won’t be able to identify either. 

There are innumerable things. Why does it matter to you to tell the difference? I only know the things my mom and MIL do. That's all that's helpful to me.

In the end, gaslighting is anything someone does to make you question your reality. "You're too stupid/mentally unstable/tired to trust your own brain, so trust mine instead. I should be the authority over you." 

[Janeway]

My MIL was a huge gas lighter. It got so bad that I found myself one day actually thinking I was crazy and should just leave my husband and baby (this was long ago and I just had one baby at the time). Then I decided to see an attorney and a therapist. The attorney was most helpful in that he must’ve caught on to what was going on and he told me to start recording the conversations he said it was perfectly legal they would be submissable in court as long as one party to the conversation was aware of the recording. And then when I played the recordings and then played it back to myself later it was obvious what she was doing. it actually saved my marriage because I actually took the tape recordings to my husband and played them. so we never divorced but we did get mother-in-law out of our lives.

[Wheres Toto]

15 hours ago, Quill said:

But why doesn’t the would-be victim just bail on the perpetrator? Why is the victim saying, “Well *I* must be the problem”? 
 

It seems worthwhile to note that the name comes from an old film , because a lot of modern women would be like, “bye-bye, lunatic. Try your brand of crazy on someone else!” 

I think a lot of people have already answered this.    Also in the past, abuse that wasn't physical was often downplayed.  "At least he's never hit me/you".   

27 minutes ago, Indigo Blue said:

This. For me, it was reading a book about daughters of NPD parents and having the biggest light bulb moment of my life.

This thread is kind of doing that for me.  I had started to think about some of it.  My mother telling me I was "never a high energy person" at a time when I was working two jobs, going to school, and taking care of a child.  How much energy am I supposed to have to go out to parties, visit family, etc in that situation.

The training to not take your feelings seriously. "Want to cry, I'll give you something to cry about".  I knew I didn't think that was right and never did it to my kids, but never connected it with future habits and willingness to put up with sh*t.  

[Slache]

32 minutes ago, Wheres Toto said:

The training to not take your feelings seriously. "Want to cry, I'll give you something to cry about".  I knew I didn't think that was right and never did it to my kids, but never connected it with future habits and willingness to put up with sh*t.  

"It's not that bad", "don't be so emotional", "you're making so much out of nothing", "stop causing drama", "why do you always do this?"

Edit: I haven't experienced this personally, but it's extremely common.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Slache

[Farrar]

I think some of the things that people now call gaslighting are relatively subtle and play on someone's emotions already feeling guilty or vulnerable. Indigo Blue's example is perfect that way. When there's a conflict, you don't have to be crazy or horrible to be at fault for making it worse or being unfair to the other person - that's human. And I think most balanced people know they sometimes lash out or don't see when they're being unfair or what have you. So then the manipulator uses that.

It's usually not as blatant as moving pictures around and making you think you're forgetting time or something like in the movie. Sometimes people who are doing the gaslighting aren't even fully aware either. They are in the conflict, feel guilty about it, and deflect so much blame that they start to convince the more open minded, balanced person that they're really to blame. And it's not part of some sinister plan. It's just the defensive, less able to admit to faults party continuing to deflect.

[Starr]

What's really hard about these things is that any one or two examples often don't sound so bad to someone you are confiding in. The accumulation is what gets you.

[Guest]

Thanks, @Indigo Blue for that thorough explanation. I can (unfortunately) relate quite well to that; first with my mom, then the aforementioned kooky boyfriend, then my SIL. I guess along the way I did get healthy and was able to see more and more clearly when someone is just playing games I’m not willing to play. I have a super-sensitive B.S. radar now and I’m willing to (as the situation calls for) either directly tell the person I will not do X, or file it away mentally as “okay, I se what this person does now and I’m not getting painting into that corner again…” Just like with the birthday-gift movies in my other thread. I’m still not sure whether I’m going to be direct about that or just give back the movies and file it away mentally, but in either case I will be on alert for anything that friend “gives” me in the future. 

[Guest]

It's usually not as blatant as moving pictures around and making you think you're forgetting time or something like in the movie. Sometimes people who are doing the gaslighting aren't even fully aware either. They are in the conflict, feel guilty about it, and deflect so much blame that they start to convince the more open minded, balanced person that they're really to blame. And it's not part of some sinister plan. It's just the defensive, less able to admit to faults party continuing to deflect

 

That makes more sense to me, @Farrar.

I remember one time, there was a (really stupidly tiny) thing at my office that my SIL liked one way, but I was the one who always suffered an annoying outcome from it.
 

It was a stamps holder, the little things that hold a roll of postage stamps and dispense them one at a time. Well, I hated that stupid assed thing because I was the bill payer and I could never see that we were running out of stamps until we actually ran out. And so then *I* would be inconvenienced to have to make a post-office run so the mail could go out. Then my SIL would come in the office and put the stamps back into that damn dispenser again and I would be annoyed all over again when I again ran out in the middle of my workday. 
 

It seems so crazy now that I went on being annoyed about this over and over and over for years. In the Harry Potter book, the Goblet of Fire, the professor is teaching Harry the Imperious Curse by putting it on him. Harry partially resists it, saying in the back of his mind, “Why, though? Why should I jump up on the desk?” Honestly, it was almost like that when I, at long last realized that we didn’t have to have the stamps the way SHE wanted the stamps. That I actually had as much right (more, actually, since I used the stamps the most often) to have the stamps unencumbered in that stupid container as she did to have them in it. In fact, I could buy five rolls of backup stamps, now that they were “forever” stamps and could keep them anywhere I liked: in the drawer, in my purse, in the supply cabinet. Literally whatever I liked! 
 

In case anyone is wondering, yes, SIL did have an absolute meltdown when I very gently suggested that I did not want the stamps in the dispenser because it inconvenienced me all the time. She was furious about it and said it looks messy if they are “all blah!” in the drawer. But I never used used that dumb dispenser again. 
 

Toxic people suck. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Indigo Blue said:

This. For me, it was reading a book about daughters of NPD parents and having the biggest light bulb moment of my life.

For me it was reading a parenting book long ago, “Families Where Grace is in Place” by Jeff VanVonderan I think his name is. Reading that book made me realize I grew up with nutty scripting. I don’t think he used the term “gaslighting” in that book though. But he sure did describe issues I had been through. 

[Indigo Blue]

1 hour ago, Starr said:

What's really hard about these things is that any one or two examples often don't sound so bad to someone you are confiding in. The accumulation is what gets you.

This times a thousand. Death by a thousand tiny cuts.

[livetoread]

12 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

 

With all that said, some people say a gaslighter has to be doing it intentionally. I don't think that's a useful metric, simply because we never can know what's going on in another person's mind. It does seem to me, based on what I've read about people subjected to a lot of this, that many toxic gaslighting people have great difficulty separating their perception from objective reality. They tend to assume that if they feel a certain way, that means it IS a certain way. If later they feel differently, then that means things were different. Their memories adjust to their feelings to a much greater extent than they do for the rest of us. Do they know what they're doing? Perhaps on some level - but that level is just not meaningful to them. And even if it is, you'll never know for sure.

Exactly this. I think part of gaslighting is the motivation for doing it. It's often associated with people with NPD, and they can't help but distort reality to fit their need to protect their extremely fragile sense of self. Realty has to bend so they can continue to see themselves as the most amazing person ever. People aren't real to them in the sense that others have equal rights, standing, or feelings. People are either sources of ego propping or ego threats and the threats have to be punished. So if you say or do something to them that makes them feel even slightly bad about themselves, their reality says you are bad and need to be punished. It can't possibly be true that they actually did something wrong, so reality must be different. Of course, when their emotional needs shift to something else, so does their reality.

They really do usually believe it at the time and sound so confident and sure which makes it easier to question yourself, particularly if you have a low tolerance for conflict and are highly empathic. Plus much gaslighting occurs around your perception of their bad behavior which is a subjective thing. It is very easy to muddy perceptions of who was hurt and who was too sensitive and what intentions were and who heard what etc.