This month I want to touch on a very serious subject: Gaslighting.
This is something I was the target of 10 or so years ago in an organisation I was with. At the time, I didn’t know that’s what was happening to me and a few of my colleagues – I just thought we had been targeted with some pretty snakey undermining and bullying behaviour from someone who was in a more senior position. It was really devastating at the time. My desire was to stay and sort out the problem so I tried to persevere and try different ways to work with the perpetrator, giving her the benefit of the doubt, assuming she just didn’t have all the facts or that she had mis-interpreted facts, or perhaps she had been mis-led somehow by someone. All to no avail. There was just no shift in her accusations or undermining behaviour. And let’s be clear, her behaviour was having a really serious effect on the state of my mental health, and that of my colleagues. Eventually the penny dropped and I realised that someone else’s behaviour wasn’t something I could fix. I walked away even though I didn’t have another job to go to. I had never done that before. But, my sanity was far more important than allowing that other person’s lies and manipulations to impact my life. It was a BIG learning experience for me.
Then a few years later, I had a similar experience. Someone in a position of power tried to undermine my own perception of my emotions and recollection of events. Interestingly, I only recognised their manipulative behaviour when I paid attention to the response their actions generated within me. Having gone through something similar already, I was much quicker to recognise that the issue didn’t sit with me but with that other person. This time I could let go of trying to change that person’s behaviour and just distance myself from them – leaving them and their issues to themselves.
Then over the weekend I saw one of those inspirational quotes pop up on my Facebook feed, and it reminded me of those two events. It also gave a name to the issue: Gaslighting. That then led me to do some research and to grasp what a terrible and damaging problem gaslighting is.
Now, gaslighting can happen to anyone. And chances are, it has already happened to you. Perhaps you just haven’t recognised it. At best, many of us try to think the best of other people so we dismiss their behaviour by saying things like “he/she isn’t that bad” or “they didn’t really mean that”. At worst – we let their lies and manipulations take hold.
Intentional or not, gaslighting is dangerous. When gaslighting is working effectively, it leaves you questioning your own self-perceptions and your own reality. The sooner you recognise it, the sooner you can gird your loins against it.
So, let’s start with defining what gaslighting is.
Psychologists use the term “gaslighting” to refer to a specific type of manipulation where the manipulator is trying to get someone else to question their own reality, memory or perceptions.
Psychologists also acknowledge that this is a very serious problem.
Gaslighting can happen in any situation – in your workplace or in personal relationships – pretty much anywhere where there is imbalance in the power dynamic. The target of the gaslighting finds themselves stuck. In the case of a marriage, the target of the gaslighting sees the relationship as being too important to walk away from. In the case of the workplace or other professional setting, the gaslighter has a direct impact on the target’s income, reputation or career progression.
So, how does a gaslighter work?
The manipulator works on undermining your sense of stability and normalcy and makes you question everything whilst keeping you dependent on them or frightened of the negative impact that they can have to your life.
Quite often they are projecting their own issues onto you and use accusations of those issues against you – accusing you of something. This is done so your focus turns to defending yourself and takes the spotlight off the gaslighter’s behaviour.
The other tactics used by gaslighters to watch out for include manipulating and finding other people they know who will stand by them, and then use those people against you. They will say things like “This person agrees with me”, “This person also sees this in you”. (This doesn’t mean that these people actually said these things, but it is powerful enough to create greater doubt in your mind and further undermines your ability to know who you can trust – and that includes whether you can trust yourself).
Another effective technique is that they tell other people things about you that “aren’t quite right”. The gaslighter knows that if they’ve sown the seed of doubt about you, then people won’t believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is, well, gaslighting you.
So, how do you know if you are being gaslighted?
- Look for signs where they repeatedly deny your experiences, deny your stories and deny your views.
- You find yourself second-guessing yourself and your decisions
- Questioning whether your response (to the gaslighter) is wrong/feeling scared to speak because you won’t be able to articulate the meaning well enough to be understood
- Avoiding telling anyone else what you are experiencing
- Your mind keeps churning over perceived character flaws (defined by the gaslighter) such as being too sensitive or defensive
- You find yourself constantly having to defend yourself or correcting stories the manipulator has ‘put out there’ about you or about the things you’ve said or done.
Most importantly, how do you deal with gaslighting?
The number 1 step is to identify the problem. Naming it, recognising it makes it something real and something that can be addressed. Whilst it remains a “sense that something is wrong”, you can’t deal with it.
Naming it also helps put the ownership of the problem back onto the perpetrator. The receiver may have to deal with the impacts, but the blame and the accountability sit squarely with the gaslighter. This is really powerful for anyone who has been subjected to that type of manipulation. It releases them from the blame and ownership.
Number 2 is to remove yourself, as far away as possible, from the gaslighter. If you can.
Unfortunately, many people feel they can’t. They might be married to their gaslighter or they may not have the funds to walk away from a job or boss who is manipulating them.
If this is the case for you, Psychoanalyst and Associate Director of the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence, Robin Stern says, “The antidote to gaslighting is greater emotional awareness and self-regulation – both the knowledge and the practice.”
One of the things I teach my clients is that they are the ultimate authority of truth about themselves and their own lives. If you feel that your perception of self, of reality or of events is being undermined by someone else, then it probably is. Your job is to stand in your truth.
If you aren’t sure of what the truth is, which can happen if you’ve been gaslighted for long enough or the gaslighter has done their job effectively enough, start journaling the conversations you’ve been having. You can then review those conversations and see where they are veering away from the manipulator’s behaviour and back to blaming you and all of your (alleged) flaws.
I can tell you from experience that being gaslighted sucks and when you are in the midst of one of these devastating scenarios, it can feel impossible to get out of. But trust me. You can protect yourself from these people and the damage they can cause.
Remember, what someone says about you does not define you. Their labels of you are not your labels. Their opinions are only opinions and you may never be able to change someone else’s opinion, so you need to let go of trying. The only person’s opinion of you that you can control is yours and yours is the only opinion on your life and who you are that counts!
Tell your gaslighter to go shove their lies and manipulations up their arse. If you can’t do it to their face, then do it silently in your mind. Doing this simple act is extremely cathartic!
Stand your ground. Know that what is inside of you is far greater than any person or situation you are dealing with.