# How to Recognize The Tactics of Gaslighting



## David Baxter PhD

*How to Recognize 5 Tactics of Gaslighting*
_Savvy Psychologist_
Fri, 19 Jan 2018   

?That never happened; you must be imagining it.? 

?Everyone agrees  with me ? you?re overreacting.? 

?Wow, what?s it like to be insane?? 

If  these sound like a familiar refrain, you may have been the target of  "gaslighting," a term blowing up like, well, a lighter thrown into a  puddle of gas. A form of emotional abuse, gaslighting is dominating the  headlines, is all over Twitter, and has been thrown around by everyone  from pundits to columnists to late-night comics.

*What is Gaslighting?*
 The term comes from the 1944 movie _Gaslight_, starring  Ingrid Bergman, who, in a spooky ?everything is connected? moment, won a  Golden Globe for her role. In _Gaslight_, Bergman plays a wife, Paula,  whose reality is slowly being undermined by her supposedly devoted  husband Gregory. His nefarious goal is to have her institutionalized so  he can gain access to her fortune.

 The title comes from Gregory?s habit of secretly digging through the  attic for her hidden jewels. When he creeps upstairs and turns on the  lights in the attic, the rest of the gas lights in the house dim  accordingly, making Paula suspicious. But when she asks him about the  dimming lights, he acts like she?s crazy. She must be imagining things;  they?re just as bright as always. ?Why don?t you rest a while,? Gregory  suggests. ?You know you haven?t been well.?

 In some ways, the movie is dead on. The mind games Gregory plays are  diabolical: He tells her friends she?s unstable. He isolates her from  family. He disguises cutting invalidations as statements of concern. He  hides her belongings, then questions her sanity when she can?t find  them. In short, he messes not only with her, but with the people and  objects around her to alter her reality and make her think she?s losing  it.

 But in other ways, _Gaslight_ is clearly a Hollywood movie.  Gaslighting in real life is different. But how? What tactics do real  life gaslighters use? This week, we?ll illuminate five tactics of the  all-too-common and all-too-insidious practice of gaslighting.

*5 Signs of Gaslighting*


*Gaslighters override your reality.* 
*Gaslighters aren?t out to destroy you; they?re out to make things easier for themselves.* 
*Gaslighting is often fueled by sexism.* 
*Gaslighters make disagreement impossible.* 
*Gaslighters make you agree with their point of view.* 

 Let's dig into each a little further.

*Tactic #1: Gaslighters override your reality.*
 At its heart, gaslighting is overriding your reality to the point  that you question your own judgment. Like most things, there are  degrees. It can be as small-scale as telling a child, ?You can?t be  hungry ? you just had a snack,? or as large-scale as denying fully obvious  facts, such as the story that made the rounds of the interweb recently  of a man who got married, posted the wedding photos on Facebook, and  then told his long-distance girlfriend it was all in her head.

 To sum up, if the gaslighter had a mantra, it would be, ?If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes truth.?

*Tactic #2: Gaslighters aren?t out to destroy you; they?re out to make things easier for themselves.*
 Unlike in the movie, the gaslighter isn?t usually trying to destroy a  relationship, much less destroy a relationship in order to claim  something as concrete as a treasure chest of jewels ? mwa-ha-ha-ha! Quite  the opposite. The gaslighter _wants_ the target around, _wants_ to maintain the relationship. They just want the target around on _their_ terms. 

 By the same token, gaslighting isn?t always conscious. Indeed,  gaslighters don?t sit around stroking their goatees or petting a white  cat while plotting to undermine your sanity. Instead, gaslighting comes  from the need?conscious or unconscious?to control. Gaslighters work to  undermine you so you can?t challenge them. Then the relationship can go  the way they want. They get to have their cake and eat it, too, without  the inconvenience of having to discuss things, compromise, or work  together.

*Tactic #3: Gaslighting is often fueled by sexism.*
 Of course, gaslighting can be used by anyone against anyone ? it?s not  always gendered. But it?s often used as a form of emotional abuse  against women. It ?works? in part because it feeds off sexist  stereotypes of women as crazy, jealous, emotional, weak, or incapable.

 For example, in an excellent 2014 paper published in _Philosophical Perspectives_,  the author, Dr. Kate Abramson of Indiana University, details a story  where a female grad student discovers the male grad students have made a  list ranking the female grad students by attractiveness. When she  expresses that such a list is inappropriate, she is told she?s overly  sensitive, that she?s policing innocent conversation among male friends,  and really she?s just insecure about her ranking on the list, isn?t  she?

 What just happened there? If a woman rings the alarm on sexist  behavior, gaslighters use sexist stereotypes to undermine the woman?s  complaints. Instead of taking her seriously, each of her complaints  might be refuted as a silly misinterpretation or dismissed as her being  too sensitive. In this way, the sexist stereotypes are used to reinforce  themselves?an uninterrupted pattern of circular logic: ?See, she?s just  another insecure, overly emotional woman we don?t have to listen to.?                                    

*Tactic #4: Gaslighters make disagreement impossible.*
 Once you are discredited, you can?t protest. When credibility is  undermined?you?re crazy, a liar, unstable, a failure, or have lost your  mind ? anything you say is automatically suspect and builds the case  against you. Therefore, you can?t disagree. And the louder your  protests, the more your gaslighter can smile smugly and say, ?See, I  told you so.?

*Tactic #5: Gaslighters make you agree with their point of view.*
 This might sound the same as the last tactic: making you agree with  them sounds the same as making disagreement impossible, but it?s subtly  different. Hear me out: Gaslighters need the world to conform to their  standards. And they need the very individuals they gaslight to agree  with them.

 Therefore, it?s not enough for gaslighters, for example, to insist  that sexual harassers were just having a little fun. They need the  target of the harassment to _agree_ that it was all just a little fun. Ideally, the target would not only agree but also believe that she _deserved_ to be undermined because she was being crazy, overly sensitive, or imagining things.

 Now, refusing to witness or substantiate your reality is  invalidation. But gaslighting means getting you, the target, to  invalidate _yourself _as well. Not only does no one take you seriously, you wonder if you can take your _own_  experience seriously: your common sense, your feelings, your memory,  even what you?ve seen before your very eyes. In other words, gaslighting  not only invalidates your experience, it makes you question your  capacity to trust your experience in the first place.

 As for Ingrid Bergman as Paula, she is validated in the end and Gregory is arrested, but not before she dishes out some gaslighting revenge of her own as he sits tied to a chair.  In a final attempt to manipulate her, Gregory tells her to get a knife  and cut him free, but as she pulls his knife from a drawer she  proclaims, ?There is no knife here; you must have dreamed you put it  here,? before tossing it away and quipping, ?I am always losing things.?

 Whether in Hollywood or your own household, gaslighting is a form of  emotional abuse. Isolation is a key ingredient to gaslighting, so if  today?s episode spoke to you, reach out. Having just one person validate  your experience can be a lifeline that begins the process of reeling  yourself in from all the lies to believing your own truth.


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