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What gaslighting is:
- Deliberately changing your environment and when you ask about it, deliberately pretending nothing is different so that you start to question your sanity.
- Telling you that something objectively did not happen a particular way when you have evidence (not just your memory) that it did, especially if knowingly contradicting you.
- Telling you that your subjective feelings or experiences are not what you say they are.
- Deliberately saying something ambiguous and then changing the stated "interpretation" based on how you react to it (i.e. Schrodinger's Douchebag) so that they can escape consequences by simply saying "I didn't *mean* it like that" when they actually did.
What gaslighting is not:
Also, not every bad relationship is abusive, not every shitty thing someone does is abuse or harassment, not every person you don't like is an abuser, harasser, evil, narcissistic, or has some other mental disorder. Even if they do, it may or may not have anything to do with that disorder, and if you're not their therapist treating that disorder, you're not qualified to make that kind of judgement call.
Part of the problem is that gaslighters and abusers in general take otherwise acceptable, innocuous, or "normal" things and twist them up with their intention to control. So a lot of these things can be *used* by gaslighters and abusers, but they are not, by themselves, automatically, an indication of gaslighting.
The point of gaslighting is to control you - your behaviour or your thoughts. Sometimes it's with good intentions, like my oft-used analogy of the tired mother trying desperately to get her kid to eat her vegetables. But she is trying to make the child do something that the child doesn't want to do, so she resorts to a mind trick in order to control the outcome.
People can be jerks to you without actually intending to try and *control* you. And people can genuinely have a disagreement or a difference of opinion or memory from you without trying to *control* you, other than to persuade you of their position. With or without the persuasion, strongly disagreeing with you is not, by itself, gaslighting, even if the disagreement is about a past event that you both remember differently.
This is how we as a culture start to get fatigued and we start checking out and not listening anymore. When EVERYTHING is "abuse", "harassment", and "gaslighting", people stop listening and real abuse victims get dismissed and ignored (which, btw, furthers the cycle of gaslighting).
Just because someone remembers events differently or interprets words or actions differently, they are not necessarily trying to gaslight you. We ALL remember things differently. The brain is not a video recorder, it does not take down every detail faithfully. Even if you think you're good at remembering details, you're probably more likely better at fabricating realistic details than the people who were with you so they either can't contradict you or they immediately rewrite their own memories to accept your new headcannon.
I've been aware of these problems since I was a child, so I take the time to record details in the moment and then cement them immediately afterwards by writing them down. There are all kinds of tricks to exploit the brain and better remember, but most people do not do them and think their memories are an accurate reflection of reality.
They're not.
Not every mismatched set of memories between 2 people is a gaslighting attempt. Not every correction or explanation of past situation is a gaslighting attempt. While it really really sucks for someone who has been gaslighted and is desperately trying to reconstruct who they are and what happened, most of the time we are not recording accurately to begin with.
- "That's not how I remember it." - memories are fallible and people can genuinely remember situations differently ... even you and even someone you're mad at.
- "I know you may have heard that this thing happened, but it didn't, it happened like this."
- "For what it's worth, whatever you *feel* about it, *I* don't feel that way / think of you that way."
- "That might be how you interpreted what I said, but I did not *intend* that meaning." - may be gaslighting if they did mean it (see above) but want to make you think otherwise, may be not gaslighting but still a crap thing to say like not intending racism when saying something racist, or may genuinely be intending something benign and you interpreted intentions that were not there, such as "I did not intend to imply you were lazy when I asked what you did all day while I was gone".
- "I didn't realize the scheduling conflict at the time when I said I would do the thing, but now I can't do the thing because this is mandatory / more important / a one-time thing and the other can be rescheduled / I have to make a choice and this is what I'm choosing."
- "I had a different interpretation and if I had realized that's how you were going to take it, I would not have said that / agreed to that / would have clarified."
- "I don't remember saying that and wouldn't have used those words had I known you would hear it that way, and surely everything I've said on the subject in the intervening 5 years that contradicts what you think you heard should have better explained my position?"
- "No, that's not how I feel."
- "Are you sure you don't feel this way? Because your actions seem to imply this."
- Saying one thing, doing something different - may be gaslighting but also may be someone who isn't in touch with their own feelings or programmed by their past, like an abusive relationship, to say something placating even if the desired actions don't match up.
Also, not every bad relationship is abusive, not every shitty thing someone does is abuse or harassment, not every person you don't like is an abuser, harasser, evil, narcissistic, or has some other mental disorder. Even if they do, it may or may not have anything to do with that disorder, and if you're not their therapist treating that disorder, you're not qualified to make that kind of judgement call.
Part of the problem is that gaslighters and abusers in general take otherwise acceptable, innocuous, or "normal" things and twist them up with their intention to control. So a lot of these things can be *used* by gaslighters and abusers, but they are not, by themselves, automatically, an indication of gaslighting.
The point of gaslighting is to control you - your behaviour or your thoughts. Sometimes it's with good intentions, like my oft-used analogy of the tired mother trying desperately to get her kid to eat her vegetables. But she is trying to make the child do something that the child doesn't want to do, so she resorts to a mind trick in order to control the outcome.
People can be jerks to you without actually intending to try and *control* you. And people can genuinely have a disagreement or a difference of opinion or memory from you without trying to *control* you, other than to persuade you of their position. With or without the persuasion, strongly disagreeing with you is not, by itself, gaslighting, even if the disagreement is about a past event that you both remember differently.
This is how we as a culture start to get fatigued and we start checking out and not listening anymore. When EVERYTHING is "abuse", "harassment", and "gaslighting", people stop listening and real abuse victims get dismissed and ignored (which, btw, furthers the cycle of gaslighting).
Just because someone remembers events differently or interprets words or actions differently, they are not necessarily trying to gaslight you. We ALL remember things differently. The brain is not a video recorder, it does not take down every detail faithfully. Even if you think you're good at remembering details, you're probably more likely better at fabricating realistic details than the people who were with you so they either can't contradict you or they immediately rewrite their own memories to accept your new headcannon.
I've been aware of these problems since I was a child, so I take the time to record details in the moment and then cement them immediately afterwards by writing them down. There are all kinds of tricks to exploit the brain and better remember, but most people do not do them and think their memories are an accurate reflection of reality.
They're not.
Not every mismatched set of memories between 2 people is a gaslighting attempt. Not every correction or explanation of past situation is a gaslighting attempt. While it really really sucks for someone who has been gaslighted and is desperately trying to reconstruct who they are and what happened, most of the time we are not recording accurately to begin with.
