Have You Ever Been Gaslighted? Well, For Sure You've Been

Gaslighting (verb). is a form of psychological manipulation by which a person controls another person to question their own sanity. Emotional abuse, to be exact.

In simpler terms, it is a type of manipulation where a person makes another person doubt his or her feelings, perceptions, experiences, and understanding of events that happened to them.

Gaslighting is a new term for me. I really thought this word or expression is a "millennial term" but upon research, it was derived from a 1944 film entitled "Gaslight" but became popularly used in the middle 2010s.

But the thing here is that a gaslighter has complete awareness of what he/she does. It's intentional and so that makes them a straight-up manipulator. They know what they're doing to twist the situation around

To explain gaslighting better, from Psych2go, here are 4 common phrases of gaslighting:

You are so sensitive or emotional.

Have you met someone in your life where he/she comments something on you about how you feel about a certain situation? More particularly if it has something to do with the other person.

Mostly, we're going to set examples in relationships because it's easier to find red flags if it's between two people only.

For instance, you both agreed to have a date on Friday night at a fancy restaurant. You are both busy so you both agreed to just meet in the restaurant right away at the agreed time. You have been waiting for so long already.

You got mad, you feel disappointed with him. Then he goes and makes up stories to convince you he's really sorry for what happened. But when you cried and got emotional, he then said "you are so sensitive!"

I was just joking!

Most of the time, when things get a little bit chaotic, someone could have caused a fuss about it. And so, to de-escalate the situation, one would make a statement "I was just joking!".

When someone says "you're fat, you look like a barrel", and if you get hurt they'll say "you're too sensitive! I was just joking". They will use this statement to normalize their actions. It seemed like you are not entitled to your reactions or feelings towards them. Then they'll lecture you to be strong and that you should be tough in every way you can.

My question is, why would they do that in the first place?

You're imagining things.

This is a classic statement of gaslighting particularly when you are in an abusive relationship. This usually happens when the other one is mentally exhausted and the other person is taking advantage of it too.

This is a type of manipulation where he/she will question your sanity. "You're imagining things, it didn't happen". What happens is that they will discredit your feelings and manipulate your senses or thoughts.

What makes it frustrating is that they will appear very concerned about you but actually, their agenda is to dismiss your emotions.

I am sorry if you think that I hurt you.

This statement is used to shift the blame on you. It appears that the manipulator is apologizing to you but in reality, they are only shifting the blame on you. They will also make you feel that you have misinterpreted or misjudged the situation unfairly.

As a result, you start to doubt yourself if maybe you're being too sensitive again and that you become dependent on them and validate your feelings through them.

Mental, verbal, or any form of abuse should never have a place in your relationship. We wouldn't want to be in a toxic relationship. If you feel like the other person is starting to manipulate you, call them out and communicate. You should sort things out immediately as needed.

Or even with random people you meet, they could've gaslighted you but weren't aware of it yet. Upon writing this, I realized that I have been gaslighted by certain people, it's just that I didn't know this vocabulary exists.

Lead image source

Thanks for reading.

Keep safe everyone!