Gaslighting — 5 key points you need to understand

Awareness of phenomenon that all of us at Lovefraud and throughout the survivor community have been talking about for years has gone mainstream — gaslighting. In fact, the Merriam Webster Dictionary named “gaslighting” as the word of the year for 2022.

Gaslight was the title of a play written in 1938, which was made into a movie in 1944 starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. The story is about a con man who marries a young heiress. As he searches for jewels that he believes are hidden in her home, he tries to make his wife believe she is going crazy. He hides things and then asks her what she did with them. He causes the gaslights to dim and brighten, and when his young wife notices, tells her she is imagining it. The movie is worth watching — it is an excellent portrayal of sociopathic behavior.

Gaslighting definition

Now, people all over the news and social media are using the term gaslighting. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, searches for the word went up 1,740% in 2022.

For years, the dictionary said, gaslighting referred to the type of deception like that portrayed in the movie. Merriam-Webster defined it as:

: psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator

But, Merriam-Webster said, its meaning has evolved to something simpler and broader: “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for a personal advantage.”

It’s good that people are becoming familiar with the concept of gaslighting. We need to know that others may be capable of massive and ongoing deception. Here are five key points to understand:

1. Gaslighting is lying

People who engage in gaslighting are trying to make you believe something that isn’t true. They may say that they did not do or say something when you remember that they did. They may accuse you of doing or saying something that you did not. They may tell stories that aren’t true, or omit facts that are true. Essentially, they are lying, and once you figure out what they’re doing, that’s exactly how you should view their behavior.

Read more: Gaslighting in real life

2. Gaslighting can target individuals and groups

If you’ve had a sociopath in your life, you’ve probably been subjected to gaslighting. Sociopaths lie — it’s the cardinal sign of these personality disorders. Even if you caught them in the lie, they still denied it and then blamed it all on you. You know what gaslighting feels like.

Now, however, gaslighting has become culturally pervasive throughout social media, according to Bernard J. Luskin, Ed.D., MFT. Writing in Psychology Today, he said, “Media manipulators use all forms of technology to massage messages designed to influence large numbers of viewers in ways that give the messenger predetermined, self-serving meaning,” Luskin says.

Luskin explains that pictures, graphics and sound are manipulated so that targeted perceptions are created in the mind. “By capturing attention, using repetition, psychovisualization, and compounded memory, the gaslighting effect can be achieved,” he says.

3. Gaslighting is about power and control

The objective of gaslighting is to manipulate your beliefs and behavior. Gaslighting is usually an ongoing process of lies, denials and subterfuge, with the goal of making you doubt your own perceptions. The longer you are subjected to it, the more it wears down your sense of reality. And the more you lose confidence yourself, the easier you are to control.

4. Anybody can be susceptible to gaslighting

Gaslighting is lying, and unfortunately, humans are lousy lie detectors. Research has shown that people can spot a lie only about 53% of the time, which is the same as flipping a coin. In fact, human beings are biologically programmed to trust, so we naturally tend to believe what people say to us, at least at first.

Gaslighting involves emotional and psychological manipulation. In a personal relationship, the perpetrator mixes the gaslighting with love bombing. Well, when people proclaim their love for us, we want to believe them, so we also tend to believe more of what they tell us.

In other situations, the perpetrator may take on a mantle of respectability or abuse a position of power. And when someone is in a position of authority, we want to believe that they know what they’re talking about. Or we’re busy living our lives and don’t have time to verify their statements.

For many reasons, we often take what people say at face value. So anyone can believe statements that turn out to be false.

5. The perpetrator of gaslighting is at fault

The typical attitude among sociopaths is that if people are dumb enough to fall for their lies, it’s the victim’s problem, not theirs.

Still, some writers have suggested that people may be vulnerable to gaslighting due to childhood experiences, an inclination to self-doubt, a desire to avoid conflict or a lack of self-confidence. This is tantamount to blaming the victim for the perpetrator’s lies.

If someone is lied to, it is not their fault. Gaslighting is reprehensible behavior and is always the fault of the perpetrator.

Get away from people who gaslight you

Healthy people do not engage in gaslighting. At all. Therefore, if you encounter anyone who denies saying or doing something that you clearly remember, or accuses you of being crazy or paranoid, please recognize that these are typical gaslighting strategies and the person is trying to control you.

The best thing to do is to get the person out of your life. Yes, this may be difficult, because gaslighting drains your internal strength, and may be intertwined with trauma bonding. So don’t confront the person right away — that will just lead to more gaslighting.

Quietly educate yourself about gaslighting and other sociopathic behaviors. You’ll begin to see that there is a reason why the person’s behavior is so confusing — he or she has a personality disorder. Then you’ll realize that you were never crazy or imagining things after all. The accusations against you were all gaslighting.

Learn more: Survivor’s guide to healthy people and healthy relationships