While I'm happy that the word "gaslighting" is more known than it used to be, and that people at large are learning to recognize what it looks like, I feel like we need to be careful not to turn it into something soft and casual we throw around off the cuff without meaning.
Being gaslit is psychological abuse that fucks you up very badly, very slowly, at such a gradual pace that you don't usually know it's happening until it's already re-wired your brain.
If you're unfamiliar with the term, "to gaslight" is to intentionally persuade someone that they cannot trust their own perceptions of reality. It's a destabilizing form of manipulation that leaves you constantly anxious, off-balanced, confused, and dependant on others.
This is done by lying about events that have happened or about things that are happening, invalidating feelings and observations, and either denying, refusing to acknowledge, or deflecting away from hard facts.
As someone who has experienced gaslighting as a form of abuse, this is what I remember from when I didn't know anything was off:
"Oh, I must have forgotten what really happened."
"I'm just not seeing it from their point of view."
"Everyone has their ups and downs. This is normal."
"I guess I wasn't thinking about what I was doing."
"I must have been wrong."
This is what I remember from when I first started realizing something was weird:
"How come every time I'm convinced they did something wrong, they just talk to me a few minutes, and I end up asking for their forgiveness? What has me so convinced I was right in the first moment?"
"I should start writing things down when they happen, so I can go back and check later when I'm confused."
"If every relationship like ours (familial, romantic, platonic) works this way, how come I never hear about it, or read about it, or see it anywhere else?"
Getting out and adjusting to the real world is hard, too, and comes with rapid swings of unfounded guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, and self-deprication that are completely unfounded in reality.
You've been conditioned to believe that you are entirely helpless and unable to think for yourself, possibly "crazy" or otherwise fundamentally impaired, and that there is a singular source of guidance that knows exactly what is right, and all of a sudden that pillar of support has vanished.
The immediate "after" that I recall looks like:
Constant uncertainty. Because nobody is there to tell you what's real and what isn't, you approach every situation thinking at it from all angles. Every question has fifty possible answers and most of them are wrong and you don't know which. If you choose wrong, the world will end.
A sense of helplessness. You feel that nothing you do is correct, and it's easier to make no choices at all- or you make wild, reckless, impulsive choices, because you feel you have nothing to lose.
Memory loss. I don't understand this one, but it's not like memoriescare being erased, but more like... you're so used to treating your memories as dreams or imaginations that you reflexively dismiss anything you recall as fake, and you can't believe anything you recall because you don't think it was real. Your abusers voice is in your head, wiping things away and telling you that you did the wrong thing. And you believe them, because they're the only constant you can rely on.
Missing the abuser, or the abusive dynamic. Because you know now that it wasn't healthy, but at least you knew where you stood. As long as you said the right things and acted the right way, agreed and obeyed and did as they expected, you felt like thevworld made sense. Now you have to figure out which parts of you really are broken, and which parts are working fine in a really weird way, and it's like tuning a piano when you've never played one before.
The long term "after"- for which I can only speak for myself- looks like:
Having to double-check, triple-check, and continue checking hard evidence of an event before responding in an active way.
Consulting with trusted friends to verify that your observations are legitimate and that your perceptions are valid. Following up with them to see if someone is really angry at you, or if you're just projecting anger onto them because it's what makes sense to your old pattern.
Obsessive collection of "evidence"- saving pictures, writing detailed journals, making recordings and video, never deleting emails or old texts, because you still don't quite trust yourself all the way and you're afraid that someone will cause you to doubt yourself again.
Continued self-doubt and being "gullible": I have straight up seen people flip me off to my face in front of witnesses and then immediately tell me, "No, I was just waving", and my first instinct is to believe them. For a few seconds, I *really do* believe them. Your brain is so trained to latch onto what people tell you to believe that its really, really hard to hold onto information that you already have.
Learning to take ownership over your own actions. (I didn't mess up because I'm "crazy", I messed up because I'm a person and people do that.)
Instinctively seeking approval. (Takes a lot of work to remind myself that I don't exit to make people happy, and that some people suck ass, and I can tell them to piss off.)
I don't intend to invalidate anyone currently struggling with this- if you feel that something is wrong, it probably is. That's the thought that got me out. Trust that feeling that something isn't right.
I just want people who don't know what to look for to know what gaslighting *actually* looks and feels like, so they don't just roll their eyes and think, "Oh, that word doesnt apply to me- I'm not some snowflake".
('Cause we all saw what happened with "triggered", right?)
dededos
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
baratheonpilled
areudirty
romaincrisis
snowghoul
