Science of the Spirit
Ben Michaelis, PhD, a New York City-based clinical psychologist, has worked with victims of gaslighting. For one of his patients—we'll call her Marie—the gaslighting began when her husband shouted another woman's name during sex. When she tried to discuss the incident with him, he flatly denied what he'd said and told Marie she was hearing things. Marie figured she must have had too much to drink. But then the lying continued: Marie's husband would change his alibi constantly, and when Marie questioned him, he'd say she was acting delusional. It wasn't until almost a year later when Marie realized her husband had been hiding an affair the whole time.
"[Gaslighting] is like someone saying the sky is green over and over again, and at first you'll be like 'no, no,'" says Gail Saltz, MD a psychiatrist and host of the podcast The Power of Different. "Then over time the person starts to manipulate you into saying 'I guess I can't really see what color the sky is.' It's just this sense of unreality."
Acknowledging you're a victim of gaslighting like Marie did can be tricky at first, says Michaelis, who is the author of Your Next Big Thing: 10 Small Steps to Get Moving and Get Happy. "Initially, if someone is insisting on a reality that is different from your own, you'll think, Why was I off that day? Was I tired?" As the gaslighting continues, victims begin to question themselves and their judgment more and more. Michaelis says this can go on for months or even years before they realize they're being gaslighted. "People who experience gaslighting may show obsessive-compulsive symptoms because they want to constantly check themselves and recheck themselves," says Dr. Michaelis. The confidence-depleting nature of gaslighting could contribute to increased anxiety in many or all aspects of a victim's life, not only in the relationship. Many gaslighting victims berate themselves or feel the need to apologize all the time, explains Dr. Saltz.
Gaslighting can manifest in a workplace environment as well. "Your boss may use gaslighting to hide a mistake or cover up information they didn't mean to share," says Michaelis. "It can also be a passive-aggressive gesture used among peers who are competing."
If you realize you're being gaslighted, the first thing you need to recognize is that a gaslighter may not be conscious of the effects of their actions, especially if they have issues with being wrong or out of control. In this case, confronting the gaslighter could work. Michaelis suggests conducting all conversations you have with the gaslighter in a recorded format, like through email or text. Then, when gaslighting occurs, tell the person what they originally said. "If they continue do deny what they said, you can supply the recorded evidence so they have a concrete understanding of what happened," says Michaelis. This method works best when confronting a friend or partner.
In professional relationships, Michaelis suggests reaching out to a third party, like human resources, which can make the confrontation more objective. You can take this route in your personal relationships as well by enlisting a friend or family member to help. "If you find it happening to you, be thoughtful of the person's motivations," Michaelis says. "They don't usually do it out of pure ill-will. It usually correlates with trying to cover something up, so first try to repair the relationship if it's worth it."
If confrontation fails and ending the relationship is an option, Dr. Saltz recommends doing so. Michaelis agrees: "All relationships are changeable. Maybe not immediately, but they are changeable or severable if need be," he says.
If you have to stick it out with a gaslighter, though, try to boost your confidence with the support of good friends. "If you're having a hard time changing the situation, they can bolster your reality otherwise," says Michaelis. In a work environment, you should also be wary of what information you share with a gaslighter. Michaelis suggests withholding personal life details with a gaslighting co-worker or boss to protect yourself from emotional abuse in the office.
No matter which method you choose, it's important to take control of reality again, says Dr. Saltz. This involves setting limits that stop gaslighting attempts in their tracks. For example, if your boss calls you overly sensitive when you ask, "Why won't you let me work on big company projects?" demand true feedback rather than accepting blame on your character. "It's holding the line for what you're wanting to achieve," Dr. Saltz says, "and not buying into accusations intended to knock down self-confidence."
Comment: Many psychiatric professionals agree that even strong, intelligent, confident, and stable people can become vulnerable to this form of emotional manipulation. Intelligence and emotions are not the same thing and a gaslighters' key maneuver is to prey on emotion rather than intelligence. Gaslighting is a specific, conscious, deliberate tactic of manipulation and control.
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Reader Comments
Does anyone know why authoritarianism has become so omnipotent and total? Why everyone has to obey central command?
It is because the architects (aka our historical leaders and uhhh 'teachers' and 'reformers', 'professionals' and 'advisors', 'counselors') of techno-civilization have been practicing gaslighting and every other form of hideousness and criminal and psychotic activity on less technological populations for thousands of years. It is total takeover. Remember too, that children are much less technological than adults. They do not need nor want or in any way desire a lot of this technological shit until they are trained to want it and to desire it.
Everything techno-civilization possesses is a product of theft from previous owners and mind control of those who are left after the various genocides and mass murders and butcheries.
Criminals must cover their tracks and do it as thoroughly or they face the penalty of their crimes. Criminals do not want that!
The best criminals convince everyone that they are doing good and are beautiful when they are doing maximum evil and are in fact, grotesque and perverse and well, DAMNED FOR ETERNITY.
Isn't technology wonderful? It is the evolution of the mind and of the being of man. It is the best thing there is. So much good comes from technology. It is to be honored and worshipped in its totality and might. Everything good comes from advancing technology. It is supreme. Don't blame technology for anything that goes wrong. Blame yourself or somebody else for not keeping up the pace. We must keep the pace. Technology is life, is love, is God. It is the torch that shines through darkness. TECHNOLOGY. TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY.
Aren't we the greatest? And it is because, all because, of......TECHNOLOGY.
Have a nice day, butchers, murderers, rapists and thieves.
In Eternal Hell.
ned, out
. . . I thought that was a pretty righteous rant . . . and absolutely correct just btw.
Denial is deep rooted as a predicate of a sense of independent autonomy - as if Life being is merely something to manipulate and exploit as a someone separate from it.
Wishful thinking given extreme emotional reinforcement operates in place of true willing - indeed it seems to usurp your true desire to such a degree you might not be able to feel and know the true of anything.
Mutually agreed definitions operate tacitly to defend and support the identity rising from or constructed over denial.
Denial depends on the true to even SEEM to be a power of opposition or refusal - for the true of you is the extension of attention and value extending in act to what you accept as yourself.
Wishful thinking identified and believed operates a false sense of self-reality and makes falsely founded relationships for getting. Beneath the presentations of self are the fears that the persona mask was constructed to get away from.
If you are in a relationship and find your integrity undermined - you need to re-establish the integrity of the relating - and see if there IS a genuine willingness for relationship. If the other is too afraid to allow communication, the fear itself may be able to be acknowledged. This may open up further avenues of exploration and uncovering of relationship in place of denied consciousness operating in the dark.
Whatever words or terms are employed, blame is always destructive but a core integrity of being is always worthy of standing in and is an act of love - regardless the form it takes or the 'meanings' applied.
Abuse can be used as an insidious weapon of 'assigning evil' as the ruse of righteousness. But abuse does not belong in a real relationship - and so the honesty of the relationship needs to be brought forth - in the open - in whatever way works - or there is no current willingness for relationship - only abuse.
Using each other is not relationship - but society normalizes by currency of acceptance and manipulative thought and behaviour become the 'culture' of masked hate.
Healing or undoing hate and fear will never occur while guilt projecting blame is identified in as god, self and saviour. We might deny such is our mind - but the cock crows and the light is nigh in which to recognize and release what had seemed a self-protective gesture, but locked ou out of our heart's knowing.
Attending to 'evils' whilst still masking our own is a sure way to being manipulated by denied fear and guilt. When it comes to the surface - there is opportunity for healing ourselves - and a natural witness or sharing to others. If all our attention is on the sickness in others - even when sickness is demonstrated in their behaviour - then our own vibrational correspondences are kept hidden or 'denied' light by the emotionally backed wish it be exclusively them who are wrong.
It's easy to show the pathetic nature of those who are exposed - less so when it is you who are defending what to you seems your survival - not because of any presence of intelligent assessment - but out of ancient fear scripts that HAVE no consciousness in them.
The attempt to engineer or manipulate society so as not to suffer abuse is simply a denial of Consciousness masked in a collective idea of sacrifice. But agian - the ancient fear scrip without consciousness dictates "THIS MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!" - and I remind you that wishing - no matter how intensely backed with emotional sacrifice - IS NOT and can not be true willing.
Awakened responsibility is the uncovering of your holy will. It will not seem so - because it has been demonized by the projections of a wish to override and oppose Communication - as if to become a will of power.
But we cannot oppose communication - any more than thought can trap the mind in which thought arises. But clearly we are able to believe we have and want it so - and then suffer in like measure by our own 'word'. And clearly we react so as to generate 'rules' by which to map out and mask and redistribute the conflicted pain of an incoherent self sense as a self defended over and against a conflicted and incoherent world. This 'power struggle' is the denial of Communication in forms of self-justification. But where do we go to receive our sense of self? No matter the habit freedom is a consciously accepted choice - rather than a falsely framed reaction.
From awakened freedom one can and should deny anything that would re-frame you in terms of a trapped and trapping mind. Growing this discernment is loving yourself enough to keep watch - and forgiving yourself when you notice you forget - which is a point of honouring the noticing - not a call for blame.
That's why the majority of the population who are authoritarian followers are pretty much crazy and don't stand for any thing real, but will punish and defend for lies, sick!
I'm going with binra; it's all about denial. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Marie is an idiot.
One should never extend ones hand further than one can withdraw it.
I was in a relationship several years ago, and was being gaslighted. My first reaction was to question myself.
But you know within that something ain't right. I tried confrontation and presented this person with facts, lots of them. Like you said this and that and so on. Did not get me anywhere whatsoever, and the lies got more outrageous. Even on a par with the state deparment and MSM. I got out. My advice to anyone would be, if you know something ain't adding up, then it probably isn't. Trust yourself, and pay attention to the facts, not wishful thinking. Then get yourself out of it, because it will not get any better.