How to spot a gaslighter – and what to do if you’re being manipulated
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It’s a term thrown around on plenty of reality dating shows and has firmly cemented itself as a leading term in pop culture, but what actually is gaslighting and how do you know if you have fallen victim to it? According to the Oxford Dictionary, to gaslight someone is to “make somebody believe untrue things in order to control them, especially that they have imagined or been wrong about what has really happened”. Like with everything, there are varying degrees of gaslighting and everyone’s experience with the phenomenon is different. HELLO! spoke to a number of experts to discover the true meaning of the relationship buzzword and to learn how to catch a gaslighter before we get burned.
What does gaslighting mean?
To put it simply, gaslighting is a form of manipulation that occurs in a relationship between two people. American dictionary, Merriam-Webster, voted the term its word of the year in 2022 and outlined the effects being gaslit has on a person. It said that it “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”.
Sofie Roos, a licensed relationship therapist and author at Passionerad, told HELLO!: “It often starts with small harmless comments, such as ‘you’re overreacting’, or ‘no that’s not how it was, you remember it wrong’, but with time, it easily escalates to a phase where you actually start doubting your own memory, your feelings and eventually your own self-image.”
The expert outlined what a gaslighter is after – “control”. She explained: “They take that by twisting the reality, denying things they’ve said or done, blaming others or by making you feel guilty for something you haven’t done.”
Why is it called gaslighting?
The term “gaslighting” actually originates from a play. Written by Patrick Hamilton in 1938, Gas Light was later adapted into films in the UK in 1940 and in the US in 1944. The play and the films tell the story of a husband who subtly manipulates his wife into questioning her own sanity. To do this, he used techniques such as dimming the gas lights in their home and insisting she was imagining it. Over time, as the idea filtered its way into mainstream culture, the dramatic scenario inspired the dating term “gaslighting” to describe a form of psychological manipulation where someone causes another person to doubt their own reality and experiences.
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