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— By Dr. Sandip Roy.In the movie “Gaslight,” the wife complains that the lights in the house flicker and dim every evening.
But the husband insists that the lights are fine, and she is being delusional.
The truth is, he does the dimming of gaslights in the house secretly.
Since that movie, gaslighters have been described as people who trick their victims into doubting their version of events, labeling them as “going crazy.”
Gaslighting is the act of manipulating others to doubt themselves or question their own sanity (Johnson & Nadal, 2021).
How does gaslighting happen?
Gaslighting happens mainly through:
- deliberate deception,
- sarcasm, passive aggression,
- open aggression and bullying,
- playing on vulnerability or defensiveness, and
- undermining someone else’s expertise and experience.
It is common in toxic relationships, especially when one partner is more powerful than the other, or the victim partner is more dependent upon the gaslighter.
Gaslighters often shut down their victim’s rational thinking with statements like,
“So you thought you should do it? Why do you think so much? Why can’t you simply do what I ask you to do?”
Over time, the gaslighted person gets too weak to stand by their decisions or opinions. And they transfer their decision-making to the gaslighter, turning to them for every decision and fact-checking.
4 Types of Gaslighting
Technically, gaslighting behavior can be of four main types:
- Blatant lie (hiding, denying, or falsifying facts)
- Blame-shifting (assigning the blame to another person, the scapegoat)
- Coercion (using charms and seduction, constant pressure, or forcefully by bullying)
- Reality distortion (gradual manipulation of victim’s version of reality and loosening their grip on their sanity)
6 Types of Gaslighters
Gaslighting can happen in these six main types of situations:
1. Medical & Professional Gaslighters
Medical gaslighting can go unnoticed, as patients place their greatest trust in their doctors. But it happens. And can happen in any medical setting — hospitals, clinics, and doctor’s offices.
Most often, it involves a medical person questioning the patient’s symptoms.
Suspect medical gaslighting when the consulting doctor:
- minimizes or dismisses your symptoms
- blames your complaints on mental health
- labels you as an anxious/stressed patient
- refuses or over-prescribes diagnostic tests
Personal experience: Some years back, I consulted a patient who had been medically gaslighted for nearly three years. Every doctor he met dismissed her within 5–10 minutes with antianxiety medications. She turned out to be suffering from subclinical thyrotoxicity.
- Medically gaslighted patients can frequently change their doctors and therapists, or resort to unproven herbal and “alternate” medicines.
- The victims may not follow their prescribed treatment or default on refills of medicines.
- They may grow to distrust themselves or the healthcare system they are receiving treatment from.
Medical gaslighting is commonly dispensed by practitioners of alternate therapies and pseudosciences like homeopathy.
Professional gaslighting is when deceitful advice is given out by people from other professions. For example, technical help departments are known to gaslight users, blaming them for the issues with the software or app.
Gaslighting is building a false reality through a series of lies.
2. Racial & Gender Gaslighters
- Racial gaslighting makes people of color question their own experiences of racism.
- Gender gaslighting makes people of a particular gender question their own experiences of gender bias and gender abuse.
Both of these try to invalidate the credibility of the person’s identity, stereotyping them negatively so that they are not supported by others of their own identity.
Both happen at workplaces. While racism and gender maltreatment occur because of power imbalance, and the same factor feeds their gaslighting.
3. Parent & Family Gaslighters
Gaslighting in families usually occurs as a result of power imbalance.
Mostly, it is the older and stronger person who gaslights the young children. Though occasionally, they can reverse their roles.
A parent may criticize a child or even beat them for doing so for their betterment or making them emotionally strong (“toughening them up”).
The sad fact is that these gaslighted children grow up into gaslighters themselves.
4. Political & Governmental Gaslighters
Did you know that North Korea has the official name Democratic People’s Republic of Korea?
Notice the irony there – democratic and republic for a clearly authoritarian regime.
Many would call Russia’s Putin a partial dictator. In 2020, Putin secured 22 million extra votes, which many deem to be fraudulent. He will continue to be the president until 2036.
Political and governmental gaslighting begins by securing high honor, almost to the level of awe, for the person in authority. They also tend to decimate the opposition to secure their monopoly.
Once this power inequity is set, they unleash their false narratives on the people, most of whom believe the gaslighter.
Repeated lies (like coronavirus is fake and science is a hoax) constantly bombard people’s rational minds, tiring them out and undermining their judgment.
5. Institutional & Media Gaslighters
It is all too evident today when media houses have become spokespersons for the political party in power.
People are played to by the government-directed narrative each hour of the day. The political manifesto is played out in newsrooms in different forms – debates, public polls, street interviews, etc.
Few understand that almost all of it is stage-managed. The people randomly picked to answer the reporter have already been fed on what to say.
Newsrooms have become echo chambers of governmental messaging. And the people have become gaslighted victims.
6. Intimate Partner Gaslighters
The most discussed form of gaslighting. Perhaps because the term “gaslighting” found its way into public consciousness from the film of that name.
- An abusive and violent person can systematically erode the weaker partner’s self-esteem.
- They can keep the victim emotionally unstable and mentally confused.
- They can frequently accuse the victim of being insane or hysterical.
- The victim may lose her judgment on how to respond emotionally.
Narcissists as intimate partners are habitual gaslighters. Victims of narcissistic gaslighting can be left wondering whether to laugh, wonder, or cry in a situation.
FAQs
How to quickly spot gaslighting?
Four common signs of gaslighting:
— Blatant Denial: Deny that they said/did something despite the evidence.
— Blame-Shifting: Blame you for their faults and things you aren’t responsible for.
— Invalidating Emotions: Claim or declare your feelings as wrong or unreasonable.
— Ridiculing: Constantly downplay or ridicule your opinions, beliefs, values, or ideas.Why do people gaslight?
People like those with narcissistic and sociopathic personalities are often gaslighters because it makes them feel powerful to make other people question themselves. They might also gaslight as a way to get attention and approval from others, especially if they have low self-esteem.
Final Words
Finally, there is a specific type of gaslighting—Accidental Gaslighting.
Accidental gaslighting happens when someone accidentally does something to make someone else feel like they are being controlled or confused. This can happen when the first person makes assumptions about the second person’s thoughts or feelings without checking with them first.
Gaslighting is a psychological game that narcissists play to trap their targets into a people-pleasing and walking-on-eggshells mode.
Reach out to a mental health expert if you feel gaslighted.
• • •
√ Also Read: 20 Gaslighting Phrases (That Narcissists & Manipulators Use)
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