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It reminds me of when a guy I was seeing told me that he would call me on a certain date at a certain time. That date & time came and went and he didn't call. Eventually he called me and the first thing he said when I answered the phone was "Why ain't choo call me?" I told him that he had said that he would call me, and he insisted that I was the one who said that I would call him. We spoke only maybe 1 or 2 times after that. Hopefully he's no longer gaslighting (or at least hopefully his grammar improved and maybe he's now asking "why didn't you call me", lol).
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I have extensive experiences of being gaslighted by neighbors who believed something nasty about me. It really opened my eyes to the numbers of truly evil people who will gang up to do something like this. It's a sign of rottenness in a society when this sort of thing becomes common, when subtle psychological cruelty is practiced for a while before law and order breaks down, and mobs with torches and AK-49s take over. It's an omen.
I wanted to write a longer initial post but I was interrupted.
I had a situation at work recently where I felt like I was gaslighted. I reported a situation with a difficult individual to my supervisor. I didn't expect anything to come out of it, but her reaction was just really odd, basically to try to project a completely different reality of who this individual is, and in some respects she questioned my perceptions. I ended up wishing I hadn't said anything at all.
I'm not sure if what she was doing was intentional or not, but it brought back some memories of this occurring in my childhood.
When my parents did it, it frequently took the form of either greatly exaggerating certain details, or diminishing them to the point of denial. I often sensed something wasn't quite right, but the lies they told were things that I couldn't prove. My mom went on later to try to rewrite our family history, and she wants me to play along.
I think many of us probably unintentionally do this from time to time, but for me it is the repeated pattern that makes one a gaslighter.
can't somebody give good examples of this? never heard of it.
As mentioned upthread, the term comes from the Ingrid Bergman movie Gaslight, where her character's husband tries to make her think she's crazy by telling her that their house's lights flickering (among other things, and that he's actually making happen) are all in her head.
In real life it generally shows up as people dismissing a legitimate concern of yours as nothing to worry about, or saying that you were mistaken about something you know to be true, causing you to trust your own judgement. It's not necessarily because they want make you think you're crazy, but they might not want to deal with your issues or admit that they're wrong.
As mentioned upthread, the term comes from the Ingrid Bergman movie Gaslight, where her character's husband tries to make her think she's crazy by telling her that their house's lights flickering (among other things, and that he's actually making happen) are all in her head.
In real life it generally shows up as people dismissing a legitimate concern of yours as nothing to worry about, or saying that you were mistaken about something you know to be true, causing you to trust your own judgement.
oh alright. ty
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I told him that he had said that he would call me, and he insisted that I was the one who said that I would call him. We spoke only maybe 1 or 2 times after that. Hopefully he's no longer gaslighting (or at least hopefully his grammar improved and maybe he's now asking "why didn't you call me", lol).
