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What is gaslighting, really?
Years ago, one of my brothers and my older sister had a discussion about college. All four of us attended, with varying degrees of success. During the conversation, my brother congratulated my sister for going further with secondary education than the rest of us.
Here are the facts:
Each of my brothers dropped out after a year.
My sister dropped out after two years.
I graduated with a four year degree.
Even now, I don’t write this with anger or disdain. I feel, instead, like I’m standing in quicksand. I can’t get my moorings.
My sister invented a story about my kids offending our relatives by proselytizing, something I knew they never did. She admitted that it was a lie, but it didn’t matter, because it was something they might do someday.
She warned me that one of my sons should never be left alone because he might have an asthma attack. I reminded her that it wasn’t possible, because he didn’t have asthma. But, she explained, he could DEVELOP asthma.
This is all stuff I should be able to laugh off. But I grew up being told things that made no sense, and my vulnerable mind turned on itself. My dad told me I liked reading the newspaper because I liked “sex news.” He would make misogynistic comments, then look at me with disgust and call me a “women’s libber.” I was eight.
Gaslighting is a very serious, systematic attack on another person’s perception of reality. The term comes from a 1944 movie called “Gaslight”, based on a play from 1938. A man torments his wife by removing objects from their home and dimming the lights. When she brings these things to his attention, he convinces her that she’s insane.
Something that concerns me is how many people have latched on to the word “gaslight” as a punchier, more colorful way to convey that someone is being disagreeable. “He never takes out the trash. He’s gaslighting me.” It’s also misused to describe simple disagreement, or ordinary attempts at persuasion that aren’t welcomed by the recipient.
I love my family, and I once was extremely close to my (now estranged) sister. She could be my biggest fan. My dad once told me that I had qualities that he wished he had. So there’s an inner tug-of-war, and things I should dismiss instead fill me with terror. I remember being a little girl, racking my brain to try to figure out what I said that made me a “women’s libber.” Do I really have a college degree? Am I a bad mother? Why do the people I love make me mistrust myself so profoundly?
Why does it matter? Because gaslighting is a very specific, extremely traumatizing form of manipulation and psychological torture. Your neighbor’s dog isn’t gaslighting you because he won’t stop barking. Your partner isn’t gaslighting you because he supports a different political candidate.
To help people heal, it’s important to understand how powerful words can be. For me, the term “gaslight” gives a label, and thus a possible solution, to a personal tsunami I still struggle to overcome. And you may have endured, or are enduring, a similar storm.
Words matter. Let’s agree to use them with care.
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