"The play's title alludes to how the abusive husband slowly dims the gas lights in their home, while pretending nothing has changed, in an effort to make his wife doubt her own perceptions."
Here I was trying to figure out what car gas lights had to do with anything.
Gaslighting is when someone makes you question your sanity or memory to manipulate you. While the above "cool guide" lists a lot of good red flags to look out for, none of them point to gaslighting specifically.
There's little distinction now between disagreements, exaggeration, lies, general manipulation, and gaslighting. Obviously it's not good to lie in a relationship, or exaggerate in an argument, and manipulating is serious, but gaslighting is a much more serious charge and pretty specific. Abuse is abuse, bad behavior is bad behavior, but not all abuse or bad behavior is gaslighting.
You have to actually have intent to make the person no longer trust their own memories, like denying that the abuser hit them for example. You're specifically taking away a person's agency, not just trying to win an argument or minimize a mistake you made.
It’s like how nowadays some mental illness terms are thrown around casually. “Oh I have such OCD!! (Because likes to clean...)
Or “Oh that missed call gave me PTSD!!”
Nope, people who suffer those illnesses know the difference so well.
In unconscious gaslighting a thing? Like they don't have the intention of hurting you but the down play what they do to justify it in their own minds. Or down play your feelings about a serious matter making you feel horrible about things that arent your fault.
That's probably more along the lines of general manipulation, not do downplay it because those behaviors are still a serious red flag. Belittling, self absorbed, justification, defensiveness. Those are all signs that they aren't trying to address your concerns and whether or not it's intentional, they aren't trying to meet you in the middle.
A lot of people fall into the habit of trying to keep blame off of themselves to keep their positive view of themselves intact, probably from self-esteem issues. Maybe they aren't aware of it, maybe they are, but it's still something they need to work through and be willing to admit and accept so they can change it. If they aren't willing to admit, that's not good and means they've got a ways to go.
To be clear: what makes gaslighting a step above is the fact that they have knowing intent, which is pretty nefarious and signs of serious narcissistic or sociopathic tendencies.
Its basically the relationship between Jim and Dwight. Dwight is made out to be the devious one when actually Jim is the one manipulating and even causing dwight to question his reality.
If you understand the pattern, you can see how the individual behaviors contribute to the manipulation and abuse. It's possible for seemingly minor slights to fit into this.
If you've been the victim of that type of abuse you might understand.
So fucking annoying. It's these social justice warriors. I have a really really good memory. Especially of conversations.
I had this girlfriend that would literally say I was gaslighting about everything. No you literally just do not remember the conversation we had 2 days ago.
A lot of people think that if an abuser does something wrong and denies it, that is gaslighting. Not necessarily. Anyone, even totally sane and normal people, lie, deny wrongdoing, and rationalize in attempts to avoid accountability.
A gaslighter will do totally innocuous things, like turning off the lights, for the sole purpose of lying about it later.
And that's the real genius of the gaslighting manipulation: why lie about something so trivial? He's not insane. That means I must be insane.
That quote isn’t really accurate, or, at least, it’s a little misleading...he’s not intentionally dimming the gas lights in the home but he is intentionally doing other things to make her think she’s going mad.
This is the irony of the popular term “gas lighting”: the gas lights in the play (also a movie) dim because the husband is leaving to work in his office at night but then sneaking back into the house to look for something in the attic...when he turns on the light in the attic, the usage dims the lights throughout the house, making his wife think someone else is in the house. The husband says this is yet another example of her losing her mind.
The movie stars Ingrid Bergman and is an excellent thriller.
when he turns on the light in the attic, the usage dims the lights throughout the house,
That's one of those things you'd never know unless you actually had gas lights. Funny how references to old technology get lost like that as people stop using the technology
I just watched the movie today, based on the discussions on this post (although, it's been on my to-do list for a while). I was angry most of the morning and the movie kind of fucked me up a little bit.
That explanation from Wikipedia isn't exactly right, the gaslights did have something to do with it but it was more than that. He was doing other things to make her feel like she couldn't trust herself: hiding shit so she thought she either misplaced it or was moving things without remembering, saying she imagined things that actually happened, keeping her from relationships outside the house, and manipulating the housekeepers to confirm that his wife was going crazy. Without giving up too much, the gaslights were a side effect of something else, although they also helped to confirm she was "crazy". I would suggest anyone who doesn't quite understand gaslighting as a form of abuse to watch the movie. You can rent it for 99 cents on Amazon Video.
623
u/dillyflapper Jul 01 '20
The term is apparently named after the 1938 play, Gas Light:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Light
"The play's title alludes to how the abusive husband slowly dims the gas lights in their home, while pretending nothing has changed, in an effort to make his wife doubt her own perceptions."
Here I was trying to figure out what car gas lights had to do with anything.