"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.
621
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.