Gaslighting is when someone screws with your sense of reality to manipulate you, causing you to distrust yourself and trust them instead. Vladimir Godnik/Getty Images

People can toy with other people's memories and make them feel like they're losing their mind.

It's called gaslighting, and it's super manipulative.

Look out for lies, isolation, projection, and having them accuse you of being "crazy."

Have you ever been talking to someone, and their version of events seems totally and completely different to yours?

This happens a lot in regular conversation, largely because nobody's memory is perfect and we all remember things a bit differently to each other.

However, in darker circumstances, manipulative people toy with someone else's perception of reality to make them feel like they are going crazy. It's called gaslighting.

ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement

Gaslighting is not when somebody has a different opinion. For example, you can't accuse someone of it just because they vote for an opposing political party, or you disagree about liking a movie. Rather, it's an effective manipulative tool people use in abusive relationships, a favorite tactic of people with dark triad personality traits.

It's used to make the victim question their reality, and become more subservient. According to psychologist and therapist Perpetua Neo, it is when someone "screws with your sense of reality to manipulate you, causing you to distrust yourself and trust them instead."

The term has roots in the 1944 film "Gaslight", and an earlier 1938 British play. In the movie a man, Gregory, controls and tricks his wife Paula into believing she is losing her mind — her things appear to go missing, she hears footsteps coming from the attic, and she sees the gaslights dim and brighten for seemingly no reason.

These schemes are on the more dramatic end of the scale. In relationships the signs can be a lot more subtle, and hard to detect.

Neo listed some of the things she and some of her clients went through, such as having emails and numbers deleted from phones, and being made to repeat things over and over while being backed into a corner.

"In such cases it's akin to waking up in an alternate reality," she said. "Even though you know your name and who you are, you're not sure what world you are in and who you are in that world."

Gaslighting has become a buzzword

Gaslighting as a term has become much more widespread in the past few years, in part due to increased conversations online about psychological abuse. Terms like gaslighting, love-bombing, and narcissism, which were once only understood by mental health professionals, are now common vocabulary, even appearing in songs like "Gaslighter" by country music superstars The Chicks.

Trauma therapist Shannon Thomas, who has treated survivors of psychological abuse and wrote the book "Healing from Hidden Abuse," told Insider she has seen a boom in popularity of these terms, but called this a "double-edged sword." While it may raise awareness and help people seek professional help, the correct information can get diluted and distorted in the process.

Calling someone "narcissistic" or accusing them of "gaslighting" in the heat of the moment weaponizes the terms, she said. "It's a way to stop people from even being able to communicate."

Lisa Fontes, the author of "Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your Intimate Relationship," told Insider she is happy to see more knowledge on the subject, because it helps people detect it.

"I see this as a positive — that people are more willing and able to call out others for gaslighting, and trust their own eyes, ears, and memories about what truly happened," she said.

You may not notice it's happening

You might think you are too strong of mind to let somebody gaslight you — and hopefully you are right — but according to psychologists, gaslighting is often done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize they're being brainwashed.

It's like the "frog in the saucepan" analogy: where the heat is turned up very slowly on the stove, so the frog never realizes it's starting to boil to death.

Everybody is different, and everyone has different experiences. But according to Neo, the psychologist and therapist, people who are controlling, abusive, and narcissistic often follow the same pattern. For this reason, there are several techniques that the people who tend to gaslight others follow.

The more aware you are of these kind of traits and signs, the better equipped you are to avoid falling into a gaslighter's trap.

Here are some of the signs to look out for.

1. Lies

A gaslighter's main objective is to confuse you. Because of this, they don't really care whether their lies are blatant and obvious. When they say something that is obviously untrue, they will still say it with a straight face.

Even if you have proof, they will often stick to their guns. This is all a tactic to keep you off-kilter. Eventually, they will attempt to make you believe that everything they say is the reality.

"Gaslighting is the intentional distortion of facts," said Thomas, the trauma therapist. "So the other person will doubt their assessment of reality."

It may start off with something as simple as: "I didn't say that," or "You never did that."

The more sure you are that they are wrong, and the more frustrated you get, the more they will persevere with their lies.

"They'll drive it home with 'you're crazy, you're too sensitive,'" Neo said. "Or they'll remind you of it to tell you there's something wrong with you. This way they get you to trust their version of reality. "

2. Isolation

Abusive people like to use the people around you as weapons. According to Stephanie A Sarkis, author of "Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People — and Break Free," if you have children, a gaslighter will tell you that it was a mistake to have them. They will try and make you believe that you are worthless, and nothing else can compare to how important your relationship is.

They may say tell you your friend actually hates you, or your brother thinks you are useless. These are almost certainly lies, but when they are reinforcing your mind with the same stories over and over again, some of them may start to stick.

"Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what — and they use these people against you," Sarkis wrote in a blog post for Psychology Today. "When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don't know who to trust or turn to — and that leads you right back to the gaslighter. And that's exactly what they want: Isolation gives them more control."

Essentially, it's brainwashing, said Thomas, to lead you to trust the abuser, and only the abuser.

"It's diabolical," she said. "Gaslighting is intentional. It's to pull down people's ability to trust themselves and their core assessment of life."

Gregory toys with Paula in Gaslight, doing everything he can to isolate her from other people. IMDb/MGM

3. Positive reinforcement

One of the most confusing — and effective — things a gaslighter can do is be nice to you. If someone was truly nasty and insulting towards you 100% of the time, the relationship probably wouldn't have gotten very far. However, when someone starts gaslighting you, they've already established a relationship with you that you believe is meaningful. A trauma bond has been created.

"Naturally, the abuse persists, and you're never sure if it happened," Neo said. "Because the next day, he is so charming or so remorseful — or a mixture of both."

When a relationship starts with someone abusive — perhaps a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath — they will "love-bomb" you. This is a tactic when somebody showers you with affection, and makes you feel like the luckiest person in the world.

However, the love-bombing, or idealization, stage is quickly followed by the devaluation and discard stages, where you start to be insulted and wonder where things started to go wrong.

The idea is that when they take this love and affection away, you will do anything to try and get it back. You blame yourself for them changing the way they acted towards you, and you compromise yourself time and time again to get the perfect partner back. You can't though, because that person never really existed.

Gaslighters will throw in the odd compliment, or a rare gift, to make you believe that it's the real them, and whenever they are angry at you, or abusing you, it's because you did something wrong.

Once they've worn you down, the gaslighter will have you where they want you. You'll be agreeable to everything they say and you will no longer question them when they blatantly lie to you. You'll be confused and disoriented, and feel like you have nobody left around you to trust.

"Because you don't trust yourself, and instead have been conditioned — rewarded or punished accordingly," Neo said. "You fade away into a shell of who you are."

In other words, the gaslighter now has complete control.

Gaslighters go for the strong, not the weak

Some people subconsciously seek out abusive people to date. Unfortunately, this means that if you've been in a relationship with a gaslighter, you may be more likely to end up in another one.

Certain traits make people more susceptible to falling into these types of relationships. According to Neo, people are attracted to abusive relationships because they are familiar, and they recreate damaging aspects of their past because familiar feelings are comfortable.

Also, there are the people who have a lot of empathy for others, and they get sucked in because gaslighters know they can prey on that.

Neo also pointed out that many of her clients who were in these sorts of relationships were high-achieving women. This seems counter-intuitive, but abusive people enjoy controlling those who they feel are worth controlling. For example, narcissists will show you off in front of their friends, but behind closed doors they will belittle and devalue you.

The gaslighting can persist even after a relationship ends, Neo warned.

However, she also says the good news is you can heal and you can learn to trust and love again, rather than feel fearful that life is out to get you at every turn. It'll just take time, and the strength to stay away, and not fall for their games again.

"Ending it is only the start," Neo said. "Healing from it is another thing altogether."

This post was first published in July 2017, and was updated in August 2023 with more information.



Read the original article on Insider