What Is Gaslighting? Examples & Signs

What Is Gaslighting? Understanding the Invisible Abuse

The term gaslighting has moved from clinical psychology into the mainstream lexicon, but its true meaning and devastating impact are often misunderstood. At its core, gaslighting is a sinister and calculated form of psychological abuse where one person, the gaslighter, systematically manipulates another to the point where the victim questions their own sanity, perception of reality, and memories. This insidious process creates a profound reality distortion, leaving the victim disoriented, confused, and entirely dependent on the abuser for their sense of what is real and true. The ultimate goal of the gaslighter is power and control, achieved by eroding the victim’s self-trust.

The Origin of the Term “Gaslighting”

The word finds its origin in the 1938 play “Gas Light” and its subsequent film adaptations, most notably the 1944 version starring Ingrid Bergman. In the story, a husband manipulates his wife into believing she is going insane. He does this by subtly dimming the gas lights in their home and then adamantly denying that the lights are flickering when she notices it. He convinces her that she is imagining things, making her doubt her own senses and reality. This powerful narrative provided the perfect metaphor for a manipulative tactic that had existed for centuries but now had a name.

The Common Signs of Gaslighting: Are You a Victim?

Recognizing gaslighting can be incredibly difficult, especially when you are in the midst of it. The abuse is slow, methodical, and often disguised as concern or love. Here are the most common signs that you may be experiencing this form of psychological abuse.

You Constantly Second-Guess Yourself

You find yourself frequently wondering, “Am I too sensitive?” or “Did I remember that correctly?” You start to distrust your own judgment and instincts in a way you never did before.

You Feel Disoriented and Confused

Simple conversations leave you feeling bewildered. The gaslighter’s constant reality distortion makes it hard to keep your thoughts straight, and you often feel like you’re “losing your mind.”

You Struggle to Make Simple Decisions

Because your confidence in your own judgment has been shattered, even small choices, like what to wear or what to eat, become sources of significant anxiety and self-doubt.

You Frequently Apologize

You find yourself apologizing for things that aren’t your fault, for your feelings, or even for your very existence. The gaslighter has made you believe that you are the source of all problems.

You Feel Isolated

The gaslighter often works to isolate you from friends and family who might validate your reality. They may tell you that “no one else understands you” or that your loved ones are “trying to break us apart.”

You Make Excuses for Your Partner’s Behavior

To the outside world, and even to yourself, you defend the gaslighter. You tell yourself and others that they are “just stressed,” or “had a difficult childhood,” rationalizing their abusive behavior.

Gaslighting Examples in Different Relationships

Gaslighting is not confined to romantic partnerships. It can occur in any relationship where there is a power dynamic, including with family, friends, and in the workplace. Here are some concrete examples of what it looks like in action.

Gaslighting in Romantic Relationships

This is one of the most common contexts for gaslighting. The abuser uses intimacy and trust as a weapon.

• Countering: “You’re remembering it wrong. We never had that conversation. You must have dreamed it.”
• Withholding: “I’m not going to listen to this crazy talk. You’re being irrational.”
• Trivializing: “You’re so sensitive, you can’t even take a joke. I was just teasing you.”
• Denial & Forgetting: “I never said I would go to that event with you. You’re making things up again.”

Gaslighting in the Workplace

In a professional setting, gaslighting can be used to undermine an employee’s confidence and credibility.

• A boss takes credit for your idea in a meeting and later says, “I don’t know why you’re upset. We developed that concept together in our one-on-one last week.”
• A colleague constantly changes project deadlines and then claims, “I sent you an email about the new deadline last Tuesday. You need to be more on top of your inbox.”
• After giving vague instructions, a manager tells you, “Your work is not up to standard. My instructions were perfectly clear to everyone else.”

Gaslighting in Families (Parent-Child or Between Siblings)

Family gaslighting can be particularly damaging as it shapes a person’s reality from a young age.

• A parent denies a painful childhood event ever happened: “I never hit you. You have such a vivid imagination.”
• A sibling consistently rewrites shared history: “You were always the spoiled one. Mom and Dad never made you do any chores, unlike me.”

The Psychology Behind Gaslighting: Why Do They Do It?

Understanding the motives behind gaslighting can help victims see that the problem is not with them. Gaslighters are often driven by a deep-seated need for control and power. This behavior is frequently rooted in personality disorders like Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) or Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). The gaslighter feels a profound sense of inadequacy and maintains their fragile self-esteem by making someone else feel smaller and more unstable. They thrive on the dependency they create. For a deeper dive into the psychological profiles of manipulators, the American Psychological Association offers valuable resources.

The Stages of Gaslighting: A Slow Descent into Doubt

Gaslighting rarely happens overnight. It is a gradual process that unfolds in stages, making it harder for the victim to detect.

Stage 1: The Lie and Disbelief

The gaslighter tells a bold-faced lie, something you know is untrue. You are confident in your reality and push back.

Stage 2: The Repetition and Amplification

The gaslighter repeats the lie and adds more layers to it. They may recruit others or use “evidence” to support their false narrative. This is where the reality distortion begins to set in.

Stage 3: The Escalation and Doubt

When you continue to challenge them, they escalate. They might get angry, play the victim, or question your mental health. You start to think, “Maybe I am wrong. Why would they be so upset if they were lying?”

Stage 4: The Acceptance and Dependency

Exhausted and confused, you begin to accept their version of reality to keep the peace. You stop trusting your own mind and start relying on them to tell you what is real. This is the goal of the psychological abuse.

Gaslighting vs. Other Forms of Disagreement

It’s crucial to distinguish between gaslighting and a simple disagreement. In a healthy disagreement, both parties respect each other’s perspectives, even if they don’t agree. The goal is resolution or understanding. In gaslighting, the goal is to dominate and invalidate. The gaslighter is not interested in the truth; they are only interested in their own version of it.

Behavior	Healthy Disagreement	Gaslighting
Goal	To understand, resolve, or agree to disagree.	To win, control, and make the other person doubt themselves.
Respect for Reality	Both parties acknowledge a shared reality, even with different interpretations.	One party actively denies the other’s reality and imposes their own.
Outcome	Both parties feel heard, even if frustrated. The relationship may strengthen.	The victim feels confused, small, and invalidated. The relationship is damaged.

The Long-Term Effects of Gaslighting on Mental Health

The consequences of prolonged gaslighting are severe and can lead to significant mental health challenges. The constant reality distortion and psychological abuse take a heavy toll.

• Chronic Anxiety and Depression: The persistent state of uncertainty and self-doubt can lead to diagnosable anxiety and depressive disorders.
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Victims of severe, long-term gaslighting can develop symptoms of PTSD, including hypervigilance and flashbacks.
• Destroyed Self-Esteem: The victim’s sense of self-worth is systematically dismantled.
• Difficulty Trusting Oneself and Others: The foundational trust in one’s own mind is broken, making it hard to form healthy relationships in the future.
• Codependency: The victim may become emotionally reliant on the abuser, creating a toxic and hard-to-break cycle.

Organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) provide support and information for those struggling with these effects.

How to Respond to and Recover from Gaslighting

If you recognize yourself in these signs, know that you are not alone and recovery is possible. Reclaiming your reality is a process.

Steps to Take While in the Situation

• Trust Your Gut: The first and most important step is to acknowledge that your feelings and perceptions are valid.
• Document Everything: Keep a journal, save text messages, and take notes. This creates a tangible record of reality that counters the gaslighter’s distortions.
• Set Firm Boundaries: Clearly state what behavior is unacceptable. For example, “I will not continue a conversation if you tell me I’m crazy.”
• Seek External Validation: Confide in a trusted friend, family member, or therapist. An outside perspective can help you see the situation clearly.

Steps for Healing Afterward

• Go No-Contact or Low-Contact: If possible, remove the gaslighter from your life. If that’s not feasible (e.g., a family member or co-worker), limit your interactions as much as possible.
• Seek Professional Help: A therapist trained in trauma and abuse can be invaluable. They can provide you with tools to rebuild your self-esteem and trust in your own mind.
• Practice Self-Compassion: Be kind to yourself. You survived a manipulative and damaging situation. Healing takes time.
• Reconnect with Your Interests: Re-engage with hobbies and activities that you enjoy and that reinforce your identity separate from the abuser.

For immediate support and resources, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7, even for those experiencing non-physical forms of abuse like gaslighting.

Gaslighting in the Digital Age and Media

In today’s world, gaslighting has found new avenues. It can occur through text messages, social media, and email. This “digital gaslighting” might involve someone denying they sent a message, manipulating photos or screenshots, or using technology to spy on and then question your activities. Furthermore, the term is sometimes misused in media and online discourse to describe any disagreement, which can dilute its serious meaning and make it harder for true victims to be taken seriously.

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Gaslighting in Healthcare Settings

One of the most damaging environments where gaslighting can occur is within the healthcare system. When patients, particularly those with chronic, invisible, or poorly understood illnesses, seek help, they are sometimes met with dismissal or disbelief. A medical professional might tell a patient their debilitating symptoms are “just stress” or “all in your head,” effectively using their authority to invalidate the patient’s lived experience. This form of medical gaslighting can have severe consequences, leading to delayed diagnoses, worsened conditions, and profound psychological trauma. It disproportionately affects women, people of color, and individuals with conditions like fibromyalgia, endometriosis, and autoimmune diseases, whose pain reports are often statistically downplayed by providers.

The Role of Institutional Gaslighting

Gaslighting is not confined to interpersonal relationships; it can also be a tool wielded by institutions and organizations. Institutional gaslighting occurs when an entity denies or rewrites history, discredits collective experiences, or systematically labels whistleblowers as unreliable or mentally unstable. For example, a corporation might deny the existence of a toxic work environment despite overwhelming employee testimony, instead framing complainants as being unable to “handle pressure.” Similarly, governments might engage in gaslighting by denying well-documented historical events or reframing public perception of a crisis. The power dynamic in these scenarios is immense, as the individual is pitted against the perceived legitimacy and authority of a large organization, making their reality feel even more fragile and difficult to defend.

Examples of Institutional Gaslighting Tactics

• Official Denial: Releasing statements that directly contradict widely observed events or shared public experiences.
• Bureaucratic Obfuscation: Creating such complex and labyrinthine processes for complaints that individuals give up, and the institution can claim no formal issues were filed.
• Reframing the Narrative: Portraying systemic problems as isolated incidents or the result of a few “bad apples” to avoid accountability for widespread issues.
• Attacking Credibility: Using an individual’s past or personal life to publicly discredit their claims against the institution.

Gaslighting and Digital Communication

The digital age has introduced new, potent avenues for gaslighting. Through text messages, email, and social media, a gaslighter can manipulate reality with even more ease and deniability. The lack of tone and body language in digital text makes it simpler for them to deny intent, often responding to calls for clarity with statements like, “You’re reading too much into it” or “It was just a joke, you have no sense of humor.” Furthermore, the ability to delete messages, edit shared documents, or block and unblock someone creates a chaotic environment where the victim’s digital “paper trail” can be manipulated or erased, leaving them questioning what was actually said.

Digital Gaslighting Red Flags

Tactic	Example
Denying Receipt	“I never got that text from you. You must not have sent it.”
Quote-Tweeting or Screenshot Manipulation	Taking your words out of context publicly to make you look irrational or abusive.
Love-Bombing via DM	Switching between public criticism and private, affectionate messages to create confusion.
Ghosting and Reappearing	Disappearing for days without explanation, then reappearing and acting as if nothing happened, making you question if you were too demanding.

Gaslighting in Parent-Child Relationships

When a parent gaslights a child, it fundamentally disrupts the child’s developing sense of self and reality. Because a child’s worldview is inherently shaped by their parents, this form of gaslighting is exceptionally corrosive. A parent might consistently deny a child’s feelings (“You’re not hungry, you just ate”), rewrite shared memories (“We never went to the zoo that summer, you’re imagining things”), or blame the child for the parent’s emotional state (“You’re making Mommy so sad when you cry like that”). This teaches the child that their emotions, perceptions, and memories are inherently untrustworthy, laying a foundation for chronic self-doubt and difficulties with emotional regulation that can persist into adulthood.

The Neurobiological Impact of Prolonged Gaslighting

Beyond the psychological effects, chronic gaslighting can leave a tangible mark on the brain. The constant state of hypervigilance and cognitive dissonance—the mental discomfort of holding two conflicting beliefs (e.g., “I trust my perception” vs. “This person I trust says my perception is wrong”)—creates sustained stress. This can dysregulate the body’s stress response system, leading to elevated cortisol levels. Over time, this is associated with physical health problems, including a weakened immune system, digestive issues, and an increased risk of anxiety disorders and depression. The brain’s hippocampus, vital for memory formation, can be particularly affected by chronic stress, potentially explaining the memory confusion that many gaslighting victims report.

Counteracting Gaslighting with Cognitive Reinforcement

To fortify your mind against these tactics, it is crucial to engage in practices that reinforce your cognitive grip on reality. This goes beyond simple self-care and enters the realm of active mental training.

1. Maintain a Reality Journal: Keep a detailed, timestamped journal of events, conversations, and your feelings. Use a pen-and-paper notebook that cannot be easily altered or deleted. This creates an objective record you can refer to when your doubt creeps in.
2. Practice “Grounding” Exercises: When you feel confused or off-balance after an interaction, engage your senses to reconnect with the present moment. Name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. This pulls you out of the mental fog and back into your sensory reality.
3. Verbalize Your Reality: Confidently state your perception using “I” statements. For example, “I understand that you see it differently, but my experience was…” This does not seek their validation but instead affirms your own truth in the face of their denial.

Gaslighting and the Erosion of Intuition

One of the most insidious casualties of gaslighting is a person’s intuition. Intuition is that gut feeling, the subconscious processing of information that alerts you to danger or incongruity. A gaslighter’s constant invalidation teaches you to ignore these internal alarms. You learn to dismiss the knot in your stomach when they give a contradictory story or the feeling of unease when they shower you with affection after a cruel remark. Over time, this erosion of intuition makes you more vulnerable not only to the original gaslighter but also to other manipulative people and potentially unsafe situations, as your primary internal warning system has been systematically disabled.

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