gaslighting

Medusa22

melissak wrote: »

To people who have experienced this, do you think the perpetrator is necessarily aware that they are doing this, is it an intentional attempt to hurt/control or just a funked up way of relating to others?

I think, well in my experience anyway, that they are both aware and unaware at the same time, they seem to practice some sort of cognitive dissonance, or ''double think'' I suppose to live with what they are doing and to justify it. On some level they know that what they are doing is wrong, but they often try to paint themselves as the victim or the person who is being hard done by, in my case I was often made to feel like I had done something wrong or bad or hurtful, and I think that both guys partially believed I had done something wrong or hurtful, but at the same time they were aware that I hadn't really, it was their perception that was skewed.

valoren

seamus wrote: »

But...they were all there. How has he convinced them that you're the one who lost the head, when incident happened right next to them?

It's being twisted around and spun against me because we've subsequently fallen out. They all know what happened. He's a part of their bubble now, a clique, their way of thinking and is willfully telling blatant lies about his own brother. I'm fair game for gas lighting now. That particular incident is now used as their word against mine. Conveniently for them, no one else was there to confirm what actually happened so they are all free to invent what they claim happened and to discredit me.

To give an example,

Say you were out walking your dog.
You see your brother and his father in law approaching you.
You say "Hello"
They both shun and turn their heads away, ignoring you.
A year later, you hear that they have been telling people/their own circle of friends & family that they saw you out walking your dog, they both said hello to you but YOU turned your head away and ignored THEM.
That you are arrogant, ignorant and despicable because of that etc etc.

How can you prove that you actually did the opposite? That it's THEM who are lying etc. It's crazymaking.

steddyeddy

Penny Tration wrote: »

I think that after a while of being told you're crazy, most people would reach out to a friend or a forum and seek advice. When the advice is a resounding "no, you're being rational," then the person will start to slowly realise what's going on.

You're forgetting a few variables such as confidence eroding and attraction to abuser.

Unfortunately we put more faith in someone we love than people on a message board.

Azalea

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

I've never heard the term but I presume it comes from the Hitchcock film Gaslight, where Ingrid Bergman's character was convinced she was going mad (by her husband).

Yep.

steddyeddy

arayess wrote: »

it isn't the norm :eek::eek:
my mother opened my mail until I left home.
her house , her rules was her mantra.

No it's not. It becomes gas lighting when they convince you you're wrong to question it.

Paramite Pie

arayess wrote: »

it isn't the norm :eek::eek:
my mother opened my mail until I left home.
her house , her rules was her mantra.

Nope, overbearing mother. Granted, they probably grew up with little privacy themselves - me mam shared a bed with 4 other siblings. Establishing privacy boundaries like knocking was new to her!:pac:

She never opened my mail though.

seamus wrote: »

But if someone is 16 or over and their parents are going into their bedrooms to do anything more than collect dishes and dirty clothes, then you've got a problem.

Dishes in the bedroom? Eating in a bedroom was a huge no no in my house growing up, and I've only ever had one house mate who did that. It's not actually a common thing is it?

KomradeBishop

In relation to this, I came across the very interesting term 'zersetzung' recently - the Stasi in East Germany, used a highly professionalised form of gaslighting, combined with a totalitarian surveillance state, to try and destroy targets mental health, social lives, and lives in general:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

Insect Overlord

Sounds a bit like the inspiration behind Roald Dahl's "The Twits", but less funny.

melissak

KomradeBishop wrote: »

In relation to this, I came across the very interesting term 'zersetzung' recently - the Stasi in East Germany, used a highly professionalised form of gaslighting, combined with a totalitarian surveillance state, to try and destroy targets mental health, social lives, and lives in general:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

Yes I read that a couple of days ago. Can you put up a link to that case in England, I can't find it now and oh does not believe me. It is one of the most fcuked up things I have seen in a while.

seamus

Paramite Pie wrote: »

Dishes in the bedroom? Eating in a bedroom was a huge no no in my house growing up, and I've only ever had one house mate who did that. It's not actually a common thing is it?

Bringing up a cup of tea, sandwich when studying. Glass of water at nighttime, etc.

Eating dinner in your bedroom itself would be odd, but bringing up a snack or some drinks not so much. Especially in a busy house where your bedroom might be your only refuge when you're reading or something.

custard gannet

We run the gas off the electricity and the electricity off the gas and we save two hundred pounds a year.

melissak

custard gannet wrote: »

We run the gas off the electricity and the electricity off the gas and we save two hundred pounds a year.

How? What?

KomradeBishop

melissak wrote: »

Yes I read that a couple of days ago. Can you put up a link to that case in England, I can't find it now and oh does not believe me. It is one of the most fcuked up things I have seen in a while.

Oh yea, from the last time I posted it - the way GCHQ (UK) spies targeted political activists - having sex, getting into relationships with, and even having babies with minor political activists - then just disappearing - humiliating and massively screwing up the lives of some:

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I came across the term Zersetsung recently, which is a fascinating/terrifying article on how the DDR/Stasi utilised spying to directly target political activists/opponents, in order to destroy their mental-health/personality/lives, through an extremely fúcked up and professionalized form of 'gaslighting'.

When you read about the type of mass surveillance under operation today, and read about some of the things the UK has done to target just very low-level political activists - ruining the lives of some in the process - when you see all of this, you realize that it's fairly plausible that we may see a lurch towards that kind of surveillance state in the near future, and that terrorists (even if they successfully end up murdering thousands) are far less of a threat to the general public, than those who would roll back our civil liberties, and enable all these sorts of state abuses.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/20/met-police-apologise-women-had-relationships-with-undercover-officers

So yea, it's not gaslighting, but be sure that - given the prevalence of the NSA/GCHQ spying, and the depths their respective intelligence agencies are willing to plumb, when it comes to lack of morals - they probably deploy similar tactics themselves.

melissak

Would that not be rape by fraud? Is rape in your oewn country, when officially sanctioned, a war crime?

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Oh yea, from the last time I posted it - the way GCHQ (UK) spies targeted political activists - having sex, getting into relationships with, and even having babies with minor political activists - then just disappearing - humiliating and massively screwing up the lives of some:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/20/met-police-apologise-women-had-relationships-with-undercover-officers

So yea, it's not gaslighting, but be sure that - given the prevalence of the NSA/GCHQ spying, and the depths their respective intelligence agencies are willing to plumb, when it comes to lack of morals - they probably deploy similar tactics themselves.

ancapailldorcha

seamus wrote: »

No...
Even my 3 year old gets to open her own post.

Up to a certain age it's pretty normal that parents just do whatever the hell they like. But if someone is 16 or over and their parents are going into their bedrooms to do anything more than collect dishes and dirty clothes, then you've got a problem.

Yeah, I thought this as well. My folks would do the same to me. It continued until I emigrated. I remember getting a letter from my alma mater and my Dad roaring at me over the phone when I asked him not to open it. I let him and it was a survey or some other irrelevance.

KomradeBishop

melissak wrote: »

Would that not be rape by fraud? Is rape in your oewn country, when officially sanctioned, a war crime?

Good question - I don't know, but think it could be - that seems to be something relatively new as far as courts are concerned, where precedent is still being set in courts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception

Earthhorse

melissak wrote: »

I recently encountered the term gaslighting, a form of emotional abuse where someone makes another person think they are crazy/paranoid. My question is if someone was in such a relationship how would they know that they were being gaslighted and not actually crazy/paranoid etc. It seems to me it would be a bit of a catch 22.

You're right, it would be a difficult trap to escape from once you found yourself in it.

I suppose they eventually do some form of internal check with their gut and decide that a line has been crossed. Another good check they could do is ask themselves if a friend described the situation to them what advice would they give. Removing yourself from the equation can sometimes be a good way of clearing your head.

The tactics of gaslighters are successful though in part because they make victims forget about themselves. What I mean is, the focus becomes how the gaslighter is embarrassed or hurt by this crazy behaviour (which isn't actually crazy behaviour of course) and so the victim, who doesn't want to hurt their loved one begins to think about how they can change so it doesn't happen. They've sort of bought into the narrative at that point and I'd say it does take a line being crossed before they buy back out again.

orubiru

Medusa22 wrote: »

I think, well in my experience anyway, that they are both aware and unaware at the same time, they seem to practice some sort of cognitive dissonance, or ''double think'' I suppose to live with what they are doing and to justify it. On some level they know that what they are doing is wrong, but they often try to paint themselves as the victim or the person who is being hard done by, in my case I was often made to feel like I had done something wrong or bad or hurtful, and I think that both guys partially believed I had done something wrong or hurtful, but at the same time they were aware that I hadn't really, it was their perception that was skewed.

In a lot of cases they actually have been a victim at some point in their past.

Unfortunately one of the ways many abusers "learn" to abuse is because they have been victims themselves.

Gas-lighting is one of those things that really is a learned behavior. If a parent has been unreasonably demanding, or if a parent is obviously wrong, but the kid is not allowed to challenge them on that then the kid may learn that this is the way to assert yourself or to have power over another person.

In other cases, such as with religions or cults, gas-lighting tactics are used because the victim is not trusted and so there is an effort to control how they think or what they feel able to do.

The idea of being a sinner even though you don't feel like you've done anything wrong, for example.

See also, "if you think X doesn't affect you then you are actually more likely to be affected".

You may often see things like this on Boards when someone makes a contentious statement and says something preemptive like "the replies to this post will prove just how right I am" so you might be sitting there thinking that you strongly disagree with what's been said but you've been put in the position where to disagree means you are already wrong.

You can imagine all of that translating over to bad or abusive relationships. They make an accusation, you disagree, they say "see! you don't even know you're doing it!" They say something daft, you call them on it, they say "thanks for proving my point".

Junkyard Tom

An File wrote: »

Sounds a bit like the inspiration behind Roald Dahl's "The Twits", but less funny.

One night, when Mrs Twit was asleep, Mr Twit crept out of bed and took her walking stick downstairs to his workshed. There he stuck a tiny round piece of wood (no thicker than a penny) on to the bottom of the stick.

Every night, Mr Twit crept downstairs and added an extra tiny thickness of wood so the end of the walking-stick. He did it very neatly so that the extra bits looked like a part of the old stick. Gradually, but oh so gradually, Mrs Twit’s walking stick was getting longer and longer.

“That stick’s too long for you,” Mr Twit said to her one day.

“Why so it is!” Mrs Twit said, looking at the stick. “I’ve had a feeling there was something wrong, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what it was.”

“There’s something wrong all right,” Mr Twit said, beginning to enjoy himself.

“What can have happened?” Mrs Twit said, staring at her old walking stick. “It must suddenly have grown longer.”

“Don’t be a fool!” Mr Twit said, “How can a walking-stick possibly grow longer? It’s made of dead wood isn’t it? Dead wood can’t grow.”

“Then what on earth has happened?” cried Mrs Twit.

“It’s not your stick, it’s you!” said Mr Twit, grinning horribly. “It’s you that’s getting shorter! I’ve been noticing it for some time now.”

“That’s not true!” cried Mrs Twit.

“You’re shrinking, woman!” said Mr Twit.

“It’s not possible”

“Oh yes it jolly well is,” said Mr Twit. “You’re shrinking fast! You’re shrinking dangerously fast! Why, you must have shrunk at least a foot in the last few days!”

“Never!” she cried.

“Of course you have! Take a look at your stick, you old goat, and see how much you’ve shrunk in comparison! You’ve got the shrinks, that’s what you’ve got! You’ve got the dreaded shrinks!”
Mrs Twit began to feel so trembly she had to sit down.

Roald Dahl.

Medusa22

Earthhorse wrote: »

You're right, it would be a difficult trap to escape from once you found yourself in it.

I suppose they eventually do some form of internal check with their gut and decide that a line has been crossed. Another good check they could do is ask themselves if a friend described the situation to them what advice would they give. Removing yourself from the equation can sometimes be a good way of clearing your head.

The tactics of gaslighters are successful though in part because they make victims forget about themselves. What I mean is, the focus becomes how the gaslighter is embarrassed or hurt by this crazy behaviour (which isn't actually crazy behaviour of course) and so the victim, who doesn't want to hurt their loved one begins to think about how they can change so it doesn't happen. They've sort of bought into the narrative at that point and I'd say it does take a line being crossed before they buy back out again.

This is exactly it. If you're in a relationship and someone tells you that something you are doing/saying hurts them then you might try to argue about why you do it, but if they genuinely seem to be hurt (and maybe they often are) then you may just back down or try to find a way to modify your behaviour so you won't hurt them again. Even though this often means giving up your freedom or independence in some way, but you think that you did something inappropriate so you think it's the right thing to do.

melissak

But how would you know that you were not in the wrong? How would you know you were not misinterpreting things?

Medusa22 wrote: »

This is exactly it. If you're in a relationship and someone tells you that something you are doing/saying hurts them then you might try to argue about why you do it, but if they genuinely seem to be hurt (and maybe they often are) then you may just back down or try to find a way to modify your behaviour so you won't hurt them again. Even though this often means giving up your freedom or independence in some way, but you think that you did something inappropriate so you think it's the right thing to do.

Medusa22

melissak wrote: »

But how would you know that you were not in the wrong? How would you know you were not misinterpreting things?

Well that's the thing, you often don't know, and sometimes you think you know that you are in the right, but the other person brings you around to their way of thinking. Sometimes it's only after repeated incidents and knowing in your gut that you are right, or it's having a chat with a family member or friend who realises that something isn't quite right, and they are usually able to remind you that your partner's behaviour isn't normal, that you shouldn't doubt yourself. I think for me, looking back, I should have gone with my gut, I knew that some things I was asked to do were unreasonable and other things seemed reasonable at the time, but looking back on it, they weren't. Hindsight is 20/20

steddyeddy

Well maybe the letter opening thing depends on context. A few of the people I talked to who lived with abusive parents or partners complained about that a lot. It wouldn't be abusive in isolation I suppose.

melissak

This is the bit that bothers me. Someone who had a dysfunction family would be more likely to suffer abuse and thus their core values and family dynamic would be skewed to a point that they couldn't trust their families opinion of it and people with a good social circle wouldn't let it go so far before some of their friends would say this is a weird relationship. So if you wlet yourself get into this position it would be so hard to get out. I know myself a girl who was, to me and all her other friends told her her boyfriend was awful and she genuinely couldn't see it and fell out with all her friends thinking they were sabotaging her relationship. In hindsight I think this is what this was and wonder is there something I could have said different that would have illuminated this without alienating her, which was the last thing any of us wanted.

Medusa22 wrote: »

Well that's the thing, you often don't know, and sometimes you think you know that you are in the right, but the other person brings you around to their way of thinking. Sometimes it's only after repeated incidents and knowing in your gut that you are right, or it's having a chat with a family member or friend who realises that something isn't quite right, and they are usually able to remind you that your partner's behaviour isn't normal, that you shouldn't doubt yourself. I think for me, looking back, I should have gone with my gut, I knew that some things I was asked to do were unreasonable and other things seemed reasonable at the time, but looking back on it, they weren't. Hindsight is 20/20

Youngblood.III

It is a popular form of bullying in the workplace.

Whitewinged

Youngblood.III wrote: »

It is a popular from of bullying in the workplace.

I was just about to say that.

Yea I'd say it happens quite often in the workplace for example if someone's workload is too big and impossible for any one person to do and every time they talk to their manager about it, it turns into "maybe you need to focus on your time management" or something like that and then it becomes about the person rather than the fact the workload is just not manageable.

I'd say there are lots of mild examples of gaslighting that happen in most kinds of relationships especially when one person is more dominant than the other but any consistent, repetitive forms of gaslighting would, I imagine, be very damaging to a persons view of their own reality and facts.

Medusa22

melissak wrote: »

This is the bit that bothers me. Someone who had a dysfunction family would be more likely to suffer abuse and thus their core values and family dynamic would be skewed to a point that they couldn't trust their families opinion of it and people with a good social circle wouldn't let it go so far before some of their friends would say this is a weird relationship. So if you wlet yourself get into this position it would be so hard to get out. I know myself a girl who was, to me and all her other friends told her her boyfriend was awful and she genuinely couldn't see it and fell out with all her friends thinking they were sabotaging her relationship. In hindsight I think this is what this was and wonder is there something I could have said different that would have illuminated this without alienating her, which was the last thing any of us wanted.

I'm sure that girl was aware on one level of what you were saying, but she was probably in denial or not ready to deal with it, or maybe her boyfriend really did make her believe that her friends were sabotaging her relationship.

My first serious relationship was like that, with my ex whispering in my ear every time my friends did something that wasn't very nice (and we were teenagers, so it was often enough!), so then when they told me that they didn't like him and they gave me an ultimatum, asking me to choose between them and him, I resented the ultimatum and I was resentful about the way they treated me, so I was sixteen and I made the wrong decision, I chose him. Nearly four years later I finally ended the relationship, and I hadn't a friend in the world, as he'd driven them all away, and I'd driven them away too, choosing him over them when conflict arose.

The best you can do in a situation like that is be there for the person, and if they are receptive then tell them when something doesn't seem right, but it's best to back off if they refuse to accept it or they deny it, in time they will realise and they will come looking to you for help, but you might have had enough and they'll be left to deal with it on their own, and I understand that too, there is only so much patience people have and they can only stand by and watch someone be treated badly for so long.

Edited to say that I didn't come from an abusive background and I had a loving upbringing. My parents didn't approve of the boyfriend either but their disapproval also stemmed from the fact that he had a dysfunctional background and family situation and my parents' snobbery was involved in this, so I dug my heels in and refused to listen to them, the more they tried to keep us apart, the more we wanted to be together.

Whitewinged

Medusa22 wrote: »

I'm sure that girl was aware on one level of what you were saying, but she was probably in denial or not ready to deal with it, or maybe her boyfriend really did make her believe that her friends were sabotaging her relationship.
g.

Ye I would say most cases within relationships are so subtle to begin with and gradually increase over time that most people could fall victim to it not necessarily someone who hasn't got a good support system. If it was subtle enough then friends and family would probably not really notice it initially either. By the time it gets bad then the person may already be in doubt of themself. An accumulation of little things but each on their own might sound trivial.

qo2cj1dsne8y4k

It's funny, not even 24 hours later from me saying I wouldn't stand for it happening to me, I think it did. Not that I care either way, a swift **** off and the use of the block button on whatsapp and all is right in the world again. But I understand better the way some people fall for it.

I can't imagine being in a relationship where little things like that would happen constantly, you'd be left with absolutely no self esteem left at all.

kettlehead

arayess wrote: »

it isn't the norm :eek::eek:
my mother opened my mail until I left home.
her house , her rules was her mantra.

It's addressed to you so it's your possession. Your ma shouldn't have been reading your mail!