Gaslighting
When Someone Makes You Question Your Own Reality
Overview
Gaslighting is a term that's become common, and that's a good thing — because for years, people experienced it without having a word for it. They just knew something was wrong, but they couldn't name it. And that's precisely how gaslighting works: it leaves you knowing something is off, but doubting your own ability to know what's real.
At its core, gaslighting is psychological manipulation designed to make you question your reality. When someone can get you questioning your own perceptions, memories, and feelings, they gain enormous power. They can control you, manipulate you, and exploit you — all while you doubt whether anything is actually happening.
If you've ever walked away from a conversation feeling confused, if you've started to doubt memories you know are accurate, if someone keeps telling you that things didn't happen the way you remember — you may be experiencing gaslighting. And there's a way out.
What Usually Goes Wrong
Gaslighting works precisely because it targets one of your greatest strengths: your openness to reality. Good, honest people know they can be wrong sometimes. They're willing to hear feedback. They adjust their views based on new information. This is healthy — we're supposed to take in input from the world around us and update our understanding.
But gaslighters exploit this quality. They give you "feedback" that isn't true, designed to invalidate what you know you experienced. Over time, this creates serious problems:
You start to doubt yourself. What began as occasional confusion becomes chronic self-doubt. You stop trusting your own perceptions.
You lose your sense of self. Many people describe feeling like they "disappeared" in gaslighting relationships. They don't recognize themselves anymore.
You defend bad behavior to others. When friends notice something wrong, you explain it away: "He's just stressed." "She didn't mean it like that." You become the gaslighter's PR department.
You apologize constantly. Somehow, every conflict ends with you apologizing — even when you're the one who was hurt.
You feel isolated. Gaslighters often pull you away from other people and other sources of reality. Your world shrinks.
You feel crazy. This is the ultimate goal. When you don't trust yourself, you're dependent on the gaslighter to tell you what's real — which gives them complete control.
What Health Looks Like
In healthy relationships, both people can hold their own experience and remain open to the other person's perspective. When there's disagreement, there's genuine curiosity: "That's interesting — tell me more about how you saw it." Neither person has to destroy the other's reality to feel okay.
A healthy relationship with yourself and reality looks like:
- Trusting your own experience. When something hurts, you know it hurts. When something feels wrong, you pay attention to that feeling.
- Being open to feedback without abandoning yourself. You can hear another perspective and consider it without automatically assuming you were wrong.
- Having people who validate reality with you. You have trusted friends or family you can talk to who help you see clearly — people who don't have an agenda.
- Holding your ground when needed. You can say, "I see it differently" or "That's not how I remember it" without collapsing or being destroyed.
- Feeling like yourself. You know who you are, what you think, and what you value — even when someone disagrees.
Key Principles
1. Gaslighting uses your honesty against you. Good people are open to being wrong. Gaslighters exploit this by feeding you false feedback to make you doubt what you know is true. Your openness is a strength — don't let anyone use it as a weapon against you.
2. We find reality in the relationship between our own experience and trustworthy input. We're designed to take in information and adjust our views. But when the input is designed to confuse rather than clarify, the system breaks down. The problem isn't your ability to process reality — it's that you're receiving corrupted data.
3. Gaslighters use specific tactics. Recognizing the tactics helps break the spell. Common methods include:
- Negating: "That didn't happen." "I never said that."
- Minimizing: "You're making a mountain out of a molehill." "It wasn't that bad."
- Denying: "I don't know what you're talking about."
- Countering: Every statement you make is contradicted.
- Stonewalling: Refusing to engage with the topic at all.
- Labeling: "You're just too sensitive." "That's just your anxiety talking."
4. Your experience matters. Your feelings, perceptions, and memories are data. They're important. If something feels wrong, that's information worth paying attention to — even if someone tells you it shouldn't feel that way.
5. Find trusted reality-testers. One of the most important steps is talking to someone you trust. When you describe what happened to a healthy person, you'll often hear: "No, that does sound weird. Of course you're questioning that." This external validation can be the first step back to sanity.
6. Boundaries protect your sense of self. When someone gaslights you, a boundary might sound like: "I see it differently." "We'll have to agree to disagree." "I'm not going to debate this further." You're not trying to convince them — you're protecting your own reality.
7. Some situations are dangerous. Not all gaslighting is merely unpleasant. Some occurs in the context of domestic violence, financial abuse, or other dangerous situations. If you're in danger, this isn't just a relational problem to work through — it's a safety issue requiring outside help and possibly an exit plan.
Practical Application
This week:
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Tune into your own experience. Notice moments when something feels off. Don't immediately dismiss that feeling. Write it down if it helps.
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Talk to someone you trust. Share what's been happening with a friend, counselor, or pastor who doesn't have an agenda. Ask them: "Am I seeing this accurately?"
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Start keeping notes. If you're in an ongoing gaslighting situation, keep a simple record: "On Tuesday, they said X. On Friday, they denied saying X." Documentation helps you trust yourself.
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Practice boundary language. Try phrases like: "That's not how I remember it." "I see it differently." "We'll have to agree to disagree." You don't need to win the argument — just hold your ground.
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Evaluate your safety. If this person is physically dangerous, controlling finances, or creating fear, this is bigger than a relational issue. Consider reaching out to a domestic violence hotline or counselor.
Common Questions & Misconceptions
"What if I really am too sensitive?" Even if you are sensitive, that doesn't mean your experience isn't real. The fact that something bothers you more than it bothers someone else doesn't make it not real. And in gaslighting, the "too sensitive" label is often part of the manipulation.
"But they seem so sincere — could they really be doing this on purpose?" Some gaslighters know exactly what they're doing. Others genuinely believe their own distorted version of reality. Either way, the effect on you is the same. Whether they intend to manipulate you or just can't see truth clearly, you still need to protect yourself.
"How is this different from just disagreeing?" In healthy disagreement, both perspectives are allowed to exist. In gaslighting, one person systematically invalidates the other's reality. It's not "I see it differently" — it's "You're wrong about what you saw, felt, and experienced, and something is wrong with you for thinking otherwise."
"If I set boundaries, won't they just leave?" They might. But consider what you're keeping if you don't set boundaries: a relationship where your reality is constantly under attack. Some relationships can survive truth-telling. Others can't. Better to find out.
"What if I've been in this so long I don't know what's real anymore?" That's actually common, and it's recoverable. Connecting with safe people, working with a counselor, and slowly rebuilding trust in your own perceptions takes time — but it happens. You weren't always this confused. You can find your way back.
"Is this abuse?" Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse. Whether it crosses into other forms of abuse depends on the situation. But make no mistake: systematically making someone question their sanity is harmful, and you don't have to minimize that.
When to Seek Additional Help
Consider reaching out to a counselor, pastor, or domestic violence resource if:
- You feel unsafe in your home or relationship
- You're afraid of the person's reaction to your boundaries
- You feel controlled — financially, socially, or physically
- You're experiencing physical abuse alongside the gaslighting
- You've been isolated from friends and family
- You're having thoughts of harming yourself
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
Closing Encouragement
If you're reading this and recognizing your own situation, here's what I want you to hear: you're not crazy. Your experience is real. Something is wrong — and it's not your ability to perceive reality.
Finding your way out of the fog takes time. It often requires outside help from trustworthy people. But you can get there. You were designed with the capacity to know what's real, and that capacity isn't gone — it's just been under attack.
The first step is often the hardest: trusting yourself enough to say, "Something isn't right here." If you can say that, you've already started the journey back.