How Is Gaslighting?

How Is Gaslighting? If they tell us "what are you talking about?", "Don't do drama" or "why are you always on the defensive?" sporadically, it is not necessary to pay too much attention to it, but when these and other phrases are repeated in our dialogue with people around us, we should begin to activate all the alarms because most likely we are being victims of that effect.

This term has its origin in a play of the same name in 1938 and the subsequent American film in 1944. In them, a man manipulates objects from his house and memories to make his wife believe that she is crazy and keep her fortune. Now, this word has come to our day to day to identify toxic people.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse that consists of manipulating the perception of the reality of the other. The person who abuses psychologically consciously or unconsciously manipulates his victim so that he doubts her own judgment. This person, through strategies such as denying something that happened, sows doubt in the victim, who no longer knows what to believe and this brings anxiety, anguish, confusion, etc.

Signs that show that I suffer from gaslighting

To detect if you are suffering from "gas light" you must know the process and evolution of this phenomenon, pay attention to each of the conversations that are had in order to then be able to differentiate the three stages that could occur: idealization, devaluation and discarding.

In the idealization stage, the victim loves the person who does gaslighting, as she projects an image of herself as her perfect partner. It generally occurs in pairs, so the victim can fall in love with the abuser, although it can also happen in friendships, co-workers, etc., with whom we connect a lot from the beginning and we do not see any defect in them.

The devaluation stage is when the victim goes from being "adored" to being unable to do something right, but after having tested the ideal, she is desperate to fix things.

Discard stage: here the problems begin and the abuser no longer worries about fixing the situation, at best he tries to compensate with some positive moment. That is, they can be people with a tendency to chain relationships.

And, while living these situations, how does the abused react to these situations?

To feel down. This whole situation will make you feel sad, inferior and insecure.

Excess of justifications. You will spend your time justifying yourself or, perhaps, you will find the courage to talk about the conflict, even knowing that it will end in an argument.

Few social relationships. As we have mentioned before, you may have a negative view of your circle of friends or even that they have turned against you for not having moved away, so most likely you will interact with fewer people every time ...

Listen to the content of the video to learn more about this topic.



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