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Are you being gaslighted on? Here is how to spot it and shut it down

couple fighting
“Girls, imagine Mark finished his weekly bundles in two days! Now I have to buy him bundles again! It’s totally putting my budgeting in shambles!”
Silence.
I knew it! Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus should not have been the first book for our little book club.
“You are now buying him airtime and internet bundles?” I ask. I bite my tongue. Silence.
This is Mercy. She started dating Mark about a year ago, and she was already shopping for him and he had moved in with her since the curfew began.
“You know he is perfect just that he has been struggling financially for a while now.”
That is how we never finished the book. We would not have been so alarmed if Mercy, normally a forthright high-achiever was not showing signs of low self-esteem since Mark set foot in her territory.
Suddenly, she was not so sure of herself anymore, and she had started alienating herself from us—her friends for eons years. Now, it was Mark this, Mark that…..
Our little Zoom book club is an attempt to keep us entertained during these depressing times. And we stay away from discussing her relationship. Maybe talk just a little behind her back… oops!
Then the other day I came across this word gaslighting….and bang, I knew it, Mercy was a victim of gaslighting. According to Wikipedia, gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes including low self-esteem.
According to a psychological platform, BetterHelp, gaslighting is not an obvious form of abuse, it’s hard to detect. A gaslighter controls another by manipulating, hiding, and distorting the facts of their situation. You become confused and disoriented because the gaslighter has caused you to doubt your sanity. It's such a sneaky form of abuse. The person who gaslights you wants to control you.
It was in a 1944 movie, Gaslight, where a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind that the term gaslighting was coined. Although most victims are women, anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realise how much they've been brainwashed.
“Most of us have been gaslighted at some point in our lives. When left unexamined, gaslighting can have a devastating and long-term impact on our emotional, psychological, and sometimes physical well-being,” says Robin Stern, a psychoanalyst and an associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, in her article on Vox.
Since I learnt of this form of abuse, I have been giving a second look at my relationships, with my family, friends and men. I dug deeper to my first love, a relationship that ended more than eight years ago. It’s the realest relationship I have had. We fought a lot. I called it passion. Now I think both of us had a degree of gaslighting in us. We were terribly mean to each other when we fought, I called him a sponge and chimney for drinking and smoking daily, and he constantly made fun of my intelligence. He had a habit of using my lowest moments to make fun of me.
Scientists say that you can be manipulated in romantic relationship, by family members, friends or even at work. Please don’t get me started on family, I have a friend who lives hand to mouth because of family. Scientists also say that you might be the perpetrator or the victim without being aware. Gaslighting happens in relationships where there is an unequal power dynamic and the target has given the gaslighter power and often their respect according to Dr. Robin Stern.
There are those that are fortunate to overcome this but they are the unlucky ones that have a bad ending. If you are a victim talk to a counsellor. If you are an instigator, find a counsellor to also help you.
Five tactics people use to gaslight:
1. Gaslighters override your reality. Gaslighters trample your sense of reality to the point that you question your own judgment.
2. Gaslighters make things easy for themselves. The gaslighter wants you around and wants to maintain the relationship. They just want you around on their terms.
3. They challenge your interpretation of past events. When something happens in the present, it’s fairly reasonable to bring up past events to suggest that your partner is displaying a particular behavioural pattern. The gaslighter will tell you that your version of what happened in the past is wrong.
4. Gaslighters make you agree with their point of view. Gaslighting is all about control, so it makes sense that gaslighters try to get the world to conform to their standards. And they need the very individuals they gaslight to agree with them.
5. They accuse you of being over-emotional. It’s frustrating, demoralising, and destructive to be on the receiving end of gaslighting. No wonder you start crying or becoming angry during discussions in which you’re trying to state your case. There’s nothing a gaslighter loves more than an interaction during which they look calm and aloof and in control. They also use it as a chance to comfort you, which is a great opportunity to dismiss the discussion altogether and for them to look like the reassuring adult in the relationship. While gaslighting can be used by anyone against anyone, it’s often used as a form of emotional abuse against women. It works, in part, because it feeds off sexist stereotypes of women as hysterical, nagging, emotional, weak, or incapable.

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