5 Nefarious Gaslighting Examples and How to Respond

“That never happened; you must be imagining it.”

“Everyone agrees with me—you’re overreacting.”

“Wow, what’s it like to be insane?”

If these comments sound like a familiar refrain, you may have been the target of gaslighting, a term blowing up like, well, a lighter thrown into a puddle of gas. Gaslighting, a form of emotional abuse, dominates the headlines, is all over Twitter, and has been thrown around by everyone from pundits to columnists to late-night comics.

But what is gaslighting? And even more importantly, how should you respond to gaslighting behavior?

What is gaslighting?

The term "gaslighting" comes from the 1944 movie Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. She plays a wife, named Paula, whose supposedly devoted husband, Gregory, is slowly undermining her reality. His nefarious goal is to have her institutionalized so he can gain access to her fortune.

Gaslighters override your reality to the point that you question your own judgment.

The title comes from Gregory’s habit of secretly digging through the attic for Paula's hidden jewels. When he creeps upstairs and turns on the lights in the attic, the rest of the gas lights in the house dim accordingly, making Paula suspicious. But when she asks him about the dimming lights, he acts like she’s crazy. She must be imagining things—they’re just as bright as always.

“Why don’t you rest a while,” Gregory suggests. “You know you haven’t been well.”

In some ways, Gaslight captures the emotional abuse with dead-on accuracy. The mind games Gregory plays are diabolical—he tells her friends she’s unstable, isolates her from her family, and disguises cutting invalidations as statements of concern. He even hides her belongings, then questions her sanity when she can’t find them. In short, he messes not only with her but with the people and objects around her to alter her reality and make her think she’s losing it.

But in other ways, Gaslight is clearly a Hollywood movie. Gaslighting in real life is different. But how? What tactics do real-life gaslighters use? This week, we’ll illuminate five gaslighting tactics of the all-too-common and all-too-insidious, and then tackle how to respond.

5 gaslighting tactics and how to respond to them

Tactic #1: Gaslighters override your reality

Gaslighters override your reality to the point that you question your own judgment. And, as with most things, the behavior varies when it comes to how severe it is. It can happen on a small-scale, as with a parent who tells a child, “You can’t be hungry—you just had a snack....

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