Guest Post by Daisy Luther
Imagine this.
A woman, for the sake of my story, is in a marriage with a partner who does not respect her. He insults her regularly, belittles her efforts to improve herself or her situation, and minimizes her feelings.
In fact, when she tries to stand up for herself, things get even worse. The partner calls into question her memories of the event. He dismisses the way things made her feel, calling the emotions “ridiculous” or “stupid.” He convinces her she’s overreacting and that he was only trying to do what was best for her. When she brings something up, he completely rewrites the event, causing her to doubt what actually happened because she’s in a vulnerable state due to the constant abuse.
In a situation like this, the abused partner often feels powerless, confused, and unable to leave the situation. They are at a disadvantage because they’ve been influenced to doubt their own reality. This leaves them trapped deeper and deeper in the abusive scenario. They feel unable to escape because they’re really not sure what actually happened. Were they blowing things out of proportion? Are they, in fact, stupid, forgetful, and inept?
Abusive relationships follow a pattern. There’s a period of breaking the victim down, isolating them from their support systems, and making them dependent on the abuser. Then, the abused partner is maneuvered into the belief that she can’t get by on her own.
This master manipulation is how people become trapped in abusive relationships.
And, as I’m about to show, not all abusive relationships are one-on-one romantic relationships.
What is gaslighting?
Medical News Today defines gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which a person or group causes someone to question their own sanity, memories, or perception of reality. People who experience gaslighting may feel confused, anxious, or as though they cannot trust themselves.
The term “gaslighting” comes from the 1944 classic film (and before that, the play), Gaslight. In the story, a husband tries to make his wife believe she is suffering from a mental illness. Starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, it’s well worth a watch.
Gaslighting is a form of narcissistic abuse. For a quick refresher on the definition of a narcissist and the techniques they use, go here.
Forbes offers the following signs you are being gaslit:
Signs to watch for include:
The “Twilight Zone” effect. Victims of gaslighting often report feeling like a situation is surreal—like it’s happening on a different plane from the rest of their life.
Language describing you or your behavior as crazy, irrational or overemotional. “When I asked women about their partners’ abusive tactics, they often described being called a ‘crazy bitch,’” Sweet writes in “The Sociology of Gaslighting” in American Sociological Review. “This phrase came up so frequently, I began to think of it as the literal discourse of gaslighting.”
Being told you’re exaggerating.
Feeling confused and powerless after leaving an interaction.
Isolation. Many gaslighters make efforts to isolate victims from friends, family and other support networks.
Tone policing. A gaslighter may criticize your tone of voice if you challenge them on something. This is a tactic used to flip the script and make you feel that you’re the one to blame, rather than your abuser.
A cycle of warm-cold behavior. To throw a victim off balance, a gaslighter may alternate between verbal abuse and praise, often even in the same conversation.
Gaslighting is a deliberate attempt to provoke self-doubt, confusion, and dependence.
How does someone gaslight another person?
Again, let’s look to the experts. Medical News Today provides these examples of how gaslighting might take place:
- Countering: This is when someone questions a person’s memory. They may say things such as, “Are you sure about that? You have a bad memory,” or “I think you are forgetting what really happened.”
- Withholding: This involves someone pretending they do not understand the conversation, or refusing to listen, to make a person doubt themselves. For example, they might say, “Now you are just confusing me,” or “I do not know what you are talking about.”
- Trivializing: This occurs when a person belittles or disregards how someone else feels. They may accuse them of being “too sensitive” or overreacting in response to valid and reasonable concerns.
- Denial: Denial involves a person refusing to take responsibility for their actions. They may do this by pretending to forget what happened, saying they did not do it, or blaming their behavior on someone else.
- Diverting: With this technique, a person changes the focus of a discussion by questioning the other person’s credibility. For example, they might say, “That is just nonsense you read on the internet. It is not real.”
- Stereotyping: An article in the American Sociological Review says that a person may intentionally use negative stereotypes about someone’s gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, or age to gaslight them. For example, they may say that no one will believe a woman if she reports abuse.
After a period of time, this emotional barrage results in the target of the gaslighting suffering from confusion, doubt, and self-blame.
- feeling uncertain of their perceptions
- frequently questioning if they are remembering things correctly
- believing they are irrational or “crazy”
- feeling incompetent, unconfident, or worthless
- constantly apologizing to the abusive person
- defending the abusive person’s behavior to others
- becoming withdrawn or isolated from others
The Forbes article offered these specific examples of gaslighting in romantic relationships.
“Ebony’s partner would steal her money and then tell her she was ‘careless’ about finances and had lost it herself.”
“Adriana’s boyfriend hid her phone and then told her she had lost it, in a dual effort to confuse her and prevent her from communicating with others.”
“Jenn described her ex-boyfriend as a ‘chameleon’ who made up small stories to confuse her, like lying about what color shirt he had worn the day before to make her feel disoriented.”
“Emily described her ex-husband stealing her keys so she could not leave the house and then insisting she had lost them ‘again.’”
But if you think this phenomenon is limited to women being abused by their husbands or boyfriends, you’d be wrong.
Gaslighting doesn’t just happen in romantic relationships.
Gaslighting is a complicated thing. While it’s common in abusive romantic relationships, it can also occur in unhealthy parent-child relationships, sibling relationships, or even workplaces. But that’s not all. It can also occur on a much broader scale.
Racial gaslighting
According to an article in Politics, Group, and Identities, racial gaslighting is when people apply gaslighting techniques to an entire racial or ethnic group in order to discredit them. For example, a person or institution may say that an activist campaigning for change is irrational or “crazy.”
Political gaslighting
Political gaslighting occurs when a political group or figure lies or manipulates information to control people, according to an article in the Buffalo Law Review.
For example, the person or political party may downplay things their administration has done, discredit their opponents, imply that critics are mentally unstable, or use controversy to deflect attention away from their mistakes.
Institutional gaslighting
Institutional gaslighting occurs within a company, organization, or institution, such as a hospital. For example, they may portray whistleblowers who report problems as irrational or incompetent, or deceive employees about their rights.
This often occurs to cover up a mistake that could result in the person who erred facing punitive consequences or to keep people “in their place.” It’s a control mechanism, pure and simple.
Have we been gaslit by our own government?
I don’t think it’s farfetched to say that we, the people of the United States of America, have been gaslit.
Does this sound familiar? Lockdowns that keep you away from friends and loved ones? Losing your income and becoming dependent on handouts doled out by the government? Being censored and mocked when you say anything that is not in line with the official narrative? Being treated like a crazy conspiracy theorist who should be punished because of the harm you’re causing to others if you refuse to go along?
When you look at it this way, it feels like the entire US government and media have colluded to abuse the people. Many of the Covid-related “truths” that were promoted by the government and the media that we were not allowed to dispute have now been proven to be false. Stories we couldn’t question about the origins of the pandemic have been proven false. In another incident of broad-scale gaslighting unrelated to the pandemic, a lot of evidence has been produced that shows the Biden family may have received money from influence-peddling, but the media tells us not to believe it.
And like good little victims, it seems like a hefty portion of the country is refusing to believe the evidence, instead believing in the good intentions of their abusers. They’ve been gaslit, brainwashed, and are unable to break free of the manipulation.
And it’s still going on.
Recently Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a scathing opinion of the US government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, saying that we “have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
“Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent,” he said.
At the federal level, he highlighted not only immigration decrees but vaccine mandates, the regulation of landlord-tenant relations and pressure on social media companies to suppress “misinformation.”
The gaslighting blowback was immediate, with breathlessly outraged headlines.
Slate eloquently opined, “Neil Gorsuch’s List of “Civil Liberties Intrusions” Is, Uh, Missing a Few Things.” making sure to throw plenty of insulting talking points into their introductory paragraph in their attempt to liken a Supreme Court Justice who was educated at Harvard Law, Oxford, Georgetown, and Columbia, to an ignorant relative one merely tolerates. And they insinuated he was a racist.
Gorsuch has long railed against such policies, and his opinions have taken on an increasingly shrill tone, like the Fox News–poisoned uncle who hectors you about the plandemic in 3,000-word Facebook comments. The justice’s rant in Arizona v. Mayorkas, however, hits a new low, moving beyond the usual yada-yada grievance parade to issue a thesis statement of sorts…
…As Vox’s Ian Millhiser quickly pointed out, this sweeping claim leaves out two “intrusions on civil liberties” that any person with a basic grasp of history and sanity would surely rank as worse than pandemic policies: slavery and Jim Crow.
An opinion piece published in the NY Times gasped, “Neil Gorsuch Has Given Himself Away,” made it seem as if the Justice was belittling every other civil rights mishap in the history of America while also blithely disregarding the folks who died during the pandemic.
The New Republic condescendingly liberal-splained to the rest of us “What Neil Gorsuch Got Wrong About the Pandemic,” stating that “The justice’s vision of the judiciary’s role in public health may be more dangerous than any Covid-era restriction.”
The site Above The Law literally said Gorsuch was stupid in the piece, “For An Originalist, Gorsuch Is Clearly Slacking On His Definitions And Their Historical Meanings.” The subheading reads, “Is what he said stupid? Yes. But let’s be technical here.”
Law and Crime website also played the race card and did so right in the headline: Neil Gorsuch implies COVID restrictions were worse than slavery and Jim Crow, and the internet noticed.
Let’s look at that definition of political gaslighting again…
For example, the person or political party may downplay things their administration has done, discredit their opponents, imply that critics are mentally unstable, or use controversy to deflect attention away from their mistakes.
Oof. If that textbook case of gaslighting isn’t embarrassing, it should be. Then again, narcissists are rarely embarrassed.
The gaslighting will escalate.
Another thing about narcissists: they just get angry when they’re called out. They will respond by gaslighting you harder or seeking to “ruin” you. (source) They’ll punish you with a loss of “privileges,” money, material goods, and freedom. We’ve watched it happen again and again in our cancel culture media. Some of us have been unfortunate enough to have personal relationships with narcissists and learned this the hard way.
The only way to end narcissistic abuse and gaslighting is to recognize it and remove yourself from the situation as much as you can. Obviously, when it’s our entire government and society, that becomes complicated. You may be stuck with just recognizing it. But that in itself gives you a certain amount of freedom and personal power. It helps you get off the hamster wheel, and you begin to spot the manipulations more easily.
One thing we can be sure of is that this will escalate as more and more people say, “No, that’s not what happened.” This is something we can expect, and in some small way, maybe we can take comfort in the response. Perhaps we can smile to ourselves because we know those who were trying to manipulate us all are on the defensive.
But what do you think? Do you believe the mainstream media, the liberal pundits, social media, and our government are gaslighting us? Do you think they’re trying to get us to remember the events of the pandemic differently than how those events actually unfolded? Have you ever experienced gaslighting on a personal level? What do you believe is the best way to handle this?
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Just go to sleep , Miles.
That Invasion Of The Body Snatchers actor is Kevin McCarthy
( like House Speaker , freaky )
Best gaslighting joke was uttered by Redd Foxx, who was in bed with a hot 20-something chick. Wife walks in and screams, “What is that girl doing in our bed?”
Redd – “What girl? Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin’ eyes?”
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
Edward L. Bernays, (Sigmund Freud’s nephew and author of Propaganda: How the Media Molds Your Mind )
Now , put the above skill set in hands that are not accountable :
“The Technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by elite, unrestrained by traditional values.” | Zbigniew Brezhinsky , Advisor to 5 U.S. Presidents – Executive Director Trilateral Commission. “Between two Ages”
Or maybe it is just sin nature and the nature of sin.
Interesting. But this is more than sin.
This is sin , weaponized , for maximum effect , to create even more sin.
That is the reaping what you sow principle. One seed planted might make a hundred fold increase. This works all through the natural world as well as the Spiritual.
We’re not seeing or hearing things. We’re being destroyed, replaced and rebuilt.
“In the destruction of the old world order and in the chaos of these modern times, the work of the new creation is going forward; the task of reconstruction, leading to a complete reorganization of human living…” Discipleship in the New Age She says that the “universal creative aspect” has designed The Plan with a world “transition from chaos to ordered Beauty,” which is the “politics of meaning.”
Alice Bailey The New International Economic Order – ( Major U.N. connections here )
OVER 100 NWO QUOTES–QUOTES FROM PEOPLE WHO CONSIDER US “SUBJECTS”
twoday.net/static/omega/files/quotes_from_people_who_consider_us_subjects.htm
It is a science the people are not ever to learn about.
Ghosts in the Machine | Full Spectrum Special Operations (PSYOP)
youtube.com/watch?v=ZOVNTdL6wDI
……. That bit about ” crazy beotches ” , problem is in contemporary western civ they actually ARE legion . That said , yeah ,that the establishment is sociopathic and actively gaslighting us is beyond mere speculation .Its just that a lot of those examples and indicators the author cites could go either way . A decade or so ago I inherited a long lost 15 year old daughter who’d been primarily raised by her sociopathic, gaslighting mother, lets just say that there was a reason I had to get as far away from that woman as possible and that the apple unfortunately didn’t fall far from the tree( like mother like daughter/ I see the potential good in her also ,but its not germaine to the point I am tring to make she is after all my little girl ) ,I’m still licking my wounds from that episode of my life and probably always will be .” Crazy Beotches” everywhere , don’t “gaslight” me on the unfortunate reality of the phenomenon /trend , I saw it with my own lyin eyes .I have settled in on the current” Mrs Simplecarpenter” now for 18 years ,who’s “crazy beotch” levels are at exceptable and manageable levels (-;” A SEXIST WOULD SAY “!!!!!
” all men are bad , females can do no wrong ”
Every tv talk show from oprah to the view.
The courts follow.
All part and parcel to the feminization of American / western culture . The lunatics now run the asylum , welcome to the chicktatorship . Dont get me wrong , women should and could hold a high place of esteem in life , just not in the lane they’ve chosen for the last say 50 t0 60 years . Ironically this state of affairs is probably due mainly to the failure of men to assume their proper roles , and that would have included me when I made those series of choices out of weakness that lead to the state of affairs I was whining about in my prior post ( not that I would take it back even if I could ).” A SEXIST WOULD SAY “!!!!!
AIPAC exists, and it exists for the sole purpose of subverting the US government to serve Israeli desires.
Even blue areas are beginning to resist:
crazy bitch
Hmmm…I think I have been the victim of gaslighting.
Good to know.
No. That part is true. But we love ya anyway. It’s a “family” thing.
insert HSF’s embarrassed monkey gif
You can NEVER reach a peaceful Accord with a LIAR!
…and they’re ALL liars!
So you see it too?
1) Yes
2) Absolutely
3) From time to time it was tried on me. Had no effect. Maybe I’m just anti-social and stubborn.
4) Have faith, remain open minded and trust yourself.
I’m convinced AI writes this crap
And natural stupidity believes it.
I’m convinced you’re both bots. The total lack of creativity really sells it!
Gassed up at the costco recently. Woman in front of me was losing her composure. Couldn’t seem to persuade the robo-pump to accept her payment. I got out to lend a hand – & move it along. Got it brokered. I noticed she was pumping 92 into a teensy mini-cooper. Asked if that was necessary. Oh, yes, she said. It has a hp engine.
Not like the “good old days” grades. But there’s still different grades of pump … & gas.
Different grades of light, too.
(Incan•descent sacrificed on the altar o’ LEDs to the promised land o’ follow the leader to non-essential nirvana, remember those? Still got deeper-in-the-jungle halogen bulbs, not too expensive, if you’ve got the fixtures, & metal halides, not cheap – bulbs or fixtures.)
(And def dif grades of raging agin’ the dyin’ of the light.)
So this odd term “gaslighting” that is meantended to refer to some sort of negative psyop … would that be the low octane gas, or the high?
And does process of elimination then reveal which octane goes into the positive psyop that is most of what passes for the socializing the wo/m/an/ts do?
psyop polarity. Is one side of a legal tinder coin-bill better than the other? How’s that work(in’ out fer ya’? ~ “doctor” phil)? One of those lesser evil con•tinuum things, no doubt.
Soooo … if it feels good, it’s prolly legit, & any port in a storm, so do it? Gimme the pleasant pander & keep the pathologized unpleasantness, please?
“In an ant colony, all larvae are hatched with virtually the same set of genes: the queen, the workers, the warriors are created equal. Which creatures become what, including what biological features they manifest, depends entirely on the needs of the clan. The oncologist & author Siddhartha Mukherjee described this phenomenon in a fascinating article in The New Yorker: “Ants have a powerful caste system. A colony typically contains ants that carry out radically different roles & have markedly different body structures & behaviors.” Genetically identical siblings will become differentiated into biologically variable adults based purely on signals from the physical & social environment. When a queen is removed from a jumping ant hive, for example, the worker ants “launch a vicious, fight-to-the-death campaign against one another – stinging, biting, sparring, lopping off limbs & heads” – until a few workers win & become, well, monarchical. Without any alteration in DNA structure, the physiology of the new queen changes; “she” now becomes fecund & dominant & will live longer than she would have in her previous worker incarnation. Psychiatrist Michael Kerr, formerly of Georgetown University, noted this same dynamic in his book on human family systems. “What each larva becomes is dictated by a colony level process. In this sense, a young larva is born into a functioning position in the colony & his development is determined by that position.” ~ The Myth of Normal – Gabor Mate
but …… but …… we were ‘ saved ‘ from default by the brave rino’s ……. yada … yada .. yada…
Kevin McCarthy just proved he was FULL OF SHIT the entire time in the negotiations on the debt limit. – stew peters
So in exchange for $4 TRILLION In new debt authorization, there is only $29 billion in initial “cuts” (.725%)?
@TomFitton
“He insults her regularly, belittles her efforts to improve herself or her situation, and minimizes her feelings.”
The author is herself gaslighting us with this bullshit. The abuser is always male, if only ‘for the sake of the story,’ right Daisy?
We live in a matriarchy, a gynocracy, where the men among those who rule us are just simp cucks dancing to the pussy lash.
Aye , well said , but ultimately even that is a failure of manhood properly conducted ,in reality . Eve was the temptor but Adam was weak enough to be tempted . Me ? Guilty, but recovering , redeeming some level of integrity as I age . Thank God , literally .Oh , and such a holes as the female author bases her thesis on do exist , its just that she should go on to make the point that it definitely works both ways . “Who’s afraid Of Virginia Wolf “seems to indicate that there is nothing “new” about it , and dont get me started on Solomons Proverbs where Solomon figures he’d be better off sleeping on a smallcorner of the rooftop than to live under the same roof with a spiteful and contentious beeotch , a sentiment that is repeated multiple times and laced thruout this written advice to his son .
“But what do you think? Do you believe the mainstream media, the liberal pundits, social media, and our government are gaslighting us? Do you think they’re trying to get us to remember the events of the pandemic differently than how those events actually unfolded? Have you ever experienced gaslighting on a personal level? What do you believe is the best way to handle this?”
Most definitely we are being intentionally and deliberately gaslighted, bamboozled and deceived by: the government (elected officials and bureaucrats) , the corporate media, Big Pharma, the Too Big To Fail Banksters and others. The plutocrats have not been able to, despite their best efforts, convince all of us their fake reality/narrative is factual. There is still much skepticism and outright resistance to their efforts and narratives. Look at all the people who refused to take the kill shots.
We don’t question or doubt ourselves (which is the goal of the abuser); most Westerners acquiesced to the plutocrats’ policies mainly due to: coercion, threats and intimidation not psychological trickery. The plutocrats took control of the COVID, George Floyd, “epidemic”, inflation. and bank failure narratives but many of us saw through their deceit and double standards.
For example over the years as a Black man I’ve had long running debates/arguments with supporters of the Black Lives Matter defund the police mantra, I point out BLM never says anything about the intragroup violence and homicides or Black the high abortion rates in our community, for them the issue is always police brutality.
There have been attempts to gaslight me but I knew what the person was doing, I knew their history and refused to go along and I pointed out the person’s behavior, their lies and the policies of those who put that person in the position of authority.
The best way to deal with gaslighting is to hold fast to your recollections, your perspectives, your experiences and your reality.
I’ve been gas lit for 63 years…and I haven’t broken yet.
Fuck ALL you lying assholes out there! It ain’t gonna work! Well, not like you imagined it would anyway.
If your goal is to be shot in the face? Then it’s workin’ pretty well!
Hmmm, well if I make you so angry and you cannot possible educate someone as stupid as me, guess I’m just gonna have to leave you–for your own good! (jaw drop–)
The QUEEN of The Ban Hammers waxes poetic about gaslighting! I think I’m going to be fucking sick.
Did you REALLY think you’d never see any of the people you hit with that hammer again, Daisey?