Do you feel irrationally and absurdly powerless, and at times, stupid with certain dominant persons around you? It is time to take stock. You may be a victim of gaslighting.
SAJI P MATHEW OFM
I just added gaslighting to the dictionary of my personal computer. Gaslighting is declared as the word of the year 2022 by American dictionary Merriam-Webster, and I know it would be a word that would be often heard from newsrooms, courtrooms, and at public conversations for a while, until someone else gaslights us. In 2018, the term was named a buzzword by The Guardian; and shortlisted for the ‘word of the year’ by the Oxford Dictionary.
What Is Gaslighting?
To gaslight is to intentionally distort reality
by manipulating someone or a group using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning often for one’s own advantage. It is making someone
or a group believe that what they are feeling, thinking, and seeing is not real. Anybody could be a victim of gaslighting: an employ, a business partner, a spouse, or a patient. Anyone in a position of power can gaslight another: a strong family member, a boss, people of influence in a community, etc. Sadly this sort of mental abuse is quite common in all sorts of relationships, especially in deep and intimate relationships. The very fact that this word has seen a 1740% increase in search and in usage in 2022 must alert us.
The origin of gaslighting is not in gas or in lighting; it is from a 1938 British play called Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton; it became a TV series in United States in the name, Angel Street in 1940s; then it was made into a more widely known movie in 1944 also called, Gas Light.
In the play as well as in the film, an abusive husband manipulates his wife to believe that she is gone mad through manipulative and psychological means, and even through physical means as dimming the gas lights in the room and asserting that she is imagining it.
Gaslighting involves an imbalance of
power between the abuser and the person
they are gaslighting. Abusers often exploit and exaggerate the stereotypes or vulnerabilities of the other; stereotypes and vulnerabilities related to gender, sexuality, race, nationality, and the like. Gaslighting is not an incident but a process, at times a slow process, which includes creating confusion, lying, deception, isolation, denial, accusation, and manipulation of all parts of the process. Means of gaslighting are subtle and confusing. It is confusing because it often comes from people who are close, caring, and trusted.
Mental health experts have been using gaslighting to explain the state of affairs in marital and other intimate relationships;
but today gaslighting has entered the public, political and social arena more than ever before. The psychological manipulation of a people or ethnic community over a period of time can make them question the validity of their own thoughts, perceptions of reality or memories that they held as true. It can play down the self-esteem and confidence of people and communities; and the victims begin to form dependence on the perpetrators.
The Subtle Undoers of Inclusivity
The biggest threats to inclusivity are false narratives. Without calling a spade by its name no inclusivity is possible, we might, at best have pseudo nationalism or pseudo communities. When dealing with the horrors of apartheid in 1995, the South African government along with other sensible leaders established a court-like body and called it ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ to help heal the country and bring about reconciliation of its people. The leaders very well recognised that there is no possibility of reconciliation or inclusivity without first having the possibility of truth being spoken and heard.
The greatest undoers of truth, and thus inclusivity, are thought control, post-truth, echo chambers, and now gaslighting. Thought control is the practice by a totalitarian government or establishment of attempting (as by propaganda) to prevent objective and impartial information from being received, and in its place spread
lies and emotionally charged information as official ideology and policies. Post-truth makes objective facts less influential in shaping
public opinion; objective knowledge will have no effect on voting or policymaking. An echo chamber is an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own; one never encounters or faces the other. Now the phenomenon of gaslighting completes the picture by forcing people, often the vulnerable ones, to doubt their memories, beliefs, feelings, or even sanity.
Signs to Watch Out
Gaslighting is so very subtle; and psychologists warn us of situations to be cautious about. When you have a ‘Twilight Zone’ effect whereby you feel that the situation is surreal, that it is happening on a different plane from the
rest of your life, that in normal life it does not make sense at all, that it is not connected with life, then it is time to be cautious. Gaslighting could arrive in the garb of nationalism, religion, doctrines, and more.
Be cautious when people trivialize your needs and feelings, and sweepingly use a language that describes you or your behavior as crazy, irrational or overemotional. Be alert if you are feeling powerless and confused after leaving an interaction. Be cautious about people and groups that try to isolate you from friends, family and other support groups. A gaslighter may pretend not to understand or refuse to listen, or over-criticize your tone of voice (tone policing) when you are challenging them on something.
Gaslighting destroys the individuality of
the victims. Kate Abramson’s Turning Up the Lights on Gaslighting argues that the gaslighter destroys even the possibility of disagreement
of the victim. Right-wing governments of the recent past, be it Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the United States have partially held people sway through gaslighting. The Indian right- wing narrative is gaslighting millions to believe in a surreal past and insane future. With it inclusivity becomes a very distant dream.
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