For 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, DWS and other Yukon organizations working to prevent violence are creating spaces for learning more about how GBV works and what prevention can look like.

You are not alone. You deserve support.
As we have tough convos about violence and abuse, please take care of yourself. You are the expert in your life and know best how to take care - whether it’s reaching out to loved one, being on the land, taking time for yourself, or connecting with resources.

Want to help to prevent violence? Sign up for the two FREE workshops DWS is offering on December 6th and 7th. More information and sign-up here.

Image description: Text ‘What is gaslighting?’ on background of a colourful northern lights

More than just subjects for songs (with wicked awesome hooks), gaslighting is a kind of emotional abuse where someone makes you question your reality.

Signs of Gaslighting

From BlessingManifesting:

Blatant lying or constant coverups.
Denying conversations or events ever happened.
Manipulating others to see you differently.
Your self-esteem slowly erodes away and you begin to question what is real. You start to think you are bad or crazy.
Actions contradict words. Broken promises.
Feeling like you have to defend reality.

More than just partners

Folks think of gaslighting in just partner relationships, but it can happen:

At work: “I told you that project was due tomorrow.” (They didn’t.)
With parents: “That’s not how I remember your childhood.”
Landlord: “No tenants before you has had a problem with this tub!” (While tub is overflowing.)
At the doctors: “All your tests are coming back negative. Everything must be fine.” (While you are definitely not feeling fine.)
When bringing up injustice: “You’re so sensitive!” “You need to grow a thicker skin to survive this world…”
To children: “You shouldn’t’ve made me angry!” (Adults are responsible for their own feelings.)
When racialized folks point our racism: “You’re just looking for problems!” (The term “racial gaslighting” was coined by Angelique Davis and Rose Ernst.)
Just existing near folks who think oppression or harm is funny: “IT WAS A JOKE!” (Jokes are funny tho…)

Created by Kat Chow/NPR
Image description: Drawing of a porcupine with text ‘What happened’ and text surrounding it: ‘Take a joke’ ‘Oh, that was so harmless’ ‘You must be misremembering’ ‘He’s so smart/talented/nice, though!’ ‘He’s married’ ‘I doubt he meant it that way’ ‘But I love him!’ ‘He’s just awkward’ ‘Maybe he thought you were flirting’

Surviving Violence

Because we still live in a culture that blames survivors for the abuse we experience, often when we tell someone about the abuse, we get gross victim blaming messages that question whether or not the abuse was ‘real’. And also serve a double function of keeping survivors silent.

Responses can include:

“At least they didn’t hit you.” (Most survivors share that the emotional abuse takes more of a toll than physical abuse.)
“They’ve always been kind to me.” (Cool. I’m telling you that they harmed me. Both can be true.)
“Did you try to leave? Fight back?” (Whether or not you fought back, you didn’t ask for abuse.)
“He’s autistic and doesn’t have good social skills.” (TRUTH: Neurodivergent folks deserve accommodations, but space to be abusive is not an accommodation.)

Understanding the dynamics of violence makes us such better supports to survivors of violence. Check out more info on how to help a friend. Folks supporting survivors can call DWS’ 24 Hour Support Line for confidential chats and resources as well - 867.993.5086.

Gaslighting is a way of avoiding responsibility or accountability and putting it on the person experiencing the abuse. In the case where it’s (sometimes) well meaning friends and acquaintances gaslighting survivors, they’re reinforcing the message that survivors cause abuse instead of the idea that abuse is pervasive in our communities, held up by structures and systems, the responsibility of everyone in the community to prevent, and takes a massive culture shift in order to end violence.

I would never get with someone like that

In workshops youth tell us again and again: ‘As soon as someone mistreats me, I’m out the door!’ or on the much more victim blamey side, ‘I would NEVER allow someone to treat me like that!’

Thing is, it never starts with horrible things like, ‘You are useless and no one would ever want to hire you.’ Abuse can start with the person being so wonderful, like out of a dream. They tell you, ‘Don’t worry! I will always provide for you,’ and slowly, as they isolate you from your family and supports over months and years they start calling you ‘useless’ and ‘unemployable’.

We gotta talk about power, again

So… Abuse happens because one person chooses to use the power they have to harm someone else.

Folks working to end gender-based violence say the sentence above so much that Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs turned many examples of how perpetrators abuse power in relationships into a wheel shape.

(Apologies for Very Gendered Language. Folks have taken the power and control wheel and adapted it many times. Excellent intersectional examples on DWS’ resources page!)

The idea of the wheel is that the existence or the threat of physical or sexual violence is always present in the relationship and all of the wedges are spokes that hold up the outer edge of the wheel.

Examples of gaslighting shows up in a couple of wedges, but take a peek at some of the points in the ‘using emotional abuse’ wedge and all of the ‘minimizing’ wedge!

Gaslighting, like other tactics of abuse, is an abuse of power.

Image description: Wheel with ‘power and control’ in centre and ‘physical/sexual violence’ around the edge of the wheel. In the centre are wedges: ‘Using intimidation: Making her afraid by looks, actions, gestures. Smashing things. Destroying her property. Abusing pets. Displaying weapons. Using emotional abuse: Putting her down. Making her feel bad about herself. Calling her names. Making her think she’s crazy. Playing mind games. Humiliating her. Making her feel guilty. Using isolation: Controlling what she does, who she sees and talks to, what she reads, where she goes. Limiting her outside involvement. Using jealousy to justify actions. Minimizing denying and blaming: Making light of the abuse and not taking her concerns seriously. Saying the abuse didn’t happen. Shifting responsibility for abusive behaviour. Saying she caused it. Using children: Making her feel guilty about the children. Using the children to relay messages. Using visitation to harass her. Threatening to take the children away. Using male priviledge: Treating her like a servant. Making all the big decisions. Acting like the ‘master of the castle’. Being the one to define men’s and women’s roles. Using economic abuse: Preventing her from getting or keeping a job. Making her ask for money. Giving her an allowance. Taking her money. Not letting her know about or have access to family income. Using coercion and threats: Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt her. Threatening to leave her, to commit suicide, or to report her to welfare. Making her drop charges. Making her do illegal things.

Getting Buzzy

Now that more folks are understanding the word ‘gaslighting’ there’s more of a chance for it to be misused. Just like a supervisor pointing out a legitimate concern about an employee’s behaviour is not always workplace harassment, a disagreement is not always gaslighting.

Respectful conflict and disagreement can be a good thing! Possibility models of healthy conflict are few though…

Whitney Goodman (@sitwithit) created this helpful chart to recognize what is a disagreement and what is gaslighting:

Disagreement:

questioning someone’s facts during a discussion: it’s ok to ask for facts or backup when engaging in a civil discussion about a topic.
the goal is agreeing or seeing their side, not to make you question your sanity or reality.
the person might get under your skin or make you upset, but you know that they’re saying isn’t totally factual and they are speaking from their point of view.
disagrees with your point of view and expresses that: “I don’t agree with that,” or “I see it a different way.”
someone communicating in a way that bothers you: this person seems to ahve a style of relating that doesn’t work for you.
they have little interest in learning: they are content with their worldview.
likely happens around certain topics with certain people: is not being employed as a long-term strategy to manipulate and control.

Gaslighting:

an assault on your version of reality: everything is your fault, everything you say is wrong, there is no room for compromise.
takes away your ability to think clearly and rationally: you question yourself often and replay situations to try to find where you went wrong of what details you may not remember.
makes you defend yourself against accusations you know aren’t true: you’ll spend hours arguing or trying to make sense of things you know deep down you didn’t do.
they tell blatant lies: they will say something or maybe even write it and say when confronted with evidence say, “I never said that.”
their actions rarely match their words: they will say they love you and are committed, but do something to hurt you the next day.
they will use other people to make you feel bad: they may say things like, “your friend x says you’re crazy too.”
is a strategy that is used consistently over time to confuse, manipulate, and belittle you into being controlled.

Image created by Whitney Goodman @sitwithit
Text in body of post above.

Why the Light?

Where did we get the word ‘gaslight’? From a Vox article by Robin Stern:

The phrase originated from a 1938 mystery thriller written by British playwright Patrick Hamilton called Gas Light, made into a popular movie in 1944 starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. In the film, husband Gregory manipulates his adoring, trusting wife Paula into believing she can no longer trust her own perceptions of reality.
In one pivotal scene, Gregory causes the gaslights in the house to flicker by turning them on in the attic of the house. Yet when Paula asks why the gaslights are flickering, he insists that it’s not really happening and that it’s all in her mind, causing her to doubt her self-perception. Hence the term “gaslighting” was born.
The term appeared in academic discourse before it hit the mainstream. Its use goes back as far as 1980 in academic journal articles about women’s socialization. Experts postulated that women were trained to long and hunger for relationships and connection, a conditioning that made them vulnerable to exploitation of their attachment, which is exactly what gaslighting is.
It’s unclear when exactly the term seeped into the world of popular psychology, but it’s now frequently employed in couples counseling and self-help books to describe a specific type of toxic relationship.