![]() What Gaslighting Looks Like in a Relationship If Brittany displayed emotion or lost her composure during an argument, her abuser would repeatedly call her “crazy,” making her question her own mental well-being. Jenn referred to her ex-boyfriend as a “chameleon” who tried to disorient and confuse her with subtle fabrications, like lying about the color of the shirt she had worn the day before. Simone’s ex-husband hacked into her social media profiles during their divorce, crafting posts that made her seem mentally unstable. In certain cases, abusers might exploit their victim’s vulnerabilities, or prey upon stereotypes or imbalances related to an individual’s gender, sexuality, race, nationality and class.īelow are just a few of the examples of gaslighting that Sweet documented through 12 months of intensive interviews with 43 heterosexual women who had survived domestic violence, published in a 2019 article in American Sociological Review. Primarily, gaslighting happens in romantic relationships, but it can also occur within friendships, between family members and even among coworkers. Still, although the term is admittedly trendy, the behavior it's meant to describe can be intensely toxic - and potentially dangerous. That same year saw a whopping 1740 percent increase in lookups for “gaslighting” online, according to Miriam-Webster. ![]() Gaslighting has since been used to describe various manipulative tactics and distortions of reality - for example, patients who feel that their symptoms are unfairly dismissed by doctors may refer to their experiences as “medical gaslighting,” according to a 2022 article in The New York Times. One essay by journalist Lauren Duca, “How Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America,” quickly went viral after it was published in Teen Vogue that December. More recently, the term recaptured public attention in 2016, when it was frequently used to describe former President Donald Trump’s strategy of creating false realities through repeated lies. Notably, one of Gregory’s tactics is to dim the house’s gas lights before insisting it’s all in Paula’s head. In the film, Paula (Bergman) is isolated by her husband Gregory (Boyer), who is committed to making her believe she’s going insane. The term “gaslighting” made its debut in the 1938 British stage play, Gas Light, which was adapted twice to the silver screen - most famously as the 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Read More: Understanding the Psychology of Catfishing ![]() “There’s so many types of psychological abuse, but gaslighting has that extra quality of convincing someone that their reality isn’t shared by other people or trying to convince them that their understanding of what’s going on is distorted or wrong.” “It tries to make someone seem or feel ‘crazy,’” says Paige Sweet, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who studies gaslighting in relationships and in the workplace. It often occurs in abusive relationships, where the perpetrator intentionally misleads their target - essentially, distorting reality to make it seem like what the victim is experiencing or feeling isn’t real. Broadly speaking, gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse or manipulation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |