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You’ve probably heard this buzzword throughout the past decade. Gaslight was a 1944 movie created from a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton. If you can stomach the film, the insight into the term we now use as a common verb “gaslighting” will make this concept very clear. At 14 years old, Paula, played by Ingrid Bergman, witnessed her aunt being murdered. After that trauma, she was sent to study opera in Italy. Years later there, she has a two-week love affair with a man who she falls in love with, and they marry and return to London to live in her aunt’s home that she has inherited. In order to help her with her traumatic memories in the home, her husband, Gregory, played by Charles Boyer, tells her to put all the house’s belongings in the attic and seal it up. With a criminal mentality and a desire to take these riches for himself, Gregory later goes into the shut-up attic himself to investigate all the pirate’s booty stored from the wealthy aunt’s estate. While up there, Paula is hearing the sounds in the attic, and the gas lights in the home start to dim as he creeks around up there. When she tells him this, he has to cover his tracks, so he lies and tells her she is imagining the whole thing. This is where we get the phrase “gaslighting”. He told her she must be seeing and hearing things because he didn’t see the gas lights flickering. It’s only the start of the many things that Gregory says to get Paula that have her slowly start thinking she’s gone “mad”.

This. Is. Psychological. Abuse.

There’s a broach she thought she had lost, which he actually stole. He tries to make her feel forgetful, so he moves a picture off the wall and tells her she moved it and that she must have forgotten. He hides a piece of jewelry, and then in front of everyone at a party, she pulls it from her handbag and gets hysterical thinking she stole it. After this meltdown, he decides it’s best for her not to go out in public, which starts an abuser’s favorite tactic: isolation.

This real-life process doesn’t happen in a two-hour movie time frame. This is a slow, manipulation over days, months and sometimes years. An abuser uses gaslighting as a control move to make the victim feel, through their lies, that they are going insane. Without having a trust in their own sanity, the victim begins to not trust themselves to do another else. It turns into a helplessness where now they rely more and more on their abuser because they think the abuser is the only one helping them. This can look similar to Stockholm Syndrome. In the movie, in order to “keep her safe” from herself, Gregory has a plan lined up to get her placed in an institution and take over the legal rights to the estate and her care, which would allow him full say over her life and inherited wealth. So dangerous. All this time, he is straight out lying to her making her think she is the one who has gone crazy. This is brainwashing. These are invisible chains.

When a detective, Inspector Cameron, played by Joseph Cotton, eventually gets involved in Paula’s life, he starts to piece together what is really going on. One scene I love goes like this:

Paula (distraught and hollering about the events): He said I was going out of my mind!!

Inspector: You’re not going out of your mind. You’re slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.

Well, if that isn’t the truth! What’s the irony here is that it is so upsetting to think you are not mentally well, so when someone makes you feel like that even though you are well, you actually can start to feel confused enough to question the reality of everything. Everything becomes messy and garbled as if you are insane. It’s a terrible abuse that truly can make you mentally unwell even when you weren’t in the beginning.

This is one of the most common types of abuse techniques used. When the gaslighter’s control or abuse is recognized in the early stages of a relationship, the victim may speak out to their abuser. Gaslighting is a response like “trust me, I’m only doing this because I love you”. “Why are you being so sensitive?” “If you were better with spending, I wouldn’t have to do be in charge of the checkbook. I don’t even want to handle the finances, but you can’t do it, so I have to.” They will also straight out lie once they’ve gained trust. They’ll tell you a friend said something horrible about you to them and make you start questioning your outside relationships. Isolation and confusion are always what they are going for.

Any type of relationship can have gaslighting. From a boss, partner, child/parent, even friends. I have had a number of relationships where I have discovered I was being gaslit. A rule of thumb I use now in given situations is: When I’m in a discussion and I start to think “wait, am I going crazy?”, I stop and think “Gaslighting!!” And I end the conversation. Do I really think to myself, “am I going crazy?” Yes. There are people in my life that will twist me in a corner, and I actually have a cognitive thought about the confusion of my actions, words, perception. If they tell me “you didn’t say that”, and I start to wonder, “wait, did I say it or am I going crazy?” If they say “you’re being too sensitive, I didn’t even mean it like that”, my brain whispers “are you too sensitive or are you just going crazy?” It’s the strangest thing, but psychology calls this “crazy making” — something that draws your cognition, emotions, or feelings to start feeling illogical or not able to trust your perception. This makes you start wondering about reality all together. It’s very scary. Once in a while, it may truly be a miscommunication — but if I find myself thinking this over and over with the same person or in the same conversation, it’s time to run!

If you are in a relationship of any kind with someone who is a narcissist, you know this type of gaslighting behavior better than anyone! If you’ve had any type of experience with gaslighting, this is a type of trauma — a psychological abuse. This is not just something to brush off. You may still be struggling with lack of self-trust if you’ve endured gaslighting for any season of your life. This also makes you more susceptible to gaslighting relationships in the future, so it’s common if you’ve encountered multiple gaslighting traps. Maybe you are even still in one right now. Maybe because it’s gone on for so long and you love the person so much, you aren’t even sure if you are in a gaslighting situation, but you are wondering.

With any of this, and more, I’d love to help you discover the truth from the lies your abuser told you, help you rebuild the self-trust bridge inside yourself, and work through any narcissistic healing. Please reach out if you need support in this area. If not to me, to any professional who can help you get a reality check from the outside looking in. Be careful who you choose to talk to about this — because if they are close to and believing your abuser’s side of the story, they may confirm their lies and make you doubt yourself even that much more. On the “Connect” tab of my website, please send me a message if you have questions about this episode’s content.