A technique commonly used by dictators, cult leaders, and abusers, gaslighting is a tactic used to gain power and control by manipulating ‘targets’ to question – and lose a grip on – their reality.
Gaslighting involves deliberate and calculated efforts to disrupt the life, reputation, and sanity of identified targets. Usually, successful, intelligent, and caring people, victims of gaslighting are left emotionally and mentally damaged, and struggling to regain their self-confidence and self-belief. While the term sounds fairly harmless, the act of gaslighting is anything but. Gaslighting undermines mental stability and ends careers, sometimes for good. And it’s no longer a tactic reserved for dictators, cult leaders, and abusers.
In this first article of a three-part series, we discuss what gaslighting is and who does it. In parts two and three, we’ll discuss how to identify gaslighting in the workplace, and what to do if you find yourself targeted.
What is Gaslighting?
The term ‘gaslighting’ was adopted from the 1930s play, ‘Gaslight’, where a husband attempts to convince his wife, and their friends, that she is insane. Repeatedly he dims and brightens the gaslights in their home and, when his wife comments on the change in their environment, her husband tells her she’s mistaken. Eventually, she loses her grip on reality and believes she is going insane.
In the workplace, gaslighting is used to cause a person or group of people to lose self-confidence, question their decisions and competence, and live in a state of constant confusion and paranoia. Gaslighters will employ their tactics to undermine a perceived ‘threat’, get someone out of a job or even a company, destroy reputations, and control and manipulate behavior.
If this sounds predatory, it’s because it is. Gaslighting is a cruel game of cat and mouse with the victim often unaware they’ve been targeted. Gaslighting is a slow, deliberate, methodical process that can go on for months. Gaslighters want to control targets not by overtly bullying them, but by distorting their perception of what is and isn’t real. The gaslighter is far too cunning to do anything that could result in a trip to human resources. Instead, they persist in undermining a person’s confidence and self-belief to the point where victims lose the ability to function normally and think clearly.
The process starts slowly. Once a target is identified, gaslighters begin by building trust with the victim. They are helpful, charming, accommodating, and even protective. They will appear genuinely interested in the victim and will ask questions and listen intently to the answers. But be warned. Gaslighters don’t gather information because they want to build relationships. They do it because they’re looking for weak points, flaws, and emotional ‘hot spots’ that they later use to undermine and disrupt the victim.
If you’ve never met or been subjected to a gaslighter, you may be wondering if this is real. You’d be forgiven for believing that no-one could possibly be this evil and calculating. And it’s this belief that gaslighters rely on as a smoke-screen for their behavior. They know that anyone with a conscience will struggle to believe such evil acts could be deliberate. And so it’s relatively easy for them to convince observers that a victim is imagining or inventing things. Before long, it’s not only the victim who believes he or she is going crazy. People around them start to believe it too.
So who are the gaslighters? And what do they look like?
Unfortunately, gaslighters learn to blend in with the rest of us. They dress like us, eat what we eat, and do the things that we do. They’re masters at ‘fitting in’. Gaslighters are almost always psychopaths, sociopaths, or narcissists. They have anti-social personalities which they cleverly disguise by observing and mirroring the behavior of kind, caring people. With studies revealing that approximately one in five CEOs is a psychopath – compared with one in one hundred of the general population – it is easy to see why gaslighting is so common in the workplace. Other cited professions with higher than average rates of psychopathy are lawyers, salespeople, police officers, and military personnel. The common theme across these professions is power and access to a constant supply of potential victims. The workplace is a playground for gaslighters.
Interestingly, the majority of gaslighters have never heard the term. But faced with an explanation of the act, they know the tactics only too well, and often cite it as one of their favorite things to do.
In part two of this three-part series, I’ll shed light on some of the tactics gaslighters use to snare their victims. While it’s my sincere hope you never fall prey to a gaslighter, having the ability to identify one will put you in a position to be able to protect yourself.
