Gaslighting

The colonization of other people's minds

Gaslighting is arguably the most insidious and effective psychological abuse strategy for overriding a person's will.

Its name derives from the play "Gas Light", where the protagonist altered the intensity of the gas lights in his home and then convinced his wife that the change was the result of his imagination.

In the context of intimate partner violence, it is defined as a pattern of emotional manipulation by which the aggressor makes the victim doubt her own perception of reality, judgment and memory. It is not an occasional lie, but a systematic attack on the other's sanity.

The ultimate goal is the annulment of identity: the aggressor seeks to make the victim lose his "internal compass" and depend entirely on the version of reality that he dictates to him, becoming the master of his mind.

The three stages of induced dementia

This destabilization process usually occurs in three distinct stages. First, the disbelief stage, where the victim notices obvious contradictions ("I didn't say that", "that didn't happen that way") and tries to correct the aggressor thinking it is a mistake.

Second, the defense stage, where the victim feels attacked and wears herself out looking for evidence to validate her reality, while the aggressor calls her "crazy", "jealous" or "too sensitive".

Finally, comes the stage of depression and surrender: exhausted and confused, the victim assumes that the aggressor is right and that it is she who is mentally failing.

Phrases such as "you are always imagining things" or "you are out of your mind" become absolute truths for the abused person.

Ambient gaslighting and sensory chaos

Beyond verbal denial of facts, there is a variant known as "ambient gaslighting."

In this scenario, the aggressor alters the physical environment to generate instability: he changes objects and then denies having done so, hides things from the victim or pretends not to hear sounds they both hear.

This manipulation of the physical environment reinforces the idea that the victim is losing touch with reality.

By creating sensory chaos and denying empirical evidence, the person's basic trust in her own senses is dismantled, leaving her in a state of total helplessness and extreme vulnerability to any suggestion from the abuser.

Summary

Gaslighting is a strategy of insidious emotional manipulation in which the aggressor makes the victim doubt her own perception, judgment and memory, seeking to override her identity and control her mind.

This process occurs in three phases: an initial disbelief, an exhausting defense seeking to validate reality and, finally, a deep depression where the victim assumes that the aggressor is right and she has lost her sanity.

There is an environmental variant where the abuser alters the physical environment or denies real sounds to create sensory chaos, dismantling the person's basic trust in their own senses and leaving them totally helpless.