Gas Lighting
What is it? It refers to an old movie that has a woman slowly driven mad by her husband who turns down the gaslights, but who keeps insisting nothing has changed.
I have been gaslighted. One of the first times I was gaslighted was by my brother and mother. They told me I was so thin that the wind would blow me away. I was young, too young to realize that it wasn’t true. But I was afraid, and I started eating, and got fat, had to wear Husky size cloths and eventually my arches of my feet collapsed from my excessive weight. All because of a stupid joke that was mean and cruel.
Other times I have been gaslighted? I took an IQ test and got a high score; my mother didn’t want my brother to be jealous so she told me siblings are usually 11 points apart. Not true. I subtracted 11 points from my score whenever I thought about it. An example of self gaslighting.
You probably have understood by now that my mother thought my brother was the ‘golden boy’. SO anything he did was great. This is also a form of gaslighting. It continued until the time of her death, I finally popped her bubble. And I told her all the terrible things he had done.
My mother was an expert in gaslighting. She used to turn to me (when she was feeling down) and tell me, “you know what you did wrong.” What? What bullshit! Oh the stories she would invent, what lies…
I worked for someone who loved to gaslight people. He would hold meetings and ask for everyone’s opinions (not wanting them) and if anyone dared expression an opinion he went on a rampage. He wrote a non-competitive contract that had no time nor territorial limits, and thought it would fly. And it did, because he gaslighted people into believing him.
People are gossips and they love gaslighting; I have been the subject of such mischief. Once it is started it just gets going and snowballs. You can always find mean and nasty people who believe anything.
I usually explain gaslighting this way; it is when someone is feeding your bull shit and telling you it is caviar. A lot of people will swallow hook line and sinker. Especially if it is announced with authority.
