10 Years as a Therapist - This Is What Gaslighting Actually Looks Like

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]There is a big difference between disagreeing with somebody and what gaslighting is.

[00:00:05]In healthy relationships, disagreement is normal. You're not always going to see eye to eye, but it respects each person's perspective. Even though you might not share the same view, you don't feel completely deregulated and destabilized by disagreement. With gaslighting, it's a very, very different dynamic. That person is distorting your reality. They're manipulating a sequence of events to make you doubt yourself, doubt your perspective, and your grasp on what has actually happened. Now, it can be subtle at first, and it can ramp over up over time. And obviously, there's a spectrum to how damaging this can be. But the difference is with disagreement, you can have a disagreement and not feel completely overwhelmed, not really sit and second-guess yourself and judging yourself. When somebody is gaslighting you, they're constantly repositioning things. They're manipulating the narrative. They're positioning you in a certain light, positioning their argument in a certain light. And often, what that's doing is they're they're positioning themselves in your life as an authority, that they know better than you, that you should look to them for guidance. Because the undertone that's in that is you can't trust your perception, you can't trust your judgment, you're inherently wrong, I know better than you. You need to trust me cuz this is coming from a good place, that I know better than you. That is a form of manipulation, and it is so so damaging over time. Now, it might start out small at first, but the thing is you can't ignore cuz the longer it goes on, the more it erodes your self-trust, the more it erodes your self-worth, your ability to go, Did that actually happen?

[00:01:30]Did that really play out the way I thought it played out? You know, you're having these conversations, and then the person's having the conversation back, and they have completely restructured what's happened. They've manipulated it, they've repositioned you in that conversation. And you know, that didn't happen. That didn't happen like that.

[00:01:43]And they're like, it did, it did. This is what This is what we said. This is what you you agreed. And you know that that's not true. And they just keep throwing mud at it, and they keep at it and at it and at it, in the hope that you will placate, in the hope that for an easy life it's just, "Ah, okay, maybe that must be the case. And in time, what they might also do is recruit third-party validation. Even so-and-so believes that you you have this stance.

[00:02:06]Even so-and-so thinks you're unstable.

[00:02:07]Even so-and-so can see that you're a problem. Reinforcing their narrative, and then making you doubt and that other people see the same thing. Like when you're isolated, when you're away from your friendship group, you're not challenging that, this is when it becomes really debilitating because that person's kind of like an anchor. You're looking to them for guidance. Often they can be trying to show you things or position things as though they're helping you, as though this is coming from a loving place, but underneath this is control.

[00:02:34]A lot of this is about control, getting access, and meeting their needs, and you're becoming a shell of yourself. As I said, in a healthy relationship, you can disagree. You can speak up for yourself. You can have a dialogue. Even if you have to take space, you're not you're not completely disoriented.

[00:02:47]You're not sitting questioning, "Did that happen? Am I the Like have I got this back-to-front?" That is consistent with gaslighting. With gaslighting, you're completely bamboozled. You're disoriented. You're not fully sure you can trust your judgment because it's a sustained attack on your senses. The major thing that you have to bear in mind with this is this person eventually becomes positioned as an authority, as in having some sort of power or judgment or some sort of influence over you, more so that you don't trust yourself anymore because you've been looking to this person as an anchor and as a compass for that long, or they have positioned themselves as knowing better than you, and you've unconsciously begin to buy into this.

[00:03:27]This is super damaging. We do not ignore gaslighting. We don't ignore it. We know the distinction between disagreement, and we know what gaslighting is.

[00:03:35]When you're in it, you need to seek help. You need to be able to get away from it. Now, it's really important to remember it won't always be intimate partnership. Sometimes it can be your business colleagues. Sometimes it can be your friends. It can be your family. So, we have to look at it and become aware of what that behavior is so that we can resource ourselves, start to speak up, start to call out and be like, "That's not what happened." Document what we know to be true, because that is part of how we take care of ourselves on that.

[00:04:00]We stay on top of the conversations. We start to catch when that reality distortion is playing out, when those reframes, when those edits, when those manipulations start to show up in the conversation. We work on ourselves to be able to communicate our boundaries. And if that person most likely will double down and start attacking your credibility, start using other people, then we start to think "This isn't a safe relationship. This isn't a safe dynamic. I need to be away from this."

[00:04:23]Gaslighting should never be overlooked because it is one of the most debilitating things I've seen people recover from. If you're going through this right now and you're questioning, is this something that you're struggling with?

[00:04:35]Reach out. Get help. Do not ignore this.

[00:04:38]Like, you need to be able to see that to see this for what this is. This is not a healthy relationship. This is not a healthy dynamic. If you're being subjected to gaslighting behavior,