What Is Gaslighting? (Quick Read)

What Is Gaslighting?

Gaslighting is manipulation that makes you doubt your own memory and perception. Someone denies things you know happened, or treats your reaction as the real problem, and over time you start checking your own experience against their version of it.

It shows up most often in intimate relationships, where it is one of the ways a person keeps control. It also happens at work and in medical care, when someone's account of their own body or experience keeps getting dismissed.

• You apologize often without knowing what you did.
• You keep notes or screenshots to prove to yourself that something happened.
• You feel more confused after talking with one particular person.
• You have stopped telling others what goes on because you expect not to be believed.

A written record helps, and so does someone outside the situation who can reflect back what you describe, including a therapist. Gaslighting is one of the tools of coercive control — the gender-neutral power and control wheel shows how it fits alongside other tactics. It often appears alongside DARVO, a pattern in which the person causing harm reverses roles and presents themselves as the victim.

If gaslighting comes with fear or control, the Safety Plan Builder and the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) can help you plan next steps.