Gaslighting: The most overused and abused word of the season.
I don’t have to scroll very far on the Internet to see the term “gaslight” pop up not once, twice, but several times. For a long time, I didn’t know what it meant. It was kind of like one of those fancy words in a book you read as a child that you just glossed over and moved on from reading. However, I would see it used all the time, to the point where I eventually had to look it up.
I found out that gaslighting meant to make someone feel like they’re insane. But then I looked at a more clinical, psychological definition of gaslighting — according to Sarah DiGiulio on NBC News, it is when “the manipulator is trying to get someone else (or a group of people) to question their own reality, memory or perceptions.” Barbara Ellen of The Guardian has another similar definition of gaslighting: “systemically dissolving another person’s sense of self, until they’re questioning their every move and instinct.”
It is a term associated with abuse. I think to my life personally — how many people have gaslit me in my lifetime? Probably two people have, total. Not every person that has put me in a bad mood or angry has gaslighted me, but the frequency with which I see it used makes me think of narcissism — another term used as an umbrella term that trivializes the 1% of people that actually suffer from narcissistic personality disorder.
George Simon is a psychologist and bestselling author of the In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People.
“Gaslighting as a term has been overused,” George Simon says.
Ellen cites the experience of actor Rebecca Humphries, who was cheated on by comedian Seann Walsh in a 2018 scandal. She had been called “psycho”, “nuts”, and “mental” numerous times and her friend suggested that she had been gaslighted, a relief to know there was a word to give “her the vindication and courage she needed.”
Gaslighting is commonly used in the context of romantic relationships, which makes sense. The people we are with are the people we’re supposed to feel the safest and happiest around. It is a real and dangerous phenomenon, which can happen to anyone. Many women have spoken up about being gaslit in abusive relationships and having the word from the 1944 psychological thriller movie likely powers a lot of people.
Ellen, however, also notes that the term has been overused, and hence cheapened, to the point that “it seems as if there’s a national gaslighting epidemic.” She stresses that the term is implied very inappropriately, even to male contestants of a reality TV show who boorishly just said anything to get laid.
And then there’s the touchy issue of how gaslighting, as a word, is used in politics. I have seen political pundits on both the right and the left label their political opponents “gaslighters”, and have seen it commonly used to describe the statements and behavior of Donald Trump. To me, using gaslighting in a political context, although valid, is a similarly very slippery slope.
“It serves us to remember that gaslighting is a specific form of structured abuse. It’s not a convenient umbrella term for all mendacious or unpleasant behaviour; it isn’t gaslighting every single time someone lies, or makes excuses,” Ellen says
The distinction here, then, is that all gaslighters might be lying creeps, but not all lying creeps are gaslighters. The bigger product, of course, is when gaslighters are not named, and it’s important to validate victims of gaslighters.
However, misusing and overusing the term does not help victims. In fact, it trivializes their pain. Gaslighting has become a much more common and popular term and has verged into buzzword territory, to the point where, in a lot of cases, it loses its meaning.
“I’m becoming convinced that “gaslighting” is going to lose its usefulness because people are casually misusing it. There have been a few times over the last year, even, where I’ve seen people use “gaslighting” maliciously,” said popular freelancer,
People can be assholes without being gaslighters. Field talks about how using the word “gaslight” in a conversation effectively shuts down a conversation — the accused gaslighter becomes abusive and the interaction inherently changes. The conversation becomes about whether someone is behaving abusively, and Field, as an abuse survivor and a feminist who talks a lot about sexual assault, she’s subject to a lot of people dismissing her and denying her experiences.
However, she also started seeing gaslighting used in situations that weren’t actually gaslighting, when normal human behaviors become slapped with the label. For her, the overuse of the accusation means that when abuse survivors first hear the term, it might lose some of the empowering meaning it meant for her when she heard it. A lot of the times, Field observed that people actually meant “you’re being an ass, please stop” when they used the label.
Gaslighting is a form of manipulation and abuse, so let’s proceed more cautiously as the term is used so its meaning and experiences of survivors are not diminished.
