What are some ways of psychological abuse similar to gas lighting?

Being all warm and friendly to a friend at times, and then cold and dismissive at other times.

Gaslighting is one type out of many types of possible psychological abuse types. They’re not different/same— one is a part of the whole.

This is another type of psychological abuse.

I think that most emotional abuse includes a lot of stuff under the gaslighting blanket.

Denying something was said, done, discussed, agreed upon.

Playing ‘innocent’, playing ‘dumb’, ‘forgetting’, not ‘remembering’.

My ex was FAMOUS for all of these, he couldn’t keep an agreement from morning til night, and of course, those delightful passive aggressive games that really stir up the crazy pot. lol

I really think some people truly BELIEVE their own bullshit, their program is so hardwired that it IS their reality.

@Coloma summed it up perfectly.

This begs the question – If someone can convince themselves of a false reality…isn’t it entirely possible an outside factor (like, I don’t know… a massive conglomerate) could also do the convincing? Not that they would do that.

Here’s the one I hate most:

Trusted person #1 is jealous of trusted person #2 and makes up things to report person #1 did. You get to be in the hotseat to decide between two people you trust what accusations are true, what incidents are true, what denials are true. I refer to this situation as a clusterf**k.

@Neizvestnaya Don’t you think there would have been previous incidents where the jealous person would have displayed jealous behavior.

@Coloma

Can emotional abuse hurt anyone or those either depressed or sad or somewhat sensitive?

@raven860: Not necessarily. I’ve been in this situation where the person you least expect to become conniving is the one and the victim of their attention has a past of a few screw up so it’s soooo tough to call.

I chalked it up to my person #1 thinking they’d reduce the power/hold of person #2 this way which would then give me more power over person #2 because I’d have doubt, a new obstacle for person #2 to overcome and for them to try to make good with me, in way try harder to please me to regain my confidence. Like I said, it was a weird and evil situation of good intentions executed in very bad ways.

@raven860 Emotional abuse, in the right circumstances, can destroy even the strongest, most confident person.

Silent treatments are another form of psychological abuse. In a workplace, it takes just a few weeks of continuous and/or systemic silent treatments to start to erode at a person. I have a friend from work who went on medical leave 3 years ago because of 3 years of gaslighting, manipulation, passive aggression, information withholding and silent treatments from his supervisor (she also ran off 3 other people). He started out as the sweetest, friendliest and most focused worker in his department but the day he left, he was 100 pounds overweight, squirrely, had severe migraines and tinnitus, near-suicidal and is still trying to recover.

People forget that we often spend more time traveling to and from work and at work total, than with our families. I leave home at 7:15 in the morning, am at work from 7:45 to usually around 5 and don’t get home with my daughter until 5:45. She goes to bed about 9… that’s 3½ hours daily compared to about 9 hours at work, so abusive workplaces can have equally or more of a detrimental effect on us.

This link gives information on what mental health damages result from workplace emotional abuse.

@linguaphile Are there ways to counter emotional abuse other than avoiding the person? I hate to hear that a few abusive people can harass people to such an extent.

@Neizvestnaya That sucks, lets hope not many people are capable of that level of deceit.

When I was in my divorce process I also had an abusive boss, OMG!
I got rid of them both, and trust me, I was a mess at that time as well.

The worst part is how these situations completely screw with your perceptions and intuition.

It has been 8.5 years since I divorced and I am still learning to trust my intuition.

I am just not built to deceive and it has taken me 50 years to realize that I tend to easily project MY trustworthiness and genuine intentions onto others that are not always worthy of those projections. haha

I will never be a jaded and suspicious type, but, I am much, much, more discerning and on alert for potential red flag behaviors these days.

(Copied from your last question on this) Gaslighting is abusive, but I think it’s important to note that gaslighting refers specifically and only to someone consciously and purposefully creating a false reality for someone else for the purpose of making them doubt their own mental trustworthiness so as to better take advantage of them. Most people who might come across as gaslighting aren’t doing it on purpose, but rather as a subconscious reaction and a way to deal with their own crap. For example, a typical abusive parent doesn’t actually stay up at night creating new ways to create instability for their child, they just get terribly scared when they realize the child is growing up and will leave them and decide to make the separation less painful by a “leave them before they can leave you” tactic. This is very different from the Machiavellian tactics of gaslighting, and should be treated as such in dealing with such cases.

@Aethelflaed

I remember reading that. However, I am sure there are people out there who will abuse others with gaslighting.

@raven860 I’m sure there are. It’s more that it’s a rare and very specific form of abuse; it’s much more common to abuse someone on a much more subconscious, reactionary level. Abusers often feel that they are the abused ones, that they are the persecuted ones, and so the abuse actually comes from attempts to protect themselves. Gaslighting is, however, one of the only ones with a specific name, so it’s hard to go “oh, yeah, and then there’s gobledy-gook” because there isn’t; there are ways of abusing that aren’t gaslighting, but almost none of them have names. And most of them I wouldn’t say are similar to gaslighting, because to me what separates gaslighting from all other forms of emotional abuse is the conscious and deliberate attempts to make someone doubt themselves, not just doing things that results in someone doubting themselves (but without that being an official goal you were trying to achieve). Or the conscious and deliberate goal of simply manipulating someone into giving you what you want, but with them not doubting themselves (like in confidence tricks). If you’re looking for a better understanding of all emotional abuse, I can point out some resources, but I don’t know that any of them really deal with the idea of things that are like gaslighting but not actually gaslighting, unless the only requirement for being like gaslighting is just also being emotionally abusive.

@Aethelflaed

Yes, well, this IS the $64 thousand dollar question!

As if the difference between conscious and unconscious behavior makes a difference thoguh.
Either/or, it’s a bad outcome for all involved.

A ” I know exactly what I am doing, but, I don’t care! ” and in the other corner is the ” I’m not fully aware what I’m doing, but, I still don’t care! ” lol

I don’t care what the deep seated motives and levels of awareness are anymore, that’s like looking for the motives of a Rattlesnake. It doesn’t matter why, it only matters that you hear the rattle. haha

@Coloma Lol yeah, it’s… I don’t care if it’s subconscious or not, you’re still responsible, but I have found the differences to be important in figuring out how to deal with them.

@Aethelflaed

How do you deal with them? I can imagine a bunch jealous or hostile sadistic coworkers going the length to gas light their target.

@raven860 Mostly, get away from them as much as you can and use nonviolent communication for when you can’t. But understanding why they’re doing something can help. Like if someone just yelled at you for being an alcoholic because you had a couple drinks at the office Christmas party, and you aren’t, then are they doing it to gaslight you, or because their father was an alcoholic, and this is triggering them, and they’re worried that you will have more and then beat them? Probably the second, and then you can sit down with them and reassure them that 3 drinks a night is your limit, spread out over a few hours, and even if you did have more, you’d just retire to hugging the toilet, because you don’t become violent when drunk. And then the situation has been defused, whereas if you accuse them of gaslighting and they aren’t, then they just feel more attacked, and focus on the idea that a good defense is a good offense, and they should attack you even more.

@raven860 I think it is all one word, “gaslighting”. It’s from a great 1944 file with Ingmar Bergman. The film was Gaslight and it involves a man (Charles Boyer as Gregory) trying cover the tracks to his a murder he committed crime by driving his wife, who witnessed the crime as a child, insane. Of course , at the very next opportunity, the wall is removed and the stairs are right back where she thought she remembered them being. The Wikipedia article lists some of the devious things he does to destroy her own confidence in her memory and her very sanity. It’s a classic film still worth watching.

@rOs “isn’t it entirely possible an outside factor (like, I don’t know… a massive conglomerate) could also do the convincing?”

…of course. Political parties, politicians, churches, the media, business corporations… they do this sort of thing all the time.

@Aethelflaed

I understand what you are saying and I understand the distinction you are making between gas lighting and criticism.

Assuming gas lighting is taking place by a group against an individual purposefully,

What if you can’t get away from them?
Also is it called gas lighting if the target is not doubting their mental health and know the certain individuals are lying, being manipulative and trying to deceive them.

I also wanted to know how you know about this subject so much? Does you profession gain you insight or is it just from a hobby?

I also found this off wikipedia, I thought it answered my question of a harassment technique in league with gas lighting. What are your thoughts about it? Are there any famous or known cases of either of these behaviors.

Psychological harassment

This is humiliating, intimidating or abusive behaviour which is often difficult to detect leaving no evidence other than victim reports or complaints; this characteristically lowers a person’s self-esteem or causes them torment. This can take the form of verbal comments, engineered episodes of intimidation, aggressive actions or repeated gestures. Falling into this category is workplace harassment by individuals or groups mobbing.

Community-based Harassment — stalking by a group[11] against an individual using repeated distractions that the individual is sensitized to, such as clicking an ink pen – is another subtype of this.

@ETpro

Thank you for that information, it was on my mind and I was about to ask why they call it Gas-lighting. As you can tell I am new to such phenomena of dedicated, specific and choreographed mental abuse.

@raven860 Gaslighting is a subsect of emotional abuse/psychological harassment (kind of like how Devil’s Food Cake is a subsect of cake). It comes from the movie Gaslighting, so it only refers to specifically what happened in that movie. While it’s not out of the question that someone could and would gaslight someone in real life, it’s actually very rare, because you really can’t manipulate people that easily and predictably. It really makes for a much better plot line than an actual abuse method.
Gaslighting I don’t know offhand if there are any cases (I’d think there were, but not necessarily famous ones). Emotional abuse, tons. Just tons. It’s everywhere. You can look into the kinds of abuse that often accompany substance abuse and/or personality disorders. This might be a good starting place, though it is somewhat specific (but much of what it says can be applied to larger areas of life).

This is an area that everyone should be aware of, with in themselves as well as others.
I spent the better part of a decade educating myself on Narcissism, other personality disorders and all manner of abuse and manipulative behaviors after I divorced.

The year I spent in therapy after my divorce was very enlightening, and my therapist told me about ‘Gaslighting’, I had never heard of it before.

She said I was lucky I didn’t end up hospitalized for depression considering the gaslighting I had been living with.

What a wake up call!

The bottom line is that anyone can have a bad moment, but, a relatively ‘normal’ healthy enough person WILL catch it and apologize, quickly!

It is easy knowing whether or not you are dealing with a personality disordered person, bottom line, ALL PD’s have some common behaviors, namely, pathological lying, manipulation, and the complete and utter inability to EVER apologize of look within.

If they do apologize you can bet it is from a manipulative place.

The quickest test is to watch for the blame game.

PD’s NEVER apologize or take responsibility for their part, no matter how big or small, it is ALWAYS someone elses fault.

In Martha Stouts ” The Sociopath next door” she says that one of the biggest red flags is the victim trip…be very wary of anyone that always presents themselves as a chronic ‘victim’ of others, life, circumstance.

Big red flag, HUGE!

@Coloma Actually, people can overcome personality disorders. Taking responsibility, apologizing, looking inward, etc might be much harder for people with personality disorders, and it might be a tell-tale sign, but it’s not true that they cannot change, or that none of them will ever do any of those things. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy has been a really great tool in helping people overcome personality disorders and evolve as people.

@Aethelflaed

Sure, agreed, if one is not dead there is hope of change, but, the trick is to not hang on to false hope and delusional thinking patterns if you find yourslef involved with someone with these issues.
The fact is, most do not change, sadly, and while I have compassion for people with these issues I have more compassion for those of us that have had bad experiences dealing with these people.

@Coloma I agree. I was just pointing out that it isn’t an always/never issue (and also that not all PDs = sociopath).

@Aethelflaed

I wanted to know how you knew so much about these kinds of abuses. Are you a professional or known about it from general know how?

@Aethelflaed

Agreed. :-)

@raven860 I thought for years about becoming a psychologist, and couldn’t afford school then, so I read all the stuff on my own to try to get a head start. I’ve decided to pursue a different career path, but I still read a lot of articles in journals like American journal of psychiatry, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, etc. And several of my friends are at various stages of getting their Psy.D., so a lot of what I say here is really just repeating what they said when I asked them.

@raven860 Psychological abuse methods are not a topic I have spent a huge amount of time researching. But being aware enough of them to spot them when someone attempts to use them on you is worth the amount of study required. Forewarned is forearmed.

@ETpro , @Aethelflaed , @Coloma

Does the law recognize any of these activities? even if there are no laws against it. Psychological abuse is like a nuclear weapon, its a type of torture.

@raven860 Um… Not really, but not entirely no. Like, if you called Child Protective Services on a man who did that to his kids, they would tell you that they cannot do anything without “severe physical abuse or rape”. But could you use it in divorce proceedings in a state that has at-fault divorces? Probably.

”...even if there are no laws against it.” That should not have been there, I apologize for the confusion.

Also, can you refer me to some good websites where I can research such information. Google-ing “Psychological harassment” brings me to the following site http://www.psychologicalharassment.com/

There seem to be some reasonable claims on the website but there are also a lot things that the average person would call paranoid, far-fetched, and delusional.

@raven860 Try emotional abuse. It’s probably going to yield more results than psychological harassment, and is going to be more commonly used in clinical settings. Also the book I recommended above.

I am not familiar with that site. What things do you think are paranoid, far-fetched, and delusional?

@Aethelflaed

Hmm it may have been a different website but I once saw claims of microwave weapons to destabilize mental health and the government using them to destabilize people blah blah blah.

Some of these http://www.psychologicalharassment.com/advanced_technologies.htm They sound more credible with cited sources than what I have come across before.

@raven860 Ah. I don’t know if those technologies exist (not at all my area of expertise), but I think what they were saying is that if they did exist, using them in such a manner would be emotional abuse.

@Aethelflaed

I agree.

@raven860 The fact that it is a .com site makes it somewhat suspect for this kind of information. You probably want to look for a reputable educational or organizational site; .edu or .org. You could also try databases for journal articles if you have access to them through a library.