If you feel invalidated, doubt your own credibility and sanity, and are convinced it’s all your fault, you’re probably being gaslighted. Sam Vaknin lays out the characteristics of this insidious form of “ambient abuse.”
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Ambient abuse [aka gaslighting] yields an irksome feeling, a kind of disagreeable foreboding, a premonition, a bad omen … it’s in the air. In the long term, such an environment erodes the victim’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Self-confidence is shaken badly …. In ambient abuse the roles are reversed; the victim is considered by everyone to be mentally deranged and unstable, and the abuser is universally acclaimed as the suffering soul and victim.
As you watch this video, you will learn about the five categories of ambient abuse, and how they are often combined in the same abuser.
You may also like: Why Women Aren’t Crazy — which also explains gaslighting.
Editor’s Note: After posting this video, some negative information concerning Sam Vaknin was brought to our attention. We did not thoroughly vet his personal credentials prior to posting, and this post does not constitute an endorsement of him. There is, however, valuable, accurate information in the video pertaining to the form of psychological abuse known as gaslighting.
Photo—David Ohmer/Flickr
Gaslighting is a favored tool of bullies in the workplace, it isn’t just in private relationships.
Interesting distortion of the term. Originally Gaslighting , named after a 1938 play by the British dramatist Patrick Hamilton.
I am familiar with the movie and fail to see how using the term in this way is distortion of it. Fits perfectly.
“Holy sh–!”
I put that in quotes because I shouted it out loud when I watched this video this morning. I’ve watched it again a few times just to make sure I’m not crazy. His words describe so perfectly my subjective experience of pop-feminist shaming of male sexuality. It feels good to have a name for something that I’ve felt unaccountably angry about for years: ambient abuse.
Thank you for posting this!
Wow, I’ve never heard of this before, but I agree with his assessment that this sort of abuse is the worst kind.
Thanks for posting it.
I had trouble understanding Sam’s accent but agree that gaslighting is one of the most dangerous forms of abuse. I read up on the following article that furthers the narrative of gaslighting (malevolent power) into narcissism. “As Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self-Love, a bestselling study of narcissism, says: “Narcissists gravitate towards professions where they can control people and elicit adulation. They are more likely to work in politics, finance or medicine than in shoemaking.” This is spot on.
-http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5ff67be2-b636-11df-a784-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3IomO8rwV