You can stop someone from gaslighting you by saying “No.”
to gaslight (verb)
gaslit, gaslit
the post-woke term for manipulating someone’s perception of their own oppression.
“No” can be spoken, or it can be a state of mind.
It can feel daunting to stop someone from “telling you what’s what”. Especially if this person is an authority figure, or if there’s a web of psychological games thread around you 24/7.
But, in most cases, standing up for yourself is healing and empowering, assuming it doesn’t put you in danger.
You don’t say “No” so the other person feels rejected or ashamed.
You do it so you can move on.
You have 4 responses when you’re being gaslit
1. Stand your ground
Gaslighting means that someone is denying your experience, consciously or otherwise. Either way, not your problem.
Your experience is your problem.
If someone’s telling you how you feel, or what you’ve seen? You have a right to trust your own judgment. (Unless you are promoting conspiracy theories — then, you don’t.)
A guy I met online stood me up twice for our first date.
I told him that comparing me to a virtual assistant was an example of female subjugation. He told me, “I’m not feeling the vibe, let’s get to know each other a bit more before meeting up.”
Ok. See ya never.
After a 4-week long silence, he hit me with this:
“What,” you don’t want to sext after I ditched you for being too assertive?
Ignorance has a short memory.
The most economical way to regain control of my time and Whatsapp storage?
“No.”
2. Confront the gaslighter
This is equally difficult and worthwhile when the gaslighter is a loved one.
Ideally, you’d want to educate the other person and rekindle the relationship.
Once, a former partner maintained that the pain I was feeling was unrelated to his actions. It wasn’t.
I tried to heal our deteriorated trust through communication.
“Talk to me. Help me fix this.”
He said I was dividing us. I was too negative. He wasn’t happy anymore.
At the time, his “you’re too sad and angry” attitude was breaking me into a thousand little pieces.
But now, I see the gaslighting clearly and I have no regrets.
I tried. I failed. I moved on.
3. Walk away
When your best intentions don’t change the situation, there are only two things keeping you there.
An attachment to the past, or a fear about the future.
There’s someone I called a “friend” for about 2 months.
He added me to his exclusive, boozy, male-dominant Whatsapp group.
When he wasn’t grooming me with sweet nothings like, “You and I will f-ck one day”, he was telling me to stop promoting my women’s leadership workshop in the chat.
I asked the women in the group what they thought of this complaint. They contacted him directly about it.
Shooing women to the online version of the Victorian drawing-room, while the men chatted freely, was acceptable. Discussing the act with other women was unacceptable.
As the digital drama unfolded, I emerged as the big bad wolf for outing the ringleader as a gender segregationist.
“I asked you nicely through DM, and you share a screenshot with everyone?”
I couldn’t have been more gaslit if I’d covered myself in gasoline and ran through a bonfire.
I distanced myself from the chats and eventually hit the “Exit” button. In an era of digital validation, that move was a gulp of fresh, freeing air.
4. Preserve your spirit
There are situations where you can neither prove your point, nor press “Exit”.
Perhaps it’s a colleague or institution you need to work with.
As I’ve written elsewhere, I’ve faced an absurd amount of ignorance from local authorities when I was attacked by a male neighbor.
After making death threats to residents in the middle of the night, this man got charged with a short sentence in prison.
Weeks prior, he’d threatened me with assault, grabbed me, called me a “bitch” and a “floosie”. In between, multiple police officers ignored, victimized, and blamed me for his behavior.
The man was deemed too old and mentally ill to know what he was doing. Oh, and he was white. Why was I “provoking him”?
“You clearly don’t like him,” a police investigator told me. “He’s not aggressive. You challenged him.”
Sure I did, by standing upright and with a camera in my hand in my own back garden.
I fought for 2 months for this man to lose his tenancy in the building and stay away from us. I was the main resident working with the authorities while also holding several jobs.
My mental stability was spiraling. I couldn’t afford to let him come back, but I couldn’t afford to shatter my health, either.
So the priority became to preserve my spirit.
Find my happy place, inside and out, where nothing can touch me.
Those emails can wait.
Do whatever it takes for Number 1.
And remember: Nobody’s perfect
I’ve been on the other side of the gaslight bandwagon.
Episodes I considered minuscule and anything but mal-intended, a friend would experience as vicious betrayals.
To manipulate someone’s feelings is not about being evil or angelic. We all find ourselves in the positions of victim and abuser, interchangeably.
As we practice awareness of others’ behavior, we become more attuned to our own.
We evolve. We progressively learn how to protect ourselves and others.
Most importantly, we take responsibility for our choices:
What we get into — and what we walk away from.
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Previously published on medium
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