The term gaslighting has become widely used in recent years, and with that has come some understandable confusion. While it’s an important concept to name, it’s also one that is often misused.
What Gaslighting Really Means
Gaslighting refers to a specific form of emotional and psychological abuse. It occurs when someone intentionally and repeatedly undermines another person’s sense of reality. This is done through ongoing behaviours that dismiss, deny, or distort experiences that the abuser knows to be true, with the aim of making the other person doubt their own perceptions, memory, or sanity.
The term comes from a play that was later adapted into the film Gaslight. In the story, a husband deliberately creates situations that cause his wife to question her mental stability. He dims the gas lights in their home, hides objects, and then denies these actions when she notices them. Over time, this erosion of her trust in herself allows him to manipulate and exploit her.
How It Shows Up in Relationships:
In modern usage, gaslighting describes a similar pattern of manipulation. It can occur in intimate relationships, families, workplaces, or other settings where there is an imbalance of power. What makes gaslighting distinct is that it is not accidental or careless. Gaslighting is an orchestrated pattern of behaviour, carried out with the clear intention of making someone doubt their reality when the abuser knows that person’s reality to be true.
Gaslighting vs Insensitivity
It’s also important to clarify what gaslighting isn’t.
Many people use the term to describe experiences of feeling misunderstood, dismissed, or disagreed with. This might include situations where someone is being insensitive, overly opinionated, or pushing their own perspective in a way that feels invalidating or undermining. These experiences can be painful and should absolutely be addressed, but they are not necessarily gaslighting.
If a person genuinely believes their own perspective to be true, even if they are wrong or expressing it poorly, this does not meet the definition of gaslighting. Miscommunication, conflict, defensiveness, or lack of emotional awareness can all cause harm, but they are different from intentional reality manipulation. Using the term gaslighting in these situations can muddy the waters and, in itself, become problematic as it is a serious accusation.
Gaslighting occurs when someone knows your perspective is accurate and deliberately attempts to replace it with a false version of reality in order to gain control or power over you.
How Therapy Can Help
Counselling/Therapy can provide you with a space to reflect on your relationship in order to assess if the behaviour is problematic behaviour rather than specifically manipulation in the form of gaslighting.
If it’s the former then this is something you can get help addressing, either through individual or couples therapy.
If you feel that the behaviour is in fact gaslighting, and is part of a pattern of manipulative behaviour, that your experience is being discredited by a partner who is seeking power over you: then I suggest that couples therapy might not be helpful.
Gaslighting is a type of coersive control. Your partner is likely to use couples therapy as a way to further their own narrative, or to punish you later for what you discolse in session. In this case you are safer to seek individual support.
If you believe you are being gaslit, please know that this behaviour is abusive and deeply harmful. You deserve support and to feel grounded in your own reality. Reaching out to a therapist or support organisations such as Women’s Aid, Men’s Aid, or Safe Ireland can be an important step toward safety, clarity, and healing.
You are not imagining it — and you don’t have to face it alone. We’re here to help.
If you would like to read more about control and self-esteem in relationships check out this post here.
First published at WellnessRooms.ie
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