Gaslighting: What it really is and how to address it

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Adulthood, But Better newsletter series. “When we’re challenged or confronted or told, ‘Hey, I remember this differently,’ we might think we’re being gaslit, when actually we’re being confronted on a behavior and asked to change it — as opposed to being told that we’re bad or that we don’t remember things correctly or that we’re emotionally unstable,” said Vanessa Kennedy, director of psychology at Driftwood Recovery, a residential rehabilitation center in Texas. Some people weaponize psychological terms like gaslighting when others simply do something they don’t like, which is wrong, said Monica Vermani, a Canada-based clinical psychologist and author of “A Deeper Wellness: Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety and Traumas.” Gaslighting is actually “a highly calculating form of manipulation — which involves the destabilization — of one individual by another over a protracted period of time,” Vermani said. Gaslighters “are typically emotionally abusive people — often with low self-esteem — who wish to control others rather than engage in mutually respectful relationships that require consideration, empathy, compassion and kindness,” Vermani said. They might say, “Even if you were to tell other people about what’s happening, you wouldn’t be believed because people know you to be irrational or make things up,” Kennedy said.