The three stages of gaslighting
Gaslighting is basically a step-by-step psychological process to manipulate and destabilize you. It’s repetitive information force-fed to you that builds up over time, undermining your faith in your own logic, reason, and judgement. It’s super hard to detect because it’s encoded on the subconscious “hard disk,” which isn’t overridden by the conscious “floppy disk.”
Stage one: gain trust and undermine it ⚭
The manipulator builds your trust in their unimpeachable integrity and motivations — usually through bullshit, self-promotion, and ingratiating propaganda. Once they have this trust, they start subtly undermining it until you doubt your own judgement, unsure which way is up. Eventually you’re relying on them completely to clear up your uncertainty and restore your sense of reality — which is in fact their distorted reality.
Stage two: defense and isolation ⚭
They isolate you, not only from your own sense of identity, but from the input and validation of others. You’re made to feel your opinion is useless, weird, wrong. You stop expressing yourself out of fear of ridicule, judgement, or punishment, because surely they know best.
It’s like a trauma bond or Stockholm syndrome, reducing you to complete reliance on them, regressing you to an infantile state where you need the all-knowing “parent” to tell you what to do and how to think.
Stage three: depression and powerlessness ⚭
You live in a state of extreme confusion and fear. You’re stripped of dignity and self-reliance, and exist in an information vacuum where you only see and hear what the manipulator deems relevant. PTSD symptoms often occur — constant dread, hyper vigilance, mind paralysis, nightmares, rage, and even violence. The process is complete and you’re reduced to a willing, passive accomplice in this very distorted reality.
source: Vanessa Beeley, Gaslighting: State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism
- previously: US exceptionalism is abusive narcissism
- see also: how to detect manipulation, and getting clear on your core values prevents manipulation
- related: confusion is a crucible — don’t discount that sense that something’s not right