The Gaslight Effect ─ How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life

Are You Being Gaslighted?
Check for these telltale signs:
1. You constantly second-guess yourself.
2. You wonder, “Am I being too sensitive?” a dozen times a day.
3. You wonder frequently if you are a “good enough” girlfriend/wife/employee/friend/daughter.
4. You have trouble making simple decisions.
5. You think twice before bringing up innocent topics of conversation.
6. You frequently make excuses for your partner’s behavior to friends and family.
7. Before your partner comes home from work, you run through a checklist in your head to anticipate anything you might have done wrong that day.
8. You buy clothes for yourself, furnishings for your apartment, or other personal purchases thinking about what your partner would like instead of what would make you feel great.
9. You actually start to enjoy the constant criticism, because you think, “What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.”
10. You start speaking to your husband through his secretary so you don’t have to tell him things you’re afraid might upset him.
11. You start lying to avoid the put-downs and reality twists.
12. You feel as though you can’t do anything right.
13. You frequently wonder if you’re good enough for your lover.
14. Your kids start trying to protect you from being humiliated by your partner.
15. You feel hopeless and joyless.

Your husband crosses the line in his flirtations with another woman at a dinner party. When you confront him, he asks you to stop being insecure and controlling. After a long argument, you apologize for giving him a hard time.

Your boss backed you on a project when you met privately in his office, and you went full steam ahead. But at a large gathering of staff—including yours—he suddenly changes his tune and publicly criticizes your poor judgment. When you tell him your concerns for how this will affect your authority, he tells you that the project was ill-conceived and you’ll have to be more careful in the future. You begin to question your competence.

Your mother belittles your clothes, your job, your friends, and your boyfriend. But instead of fighting back as your friends encourage you to do, you tell them that your mother is often right and that a mature person should be able to take a little criticism.

If you think things like this can’t happen to you, think again. Gaslighting is when someone wants you to do what you know you shouldn’t and to believe the unbelieveable. It can happen to you and it probably already has.

How do we know? If you consider answering “yes” to even one of the following questions, you’ve probably been gaslighted:

Does your opinion of yourself change according to approval or disapproval from your spouse?

When your boss praises you, do you feel as if you could conquer the world?

Do you dread having small things go wrong at home—buying the wrong brand of toothpaste, not having dinner ready on time, a mistaken appointment written on the calendar?

Gaslighting is an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that is difficult to recognize and even harder to break free from. That’s because it plays into one of our worst fears—of being abandoned—and many of our deepest needs: to be understood, appreciated, and loved. In this groundbreaking guide, the prominent therapist Dr. Robin Stern shows how the Gaslight Effect works and tells you how to:
Turn up your Gaslight Radar, so you know when a relationship is headed for trouble

Determine whether you are enabling a gaslighter

Recognize the Three Stages of Gaslighting: Disbelief, Defense, and Depression

Refuse to be gaslighted by using the Five Rules for Turning Off the Gas

Develop your own “Gaslight Barometer” so you can decide which relationships can be saved—and which you have to walk away from

Learn how to Gasproof Your Life so that you’ll never again choose another gaslighting relationship

Robin Stern, Ph.D. is the associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and an associate research scientist at the Child Study Center at Yale. She is a licensed psychoanalyst with 30 years of experience treating individuals, couples, and families. Dr. Stern is also on the faculty of Teacher's College, Columbia University, and the author of Project Rebirth. Dr. Stern was a founding member of the Woodhull Institute, where she spent 15 years creating and facilitating development programs for women leaders. She regularly consults with schools and companies around the world, and since 2012 has worked with Facebook to develop tools that help adults and children develop emotional intelligence and resolve online conflict.