bartons:

illness:

illness:

social media ruined the word gaslight pretty much the minute they got ahold of it and even though people disbelieve victims of abuse as is, it’s pretty infuriating

you cannot gaslight an entire class of people “collectively”. you cannot be gaslit by a complete stranger over the internet. gaslighting is ONLY about an intimate relationship between someone who is emotionally abusive and their victim.

if you use the word differently, it loses all of its meaning. and that’s basically what has happened to it because people want to exaggerate. use another. i can’t remember the last time i’ve seen it actually used correctly, as in abuse.

addition: gaslighting doesn’t mean “not listening” to someone. it doesn’t mean “acting like someone is crazy”. it doesn’t mean “lying”. it doesn’t mean “being stubborn”. it is a pattern of emotional abuse within a relationship.

yeah fr

gaslighting isnt just a synonym of abusing. to ‘gaslight’ is to specifically make someone doubt their own memory/sanity by denying things. it doesnt always happen in abuse and you cant use it as an umbrella term to describe all of abuse, because it means one specific thing

also, it’s not just any form of manipulation. its extreme and serious and very intricately planned