The Psychology of Gaslighting: Reclaim Your Reality
“Gaslighting isn’t just about lies—it’s about erasing your confidence, your clarity, and eventually, your sense of self. In this episode, we get underneath the manipulation, breaking down how gaslighting works, why it’s so effective, and how to reclaim your truth before someone else rewrites it for you.”
Transcript
Welcome back to The Psychology of Us, I’m Professor RJ Starr and today, we’re talking about something that’s become a buzzword in recent years—gaslighting. Maybe you’ve heard it used in political discussions, relationship advice, or even casual conversations, but what does it actually mean? More importantly, how does it work, and why is it so psychologically damaging?
I want you to think about this for a moment. Have you ever had an interaction where you walked away feeling… unsettled? You were sure of something—something you saw, something you remembered, something you felt—but after talking to a particular person, suddenly you weren’t so sure anymore. Maybe they told you, “That never happened,” or “You’re overreacting,” or even, “You always do this.” And even though you knew what you experienced was real, doubt crept in.
That’s gaslighting. And it’s one of the most insidious forms of psychological manipulation.
The term comes from a 1938 play called Gas Light, later adapted into a film, where a husband slowly manipulates his wife into questioning her reality. He dims the gas lights in their home, but when she notices, he insists that nothing has changed. Over time, she begins to doubt her own perception, her own mind, her own sanity.
That story might be fictional, but gaslighting is very real. It happens in romantic relationships, in friendships, in workplaces, even at the societal level. And while some people use it deliberately as a way to control others, others may gaslight without even realizing they’re doing it.
So in this episode, we’re going to break it all down. We’ll explore the psychology behind gaslighting—how it works, why it’s so effective, and what it does to the brain. We’ll look at real-world examples, from relationships to workplaces to institutions. And most importantly, we’ll talk about how to recognize gaslighting when it happens and how to protect yourself from its effects.
By the time we’re done, you’ll have the psychological tools you need to stand firm in your own reality. Because no one—no matter how persuasive, how powerful, or how close they are to you—has the right to rewrite your truth.
Let’s get started.
Section II: The Psychological Mechanics of Gaslighting
Gaslighting isn’t just about lying. If it were, it wouldn’t be nearly as effective. It’s about eroding a person’s trust in their own perceptions—slowly, methodically, until they begin to doubt their reality entirely. And the reason gaslighting works so well has everything to do with how the human brain processes information, memory, and emotional regulation.
Let’s start with cognitive dissonance, a term coined by Leon Festinger in 1957. Cognitive dissonance happens when we experience two conflicting thoughts or realities at the same time. And when that happens, the brain hates it. We want things to make sense; we want our thoughts and experiences to align. So when a gaslighter presents a version of reality that directly contradicts our own—but does so with enough confidence, repetition, and authority—our brains scramble to resolve the conflict. And too often, that resolution comes at our own expense. We begin to doubt ourselves rather than doubt the other person.
Another key psychological principle at play is the illusory truth effect—the tendency to believe something is true simply because we’ve heard it over and over again. The brain is wired to equate familiarity with truth. This is why propaganda works. It’s why advertisers repeat the same slogans. It’s why political narratives, no matter how outrageous, can take root if they’re repeated enough times. And in the case of gaslighting, it’s why hearing “You’re too sensitive” or “You’re imagining things” over and over again can start to feel true, even when it’s not.
But gaslighting isn’t limited to just one-on-one interactions. It happens in workplaces, where a toxic boss or coworker can manipulate employees into questioning their worth or their competence. It happens in families, where parents might gaslight their children into believing their emotions are exaggerated or invalid. It happens at the societal level, too, when institutions rewrite history or downplay harm in ways that make people question their own lived experiences.
Let me give you a real-world example. There was a case study published in The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships that examined gaslighting in abusive romantic relationships. One participant, a woman in her late 20s, described how her partner would move objects around their apartment and then insist she had misplaced them. He would say things like, “You must be so stressed; you’ve been forgetting things a lot lately.” Over time, she started to believe him. She started to feel forgetful, absentminded, unstable. And that feeling gave him more power over her—because if she was the one who was unreliable, then surely he was the one who was right.
Now, I want to pause here. If this is sounding familiar to you, if you’ve ever been in a situation where someone consistently made you question your own perceptions, I want you to know—you are not alone. And more importantly, you are not crazy. Gaslighting is designed to make you feel that way, but recognizing it for what it is can be the first step in reclaiming your confidence and your sense of reality.
So, now that we’ve covered the mechanics of how gaslighting works, let’s move on to its effects—the psychological and emotional toll it takes on a person over time. Because the damage of gaslighting isn’t just about confusion in the moment—it’s about long-term erosion of self-trust. And that’s what we’ll explore next.
Section III: The Emotional and Cognitive Toll of Gaslighting
Gaslighting isn’t just frustrating in the moment—it leaves lasting psychological scars. When someone repeatedly makes you question your reality, the effects don’t just disappear once the conversation ends. Over time, gaslighting reshapes the way you think, the way you feel, and even the way your brain functions.
One of the most damaging effects of gaslighting is self-doubt. If you’ve ever been gaslit for an extended period, you might recognize the feeling: that constant, nagging uncertainty about your own memory, your own judgment. And once that self-doubt takes root, it spreads. You don’t just second-guess your conversations with the gaslighter—you start second-guessing everything. Did I really hear what I thought I heard? Am I being too sensitive? Maybe I am overreacting. The worst part? The gaslighter doesn’t even have to be around anymore for these thoughts to persist. The doubt becomes internalized.
From a neurological standpoint, gaslighting is a form of psychological stress, and stress has profound effects on the brain. When someone is repeatedly gaslit, their amygdala, the brain’s emotional center, becomes hyperactive. This is the same part of the brain that governs our fear response—the fight-or-flight system. When we feel emotionally unsafe, the amygdala kicks into overdrive, flooding the body with stress hormones like cortisol. And over time, chronic stress takes its toll.
At the same time, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for logic, reasoning, and decision-making, starts to shut down under prolonged stress. This means that when someone is gaslit for long enough, they actually lose some of their ability to think clearly and critically about their situation. This is one reason why people who have been in gaslighting relationships—whether romantic, familial, or professional—sometimes struggle to leave, even when the manipulation is obvious to outsiders. Their brains have been rewired to accept the gaslighter’s version of reality over their own.
I once had a colleague—brilliant, accomplished, respected—who found herself in a situation like this. She had been working under a supervisor who constantly undermined her confidence. If she brought up an idea, he’d say it was unrealistic. If she recalled a past discussion, he’d tell her she must be mistaken. If she voiced a concern, he’d tell her she was being “difficult.” Little by little, she started questioning herself. She began apologizing for things that weren’t her fault, deferring to his judgment on matters she knew better than him, and worst of all—she started believing she was the problem. It wasn’t until she confided in a friend who validated her experiences that she realized what had been happening. And once she saw it for what it was, the spell was broken.
This brings us to another key aspect of gaslighting: isolation. Gaslighters don’t just manipulate your perception—they manipulate your access to other perspectives. The more isolated someone becomes, the more powerful gaslighting becomes. It’s why abusers discourage their victims from talking to friends or family. It’s why workplace gaslighters foster environments of secrecy and control. The fewer people you have to validate your reality, the easier it is for a manipulator to rewrite it.
And this is where trauma bonding comes into play. Trauma bonding is a psychological phenomenon where a person develops an emotional attachment to someone who is harming them. It’s why people sometimes defend their gaslighters, make excuses for them, even feel guilty for questioning them. When intermittent reinforcement—occasional moments of kindness or validation—are mixed in with gaslighting, the brain clings to the positive moments, convincing itself that the relationship must be real.
If this sounds dark, it is. Gaslighting can leave people struggling with anxiety, depression, and in severe cases, symptoms of complex PTSD. But the good news is, once you can see gaslighting for what it is, you can start to break free from its grip. And the first step to doing that is learning how to recognize it when it’s happening.
So let’s talk about that next. What does gaslighting look like in everyday life? What are the red flags? And what phrases should immediately set off alarm bells? That’s coming up next.
Section IV: Recognizing Gaslighting – Key Red Flags
Gaslighting isn’t always easy to spot, especially when it happens gradually. It’s not as obvious as someone shouting, You’re wrong! or You’re imagining things!—though, sometimes, it is that blatant. More often, it’s subtle, insidious. It’s in the way someone reframes an event, downplays your emotions, or plants tiny seeds of doubt in your mind until you start doing the work for them—questioning yourself, rewriting your own experiences, and, eventually, distrusting your own judgment.
So how do you recognize it when it’s happening? What does gaslighting sound like?
Here are some of the most common phrases gaslighters use:
“You’re too sensitive.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“That never happened.”
“You always do this.”
“I was just joking. You take everything too seriously.”
“You’re remembering it wrong.”
“Everyone else agrees with me.”
Let’s pause here for a moment. Think about these phrases. On their own, they don’t seem especially harmful, right? Most of us have heard something like this before. But when they’re used repeatedly—especially in response to valid concerns, feelings, or observations—they serve one purpose: to make you question your reality.
One of the key signs of gaslighting is patterned invalidation. That means it’s not just a one-time misunderstanding or an offhand comment—it’s a repeated strategy that consistently undermines your confidence in your own thoughts and experiences. And this is where intentional and unintentional gaslighting come into play.
Some people gaslight deliberately as a means of control. They know they are distorting the truth to manipulate others. But others may gaslight unintentionally—because they don’t want to accept responsibility, because they were raised in environments where denial was a survival strategy, or simply because they don’t know how to handle conflict in a healthy way.
Either way, the impact is the same. The person on the receiving end walks away feeling confused, destabilized, and unsure of themselves.
Let me give you a real-world example. A study published in The Journal of Applied Social Psychology examined gaslighting in professional environments and found that employees who were gaslit by their supervisors often exhibited signs of imposter syndrome—the persistent belief that they weren’t good enough, despite clear evidence of their competence. In one case, a woman working in finance was repeatedly told by her boss that she was “lucky” to have gotten her position. Whenever she presented data, he would question her numbers, subtly suggesting she was making mistakes even when she wasn’t. When she proposed ideas, he would dismiss them—only to later present them as his own. Over time, she began to doubt herself. Was she really good at her job? Did she even deserve to be there? It wasn’t until she spoke to colleagues who validated her experiences that she realized what had been happening.
Gaslighting doesn’t just happen in relationships or workplaces. It happens within families, too. A parent might tell a child, That didn’t happen, or You always exaggerate things, conditioning them from an early age to distrust their own perceptions. It happens in friendships, where someone constantly reinterprets past events to make themselves the victim, subtly shifting blame onto you. And it happens in social and political spheres, where entire narratives are rewritten to make people question their lived experiences.
The key to recognizing gaslighting is paying attention to the patterns. It’s not about occasional disagreements or misunderstandings—those happen in every relationship. It’s about a consistent effort to destabilize your sense of reality.
Here’s a quick test: If you frequently find yourself apologizing, even when you haven’t done anything wrong… If you replay conversations in your head, trying to figure out if you really misunderstood something… If you feel emotionally exhausted after talking to a particular person, like you’re constantly trying to prove your version of events… You might be experiencing gaslighting.
So, now that we’ve identified what gaslighting looks like, the next step is learning how to protect yourself. What can you do when you realize it’s happening? How do you reclaim your sense of reality and break free from the cycle? We’ll explore that next.
Section V: Protecting Yourself from Gaslighting
Recognizing gaslighting is the first step—but knowing what to do about it is just as important. Because once you see it for what it is, you have a choice: You can continue questioning yourself, or you can reclaim your reality. And let me be clear—reclaiming your reality isn’t easy, especially if you’ve been gaslit for a long time. But it is possible.
So, let’s talk about how to protect yourself.
One of the most powerful tools you can use is documentation. Gaslighting thrives in ambiguity—when things are left open-ended, when conversations get twisted, when words get rewritten. One way to counteract that is by keeping records. Write things down. Keep emails. Save text messages. Not because you need to prove anything to anyone else, but because you need to anchor yourself in what actually happened. When someone says, I never said that, but you have it in writing, it’s much harder for them to manipulate you. And even when there’s no physical record, writing down your own experiences—what was said, how you felt—can be a powerful way to maintain clarity.
Another critical step is seeking outside perspective. Gaslighting thrives in isolation. When a gaslighter can make you feel like you’re the only one who sees things the way you do, their power increases. But when you share your experiences with a trusted friend, mentor, or colleague—someone who isn’t caught in the gaslighter’s web—you get something incredibly valuable: validation. That outside perspective reminds you that your reality is real.
I once had a former student—let’s call him Alex—who came to me after a long-term friendship had left him feeling completely disoriented. His friend would constantly rewrite their past interactions, making Alex seem like the unreasonable one. Every disagreement, every conflict, somehow became his fault. And over time, Alex started believing it. He even apologized for things that, deep down, he knew weren’t his doing. But one day, he decided to talk to someone else about it. And that conversation changed everything. His friend—who had also interacted with the gaslighter—immediately confirmed, No, you’re not crazy. This isn’t just in your head. That single moment of validation was enough to break the gaslighter’s hold.
That’s the power of perspective.
Now, what about setting boundaries? This is often the hardest part, because gaslighters hate boundaries. The moment you push back—even slightly—you’ll often see them double down. They might guilt-trip you, shift the blame, or even escalate their manipulation. This is why setting boundaries requires more than just words—it requires emotional detachment.
For example, instead of engaging in endless arguments about what did or didn’t happen, you can say:
“I’m not going to argue with you about my experience.”
“I know what I saw, and I don’t need you to agree.”
“I don’t feel comfortable having this conversation.”
Notice how these responses don’t invite debate. They shut it down. The goal isn’t to convince the gaslighter of your truth—it’s to stand firm in it yourself.
And sometimes, the best boundary you can set is distance. In cases of extreme gaslighting, especially when it’s tied to deeper emotional or psychological abuse, stepping away from the relationship entirely might be the healthiest option. This isn’t always easy, especially if the gaslighter is a family member, a long-time friend, or someone in a position of authority. But choosing to limit your exposure to someone who consistently distorts your reality isn’t selfish—it’s self-preservation.
One last thing I want to mention: rebuilding self-trust. Because even after you’ve recognized gaslighting, even after you’ve stepped away from the person doing it, the lingering effects don’t disappear overnight. It takes time to learn to trust yourself again. And one way to do that is through small acts of self-validation.
Try this: The next time you find yourself doubting your perception, pause. Ask yourself, What do I know to be true? What do I feel, in my gut, is real? Trust that feeling. Hold onto it. Because every time you choose to believe yourself—rather than let someone else rewrite your reality—you take back a little more of your power.
Gaslighting is designed to make you lose yourself. But you can always find your way back. And when you do, you come back stronger, more self-assured, and with a sharper awareness of who you are and what you stand for.
So, as we wrap up this episode, let’s talk about the big takeaways. What have we learned today, and what can you carry with you moving forward? That’s coming up next.
Section VI: Closing Thoughts & Takeaways
We’ve covered a lot in this episode, so let’s take a moment to reflect.
Gaslighting is one of the most insidious forms of psychological manipulation because it works slowly, subtly, and often without the victim even realizing what’s happening. It isn’t just about lying—it’s about making you doubt your own reality. And that doubt, when it takes hold, can shape how you see yourself, your relationships, and even the world around you.
We talked about how gaslighting exploits cognitive dissonance—that discomfort we feel when we’re presented with two conflicting realities—and how the illusory truth effect makes us more likely to believe something just because we’ve heard it repeated enough times. We explored the emotional toll gaslighting takes, how it activates the amygdala, shutting down rational thought, and why some people struggle to break free from its grip due to trauma bonding.
We also discussed how to recognize gaslighting—the red flags, the manipulative phrases, the patterns that emerge when someone is trying to control your perception. And most importantly, we talked about how to protect yourself: keeping records, seeking outside perspective, setting firm boundaries, and rebuilding trust in your own perceptions.
And that’s where I want to leave you today: with the reminder that your reality is yours to own. No one else—no matter how confident, how persuasive, how close they are to you—has the right to tell you that what you feel, what you remember, or what you experience isn’t real.
If this episode resonated with you, I encourage you to sit with it. Think about the relationships in your life. Reflect on times when you may have been gaslit—or, just as importantly, times when you may have unintentionally gaslit someone else. Because the truth is, we’re all capable of distorting reality in ways we don’t always realize. The key is awareness.
And if you have thoughts, questions, or experiences you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at ProfRJStarr@outlook.com. I read every message, and your stories help shape these conversations.
Thank you for spending this time with me today. If you found this episode helpful, consider sharing it with someone who might need it. And if you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to The Psychology of Us so you don’t miss our next conversation.
Next time, we’ll be diving into another fascinating topic—one that might just change the way you see yourself and the people around you. But until then, remember: Your reality is valid. Your perceptions matter. And no one can take that away from you.
I’ll see you next time.