Gaslighting manipulates people into discounting their own sensations and perceptions and forces them to accept the gaslighter's imposed reality. Examples include denying another's pain, minimizing a child's abuse by emphasizing the abuser's feelings, and blaming rape victims by suggesting they provoked the assault. These tactics destabilize victims, erode self-trust, and reinforce the gaslighter's power. Normalization of denial, victim-blaming, and shifting accountability within social and cultural contexts reveals how effective gaslighting becomes within an abuse culture and how victims are undermined and isolated.
Gaslighting occurs when you manipulate someone into discounting their own experiences and replacing them with what the gaslighter imposes. A simple example is you tell someone you are in pain, and they respond, "You're fine." An adult strikes a child repeatedly and tells them, "This hurts me more than you." A well-documented kind of gaslighting occurs when a victim reports she was raped, and the response is, "You asked for it."
In other words, you feel the sensation of pain and are told not to trust your own experience and, instead, listen to the gaslighter who tells you to ignore your body registering pain as a sign of injury or illness. A child feels the extreme powerlessness and pain of being beaten, but the gaslighter says they are misreading the situation.
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