What's The Difference Between A Gaslight Victim And A Gaslighter?

[joreth]

I have a question and I need for everyone interested in answering it to assume that I am asking in good faith, not trolling.

Are there any articles that directly compare and contrast the difference between being gaslighted and someone who is *actually* the horrible things that a gaslighter accuses the victim to be

Comments

[ext_2238475]

Good questions. I'm only starting to think about this, so this might not be fully-formed thoughts, but I think the only way to really tell the difference is by looking at the actions of the supposed abusers/victims, as well as the level of self-examination.

Even in this post you keep saying the gaslighter felt out-of-control/isolated/whatnot because of his victim's resistance to his actions. But he never once wondered whether or not he was really the abuser/in the wrong. If you told him he was in the wrong, he said you were hurting him.

By contrast, victims/survivors of abuse are constantly wondering if they're in the wrong. You can see it in the Captain Awkward advice columns -- people go, "Am I a horrible abuser for wanting to go out and see my friends and thereby leave my partner all alone some nights?" (for instance), and the answer is of course a resounding no. But they do ask the question

[virginia_fell]

I think I am reading you right, and yes! Yes it makes sense to me.

I have known some people who will treat the "am I being abusive?" question as a sort of... almost a form of self-injury? Rather than a question that can and must be answered as mercilessly-accurately as possible for ethical reasons.

So I've seen a lot of abusive people who're willing to do what looks like asking The Question, but the end goal is to prompt the people around them to stop them from flagellating themselves with the question rather than to get pointed but potentially-uncomfortable feedback.

[joreth]

I've seen that too. It wasn't asked as a form of self-reflection (although I fully believe that THEY fully believed it was), it was more for validation - what guys think the "do I look fat in this?" question is

[joreth]

Yeah, it makes sense. As I said I get it on an intuitive level. It's something that I can "recognize when I see it". But when both abusers and victims turn to the internet to find resources to help them identify and solve their relationship problems, they both find "are you a victim? Read this checklist to find out!" articles, and they BOTH see themselves in those articles

[virginia_fell]

Thanks for this. People can get away with some truly ridiculous behavior by doing batshit things while also being brittle and vulnerable, and acting out of that tenuous and insecure place. I don't think I've ever met a single gaslighter whose personal sense of reality weren't absolutely sincerely as mutable as their claims. People look for insincerity, intentionality, and control, because apparently everybody's afraid of being manipulated by Hannibal fuckin Lecter rather than any actual human

[joreth]

"From the inside, all abusers look like victims. They're not lying. They're not typically running long-game Machiavellian machinations that will end in their total dominion over all life."

This exactly. It's also what makes it possible for victims to also be abusers. No one is a White Hat Hero or Black Hat Villain and everyone has very convoluted and complex motivations for the things that they do. Psychology is messy. For once, I'm not actually trying to demonize abusers, I'm trying to (with this post) find solutions to get past the smoke screens that we all put up when we convince ourselves that we are the hero of our own stories so that we can start identifying our own misbehaviour and start taking responsibility for how we affect those around us - in other words, how to own our own shit.

I'm trying to find ways for people who are hurting others but who don't know it and possibly are unable to know it at this stage in their emotional development to learn to identify how and why they are hurting others, and also to show how

[virginia_fell]

I don't know how to explain that to people who effectively don't already have a receptor for that category of message, or who will use it as something other than data when they receive it. I mean, there are some general guidelines for talking through someone's personal filters so that the truth happens on their side after translation, but that requires so much knowledge and investment and vulnerability on the part of the person doing it that even though I still have some degree of confidence in my ability to manage it... I would much rather that job be in the hands of someone with the necessary training that lets them charge for their time and energy.

There might be some shortcuts? Some general principles that could be a little more widely-applied. My best hypothesis right now for a starting point would be to help people see the difference between examining their behavior even when it hurts, and examining their behavior specifically so that it will hurt.

[joreth]

So, here's an example from that same gaslighter in my story. He, like many of the abusers I have seen who had their cover blown over the last few years when a relationship imploded, has been going around the internet accusing his victim of being the real abuser. He's advocating for more dialog about abuse in poly and kink communities. He's passing around articles with "How To Tell Your Relationship Is Abusive" and "How To Identify A Narcissist". He genuinely believes that he was the victim

[joreth]

... continued

[joreth]

...continued

[blackrosemoth]

I think you made a great point about victims being able to be abusers as well. I wish I had some good resources to share but all I've got is that I've actually had a few discussions about this exact thing, how gaslighting looks very much similar from the victim side as it does in the abuse side. And I have been close with people in a relationship where each one performed some gaslighting style abuse in order to try to assert their own agency when they did not have the skill set to do so. It is/was quite a mess

[joreth]

There was an article that went around a while ago, based on a book I think, about how to tell if someone is a sociopath. I didn't read it, but I think the big attraction was that people would read it and at first would think "OMG everyone I know is a sociopath!" and then the next thought was "OMG I AM a sociopath!" Which, of course, they weren't, and that wasn't the point of the article.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think plenty of people would actually read an article, if it was written the right way, that had the reader evaluate their own behaviour on some kind of manipulator scale. I would love to see that kind of approach take off.