5 Types of Gaslighting: What They Are, Examples, & How to Respond

What Is Gaslighting?

Gaslighting is a form of psychological and emotional abuse where the abuser manipulates and distorts the truth in order to gain power and control over the victim.¹ When the abuser gets the victim to question their grasp on reality, they cultivate a relational dynamic where the victim looks to the abuser to confirm the accuracy of their perceptions and to make the “final call” on things. This shifts power away from the victim and to the abuser.

Gaslighting is one of the more common manipulation tactics abusers use, and it can occur in any type of abusive relationship– with close family, work colleagues, or romantic partners. Gaslighting is most common in relationships where there already is a power differential (ex: from a boss or a parent), or it can be used to create a power differential where there was not one before, for example, in romantic relationships, friendships, and within entire families. It’s also important to note that gaslighting behavior is more common among abusers who have certain mental health disorders, such as persons with narcissistic, borderline, and antisocial personality disorder.²

5 Different Types of Gaslighting

Gaslighting can affect individuals differently, depending on the type of gaslighting, the relationship, and the manipulator. Gaslighting can be present in any relationship – with a parent, romantic partners, friends, coworkers/bosses, strangers, and even yourself! It’s possible to gaslight yourself. While gaslighting can be negatively impactful in any relationship, it’s particularly important to focus on taking care of your mental and emotional health when you experience it in relationships with power differentials.

While there are main types of gaslighting, these types can overlap, and a gaslighter may even use more than one type at once.

Below are five different types of gaslighting:

1. Coercion

Coercive gaslighting is the manipulation of a person’s reality in order to persuade them to do something by using threats or force. This can take many forms – emotional abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse/violence, and even financial abuse, among others. Usually, there is nothing actually wrong with the victim, and coercion is the abuser’s way of hiding something they themselves are struggling with.

Below are examples of how gaslighters use coercion:

• Your partner convinces you you have a medical problem because they don’t think you are intimate enough when they are really struggling with sex addiction
• Your partner is insecure about going to church alone, so they convince you you are a bad person without religion until you cave and attend services with them
• Your parent insists you don’t spend enough time with them, so they withdraw their affection every time you choose to spend time with someone else
• Your partner is insecure about how others perceive their income status, so they are demeaning about every item you wear that isn’t designer branded to convince you to buy more designer brands
• Your parent wants a grandchild, so they bombard you with research articles on different indicators that you may not be able to have children until you decide to have children
• A partner showers you with gifts and affection to distract you from your suspicions of them cheating

2. Outright Lying

A gaslighter will use lying in order to establish power and control by positioning their grasp on reality as superior to the victim. The lies can be outright the opposite of the reality you’re seeing, or they can be more subtle and harder to detect. While there are many common gaslighting phrases abusers use, most of them will focus on “crazy-making” directed toward their victims.

Once you notice a pattern of gaslighting that includes a pattern of lying, it can also be helpful to consider if you’re dealing with pathological lying or narcissistic gaslighting to help figure out the best path to move forward.

Below are some examples of how gaslighters lie:

• They lie about not attending an event, even though you remember them being there
• They claim they never took money out of your mutual savings account, even though you have evidence of the transaction
• Insisting that you’re misunderstanding inappropriate flirtatious texts on their phone, even though they were obvious about their intentions with the other person
• A coworker telling you they never received an email from you to prepare for a work presentation, even though you have the outgoing message in your email
• Telling you that they have not continued to go to the casino, even though there are thousands of unaccounted dollars missing from your shared budget

3. Scapegoating

Scapegoating is the deflection of blame away from the responsible party and onto another person. Oftentimes this is used to deflect responsibility for things that would severely damage the relationship or the person’s position of power and control.

It may be easy to recognize that you’re not the one to blame when you first encounter scapegoating, but the power of this one lies in repetition. When you have heard this same message many times in slightly varying ways, it’s easy to start questioning if you’re the one that’s actually missing something.

Below are some examples of how gaslighters scapegoat:

• Your partner tells you, “I wouldn’t have cheated if you gave me more attention and intimacy.”
• Your boss tells you that a major work project failed specifically because of your contribution’s imperfections when it was really their lack of coordination with the team as a whole.
• You may even be the scapegoat of an entire family. For example, your entire family shares the narrative that you (one of the siblings) are responsible for the parents’ divorce, even though your parents were also struggling with communication/finances/etc.

4. Reality Questioning

Reality questioning and manipulation are what people typically think of when they hear the term “gaslighting” because this is the basis from which the term was coined. The movie Gaslight featured a man who manipulated his wife’s reality to make her seem crazy in order to get her committed to a psychiatric facility, all because he wanted to get her expensive jewels.³

Reality manipulation is possibly one of the most damaging forms of gaslighting because of the emotional and psychological distress it causes. It eliminates a person’s sense of self, ability to trust in themselves, and overall autonomy over their lives and choices.

Below are some examples of how gaslighters use reality manipulation:

• A parent insists that it didn’t happen that way and you are remembering things incorrectly when you share a difficult or traumatic childhood memory
• A partner tells you you’re remembering their inappropriate texts to another person incorrectly, and they’ve since deleted the inappropriate texts
• A coworker tells your boss that they asked for your contributions to a project, and you never got back to them, even though they never actually talked with you
• A partner insists they told you about a crucial event you’d need to attend together, even though you distinctly remember discussing other plans for that day with them

5. Trivializing

Trivializing can also be considered minimizing or dismissing information, accomplishments, or contributions by another person. The purpose of this is to make the other person feel like their thoughts, feelings, and contributions are unimportant and insignificant. This gives the gaslighter the final say in what is important, which gives them more power and control.

Trivializing is one of the more common forms of gaslighting, and it can happen in many relationships. Sometimes, it is unintentional and not meant to be malicious. When you encounter this, it can be helpful to consider whether there has been a pattern of this over the course of the relationship and how it feels to be on the receiving end of this particular relationship.

Below are some examples of how gaslighters use trivializing:

• A parent tells you you are overreacting and “It wasn’t that serious” when you share a difficult or traumatic childhood memory
• Your partner tells you, “You’re so needy and controlling” when you ask them to let you know they make it home safely after a night out without you
• Your boss makes a joke to the entire team that you think you’re better than everyone else because you asked to be paid for the overtime they’ve been making you work
• Your partner tells you about how awful their friend treats their partner and tells you to be thankful they’re a better partner than their friend. (This is sometimes referred to as “brightsiding.”)
• When you’ve reached the limit of being “teased” within your family and get angry, a gaslighter might continue the gaslighting by saying, “Can’t you take a joke?”

Impacts of Gaslighting

Gaslighting is an incredibly damaging and painful form of emotional and psychological abuse. It makes a person feel like they do not know themselves, they cannot trust themselves, and they cannot trust their perceptions of the world. Gaslighting can foster self-doubt, self-loathing, and withdrawal from other important relationships. Repeated and consistent exposure to gaslighting can increase the risk of developing a diagnosable mental health condition, such as anxiety, depression, or PTSD.⁴

Impacts of gaslighting may include:

• Low self-esteem: Gaslighting is an external presentation of negative perceptions about a person. When a person internalizes this into their own negative self-talk, it can cultivate low self-esteem.
• Self-loathing: If negative self-talk escalates to the point of being highly critical, demeaning, and insulting of oneself, a person’s low self-esteem may spiral into self-loathing.
• Anxiety: Gaslighting can result in symptoms of anxiety because the nature of this tactic is to make the victim question and worry whether they can trust themselves. Worry and fear are cornerstone symptoms of anxiety disorders.
• Withdrawal from relationships: If a gaslighter uses relationships as ammunition against their victim, they may isolate themselves in order to avoid the conflict between how they feel and how the gaslighter is saying everyone else feels.
• Depression: Low mood, helplessness/hopelessness, and feeling worthless are major symptoms of depression, and the constant self-questioning that gaslighting creates can easily foster an environment for developing these symptoms.
• Trauma reactions/symptoms: The constant self-questioning that gaslighting induces may also induce trauma symptoms, such as avoidance, negative internalized beliefs, and hypervigilance.⁵

How to Respond to Different Types of Gaslighting

Gaslighting can be incredibly hard to catch and disrupt while it is happening. Oftentimes as you’re reflecting on the accuracy of a gaslighting comment, the gaslighter has moved the conversation on in order to make it difficult to return to their manipulative statement. However, there are strategies that you can use to address this dynamic.

Before considering any strategies, the most important factor to consider is your safety. Chronic gaslighters are engaging in emotional and psychological abuse in order to gain and maintain control and power over their victims. Before confronting or trying to change a gaslighting dynamic, first consider how this person may react and take precautions to safeguard your physical, mental, and emotional health.

Most of the time, gaslighting is a tactic used by abusers to gain and keep control. However, sometimes gaslighting is a way to avoid conversations about hard topics, like feelings and difficult decisions. If the gaslighter is not abusive but is avoiding tough topics, they might be more receptive to working through it and facing the problem

Below are some ways to respond to different types of gaslighting:

Know When to End the Relationship

If you cannot see a future where this person can respect your boundaries and stop gaslighting you, it may be time to consider ending the relationship. Relationships without a foundation of safety and mutual respect are unsustainable in the long term and will negatively impact your mental and emotional health. Leaving a toxic relationship can be difficult, particularly if it involves breaking up with someone, but everyone deserves to be in health relationships.

Trust Your Gut

Listening to and trusting your inner experiences and feelings is the most important thing to do when addressing gaslighting and overcoming self-doubt. Your inner reaction is the beginning of processing external information, so tuning into your gut can help you figure out the validity of others’ statements and to take inventory of how this is impacting you.

Lean on Your Support Network

If you think you may be in a manipulative or abusive relationship, engaging with people you trust outside of this relationship is crucial. Trusted family and friends can help give you perspective on the validity of the gaslighting, support you emotionally, and help give you the courage to leave a difficult relationship if needed. Oftentimes a gaslighter will isolate their victims by saying, “Your friends and family all agree with me”, but you may find that this isn’t true when you talk to your friends and family yourself and explain the situation.

Present the Evidence to Them

If you want to try to preserve the relationship that contains gaslighting, and there is reason to believe that the gaslighter is not being intentional or malicious with the gaslighting, having a conversation with them is the first step in changing this dynamic. Talk to them about how the gaslighting impacts you mentally and emotionally, present evidence of the times that your perception was not entirely wrong, and how you’d like to see this change in the future. It is important to note that this approach is only useful if the other person is willing to listen and take accountability for their actions, which is not true with all gaslighters.

Outline Your Boundaries to Them

If you have talked about how the gaslighting impacts you and the other person was receptive, it can also be helpful to follow up with a conversation about healthy boundaries related to the person’s behavior. It’s important to outline your tolerance and boundaries related to gaslighting. However, it’s also important to address other behaviors contributing to the other person feeling like they are allowed to gaslight you. This may include things like having time for yourself to pursue your own hobbies, time with family and friends or putting a stop to any triangulation.

Focus on Your Own Healthy Coping Skills.

In order to maintain healthier boundaries, it is imperative that you also have your own healthy coping mechanisms. These will help to keep you calm when you have to have difficult conversations when you need to remind yourself of your positive qualities, and with managing any of the residual damage from the gaslighting you’ve experienced.

Consider Seeking Therapy

The effects of gaslighting can last for a long time, and they can impact virtually every aspect of your life. If the impacts of gaslighting affect your functioning (within your work, home, school, family, social, and self-care realms), it may be time to consider seeking professional help. If you’re feeling ready to get started, check out this guide on how to find the right therapist, or check out an online therapist directory to find a therapist today.

In My Experience

In my experience, noticing gaslighting at the moment and challenging it can be extremely difficult. These moments often come and pass so quickly that we can even feel gaslit into questioning if the interaction even happened. My experience leads me to emphasize how critically important it is to have objective social support persons to validate what you’re experiencing and feeling, as well as how helpful it can be to work with a professional therapist on the residual impacts of gaslighting.

It also feels important for me to speak to the fact that nobody is deserving of emotional and psychological abuse – no matter how the gaslighter twists the story. You are deserving of support, respect, and safety in your relationships. Giving yourself the love and respect you aren’t/didn’t get from your gaslighter can be a powerful place to start.