Do gaslighters realize what they’re doing?

Adapted from an online discussion.

Dear Carolyn: Do you think people who practice gaslighting realize they are doing so? It seems like such a vicious form of manipulation. Could someone be unaware they are doing it? Just curious. No experience with it here.

Anonymous Dear Anonymous: I think they think they are just trying to get what they want. That, of course, involves some degree of selfish intent — a baseline conviction that they’re more entitled to get what they want than other people are, which allows them to justify achieving that at others’ expense. But while the effect can be vicious, I’m not sure the intent is always consciously so.

If you imagine gaslighters as emotional children in adult bodies, this interpretation makes sense:

When you’re little — under 10, let’s say, though all development involves a range — it’s pretty standard to try to manipulate things to your advantage. You try to get the best cookie for yourself, without connecting that to its effect on others (making someone else get the broken one). At some point, kids on an emotionally healthy path start to make that connection and stop elbowing everyone else aside to maintain their own advantage. They learn the more complex benefits of sometimes taking the broken cookie themselves and letting someone else have the good one.

The gaslighter is the person who never matured to that point. So when they see cookies up for grabs, they do whatever necessary to maneuver themselves toward the best one — I’m guessing like a child, without full consciousness that anyone else’s wants or needs are even a factor. Maybe they have some awareness of others’ needs but it just isn’t compelling enough to persuade them.

Think of some gaslighty phrases — “I’m not wrong, you’re wrong.” “You always do [something bad].” “I never do [something bad].” “You’re too stupid to see it.” “You’re so sensitive.” “Look what you made me do.” So many are straight off an elementary school playground.

Even the subtler, adult versions of gaslighting have the same foundation. For example: “I don’t know where you’re getting this — that’s not what I said. All I meant was [offering some more flattering spin on a crappy comment vs. taking responsibility for the actual crappy comment].” It’s really just, “I’m not wrong, you’re wrong,” but all prettied up to get by an adult’s sensors.

Imagine an emotional inability or unwillingness to say, basically: “You got me — I said [crappy thing], and you’re right to be upset. I am sorry. I was being defensive and obnoxious, and you didn’t deserve that from me.” Some people have senses of self that are too fragile to bear an admission of fault, to the point of turning the shame and ridicule on others.

And when people decide to spin their bad behavior instead of owning it, they force the other person in the transaction — the sentient witness to their crappy comments or behaviors — into questioning their own memory of what they actually heard. Gaslighting exploits our natural inclination, our desire, to believe what people are saying to us, especially loved ones.