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According to author Karen Salmansohn, “Gaslighter avoids responsibility for their toxic behavior by lying and denying and making you question facts, your memory, and your feeling”
It is nothing but a serious and dangerous form of manipulation.
In this world, people use various types of gaslighting to take control over others. Let’s discover the various types of gaslighting and how to recognize them in your surroundings.
16 Major Types of Gaslighting
All over the world, people use different tactics for gaslighting others. In this article, we have mentioned primary types of gaslighting behaviors to understand them more deeply.
1. Reality Manipulation:
In this form of gaslighting, you get the feeling of losing your sanity slowly but have considerable effects. It is because your cheating partner is continuously trying to hit your ability to trust your memory and judgments.
Reality manipulation can be worse, for your cheating partner will deny all their actions which they have done in front of you. In this way, a gaslighter attacks your sense of reality and makes you feel doubtful about what you are observing and experiencing. Your partner wants to divert your thinking or to cover his tracks. Gaslighting can practice by a person regularly, and it is a sign of a serious and enfeebling form of emotional and psychological abuse. As a human, this reality manipulation is one of the most dangerous things we can do to another human, where they doubt their own reality and perception of reality.
2. The Straight Lie:
This type of gaslighting is least damaging but has the worse effects on human psychology. The straight-up lie tries to hit secret behaviors. In this type, your partner will lie about his routine activities like where he was, what they were doing, where they spent their time. How much money did they use to buy something? Their lie sounds so minor but creates the deep hits of mistrust on the relationship. Such kind of gaslighting behaviors will not only affect the relationship even build a sense of insecurity. The person will feel betrayed by his partner and by himself as your partner believed in all lies.
3. Coercion:
Coercing behavior is gaslighting, it is all about violent behavior and bullying other people with the element of pure manipulations. There are some noticeable signs of coercing behavior. You might have noticed that men or women who are involved in cheating are infamously charming and attractive. These people use their high ability of manipulations and humor. They have full command of showing the package of seduction in limitless shapes and types.
In this way, these cheating partners use these charming tactics to hide all their cheating behaviors for betrayed partners. This charm offensives behavior of the cheating partner is only a sign to cover their double life.
4. Pure Manipulation Pressure:
Pure manipulation pressure is a type of gaslighting behavior where a partner gives pressure to his partner through verbal communication. He tries to win every possible argument to succeed, this affects the emotional side of his partner. Every gaslighter who try to hide something from the partner or wants to manipulate his action or behaviors will definitely take help from verbal and emotional manipulations. He may use another form of it, for example, showing you charm on one side and the other side gives you pressure with their offset routine.
Coming home late at night, flirting behavior, friendship and talking to close friend more frequently, and not returning phone calls are all the signs that they are manipulating that it is their normal behavior nothing is harmful.
5. Bullying and Violent Behavior:
In this type, the gaslighters create boundary violations for the other person. Moreover, this behavior will look like yelling and physical violation, being threatened all the time with physical haram and abundance of finance and other needful resources. These signs will create deep down harm and mistrust feelings in between partners. These gaslighters do not understand the worse effects of their actions on the mental health of their partners. They only focus on what they want from the other person regardless of their needs and emotions.
The following gaslighting types are based on the general form that everyone can experience in life.
6. Unconscious Gaslighting:
We all have some unconscious sides of life, which is a fact that influences our lives and generates our behaviors. Such unconscious behaviors are not unconsciously happened in real terms, come from or deep consciousness that we preserve as a shadow of something impactful. These shadows can be our unapproved realities that can be socially unacceptable.
In the same way, people practice manipulation to settle things according to their desire. They unconsciously express themselves with some unacknowledged and unacceptable agendas. You can find this type of people in your life like at work, at home, and in schools. They can harm your physical or can harm your mental health. Essential things you can not recognize have harmful effects due to such gaslighting behaviors initially.
7. Gaslighting Domestically:
Domestic gaslighting is a form of domestic violence and abuse. This type of gaslighting can practice by any person in your family or roommate. Domestic abuse is the situation in a relationship where the other person tries to dominate and take charge over the other person. Domestic abuse and violence are tools of gaslighters that they use to control the thoughts and emotions of another person.
8. Feminist Gaslighting:
Feminist gaslighting is a type of gaslighting that focuses on feminism or its beliefs. Most of the time, we have experienced gaslighters targeting feminism and discourage their every action, more often in their daily lives. Gaslighting converts the conversation of the real need of the women towards the unusual issues underlying by such narrow-minded people. In this situation, social authorities can solve the problems of women in today’s life.
9. Financial Gaslighting:
Financial gaslighting is related to financial status and habits. This type of gaslighter will involve in activities that highlight your unravel truth about your financial independence. They try to pull your position down by saying such words in front of people.
10. Gaslighting in Friendship:
If your friend is hitting your thoughts that affect your emotions, it means he or she is gaslighting you. You might have experienced this but can not recognize what it is? For example, if a man and woman are with a friend who tries to change your thoughts or feeling. That friend is gaslighting you.
11. Gaslighting in Gender:
This type of gaslighting is related to the person who creates doubtful questions in your mind about the importance of your gender. These gaslighters try to make you insecure and less valued or create doubts in your mind about your gender. This toxic thought will create a self-deterioration view in you.
12. Government Gaslighting:
Government gaslighting is a large-scaled version of gaslighting that is usually gone without recognizing it. Here government creates some unknown perceptions about the reality of the people and leaves them without any interventions. It harms the mindsets of the people towards particular things.
13. Media Gaslighting:
The gaslighting by media in might be very clear to you. Nowadays, the media is so powerful and influences our thoughts. The kind of media gaslighting wants us to remember something or forget some things and if they want that to happen, they alter and reform the entire story and perspective of an even in our mind.
14. Narcissistic Gaslighting:
In this gaslighting type, gaslighters suffer from some mental disorders. They showed a high level of self-absorption, extreme egos, and have an absence of emotions and care for others.
15. Gaslighting by Parents:
In this type of gaslighting, parents gaslight their children and want their perception to influence the adolescent identity. Some prominent signs when parent gaslighting their children include:
First, when a parent denies the experience of their child. In this way, they invalidate the feeling of their child and create harmful effects. In another sign parents always refuse to accept the trust and considers the child wrong in all cases. Similarly, in a difficult emotional situation, parents should be as supportive as they need to be but gaslighting parents always make them feel worse about the conditions and give the whole blame on the child.
16. Self Gaslighting
You will find it strange that not only others can gaslight you. You can even gaslight yourself. Generally, self gaslighting is a cause of bearing abuse and violence for others. It creates distrust in you to stop believing in the sense of reality or your sanity.
Difference between Gaslighting and Manipulation:
Gaslighting is a way in which an individual manipulates another individual in a desire to take charge of others. This feeling leads the victim to question or doubt his reality. In this way, the victim does not raise the question of the gaslighter’s behaviors and actions in return. Manipulation is a kind of action in a relationship where this causes seriousness.
Manipulations lead to the situation where a person influences your words and behavior intended to make you feel that everything worse happens because of another person. It enhances your insanity and will make you crazy. In manipulation, the manipulator will use words and actions altogether in a wrong way even when he wants to use them positively.
All you need to do is to aware of yourself and have a conscious mind to make sure what is happening around you. And make yourself able to understand your own feelings and emotions.
Common Gaslighting Behaviors that Works:
All types of gaslighter use the same type of tactics to manipulate your sanity. You might feel confused after meeting a gaslighter or question yourself that what is wrong with me? Here are some tactics and common behaviors gaslighter predicable do to you;
- They lie to you on your face with any hesitations.
- Blaming you for all the makes that happened in the past
- Discrediting you in front of people is a tool of gaslighters. They spread rumors and make gossips, also pretend to be worried about you and backbiting with others.
- Confusing your thoughts and emotions may allow gaslighters to take control over you.
- In all bad situations and after every discussion, they shift the entire blame on you.
- After affecting and abusive behavior, they will try to make the situation smooth with loving and charming words. These words sound enough but are not authentic.
Conclusion
We have discussed all the primary types of gaslighting behaviors. These are considered forms of emotional and psychological abuse. We all are part of this abusive social world. Sometimes, the word abuse is harsh in its sound, and it is equally harmful to the reality of the person facing gaslighting.
In a similar situation, you see yourself believing that you are a victim of gaslighting. Must seek help from the people of your trust or do not hesitate in taking professional support. They will definitely support your side of the situation and take appropriate steps to stop this abusive behavior.
