My experience of gaslighting

N.B. this relates to a FORMER employer for whom I no longer work. I worked there for 3 years, over 1 and a half of which was abusive

Trigger warning: this contains allusions to self-harm and suicide. I wish to be open about my experience in the hope that others feel they can speak up and we can all end this form of abuse together.

When you think of gaslighting, you may be inclined to perceive it with respect to domestic or sexual abuse (usually against vulnerable women), or the government of a country to its subjects. However, gaslighting is something that is universal, and unfortunately more prevalent.

I was gaslighted.

The context in which I will be discussing gaslighting relates to the workplace. Indeed, this is where my gaslighting story begins.

What is gaslighting?

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes including low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilise the victim and delegitimize the victim’s beliefs. Instances can range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents occurred, to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

The term originated from the British play Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton[1]

The above is the Wikipedia definition of what gaslighting is. Whilst I will be pulling information from other sources, I wanted to write this primarily from my own experience of being gaslit.

How was I gaslit?

In no particular order:

• Someone who was clearly culpable had their existence denied by everyone except me, which made me question my sanity (as I felt I had become obsessed with holding this person to account). Any attempts that I made to raise this were trivialised as “obsessing over feelings of betrayal” or similar
• They denied that there was a proxy and that I had intended to communicate with someone I was advised not to. I made it clear that there was no attempt to communicate with them, I never wanted them to see it and that the person involved did not need to do anything (which I’d said). Everyone treated me as if I had contacted the person directly, without the proxy (who went behind my back). This is despite my protests and explanations of the truth. At the time, I stormed out of a work function and narrowly avoided jumping into the Waterfront to end my life. I was blamed for causing an epileptic fit from the person’s receipt of that undue correspondence, which I postulate was modified for maximum damage and intent. This was met with denial and blame, and any feelings of betrayal became feeling of blame for me.
• I am autistic. As such, I was entitled to the observation of protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. These were neglected which, under this Act, constitutes discrimination. I was denied that these characteristics even existed, and was constantly told that my organisation did all it could to support me. This is a lie, as I had an £85/HOUR specialist support worker paid for by the British taxpayer who was left out of all conversations
• My specialist support worker funded by the Department of Work and Pensions was constantly undermined as being my “mentor”, despite our insistence to the contrary. In the company’s parlance, a “mentor” is someone who works in a different part of the same company. All transcripts referred to him as my mentor, and as such outright denied his commission from the UK government
• When calling out the company’s abuses on public fora, I was shut down for being “derogatory” despite speaking truthfully. I was sent a threatening letter that appeared legitimate at first glance
• I went to a meeting, during which my manager drove me into a state of meltdown. Previously, I had a technical problem. After exhausting all my other options, I contacted someone I knew who could help but with whom we did not get along (though I tried to make things better between us, see later point). However, they did not respond to my professionally-written query due to personal issues. Unsure of what to do, I consulted an HR professional who told me to express my concern to their manager. I did so. After two weeks’ holiday, I returned to find out that nothing had been done. Instead, that manager had contacted my manager, who had decided to run a meeting with me. During this meeting, he berated for “obsessing” and ignored everything I said so much that I stormed out of the room and went to another room, wherein I attempted to hang myself from the ceiling with my lanyard. Whilst I failed, I did cut myself with my pass card and had to get a new one (which I was blamed for breaking). In a subsequent meeting, I pressed the manager about why he called the first one. He said that he knew all along that I was advised by HR to send the email, and was planning to tell me had I not stormed out! Moreover, he did not at any point acknowledge the self-harm and suicide attempt as anything more than an over-sensitivity on my part.
• A manager who had first met me in 2016, introduced by my manager, denied meeting me in order to claim that his fact-finding meeting with me was independent. I mentioned twice that we had definitely met, but he denied both times. It should also be noted that this manager was my manager’s manager, who would have been in constant correspondence with him about me
• My attempts to remediate a tension with another colleague were ignored, and labelled as an obsession with the friendship of that person. This is despite the fact that, on multiple occasions, I stated that I wanted nothing more than to be able to say “hello” or “morning” just as I would to any other colleague. This was severe to the point that I wasn’t even sure that I was speaking the same language as them
• I had made three requests: accountability for an individual who had made my working life terrible; closure with another colleague and a new, less toxic manager. These were noted once, but never spoken of again. They were never addressed
• The company denied that I was in a constant state of meltdown, which they caused, by claiming to be supportive of me. This placed the onus onto me for not taking their support correctly, as I was the one having the meltdowns. This is an extremely toxic behaviour characteristic of the changing method of gaslighting (Greenberg)
• The company would apply double standards to me, to my detriment. An example of this is where I complained when my mother commented about my weight. My manager dismissed my averse reaction by saying that my mother only said it as she cared about me. However, when I applied the same logic to a colleague at work that I cared about (in hindsight, this was wrong) by commenting on theirs. Rightly, I was admonished. However, the double standards made me feel like I was the exception, and that positive things did not apply to me at all
• The company then stated that any issues were caused by the fact that I did not suit large companies, rather than any action on their part
• They did not record my admission of responsibility for something, so that I began to doubt whether I had said it at all. Whenever I mentioned holding others to the same standard, I was led to believe that I was shirking my own responsibilities despite my vocal contradictions of this.
• My manager made a medical diagnosis of anxiety and depression, despite not being qualified to. He then passed off my problems as being related to my medication, denying their root cause
• “Friends” denied that a company was capable of gaslighting me, and said that it did not matter as, at the end of the day, I work and then go home. I would say that this is also a heinous form of gaslighting
• The company called me whilst I was on holiday. I stated to the lovely lady who called me that I did not wish to be contacted as I was on holiday, and to do so was to detriment my mental health by bringing my focus back. However, I was called the next day (I was still on holiday) and told about a catch-up. This catch-up was a lie, a meeting for which I had not prepared. I raised the fact that I was contacted whilst they knew I was on holiday
• I was deliberately isolated for three months with no contact, apart from when the Union had to pressure the company to give me support. They then denied that I was ever isolated but in constant support, citing the unwanted holiday correspondence to back that assertion. This is despite my saying that the correspondence was unwanted
• The semantics and nuances of my arguments were denied, and all analogies I drew were ignored. This made me seem insane, and projected an image that I was a danger to my office (as I intentionally made people uncomfortable and threatened). This was the impression that those in my company wanted to project onto me, and I began to believe it
• I was painted according to outdated autistic stereotypes, which made me doubt whether what I had said about my traits was actually being registered at all. This may not sound severe, but it made me feel like I did not matter as a person (my manager contradicted this). My manager would convey to my support, including licensed therapists, falsehoods: I do not like people, I do not like change, I do not understand any social interactions. For want of an analogy, this is like claiming you are accommodating towards the black community by running a black-and-white-minstrel show in full blackface and then using this to claim to be supportive towards them and movements such as Black Lives Matter.
• My qualifications and level of work were made to feel that they did not matter, whatever I did. Nothing could defend me
• Relocation was completely ignored, even though I requested this. This is given the fact that they and I knew that my problems only stemmed from being in that particular office environment.
• Though I was advised by HR, the same person who advised me also led me through my disciplinary process. This led to a conflict of interest, which was immediately denied by all parties. Moreover, my advice was denied as being improper “advice” despite my assertions to the contrary
• I was told that I was harassing others despite one-time correspondences with the aim of holding them to their actions. This was consistent with previous harassment entrained by meltdowns, which I regret, and so I believed that I was being harassed. This also seemed to be a consistent line used
• I was told to “let go” of something when I had only mentioned something once and in a time-frame consistent to the currency and urgency of the situation, as it was technically in the past.
• I had made a suggestion about how to improve a process, which was rejected on the grounds that I did not know how the process works. The correspondence was framed as if I was outlining how I thought the current process worked, though it was obvious that it was a suggestion on how to make things better. This made me doubt my intelligence, or whether I had answered the questions correctly.

Why would anyone gaslight me?

Gaslighting is perpetrated by those in power. In the eponymous play, the husband of the protagonist is trying to cover up their role in a murder. He knows that his wife suspects him, and so he resorts to dimming the gaslights whilst denying that the dimming took place. Here, the wife is trying to charge her husband, but the husband wants to ensure that the wife is distracted by her own sanity or perceived lack thereof. In my case, I was trying to hold the company responsible, and was gaslighted in order to focus the blame on myself.

Another reason involves an understanding of the meltdown cycle[2]. Whilst my former employer was not willing to engage with this constructively (they claimed that they had read the guidance on it, and so dismissed it, despite my knowing they they could not have possibly read it), it appeared that they grasped it at a rudimentary level. They knew that I would have these meltdowns, wherein I acted irrationally. This irrationality was obvious to anyone in the moment, and something that they exploited. They knew that they could not challenge me rationally, and so they exploited my vulnerability: they blamed me for the meltdowns, attributed all of my actions to them as intentional and then denied ever escalating me to the point of meltdown.

Conclusions

This has made for long and uncomfortable reading. However, I believe it necessary to tell my story. Gaslighting does happen at work as much as it happens anywhere else. It is a form of abuse, and must be called out for what it is. Anyone who does, conspires to or facilitates gaslighting should be grounds for instant dismissal, especially if it causes serious long-term psychological harm as it did to me.

What can you do?

Get evidence: writing, video, whatever. Present this to independent parties and challenge the lies with it.

Spark a conversation: use the hashtag #theydiddimthelights and raise awareness. Tell your stories too.