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Exploring the Concept of Institutional Gaslighting

A therapist attempts to explain this term in normal words.

Synthia Stark
Accompanied by Enervation
3 min readDec 13, 2022

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Photo by Михаил Лазаренко on Pexels — a close-up image of the Buckingham Palace gate.

I’ll be honest — I have yet to watch the Netflix series “Harry & Meghan”. Apparently, “institutional gaslighting” was brought up and I’m a therapist, so my plan is to dissect this term briefly.

No, I won’t diagnose or make baseline claims about what regular gaslighting is or isn’t. There are enough pieces out there that explain it in great detail.

What I can say is that gaslighting is a legitimate and slow-burning form of harm where the other person undermines what you did, said, and experienced over a period of time, until you are left doubting that you really said or did certain things.

It is often used as a very subtle manipulative tactic, often by affluent and powerful individuals who have little regard for the well-being of others. They know how to dial up the charm so that the other person is left conflicted as to whether or not this person is truly helping them or not.

Usually, this person is someone close to you, like a family member, a romantic partner, a manager, and many more. The best way to escape those situations is to gradually limit your time with those people, resulting in either reduced contact or no contact.

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Accompanied by Enervation
Accompanied by Enervation

Published in Accompanied by Enervation

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Synthia Stark
Synthia Stark

Written by Synthia Stark

Canadian Therapist & Former Researcher | 5x Top Writer | Writing about mental health, psychology, science, etc. https://linktr.ee/SynthiaS

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