Someone recently told me that they sometimes feel gaslighted around me because I effortlessly make them question their beliefs and feelings. Hearing that didn’t sit well with me, especially since I’ve been pondering the question in the title for quite some time.
I’ve always been quite critical of myself and don’t consider myself a very nice person. When I discover that someone doesn’t enjoy being around me, I don’t blame them one bit. It’s not like I’m intentionally mean or abusive; quite the opposite, actually. I have very strong morals. However, this includes things like not lying, which means I always speak the truth, even if not everyone likes hearing it. I don’t conform to many social norms expected of me.
Despite all of this, I have deep relationships with several people and especially the elderly and for example the parents of my past girlfriends have all liked me a lot. But I can’t help but wonder why they don’t see me as I see myself. I worry that I’m hiding the true me so well that people don’t actually like me, but rather the facade I unknowingly maintain. Then again, a true psychopath probably wouldn’t be second-guessing themselves in this manner.
No, mainly because even when I try to manipulate people, I usually don’t succeed.
You should talk to a therapist.
Asking this question and being self critical is a good sign.
Being told you are gaslighting is NOT necessarily a sign you are a psychopath. They could be gas lighting you. Or you could just have some other blind spots about your own behavior.
People throw gaslighting around willy nilly now, so it could jest mean OP made them think about some opinion they had.
It’s very hard to say without knowing the person, but I think your advice is good.
You should talk to a therapist.
Definitely. This.
It’s really the only good answer OP is likely to get on the internet.
Well, if I am, I’m really bad at it.
I can’t convince a mouse to eat cheese.
Offer peanut butter, they like that better.
I’m gonna guess that “Quite the opposite; I have very strong morals. This however icludes things like not lying which means that I always speak the truth and not everyone likes hearing it. I don’t follow many of the social norms expected of me.”
is the reason for this
“A person recently said to me that they sometimes feel gaslighted around me because I so effortlesly make them question their own beliefs and feelings.”
It’s good to remember that most of our society is based on lying, and that most people prefer someone nice, rather than someone honest.
The times that I have to tell someone the uncomfortable truth happens far less often that you’d think. Many of the white lies we tell are completely unecessary.
Hmm, you say they’re unnecessary, and yet you are in a situation where people say they’re uncomfortable around you…
If you don’t bother with white lies and think that goes down okay, then maybe the other person is pretending they’re okay with it when it does actually bother them.
So they’re then telling a white lie of their own to spare your feelings, or just because they want to move on from the subject.
most people prefer someone nice, rather than someone honest
I try to identify those people fast to keep away from them.
Honestly it’s almost impossible for me to think of someone who isn’t like that. Have you found people who aren’t…?
I’m autistic and have much better luck finding “plain” conversation with other autistic people. No idea I’d you are or aren’t but you’ll welcome to join the community of you aren’t a bullshitter.
It can be a little weird to get used to because the whole world lies, but man, is it refreshing once you do and have the trust/rapport to just speak plainly with friends.
I appreciate this response. I’m not autistic but sometimes I have thought I could be on the spectrum. Nothing diagnosed yet though. I have commented and lurked in that community here and have sometimes felt like I have some things in common with y’all. Have a great evening.
Me. If I found out that you’re being nice but dishonest, I’ll cut my interactions with you almost immediately, and the ones I’m forced to have will be minimal and devoid of any personal information, as you have proven not to be trusthworthy.
Depends. Are they nice before they’re honest? Or are they nice while also being honest?
They aren’t mutually exclusive labels, so you might just be a positive person that doesn’t pick up on nefarious clues so well and thusly aren’t going to recognize the kind of casual dishonesty being referenced here.
I think you may be assuming gaslighting is something only done by the wicked. Some “nice” people, who I think they’re referencing, will be “nice” in incredibly cruel ways. Those are the people to avoid. People who will call you “friend” and be friendly, but then not even mention or invite you to their wedding, or ghost YOU over drama in their life … all forms of people running friendships dishonestly while still putting a “nice” front on is what I think of when I hear bad nice guy. There are A LOT of them depending on what social circles you roam; people jockying for social status using kind words without kind action.
Yes, people universally like “nice” people, but not all “nice” people are good people.
While people can be polite and honest, it is clear that they are talking about someone who cares far more about one than the other.
I know, I’m just trying to describe the type of person who is nice but not good, since they said they cannot think of someone like that.
I can think of only three people I have ever known out of the thousands of people that I have interacted with in my lifetime that actually preferred honesty over politeness.
I prefer honesty.
Yeah I kind of feel that way too. People will even say they want the truth but they often don’t. I even fall into that category sometimes though I generally think I would much prefer the truth. I kind of get it, the truth is really hard to deal with sometimes. But I can’t understand always putting it behind “being nice”.
I have learned to not volunteer anything that is less that gushing praise if someone doesn’t ask first. I also don’t ask questions where I might not like a negative response, although that hasn’t even come up in a few years as my ability to take and process criticism is pretty solid.
This is a cultural value, fyi. You might enjoy another culture more if that’s an option for you.
I’m an immigrant in Germany studying to be a German teacher for new immigrants. As part of our curriculum, we were given this question to answer for ourselves and share with the group (about 80% German, with one each South American, North American, and Russian student, plus five Asian students, in grad school):
your roommate, whom you like and want to preserve a good relationship with, has spent many weeks knitting herself a sweater and she’s really excited about it. You see her around campus and can tell from afar that she’s wearing the sweater and that you don’t like it. What do you say to her?
The Asian and Russian students wouldn’t address it; the American students would say that it was very cool that she’d actually made her own clothing, which they both believed would be true, if oblique; and the German students would tell her it didn’t look good, though about half would also try to find something they did like about it (fit or color or knit pattern) to compliment as well.
That’s a tiny sample size, obviously, but it was interesting to me and I found it completely insane that some Germans would just tell their roommate that they didn’t like her sweater. My old roommate told me he thought my lipstick was too dark on my wedding day when I was showing him pictures several weeks later, though. Unfortunately the class came afterwards and I was very annoyed with him at the time. I still kind of am, but I’m trying to be culturally accepting 😅
Nobody likes the bad kind of “honest” where someone is constantly an asshole for no reason, then hides behind “well would you rather I lie about my hatefulness?” as though it’s the honesty that people dislike rather than the views they’re being honest about.
But plenty of people appreciate honesty from those who also happen to be otherwise good people.
That isn’t honesty, that is being a bully with an excuse. Those people tend to be inconsistent enough that it becomes clear they are not even being honest.
Agreed, but they call it honesty, so when someone says they’ve never encountered a single person who appreciates their honesty, it’s my first suspicion.
That might reflect on you just as much as the people you’re suspicious of. What I’m talking about is that someone can ask your honest opinion, you break it to them as gently as you can, and they are obviously crushed by it. There are other varieties of it too, but that’s the one that sucks the most and illustrates that honesty is just not really what most people want if it’s at all a difficult truth.
If you want to play the “I know you’re a shitty person by one comment on the internet” game, go ahead.
Something being my first suspicion is quite different from it being a knowledge claim.
No, because I knowingly manipulate the people around me. I’m firmly against violence, including emotional and verbal violence, so I make the effort to manipulate people with misdirection and incentives rather than threats or punishment.
Every manipulates others all the time, whether they know it or not, whether they admit it or not. The important thing is to do it ethically, and how can you do that if you’re not aware of the effects you have on others?
It’s good that you are engaging in self-examination in this way. I might suggest that there’s a difference between being honest and being blunt. Just because you refuse to lie does not mean you always need to tell the truth, rather that you only tell the truth. You’re allowed to keep silent, to leave a true-but-painful confrontation unspoken.
The important thing is to do it ethically
No, the important thing is not doing it for nefarious or merely self-serving purposes.
I think most people would agree those are ethical concerns.
But not the only ones. There are almost infinite ethical considerations beyond being self-serving or nefarious.
Well, sure. Not sure if you’re disagreeing or clarifying, honestly.
Your comment is too broad. I’m tightening my position back.
Oh I definitely omit information. It’s just that I don’t say things I don’t believe/mean.
You sound like someone on the ASD spectrum - honest, principled, not confirming to social norms, overthinking. You had to mask to survive, yes, so obviously there is a facade, but that don’t make you a thief. You are thoughtful & intelligent, & capable of using logic to steer the conversation, but that don’t make you manipulative. You are honest man with morals, how can you not be kind? Why don’t you consider yourself a nice person?
For what it’s worth, ADHD folks tend not to fit social norms, either, and have blind spots about their behavior and how people perceive them.
I had ADHD but also read this as ASD.
There is a lot of overlap with ASD and ADHD symptoms/behaviors.
They might be a psychopath. Considering how they got this person on their side with like 3 paragraphs of text. My conclusion, I’m not ruling it out.
Why don’t you consider yourself a nice person?
I’m a bit arrogant at times and have very little patience with people I don’t find interesting. If I like my own company better than being around someone else they’ll probably going to notice. I also find most topics that “normies” talk about to be extremely uninteresting which is why for the most of the time I just remain silent and then when I do open my mouth it’s often something that goes against the common narrative or just otherwise is easy to misunderstand. Then there’s often this one guy in that group who later comes to me in private and tells me that they totally agree with what I said earlier. Those are the people I then bond with.
Yep, ASD. We are intelligent. We are perfectionists. We take our sweet time to learn about the world around us. Once we’ve learnt about something, we are quite sure of it, & hence we’re strongly opinioniated on things we know. Stupidity, and not being able to see things correctly may even ‘trigger’ us, & hence we can come across as arrogant. We can see the forest for the trees, but we lose our minds because the rest of the world only sees the trees for the trees.
Someone recently told me that they sometimes feel gaslighted around me
Are you sure that they know what that word means? Most of the time I see the word gaslighting, they actually mean something else.
What does it mean? It’s a relatively new term and I’ve seen it used to describe everything from accidental logical fallacies to being short-changed at the liquor store
I’m going to try to explain the origins from memory so someone who knows more will probably explain better.
It comes from an book or a movie, where a husband is planning something nefarious (don’t remember if it’s a murder or something) and he uses the attic of his house to do it. This is set back in the days when they used gas for lighting things and when he turns on the lighting in the attic, it causes the lights to change (probably get dimmer) in the rest of the house. His wife notices this and brings it up to him, since he obviously doesn’t want to reveal that he is the one causing it, he constantly convinces his wife that it’s all in her head and that she might be losing her mind.
Gaslighting is the process of making someone question their own beliefs. It’s usually seen in the context of abusive relationships, but any person can gaslight any other person in whatever context (i.e., politics, etc).
No, that is exactly the over-broad, willy-nilly, tossed-around definition they were talking about. Gaslighting has a much more insidious context than simply making someone question themselves. It means doing it on purpose; intentionally lying to someone and trying to convince them that they’re crazy. Like if I said I was going to the grocery and then when I came back with nothing, I insisted I never said that. Or if i borrowed $50 and when it came time to pay you back, I try to tell you I only borrowed $25. It’s inherently deceptive and cruel.
It’s not really beliefs in the general sense, it’s making them question reality, their memory, their reasons for doing things.
Plus with the context of malicious intent and lying.
Getting a racist to question their racist beliefs isn’t gaslighting, but would fit the vague definition of getting someone to question their reality, their memory, and their reason for doing things when they have fallen into racist dogma.
From the wiki article describing the play/movie the phrase comes from:
“In the story, the husband secretly dims and brightens the indoor gas-powered lighting but insists his wife is imagining it, making her think she is going insane.”
Imo it’s when someone is deceived by a person who lies about the actual state of affairs/reality to make the other person question what they experienced as credible. I don’t think that’s the same as when someone helps question beliefs in general because skepticism is good to make sure we aren’t self deluding, but if that person is lying about reality to manipulate them it becomes bad/gaslighting.
Another example I think is from it’s always sunny in Philadelphia in the episode where Dennis and Mac go to live in the suburbs and Mac asks Dennis if he hears a beeping the audience can hear and Dennis says he can’t until he blows up saying of course he can when berating Mac. Dennis is angry at Mac and in retaliation he gaslights him about the annoying beeping sound to manipulate him into questioning if the beeping is real or an audio hallucination.
Edit: just realized it’s possible it’s always sunny was doing an homage to Gaslight in that episode as they’ve done similar things in the past with other older movies and TV shows
Hey, thanks for taking the time to reply to my hasty, poorly put together message. The point I was trying to make was that the original meaning has been lost when the word became popular. It is a somewhat obscure word with a loose definition based on an obscure reference and it describes something for which the language was more than ready to describe anyway. I think that instead of telling people to try and use the word correctly, one should tell then to not use it at all.
Are you capable of feeling guilt or remorse? If so you are probably not a psychopath. If not you might have some traits. In any case you might want to see a professional.
Also autism is often mistaken for some degree of psychopathy. As an autist I have personal experience with this.
Oh definitely. I just had a spider get stuck on a glue trap meant for thrips and I felt bad the whole day.
From the comfort and authority of my armchair, as a (fake) psychologist, I declare that you can’t be a psychopath if you feel guilty about a spider (and other beings, especially humans).
I think of gaslighting as manipulation of a victim by an abusive person by causing the victim to doubt their own feelings and perceptions, thereby gaining control over them. They do this by convincing the victim that what they are feeling and observing is false and the fault of the victim rather than the abuser.
This has a better explanation and some clear examples:
https://www.newportinstitute.com/resources/mental-health/what_is_gaslighting_abuse/
this includes things like not lying,
Then stay quiet, if what you have to say is only negative. A white lie is OK to not make people sad or offend them if it’s matters of little importance. There’s this thing called being polite. And that includes for instance saying dinner is nice when it isn’t.
I’m guessing you are a bit autistic, i can absolutely relate to what you say, and the above took me decades to learn, and I’m still struggling with it.
I find it entertaining that answering questions honestly implies someome has a disorder.
“Why didn’t you like the peas?”
“They were overcooked for my tastes.”
Society: “What a rude jerk, they should have lied to make the person who cooked feel better.”
And the flipside of it is that when you yourself commit to not lying it makes you even more sensitive to noticing when others do it. If I see someone comfortably lying to a 3rd party in front of me then I assume they’re doing the same thing to me aswell. People even brag about situations where they’ve gotten ahead by lying. They’re effectively advertising their untrustworthy personality. Praise is also far more valuable when coming from someone you know to tell the truth. They know I’m not saying it to please but because I mean it.
That plus everyone has different ideas of what the ‘right’ things to lie about are and get mad if someone lies about the ‘wrong’ thing.
It is mostly to avoid the conflict of the other personn overreacting to differences in opinion as well.
Obviously it depends, you need to consider the work people have put into something, rudely saying you don’t like it is just that, rude.
If it’s overcooked, they probably know it already. No need to make that comment, unless you like being an asshole.If they don’t ask, I don’t say anything. Asking and being mad about someone not lying to protect your feelings when they don’t praise your effort is rude.
For example, why is the person who knows something is overcooked asking how it is? If I take a bite and don’t eat it, then they ask why, they are being rude by putting me in a situation where the social expectation is to lie.
Exactly. I treat others as I want to be treated myself. This means that if I’m asking something I’m expecting an honest answer. If I don’t want to know I don’t ask.
Everyone manipulates everyone around them unknowingly all the time. Even altruistic behavior exists partly because it makes other people think good things about you.
Only if you’d stop all human contact would you stop that. We’re built to want things (mostly sex+resources) from other people, and we’re equipped to get it.
We also all have “dark” (“psychopathic”) thoughts & behaviors that we’re hiding, not only from others but also ourselves. Some people embrace them more than others, some people resist them more than others.
I can suggest The Moral Animal for deeper understanding.
Personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits Wikipedia
Seems you’re not since in this post you show empathy, remorse, and examining your flaws is anti-egotistical. Though you may think of not conforming to social norms as antisocial behavior, many people do this and put on a “public” facade.
Though, being “honest to a fault” is a little antisocial depending on how far you take that. Is it just “I never give a lie to a direct question.” Or: Do you always correct people who you know told a lie? Do you interject in stories where a lie has been told? Do you tell people unsolicited truths that are hurtful? Some would consider the latter list of behaviors to be antisocial.
It’s good to self-evaluate. I know I have some manipulative habits, I definitely lie too easily, sometimes without remorse, but I don’t fit a majority of the markers: I feel immense remorse at certain things, I’m not arrogant, I’m genuinely helpful, not just manipulatively so, etc. I would consider talking more in dept with your friends that want to cut ties or express frustration and hear out their concerns. We all have areas for self improvement, so don’t just yourself too harshly. Maybe as another commenter suggested, go to therapy and see what you can uncover.
It’s good to be self aware and self critical but I think you’re over analysing yourself and putting negative labels on you.
A true psychopath wouldn’t care or have the ability to care.
The way you describe yourself you sound like you’re intelligent and insightful, and it’s unsurprising you would get on with older people if you’re more mature than others of your age.
You do need to be careful about inadvertently manipulating other people to your way of thinking - anyone needs to be careful of that, but particularly if they’re skilled in being persuasive. Just because you can persuade people to your way of thinking does not mean you are always right. I’m able to do the same in real life but have to frequently stop myself and think - it’s really important to learn to be open to other positions before you rush in and try to change people’s minds.
Having said all that, that is not “gaslighting”. You may need to understand what your friend is saying. It may be that actually you are doing a good thing in persuading them. Or it may be you’re inadvertently doing harm.
Or it may just be that your friend is very impressionable - some people are a bit like pillows - they will take on the opinion of the last person they spoke to much like a pillow takes an indent from the l last head they laid on. That’d be their problem, now yours.
But you probably need to understand what it is your friend is saying so you can reflect on whether they are right or wrong to blame you.
Overall though, you seem to take quite a negative view of yourself or are worrying you are a “bad person” (although a psychopath isn’t bad, they’re just built differently; but obviously that seems bad to a lot of people). The fact you worry about being a psychopath shows you are not one, but also it shows you seem to be feel bad or guilty about who you are. You should explore why that is. As others have said, therapy can be a good way to do that. But having self awareness and a degree of self criticism (within limits) is already a powerful thing; but it can be a bad thing when that is paired with low self esteem.
The fact you are even asking this makes me think you’re not a psychopath or sociopath.
A (psycho/socio)path would probably not be introspective at that accusation. They would probably just dismiss it or be angry that someone could even think that about them.
I am not a therapist or licensed to diagnose someone and no professional would/could ever diagnose someone without meeting them and interacting.
I would strongly suggest seeking out a therapist. I am a huge proponent of therapy for everyone - everyone needs an impartial party to talk to about things, even when things are going well.
Exactly… a psychopath is not worried about being a psychopath.
As people are saying, a true psychopath might not even question themselves. That said, it is probably a spectrum and we all may have such tendencies - and I mean like 100% of the population, as a shared human condition, to lie somewhere on that spectrum. It seems a good thing to me to examine myself in that manner and maybe dial down, or perhaps even dial up, those things. Especially when others misuse the words, twisting them to suit their own perspectives - e.g. calling someone “unstable” if they want to escape them, the abuser.
Also there are generational differences, and even generational (and other) traps - e.g. a lot of older MAGA parents in the midwestern USA have been abandoned by their children, who want to do things like “take the vaccine” (which I chose to highlight the discussion since it is a decision involving fully literal life-and-death consequences, plus also likelihood of permanent brain damage, which is what we now know long-covid to be), so in such cases is it truly the children who are being “unstable” and “aggressive” to leave, or rather the fault of the parents who attempt to force their christofacist belief structures onto their children, leaving no room in the latter to have their own thoughts or desires?
These are complex, weighty matters, and won’t be resolved quickly, but are good to think about regardless.
No. I have not thought that.
