Gaslighting.

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Gaslighting, a way of mental abuse to others. If you've never heard of it before, it's based off of a play by Patrick Hamilton, in which a murderer kills a wealthy woman, but can't find the jewels he murdered her for. So he marries a couple of years later, and they move into the apartment under the wealthy womans abandoned apartment. The murderer begins trying to drive his wife insane so he can work on searching the upstairs apartment unimpeded, and makes her doubt her memory, her abilities, her self control, her ability to think for herself, and many others. However, before the murderer can get the jewels or finish driving his wife insane, a detective who was trailing the murderer manages to convince the wife that she wasn't going insane, and  was instead being manipulated. She helps him bring justice to the murderer after getting revenge on him by stating she was going to let him escape before using all the things he did to her to make her think she was insane to state she couldn't.

This play not only gave light to those types of situations, but it also gave a term to the name, Gaslighting. Why this name? Because in the play, the detective can convince her that she isn't going insane by the gas lamps. The gas is split thru the house, so if a light turns on someplace, all the other lights go down slightly. So, because of the fact that every time the murderer turned on the lights to go and search the upstairs apartment, the lights in her room would go down before she began hearing footsteps. Since someone who was going insane wouldn't imagine the logic of the lights, this convinced her that she wasn't insane and her husband was physiologically manipulating her.

But, as much as it makes a cinematic play with a clear motive, the murderer wants to drive his wive insane to search unheeded, in the real world, it's much more complicated. Unfortunately, both men and women decide to gaslight others they see, work with, or live with, in order to dominate the relationship. And there is not always a detective to prove that you're not insane. That job falls to you, and your friends.

The main ways that Gaslighting works is that the person who is Gaslighting will do the follow tactics:

• Withholding: Not listening, refusing or pretending not to hear the victim.
• Countering: Questioning the victim's memory, even when the victim has remembered everything correctly.
• Blocking/Diverting: Changing the subject and/or questioning the victim's thoughts to gain control of the conversation (and the victim's feelings of sanity).
• Trivializing: Making the victim sense that their feelings and problems are small and unimportant.
• Forgetting/Denying: "Forgetting" things that have already occurred, particularly promises that have been made.

If you feel like you, or a friend, is under any of these effects, you will want to check out sites and articles like this one to be sure, then go to the domestic abuse hotline when you're sure. There's more info about many things there.

Adventure Van, with a joke to end off this horrible topic.

How many mens rights activists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None, they use gaslights.