One of my first memories was around age 4, when my dad, born and raised in India and later immigrated to Canada, explained the British Empire’s colonization of India. I felt the injustice.
Since then, I’ve been fighting for myself and other marginalized people to be seen as:
- human and
- deserving of equity
On this journey of fighting racism, misogyny, and more, I’ve experienced and continue to experience gaslighting in spaces and by people who are fighting for human rights.
It surprised me at first. I’ve come to accept it.
If you work to change systems so we all experience human rights and equity, you will eventually be gaslit.
You will be gaslit not only by the people who don’t want to change the system but by the people fighting for the very same thing you are fighting for.
It’s tiring.
It’s also a barrier to being treated as humans and experiencing equity.
What I find fascinating, as a conflict resolution practitioner, are two things:
- Human rights workers who gaslight others, don’t know they are doing this, and
- Human rights workers who experience gaslighting don’t recognize they’re being gaslit!
This lack of awareness and clarity keeps us from our shared goal of human rights and equity for all.
So, let’s build some clarity on what gaslighting is and the impact it has on you as an individual and your workplace.
How to Spot Gaslighting
To address gaslighting, you need to know clearly what it looks like. Here are three signs of gaslighting.
1.Dismissal
The gaslighter judges you for reacting to their behaviour and dismisses you. For example, “I can’t believe you’re reacting this way. You’re blowing this out of proportion.”
Sound familiar?
That’s what is said to you when you raise objections to being pulled out of emergency and conflict zones in a hasty, thoughtless way, leaving the people you’ve been working with – like internally displaced people, women, children, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+, and older people – to fend for themselves.
At headquarters, regional or local offices, this is said when budgets are slashed, projects are shelved, staff are let go, and you and whoever is left from your team take on the added workload.
In advocacy work, this is said when it’s decided, against your objections, that the genocide of Palestinians will not be brought up in a meeting with relevant ministers and governments.
2. Denial
Denial looks like when you raise a risk, it’s dismissed by the gaslighter, and when it results in an incident or crisis and you bring this to the attention of the gaslighter, they say: “Huh. I never said that. You’re tired (or stressed or emotional).” Those responses make you doubt yourself.
You ask yourself: Was I clear enough when I raised the risks? Did I even raise the risks that led to the consequences I was trying to avoid?
3. Fawning
Fawning is the lesser-known trauma response (the others being fight, flight, and freeze).
Fawning occurs when the toxicity created by the gaslighter not only makes you doubt yourself, your memories and your actions, but your survival and trauma response kicks in. You say or do things to keep you safe.
You find yourself saying: “I guess I got it wrong.” or “I’m sorry for causing a fuss.”
While there are even more signs of gaslighting, these are the most common ones to watch for.
And why should you look out for them?
Because ignoring them has a cost.
The Cost of Gaslighting: The Impact on Your Health
The immediate cost of experiencing gaslighting is the impact on your health.
Being gaslit means you will experience:
- Self-doubt
- Anxiety
- Hyperviligence
- Depression
- Isolation and
- Deterioration of your physical health
Knowing the signs helps put things in perspective.
Experiencing these symptoms is a result of being gaslit, not anything you’ve done.
The awareness shifts the focus and energy from: What have I done wrong? to: How do I stop this from impacting me?
That shift in thinking informs the next action you take because now you’re focused on addressing the root cause of the impact to your health – being gaslit.
Addressing that will stop the negative impact on your health and well-being.
The Cost of Gaslighting: The Impact on the Work
Another cost of gaslighting is its impact on the work.
In the workplace, when the gaslighter is not held accountable, among other things, your staff, leaders and the organization will experience:
- Burnout and
- High turnover
As a leader in your organization, clarity on what causes burnout and high turnover lets you make the best next decision on how to stop both, if you want to.
When you don’t understand that gaslighting is causing a problem, the solutions don’t look quite right. They can look like team retreats and team-building exercises, for example.
You put gaslighters together with their victims and with colleagues who don’t know how to stop the gaslighting.
Failing to identify the root problem leads to quiet quitting, burnt-out staff, high turnover, and wasted resources as you go through the hiring process only to have those people leave too and start over again.
If you’re doing advocacy work, not addressing the gaslighting that happens amongst human rights advocates means they experience lateral violence.
Gaslighting effectively shuts down people’s voices.
When marginalized people do it to other marginalized people, it’s stunning, sad, and undermines the goal for everyone experiencing human rights and equity.
So, now you know how to spot gaslighting and the cost to human rights work.
I guess you’re wondering, “How do I stop it and get accountability?”
And if you identify as the gaslighter and genuinely want to do better, you’re wondering: “What do I do to stop gaslighting?”
Stay tuned for the answer in the next post in this series.
If this post has stirred up feelings of anger and resentment because you have experienced gaslighting, do something kind for yourself. For tips on what that may look like, sign up below to get my guide.
P.S. If you want coaching in leadership, giving, receiving and acting on feedback, difficult conversations, advancing your career, learn more here.
P.P.S. If you want these posts to land directly in your inbox and/or want to be the first to learn about upcoming courses like How to Give, Receive and Act on Feedback, sign-up here.