There’s No Place Like Home Season Two Episode Three: Gaslit

INTRO: This series comes with a content note – some of what you’ll hear is distressing. Please check the show notes for phone numbers you can contact to receive confidential support.

In this series abuse perpetrated by an intimate partner is described as “family violence”, “domestic abuse” or “domestic violence”. We acknowledge that production took place on what always has been, and always will be, Aboriginal land. 

STACEY*: Victims of domestic violence are invariably gaslit into denial. And they’re hyper attuned to nuance because they’re constantly in survival mode, right? And that means the slightest hint of scepticism will see them retreat.

TARANG CHAWLA: My name is Tarang Chawla and my sister Nikita was killed by her former partner in 2015. I’m a writer, lawyer and anti-violence advocate. I’m also the host of There’s No Place Like Home.

Gaslighting is the process of denying someone’s experience and what they believe to be true.

Over the last few years, the term has become part of our vernacular. In fact, in 2022, it was one of the most Googled words in the world. 

Most experts we spoke to believe the word’s rising popularity is a good thing… but Justine Reid warns against people misusing the term without understanding its true impact.

Justine is a victim-survivor-advocate, social worker and proud Gangalu woman.

JUSTINE REID: It’s really important to understand that the defining factor of gaslighting is that it’s an intentional behaviour. It’s something that somebody is doing with intent to protect themselves and to harm the person that they’re doing it to. And when I say harm, I mean emotionally and mentally, not physically. Although it can be used in conjunction with physical abuse.

TARANG CHAWLA: Justine says a good way to think about the definition of gaslighting is to look right back to where it came from – a 1938 stage play called ‘Gas Light’ which was later adapted into the 1944 film starring Ingrid Bergman. 

In the play and the film, a husband attempts to drive his wife crazy by dimming and brightening the gas-powered lights in their home – so that he can place her in an institution and get her inheritance. When she notices, he denies it is happening, and insists that she’s going crazy. 

 AUDIO GRAB FROM GAS LIGHT THE FILM: “I’m going out of my mind!” “You’re not going out of your mind, you’re slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.”

JUSTINE REID: It is somebody saying and doing things to make the victim feel like they are losing it, that they’re crazy, that they are insane. It’s a manipulation of your emotions. And in doing so, they invalidate your memories, your lived experiences, and you start to question your whole perception of reality.

TARANG CHAWLA: Jane Matts is a victim-survivor-advocate and founder of the Sisters in Law project. She says gaslighting is part of a pattern of coercive control and after a while, the perpetrator is able to impact someone’s behaviour even when they are not physically with them.

JANE MATTS: There’s no proximity. You don’t have – always – the person there. You have, sometimes, that person in your head and the voice of them talking to you. You have them sending you messages.

TARANG CHAWLA: Emily Maguire, the CEO of Respect Victoria, says it starts small and grows over time.

EMILY MAGUIRE: It’s not something as significant as pretending that you haven’t moved the table when you’ve moved the table. It’s usually something that is intentional, and it is absolutely designed to slowly but surely pick someone apart and to break down their confidence.

TARANG CHAWLA: In the beginning, gaslighting might look like giving critical or constructive feedback but, in reality, the perpetrator is undermining their new partner subtly and systematically. This brings me to Talie Star. 

TALIE STAR: When my partner met me, I was in a really great space. And I was feeling really good about myself. I’d done a whole lot of emotional work on myself. And for him, that was a challenge. Because he could come in and go, ‘How can I slowly chip away at this until this person is so dependent on me that I have the power? And that’s what’s so insidious about it… it happens slowly over time.

TARANG CHAWLA: Talie is now an advocate and a consultant in trauma, domestic and family violence, homelessness and disability. She is also a singer. At the beginning of their relationship, the man she was seeing would undermine her singing just before a big performance. 

TALIE STAR: My partner might say to me, ‘Ah, you don’t sound as good as you normally do today. Are you okay?’ And someone might think, ‘Oh, gee, that’s so kind. And that’s so caring.’ But actually, what he’s doing is just undermining my confidence, and trying to basically make me feel unsettled. So that when I do get up to do the performance, and if my voice cracks at some point or something happens, I then will think, ‘oh, maybe he’s right.’

 TARANG CHAWLA: Stacey*, who you met in episode one, was 20 when she met the man who abused her – Oliver – in a bar. He was ten years her senior and manipulated her from day one.

STACEY: He was a big fan of that Neil Strauss book, The Game, which glorifies the manipulation of women under the guise of pickup artistry.

TARANG CHAWLA: In the early days of their relationship, Oliver used negging to break down Stacey’s sense of self. 

Negging is a tactic promoted in The Game. It involves giving someone a back-handed compliment to chip away at their self-esteem and make them want your approval.

EMILY MAGUIRE: Even that language of backhanded compliment is really funny, isn’t it? Because it’s actually just an insult.

STACEY: There was one time I turned up for a date. And I was wearing a new top that I’d just bought. And I was feeling pretty good about myself. And he said, ‘I like your top. But I’m not sure it’s designed for somebody with your figure.’ And I wasn’t really sure what to make of that. I couldn’t work out whether I should be humiliated or appreciative for the advice.

And he very kindly told me about the diet pills that his ex-girlfriend had been on, which was quite a call to action for me because he knew that I was quite envious of her slender figure.  

TARANG CHAWLA: Gaslighters gain control by focusing on your flaws and weaponising your vulnerabilities. 

This could look like backhanded compliments or barbed comments about your parenting, appearance, competence, culture or intelligence.

Stacey eventually had children with her perpetrator.

STACEY: He would criticise my lack of milk production, because I was starving our child. I didn’t play with the kids enough. I didn’t read them enough bedtime stories, I didn’t feed them enough nutritious food.

TARANG CHAWLA: Gaslighters also avoid facing the consequences of their behaviour by hiding and distorting information. They may claim they don’t remember something, deny it ever happened or blatantly lie when confronted with facts that contradict their narrative.

In Stacey’s case, she was gaslit into thinking her partner’s infidelity was a figment of her imagination.

STACEY: I found an eyeshadow palette at our home that wasn’t mine and he proceeded to convince me that it was, despite me having never worn blue eyeshadow in my life. He would always have some reason to explain an anomaly. Like the long female hair I found in my bed was there because he’d let our couple friends sleep there while I was away for the weekend.

He even enlisted a colleague once to call me and explain that it was him who had sent the sexually explicit text messages to another woman on my husband’s phone. I mean, the story was so absurd but I went along with it.

TARANG CHAWLA: Gaslighting can be enabled culturally and socially. For Stacey, it was reinforced by her perpetrator’s colleague who upheld the deception by supporting his lies.

JANE MATTS: There’s a thing called Flying Monkeys. It’s where you’ve got a perpetrator, and they’ve got their flying monkeys who come in and support what they’re doing to you. And you think, ‘Oh, that must be right then’ and then you normalise it, because those people that are friends of the current controller who are supporting the behaviours that he or she is doing, and we need to be really conscious too.

TARANG CHAWLA: People around the person perpetrating the abuse can also enable their behaviour. This may be intentional, or they may be complicit without realising it.

TALIE STAR: They are manipulating anyone and everyone around you to create their narrative as truth.

TARANG CHAWLA: Denial is a fundamental part of gaslighting. It forms part of the term, DARVO which is interrelated.

JUSTINE REID: DARVO stands for deny, attack, reverse victim offender.

 TARANG CHAWLA: DARVO is terminology used by many people in the domestic and family violence sector. Justine Reid says gaslighting is part of the ‘D’, the ‘deny’ phase of DARVO.

JUSTINE REID: In the denial phase, it will look like you’re having an argument about something or you’ve confronted the perpetrator about something that might have occurred in the relationship. And then they’re turning around and they’re saying to you ‘that never happened. What are you talking about? I would never do that.’

It could look like denial of a physical attack, it could look like denial of an agreement that you’d made together, it could look like denial of sending a text message to your mum, that was speaking negatively about you, starting friction in your personal relationships, because the goal of that would be to isolate you. So it’s just denying that behaviour.

 TARANG CHAWLA: The attack phase of DARVO comes next. This usually looks like name calling – with comments like ‘you’re crazy’ or ‘that’s insane’.

 JUSTINE REID: Then we move into the reverse victim offender, which is blame shifting. It’s switching those roles around so the perpetrator paints themselves out to be the victim of your behaviour.

TARANG CHAWLA: Blame shifting is a key part of emotional abuse. We’ll be unpacking it later in the series.

JUSTINE REID: The behaviour might look like, ‘Well, I only did that, because you did this first, so you’re the problem here’, ‘I only escalated to that level of violence because you shoved me initially.’ Or ‘I only sent those messages or shared an inappropriate photo of you with my mates because you said it was okay,’ even though you likely didn’t. 

TARANG CHAWLA: The combined impact of the various elements of DARVO is to disorient the victim, while simultaneously breaking them down.

JUSTINE REID: Over time, when that’s a repeated pattern in your relationship, you start to question your entire existence, your entire reality. And when you’re constantly being told, by somebody that you love and care about, that you’re the problem….. you start to believe ‘Oh, it’s me, I’m the problem here.’

ALEX BUNTON: And that’s when I go back to feeling crazy… you just… lose track of who you are… from someone gaslighting you, from someone making you feel like you’re unworthy.

TARANG CHAWLA: That was Alex Bunton, the professional basketballer you met in episode two.

The man who abused Alex was in and out of work. When he was in a tough financial position, he would borrow money with empty promises to pay her back.

ALEX BUNTON: We’d get to the stage of he would put $2,000 in and then he’d spend 3000 and it’d be like, ‘Well, I put $2,000 in. What are you talking about? I still contributed.

TARANG CHAWLA: When Alex would ask him to pay her back, he’d make excuse after excuse. When she’d ask again, they would have a huge fight over money – in which he’d blame her.

ALEX BUNTON: He’s like, I’m sorry that I’m not the pro athlete. You can afford to buy things and then you wouldn’t buy things for me. How do you think I feel?

It was my fault if I said the wrong thing, or it was my fault if I didn’t talk to him in the right way. So I’d be like, ‘It’s gonna be okay.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, you’re not making it okay.’ I’m not doing enough. I’m not saying the right things to make this situation better. You know, financially, if I had the money to pay for things.

TARANG CHAWLA: Alex’s perpetrator used guilt to gaslight her. As a tactic to isolate her from her family, he would make her feel bad for being close to them – because he wasn’t close with his. And if he was fighting with his family, Alex would comfort him – only for him to turn around and blame everything on her.

ALEX BUNTON: I felt crazy… And I think the biggest part, the gaslighting part, for me was to make me feel like everything that I did was wrong, even if it was a positive thing, or anything I would say was wrong, even if it was a positive thing.

It felt like I couldn’t do anything right… And the more someone would tell me that I wasn’t a good person, I wasn’t doing the right thing, or the way I was doing things isn’t right, or just everything about me wasn’t right. That made me want to make it better, in some weird way.

TARANG CHAWLA: Gaslighters use several strategies to create doubt and low self-esteem in their partners. This includes denying, downplaying, blaming, using guilt, questioning their sanity and leveraging their narrative by implicating other people. According to Relationships Australia NSW, if you hear statements like this.

AUDIO GRABS USING DIFFERENT VOICES: 

‘It’s not a big deal. You’re overreacting.’

‘It was just a joke.’
‘Okay but this is your fault.’

TARANG CHAWLA: Or this.

 AUDIO GRABS USING DIFFERENT VOICES:
‘You’re crazy’

‘You’re paranoid’ 

TARANG CHAWLA: Or this.

AUDIO GRABS USING DIFFERENT VOICES: 

‘You’re too sensitive’

‘You just have a terrible memory’

 TARANG CHAWLA: Or this. 

AUDIO GRABS USING DIFFERENT VOICES; 

‘Everyone agrees with me’

‘This is why you don’t have any friends’

‘Your family don’t even like you’

TARANG CHAWLA: It’s a red flag that perhaps a relationship isn’t supportive and secure, the way it should be. In circumstances where a person comes to a relationship with a pre-existing mental health condition, it can be particularly harmful to be told they’re ‘overreacting’ or ‘too sensitive’. On top of that, abuse – like all forms of trauma – can lead to poor mental health.

TALIE STAR: Women aren’t hysterical. Women are responding to what is happening around them. And I think we need to be thinking about that narrative.

TARANG CHAWLA: Gaslighting is ubiquitous but it leaves no real concrete trace. This means it can be really difficult to manage and identify in the first place. Particularly if your sense of self has been broken down.

Psychologist Robin Stern, in her book, The Gaslight Effect, says there are some questions you can ask yourself if you’re in a relationship and you think what you’re experiencing isn’t okay… We’ve adapted them a little, but they are:

• Are you constantly second-guessing yourself?
• Do you often ask yourself ‘Am I too sensitive?’
• Do you feel confused or crazy?
• Are you always apologising?
• Do you frequently wonder if you are “good enough”?
• Do you have trouble making simple decisions?
• Do you think twice before bringing up seemingly innocent topics of conversation with your partner?
• Before your partner gets home, do you run through a checklist in your head to anticipate anything you might have done wrong that day?

If you are answering yes to a lot of these, this is a sign something isn’t right. But if you’re still not sure… speak to someone.

JUSTINE REID: There is absolutely power in speaking. The more people you talk to and the more you start to talk about what’s happening to you and what your life looks like behind closed doors, so to speak, the more you will start to think. You’ll hear, you’ll see people’s reactions, even if they don’t say it. And then you’ll have a lot of people validate your experiences. And you’ll also have a surprising number of people want to help.

TARANG CHAWLA: If you’re a friend, family member or colleague to someone going through abuse, it’s important to remember the very nature of gaslighting erodes someone’s ability to see their situation clearly.  This means victim-survivors will likely disclose their abuse in more subtle, quiet ways or make excuses for their partner’s behaviour.

EMILY MAGUIRE: People don’t just come out and say, ‘He sexually assaulted me, he hit me in the face. He’s controlling me.’ They’ll say things like, ‘He gets a bit angry’ or ‘I mean, yeah, he’s a little bit jealous, but it’s really alright because it just means he loves me’. The words that they are saying, it’s like a way of testing whether you’re going to take that little offering that they’re giving you and use it to build a bit more trust and to have a conversation with them.

You are one of the first ports of call for most women who really don’t contact support services directly, they’re much more likely to talk to someone who they know and trust and it’s usually a friend or a family member. And you can quite literally be the difference between that woman telling her story and leaving and seeking support, or making sure that she never says anything to anyone again, and she stays in that relationship forever.

TARANG CHAWLA: Stacey* asks you to not only listen, but believe them.

STACEY: If someone comes to you and offers a disclosure, please believe them. I just feel like victims of domestic violence are invariably gaslit into denial. And they’re hyper attuned to nuance because they’re constantly in survival mode, right? And that means the slightest hint of scepticism will see them retreat.

JUSTINE REID: By saying to someone, ‘I believe you, I don’t think you’re the problem here. I can see what’s going on. You’re not at fault.’ I think that is one of the most helpful things you can do to somebody that’s in it.

TARANG CHAWLA: They may not be quite sure what’s happening in their relationship… and ask you to support them in sense-checking what their partner is doing and saying. While people worry about finding the right words in this situation, Talie Star says one of the most powerful things you can do is simply sit with someone, hold space for them and listen.

 TALIE STAR: When you can sit with someone authentically and just say, ‘I want to help, I don’t know how, I’m going to listen, I’m going to be here for you. I’m going to try my best to understand in my limited capacity, I’m going to stop talking, so you can have the space.’

TARANG CHAWLA: If you’re concerned that someone in your life is being gaslit, Justine Reid has a practical-threefold approach. The first part is to do your research – whether that is through listening to a podcast or looking up the local services that might be available to that person. The second part is to have a conversation from a place of non-judgment.

JUSTINE REID: You really do need to come in from a gentle, loving non-judgemental perspective.

And it has to look like a very soft entry, ‘you know, I’m a bit worried. Is everything okay?’ And you might not get the answer the first time, you might not be able to swing in with all the information that you’ve managed to collect in that initial conversation. But it’s really important to not isolate that person further by being gung ho and by saying, I know this is going on, because the shame that they will carry and the potential for them to isolate themselves, which is only going to push them further towards the perpetrator is real.

It can be hard to watch, but keep as close as you can. And also remember, your personal safety is important too. But just by being there consistently, being that weekly coffee, eventually you’ll find they’ll start to trust and open up. And then you can have some deeper conversations.

TARANG CHAWLA: Part three of Justine’s approach involves providing ongoing support in a way that respects their decisions and honours their capacity to keep themselves and their family safe. 

JUSTINE REID: You need to support their decisions, and their decision in that moment might look like staying.

Family and domestic violence doesn’t discriminate. And it can happen to anyone. Regardless of socio economic status, regardless of cultural background, regardless of sexual preference. Perpetrators prey on vulnerable people. And there will always be times in your life where you are very vulnerable and susceptible to somebody coming along and you find yourself in that situation. So suspend judgement. 

TARANG CHAWLA: Next week on There’s No Place Like Home we’ll explore jealousy.

BRIAN SULLIVAN: It’s one of the major warning signs, when a man is jealous, and I don’t tend to use the word jealous on its own, what we’re talking about here is what I call sexual jealousy. So that’s about ownership.

TARANG CHAWLA: See you then.

OUTRO: There’s No Place Like Home is a Future Women podcast in collaboration with our proud partner, Commonwealth Bank, who are committed to helping end financial abuse through CommBank Next Chapter.

No matter who you bank with, if you are worried about your finances because of domestic and family violence, you can contact CommBank’s Next Chapter Team.

Contact the team on 1800 222 387, within Australia or visit commbank.com.au/nextchapter. If you need help or advice, please check the shownotes for phone numbers for confidential support.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate and review. It will help these important stories to reach more people’s ears. For more information about There’s No Place Like Home, or to join the movement, please head to futurewomen.com.

This episode was produced by Jamila Rizvi, Emily Brooks, Mel Fulton, Sally Spicer, Hannah Fahour and Tarang Chawla. Editing by Bad Producer Productions. Artwork by Patti Andrews.