Former Community – We Moved
🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.
Gaslighting - progressive increase
How "progressively intensifying gaslighting" reveals deliberate intention
Hi Guys,
here's something I've realized about gaslighting, and specifically the "rewriting history" motive and parcel of this technique.
Gaslighters use "manipulative summation" and "rewriting history" in a progressively increasing way.
(I do believe, by the way, that also every other techinque under the "gaslighting" category can, and probably is, used progressively as well.)
Initial "fake olive branch"
This is mostly reserved for cases when someone catches them in the act of manipulating with bad intentions, or when someone recognizes that they have manipulated or abused for a long time and cathes up to a series of manipulative moves on their part.
In these cases, the gaslighter simply knows that if he denied everything from the start the relationship would be most likely over.
Since the gaslighter understands that he has to at least admit something, to give a fake "olive branch" to the mark, he does so.
The gaslighter usually admits part -and, only a part - of what he or she did.
How big of a part this is can vary according to how much he has been exposed, whether the exposure was public or private, and so on.
Probably most gaslighting starts with a "fake olive branch".
Progressing to more and more, increasing, gaslighting
Now here is the interesting part: the gaslighter starts "rewriting history" not all at once, but in a progressive way, increasing the frequency and number of "revisions" together with the passage of time.
At first, while talking to the mark in the first occasions after the "admission", the gaslighter tests the ground: what if I now speak of this thing I did as a "mistake"? What if I make a statement to convince him that one of the things I admitted, I didn't actually do?
And he does. Then, the more he sees his "justifications" are seemingly accepted, the more the gaslighter feels he can up the ante.
The more time passes, the more his manipulative summations tend to get drastic, and rewrite everything that happened as "not having happened".
So day one after the exposure the gaslighter may say:
Gaslighter: We did so many wrong things, we ask for your forgiveness.
But day 45 after the exposure the gaslighter will say:
Gaslighter: I only tried to control you once when you were very young, but your father always had your best interests in mind.
And in between are all the slight variations, progressively increasing, to establish the slippery slope and "boiling frog" effect.
Importance of this: showing intentionality
The importance of recognizing this slippery slope is that:
- the fact that the "rewriting history" gaslighting is progressively increasing, reveals the malice and intentionality behind it.
Only someone who is consciously and maliciously gaslighting can be aware of the need to progressively increase the "revisions".
If it were unaware, it would be increasing or decreasing, by pure chance.
The fact that it only increases reveals the gaslighter really wants to do bad.
So if you catch a person doing this, you simply know he is manipulating with intention, contary to whatever protestations this abuser may say.
It is a form of "progressive and subtle brainwashing".
Interesting, thank you for sharing, Bel!
The example in particular made it much clearer.
It doesn't seem an intensification though, but more of a renegotiation -the "intensification" seems to me to give way too much power to the gaslighter, too-.
If the gaslighter has admitted to gaslighting, he has already conceded -and conceded a lot-.
The "only when you were young", "for your own good", etc. etc. aren't intensifications, but renegotiations to regain some influence/power.
So I'm thinking this phenomenon may actually be called:
- Admission-renegotiation
- Waking back
- Reneging previous admission / apology
Or something like that.
Thank you, Lucio.
Yes, I agree - it's probably more of a "gaslighting by slowly and progressively reneging back on what the mark found out".
To clarify: the initial admission is never on gaslighting, but on some small part of the manipulations that the gaslighting is meant to obscure.
Two additional examples:
Example 1 - Reneging back in words
Let's imagine a hypothetical three-step process concerning triangulation abuse (in reality the steps can be multiple, the abuser can break down the "reneging back phase" into as many steps as neeeded to slowly boil the frog - ie re-establish a clean slate by convincing the mark that nothing bad was ever done, without the mark noticing the influence, which is probably the result of all this being subcommunicated rather than literally communicated):
STEP 1
Initially, the gaslighting initially consists precisely in limiting the admission to a small part of the truth.
Let's say an abuser smears the mark to 10 people, and the mark comes to know of 2 such persons to whom the abuser has talked badly of the mark.
The abuser will admit having talked badly to just these 2 people, and never mention the other 8.
This is the initial admission, and the accompanying gaslighting.
STEP 2
The abuser, assuming the victim is still in contact after the "apology", will start reneging slowly.
After some time the abuser will say:
Abuser: Oh and by the way, one of those 2 people we spoke about already knew you were bad and had done X. In fact I don't even remember telling him anything about you.
This basically reneges on part of the initial admission, subcommunicating that the abuser apologized "just to keep the peace in front of a mad person who threw fake accusations".
STEP 3
Assuming the mark is still in contact and is beginning to get confused (due to not understanding the process), the abuser will progressively switch to denying everything he had initially admitted:
Abuser: Oh, and by the way: when I apologized for talking bad of you to that one person, I apologized just because you're mad! In fact I never told anyone anything about you, you're just crazy!!
This is often done through manipulative summation.
In fact, the main purpose of manipulative summation is to re-convince the mark that no abuse took place, and to reestablish a "clean slate".
In this way, the abuser can apologize ad infinitum, while every time re-creating a "clean slate" in the mind of the mark.
Example 2 - Reneging back by use of manipulative actions
The "reneging back" can also be done more subtly.
Let's imagine a brother stealing from his sister's money.
Let's imagine the little sister finds out.
The brother admits having stolen or at least feels no way out.
Then, the brother starts gaslighting the sister by
- hiding her stuff
- faking he doesn't know where it is when the sister asks
- and then, making it reappear
- and accusing the sister of being crazy and "losing things".
Voilà: the reneging back just took place with no "literal communication": now the sister may start thinking that the brother may not have stolen anything: maybe it's her who was crazy, and may have lost the stuff even in that initial case.
Example 3 - How abuse can extend for a loooooong time - by always reneging back!
This is how my parents basically controlled my for decades notwithstanding abusing me more and more.
Every time they "admitted something" - because I had found out what they did and confronted them - they:
- limited the "admission and apology" to a small part of the abuse;
- started immediately reneging on it more and more;
- finishing each time with a "clean slate" by ending the process with the subcommunication that "we didn't ever do anything wrong, it's you who's crazy/imagining things/perceving ill intention where there's none/always angry and throwing your own unjustified anger on us".
Apologizing over and over for the same or similar stuff may be a sign
This is why people who apologize over and over for the same "mistakes" may be very dangerous.
If they accompany the apologies with always reneging back progressively and subtly on some part of what they admitted, they very probably:
- are aware of what the did;
- did it on purpose;
- do not really find anything wrong with what they did, contrary to what they may have said; AND
- will do it again.
The "reneging back gaslighting" is precisely functional to convince the mark that nothing bad transpired, no ill intention was there, and to be able to do it again.
In conclusion:
Apology/admission
+
Subtle gaslighting by reneging back progressively
=
A very aware and very evil abuser
To be even more clear: there is no need for an "apology or admission" for this process to happen.
The central element in behavior that reveals ill-intention is that, ex post facto, the facts are progressively reframed as more and more favorable to the abuser.
And in this, the key light-bulb moment for me is understanding that intentionality of gaslighting can be inferred from the fact that the reneging back is done progressively and incrementally.
Some additional thoughts:
- in most cases in real life, the "incremental renegotiation/reneging back" is probably a combination of words, actions and power moves;
- the "reneging back" does not have to necessarily deal with "manipulatively summating" the facts;
- as seen in "example 2" above, the facts can acquire different meaning also by framing the mark as "crazy/seeing things/angry/disturbed", including by framing him as such progressively and incrementally, in various subsequent instances.
In fact, this is probably the more frequent "reneging back technique", because it is powered by the mark "buying in the frame" himself.
In other words, the incremental renegotiation can concern both:
- the facts; and/or
- the mark himself.
OFF TOPIC
Thus, another reneging back technique is "manipulatively framing the mark as worse than the abuser".
Example
If an abuser is confronted by a mark on something bad he did, for instance if the abuser is shamed publicly for not being "straight", what better occasion to "manipulatively renege back" than:
- make the mark think he has "learned the lesson"...
- then, waiting some time...
- then, appearing cooperative and high-warmth...
- then, wating for the mark to say or do something that can be misinterpreted as "not being straight"...
- and then BOOM - accuse the mark back.
Assuming the mark falls for it, this obtains "public renegotiation" without any explicit words being said.
END OFF TOPIC
