7 Gaslighting Phrases Used to Confuse and Control

This statement suggests that anything that happened in the past should be left in the past—no matter what terrible behaviour is expected to be washed away.

If you’re on the receiving end of this, you feel you should be the bigger person and let “bygones be bygones” —even if you’re still carrying around the scars from the gaslighter’s previous behaviour. 

There’s nothing gaslighters love more than to move on without taking any responsibility for past hurts. 

This sentence allows the gaslighter to play the innocent victim role and is designed to make you feel bad about calling the gaslighter out. When someone looks sad and confused as you start to make your case, it can force you to stop in your tracks and ease up on your accusations. 

Gaslighters have a wonderful ability to get in there first and state their case. Most people take it for granted that they value honesty and fairness and don’t feel a need to explicitly state this to others. Gaslighters often do.

Gaslighters know, deep down, that they’re going to spin a complex web of lies and deceit—so they get in there first with a disclaimer.

This statement can be elaborated with add-ons such as, “...but you need to calm down.” The gaslighter can simply claim to have no idea why you’re upset or angry and no knowledge of whatever it is you might be calling them out for. They just don’t know.

And because they play the innocent card so effectively, you’re left questioning if you really are over-exaggerating, or whether they have done anything at all wrong. 

Gaslighters love to cut you to the core and say some deeply hurtful things. When you react with anger, upset, or indeed in any way, they criticise you for taking what they’ve said personally. Variations on this include telling you that you’re “overly sensitive” or “can’t take a joke.” What the gaslighter is doing in all these cases is invalidating your experience. 

Gaslighters, who are often also narcissists, need to get other people on their side and are masters of coordinating a group of sympathisers. 

 If you attempt to state your case based on your experience, it can effectively be invalidated by pointing out that your experience doesn’t match others'—thereby questioning whether your experience can be right.