Ann is certain he said Saturday. Certain enough that she has already taken Saturday off work. But when she asks what time tomorrow, he turns to her with a look of complete puzzlement. “Sunday. I never said Saturday once. You do have a habit of remembering things strangely.”

His voice carries total conviction — enough that Ann begins to think she must be the one misremembering. She apologizes, still confused, and that night sits scrolling back through their messages, wanting to establish which of them got it wrong. And there it is, in his own words: this Saturday.

But instead of relief at not having misremembered, what Ann feels is fear. Fear of showing him the evidence, because she already knows what he will say: “are we really digging up old messages to score points?” How many times has she doubted her own memory this way? And how many times has she ended up the one at fault in the equation, when she was not at fault in the slightest?

What Ann is facing is gaslighting: a pattern of repeatedly distorting, denying, or diminishing another person’s perception and experience until they gradually come to doubt their own memory, perception, or judgment. It is usually found in relationships with an imbalance of power — between partners, within families, or at work.

What gaslighting is, where the term comes from, and what it is not

The term comes from the old play and film Gaslight, in which a husband secretly dims the gas lights in the house a little at a time, then assures his wife that the light is perfectly normal and she is imagining things. He does this repeatedly, alongside other manipulations, until she begins to believe she is losing her mind. The film’s title later became the name for this pattern of behavior, and has spread widely in recent years.

Gaslighting requires three elements: it is a pattern that repeats; it results in the other person doubting their own perception more and more; and it usually occurs in a context where power in the relationship is unequal, or gradually reduces one person’s power — whether emotionally, financially, in status, or through control of information.

But not every disagreement is gaslighting. Human memory is fallible on both sides. It is entirely ordinary for two partners to remember details of the same event differently, and a sentence like “I think you’ve misunderstood” in ordinary conversation is only a difference of view. What distinguishes gaslighting is direction and frequency. The doubt is pushed one way repeatedly, until one person is always the one who “misremembers, overthinks, is too sensitive,” and comes to trust themselves less and less.

How gaslighting works, and why intelligent people are affected too

Picture your own internal compass. Everyone has one: perception, memory, a sense of what is real and what is not, used to navigate daily life almost without thinking. Then one day someone begins holding a magnet near that compass, a little at a time. The needle swings without settling. The bearings begin to drift. And when we lose our way, they are the first to say, “I told you your compass doesn’t work.”

The cruelty of the mechanism lies exactly here. The more the compass is disturbed, the more we must depend on their navigation — and the more we are made to depend on their navigation, the fewer opportunities we have to check and to trust our own perception. Confidence may therefore erode gradually. The pattern usually found is not outright lying but erosion by degrees: denying what was said with total conviction; diminishing a feeling as “overthinking, dramatic, too sensitive”; or citing others — “everyone can see you’ve changed.” Each of these can throw the compass further off.

And this is the answer to why people who are intelligent, steady, and successful are affected too. Gaslighting does not work because someone is not clever enough. It works by gradually eroding trust in one’s own perception and judgment. What is more, it usually occurs in relationships we love and trust — precisely where we are naturally most open to another person’s influence. Being affected is therefore not evidence of weakness or of stupidity. It is evidence that we once trusted someone more than we trusted ourselves.

Signs that you are experiencing gaslighting

The important signs are usually not in the other person’s behavior but in changes in yourself. Apologizing becomes a reflex, even when you are not sure what you did wrong. You feel confused and foggy after conversations with this person, routinely. You start wanting to keep evidence — saving messages, taking screenshots — not in order to win against them, but to confirm to yourself that the event actually happened. You ask yourself “am I too sensitive?” more and more often. And you gradually withdraw from friends or family who used to help affirm your worth and your sense of self.

And if your situation also involves control, intimidation, or harm, Thailand’s Social Assistance Center hotline, 1300, has people ready to listen and to help assess the situation twenty-four hours a day.

Is gaslighting always intentional?

In some cases it is a deliberate tactic used to control another person. In others, the pattern may be connected to the other person’s habitual way of protecting themselves: someone unable to accept their own mistakes may lie in order to be in the right, without any malicious intent. That said, where there is occasional denial or distortion with no sustained pattern of attempting to control another person, it may be more accurate to speak of a defense mechanism, an avoidance of responsibility, or poor communication than to use the word gaslighting.

Understanding where the other person’s behavior came from does not mean we have to accept or overlook its effect on us. Their intent is one matter; a compass drifting further off course is something that needs care, whether or not the other person meant it.

How to care for yourself in a situation like this

First, find fixed reference points outside the relationship. Like a navigator who, unable to trust the compass, takes bearings from the stars. Keeping brief factual notes of events is not for winning an argument; it is so that the version of you who is confused and unsure on a given day has something to hold. That said, if keeping notes or records could be discovered and leave you unsafe, consult a professional or a hotline before choosing how to record anything. And maintaining ties with people outside the situation who have known you a long time is another star that helps give a bearing.

Second, change the goal from winning the argument to keeping your own clarity and safety. A conversation with someone who rewrites the truth — their truth — or who can keep lying, has no finish line. A goal that serves you better is knowing the truth for your own sake, rather than getting them to admit it.

Third, a boundary is still your tool. Choosing not to continue a conversation that keeps circling back to making you doubt yourself is an appropriate and legitimate boundary. We have set out the principles in our article on boundaries. And, as before: if the other person is likely to respond with intimidation or violence, setting a boundary should take safety into account and may need a professional to help plan it.

When to see a professional

If self-doubt has spread to the point where basic decisions are difficult, if confusion and exhaustion are affecting your sleep or your work, or if you are no longer sure even what to call what you are living with, a mental-health professional — particularly one who works with psychological wounds (trauma-informed care) — belongs near the top of the list. A professional can also serve very well as a steady, neutral reference point in a situation like this. And if what is inside becomes more than you can carry alone, Thailand’s mental health hotline, 1323, is staffed by people who will listen.

How hypnotherapy approaches restoring self-trust at NBRH

At NBRH we use hypnotherapy as our principal approach to emotion, physical sensation, the meaning a person holds about themselves, and the automatic responses still connected to earlier experience.

For someone who has been through gaslighting, the pattern that may still be running is self-doubt even after the person is gone: checking your own thinking again and again before daring to speak, guilt that surfaces on its own with no cause to be found, or hesitation to trust your own feelings even about small things. Working through hypnotherapy is not aimed at recovering or confirming memories, and does not require recounting every detail of what happened. We work with these patterns gradually, in a focused, relaxed state — one in which a person may remain aware of their surroundings or drift deeper at intervals, and which is never a state where the therapist takes control of anyone’s mind. The person’s emotional safety is what we hold first, always. That matters especially with this subject: for someone whose perception has recently been overridden, the transparency of the process, and the fact that every step rests on their consent, are not merely standards of practice. They can be an essential part of restoring a sense of one’s own agency. Alongside this we help develop additional ways of responding that fit present life more closely, such as coming back to trusting your own perception, feelings, worth, and boundaries, one matter at a time.

Lasting change after an experience like this is not becoming someone who never trusts anyone again. It is your own voice regaining a seat in your heart: being able to disagree with someone without immediately concluding that you are the one in the wrong, and knowing that your memory, imperfect as everyone’s is, always deserves to be heard.

At NBRH (Neuro-Behavioral Repatterning & Hypnotherapy) we hold that our behavior and responses are not a permanent identity but patterns shaped by experience, which can gradually change given care and the right conditions. We use hypnotherapy as our principal way of working with these automatic circuits, in a space that is safe, private, and always respectful of each person’s own pace.

If your situation involves both being made to doubt yourself and a bond you cannot break, “Trauma Bonding” explains that parallel mechanism specifically. Tools for boundaries are in “Healthy Boundaries in Relationships”. For anyone meeting this pattern within a family, “Toxic Parents and Helicopter Parents” has its own dimension. And for those who would like to understand the basics before deciding anything, we have set out what hypnotherapy is and how it works.

Gaslighting: When Someone Close Makes Us Doubt Ourselves