This is admittedly off topic, but how did the term "gaslight/lit" become so common in recent years? I had never heard of it until several years ago when someone close was going through therapy regarding a loved one. Now, it's like I'm shopping for a mattress and I'm being inundated with mattress ads.
That's not to take way from your experience or suggest it's not the appropriate word, I'm quite sure it is. I'm just curious if I was really oblivious of concept before my own exposure to it, or if it was called something else?
The term "gaslighting" derives from the 1944 film Gaslight, in which a husband uses trickery to convince his wife that she is mentally unwell so he can steal from her.
Gaslighting was largely an obscure or esoteric term until the mid-2010s, when it broadly seeped into English lexicon.
You might be a fairly 'protected' person. This is one of the ways unscrupulous managers try to get you to do things that are detrimental to you yet beneficial to themselves/the company - to get you into a state of self-doubt and misery so that you'll make the decision yourself.
One way to get around this is recording everything you do and feel on a daily basis. Otherwise it's one claim against the other.
Historically, it's similar to the way women try to control men since they're not as physically competitive - if you've seen chinese dramas featuring an emperor and his wives it always boils down the cliche of 'oh but it's for you, the emperor's sake' or something like that.
I don't want to further derail this thread by bringing politics into it, but let's just say that the term suddenly started being used a lot in news headlines starting in around 2016:
"gaslighting" has a steady upward curve the last 10 years.
My personal guess is that it has to do with psychology and mental health awareness going mainstream due to social media and psychology channels on YouTube.
That's not to take way from your experience or suggest it's not the appropriate word, I'm quite sure it is. I'm just curious if I was really oblivious of concept before my own exposure to it, or if it was called something else?