What I Learned as a Victim of Gaslighting in the Workplace
And how to overcome it
One of the worst jobs I’ve ever had was, on the face of it, a perfectly good job. Small agency, small but dedicated team, standard clients, ok salary, decent job title, work I was perfectly capable of doing.
And it left me a complete wreck.
I don’t mean that lightly. I’ve suffered from anxiety and depression on and off for years, so I tend to avoid hyperbole when talking about mental health. But when you’re on your way to work and start calculating where to step into the road so you could get hit by a car but not killed, so that you can be in hospital and not have to go to the office, well, that feels like it justifies a fairly loaded term.
It starts slow
I didn’t show up on day one and get my work shredded — that’s not how gaslighting works. It’s much more subtle and pernicious than that. That’s the whole point — it’s about slowly, quietly, and insidiously eroding your sense of reality until you start to rely on the person gaslighting you.
I don’t think I can even pinpoint how it first started. But over time, it demolished my confidence in my abilities.
I felt like I was going crazy. Conversations I remembered clearly were described differently…
