“The practice of gaslighting happens a lot in the workplace. Often in the context of bullying, it happens because – it’s terrible to put it this way – it’s so effective. You can seek to undermine a colleague by providing them with misinformation – by saying one thing in a meeting and another outside that meeting, for example.”
Does that mean because your advice changed and those changes negatively affected your colleague you’re a gaslighter? No. Gaslighting is a deliberate act designed to undermine and destabilise; it doesn’t sound like that was your intention at all.
Your colleague shouldn’t have used that term, however, as Dr Krupka explains, it’s possible to understand why they did and why it’s used relatively frequently these days.
“In a sense, any time we have a new term that really targets a person as an abuser, it’s incredibly powerful and, of course, really useful if you’re a victim of that abuse to have a label – a name for what you’re experiencing.
“It’s also a really sticky label. It’s like a silencer – once that label is thrown it’s very hard to unstick.”
It’s only natural then that your first reaction was a sense of shame. It’s awful that this has caused you such angst, but your colleague may not necessarily have been being frivolous or provocative for the sake of it. In fact, Dr Krupka says, it’s more likely that the person who said you were a gaslighter was genuinely confused and felt truly disoriented.
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That’s what makes this case such a tricky one. It’s possible that two people in the same workplace can be confused and even distressed by a set of circumstances – and for one or both to feel that they don’t have ground under their feet – without either engaging in gaslighting.
Workplaces are complicated, tangled, social environments. Sometimes that leads to joyfully unlikely interactions and creations; sadly, at other times it leads to disconcertment and hurt.
Ready for some Work Therapy? Send your question to jonathan@theinkbureau.com.au
