Gaslighting in Friendships

Did you know that gasliders can also be your friend? Let's talk about it. I'm Dr. D. I'm a relationship expert and licensed clinical professional counselor and today I want to give you some tips and some insight to gasliders and friendships. So what is a gaslider? A gaslider is a master manipulator. They want control over their relationship with whoever it is. They want to manipulate you into thinking that what they say is right and what you believe is always wrong. They're always going to make you question yourself and you may not expect this to happen in your friendships but it does and it sneaks up on us sometimes and it doesn't feel good.

So if you've ever had a friend who's always made you question yourself and you 're really uncomfortable and you're not sure why, you might have a friendship with a gasl ider. If you have a friend who's a gaslider, they might see you as their competition. So they're going to want to do anything they can to get the attention off of you to make you feel like you're a horrible person and that they need to have their needs met. And so what this might look like is they will question you about why you haven 't shown up to their birthday party or why you didn't call them and make you feel like you 're such a bad friend.

And the point of that is to make you feel like, oh my gosh, I'm not doing enough. Maybe I'm the bad friend, but really it's them. Gasliders who are posing as your friends will want to use information against you. So they might show up and look like they just want to gossip but they don't want to talk about other people. They want to talk about you. They want to know all the juicy details about your misery, your pain, your discomfort because they want to use that someday to attack you and that doesn't feel good at all.

So be aware of someone who's in your life that is posing as a friend who really just wants the information about your pain just so they can use that against you someday. And again, remember gasliders see you as competition. So of course they're going to use any little detail they can to make themselves look better. Gasliders who are posing as your friend really don't want a healthy attachment because if they're in a relationship with someone who has a healthy attachment style, a secure attachment style, they can't manipulate them.

So they want to attach to people who feel anxious in relationships. They probably won't attach to someone who's avoidant because of that avoidant person's going to push them away. But if you have an anxious attachment style, be aware of the gasliders in your life. I want to leave you with this, if you have a friend who's a gaslider and you feel like your friendship really isn't genuine, it might be true that they are gas lighting you. People who are considered gasliders are not authentic with themselves because they lack the ability to show empathy.

They don't know how to care about people. So if you feel this fakeness from the person that you're in a friendship with, consider are they gaslighting you? I hope that helps. Have a great day. You