I honestly believed back in April that my life was going just as well as it could and that my boyfriend and I were truly in love. I wish that I could go back in time, grab myself by my shoulders, and scream "SNAP OUT OF IT!". I was under a spell.

I knew that I wasn't in the healthiest of relationships, but it wasn't until a close friend of mine explained to me what "Gaslighting" when I truly began to realize something was wrong. I was a victim of gaslighting for several months.

In my opinion, being gaslighted is the most dangerous out of all the emotional abuse tactics out there. But not many people know what it is so... what makes it so bad? Using my personal experience, I will paint you a picture of a look into what it looks like to be gaslighted.

1. Gaslighting blinds you to the fact that you are unhappy.

The term "gaslighting" comes from a 1938 British play entitled "Gas Light" by Patrick Hamilton. In it, a husband and a wife move into a house previously owned by the woman's aunt, who was murdered years prior. In short, the husband deliberately moves his wife's things around and convinces her she lost them and that she going crazy. Eventually, he goes as far as to go to the attic and dim the house's gas lights. The woman asks her husband why she heard noises from the attic as well as saw the lights flickering and her husband denies that happening, telling her she has gone mad and is hallucinating.

(Spoiler alert, the husband is the murderer who killed his wife's aunt)

Although extreme and intense, this is a painfully accurate picture of what abusers will do to their victims.

A HUGE red light to notice in both platonic and romantic relationships (abuse can happen in any type of relationship!) is when the other party will tell you "You're just being crazy". It is the abuser's main goal to have you trust NOBODY but them. Once you constantly doubt yourself and rely on them, you can be convinced of anything. They can even convince you that you're just as happy as everyone else is in relationships and friendships and that what you are going through is typical of any relationship when it is not. You convince yourself that you're normal and happy and you reject everything that were previously your standards for your friendships and relationships, because you're happy... aren't you?

2. Gaslighting makes you rely completely on someone else rather than yourself.

Since abusers like to convince you that you are just being stupid/crazy, this turns into you relying completely on their perception of things.

Here is a personal example: There were certain people in my life whom my abuser would prohibit me from talking to (I will expand on this in the next point). He claimed he had killer intuition and managed to convince me that my intuition was absolute garbage. He made me rely on judging and perceiving people through his eyes. There were people I shouldn't associate with, but whenever I worried about people HE was associated with, I was crazy. "They're not a threat! She's too tall for me anyway" or, "I would never do that to you" which subsequently turned into "I would never do that to you.....again!"

(Spoiler, he did it to me again.)

I had to rely on his opinions of people. When he hated someone, I had to hate them too. Often he wouldn't even give me a reason WHY I shouldn't associate with them. I just began agreeing with him. He ended up controlling everything about me-- who I hung out with, how I spent my time, what MUSIC I listened to, my political opinions, my personal faith. If he wasn't convincing me that I was crazy for liking something or someone, he would guilt me into agreeing with him (another abuse technique).

3. Gaslighting can lead to complete isolation

The husband in the play "Gas Light" uses isolation as a HUGE tactic. By isolating his wife and making her cut off from the outside world, she has no one to tell her that she actually isn't seeing things. The only other person in her house is her husband. If she had happened to have a friend see what she was seeing, she would have had more confidence in herself because it would be two people's words against one in her favor.

By the time I had been dating this kid for about four months, I drifted from all of my close friends. Because I had relied so much on my significant other's perceptions of people and had abandoned my own intuition, he could convince me that the only person that truly cared about me was him. One time, I told him how it was unrealistic for me to ONLY be friends with him and he was livid. "So you're saying I'm not enough for you, then?", he claimed. I did not expect this type of reaction and I knew how angry he could get, so I found myself then convincing HIM that he was the only person I needed to associate with ever. If I would ever try to defend an individual to him, he would assume I liked them over him. Trying to have friends became tiring, so I gave up and gave in to it. In the end, it landed with me having nearly no one to talk to when he broke my heart and I was forced to leave him because he was in love with someone else.

I got lucky, because even though I was forced to shut them out, I had amazing friends that completely understood my situation when I remorsefully came back and asked for forgiveness.

4. Gaslighting causes immense self-doubt.

I remember sitting on the phone with this boy, weeping and having an anxiety attack because he had essentially told me that he didn't love me anymore. He had literally said verbatim that he wanted to rekindle something he had had with an old lover and that she was his first everything which made her better than I ever would be. This was the second time he tried to leave me for someone else. Unfortunately, it wasn't the last. For some reason, I convinced him to stay with me. I made him stop talking to this other girl and devote all that energy to me. Once that all blew over, I was not allowed to bring up this other girl. He told me that I had just overreacted and it was not as bad as I was painting it to be. I believed him. He had me convinced that all the stressing I ever did about that situation was just me being a crybaby and over-dramatic.

I would worry whenever he was out somewhere and didn't tell me. I became OBSESSED and consumed with self-hatred for worrying so much because he told me nothing would happen again. Sure enough, not even a month later, we were in the same position. Something he told me he would NEVER do to me again ended up happening again. Luckily, I pushed myself to end it here no matter how much he resisted.

However, even to this day I have issues with doubting my own judgement. I jump to conclusions about other people's opinions of me and just assume they all hate my guts. It has only been a little longer than a month that I have been out of this relationship so obviously I am still healing, but this issue is one that I believe will take a while to conquer.

Having been told that my perception is all off constantly but yet also realizing that it was RIGHT the whole time causes a kind of inner turmoil that takes a while to go away.

5. Gaslighting masks abuse.

The woman in Gas Light had no reason to doubt her husband. She had no way of knowing that she was being manipulated and isolated, for she had just assumed it was something wrong with her.

At one point in my toxic relationship, I found myself actually convincing my abuser that he was not abusing me. He mentioned to me that he upset his mother and sister and they began to accuse him of emotionally abusing them. He then asked me, "Miranda, do I emotionally abuse you?". I didn't have a reason to believe he was at that point. He was obviously upset, and we were pretty "happy" at this point in our relationship. I told him he was not emotionally abusive. I told him that he just cared about me a lot and so sometimes he knew what was best for me better than I did.

Eventually, I did look up emotional abuse online. I got chills at how much I related. However, I figured: an emotionally abusive person wouldn't outright admit to being abusive! I had found the SMALLEST reason to blow off what I was feeling. The self-doubt he had hardwired into me was at work here, so I blew it off and never mentioned it to him.

I am one of the lucky ones. I am blessed with an amazing group of friends and family to support me, and I was able to get out of this unfortunate situation relatively early. However, had it not been for a close friend of mine bringing to light what "gaslighting" is, I fear that I may have fallen into the horrible cycle of convincing someone who manipulated me and obviously did NOT care about me to stay with me for longer.

Gaslighting is sort of an invisible tactic that is really only able to be identified by an individual outside of the relationship. Unfortunately, victims of gaslighting are isolated from those who can identify these symptoms. By sharing this article, I am hoping that those who read this will become like my close friend in this story and educate victims as well as encourage them.

Being a victim of gaslighting is absolutely not the victim's fault, and you are always strong enough to get out of a toxic relationship. You are stronger than you think, and there is always someone out there to help you through that process such as old friends, family, teachers, mentors, etc. Heck, if you feel like you have NONE of those, I am always more than willing to help.

If you or someone you know may be a victim of gaslighting, please seek help. There is ALWAYS help and there is always a light at the end of the tunnel!