How to spot gaslighting, manipulation, and trauma bond tactics to protect your mental well-being.
“He’s letting me see my baby this weekend,” my client said happily. He was her boyfriend-pimp, and he habitually kept her baby from her to control her. This is a common tactic with sex traffickers: impregnate the girl and use the baby to manipulate. My client glowed with happiness, gratitude, and excitement. My heart was torn: though glad for her, I’d watched this cycle before. Just as she became close to seeing the abuse cycle for what it was, he’d become the hero, giving her the thing she wanted most. Rescuing her from his own tyranny. Saving her from himself. And her gratitude trauma-bonded her back to him and his abuse.
I opened Tiktok this morning to see what I would find. A black-out screen greeted me, informing me it was currently unavailable. Okay. I put on my running shoes and headed outside.
An hour later I turned back to my phone as I cooled off, and having heard that others saw different messages, I opened it again to see if I would see the same. Instead, a video began to play. Well, that was a short-lived stunt, I thought. But something about it tickled at the back of my mind. What was that about?
I opened it again to show my teenager, and this time was greeted with a new message glorifying the president-elect as the hero of the app, allowing for its salvation.
We probably all remember when the threat of the video app disappearing was first raised: It was 2020, and then-president Trump declared it a national security risk. He signed an executive order on August 6th, 2020 that would lead to it being banned. But then suddenly, with no successful negotiation to deal with international security threats, no changes made, the threat is past and he is lauded as the hero that restored free speech to young people.
My friends, what you see here is a classic psychological abuse tactic. The gaslighting abuser creates a threat. This may be physical violence, threats to restrict your freedoms, take your car keys, or verbal abuse. Then abruptly, the abuser pivots. The threat is over, and he stopped it. The violence ends. The keys are returned. The abusive words cease. The threatened freedoms are benevolently restored, and you are left in a position of pathetic, beholden supplication and dependence.
The villain becomes the hero.
But he’s only rescued you from the tyranny he created.
This is classic manipulation. You are disoriented, but grateful, and the most memorable impact is the last action taken. Peace is restored, and your defenses relax. You enjoy a beat of peace before the next manufactured chaos begins. You feel a sense of bonding with your abuser – a classic trauma bond.
This is the goal.
When you are caught in an abuse cycle, it can be very difficult to see what is happening. Without clear vision, you remain caught, like one driving through a snowstorm, able to focus only on what is immediately in front of you, shoulders hunched forward in tension and stress. It’s not particularly safe, yet it’s the only way to survive and move forward.
Clear vision allows you to sit back, take in the big picture, and plan your next moves without the urgency and fear of reactivity. You regain control. The danger decreases.
It is essential to understand the tactics used to manipulate as that is the first step to breaking free. My first book, Gaslighting, has been translated primarily (though not exclusively) into languages spoken in countries run by restrictive governments: Turkish. Russian. Hungarian. Chinese. Korean. Here’s something I didn’t know before I published my first book: translations happen when a publisher from another country buys the rights to make a translation and distribute it. It comes from local demand. So these translations are no coincidence. When you live under a strongman, learning about abuse tactics is critical.
Here’s what I see playing out in the current domestic government: They are working overtime to control the flow of information and the narratives about current events. The goal is not to convince you, but to flood you. When you are inundated by so much misinformation that you cannot parse out truth from lie before the next story comes in, you are kept off-balance and distrustful and in doubt. When you no longer trust reliable sources of information, you cannot hold them accountable. You begin to doubt yourself, the objective of gaslighting. They gain freer rein.
The game is to distract, attack-then-rescue, and disorient you with an overwhelming amount of drama and lies while elevating the gaslighter as hero. We’re focused on a social media app, while ICE is readied to deploy to Chicago to begin the first found of mass immigrant detentions the day after inauguration. An inauguration at which foreign, non-allied far-right heads of state and sympathizers are buying attendance, creating dangerous liaisons. Distract. Focus on Tiktok.
A media stunt shaped to look like an attack on free speech is manufactured by the same who threatened to suppress peaceful protests with domestic use of military force – then abruptly restored and credited to the one who threatened it in the first place. Attack / rescue. Glorify the false hero.
We’re flooded with misinformation – take, for example, the inundation of speculation and falsehoods about the Los Angeles fires – distracting the national community from compassion, unity, and response. Before the fires are even out, a new outrage. Pivot. Disorient.
Watch for these tactics. Know what they are. Do not normalize abnormal behavior. Arm yourself against gaslighting by keeping notes, archiving media stories, keeping records and reviewing them. Do not let them separate you from your own knowledge, memories, and awareness.
We may not be able to stop the crazy-making behavior, but we can stop them from making us crazy.
And that’s resistance, and the path to preserving your mental health through perilous times.