Fire with No Smoke: Being Gaslit (at Work)

When the Word Wouldn’t Let Go

I recently sat down to do a devotion, which I’m trying to commit to every morning as a discipline, and the same word kept ringing in my head: “Gaslighting… gaslighting… gaslighting…” While I was loosely acquainted with the word, what I didn’t realize was how much it applied to several meaningful situations in my life and to the reality around me. 

Let me explain. 

What Gaslighting Is

Gaslighting, in a loose general sense, is when someone you are in a relationship with—someone you trust—is constantly making you doubt your reality, your feelings, or what you know to be true, even when presented with evidence. 

There is a wide range of definitions for how gaslighting manifests, but the bottom line is that it is a form of psychological and emotional abuse that leaves a person second-guessing themselves, constantly feeling drained, and apologizing over and over again for the littlest things. 

And it left me wondering: seeing as though recently I’d seen all of those things come out of me, was I in fact being gaslit in one of my most trusted relationships? 

And I’m sorry to say that just because all of those things exist in your life, when making an assessment, it still may be a little too early to start making those judgments. You need more assessment before you can come to that conclusion and define those symptoms as the effects of being gaslit. 

If you are interested in exploring my discovery—and perhaps those emotions and suspicions of your own—I invite you to join me. 

Why This Felt Familiar

I am, in general, a deeply compassionate and empathetic person. I care a lot about the little guy and what they are or are not experiencing that would be considered equitable and fair. But when it comes to myself, I’m sad to say that after a lifetime of what some may call emotional abuse before the age of 19, I often struggle to feel worthy or like I deserve anything good in my life, even when I’ve earned it. 

And perhaps there is a small part of me that knows I’m deserving, but that part can often get overwhelmed with feelings of self-doubt, discouragement, and second-guessing when I’m under pressure. 

Recently, I’d been feeling all of those things. Unable to guess where they were coming from, I assumed it was my own past creeping up to remind me that I had not dealt with past trauma, that I was not healed. 

The Metaphor of Gas

However, when I think of the word “gaslit,” the immediate thing that comes to mind is something you may not see but can sense the effects of. For example, gas itself is not visible to the naked eye, so its presence is not immediately evident, but there are other signs that it is present besides the fire it creates when lit. 

Signs of gas include the smell and the way the fumes may make you feel. 

Someone who is gaslighting you may make you second-guess the smell of the gas, or even the fact that you feel sick or woozy from the fumes.

What Healthy Leadership Taught Me

A really good HR professional—the best I’ve ever worked with—once told me, “Hadiyah, it’s not what you say, it’s how what you say makes someone feel.” And while I’m not promoting editing your words so that you don’t offend anyone, I do believe you should always check in. If something you are doing is making someone uncomfortable and giving them a difficult time, and that is not your intention, then being able to identify that issue and try to address it is important. 

For me, I try to lead with that. I can still be uniquely me—with my views, values, ideas, and beliefs—without taking away from anyone else what makes them uniquely them. Meaning, I don’t need to put someone down to lift myself up. 

And what I’ve witnessed is that there are too many people in the world who see this type of behavior as mutually exclusive. We can, in fact, have a difference of opinion and coexist. And that is Biblical. What we see in the world today—constant and continual back-biting and crushing of each other to wipe one another out—I believe actually breaks Jesus’ heart and makes it difficult to bring truth when so many are using His name to hurt others. 

Back to the Question

Either way, back to the matter at hand. 

Perhaps I was being gaslit, but how would I actually know? 

Well, taking a page from that small and unsung hero—my HR professional colleague—how does what you are experiencing make you feel?

What I Started Feeling

For the last six months, I have woken up feeling more and more anxious, scared, and confused—feeling like I had to defend my every action, feeling isolated, like I was losing control over what the evidence was telling me.

You see, my life and work are based on data-backed decisions. I collect data and let it drive the decisions I make. Only when I don’t have enough data and need to make a decision do I resort to prayer to guide me through. It is the only way I can make peace with my decisions and the consequences that follow. It is the secret to my leadership. I often find myself with a lot of data, and I don't always know what the data means or whether I’m missing key information, and most of my decisions nowadays as a leader affect someone else. So I’m constantly in prayer. 

And in this particular instance, all of my emotions were uncharacteristic of my nature. They were unlike me. I was too overwhelmed to produce a single thought. I was constantly being overcome with emotion. And I realized that the way I was able to produce clarity of thought on vacation was by shutting down all visibility into the life I was living back at home and simply checking in: How was I actually feeling? 

How were my emotions making me feel? 

I don’t want to be led by emotions, but to deny that I’m feeling them would be to deny my existence and what it means to be human. 

I was challenged and overwhelmed because I had gotten so used to this programming of being emotionless in my decisions that I forgot to follow the number one rule—one of the few I share with my direct reports and team. I constantly remind them: “You are not a robot.” And for me, that means you are made up of a sum of parts, senses, and experiences, and that includes emotions. Take a moment to check in. 

What things have you turned off in order to listen to unreasonable and unreliable sources telling you what is happening around you? What evidence do you have that this reality you are currently experiencing is as they say? 

When the Bigger Picture Comes Into View

I’ve been taking a wide view around me lately and realizing that there are so many things that look wrong because they are created in a vacuum. They are constructed without a wide view of people’s human experiences in mind. 

For example, in the interest of making a building accessible, accessible design should be one of the first things we consider when building, and we should build with it in mind from the start. It is the law, yes, but that should no more be the deciding factor than the fact that it is the law to drive on the road and not the sidewalk. Yes, it is the law, but without that mindset we won’t be practicing person-centered safety. We will only drive with our own safety and desires in mind. And effectively, that creates an issue where it is not only a matter of time before people get hurt, but where the roads and walkways become inaccessible for everyone due to a crash. 

In our local area, we’ve passed legislation to include sidewalks with ramps, fines for people who park within a certain number of feet from them, and reflective poles to block off bike lanes and prevent accidents. We’ve included design into our roadways that perhaps should have always been there. People using all forms of transportation can access the main highways to get to their homes, jobs, schools, and loved ones. It gives them access to grocery stores, healthcare institutions, and larger forms of transportation, all while preserving life. 

But what if we ignored the evidence and that prevented us from designing well—or delayed action—because we were unsure of the experience of others? What if we denied that people were dying, getting hurt, or being paralyzed for life just by walking down the street? There would be even more casualties, more deaths, more fallout. Because gaslighting not only makes you unwilling to face the facts, but it also allows harm to run rampant.

What I Realized About Myself

This was making me realize something. There is a small part of me that was losing my sense of agency in the desire to be accommodating to all. There was a part of me that saw all the evidence of the pain and suffering around me and was choosing not to get involved because it wasn’t happening to me.

But for several mornings now, I’ve been waking up and realizing that this anxiousness, this fear, this second-guessing of myself was not coming from reading the news or looking at someone else and empathizing with them. It was coming from what I feel when I pull up to the gas station and do a double take at the prices, when my groceries cost me more to make a sandwich than it used to cost me to take a family of four out to dinner, and when I watch the economy and local shops in my area close down because they and their customers want to stop a powerful regime of privatized business leaders but feel powerless to do so. 

The Cost of Silence

I struggle with the idea of rebellion. I find it, in general, distasteful and disorderly, giving visions of anarchy and chaos in my mind. But the truth is there is a slew of individuals in my ancestral history who led a rebellion quietly and peacefully, some with a simple message they chanted on sidewalk-less streets: “We shall overcome.” And those three words, though small in nature, made the gaslighters lose their minds and respond with violence. 

My conclusion was this: of all the Harriet Tubmans, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s, and all the other people in this world who decided not to eat the “kings’” special brand of bad food and force-feed it to their people, there were those who stood with courage and grace, conviction and resolution—and they were indeed gaslit. 

Gaslit to believe that slaves were enjoying slavery, that segregation was best for everyone, and that we as a people were lesser. 

But as I look around me, there is still work to do. We are not yet equal, and I mean all people should be equal. And no one should be in fear to voice their needs, their ideas, or to call out inequality and unfairness. 

I realized that there were too many places being shut down because of a lack of freedom of expression, and so that suppression was forcing its way into areas of life where it didn’t belong—like a car driving down the sidewalk or a person taking justice into their own hands. 

What We Need Now

We need leadership that allows people to express themselves freely, that listens to the will of the people, and that takes accountability for the shortcomings of society while also taking responsibility for the actions and biases that lead to people’s overwhelming harm. 

And when we are nearsighted enough to make decisions that will undoubtedly harm our future, there must be someone who is willing to stand up and be the fire without wanting any smoke. 

There must be a person who is willing to start the spark without gaslighting anyone else. And that person is someone who refuses to be bought, bribed, intimidated, or dismissed, because there are people coming after them, and their decisions—or lack thereof—will affect them and those who come after them as well. 

A Final Check-In

Perhaps I’m the fire, and while I’ve chosen all this time not to make any smoke, perhaps it is with intention that I check in. And I encourage you, the reader, to do the same—and perhaps to listen to the alarms that have been all around you, trying to wake us up.