Gaslighting guide
You leave a meeting knowing what was decided. Two days later the decision is different, and when you say so you're told that isn't what was agreed — not by someone angry, by someone patient. You go looking for the email. There is an email. You reread it three times before you send anything, and by then you've spent more of your morning proving a fact to yourself than doing the work.
It has a shape at work that it doesn't have at home: there's a record. Briefs, threads, tickets, calendars. That should settle things, and sometimes it does. What it more often does is turn into a second job — the one where you keep evidence in case you need it, and the keeping of it is the tiring part, not the using.
The other shape is reputational. You ask a question and are told nobody else found it confusing. You raise a problem and become the person who raises problems. Nothing said about you is quite an accusation, so there's nothing to answer, and the quiet suggestion that you're difficult does the work an accusation would have had to prove.
The rumor with no owner«Just so you know, people have complained about you.»
The instruction that changes«That isn't what I asked you for.»
Erasing your judgment«You don't think, you do as you're told.»
Cutting you off from the group«Nobody else is complaining, only you.»
The doubt about what you saw«I'm overreacting, right?»
Your own record«I'm putting everything in writing from now on.»
Write the decision down while it's a decision.Not to build a case — so you're not the only copy of what was agreed. A one-line note after a meeting takes ten seconds and ends the reconstruction.
Ask in the channel where it's written.“Just to confirm we agreed X” in a thread is a normal sentence. It moves the record out of your memory and into a place that isn't yours to defend.
Say the confusing thing first.If something doesn't make sense to you, it usually doesn't to three other people. Being the one who says so costs less than being the one who quietly got it wrong.
Keep one person outside it.Not to complain to — to check with. Someone who knows your work and isn't in the room is worth more than any folder of screenshots.
Undermined at work · The boss who humiliates you · Always on
Gaslighting · In the relationship · In the family
Take the x-ray: At work →What it costs in real life →
Francisco Orvañanos · Consult