Gaslighting 🤔

 

Hey fam❤️

Happy new year and welcome to 2022

To people that thought I had ran away from this space, I want to assure you that I'm still here. To new people coming across my blog, I hope you find stuff that interests you here.

OMG, I'm actually excited about doing this even though I haven't really thought of what to type but something would eventually drop sha. lol.

Yeaaaah, recently in our English class we were told by our lecturer to read Animal Farm by George Orwell before we resume for the new year. Though I had read it before a long time ago (which I'm sure a higher percentage of y'all reading this would have too) but I had to read it again to refresh my memory of the book at least for the sake of exams and any kind of assessment.

I had earlier intended I was just going to read the summary online but I reluctantly had to read through in a single day since it was just a little above 110 pages or so.

Lemme just say this book is about how animals overthrew humans who were enslaving them in order to live an equal life amidst themselves but some of them ended up becoming same as those they had firstly overthrown.

*Coughs* One thing that baffles me most is the 'Gaslighting' demonstrated which I would like to share with us.

When you consider Squealer, the media aide and Senior Special Assistant to Comrade Napoleon, he deliberately made Clover to look like a fool anytime she sees things not being right and tries to remember the 7commandments that were drafted at the begining of the revolution.

When Clover was bothered about the pigs sleeping in the farm house and it was read to her the commandment that says "No animal shall sleep in a bed" adding with sheets which was not earlier stated. Squealer had told her she was mistaken about the commandments even though Clover was right, he made her look like the forgetful one.

Gaslighting according to the dictionary is to manipulate (someone) psychologically such that they question their own memory, perception, and sanity, thereby evoking in them cognitive dissonance and low self-esteem.

Something about it is, when you're being gaslighted, you tend to yield to whatever the other person says even if it is reluctantly because the person has exerted some kind of control over your state of mind.

Have you ever been in a situation with anyone where you're trying to recollect what both of you had once resolved to and the person is saying "No that wasn't what we said" but deep down in you there's a doubt you're fighting about the issue but you agreed to what the person said.

Or being in a conversation with someone, the person reminds you of your promise to pay up a certain debt and just because you wanted to evade it, you said "I think you're mistaken, I actually said I was going to pay you next week,bla bla bla" and the other party says " but  you said...... okay, that's true" whereas you had easily manipulated the person.

Here in Nigeria, the government (Federal Government especially) gaslights us almost everytime to make us think the Nigeria of now is better than it was.

This year ehn, I would want us to be careful of gaslighting, of deliberately manipulating other people psychologically or being manipulated psychologically. It turns one to a dice that is tossed anyhow and makes one to become so lowly esteemed in the sight of the other person.

Virtual hugs fam🤗🤗🤗