The first time I heard a therapist say the word "gaslighting," it was a former boyfriend of mine he was describing. We used to have arguments that always ended (didn't resolve, just ended) with the same script. I would tell him, in an effort to get the matter worked out, "OK, if I'm understanding right, what you're saying is...."

He'd shrug. "If that's the way you want to see it."

And this would confuse and frustrate me. "What do you mean, if that's the way I want to see it? What's the way it really is?"

At which he would be angry. "Do we have to talk about this all night?"

I never would really know where he stands, because he wouldn't come right out and tell me. The therapist called it gaslighting. No, I was not being unreasonable. No, I was not reading him wrong--he was deliberately blurring himself so I couldn't read him at all, then making me out to be some kind of shrew who just wanted to keep harping on it. He didn't want to resolve the conflict. He wanted to keep me off balance and make me feel like I was crazy.

Further therapy taught me that other family had been gaslighting me as well. If I had a dollar for every "it was your imagination" or "you must have dreamed it" or "you took it wrong" I've ever heard....

Point being, apparently there is a club for those of us who have been gaslighted. Welcome to it. May we all help each other heal.