10 Common Gaslighting Phrases That May Have Become Normalized
Have you ever left a conversation feeling confused, exhausted, and questioning your own sanity?
That feeling has a name: gaslighting. It’s a sneaky form of psychological manipulation where someone tries to convince you that your reality is untrue. The term actually comes from the 1944 movie Gaslight, where a husband secretly dims their home’s gas-powered lights and then tells his wife she’s imagining it, all in a plot to make her think she’s going insane.
Data from The National Domestic Violence Hotline shows that nearly half of all women (48.4%) and men (48.8%) in the U.S. have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner.
As psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula explains, “Gaslighting is an attempt to overwrite another person’s reality.” Because this behavior is so common yet was unnamed for so long, many of its key phrases have become normalized in our daily conversations—and learning to spot them is the first step to reclaiming your reality.
‘You’re being too sensitive’ or ‘You’re overreacting’
Sound familiar? You bring up something that genuinely hurt your feelings, and instead of getting an apology, you’re told you’re the one with the problem.
This phrase is a classic dismissal tactic. It’s designed to invalidate your emotions and pivot the conversation away from their bad behavior and onto your supposedly “inappropriate” reaction.
Psychoanalyst Dr. Robin Stern says the goal is to “turn the attention away from their bad behavior by making it about you doing something wrong.” It’s a slick way of saying, “My comment wasn’t the problem; your feelings about it are.”
When you hear this enough, you might start to believe it. You might begin to suppress your real feelings, thinking they’re a burden or just plain wrong. This can lead to long-term anxiety and a profound loss of trust in your own emotions. It’s a tactic that shames you for having a reaction in the first place.
‘That never happened’
This one is a total mind-bender. You recall a specific promise or a hurtful comment, and the other person looks you dead in the eye and says, “That never happened. You must be making that up.”
This is a direct assault on your memory and your reality. It’s a flat-out denial meant to make you question the very things you know to be true.
Psychotherapist Stephanie Sarkis, PhD, calls this the absolute “hallmark sign of gaslighting.” The manipulator’s goal is to chip away at your confidence until you start relying on their version of events instead of your own.
If someone repeatedly denies your experiences, you can start to feel completely unmoored from reality. This can lead to what psychologists call ‘learned helplessness’—a state where you stop trusting your own judgment entirely because you’ve been conditioned to believe it’s faulty.
‘It was just a joke’
This is the classic get-out-of-jail-free card for cruelty. Someone says something mean, often in front of other people, and when you react, they immediately hide behind humor. “Lighten up, can’t you take a joke?”
This phrase is all about dodging accountability. It allows the person to say something hurtful and then, if they get called out, reframe it as a harmless joke to avoid taking any responsibility.
The intent is a one-two punch: first, they deflect blame for their comment, and second, they make you feel like the problem for being too serious or lacking a sense of humor.
It’s an emotional sleight of hand: they wound you, then shame you for bleeding. It’s a tactic that makes you feel foolish for being hurt, which might make you hesitate to speak up next time.
‘You’re imagining things’ or ‘You’re crazy’
This one cuts deep. You bring up a legitimate concern—maybe you feel like your partner is being distant—and you’re told, “You’re just imagining things,” or the ultimate shutdown, “You sound crazy.”
This is a direct attack on your sanity, and it’s disturbingly common. A YouGov poll found that a third of women (33%) and about a quarter of men (24%) have been called “crazy” or “insane” by a romantic partner.
The goal is to discredit your concerns by labeling you as irrational or paranoid. Sociologists have noted that this tactic can be especially potent when used against women, tapping into outdated but persistent cultural stereotypes of women being “overly emotional” or “hysterical.”
Being repeatedly called “crazy” can have a devastating impact on your self-esteem. It’s designed to make you feel so unstable that you stop trusting your own gut feelings and intuition.
‘It’s your fault that I…’
This is the classic blame game. Your partner yells at you, then says, “Well, it’s your fault I yelled. You pushed my buttons!”
This tactic is called blame-shifting, and it’s all about deflecting responsibility. The abuser avoids accountability for their own actions by pinning them on you. The twisted logic is, “If you hadn’t done X, I wouldn’t have had to do Y.”
Over time, this can make you believe you are actually the cause of their bad behavior. You get trapped in a cycle of trying to be “perfect” to avoid setting them off, which can lead to intense guilt and self-blame.
‘Everyone agrees with me’
You’re in the middle of a disagreement, and suddenly they pull out this line: “I was talking to our friends, and they all think you’re being unreasonable.”
This is a manipulation tactic designed to isolate you by creating a false consensus. By bringing in imaginary allies, the gaslighter makes it seem like your perspective is the weird one, the outlier.
It weaponizes our basic human need for social acceptance against us. The subtext is: it’s not just me you’re disagreeing with, it’s everyone.
This move is meant to make you feel ganged up on and alone, pressuring you to back down. It shifts the argument from the actual topic to your social standing, making you doubt yourself simply because you feel outnumbered.
‘I’m sorry you feel that way’
This one sounds like an apology, but it feels hollow for a reason. You pour your heart out about how their actions hurt you, and this is the response you get.
This is the classic non-apology. It’s a sentence that mimics the shape of an apology but is completely empty of any real remorse or responsibility.
As one expert explained, with this phrase, they are “apologising for your feelings, which is neither their job nor their right. Their job is to apologise for their actions.” It subtly suggests that the real problem isn’t what they did, but your emotional reaction to it.
This phrase is profoundly invalidating because it shuts down the conversation and dismisses your pain. It’s a passive-aggressive way of saying, “I think your feelings are wrong, but I’ll say this to end the argument.”
‘If you really loved me, you would…’
You try to set a perfectly reasonable boundary, and you’re met with this guilt trip. “If you really loved me, you would quit your job/lend me the money/let me look through your phone.”
This is emotional blackmail, pure and simple. It uses your love and affection as a weapon to manipulate you into doing what it wants .
It reframes your healthy boundary as a personal failing—a lack of love on your part. It’s a tactic designed to make you feel guilty for saying no.
This kind of manipulation can pressure you into abandoning your own needs to constantly “prove” your love. It creates a toxic dynamic where affection is viewed as a transaction, rather than a given.
‘You’re just trying to confuse me’
You’re trying to have a calm, rational discussion, and the other person completely stonewalls you by saying, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just trying to confuse me.”
This is a sneaky tactic that involves both withholding and projection. The gaslighter pretends not to understand you to shut down the conversation (withholding), and then they accuse you of doing exactly what they’re doing—creating confusion (projection).
It’s an incredibly effective way to derail a conversation they know they can’t win on merits alone.
This phrase is designed to make you feel powerless and question your own ability to communicate clearly. It puts you on the defensive, trying to prove you’re making sense, while they get to avoid the actual issue.
‘You have a terrible memory’
This is a more subtle, long-term version of “That never happened.” Instead of denying one single event, the gaslighter launches a campaign to discredit your memory as a whole.
The goal here is to systematically dismantle your trust in your own mind. They will constantly “correct” your recollection of events, big and small, until you start to believe that your memory is fundamentally unreliable.
It preys on the fact that everyone’s memory is a little imperfect. The gaslighter takes normal, minor memory lapses and blows them up into evidence that you have a “terrible memory” and can’t be trusted.
Over time, this can make you completely dependent on the gaslighter to be the keeper of your shared history. It’s a slow erosion of self-trust that can leave you feeling deeply insecure and confused.
Key takeaway
Gaslighting is a sneaky and damaging form of psychological abuse where someone makes you doubt your own reality. And it’s shockingly common—data shows nearly half of all Americans have experienced psychological aggression.
While the word “gaslighting” has finally gone mainstream, many of its most common phrases, like “you’re too sensitive” or “that never happened,” have become so normalized that we might not even notice them.
Recognizing these phrases isn’t about winning an argument. It’s about spotting a pattern of manipulation designed to control you by eroding your self-trust. The most powerful way to fight back is to trust your gut. Your feelings are valid. Your reality is real.
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