Why Words Matter

When normalized gaslighting happens in the workplace, ask yourself what's the agenda?

Just like truth-telling is under assault, so is the honest use of words in our workplaces. When I tell audiences, podcasters, or media that “gaslighting is normalized,” they struggle to coverup their disbelief. You can see the look in their eyes: she’s surely exaggerating.

But I’m not, and I know that’s uncomfortable to hear.

The brain science on all the ways we try to avoid mental discomfort that quickly affects our nervous system making us feel physiological stress - faster heart rate, higher blood-pressure, sweat, jitteriness, tenseness and so on - helps explain why we might prefer gaslighting to simply using the ugly truth.

Institutional complicity

When you study the brain science, you learn that institutions (companies, organizations, NGOs, not-for-profits) all too often coverup abuse with gaslighting - specifically making the truth-teller, the messenger of the uncomfortable truth, who reports the abuse - the villain of the story. Why do they do it?

Because it’s far more comfortable for leaders than taking responsibility for abuse on one’s watch. Leaders - and those who are positioned to support them - work double time when abuse is exposed to make it go away. The reason is poignant, if it weren’t so destructive.

The leader wants to remain the “decent hero of their own story.” This isn’t a metaphor. This is extensive psychological research. The brain contorts reality to fit the leader’s desire for a legacy marked by integrity, not one marred by failing to protect their employees.

Normalized, bureaucratic gaslighting

Let’s look at how society uses words to mislead us into thinking all leaders care about employees, when in fact the truth is: many leaders care about being the decent hero of their own story. Many leaders care about their own future legacy. They silence what the psychologists call the “experiencing self” faced with uncomfortable reality and they tune into the “remembering self” who positions them as the decent hero.

Listen to former prison guard Alex South to get an idea of how this kind of normalized gaslighting works. Note the key words: “peer supporters,” “employee assistance helpline,” and “skilled wellbeing personnel.” These words convey gaslighting, not reality. They conjure up a vision of employee-care that simply does not exist.

“It’s hard for the prison officers trained as peer supporters to support their peers when jails are understaffed. If there aren’t enough officers to relieve the peer supporters, and there aren’t enough officers to relieve the ones who need peer support, what happens next? Not much, is the answer.

There’s the employee assistance helpline, where the person on the other end has no knowledge of prisons or the specifics of that environment. Or the teams of skilled wellbeing personnel, who supposedly respond to critical incidents in prison within two hours. They sound amazing, but in 10 years of frontline prison work including riots, murders and countless suicides, I never met them. I don’t know anyone who has. In 2024, it was reported that officers today are assaulted nearly hourly. These wonderful-sounding teams might just as well move in.”

Uncomfortable reality

South’s uncomfortable reality provides workplaces the opportunity to do an assessment of the words being used to convey employee-care. Are they true or false? Do they create a sense of safety when it doesn’t exist? Do they conjure up the value of “trauma-informed” and “psychological safety” or are the words being used to coverup their glaring lack? If words are being used to gaslight, the truly caring workplace will change that and change how they keep employees safe and healthy.

As South explains, the prison system does not halt violence, it “perpetuates” it. It’s hard to be the decent hero of that story.