Why it's important that Seann Walsh's ex talked about gaslighting – especially in the context of Strictly

Anyone who has experienced gaslighting will tell you that it’s dangerous and life altering. Once someone makes you believe – even briefly – that your brain is lying to you, you will never be the same again

Ten years ago I’d never heard the term “gaslighting”. But I realised something wasn’t right when I began to believe the person telling me that my mind was betraying me. I hadn’t just been lied to, I’d systematically and consciously been manipulated into questioning my own cognisance, driven into a spiral of self-loathing and constant anxiety by the belief that my perceptions were irrational and wrong.

Much like Rebecca Humphries, I didn’t see myself as a victim. It took me many years accept that accept that it wasn’t just a bad relationship that I’d extricated myself from, but an abusive one.

I do not believe that betraying a partner’s trust in the context of a monogamous relationship makes someone a bad person. People cheat for all sorts of reasons. Often, as Dan Savage famously repeats, to “stay married and stay sane”. Doing so on your partner’s birthday, in a way in which they – and the rest of the country – will likely find out, and lying about it, is not the sign of great character, but neither does it equate to abuse. But if Humphries’ Twitter statement is accurate, there is no doubt that Sean(n) Walsh was gaslighting her. She suspected something inappropriate was going on, and “he aggressively, and repeatedly, called me psycho / nuts / mental. As he has done countless times in our relationship when I’ve questioned his inappropriate, hurtful behaviour.”

Gaslighting is often misunderstood as simply trying to make someone believe something isn’t true. What it really entails is breaking down a person’s trust in their own mind – something so damaging it can take years to recover from. It’s a daily form of coercive manipulation designed to make someone so vulnerable and confused that they rely more on their abuser than on themselves. It exists in the same sphere of controlling behaviour as isolating someone from friends and family, making them entirely reliant on their partner. A common form of gaslighting exists in the chillingly common abuser’s refrain: “You can’t leave me – no one will ever love you like I love you.”

The term famously originates from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light, in which a husband manipulates elements of his wife’s environment (including dimming down the gas lights), and convinces his wife that these things never occurred, that she is in fact “going insane”. The story ends with her redemption and his downfall, but many of the real-life versions do not.

Through her statement, Humphries has given women across the world a point of reference for what they are experiencing. Being gaslighted by your boyfriend or husband is not a sign of your weakness or madness, it’s a sign of their dysfunction and insecurity, and the need to reinforce ownership and control over their partner. But by its very nature it’s almost impossible to recognise in the moment, unless you have a story you relate to making headlines.

The Me Too movement opened the floodgates of women’s rage, forcing men to be held accountable for their abuses of power. This power sometimes stems from money and status, but is also due simply to the patriarchal society in which we inhabit. Yes, women can be abusers too, but this is rarer because men, by virtue of going through the world as male, have an innate power over women.

Frustratingly, recent months have seen a backlash against this newly discussed dynamic, with the implication that the victims are in fact the men who are being called out for actions which they did not realise were inappropriate. Walsh may well be one of those men, focussed on looking out for himself with no real intention to abuse or manipulate, and it’s easy to argue that lying about cheating is a behaviour which has existed since time immemorial, and to equate it with abuse is a stretch.

I understand this instinct, because to broaden the spectrum of what we consider to be abusive behaviour is to accept that many more of us are either victims or perpetrators. But our fear does not change the reality of what gaslighting does to women.

Anyone who has ever found themselves curled in a fetal position, sobbing, unable to move for fear that their mind really is tricking them; that they can no longer tell the difference between truth and paranoia; that perhaps the whole world around them is a construct of a broken sense of reality; will tell you that gaslighting is real, dangerous and life altering. Once someone makes you believe – even briefly – that your brain is lying to you, you will never be the same again.

I hope that young women will recognise Humphries’ words, as I might have all those years ago, and speak out about their own experiences. I hope that when schools teach their students about domestic violence they also tell them about psychological manipulation. But most of all I hope that we can move past the idea that conversations around gender dynamics are tedious and overstated, and empower women to recognise and articulate the often imperceptible forms of abuse that they have hitherto been suffering in confused silence.

If you’ve been affected by any of the issues raised in this article you can contact mind.org.uk, mentalhealth.org.uk or refuge.org.uk