Thread by @SpencrGreenberg

Gaslighting, where someone causes another person to doubt their feelings and senses, can cause psychological damage.

There's an opposite thing, though, that can also be damaging. As far as I know, it has no name. I call it Lightgassing.

Here's how it lightgassing works:
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Lightgassing is when one person agrees with or validates another person's false beliefs or misconceptions in order to be supportive.

Unlike gaslighting, a tactic of jerks and abusers, lightgassing is an (unintentionally harmful) tactic of friends and supporters.

Ideally, when you're upset, friends should validate your feelings and help you feel heard and understood but do so without agreeing with statements they themselves know to be false.

We do a disservice to people when we encourage their false beliefs.

Most people have a value of truth-telling (and knowing the truth), and by avoiding lightgassing, we stay truer to these values.

But how does one listen with openness and empathy to an upset friend and still validate *feelings*, without validating *false beliefs*?

This can be a tricky maneuver, which I think is one reason people feel tempted to lightgas.

To avoid lightgassing, the key is to validate those elements of a person's *beliefs* that you know to be true while empathizing with them and validating that their *emotions* are understandable and okay to feel. But doing so without reinforcing belief in false things.

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Here are common examples I've seen that are sometimes, but obviously not always, lightgassing:

• "since they did X, they don't deserve to be with you"
• "It was reasonable for you to do Y because they made you feel bad"
• "you did nothing wrong, it was 100% their fault"

Is lightgassing just “enabling”? Enabling’s a broad category that can include lightgassing but also many other things.

Ex: buying alcohol for an alcoholic is enabling but not lightgassing.

Similarly, gaslighting is a form of manipulation but manipulation is a broad category.