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Gaslighting: When Carrots Are Called Potatoes (and You’re Supposed to Agree)
Gaslighting is what abusers use to make you doubt your reality.
12/05/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
A common dynamic with a narcissist is constant gaslighting. If someone lies occasionally, it may not be a major issue. But if a person gaslights all the time, it can be infuriating—particularly when the lies are blatantly untrue, when they lie to your face about things you’ve personally experienced, essentially suggesting that you don’t know what happened to you or that you weren’t present for your own life.
When a narcissist gaslights, it’s like he tells you he planted potatoes. So you start digging, expecting to harvest potatoes. But after all that digging, you don’t find potatoes—you find carrots. You show him the carrots and say, “These aren’t potatoes.” But even though it’s obvious they’re carrots, he insists they are potatoes. He tells you you’re just imagining they look like carrots, but they’re not—they’re potatoes.
You point out the shape and color are clearly different. You know what carrots and potatoes look like. Still, he claims you don’t know what you’re talking about—that you lack the knowledge to tell vegetables apart. And because you’re a woman, you’re too dumb to understand what you’re holding. But since he’s a man, and he’s intelligent because he’s a man, he knows that what you’re holding are potatoes.
He might even say he has so much life experience that he knows exactly what potatoes look like—and yes, they look just like those carrots in your hand.
So you say, “Fine. I’ll wash them and taste them—just to be sure.” And you do. You come back and tell him: they’re carrots.
He tastes them too and insists that your taste buds must be broken, because to him, they taste exactly like potatoes.
And on and on it goes. He still insists you’re holding yellow potatoes, not orange carrots.
Have you ever had a narcissist try to make you feel like you’re crazy?