Familiar to Professional: Gaslighting During a Pandemic

by Monserrat Solis

Lourdes Vallin and her sisters sanitized and cleaned their home when their father came home with a positive COVID-19 test earlier this year. Within a week the virus infected her and her family: father, mother, two sisters, brother. They suffered from the virus’ symptoms for weeks. 

The Vallin family, like a lot of families, spent all of 2020 sanitizing their groceries and taking precautions when outside their home, but they still contracted the virus in January. Although they tried to limit contact with people outside of their household, BBQs were a normal occurrence with extended family. Lourdes experienced family members gaslighting her about the seriousness of the virus. 

Gaslighting during COVID takes form through family and friends telling you it’s safe to go out. It takes form through fake news and conspiracy theories floating around, especially on social media. 

For Lourdes, this happened in her personal and professional life.

Her extended family would bounce around other homes before going to the Vallin home, which made Lourdes feel unsafe. 

“I see posts on social media so I know that they’re not taking it seriously and even though they say they are, and they’re scared, they’re still not social distancing or wearing masks around other people,” said Lourdes.

Living in the San Fernando Valley, her neighborhood, Sylmar, had been a COVID hotspot since the end of last year. Her neighborhood was one of a handful of SFV communities being hit the hardest. 

In a survey of peers and community members, 70% of the 13 responders said they live in a COVID-19 hotspot. 

 Nearly 85% of responders said they or someone they knew had tested positive for COVID-19.

Lourdes is the oldest child in an immigrant household and had to be strong for her whole family while being sick. 

She was even used as her parent’s scapegoat as a way to decline visitors at some point, before and after testing positive. 

“Lulu said no. She says it’s not safe,” Lourdes’ mom would say over the phone to friends and family. 

Lourdes’s straightforwardness leads her extended family to fear her since she’s not afraid to let them know it’s not safe and she doesn’t want visitors. 

“I won’t hide that I’m uncomfortable,” said Lourdes.

She would lock herself in her room if her extended family came over. The kids would endlessly knock on her door to coax her out but Lourdes wouldn’t budge.  

After her family recovered from COVID-19, Lourdes thought her family would tighten up about letting people into their home but instead, they relaxed about the virus.

Their thinking was: We had it, we beat it and we can beat it again. But that wasn’t the case for Lourdes. 

“I feel like the fear is worse for me now because I know what it feels like to have covid and it’s not like — it doesn’t feel like a regular flu. Even though people say it’s like a regular flu. It feels a lot worse,” Lourdes said. 

Lourdes’s parents are labor workers; her father works in landscaping and her mother works in housekeeping. Because of this, they weren’t able to work from home.

Lourdes is a tourism office aid and has spent the past year bouncing between working from home and working at her cubicle. 

Not only did Lourdes feel like her family didn’t take the pandemic seriously but her job was to attract tourists as a digital marketer, which made her feel like she was disloyal to herself. 

“By doing social media posts I’m basically inviting people to go out to places,” said Lourdes. “Promoting events and outdoor dining is exhausting and weird to me because I don’t do that. It feels very hypocritical of me.”

She updates social media accounts weekly for restaurants and events happening in the area. Posting and inviting the public to promote the economy strains Lourdes since she doesn’t go out herself. 

Her job follows the state guidelines but she still needs to do her job and promote businesses. 

The truth is, being gaslit during the pandemic is not a new phenomenon.

If you’ve ever felt someone talk down to you about the virus, congratulations, you have been gaslit during a pandemic.

But you’re not the only one.