[“Most gaslighters seem to hold in reserve a secret weapon, an emotional explosion that flattens everything in its vicinity and poisons the atmosphere for weeks afterward. A person in a gaslighting relationship fears that if the gaslighter is pushed too far, he’ll invoke this Emotional Apocalypse, something even worse than the ongoing attrition of annoyed questions and cutting remarks. This apocalypse is such a painful experience that, eventually, she’ll do anything to avoid it.
The Emotional Apocalypse might happen only once, or it might never happen, but the fear of the Emotional Apocalypse is sometimes even worse than the event itself. The gaslightee is terrified that her partner might yell, or criticize her, or even leave her, and she’s sure that if her fear is realized, she’ll be completely overwhelmed. “You feel like you’re going to die,” one of my patients told me once, and she wasn’t much comforted by my replying, “But you won’t die.”
[……] For as long as he could remember, Mitchell had worried about letting his mother down and had hoped to make up for all the other disappointments in her life. As a result, he was vulnerable to her gaslighting. Although she rarely accused him of anything directly, her hurt looks were more powerful than words. “I feel like I’ve broken her heart,” he told me in one especially painful session. “I’d do anything to keep her from looking that way and knowing that I caused her pain.” Rather than ask himself what, realistically, were his chances of making his mother happy and how willing he was to sacrifice himself to do so, Mitchell insisted that his mother could be happy—if only he could be a better son.
Sometimes the gaslighter progresses to increasingly painful responses—from cutting remarks to outright yelling, from implied guilt to explicit accusations. And if a gaslightee resists, the behavior may become still worse—daily yelling, broken dishes, threats of abandonment. She may start to feel as though even thinking about resisting provokes an escalation, as though it’s not safe to disagree even in her own thoughts. Giving in completely—in thought and emotion as well as action—may come to seem like the only safe course.
When gaslightees try to tell me about their apocalyptic fears, they often have two contradictory positions. On the one hand, putting these fears into words may make them seem trivial, so my patients express a lot of shame and self-doubt. “I know it doesn’t sound like much…,” they’ll say. “Only an idiot would get upset about such a little thing.” Or “I’m sure it’s not that big a deal. It’s just that I’m such a wimp. He’s always telling me I’m too sensitive.” On the other hand, if I ask a gaslightee to wonder what might happen if she responded to the Emotional Apocalypse with a shrug or by walking out of the room, she may desperately insist that I don’t understand how bad it really is. “But he’ll keep yelling,” she might say. “And if I leave, or ask him to stop, he’ll yell more.” If I ask what makes the yelling so frightening, I get a stare of disbelief. It’s as though the gaslighter’s secret weapon—whatever it might be—really did have the power to annihilate the gaslightee and destroy her entire world.
I know when the Emotional Apocalypse threatens, it can be truly frightening. But in fact, the yelling will not destroy your world. The criticism will not end your life. The insults—however painful—will not actually bring your house crashing down in ruins around you. I know it feels as though the Emotional Apocalypse will literally destroy you—but it won’t. And when you’re able to see past the fear that is choking you and clouding your mind, you may be able to shrug off your gaslighter’s point of view and refuse to engage with it—neither believing it nor arguing with it, but simply holding on to your own inner truth.”]
robin stern, the gaslight effect
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