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China Elevator Stories
The Gaslight Effect: How to spot and survive the hidden manipulation others use to control your life (by Dr. Robin Stern)
Have you ever experienced being gaslit?
20/09/2024
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
I believe most of us probably have. In her book, The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life, author Dr. Robin Stern explains gaslighting as follows:
“Gaslighting […] is a type of emotional manipulation in which a gaslighter tries to convince you that you’re misremembering, misunderstanding, or misinterpreting your own behavior or motivations, thus creating doubt in your mind that leaves you vulnerable and confused. Gaslighters might be men or women, spouses or lovers, bosses or colleagues, parents or siblings, but what they all have in common is their ability to make you question your own perceptions of reality.”
While Dr. Robin Stern describes gaslighting as dependent on the participation of two parties, I prefer to view the victim as an innocent party here who is not actively participating, but has simply found themselves in a situation where they are being gaslit.
Dr. Robin Stern calls the party who is being gaslit an active participant in the dynamic and refers to that party as a “gaslightee.” I refrain from viewing that person as an active participant because doing so places responsibility, or part of the responsibility, on the victim, who should not be considered responsible for the gaslighting they have experienced. The actual victim may not even realize they are being gaslit. Since gaslighting can happen to anyone, the victim may not have a word for it, they may not even know that gaslighting exists, and they certainly didn’t choose to participate in the gaslighter’s manipulation. It is common for victims to find themselves in situations where they are being gaslit, but this is usually because a gaslighter gaslights, not because the victim was an active participant.
A common misconception I’ve encountered is the belief that people who have been gaslit—or abused in any way—are somehow to blame, or that they are unintelligent, inferior, or responsible for the situation they find themselves in. This is simply not the case. As with gaslighting, any person can experience abuse. A person who has been gaslit is not less intelligent or less capable of dealing with reality than someone who claims not to have experienced such things. Dr. Robin Stern writes that “the women I saw being gaslighted—whether patients or friends—were competent and powerful, accomplished and attractive. Yet somehow, they had become enmeshed in relationships—at home, at work, and in their families—that they could not seem to leave, even as their sense of self became ever more eroded.”
Today’s society is usually not set up in a way that helps people, especially women, leave abusive relationships or marriages easily, and it can take a long time for someone to realize that their partner’s behavior constitutes gaslighting. A person may not leave because they don’t even know they’re being gaslit, or because they are not aware of the dynamic—and not necessarily because they are at fault.
If you have children, as I do, you may not be able to leave because your life or your children’s lives may be at risk.
In my case, leaving meant I would be forever separated from my children, although I did not know that at the time. My ex-husband often threatened that he would see to it that I never saw my children again, but because gaslighting was such a frequent part of our daily life, I didn’t believe he would actually carry out this threat. I also believed that if he did, I would be able to go to court and regain access to my children.
It took me years to find out that the justice system doesn’t work that way, and often the innocent party doesn’t receive a fair verdict (which I only realized after going through various court cases). The situation I am dealing with regarding my children is also akin to a hostage situation, where my children are being held by my ex-husband and his family, and any step I take must be considered in light of this.
Dr. Robin Stern describes the dynamic in a gaslighting situation as the following: “The Gaslight Effect results from a relationship between two people: a gaslighter, who needs to be right in order to preserve their own sense of self and their sense of having power in the world; and a ‘gaslightee,’ who allows the gaslighter to define their sense of reality because they idealize the gaslighter and seek their approval.”
I find this definition problematic. I urge readers not to view someone who has experienced gaslighting as defective or fundamentally different from others (which is the impression I got from how Dr. Robin Stern describes a “gaslightee”). Instead, we should see them as a person who has simply experienced more adverse events than others. A more neutral definition of a “gaslightee” would be to define them as a person who has experienced gaslighting.
I can easily compare it to two different circumstances, both of which happened in my life. My first long-term boyfriend was an Austrian man I dated for six years. We met when I was 18 and were in a committed relationship for the following years. He was not a malignant narcissist, and he didn’t gaslight me. My ex-husband, a Chinese man I was in an AMWF relationship with, whom I started dating in 2012, married in 2013, and separated from in 2019, was a severe gaslighter.
I could have easily thought I would never experience an extremely abusive relationship if I had stayed with my Austrian ex-boyfriend and believed such things only happen to others. But, because I also experienced an abusive marriage, I know that this can happen to anyone and that it is more a matter of coincidence than a reflection of the person being at fault or being an active participant.
I didn’t know my ex-husband was gaslighting me at the time, and up until about 2018, I didn’t even know what gaslighting was.
I believe there’s a physical component to your brain changing when you’re being gaslit, which makes it harder to remember events accurately. This is often referred to as cognitive dissonance. In my opinion, this brain component is one of the main factors that needs to be considered when discussing gaslighting.
One common form of gaslighting is when the gaslighter recounts past events incorrectly. In these situations, even if you both experienced the same event, you may not remember the details, especially if those events happened a long time ago, or if you were distracted by taking care of a baby during sleepless nights or dealing with other emergencies. When a gaslighter presents a different version of those events, you may struggle to determine whether their version is truthful or not.
Sometimes, we also don’t have enough facts to know whether what someone tells us is true. Dr. Robin Stern also states, “one of the worst parts of gaslighting is how hard it is to identify. You feel yourself slipping into confusion and self-doubt, but why?”
In one case, a sociopathic stalker initially told me he had been repeatedly raped by his mother when he was eight years old. I felt pity for him because I didn’t realize he was gaslighting me. My feeling pity for him was the result he wanted, as he aimed to make me see him as a victim who had suffered terrible things as a child.
Later, when someone informed me that this sociopath had been gaslighting me and that his story was not true, the stalker mocked me for believing him. He later claimed that eight-year-olds can’t have erections and that I was naive to have believed his story. In discerning what constitutes rape in a situation like this, we must focus on the actions of the person committing the act of rape, not on whether the child’s penis was erect. The lack or presence of an erection is irrelevant; what matters is that a mother was using her son for sexual satisfaction in a manner aligned with sexual intercourse.
Dr. Robin Stern writes, “at its mildest, gaslighting leaves women uneasy, wondering why they always end up in the wrong or why they aren’t truly happy with their seemingly ‘good guy’ partners. At its worst, gaslighting leads to major depression, with formerly strong, vibrant people reduced to abject misery and self-hatred. Either way, I was continually astonished, both as a therapist and in my personal life, at the degree of self-doubt and paralysis that gaslighting can induce.”
I have also experienced this happening with men.
Dr. Robin Stern explains gaslighting as “a type of stealth-bullying, often practiced by a spouse, friend, or family member who insists that they love you, even while they undermine you. You know something’s wrong—but you can’t quite put your finger on it.”
She continues: “What strikes me now even more powerfully than ten years ago is that the greater a person’s certainty—and perhaps, the greater their narcissism—the more comfortable they might be holding onto their own reality, regardless of how many people challenge their grasp on the facts. That very narcissism is a defense against taking other people seriously or caring about their view of the world. A narcissist may become enraged when others don’t share their views—many gaslighters respond this way. But that rage is not because they doubt their essential rightness; only because they can’t bear not having total control. (…) The rest of us, however, have more difficulty maintaining our worldview. We question if we are sure of what we’ve heard or seen. (…) We’ve also been taught from childhood that we can’t always trust our perceptions—especially if we are women, and especially if someone else denies the validity of our view.”
I have found this to be true. A true gaslighter will usually be able to discern whether you are confident in your perception of reality or if you are already in doubt. If you are certain that you remember things correctly, the gaslighter will typically take more extreme measures to make you doubt your reality.
In my case, my former husband knew where I was living when I moved in with my sister, her former husband, and my brother after returning to Austria. I was having video calls with my children daily, and later, once he and his family no longer allowed us to have daily video calls, on a less frequent basis before he completely broke off contact. Sometimes, my brother and sister would also talk with their nephews.
There was a time when my former husband contacted my mother and pretended he didn’t know where I was, and she believed him, thinking that he assumed I was living with her. The court initially believed him as well when he claimed he had no contact with me and didn’t know where I was. By that time, he had already created enough fake evidence to prove from his emails to my mother and others that he didn’t know where I was.
My former husband claimed he was looking for me everywhere, was really concerned about me, and later also told me in messages he didn’t know where I was and that he needed to contact the Austrian Embassy in Beijing to inform them I had disappeared. We were in contact while he told me this, and he was gaslighting me by claiming to my face that I had gone missing and that he needed to contact the Austrian Embassy in Beijing and the Austrian police.
At the same time, he was paying strangers to follow me in Vienna whenever I left the house.
I believe he created this web of lies so that others would believe him when he claimed he didn’t know where I was, ensuring no one would suspect him of paying strangers to follow me and of planning to have me murdered. This way, he could later be found innocent if his plan to have me murdered succeeded.
Not long after I realized strangers were following me in Vienna, a café in a neighboring building completely burned down. A few weeks after video calls between me and my children were reestablished in the spring of 2024, shortly after I published a blog post where I mentioned being in a relationship with a German singer, another building right next to where I live now also burned down. I have linked this incident to my ex-husband because he had repeatedly threatened during our marriage that he would kill me or have me killed if he ever found me with another man.
By telling people in my surroundings, as well as others, that he didn’t know where I was—when, in fact, he did—he was setting up an alibi that he could later use with the police or in court if I were murdered. Since he claimed he had no contact with me and didn’t know where I was, he would be seen as innocent, and the courts would never be able to connect the dots and realize that he was trying to have me killed.
Have you ever experienced being gaslit?