The Other Face of Gaslighting: Not Drowning in Shame

Around the Table: When the Light Flickers

Rain slides down the windows in a constant whisper. The hanging lamp sways softly above the table. Dinner has long been over, yet neither Jasmine nor Gabriel has moved. The plates have gone cold, the cutlery lies still. The air is thick with muffled tension — almost imperceptible, like the pause before an explosion held back.

— You weren’t at your sister’s yesterday, Gabriel says.

— Yes, I was. Why do you say that?

— When I called, I heard noise behind you. Laughter, music.

— Yes, we were eating, there were people there.

— It didn’t sound like a dinner. Your voice was… different.

— Maybe because you called right in the middle of a conversation.

— Or because you weren’t with your sister.

Jasmine meets his gaze.

— And you? Were you really at the office?

— Of course.

— You’ve been there until midnight a lot lately. I find that… convenient.

— About midnight, yes. Why?

— Because we heard voices behind you too, last night. Like you weren’t alone.

He straightens slightly, raising an eyebrow.

— You hear what you want to hear.

— Or you hide what you want to hide.

A thick silence settles. The lamp hums faintly, time stretches.

— What is it you want us to fall apart over, exactly?

— You’re the one accusing me, Gabriel.

— No. You’re the one searching for fault everywhere. You think I didn’t see it yesterday morning?

— See what?

— Your phone. That message. “Hope you slept well.”

She pauses, eyes still on him.

— It was my sister.

— Oh really? Then why did you smile like that?

— Like what?

— Like someone who doesn’t smile at a message from her sister.

— Maybe like someone who noticed your light mood when you got home last night.

He stares at her — too long.

— You’re making things up.

— Or I’m noticing them.

Silence again. The lamp sways once more. Only the sound of rain remains — and Gabriel’s breath, too carefully controlled.

When the Light Steadies

The truth, in fact, is much simpler. Gabriel wasn’t at the office that night.

He was with another woman. He called to say he’d be late — his voice calm, but carrying an unusual warmth, a contained glow, almost vibrant. In his words lingered the trace of something he no longer controlled: the thrill of the forbidden, the rush of a moment he believed would leave no mark.

Jasmine felt it without understanding it. And when he came home later, his overly smooth calm already tasted of lies.

The next morning, he woke with a tension he couldn’t soothe — a dissonance humming beneath his skin. Two realities collided: what he had done, and the image of the irreproachable man he believed himself to be. The more he felt that gap, the more he had to close it. So he searched for reasons, excuses, comparisons. After all, Jasmine had her own shadows, her silences, her detours.

That was enough to convince himself he had done nothing wrong. The tension eased — just enough for him to stand upright. But inside, something still roared: a need to convince himself, then convince her. And in that unbearable imbalance, the attack began to form.

When Jasmine looked at him, he felt dizzy.

Not because she was accusing him — but because she saw him. And in that light, his image of the flawless man began to flicker. He couldn’t let her see that fall.

So he took the lead, calmly, with the feigned authority of those who lie well. Better to destabilize her than to risk being unmasked.

Jasmine had been at her sister’s. A simple, lively evening full of overlapping conversations. When the phone rang, she felt a tightness in her chest — that bodily intuition before words. She answered briefly, uneasy without knowing why.

And when he returned later, she sensed a faint distance, a shift in energy between them. Something had changed, though she couldn’t yet name it.

The next morning, she asked questions, tried to understand. And he, to protect himself. That’s how truth split in two: the one he built to preserve his image, and the one she felt in every fiber of her body.

When the Light Warps

What played out between them that morning was not a simple argument.

It was a clash between two realities: the one he had to protect to keep seeing himself as a good man, and the one she sensed but couldn’t yet name. Gabriel didn’t lie out of cold manipulation — but his lie was no less violent. He wanted to escape shame, and in his flight, he shifted the blame. That gesture, so ordinary, changes everything: instead of owning his betrayal, he handed it back to her, like a reversed mirror.

Shame, when it seeps through the cracks of consciousness, acts like an invisible hand: it rewrites reality to avoid the fall, turning the fear of being seen into a need to dominate. The body tenses, the voice hardens, arguments tighten — not to understand, but to stay in control. And that’s how shared reality bends: a space where the liar starts to believe his own words, and the one who sees clearly begins to doubt herself. One fights to save his image, the other, to save meaning.

And between them, the light flickers.

Inner Mechanisms: When Shame Takes Control

This inner blur is no accident. Its roots lie in the mechanisms of shame itself —

that emotion that turns away the light to avoid being seen. Gaslighting isn’t only a game of power. It’s often a strategy of emotional survival.

When someone commits a wrong, two paths open. Some manage to recognize what happened, to feel guilt or even shame, and to repair. But for others, the emotion is too heavy to bear. They face an unbearable conflict: admitting the wrong would shatter the self-image they depend on — the flawless parent, the loyal partner, the competent worker, “the good person.”

That’s where reality begins to twist. The mind tries to bridge the gap between what was done and what it needs to believe — what psychologists call internal dissonance. When that tension becomes intolerable, the psyche often chooses the safest way to restore coherence: it alters perception rather than faces the fault.

Philosopher Kate Abramson calls this a “desperate effort to preserve the moral coherence of the self.”

Sociologist Paige Sweet sees it as a strategy to regulate power and vulnerability — a way to regain control when one feels exposed.

In both cases, domination is not the true goal — survival is. When shame becomes unbearable, the person no longer seeks to understand — only to survive.

From Disconnection to Distortion

Robin Stern, author of The Gaslight Effect, describes the precise moment when the fear of being wrong or losing the bond overtakes the need for truth. Lying then becomes a refuge — a way to soothe dissonance. Not to manipulate coldly, but to keep seeing oneself in a bearable light. Beneath this need for coherence lies an older emotion: shame.

As Donald Nathanson wrote, shame acts as a collapsing emotion — it makes us want to flee, to hide, or to attack. Gaslighting corresponds to that third reaction: attacking to avoid collapse.

For Brené Brown, shame is the emotion of disconnection. When it appears, the body defends rather than connects: the voice tightens, breathing locks, logic becomes armor. This cutoff isn’t only psychological — it’s neurological. When the feeling becomes unbearable, the nervous system seeks escape. And when the body can no longer flee, the mind takes over — reconstructing a version of reality that soothes the immediate pain.

This shift from body to mind marks the passage from emotional defense to cognitive distortion. As Klein and colleagues observed, perceptual distortion acts as an inner exit door — a way to survive an unbearable incoherence.

The Reversed Mirror: Projecting to Stay Afloat

Jennifer Freyd, through her Betrayal Blindness theory, showed that consciousness itself can refuse to see a truth too painful to bear — especially if it threatens attachment or moral identity. And when denial no longer works, projection begins.

As Glen Gabbard described, we expel what we can’t tolerate within ourselves and push the other to carry it for us. Thus, the one who accuses often reveals what he hides:

“You’re lying,” says the one who can’t face his own lie.

“You betrayed me,” says the one hiding his betrayal.

The body remains in constant tension — torn between the need to be seen and the terror of being exposed. Gaslighting then acts as a psychic diversion:

it redirects shame outward, blurs reality, and maintains an illusion of control.

Heinz Kohut already noted that when the self is fragmented, acknowledging fault awakens the terror of collapse. So one controls the narrative to survive psychically. But this diversion has a cost: it blocks repair and traps the relationship in fog.

Seeing Without Excusing

Understanding these dynamics, as Paul Gilbert reminds us, is not about excusing.

It’s recognizing that behind the need to dominate often lies the despair of staying whole. The only sustainable path to regulation is lucid compassion: seeing the fear without feeding it, staying clear without getting lost in it.

“I understand where your confusion comes from — but I won’t let myself be confused.”

That posture — firm, clear, grounded — restores shared reality: a space where truth becomes once again a meeting ground, not a battlefield.

And sometimes, when truth returns, the light flickers once more — but this time, it’s to illuminate what we finally have the courage to see.