I learned recently, while researching gaslighting, that there is a second type called ‘Emotional gaslighting’. This is when your abusers deny the reality of your feelings. ‘You’re too sensitive’, ‘It wasn’t that bad’, ‘You’re just faking it for attention’, ‘Stop acting like you’re hurt’ 'Come on, it didn’t hurt you’ 'You’re overreacting!’ 'You’re fine, stop exaggerating’, these phrases deny your own feelings to you. They communicate to you that not only the abuser doesn’t believe you’re experiencing pain, they’re demanding you to pretend that you aren’t. They’re asking you to deny your reality and to pretend it’s not real.
This will make you feel like you’re not allowed to feel your own emotions, and you’ll end up questioning if any of your emotion is real or are you faking it? Are you justified in feeling what you do? Are your feelings of pain and terror really just an exaggeration that doesn’t have a basis in reality? Are you making up your own suffering? Is all this pain in your head only?
This, again, will cause you to feel like you’re going insane, and doubt your every reaction to any event, you’ll try to see if thru someone else’s eyes you would be perceived as 'reasonable’ for having a reaction that you do, and it will drive you insane trying to figure out what are the 'correct’ responses while all you feel is shame, anxiety, pain and desperation.
This illusion falls apart when you realize that all 'correct’ responses are only those convenient to your abuser, and that somehow, your every positive and obedient reaction to them is 'correct’, while justified upset and pain at their abuse is 'wrong and forbidden’. So somehow you’ve been reacting to everything right, except the abuse. Somehow, your every thought and feeling needs to be convenient to them or it’s wrong. That’s how you know it’s only a self-serving game they’re playing, and all your emotions were correct all along, as there’s no way for you to 'feel’ wrong. All your pain is still their fault, and not your fault for 'feeling it’, and things are exactly as bad as you feel them. Your feelings are a reflection of reality that is happening to you, if there was no cause of you feeling upset and pained, you would not be feeling it.
The worst part is I don’t even remember her saying these phrases…. I only remember thinking them constantly by myself.