How Gaslighters Weaponize Uncertainty

Gaslighters prey upon the uncertainties of their victims.

Sadly, this story is true.

A friend of mine had a knock on her door one day. It was a middle-aged woman, her neighbor. She anxiously asked my friend whether she could smell anything on her. My friend said she couldn't, and asked her neighbor why she was so desperate and anxious.

"Because my husband keeps telling me I have an old woman smell and it's all over the house. Do I smell like an old woman? Can you smell me?" Of course, my friend couldn't smell a thing!

Now as strange and unpleasant as this sounds, my friend wasn't totally nonplussed by this bizarre situation. Why? Because it was a part of a pattern of psychological abuse she'd seen in her neighbors' marriage for years: a continual, purposeful unbalancing of his wife's emotional stability by inducing doubt about herself.

On another recent occasion, this man advised the son of my neighbor that "when you marry, you should marry an ugly woman. That way no one else will ever look at her." The implication, of course, was that he himself had married an "ugly woman". And in fact this "ugly woman" was standing right there!

Doubt, uncertainty, and ambiguity are powerful emotional destabilizers.

• "What did he mean by that?"
• "Was that me he was talking about?"
• "Can I trust my own judgement about this?"
• "Why is this person not speaking to me? What have I done?"
• "Maybe she really does have my best interests at heart as she says!"

Sure, being explicitly bullied is horrible (and often the gaslighter will flit back and forth between explicit bullying and more subtle forms of coercion), but so too is a sense of not knowing where you stand or what's going to happen next.

Uncertainty therefore becomes a tool, a weapon.

The weaponization of uncertainty

What upsets my friend about all this, beyond just witnessing ongoing cruel manipulation, is how her neighbor has come to be uncertain in everything she says, does, and thinks. She no longer has any sense of surety whatsoever.

Gaslighting, the manipulative tactic whereby someone seeks to gain control or power over another person by making them doubt their reality, memory, or perceptions, uses uncertainty as a weapon.

Hinting something negative, implying threats, questioning the validity of someone's perceptions, delivering sly and subtle but ambiguous insults ("What do you mean? Why are you so paranoid?") slowly corrodes the self-confidence and peace of mind of the victim.

But there's something else here.

Uncertain people make the perfect targets

Being continually gaslit by a powerful personality makes people uncertain, but equally, uncertain people are targets for gaslighters. And gaslighters will often find those who are prone to self-doubt.

Like any bully, the gaslighter will often intuitively know the types of people who are most malleable and therefore vulnerable to their coercion. People who naturally tend to doubt themselves, question their own ideas and thoughts, may be prime targets.

It's been found that the kinds of people who are prone to imposter syndrome tend to be conscientious, and may therefore have a tendency to look to themselves when things don't go well. Such people make prime gaslighting targets.

And it's easy to look within for the blame when, at least on the surface, the gaslighter may not appear to be a bully. They may play the victim so that it feels wrong to even criticize or question them. They may accuse their target of the very thing they do to them. The victim of a gaslighter's coercion may make excuses for the gaslighter in their life, as my friend tells me her neighbor does a lot.

Self-doubters also make easy targets because they tend, at least at first, to be drawn to the confidence and certainty of the soon-to-be-gaslighter. If you are plagued by self-doubt, uncertain as to your own worth or place in the world, someone who seems to have that kind of certainty may prove irresistible.

Uncertainty is attracted to certainty.

A certain something

Being able to relax with uncertainty is such a key emotional skill. But why? Let's take a broader view for a moment.

Life is, by nature, ambiguous and uncertain. When will I die? Who really likes me? What is the nature of this previously unnoticed mole on my leg?

Behind the need for certainty lies the fundamental need to feel safe and secure in an unknown and unknowable world. Many of us seek certainties in an attempt to fulfil this need. But too much hunger for certainty in an uncertain world makes us vulnerable. Why? Because we may blindly follow those who seem to promise us certainties.

Witness that in times of special uncertainty and upheaval, all manner of bizarre and sometimes destructive cults take root and thrive.¹ The problem is that what seems to provide us with feelings of certainty may not be what we really need or aligned with truth.

The need to feel comforted by a sense of certainty can be seen in the desperate checking by the obsessive-compulsive person or the sense of having to be certain your partner really loves you or even what they are thinking. Insecurity in relationships is driven by the desire for a solid sense of certainty - sometimes beyond what is reasonable.

As above, so below. Uncertainty isn't just weaponized by individual gaslighters.

Gaslighting governments

You may notice that when we follow leaders (or enter relationships with people) who promise certainties (think courtship/manifesto promises), a sense of heightened uncertainty tends to precede such promises.

When a sense of uncertainty is increased, we may become so desperate for any crumb of certainty we'll take whatever is offered.

Totalitarianism operates by slicing up reality into neat and unquestionable certainties. It often takes root in cultures which have had a great deal of turmoil and uncertainty. What a relief, then, to finally get a government who knows exactly how things really are and how they will be! Ah, the sweet taste of certainty!

But you'll notice that to so much as question those certainties is a dangerous business. People may start to censor one another and themselves. Any dissent or questioning of simplistic solutions may be taboo or even criminalized.

So the formula is:

• First, ramp up fear and actually increase uncertainty.
• Then, provide certainty - perhaps by telling people what the cause of their problems is (or will be if they don't make sacrifices).
• Finally, offer solutions - which are sure to hurt someone and always provide more power to the puppet masters.

But there is a caveat.

Threats and fear must never be fully vanquished. People must be kept on their toes. New and ever worse threats must be identified (or, more likely, manufactured) so that the people can continue to be controlled by the 'benevolent' tyranny. Certainty is once again provided, only for more threats to be found... and so it continues, creating a state of complete dependency on the government and complete power for the tyranny in question.²

So we can and often are led around by the nose by our need for the magnetic feelings of certainty. We like confident people, those who seem to know. Of course, they might actually know something and be wise and useful to the world. But my point here is that they might not.

If you observe closely, gaslighters will do something similar to totalitarian rulers.

Do you believe me or yourself?

Just as in totalitarian societies, the gaslighter will prey upon the uncertainties of their victim. They will keep them on their toes by identifying new threats ("Your friend Susie is no good for you. You always seem upset after you've seen her!"). And they will offer 'solutions', which can quickly turn into orders ("You shouldn't see Susie so much.").

These 'solutions' will be couched as being 'for your own good'. But notice how they restrict freedoms and confer control to the gaslighter.

More and more 'threats' are 'discovered' by the gaslighter. The victim comes to so doubt their own take on reality that it can feel like a relief to be given a 'solution' to that manufactured uncertainty. And so it continues until more and more power lies in the lying hands of the gaslighter.

In the end, the victim may feel forced to put an end to the agony of uncertainty by, for example, going next door to ask whether it's true that they really do smell like an old woman - they just have to know!

Greater demands, less certainty, more power

Guilt tripping, false teaming,³ emotional blackmail, and all the other tricks of the gaslighting trade are used to maintain an atmosphere of increasingly terrifying uncertainty.

Ever more restrictions and directives are placed upon the gaslighting target:

"You know you're not well! You can't walk to your friends' meetup! I'll drive you there and pick you up afterwards!" (And see who you are with!)

"I'm here to help you and guide you. And let's face it, without me you can't survive! We don't need the outside world [at least, you don't!], we're here just for each other, forever and ever and ever."

Strictures, rules, and demands are contained within their own restricted logic systems: "You know you get headaches after you drink, so I really don't think you should see your friends tonight!"

And the pattern of gaslighting can change over time.

As self-doubt increases, even the pretense of 'for your own good' falls away as the mask slips. Uncertainty is still used but there's more explicit contempt. The masses are sent to the Gulag, the wife is told she smells bad and (indirectly) that she is ugly. The power is complete at this point. Though uncertainty followed by 'solution' is still used.

Of course, when you remain calm, skeptical, and psychologically informed, you become less vulnerable to both governmental and personal gaslighting.

So what certain solution do I offer you as the cure for the uncertainty of uncertainty?

Be cool, wait and watch

Some people are naturally cool. Not in the type of sunglasses they wear, but in their mindsets. They can relax in chaos and keep their heads when all about them are losing theirs. If we break into French for a second, as they seem to have more words for this kind of thing, we might talk of sangfroid or aplomb - basically, being cool under pressure.

People who stay cool in this sense do so in part because they have acquired or naturally have the capacity to relax with uncertainty, to not be victim to a ravenous need for reassurance all the time or greedily claw at the first simplistic explanation or solution offered for some real or imagined problem.

None of this is to say that we should always stand back and avoid quick conclusions, but if someone seems to be both providing the uncertainty and offering the solution, then we can stop and sit pretty with not reaching a conclusion, at least for a while.

Getting better at holding a meaning vacuum

If I am heavily into you... no, let's use another example that doesn't sound so creepy!

If someone is heavily into someone and they message them but don't hear back, that is an ambiguous situation. There is now a meaning gap - what I sometimes call a meaning vacuum.

Now what people tend to do is seek to fill that meaning vacuum with meanings which are either created in the movie concept meeting of their own minds ("She hasn't messaged back because she doesn't like me/I've upset her somehow/she's found someone else/she's been involved in a terrible accident!" ... and so on) or filled for them by someone else ("Maybe she's cheating on you/she's probably lost her phone" ... and so on). In older parlance: they jump to conclusions.

Overcoming addiction to certainty may sound like a strange idea to you. But I believe it's critically important, and here's why.

If you look around you might notice, if you haven't already, that many of the world's troubles - and people's personal ones, too - are caused by people not waiting for the meaning of a situation or event to come about through evidence, but rather prematurely deciding that the meanings they've attached to a situation must be the correct or only ones, then blindly following a course of action. And that can lead to destructive outcomes far worse than the original uncertainty:

• The burning of witches in the 16th and 17th centuries as a 'solution' to unexplained events
• Jealous stalking as a 'solution' to the unexplained non-reply from a lover
• Feeling terrible because your co-worker was quiet all day so you must have upset them somehow.

Anyone who tends to misuse their imagination to prematurely fill a meaning vacuum needs to:

• Realize that they are or have been misusing their imaginations
• Generate lots of non-threatening possibilities as to what might be causing an ambiguous situation
• Transcend the need to use their imaginations at all and just stay calm and comfortable with not knowing the meaning of something or how a situation is going to unfold.

When we stop playing the games other people started, we begin to number ourselves among those who will not, or even cannot, be manipulated in that way. We are no longer addicted to having to know or have ambiguities 'resolved' for us by people who don't have our best interests at heart.