Gaslighting: When You Stop Trusting Yourself

By Helene Waters

Gaslighting isn’t just a buzzword people throw around after a bad argument.

It’s quieter than that. Slower. More deliberate.

It doesn’t start with someone telling you you’re crazy.
It starts with small corrections… little doubts… subtle shifts in reality that don’t feel like much at the time.

Until one day, you realise you don’t trust your own memory anymore.

You replay conversations in your head—not to understand them, but to check if they even happened the way you remember.

And the most dangerous part?

By the time you recognise it, you’ve already started asking the person hurting you what’s real… instead of trusting yourself.

Where the term comes from

The term “gaslighting” comes from the 1938 play Gas Light, where a husband manipulates his wife into questioning her sanity by dimming the lights and insisting nothing has changed.

That’s where the name comes from.

But in real life, it doesn’t look like theatre.
It looks like conversations. Relationships. Everyday moments.

And it rarely happens all at once.

Gaslighting is a process.

How gaslighting actually works

It builds slowly over time:

Denial — “That never happened.”
Minimising — “You’re too sensitive.”
Blame shifting — “I wouldn’t act like this if you didn’t…”
The ‘joke’ defence — “Relax, I was kidding.”
Projection — They accuse you of the very thing they are doing

Over time, it does one thing exceptionally well:

It disconnects you from your own reality.

What it does to you

You don’t wake up one day and think, “I’m being gaslit.”

You wake up tired.

Confused.

Apologising for things you’re not even sure you did.

You start walking on eggshells.
Explaining their behaviour to other people.
Second-guessing your instincts.

And slowly… quietly…

You stop trusting yourself.

That’s the damage.

Not the arguments.
Not the words.

The erosion of your internal compass.

It doesn’t just happen in relationships

Gaslighting isn’t limited to romantic relationships.

It happens:

in families
in workplaces
in medical settings
in friendships
in the legal world
in education

And it doesn’t belong to one gender.

Anyone can do it.

Anyone can experience it.

Sometimes it looks like:

calling women “too emotional”
calling men “too weak”
dismissing real pain because it doesn’t fit expectations

Different mask. Same damage.

Medical gaslighting: when your body is ignored

One of the most dangerous forms of gaslighting happens in healthcare.

Because when you are already vulnerable, being dismissed doesn’t just hurt emotionally—it can delay real answers.

Historically, medicine has worked from a “default male” model. That means when people present with symptoms that don’t fit expectations, they are often labelled “atypical” or dismissed entirely.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Men can be dismissed when their pain doesn’t fit stereotypes.
Women can be dismissed as “emotional” or “anxious” when their symptoms are physical.
LGBTQ+ individuals are often not taken seriously because identity biases distort interpretation of symptoms.

The language changes. The bias changes.

But the outcome stays the same:

The patient stops trusting their own body.

My story: when gaslighting becomes your life

I didn’t learn the word gaslighting in a textbook.

I lived it.

For 26 years, I was in a relationship where my reality was constantly questioned, rewritten, or dismissed. I was married to a man who struggled with gambling, and over time I learned how easy it is for someone to make you doubt what you clearly saw, clearly heard, and clearly felt.

You start out confident in your memory. Your instincts. Your understanding of what is happening.

And then slowly, that certainty gets chipped away.

“You’re remembering it wrong.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“You’re too sensitive.”
“You’re imagining things.”

Eventually, you stop arguing back—not because you agree, but because you are exhausted from defending reality itself.

That’s what prolonged gaslighting does. It doesn’t just confuse you. It wears you down until silence feels safer than being told, again, that you are wrong about your own life.

When it happens in medicine

Gaslighting also showed up in medical spaces.

When my late husband became unwell, I pushed. I advocated. I kept asking questions when things didn’t make sense. Early on, we were told it was “not serious” and “just a mild skin cancer, easy to fix.”

But I knew something was wrong. I kept insisting. I kept watching things change.

What was initially dismissed as something minor later revealed itself as malignant metastatic melanoma—an aggressive cancer that spread through his body like the monster it truly is. By the time the reality was fully acknowledged, it was too late. Care shifted from treatment to palliation, and it became something I had to carry with him through the final stages.

Over time, I learned how easily concern can be dismissed when it doesn’t fit what people are ready to see.

And how quickly a person advocating can be made to feel like they are overreacting.

When it becomes your own body

I experienced it in my own health too…

For years I felt unwell. Not in a dramatic, obvious way—but in a persistent, quiet wrongness in my body that I couldn’t ignore.

I have seronegative rheumatoid arthritis, which is harder to diagnose and often missed.

When I finally pushed for answers, I was told I was overreacting. I was given basic pain relief and reassurance that nothing serious was wrong.

But I knew my body was not okay.

And I kept thinking how many people are told they are fine simply because their condition doesn’t fit what is expected.

When it’s your child

The most devastating form of this came with my child.

From around three weeks old, I knew something wasn’t right. Not in a vague anxious way—but in a deep, persistent instinct that something was being missed.

I raised concerns early. I asked questions. I pushed for answers.

And I was dismissed.

Repeatedly.

I was told I was overreacting. I was met with doubt. I was even laughed at by a doctor who labelled me with Munchausen syndrome.

That label didn’t stay in one place. It followed my child’s file from doctor to doctor, shaping how I was seen before I even spoke.

And over time, something insidious happens when you are repeatedly told you are wrong:

You start to doubt your own certainty.

And in that doubt, you start searching harder. Pushing further. Trying to find someone—anyone—who will listen.

But that search itself can then be used as “evidence” that you are unstable. The very act of advocating becomes part of the narrative that you are unreliable.

It becomes a loop.

The more you try to prove reality, the more reality is questioned.

Until one day, everything changes.

On 29th May 2016, my child collapsed and went into heart failure.

In that moment, there was no theory left. No interpretation. No room for labels.

Only truth.

I remember standing in that hospital, overwhelmed with fear and clarity all at once. I grabbed the doctor’s coat and refused to let go.

And I remember screaming:
“A child does not collapse for no reason. A child does not have heart problems for no reason. Find what is wrong with my child.”

I wasn’t being dramatic.

I was fighting for her life.

And I was not wrong.

That scream was the point where my internal compass reset. The moment everything shifted—because for 9 years and 9 months I had fought for my little girl and had been dismissed, laughed at, told I was exaggerating.

She is now healthy, strong, and living a full life.

The cause was eventually identified: severe chronic reflux due to a missing protective stomach flap, allowing food and acid to repeatedly flow back into the oesophagus. The signs were there from three weeks old.

Over time, that acid exposure weakened her lungs, placed strain on her system, and nearly cost her her life.

What I learned

Looking back, I can see the pattern clearly now.

Gaslighting doesn’t always look like cruelty. Sometimes it looks like authority. Sometimes it looks like certainty. Sometimes it looks like reassurance that turns out to be wrong.

But in every form, it does the same damage.

It disconnects you from your own internal compass.

Not because you are weak.

But because you were taught—slowly, repeatedly—to doubt yourself more than you doubt the person dismissing you.

Final truth

Gaslighting isn’t about misunderstanding.

It’s about control.

And the moment you start questioning your own reality more than you question the person undermining it…

That’s the moment something has to shift.

Because your memory isn’t the problem.
Your feelings aren’t the problem.
Your instincts aren’t the problem.

You are not “too much.”

You were just taught to stop trusting yourself.

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