Gaslighting has been on the rapid rise since 2013, reaching its peak when it was dubbed the “buzz word” of 2018. However, in recent years gaslighting has taken a more insidious turn, with people beginning to question if they might be gaslighting themselves.

No, you aren’t being too sensitive.

Yes, you are qualified enough to ask for a raise at your job.

No, you can’t “change” your partner’s toxic traits.

Yes, you can do better.

Gaslighting has become somewhat of a buzz word in the psychological, relationship and self-development spaces of 2021. It’s often used to characterise a form of manipulative behaviour, commonly from parents, friends, bosses, intimate partners, or even medical professionals. However, a new phenomenon has more recently be discovered: the ability to gaslight yourself.

Psychologists classify gaslighting as a manipulation tactic, whereby the manipulator undermines and questions the victims integrity, leading them to doubt their own reality and memory of the situation. It has become such a forewarned pattern of behaviour due to the subtlety of its harm. If someone is continually gaslit, with their perception of self-belief repeatedly minimised, the seeds of self-doubt planted by the gaslighter can be internalised – thus transferring the cycle of being gaslit, to gaslighting yourself.

In simple terms – repeated abuse can cause one to become their own abuser.

What does self-gaslighting look like?

Simply, self-gaslighting can look like the suppression and ignorance of your emotions, thoughts, and intuitive feelings – thus rendering them as “dramatic” or “unnecessary”. More specifically, the Moon and Manifest Podcast notes that a tell-tale sign of self-gaslighting is when one repeatedly second-guesses and rationalises away their intuition. We’re all familiar with the strong gut-feelings we have when we are hurt by someone, or we know we are unhappy in some aspect of our lives. But if someone becomes susceptible to self-gaslighting tendencies, this “intuitive knowing”, becomes no longer a guidance system, but a voice consciously ignored in favour of more sabotaging thoughts.

A classic and common example of this is often seen when an individual is hurt by someone but dismisses their feelings of sadness or offence in the vein of – “I’m being too sensitive about this, it’s not a big deal.”

Self-gaslighting can also manifest in the workplace – with persistent and public critiques of performance, exclusion, gossip and belittling of efforts being internalised to create the perception that one isn’t deserving of working there. To prevent this self-gaslighting-induced imposter syndrome from emerging in the workplace, two more obvious scenarios that demonstrate gaslighting in a working environment could be:

Your boss doesn’t remember you handing him your report last week, even though you are sure it happened, and you did the work. The gaslighter remains adamant they never got it, which leads you to question whether they are right, and you are misremembering – despite your previous certainty.
Your boss tells you it isn’t a big deal if you miss the morning briefing, but when you do, they criticise you for it – leading you to question your commitment to the workplace, and worthiness of obtaining the job.

Whether you are experiencing gaslighting in the workplace or in a relationship, the consequences remain the same, and it often results in this internalised behaviour pattern that means the gaslighter no longer needs to do the heavy lifting – but rather you are doing it yourself.

Self-gaslighting in motherhood

Another scenario where self-gaslighting behaviours can manifest, is within mothers who undermine and question their ability to parent. Although gaslighting relationships between parents and children have been widely researched and reported, the ability for a parent to gaslight themselves, is less covered.

As parenting is already a famously challenging time – mothers who are trapped in patterns of self-inflicted gaslighting can begin to doubt their parenting capabilities and downplay the struggles of raising children under the guise of “other people have it worse”. These self-manipulative behaviours are detrimental to the mental health of whoever is experiencing it, however self-gaslighting in parenthood, if left ignored, can lead to more severe afflictions like parental burnout.

Solutions

There are a myriad of different strategies and processes to try and reverse the entrenchment of gaslighting tendencies in oneself.

Becoming self-aware

The first step to subvert self-gaslighting behaviours, is to become more self-aware. Being self-aware of your surroundings, interactions, thoughts, and feelings can reverse the psychologically distorting effects of self-gaslighting.

Self-awareness is ultimately about being confident in who you are and what you feel – in other words, being assured in your intuition. When one becomes self-aware, they have the ability to recognise the problem – in that they are gaslighting themselves – gain perspective on the origins of problem and begin to understand their feelings objectively.

Affirming your emotions

When one is in the process of understanding their self-sabotaging behaviours, Healthline Australia proposes a process of “affirming emotions” to counteract the aspect of self-gaslighting that tells you your emotions aren’t valid. An example of affirming your emotions when someone gaslights you, can look like this.

Gaslighting: “I didn’t mean it like that, you’re exaggerating, you’re crazy”
Self-gaslighting: “Maybe I am crazy. I know they love me, and they wouldn’t have meant it like that.”
Affirming emotions: “I remember how they worded it and I stand by how it made me feel. They should not have said it.”

CBT

If the clutches of self-gaslighting are too entrenched in you that these self-talk methods aren’t working – psychologists strongly recommend Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which focuses on restructuring the way individuals think and process emotions, hoping to lessen the distortion that self-gaslighting causes. It’s important to note that CBT has been likened to gaslighting when not performed properly, as the psychologists attempts to render clients issues as a product of their mental distortion, can sometimes seem like an “it’s all in your head” approach. However, a psychologist or therapist who is aware of the dangers of gaslighting and self-gaslighting, can utilise CBT as a tool to minimise the self-doubt and re-arrange clients’ thoughts in the correct way – without making them feel as though they are “crazy” or at fault.

You are not alone.

Most importantly, if you have been experiencing self-gaslighting, it’s important to know that you are not alone. Gaslighting and self-gaslighting has become one of the most dangerous behaviour manipulations of the past couple of years, and a phenomenon that has been well researched.

It is imperative that if you think you have been subjected to self-gaslighting, reach out for support – whether that be to a trusted friend, partner or professional – and try to begin by validating your feelings. Everyone deserves to feel confident in themselves, their intuition and their relationships, and with the right approach, self-gaslighting won’t stand in the way of that.

Keep Reading

In 2016, 20-year-old Lucy Dawson was sectioned for an apparent mental breakdown. Even though she had all the classic symptoms of encephalitis, she was misdiagnosed and left in a psychiatric ward until it was almost too late.

But medical negligence in women’s health is nothing new. Read Lucy’s story and the history behind it.

For centuries, doctors diagnosed women with “hysteria” – a condition characterised by emotional excess. In Western medicine hysteria was considered both a common and chronic disorder among women. Some of its symptoms included sexual desire, irritability, depression, and anxiety. In extreme cases, women diagnosed with “hysteria” were forced into insane asylum’s or underwent horrific and irreversible surgical procedures such as lobotomy or hysterectomy without consent.

The notion that women are somehow pre-disposed to negative behavioural conditions goes back to Ancient Greece, when the womb was thought to wander around the body and cause trouble wherever it went. This theory was rejected with the advancement of modern medicine, but the connotations persisted in Western popular thought for centuries. Today, researchers of medical history point to evidence that hysteria was simply a way to pathologize “everything that men found mysterious or unmanageable in women”.

They were mutilated or molested – clitorises cut off when sexual pleasure was deemed to be the cause, or ‘medically stimulated’ into orgasm when sexual pleasure was deemed to be the cure.

Supposed ‘cures’ usually involved punishment intended to turn a difficult woman into a docile one. They were mutilated or molested – clitorises cut off when sexual pleasure was deemed to be the cause, or ‘medically stimulated’ into orgasm when sexual pleasure was deemed to be the cure. Hysterectomies and oophorectomies were unnecessarily performed – often without the patient’s consent – with the intent to sterilise reproductivity and neutralise hormonal fluctuations. Not to mention the dreaded ‘resting cure’ which inspired a short story so psychologically tormented that it convinced the pioneer physician to abandon it as a form of treatment altogether.

While hysteria is no longer recognised as a medical disorder, women are far more likely than men to be told their symptoms are psychosomatic or the result of a mental illness. The implications of this can be devastating.

Lucy’s Story

In 2016, 20-year-old Lucy Dawson was sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983 for an apparent mental breakdown. Even though she presented with all the classic symptoms of encephalitis, including confusion, personality change, hallucinations, and headaches, she was misdiagnosed and left in a psychiatric ward for three-and-a-half months.

During her time there, Lucy was given electroconvulsive therapy in a last-ditch effort to reset her brain, causing a seizure which made her fall out of bed onto an exposed radiator pipe.

Lucy recalls, “It was the end of November, so the pipe was as hot as it was ever going to be, and I lay on it half dead and having just had ECT, until an old lady screamed for help.”

Anti-psychotic medication had turned her from manic to catatonic, so she was unable to move or call for help on her own. When nurses finally discovered her, it was too late. She suffered third degree burns and was inexplicably paralysed in her left leg. Staff members falsely attributed this injury to one of many violent ‘breakdowns’ when friends and family started to ask questions.

Disabled Model — Lucy Dawson Photographed in 2021 at Cleethorpes Beach

In January 2017, Lucy was finally seen by a neurologist and tested for brain injuries. It was only then that she was diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a type of autoimmune disease where the body attacks otherwise healthy receptors in the brain. Lucy explains, “They call it friendly fire because your immune system identifies antibodies and healthy cells in the brain as being bad and attacks them.” This time, doctors explained that her paralysis was just another symptom of her disease.

Anti-psychotic medication had turned her from manic to catatonic; when nurses discovered her it was too late.

But Lucy was still not satisfied. She decided to hire a lawyer after being discharged from hospital and saw several specialists for her leg – none of whom could offer a real explanation. One day, a locum noticed the position of the scar the burn had left and checked it against a diagram for the sciatic nerve. It suddenly became very clear: the radiator had burned right through it. The damage was irreversible.

Since then, the hospital has apologised and launched a “robust internal investigation” to improve their standard of care for future patients. But Lucy insists nothing could ever make up for the physical and emotional trauma she endured at their hands.

Lucy is now a British ambassador for disabled modelling and works to increase representation in the industry. She says that her success as a lingerie model “came out of nowhere. Because I’ve got quite a curvy figure, brands were interested and that became my niche.” She goes on to say that helping other disabled women to reclaim their sexuality “makes me feel what I do is worthwhile.”

In the five years that have passed, Lucy has encountered countless women with stories just like hers from all over the world. Australia is no exception.

Click here to follow Lucy on Instagram

A Bigger Issue

One in three women has had their health concerns dismissed by their general practitioner according to the latest figures from the Australia Talks National Survey 2021. It found that women were twice as likely to feel dismissed as men.

For instance, endometriosis affects one in nine women in Australia, but it usually takes six-and-a-half years to get a diagnosis.

“We literally know less about every aspect of female biology compared to male biology” – Dr. Janine Austin Clayton, director of the US Office of Research on Women’s health.

Research shows that health care providers prescribe less pain medication to women than men after surgery. In general, women report more severe levels of pain, more frequent incidences of pain, and pain of longer duration than men, but are nonetheless treated for pain less aggressively.

“It’s a huge issue in medicine,” says Dr. Tia Powell, a bioethicist and a professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Medical professionals may hold implicit biases that affect the way that women are treated, she said. “Medical schools and professional guidelines are starting to address this problem, but there is still much to be done.”

Karen Magraith, a GP and president-elect of the Australasian Menopause Society, said the gender gap extended beyond reproductive health issues.

“We have evidence heart disease in women is not recognised as early, not treated as effectively and women receive less evidence-based treatments than men do. I think that’s a good example of where women’s health is not as effectively treated as men’s health,” she said.

One of the main reasons for this is that women have been historically underrepresented in clinical trials for new drugs, treatments, and devices in Australia and across the world. And in the few instances where women have been included, the influence of sex and gender is often ignored. As a result, women are more likely to be withheld effective treatment and exposed to harmful side effects – including a higher incidence of adverse reactions when new (and insufficiently researched) drugs hit the market.

The result? “We literally know less about every aspect of female biology compared to male biology,” says Dr. Janine Austin Clayton, director of the US Office of Research on Women’s health.

It would seem that women are just too hard to study. For decades, women were excluded from clinical drug trials based on the unsubstantiated belief that fluctuations in hormones associated with the menstrual cycle would make results more difficult to analyse. When thalidomide was found to cause serious birth defects in the 1970s, women of childbearing age in the US were banned from participating in clinical research studies in order to ‘protect’ their reproductive capabilities. Even though this ban was lifted in 1993, and the inclusion of women was mandated in government-funded research, drug companies were not required to comply.

A 2008 report found that Australian Human Rights and Ethics Committees (HRECs) failed to enquire about the numbers of male and female participants in clinical trials. The same report showed that opinions were also divided on whether research cost and convenience justified excluding women from research.

As it currently stands, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has no policy comparable to those in the US or Canada requiring researchers to test on both men and women.

But organisations like the George Institute are calling for policy reform in order to standardise the way sex and gender is collected in clinical trials in Australia. Their demands include gender specific reporting in academic journals and a more equitable balance of female and male patients in clinical trials.

In response to such demands, a spokesperson for the Department of Health pointed to the $535 million package set aside for female health as part of the 2021-2022 national budget. It serves to improve cervical and breast cancer screening programmes, provide Medicare subsidies for testing of IVF embryos for genetic faults, increase support for the mental wellbeing of new and expectant parents, and boost women’s health initiatives including the Periods, Pain and Endometriosis Program (PEPP-Talk) developed by the Pelvic Pain Foundation of Australia.

However, this package amounts to less than $46 for every woman over the age of 15. More can be done to help.

What You Can Do

Standard consultations at the GP last just 15 minutes. Here’s how to make sure your health concerns are heard.

Come Prepared

Plan what you intend to talk about before you arrive for your appointment. Write down any concerns and questions so you don’t forget. Be specific.

Tell Your Story

According to Leana Wen, MD, author of When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests, “doctors end up asking about symptoms rather than the story. But studies have shown that over 80% of diagnoses can be made just by listening… By that, they mean listening to the story, the open-ended story of what happened, rather than asking a list of yes-no questions”

Be sure to mention:

When the symptoms started
Whether any life event/action coincided with the onset of symptoms
Whether the symptoms have appeared before
Describe how it feels
Whether the pain has increased/decreased
How often you feel the pain

Take Someone with You

If you are dealing with a particularly complex issue, have a condition that makes it difficult to discuss alone, or are particularly vulnerable, it might be appropriate to bring a patient advocate or a loved one along to an appointment.

Request a Female Doctor

Studies show that female doctors tend to listen more and their patients — both male and female — tend to do better.

Be Direct

If you still feel like you’re being dismissed, tell your doctor how you feel. Express concern that you are not being properly heard. A good physician should be able to listen and take your problems seriously.

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