You may hear the term’ gaslighting,’ and it immediately reminds you of toxic partners, bosses, or family members. But sometimes the villain is you. Gaslighting has many forms, and sometimes the highest level of gaslighting comes from you as you devalue your feelings, dèjavu your memories, and “talk yourself out” of what you clearly experienced, all under the guise of being responsible, mature, or “not overreacting.”
The ways we gaslight ourselves often are not visible, but instead sound responsible, polite, or logical ways of invalidating our own emotions. Here are some everyday ways people quietly invalidate themselves without even realizing it.
Telling Yourself “It Wasn’t That Bad”
The phrase “I’m just oversensitive” is a classic self-betrayal starter pack. It may have hurt you, but rather than acknowledging the hurt, you immediately downplay it. You continuously remind yourself that other people have it worse. You have been conditioned to believe that the severity of your pain must be high enough to be “allowed” to hurt.
If the event has impacted you in any way, it is irrelevant how severe it is compared to others; it impacted you, hence, it is important. Period.
Assuming Your Memory Is Wrong by Default
You clearly remember an event. But as soon as someone disagrees with you about what happened, rather than standing by your assertion, your first assumption is that you could be misremembering the event. This tendency often results from having lived in an environment where your account of events was regularly challenged by others. This leads to a gradual erosion of faith in your own memory over time.
However, having an imperfect memory does not mean that the memory does not exist. You do not need to provide “court-like” verification of your authenticity to yourself every single time. Your default mode should not be to assume that your memories are false.
Explaining Away Every Red Flag
They ignored you. They snapped at you for literally no reason. They crossed a line – again. And instead of trusting and validating your discomfort, you become their PR manager. In your quest to be empathetic, you become so concentrated on being understanding and what the person is experiencing that you dismiss how you continually feel uncomfortable with their actions.
While empathy is great, this empathy should not interfere with your ability to remain emotionally and mentally clear in your interactions with them. If you keep justifying behavior that hurts, listen to that.
Calling Your Intuition “Anxiety” to Shut It Up
Your inner voice may speak to you long before your logical brain can process it. Calling this inner voice “anxiety” and attributing it to panic or fear may set up a habit of regarding valid questions, feelings, and hunches as invalid. If something feels off and your first response always is, I’m probably just anxious; you train yourself to ignore the most important signals.
The problem is not that you feel things deeply. It is that society labelled your feelings and questions as “irrational.” You were actively taught not to trust what you feel unless it’s externally validated.
Blaming Yourself for Other People’s Behavior
When someone pulls away, disrespects you, or crosses a boundary, your first instinct is to ask yourself what you did wrong to warrant such actions. While self-reflection is good, self-blame is not. You are taking on responsibilities that you have no right or ability to take on for other people’s moods, their avoidance, and lack of effort.
This constantly keeps you in a state of being concerned about repairing issues that you did not create. You are just gaslighting yourself into believing that you deserve to be treated poorly, when there is no real evidence that you did anything wrong.
Letting Productivity Decide Your Worth
Did you have a bad day? Well, it was because you “didn’t do enough.” Were you emotional? You “should have pushed through it.” Were you resting? You were “just being lazy.” Essentially, if you have this habit, you are gaslighting your own humanity because to you, your value is based on your output, and your exhaustion is seen as a personal failure. This is exactly what Capitalism taught you, and you continue to enforce this on yourself.
You have every right to just exist and not to feel the need to constantly prove yourself. Being tired does not mean weakness; being tired is part of being human (I know… shocking!).
Calling Emotional Shutdown ‘Being Strong’
You have run out of tears. You have totally stopped crying. You don’t respond or react anymore. In your mind, you are saying that you “moved on,” but you clearly have not moved on; all you have done is disconnect from your emotions. While it may appear that you are strong, in actuality, you are emotionally numb and only pretending to be brave.
Mistaking survival mode for healing is doing yourself a disservice by gaslighting yourself into believing that unprocessed feelings just vanish after time passes. This belief is just not true because unprocessed feelings will always linger until they are addressed.
Staying Because You’ve ‘Already Invested Too Much’
You’re unhappy, drained, and disconnected. But still… you stay. Why? Because you’ve already invested time. The belief that you have invested too much time, memory, and energy into the relationship to leave is misleading you. When you stay in a relationship where you feel unhappy, your own thoughts are deceiving you into thinking that you cannot leave, or else you would lose everything you had invested thus far.
In reality, you can choose your own happiness without suffering. Staying miserable just to justify the past only steals more from your future.
18 Ways Gaslighting Shows Up in Everyday Conversations
Over time, these subtle digs can mess with your head and chip away at your confidence. Here are 18 ways gaslighting sneaks into your life without you even realizing it—and how to shut it down.
18 Ways Gaslighting Shows Up in Everyday Conversations