There are times when you don’t need someone to tell you that you’re exaggerating. You get there on your own. You stop for a moment, you feel something stinging inside you, and immediately after the rational voice takes over: “It’s nothing”. “Come on, you’re making a drama”. “Maybe you’re the problem”.
This is how self-gaslighting begins. Not with a sudden trauma, but with a slow habit of questioning one’s perceptions, to the point of considering them unreliable. It doesn’t happen by chance. And above all, it doesn’t happen because you are fragile.
How an external voice becomes an internal voice
It often happens in everyday situations. You point out a discomfort at work and are told that you are too sensitive. In a relationship you express a need and are told that you are misinterpreting it. As a family, you try to explain how you feel and someone debunks everything with a joke.
At first you get angry. Then you doubt. Finally, stop talking. Comparison with others leaves room for a continuous, silent, exhausting internal dialogue. That’s where gaslighting changes shape. It’s no longer something you endure. It’s something you reproduce inside yourself.
A study published in 2019 on theAmerican Sociological Review by sociologist Paige L. Sweet, titled The sociology of gaslighting. Sweet explains that gaslighting is not just a technique of psychological abuse, but a social phenomenon, which is based on power relations and structural inequalities. It works because it draws on stereotypes already present in society, especially those that associate some people, particularly women, with irrationality and emotional excess.
When these messages are repeated over time, they no longer need to come from the outside. The person internalizes them. And she begins to use them against herself.
Gaslighting oneself is not spectacular. It has no main scenes. It is made up of phrases that go unnoticed. You feel hurt, but you tell yourself it’s not that serious. You feel tired, but you think you have no valid reason. You feel disrespected, but you quickly find an explanation that absolves everyone except you.
According to Sweet, the central point is precisely this: gaslighting becomes truly effective when it manages to erode trust in one’s own reality. And when that happens, there is no longer any need for a manipulator. The check has already taken place. So you learn to smile, to minimize, to function. From the outside you seem balanced, adult, strong. Inside, however, something slowly fades away. Because the emotions you don’t listen to don’t disappear. They remain pending. And you sit there, wondering if you can really trust what you hear.
Go back to listening to yourself without feeling wrong
Getting out of this mechanism doesn’t mean becoming impulsive or questioning everything. It means stopping for a moment before correcting yourself. When the automatic sentence arrives “I’m exaggerating”try not to follow her right away. Stay with the feeling, even if just for a few seconds.
The body often speaks before the head. A sudden tension, breathing that changes, a tiredness that doesn’t go away. They are not whims. They are signals. And they don’t need justification to exist. It also helps to shift your gaze. Tell someone you trust about what you are experiencing, or imagine that the same situation is happening to someone you love. You would hardly tell her that she is exaggerating. With you, however, you do it without realizing it.
Sweet’s study is important for this very reason: it provides context. If you learn not to believe yourself, it’s not because you’re weak, but because you’ve lived in a system that has made it normal to doubt your emotional credibility. Starting to listen to yourself again is not indulgent. It’s a balancing act. It’s about stopping treating yourself like an unreliable source and slowly starting to recognize that what you hear makes sense, even when you can’t yet explain which one.
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