Am I Gaslighting Myself?

"There are moments when distress arrives clearly, only to dissolve almost immediately. You feel hurt or unsettled, then hear a familiar internal response: Maybe you are overreacting; maybe it was not that bad; maybe you misunderstood. Within seconds, the original feeling is replaced by doubt about whether it deserved to exist at all. Many people describe this experience as " gaslighting myself.""

"The phrase resonates because it captures something psychologically real: a pattern of internal self-doubt that feels imposed rather than chosen. But it also raises an important question. Gaslighting, in its original sense, is something one person does to another. So what does it mean when the undermining voice seems to come from inside?"

"Self-gaslighting is best understood as a learned habit of self-invalidation. It is common among people who grew up in emotionally minimising environments, or who spent long periods in relationships or workplaces where their reactions were questioned, dismissed, or reframed as excessive."

Self-gaslighting is an internal pattern of dismissing and doubting one’s own emotions and perceptions. The undermining inner voice often originates from repeated emotional invalidation in childhood, relationships, or workplaces. Interpersonal gaslighting involves one person eroding another’s reality-testing through persistent invalidation; self-gaslighting is an internalised, automatic version of that process. Repeated questioning, dismissal, or reframing of reactions trains a habit of self-invalidation that replaces felt distress with immediate doubt. The habit progressively erodes self-trust. Rebuilding trust begins with recognising and validating one’s own experience and resisting automatic invalidation.

Read at Psychology Today