Is your inner voice the loudest? This is how to recognize gaslighting toward yourself

There are times when you don't need anyone to tell you that you are overreacting. You come to that on your own. You stand still for a moment, feel something that stings inside, and immediately after that the rational voice takes over: "It's nothing," "Come on, you're making a big deal out of it again," "Maybe you are the problem."

This is how gaslighting toward yourself begins. Not with a sudden trauma, but with a slow habit of questioning your own perceptions, until eventually you begin to see them as unreliable. It doesn't happen overnight. And above all, it doesn't happen because you are weak.

How an external voice becomes an inner voice

It often happens in everyday situations. You point out a problem at work and are told you are too sensitive. In a relationship, you express a need and you are told you are wrong. In the family, you try to explain how you feel and someone downplays everything with a joke.

At first you get angry. Then you start doubting. Eventually you stop talking. Confrontation with others gives way to a constant, silent, debilitating inner conversation. That's where gaslighting changes form. It is no longer something you face alone. It is something you begin to repeat within yourself.

A 2019 study in the American Sociological Review by sociologist Paige L. Sweet, titled The sociology of gaslighting, is very clear. Sweet explains that gaslighting is not just a technique of psychological abuse, but a social phenomenon based on power relations and structural inequalities. It works because it builds on stereotypes that already exist in society, which particularly link certain groups of people, especially women, to irrationality and overly emotional behavior.

When those messages keep repeating themselves over time, they no longer need to come from outside. The person internalizes them and  begins to use them against themself.

Gaslighting against oneself is not spectacular. It does not involve big scenes. It consists of phrases that go unnoticed. You feel hurt, but you tell yourself it's not so bad. You feel tired, but you feel you have no valid reason for it. You feel disrespected, but you immediately find an explanation that exonerates everyone but you.

According to Sweet, that is precisely the key point: gaslighting becomes truly effective only when it succeeds in undermining your confidence in your own reality. And once that happens, a manipulator is no longer even needed. Control has then already succeeded. This is how you learn to smile, to put things into perspective, to function. From the outside you appear balanced, mature, strong. But inside, something is slowly extinguishing, because emotions you don't listen to don't disappear. They linger. And you continue to doubt whether you can still trust yourself in what you feel.

Listening to yourself again without feeling 'overdone'

Stepping out of this mechanism doesn't mean becoming impulsive or questioning everything. It means pausing a moment earlier, and correcting yourself. When the automatic thought "I am exaggerating" comes up, try not to go right into it. Stay with the feeling for a moment, even if only a few seconds.

The body often speaks before the head. A sudden tension, breathing that changes, fatigue that just won't go away. These are not quirks. They are signals. And they don't need justification to exist. They also help to shift your perspective. Talk about what you're going through to someone you trust, or imagine the same situation happening to a person you love. You probably wouldn't say that he or she is exaggerating. To yourself, on the other hand, you do so without even thinking about it.

This is exactly why Sweet's research is so important: It puts everything back into perspective. If you have learned not to believe yourself, it is not because you are weak, but because you have lived in a system that has made it normal to doubt your emotional credibility. Starting to listen to yourself again is not an act of indulgence. It is an act of balance. It is ceasing to treat yourself as an unreliable source and slowly beginning to recognize that what you are feeling makes sense about something, even if you can't explain exactly what.

(MP/©APA via GreenMe.it/translation and adaptation: The Global Lifestyle/Illustration:Unsplash)