What Gaslighting Actually Is (And Why Your Brain Starts Doubting Yourself)
Lianne Perry, MA, MSc., RCC
You've just had a conversation with someone, and something doesn't feel right. You know what you heard, and you remember what happened. Yet somehow, by the end of the conversation, you're the one apologizing, questioning your memory, or wondering whether you've completely misunderstood the situation.
Maybe you've started replaying conversations in your head, trying to figure out exactly what was said. Perhaps you've begun saving text messages, not because you want to prove someone wrong, but because you're no longer entirely confident in your own recollection. You might even find yourself checking with friends to see whether your reactions are reasonable.
If this sounds familiar, you may have experienced gaslighting. It's a term we hear frequently these days, but its actual meaning is more specific than simply having someone disagree with you or tell you something you don't want to hear. Understanding that distinction matters, particularly when you're trying to make sense of a relationship that has left you feeling confused.
What Gaslighting Actually Means
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which someone repeatedly undermines another person's confidence in their perceptions, memories, or understanding of reality. It can happen in romantic relationships, families, friendships, and workplaces. While gaslighting can involve deliberate deception, it isn't always possible to know another person's intentions, which is why looking at patterns of behaviour is so important.
Imagine telling your partner that something they said yesterday was hurtful. Rather than acknowledging your experience or discussing what happened, they insist the conversation never took place. When you try to explain what you remember, they become increasingly dismissive or turn the conversation around until you're defending yourself instead.
You might hear things like:
"I never said that. You're making things up."
"You're remembering it completely wrong."
"You're too sensitive. Nobody else would react like that."
"You're always twisting things to make me look bad."
"You really need to get a handle on your emotions."
Now, one disagreement about what happened doesn't automatically constitute gaslighting. People genuinely remember events differently, misunderstand one another, and sometimes become defensive. What makes gaslighting particularly damaging is the repeated pattern of having your experience dismissed, distorted, or challenged until you begin to question your own judgment.
Over time, you may find yourself relying more heavily on the other person's version of events than your own. The confidence you once had in your ability to understand what's happening around you can gradually begin to erode, sometimes so slowly that you don't recognize it until you're already questioning almost everything.
Why Your Brain Starts Doubting Itself
One of the most confusing aspects of gaslighting is that you may recognize something is wrong while simultaneously wondering whether you're the problem. You might feel certain about what happened one moment and completely unsure the next. That constant back-and-forth can be mentally and emotionally exhausting.
Our brains are continually trying to make sense of our experiences, particularly within relationships that matter to us. We naturally look for consistency, predictability, and emotional safety. When someone you care about repeatedly contradicts your experience, your brain is left trying to reconcile two very different versions of reality.
You remember what happened, but someone important to you insists that you're wrong. If challenging their version of events leads to conflict, anger, withdrawal, or punishment, questioning yourself may gradually begin to feel safer than questioning them.
You might find yourself thinking:
Maybe I misunderstood.
Maybe I really am too sensitive.
Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.
Maybe I should just let it go.
These thoughts don't necessarily mean you've lost your ability to recognize what's happening. They may reflect how you've adapted to a relationship in which trusting your own perceptions has become emotionally costly. Sometimes doubting yourself becomes a way of trying to preserve the relationship, avoid conflict, or maintain some sense of stability.
How Gaslighting Can Affect Your Nervous System
When you repeatedly find yourself having to defend your memories, explain your intentions, or justify your feelings, your nervous system may begin anticipating conflict before it even happens. You might notice yourself rehearsing conversations, carefully choosing your words, or watching someone's facial expressions for signs that they're becoming upset.
Perhaps you feel anxious before raising a concern, even when it's something relatively small. You might spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to find exactly the right words, hoping that if you explain yourself clearly enough, the conversation will go differently this time.
Over time, this kind of uncertainty can contribute to chronic stress, hypervigilance, and difficulty making decisions. You may start second-guessing choices that once felt straightforward or seeking reassurance from friends and family about whether your reactions are reasonable. Even ordinary interactions can begin to feel complicated when you've learned to anticipate being challenged or dismissed.
What's particularly difficult is that these responses don't necessarily disappear when the relationship ends. Your nervous system may continue operating as though you need to remain on alert, even when the immediate source of stress is no longer present. Rebuilding a sense of emotional safety often takes time, patience, and repeated experiences of being able to trust your own judgment.
The Protective Parts That Learn to Question Everything
This is where Internal Family Systems (IFS) can offer a particularly compassionate way of understanding what's happening. IFS recognizes that we all have different parts of ourselves that develop strategies to protect us from emotional pain. When someone has experienced repeated invalidation or gaslighting, certain protective parts may become especially active.
For example, you might have a part that constantly analyzes conversations, searching for evidence of what really happened. Another part might encourage you to apologize quickly to prevent an argument, while a different part tells you not to bring things up because keeping the peace feels safer.
There may also be a part that's angry, frustrated, and desperately wants someone to acknowledge what you've experienced. These different responses can sometimes feel contradictory, particularly when one part wants to speak up while another is urging you to stay quiet.
From an IFS perspective, these parts aren't trying to make your life difficult. They're attempting to protect you using strategies that may have helped you navigate an emotionally unpredictable relationship. The part that questions everything may believe that if it can just analyze every detail carefully enough, it can prevent you from being hurt again.
In therapy, we don't need to fight these protective responses or force them to disappear. Instead, we can become curious about what they're afraid might happen if they stop working so hard. As those parts begin to experience greater safety, they may gradually become more willing to step back, allowing you to approach situations with greater confidence and clarity.
Gaslighting Isn't the Same as Disagreement
I think this distinction deserves particular attention because the term gaslighting has become so widely used. These days, it's sometimes applied to almost any situation in which someone feels dismissed, misunderstood, or disagreed with. While those experiences can certainly be upsetting, they aren't necessarily examples of gaslighting.
Someone disagreeing with your interpretation of an event isn't automatically manipulating you. Neither is someone forgetting a conversation, making a mistake, or offering a different perspective. Healthy relationships allow room for different memories, opinions, and emotional experiences, even when those differences are uncomfortable.
Two people can remember the same conversation differently without either person deliberately trying to undermine the other. What matters is whether there's room for curiosity, discussion, and mutual respect. Can both people acknowledge that their experiences might differ? Is there a willingness to listen, consider another perspective, and take responsibility when someone has been hurt?
In relationships involving gaslighting, the pattern often looks quite different. One person's version of reality consistently becomes the only acceptable one, while the other is left feeling confused, silenced, or increasingly unsure of themselves. Attempts to clarify what happened may lead to more accusations, denials, or criticism rather than greater understanding.
Looking at the pattern over time is usually far more useful than trying to determine whether one particular conversation qualifies as gaslighting. It's also important to recognize that you don't need to establish someone's intentions with absolute certainty to take seriously the impact their behaviour is having on you.
Rebuilding Trust in Your Own Experience
One of the things I often work on with clients recovering from antagonistic relationships is helping them reconnect with their own perceptions. This doesn't mean insisting that every memory must be perfectly accurate or that their interpretation of every situation is necessarily correct. None of us has a flawless memory, and all of us sometimes misunderstand things.
Instead, it's about recognizing that your thoughts, feelings, and observations deserve consideration, even when someone else disagrees with them. You can be open to another person's perspective without automatically dismissing your own, and you can acknowledge uncertainty without assuming that you're the one who's wrong.
That might begin with noticing when you automatically question your reaction to something. Perhaps you catch yourself thinking, I'm probably overreacting, before you've even had a chance to consider what you're feeling. Rather than immediately dismissing that reaction, you might pause and ask yourself what actually happened and why it affected you.
For some people, keeping a private journal can help them reconnect with their observations, provided it's safe to do so. For others, working with a therapist offers a supportive place to explore experiences that have become tangled in confusion and self-doubt. Approaches such as EMDR and IFS can help address the emotional impact of these experiences and the protective responses that may have developed around them.
Importantly, rebuilding self-trust doesn't mean you have to confront the person who has been undermining you. Sometimes direct confrontation isn't emotionally or physically safe, particularly when you're still in the relationship. Healing can begin without the other person's agreement, acknowledgment, or participation.
You Don't Have to Prove Your Reality to Everyone
One of the hardest things about recovering from gaslighting is accepting that you may never receive the acknowledgment you've been hoping for. The other person may never admit what happened, and they may continue telling a completely different version of the story. That can feel deeply unfair, especially when you've spent so much time trying to explain yourself.
It's understandable to want someone to recognize the impact of their behaviour. We naturally seek acknowledgment when we've been hurt, particularly from someone whose opinion once mattered deeply to us. Unfortunately, continuing to pursue that acknowledgment from someone who repeatedly dismisses your experience can sometimes keep you caught in the same painful cycle.
Healing doesn't have to depend on convincing someone else that your experience was real. You can begin rebuilding trust in yourself even when another person refuses to understand, and you can recognize that something hurt you without having to win an argument about whether it should have.
That process may take time, particularly if you've spent years learning to question yourself. There may still be moments when you second-guess your memories, wonder whether you overreacted, or wish you could get one final explanation that would make everything clear.
The goal isn't to become someone who never doubts anything. It's to become someone who can experience uncertainty without automatically assuming they're wrong. Over time, that growing ability to trust your own perceptions can become one of the most meaningful parts of recovery.
Joey's Take 🐾
I don't see the point in rushing things. Sometimes I need a good walk, sometimes I need a nap, and sometimes I just want to enjoy my chew without anyone bothering me. I've found that life works better when I take things at my own pace, although my human doesn't always seem to appreciate that when we're heading home from a walk.
About Lianne
I’m Lianne Perry, a Registered Clinical Counsellor in BC who works online with clients across Canada. I specialize in trauma, anxiety, life transitions, and helping people recover from emotionally abusive and manipulative relationships. I’m certified in EMDR, a powerful approach that helps people heal without having to relive every detail of the past, and I’m also a Certified Narcissistic Abuse Treatment Clinician, having completed extensive training and certification with Dr. Ramani Durvasula. My sessions are grounded, collaborative, and combine evidence-based approaches with practical tools tailored to each person’s unique experiences. When I’m not in session, you’ll probably find me hiking with my Aussie, Joey, or sitting by the ocean, my favourite co-therapist.
