When You Become the Person Who Gaslights Yourself
Why do we question our own pain, needs, and limitations even when the evidence is right in front of us?
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When You Become the Person Who Gaslights Yourself
What happens when no one else is questioning your experience, but you still feel the need to prove it was real?
Last Thursday, I had a minor surgery on my back. It wasn’t anything I would consider particularly serious, but I left with three layers of stitches and instructions to take it easy, avoid strenuous activity, and not lift more than ten pounds for the next ten days. That same day, just a few hours after the surgery, I stopped at work to drop off the paperwork explaining my restrictions. The next day, I went in for my shift, and then I went back again the day after that.
I love my job. I like being there, I like staying busy, and I certainly wasn’t looking for a reason to miss work. If anything, I was probably a little too determined to prove, mostly to myself, that I could keep going like normal. By yesterday, I was about five hours into another shift when I started realizing that maybe I had pushed myself too far. I had been reaching, bending, twisting, climbing up and down, doing all of those little movements that don’t seem like much until your body reminds you that it is still trying to heal.
I took my lunch break hoping that sitting down for a while would help. About half an hour after I came back, my stomach started acting up. I became nauseous and dizzy, my stomach was cramping, and eventually I threw up in the bathroom. Every time I stood up, I felt weak and like I might pass out. These weren’t imaginary symptoms. I wasn’t bored or looking for an excuse to go home. I had walked into work intending to finish my shift, just like I had the shifts before it.
Eventually though, I had to admit that my body was done. I told my supervisor I wasn’t feeling well and needed to go home. He wasn’t angry. There was no confrontation, no accusation, and no one standing there demanding that I prove I was sick enough to leave. I went home, laid down, and still felt awful.
You would think that would have been the end of it. Instead, somewhere between leaving work and lying there at home, I became both the accused and the prosecutor in a trial no one else had asked for. I started wondering whether I had really been that sick. Maybe I could have stayed. Maybe I had been dramatic. Maybe I had somehow convinced myself that I felt worse than I actually did. Somehow, despite still feeling exhausted, nauseous, and dizzy when I stood up, part of me was trying to rewrite what had happened only hours earlier.
That was the part that caught my attention. Nobody at work had accused me of faking anything. Nobody had told me I was lazy, dramatic, weak, or irresponsible. There I was with very real evidence of what had happened, and somehow my own experience still didn’t feel like enough proof.
No one else was gaslighting me. I had somewhere along the way learned how to do it to myself.
When No One Else Is Accusing You
What struck me most about all of this was that no one had actually done anything to make me feel guilty for leaving. My supervisor didn’t roll his eyes or question whether I was really sick. No one demanded an explanation beyond the one I gave. There wasn’t some dramatic interaction at work that sent me home feeling ashamed. The shame seemed to show up all on its own.
Except, of course, it didn’t really come from nowhere. Somewhere throughout my life, I had learned to question myself this way. By the time I got home, I was replaying the entire afternoon as though I were reviewing evidence. How dizzy had I really been? Was I actually going to pass out, or did it just feel that way? Maybe throwing up wasn’t that big of a deal. Maybe I could have sat down for a few minutes and tried again. Maybe if I had wanted badly enough to stay, I could have pushed through it.
The strange thing about self-doubt is how convincing it can sound when it uses the language of accountability. I wasn’t telling myself that I was worthless or weak. I was telling myself that I was just trying to be honest about what happened. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t exaggerated anything. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t making excuses. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t somehow given myself permission to quit when I could have kept going.
But there is a difference between honestly examining our choices and putting ourselves on trial. One begins with curiosity. The other begins with an assumption of guilt.
I had already decided there was a possibility I had done something wrong, so my mind started searching for evidence to support it. Instead of asking why I had pushed myself until I was physically sick, I was asking whether I had been sick enough to justify finally stopping. Somehow, the fact that I had spent the first four days of recovery continuing to show up and push myself didn’t count as evidence of how hard I had tried. Only the moment I stopped seemed worthy of examination.
Many of us engage in this behavior in ways that often go unnoticed. We apologize for seeking help before anyone has even expressed concern about assisting us. We feel guilty about taking time to rest, even when no one is insisting that we work. We clarify our boundaries long after the other person has already acknowledged them. We also prepare defenses against accusations that haven’t even been made.
Sometimes we fear being seen as lazy, dramatic, selfish, difficult, or weak, leading us to criticize ourselves first. We downplay our pain and justify why our needs may not be valid before anyone else can question them.
There’s something particularly painful about realizing that no one else has to dismiss what you’re experiencing anymore because you have become perfectly capable of doing it for them.
How We Learn to Cross-Examine Ourselves
I don’t think anyone wakes up one morning and simply decides that their own experiences can’t be trusted. That kind of self-doubt is usually learned over time. Being called too sensitive or dramatic can teach a person to question their reactions. Having feelings repeatedly dismissed can make minimizing them feel almost automatic. In some environments, being dependable means pushing through, rest is something that must be earned, and needing help feels like becoming a burden. The lesson doesn’t always have to be spoken aloud, either. Spend enough time in a world where being useful is praised and having needs feels inconvenient, and eventually those messages can become part of the way a person speaks to themselves.
Eventually, those messages can become so familiar that we stop recognizing where they came from. They start sounding like our own voice. No one has to tell us to suck it up anymore because we tell ourselves. No one has to question whether our pain is real because we question it first. No one has to accuse us of making excuses because we are already working tirelessly to prove that we aren’t.
We can become remarkably skilled at cross-examining ourselves. Was it really that painful? Were we actually that tired? Did that comment really hurt, or are we being too sensitive? Do we truly need help, or should we be able to handle this ourselves? We search for loopholes in our own experiences, as though our needs are claims being made in a courtroom and we are responsible for proving them beyond a reasonable doubt.
What makes this especially strange is that most of us would never require this much evidence from another person. If someone told me they had recently had surgery, had been pushing themselves for days, became dizzy and nauseous at work, threw up, and felt like they might pass out every time they stood, I wouldn’t start investigating whether they had exhausted every possible option before going home. I wouldn’t ask whether they could have tried just a little harder. I would probably wonder why they had pushed themselves for so long in the first place.
Yet compassion can become strangely conditional when we are the ones who need it. We demand evidence from ourselves that we would never require from another person. We wait until we are exhausted before allowing ourselves to rest, overwhelmed before asking for help, or falling apart before admitting that something hurts. Even then, instead of offering ourselves the same understanding we would instinctively offer someone else, we start negotiating over whether we have suffered enough to deserve it.
Perhaps part of this comes from confusing strength with endurance. There is something admirable about perseverance, about showing up when things are difficult and refusing to give up at the first sign of discomfort. But perseverance stops being a virtue when it becomes a weapon we turn against ourselves. There is no prize for ignoring every warning from our bodies and minds until they finally become loud enough to make the decision for us.
I tell other people all the time that, ultimately, we are the ones who live with the consequences or reap the benefits of the choices we make. No one else has to live inside our bodies, carry our exhaustion, or deal with what happens when we push ourselves beyond what we can reasonably handle. I believe that when I say it to someone else. I encourage them to listen to themselves, honor their limits, and make the decision that is right for them rather than the one that proves something to everyone around them.
So why is that advice so much harder to take when the person who needs to hear it is me?
Maybe real strength isn’t proving how much we can endure. Maybe sometimes it is recognizing that we have reached our limit before we completely collapse. It is trusting that our experiences do not become more legitimate and true simply because we suffered longer, and understanding that listening to ourselves is not the same thing as making excuses.
Because if we only believe ourselves once things become unbearable, we may spend an awful lot of our lives waiting for permission that was ours to give all along.
You Don’t Have to Earn the Right to Stop
Learning to trust ourselves doesn’t mean that we never question our choices. Sometimes we do avoid things because they are uncomfortable. Sometimes we make excuses, procrastinate, or need to push ourselves a little harder than we want to. Accountability matters, but accountability and self-punishment are not the same thing, even though they can sound remarkably similar inside our own heads.
Accountability asks, What happened here? What could I have done differently? What do I need going forward? Self-punishment starts from a very different place. It assumes we have done something wrong and then searches backward for evidence to prove it. Instead of trying to understand ourselves, we try to catch ourselves in a lie.
I think that this distinction matters because there will almost always be a way to convince ourselves that we could have done more. I could have stayed another fifteen minutes. I could have sat down and waited to see if the dizziness passed. I could have tried drinking some water, gone back to work, and reassessed later. There is nearly always one more thing we could have tried, and if our standard for stopping is exhausting every possible option first, then we have created a finish line that will keep moving every time we get close to it.
Maybe the better question isn’t whether we could keep going. Human beings are capable of pushing themselves through an incredible amount of discomfort when they believe they have to. The better question might be whether continuing is actually what we need. There is a difference between being capable of enduring something and being required to endure it.
I think this is where compassion toward ourselves can feel uncomfortable, because compassion requires us to respond to what is happening rather than what we think we should be capable of handling. It asks us to acknowledge that our limits can change from one day to another. What was manageable yesterday might be too much today. What another person can handle has nothing to do with what our own body or mind needs in this moment.
There is also something worth examining about how often we wait until our bodies make the decision for us. We ignore exhaustion until we can barely function. We ignore stress until we break down. We ignore pain until we physically cannot continue. Then we point to the severity of the situation as proof that stopping was finally justified. Somewhere along the way, we begin believing that we are only allowed to stop when continuing is no longer an option.
We shouldn’t have to reach the point of collapse before our needs become legitimate.
Maybe learning to trust ourselves means allowing the earlier signals to count. It means recognizing discomfort before it becomes distress, exhaustion before it becomes depletion, and overwhelm before everything comes crashing down. It means understanding that stopping before we absolutely have to is not necessarily weakness. Sometimes it is wisdom.
Most importantly, it means remembering that doubt is not automatically more truthful than our own experience. The voice asking, Are you sure it was really that bad? doesn’t deserve more credibility simply because it is critical.
Sometimes we know what we need, and perhaps the work is learning to believe ourselves before we have punished or pushed ourselves enough to prove it.
Learning to Believe the Person Who Was There
I wish I could say that recognizing this pattern means I’ll never do it again. I know better than that. This is something I have struggled most of my life with. The voice that questions whether I tried hard enough, stayed long enough, hurt enough, or had a good enough reason to stop didn’t appear overnight, and simply recognizing it doesn’t make it disappear. But recognizing it does give me the opportunity to answer it differently.
Looking back at yesterday, there really wasn’t anything left for me to prove. I had gone back to work after surgery. I had continued showing up. I had pushed myself until my body responded in ways that were impossible to ignore. Yet somehow, even that wasn’t enough evidence for the part of me determined to question whether I had earned the right to go home.
I think that is what I want to carry forward from this experience. I don’t want to keep waiting until my body, my mind, or my circumstances leave me with no other choice before I allow myself to stop. I don’t want rest to be something I can only accept once I have sufficiently suffered for it. There has to be room between giving up at the first sign of difficulty and pushing until there is nothing left to give.
There will probably still be times when I question myself. I’ll wonder whether I could have done more, whether I overreacted, or whether I should have pushed a little harder. But I’m beginning to understand that the presence of doubt doesn’t automatically mean there is something to doubt. Sometimes it is simply an old habit asking familiar questions.
The next time that voice starts building its case against me, I hope I remember that I don’t have to defend every need as though I’m standing in a courtroom. I don’t have to produce enough evidence to prove that my exhaustion was exhausting enough, my pain hurt enough, or my limits were limiting enough.
When I catch myself asking, “But was it really that bad?” I want to stop searching for someone else to confirm what I already experienced.
I can believe the person who was there. Me.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for sharing a little piece of your day with me. I truly appreciate you being here.
Wishing you a beautiful and blessed day.
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With love,
Wendi
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