@elly.psychologist: Gaslighting is disorienting precisely because it works beneath your conscious awareness, you rarely catch it in the moment, only afterwards, left with a vague fog of confusion you can't quite trace back to anything specific. Because of that, the most effective defences against gaslighting aren't about outsmarting the person doing it, they're about protecting your own connection to your own experience. One of the most underrated tools is simply saying your feelings out loud, to yourself, before anyone else weighs in. Naming what you're actually feeling, in your own voice, interrupts the exact mental process gaslighting hijacks, and keeps you anchored to your own reality instead of someone else's version of it. The more you practise this, the less gaslighting can pull you into confusion later, because you've already established what's true for you before the conversation even starts. It's also worth being deliberate about who gets access to your feelings in the first place. If someone has repeatedly responded to your honesty with gaslighting, that isn't a space that deserves your vulnerability. Saving your real feelings for people who can actually hear them, and stepping back from those who consistently distort them, isn't avoidance, it's protection. And when a conversation starts to feel like gaslighting in real time, the moment you catch yourself thinking maybe I saw it wrong is exactly the moment to pause and step out, not to keep explaining or proving your feelings are valid. They already are, regardless of anyone's response, and staying to defend that only invites more gaslighting and more confusion Official accounts and resources: www.ellyanastasiades.com #gaslighting #gaslightingawareness #gaslit #gaslightingsigns #gaslightingexplained

Elly | Counseling Psychologist

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Wednesday 22 July 2026 07:50:00 GMT