@elly.psychologist: That uneasy feeling in your stomach when something in your relationship doesn’t sit right is worth taking seriously, even if you can’t explain it yet. The natural instinct is to go straight to them for answers, but if you’ve ever come away from those conversations more confused than when you started, unsure what you saw or felt, you’ll know how easily a gut feeling can be talked out of you. That’s often how gaslighting works. It isn’t always dramatic lies. It can be a slow drip of explanations that sound reasonable, until your own sense of what happened starts to blur. So before you reach for your phone, give yourself some distance. Find somewhere quiet where it’s just you and your own thoughts, and if your body is buzzing, help it settle with something physical, a quick walk, a workout, a shower, or a simple task that brings you back to the present. Once you’re calmer, look at what actually upset you, setting aside anything they’ve told you in the past about why it was fine. Maybe they’ve gone silent for most of the day while you’ve been reaching out, and what really stings is feeling forgotten, or the familiar worry that comes each time they disappear like that. Then try to capture it in one line, a single truth you can stand on, something like feeling pushed aside and needing someone you can rely on. Writing that down each time something happens does two important things. Over weeks and months it shows you patterns you might otherwise miss, and it gives you a record of your own experience that gaslighting can’t easily rewrite. It also gives you an anchor if you decide to raise it, so when the conversation starts drifting into side issues or explanations, you can calmly acknowledge their view and still return to the fact that you don’t feel heard. Talking while you’re still flooded makes that much harder, because you’re less clear on what you need and far easier to steer, which is exactly when gaslighting tends to land hardest. And if, no matter how many times you bring it back, the conversation keeps sliding somewhere else, that tells you something too. Some people genuinely can’t empathise or take any responsibility, and when that’s the case, gaslighting isn’t a misunderstanding you can clear up with better words. It’s a deeper pattern that needs handling in a very different way, starting with trusting what your gut has been telling you all along Official accounts and resources: www.ellyanastasiades.com #gaslight #gaslighting #gaslit #gaslightingawareness #gaslightingsigns

Elly | Counseling Psychologist

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Saturday 17 October 2026 17:34:52 GMT