How To Self Heal After Parental Gaslighting
Ways Children are Gaslighted by Parents and How to Reclaim Self Trust
How do you put into words what it’s like living as a child growing up in a house where your reality is denied? Where you feel like you can’t trust your own perceptions? Where you cry yourself to sleep every single night? Where you have panic attacks when you open your mouth to speak and have to stop yourself from crying when someone’s nice to you?
Growing up in an environment where you are taught you can’t trust yourself is brutal. In all of the abuse I suffered as a child, I think the gaslighting part is the most difficult to overcome. As I look back on my childhood and recent parental estrangement, it’s the gaslighting and neglect that makes me the angriest.
Whenever I pointed to something wrong, whether it regarded another person or situation, I would always ask myself: what if I’m lying? And then have a panic attack because I didn’t want to ruin anything for the fear of me lying. And whenever I spoke up about things I didn’t like at home, like the way I was being talked to, etc., I was always told to be quiet. When I would cry nearly every day in elementary school, my parent told me that it was hormones. You can imagine the disconnect that happened at such an early age. I never had answers for…
