Your cart is currently empty!
I used to think gaslighting was just a buzzword people tossed around on TikTok.
Now I know it’s a slow erosion of the soul—an unraveling of your reality that makes you question everything, especially yourself.
As someone who’s lived through it, I’ve learned this truth the hard way:
manipulation doesn’t always look like screaming or slamming doors.
Sometimes it looks like long silences.
Like words twisted so many times you forget what you said.
Like being made to feel guilty for having needs.
Like hearing, “I never said that,” when you can still remember the exact moment, the exact tone, the exact air in the room.
And the worst part?
You believe them.
Not because you’re weak, but because you were conditioned—carefully, quietly—to doubt your own mind.
So here I am, on the other side of that fog, doing what I wish someone had done for me sooner:
Shining a flashlight into the shadows. Naming the patterns. Whispering to anyone still trapped in the loop:
🕯️ You’re not imagining it. You’re not too sensitive. You’re not alone.
Because once you name the curse, it starts to lose its power.
Gaslighting Is Not a Buzzword—It’s a Bruise You Can’t See
Let’s get one thing straight:
Gaslighting isn’t someone disagreeing with you.
It’s not conflict.
It’s not a bad date.
It’s a deliberate, strategic war on your memory, your emotions, your very sense of truth.
It’s psychological shapeshifting.
It’s:
“You’re overreacting.”
“You always make things worse.”
“That’s not how it happened.”
“You’re remembering it wrong.”
“You’re just being crazy.”
It’s someone moving the emotional furniture until you can’t find the exit.
Gaslighting doesn’t hit like a slap—it seeps. It coils. It confuses.
And because it often comes wrapped in just enough affection to keep you hooked, you start to second-guess your own instincts.
Maybe they’re right.
Maybe you are the problem.
Maybe if you were easier, quieter, calmer, less…
🖤 Let me say this louder for the people in the back: you weren’t too much. They just made you feel small.
The Most Common Mind Games
Gaslighting doesn’t always shout.
Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it goes silent. Sometimes it smiles while it tightens the leash.
These are some of the most common tactics I’ve lived through—different faces of the same manipulation, all designed to make you doubt your own reality.
🧠 DARVO: The Gaslighter’s Favorite Curse
Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim and Offender.
It goes like this:
You bring up something they did that hurt you.
They deny it ever happened.
Then they accuse you of being cruel, dramatic, or abusive.
Suddenly you’re apologizing for even bringing it up.
It’s emotional whiplash. And it works, because it teaches you to stop bringing things up at all.
🧊 Stonewalling: Silence as a Weapon
You express a need—emotional, physical, practical—and they go cold.
No yelling. No fight. Just…nothing.
They withdraw. They shut down. And you’re left spinning in the silence, wondering what you did wrong.
You start tiptoeing. You stop asking for things. You learn to shrink in hopes of keeping the peace.
🖤 You were never asking for too much. They just gave too little.
🎭 Faux Concern: “I Just Worry About You” (Translation: Control)
Ah yes, the masterstroke: manipulation dressed as care.
“I just worry about the choices you’re making.”
“I just think you’re overwhelmed.”
“I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea about you.”
When someone constantly questions your judgment under the guise of love, it’s not care.
It’s control with a soft voice and a subtle leash.
🎲 The Ever-Changing Rules
They change the subject when you get too close to the truth.
They joke when you cry.
They say you’re “too intense” when you want to talk.
They insist you’re “making drama” when you set a boundary.
The goal is always the same: keep you unsure of the rules so they’re the only one who seems to know how to play the game.
How You Start to Shrink Without Noticing
It doesn’t happen all at once.
You don’t go from bold to broken overnight.
It starts with silence.
Then self-doubt.
Then self-erasure.
You stop bringing things up because “it’s not worth it.”
You rehearse conversations before speaking.
You start apologizing—for crying, for asking, for existing.
And no one tells you this part:
Emotional abuse doesn’t always look like fear.
Sometimes it looks like self-abandonment.
You become a ghost in your own relationship—laughing at jokes that sting, saying “I’m fine” while your chest caves in.
You don’t realize how small you’ve become…until you try to take up space again and it feels like rebellion.
But the beautiful thing about shrinking?
🖤 You can grow back. Louder. Brighter. Whole.
The Moment You Wake Up
It rarely happens in a fight.
It’s not lightning—it’s a flicker.
A friend says, “That’s not normal.”
A TikTok therapist names the pattern.
You’re folding laundry and a memory surfaces like smoke.
Or maybe, quietly, you just…stop believing them.
That buried voice clears her throat.
The you who questioned everything starts questioning them.
You reread texts. You replay conversations. You realize:
They twisted it.
They flipped it.
They made you feel crazy—so they didn’t have to feel guilty.
It’s jarring. Sacred. Infuriating.
And freeing.
Because once you see the curse, you can’t unsee it.
Once you speak the truth out loud—even just to yourself—the lie begins to crumble.
🖤 It’s the first thread you pull that unravels the entire web.
You Were Never the Problem
It’s wild, isn’t it?
How long we carry shame that was never ours.
All those times you whispered:
“I’m too dramatic.”
“I’m not lovable.”
“If I just tried harder…”
Let me say this with my full chest and a black candle burning:
🖤 You. Were. Not. The. Problem.
You were the target—because you were kind, hopeful, and full of light. Because you believed in love and growth. Because you were magic, and they needed to feel taller than you.
They deflected guilt like a spell shield.
They dimmed your intuition because it saw straight through them.
And still, you stayed. You loved harder. You tried softer. That’s not weakness. That’s loyalty misplaced.
But now? Now you know better.
Now you burn brighter.
Now you set boundaries like sigils and wear your truth like armor.
You survived their narrative—and started writing your own.
If you’re still in the unraveling, still piecing your light back together—
🖤 Remember: you don’t need all the answers to begin healing. You just have to choose yourself.
Every time.
Over and over again.
Final Note
As a survivor of gaslighting and manipulation, I write this not to reopen wounds—but to name them. To tell you: I see you. I was you. And in many ways, I’m still you.
I’ve made it out, but I still battle with the aftermath—the self-doubt that creeps in, the urge to apologize for existing too loudly, the paranoia that makes me record conversations or write things down before I can forget them. That’s what living in distortion does to you. It makes truth feel slippery, even when you finally have it in your hands.
Healing isn’t linear; it’s a reclamation that happens in small, sacred ways.
You’re not too sensitive.
You’re not crazy.
You’re not broken.
You’re waking up.
And that? That’s magic. ✨🖤
Leave a Reply