If I’m truly honest, I haven’t always liked myself, nor loved me; my relationship with myself has been toxic. Putting myself in dangerous situations, behaving in ways I didn’t want to, not caring about myself, nor nurturing myself, I’ve even felt hate towards me, disgust, shame, and guilt and a lot of the time I didn’t want to be me!! I’ve fed myself stories enabling gaslighting and deception, stories that I thought fit me perfectly, turns out they were just that, stories, with no substance nor truth. They’re still there, lingering in the wings, ready to steal the show!

Fortunately; I’ve done a lot of the work to change this, change the gaslit and deceptive stories, through personal growth, and counselling training I’m very self-aware, I’ve faced some of my fears, worked on turning them into strengths, but that doesn’t mean I know myself completely, there is always a ‘blind spot’ the part others see, they can give me feedback on these and I can either work with them or not. Work on myself is a daily job, checking in with me, asking myself how I am? What do I need from myself? Do I want to spend time alone with myself today? Even doing a lot of work with myself, I’ve realised that I still manage to gaslight and deceive myself………and I don’t realise I’m doing it!

Here are ways in which we gaslight ourselves and don’t question it…….

Consistently minimising or invalidating your own experiences, the example I always use is ‘the physical abuse I suffered wasn’t that bad as I never ended up in hospital!’ No matter what, I still experienced domestic abuse, my experience is valid and counts the same as someone else’s experience.

Dismissing your own feelings, the example I have is ‘I wasn’t invited on a trip with some friends’ at the time it hurt deeply, and upset me, I questioned myself, asking what was wrong with me! Then telling myself it’s ok, minimising that hurt, that sadness at being ‘forgotten’ I never said anything to my friends about it, never asked the question, why wasn’t I invited, when I had a right to feel what I did and also to ask why!

Never trusting your own intuition, the example I have is ‘something doesn’t feel right, I don’t feel safe going to this event, but I have to go!’ My stomach was churning which was a strong sign my intuition was saying no!! I overrode it and decided to go, even though I really didn’t want to and it didn’t feel right. I was on my way, when out of nowhere a car crossed my path and collided with my vehicle! At that point I knew I should’ve listened to my intuition, needless to say I didn’t attend as the car wasn’t safe to drive and I was in shock.

Self-deceit is something I wasn’t aware I was doing, since looking into this I realise that I’m guilty of it too!