Dissociation and internalized gaslighting

Have you ever found yourself questioning whether something that hurt you really happened the way you remember it? Or wondering if you're being "too sensitive" about experiences that left you feeling confused, hurt, or afraid? If you've been emotionally or psychologically hurt by someone close to you—especially if they denied or minimized what happened—you might be experiencing something called internalized gaslighting, and it often goes hand-in-hand with dissociation.

When we can't trust our own perceptions of reality, our minds sometimes protect us by disconnecting from the confusion and pain. Let's explore how this happens and, more importantly, how you can begin to trust yourself again.

When your trauma doesn't leave marks

When someone breaks your arm, everyone can see the cast. When someone breaks your heart or spirit, there's no visible proof. Emotional and psychological wounds are absolutely real, even though they don't leave visible scars. In fact, they're often more psychologically painful than physical injuries because they attack your sense of reality, safety, and self-worth. Yet these wounds are frequently ignored, dismissed, or minimized—sometimes even by the very people who caused them.

Here's what makes this particularly painful: when emotional wounds aren't acknowledged or validated, they don't just disappear. Instead, the pain goes underground, continuing to affect you in ways that can feel confusing or overwhelming.

Just like your body knows how to heal physical wounds when given the right environment, your emotional system knows how to heal psychological wounds—but it needs the right conditions. This means having supportive people who can witness your experience without judgment, criticism, or minimization. Without this support, emotional wounds can actually get worse over time, just like a physical injury that doesn't receive proper care.

Without someone acknowledging what happened to you, you might start doubting yourself: "Did that really happen the way I remember? Am I overreacting?"

You might think you should be able to trust your own experience without needing anyone else to confirm it. But here's the thing: relational harm is emotionally confusing by nature. The person who hurt you is usually someone you care about—a partner, parent, friend, or mentor. When someone close to you causes pain and then denies it or tells you it wasn't that bad, it naturally creates confusion about what's real. This is why it's so important to have someone accurately reflect back your experience—to help you trust what you know to be true. This is called mirroring.

When your reality gets questioned

Because emotional and psychological abuse rarely leaves visible evidence, many survivors find themselves—and others—questioning whether the abuse really happened or was "that bad." When your experiences aren't reflected back to you accurately by others, something devastating happens internally: your emotional reality, body wisdom, intuition, and intellectual understanding get split apart as you try to make sense of conflicting information.

Over time, this constant questioning breaks down your self-trust. You may even start to lose your sense of who you are. The confusion isn't just about what happened—it becomes confusion about your own perceptions, feelings, and worth. This is the beginning of internalized gaslighting—when the external denial and minimization of your reality becomes your own inner voice of doubt.

When the person who hurt you becomes your reality check

From infancy through adulthood, we naturally use something called "social referencing" to understand ambiguous or confusing situations. When we don't know how to feel or what to think, we observe others for clues about how to interpret what's happening.

The problem is that when you're hurt by someone close to you, they often become the very person you look to for understanding what just happened. This creates a devastating cycle: the person causing your confusion becomes your guide for making sense of that confusion. Instead of acknowledging your pain, they minimize it or shift blame back to you, essentially becoming your compass pointing in the wrong direction.

When this happens, your internal reality check starts telling you that your feelings are unwarranted or that you're somehow to blame. You begin seeing yourself through their eyes rather than trusting your own experience. When your real experience isn't mirrored back to you accurately, you start questioning your sanity, your memory, and your intuition. This is when gaslighting becomes internalized—their voice of denial becomes your own inner critic.

This is how you can end up learning to stop trusting your body—your most powerful ally in navigating a confusing world. It creates a particular kind of loneliness that can't be resolved just by being around other people, because the disconnection is happening inside you. It's almost like breaking up with your own intuition—that vital inner sense that has worked so hard to keep you safe throughout your life.

When your mind and body hold different truths

When traumatic experiences don't leave visible evidence—and when nobody is acknowledging what happened—your mind may become confused even though your body still holds all that pain. This creates an incredibly distressing internal experience where your thoughts and your physical sensations seem to be telling you different stories.

Living with this constant reality confusion becomes unbearable—your mind desperately seeks relief from the torment of not knowing what's real.

How dissociation becomes a survival strategy

This is where dissociation enters as a protective response: your mind learns to escape by sending parts of your consciousness somewhere safer, leaving your body as a kind of placeholder. You go through the motions of surviving without really being present for the experience of living.

Over time, you might find yourself trying less and less to be heard or understood. You already feel like you might be losing your mind, and your experiences have taught you that trying to gain clarity, assert your needs, or defend yourself often leads to more pain and confusion. The less understood you feel, the more isolated you become. More isolation leads to more dissociation, which then reinforces trauma responses that may have once helped you survive but might not be serving you now. This cycle of internalized gaslighting and dissociation can feel inescapable—but it's not.

Your deeper brain knows the truth

Here's something that might bring you comfort: while your analytical mind might feel confused about what you experienced, your deeper brain—the part that stores stress and trauma—has never been confused about whether you've been hurt.

Your limbic system doesn't care about labels or stories others tell about your pain ("it wasn't that bad," "you should be over it by now," "they didn't mean it that way"). It doesn't waver when other people deny that harmful things happened, or when you feel uncomfortable calling something "abuse." Your brain simply recognizes threat and immediately goes to work trying to protect you. This protective response is actually good news—it means your internal alarm system is working exactly as it should.

The confusion happens in your analytical mind, creating an additional layer of mental pain on top of the original wound. Sometimes this confusion itself becomes traumatic, especially when it goes on for extended periods.

Finding your way back to trust

The cycle can be broken when someone begins mirroring your pain accurately—reflecting back that your experiences were real, that your feelings make sense, and that you're not crazy. This is why having an outside source of validation can be invaluable in maintaining your clarity, especially if you're still regularly in contact with harmful people or situations.

However, it's important to understand that validation and mirroring, while crucial, are just one aspect of psychological trauma recovery. Many trauma survivors find it difficult—sometimes nearly impossible—to accept validation when it's offered. Your mind may have learned to reject positive reflections as "too good to be true" or dismiss them entirely. This doesn't mean the validation isn't working; it means your protective system is still guarding against potential disappointment or further harm. Learning to receive and internalize accurate mirroring is often a slow process that unfolds over time, and it's typically part of a broader healing journey that may include therapy, body work, nervous system regulation, and other supportive practices.

You're not alone in this

Living in a world where you can't trust your own mind or instincts is genuinely frightening. If this describes your experience, please know that you're not crazy, and you're definitely not alone. Your confusion makes perfect sense given what you've been through, and your protective responses—including dissociation—show how hard your mind has worked to keep you safe.

Healing is possible. Learning to trust yourself again is possible. And you deserve support in finding your way back to your own inner wisdom.

Sending you courage and compassion on your healing journey,

Dr. Ruth