Are You Gaslighting Yourself?

The word “gaslighting” has caught fire in the past few years . It's deployed during fights with romantic partners, between family members, and across the Internet. Gaslighting occurs when someone makes you doubt your sanity, memory, and experiences, but people overuse the term to describe even standard disagreements.

Yet there’s a type of gaslighting that therapists wish more people would recognize and talk about: self-gaslighting.

“Gaslighting is when someone manipulates you into questioning your own reality, and self-gaslighting is when you do the same thing to yourself,” says Lauren Auer, a therapist in Peoria, Ill. That makes it different from negative self-talk, or the harsh critic inside your head—which, while harmful, doesn't necessarily involve denying or distorting your ow