How Gaslighting Rewires Your Nervous System (And How to Undo It)

Your reality wasn’t just questioned — it was hijacked at the neurological level.

They didn’t just mess with your head. They rewired your brain.

Let me tell you what nobody talks about when they discuss gaslighting: it’s not just psychological abuse. It’s neurological warfare.

While you were questioning your memory, your perception, your fucking sanity — your abuser was literally reshaping the neural pathways in your brain. Creating new patterns that made you doubt everything you knew to be true.

And the most fucked up part? Your brain cooperated. Not because you’re weak, but because survival demanded it.

I spent years thinking I was losing my mind. Questioning memories that felt real but were dismissed as “dramatic” or “exaggerated.” Doubting my own perception when it contradicted their version of events.

For five years, I trusted my therapist completely. She helped me get sober from alcoholism, guided me through trauma recovery, knew my deepest fears and vulnerabilities. Then she decided to exploit every single piece of that knowledge. She manipulated my reality so thoroughly that I questioned my own sanity while she extorted $126,000 from me. The person I trusted to heal my mind became the one who weaponized it against me.

What I didn’t know then — what I wish someone had told me — is that gaslighting doesn’t just make you feel crazy. It literally changes your brain structure to make questioning yourself your default mode.

But here’s what gives me hope, and what should give you hope too: if your brain learned to doubt itself, it can learn to trust itself again.