How to Beat the Gaslighting
Bottom Line Up Front: Alternative facts and competing headlines, friends and coworkers locked in silent contention. You're exhausted from trying to figure out what's real, wondering if everyone is going crazy. They're not. You're not. Your reality is being deliberately hijacked by people and systems that need you confused and doubting yourself. When you understand how hijacking works, you take back control. You learn to trust your truth again.
Check the news. The economy is thriving. No wait, it's collapsing. Experts say that food you're eating is a poison. Wait, another says it's a superfood. WTH?
Every fact has an "alternative fact" presented with equal authority.
You're exhausted all the time. Not from work. From trying to figure out WTF is actually true. Your gut churns, your shoulders are up around your ears. You just snapped at your barrista over nothing.
Welcome to the gaslighting epidemic.
Reality itself has been hijacked. Your mind is breaking from it.
The Neuroscience of Having Your Mind Hijacked
When a person, the media or a group gaslights you again and again, you're hijacked. What does that mean?
Your Memory Maker Goes Haywire (Hippocampus)
Your hippocampus is your internal truth-keeper. It records everything that happens. Under gaslighting, it literally SHRINKS. Yup, brain scans show the tissue deteriorating.
Here's the wild part. As it shrinks, it doesn't just lose memories. It starts creating false ones to fill the gaps. In this state, when someone repeatedly tells you "that didn't happen," your hippocampus eventually goes, "Well, I'll make something up that works."
That's your mind protecting you by creating a coherent story, even if that story is totally false.
BTW, the same thing happens when your memory is questioned. Let's say you saw a robbery. If someone continues to question your memory of a blue vs red coat on the robber - over time, you'll begin to believe it was a red coat. Your memory will fill in to match the new belief.
Scientists call this confabulation. Your brain FILLS THE GAPS with false information that it genuinely believes is true. It's been called "honest lying" because you genuinely believe the false memory is true. It's not lying. It's trying to make sense of a reality that's been hijacked.
Your CEO Mind Takes a Vacation (Prefrontal Cortex)
The prefrontal cortex is your executive function—the part that makes decisions, solves problems, knows what's real and what's not. It's the voice of reason that says, "Hold up, this doesn't add up."
Under chronic gaslighting, it goes offline. Not reduced. OFFLINE. BYE BYE.
You can't make simple decisions. Deciding what to wear, what to eat becomes overwhelming. You need external validation. Your internal truth-detector is MIA.
You become dependent on your gaslighters for reality.
Your Alarm System Gets Stuck ON (Amygdala)
Your amygdala alerts you to danger. Gaslighting makes it hyperactive—everything is a threat, you just don't know why.
You're constantly on edge. Walking on eggshells. Your body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline even when you're "relaxing" on your couch. Your heart races for no reason. You jump at shadows.
Worse, it triggers your entire Autonomic Nervous System into chaos...
Your Body Is Gaslighted Too
Gaslighting doesn't just attack your mind. It hijacks your entire nervous system, turning your body against you.
I lived this. After decades of my ANS being hijacked by abuse and chronic stress, I developed mold toxicity. Nasty shit. I kept getting worse whenever I took a med or supplement.
Finally we figured it out. My nervous system was so freaked it started treating EVERYTHING as poison.
Everything.
Supplements, medications, food I could eat before? The next day Id be so sick in bed Id think I was dying. Massive symptoms. One patient was so hijacked she could only drink one specific type of water. Everything else sent her system into revolt.
Not psychological. Pure ANS, doing its job to defend and protect. So overwhelmed it just decided to label everything as BAD.
Gaslighting doesn't just make your mind question. It makes your body doubt too.
Your Prediction Machine Is NOT Broken (But They Want You to Think It Is)
Your mind is a prediction machine. It expects the people you trust to behave predictably.
When Mom says the sky is blue, it stays blue. When your partner says they love you, their actions match.
Gaslighters deliberately break the predictions your mind depends on:
They act unpredictably (loving one moment, cruel the next)
When your mind says "What the hell?" they say "You're too sensitive"
Your mind tries to resolve this by deciding YOU'RE the problem
After enough repetition, your mind literally rewires to doubt YOU instead of them
Welcome to Prediction Error Minimization (PEM). Your mind NEEDS the world to make sense.
When someone or something you trust keeps violating predictions, your mind doesn't conclude they're untrustworthy.
It concludes that YOUR prediction mechanism is broken. But here's the truth: Your prediction machine works fine. THEY are the ones breaking the rules, not you.
You know what else is a prediction machine? AI. Just like human minds, AI can be "gaslighted" through training. Feed it contradictory information repeatedly, insist the contradictions are true, and watch it break. We're training AI on contradictory data, and it's breaking the same way we are.
Sound familiar? That's what's happening to us. Every. Damned. Day.
Your Mental Double Bind
Cognitive dissonance isn't just uncomfortable. It's neurological torture.
Your mind cannot hold two contradictory things as truths:
"I'm intelligent" vs "I can't trust my own thoughts"
"This happened" vs "it didn't happen"
"They love me" vs "They're hurting me"
"I know what I saw" vs "Everyone says I'm wrong"
When faced with these in your face contradictions, your mind has to choose. It will usually choose a version that keeps you "safe" in the relationship. Even if that relationship is with society itself.
The mental energy required to maintain these contradictions is exhausting. Your brain burns through glucose trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. You're literally depleting your cognitive resources just trying to figure out what's real. As your mind rewires itself to create memories that make sense of it all.
The Collective Hijacking
Hijacking has become the new black in our world.
Organized groups using gaslighting techniques every second to change your beliefs to what THEY want you to believe. Or to confuse you into submission.
News that contradicts itself
Facts that change depending on who's funding the study
Social media bots creating false and contrary news everywhere
Paid spokespeople positioned as experts, lying through their teeth
Our minds are bombarded with contradiction after contradiction. We're all walking around with hijacked minds, depending on the very systems that are gaslighting us to tell us what's true
Ready to Take Back Your Mind?
You can't flip a switch and un-hijack overnight. The neural pathways are carved too deeply.
You CAN start building new ones. Here's how:
1. Create Reality Anchors
Your hippocampus needs backup. So write things down. That's one reason I've journaled every day for decades. It keeps my facts straight. My journal acts as an external drive, to jog my memory and keep the facts as the facts.
2. Trust Your Body More Than Your Mind
Your body keeps score when your mind can't. That tight feeling in your chest when someone's sharing an alternative fact? That's the truth. That sick feeling in your gut when you are reading or watching something? Trust it.
The body hasn't been gaslighted. Use it as your truth detector. TRUST IT.
3. Call a Spade a Spade
When you say, "That's gaslighting," the spell starts to break. Recognizing it gives your prefrontal cortex a path to begin coming back online.
Be sure to recognize the common patterns. Then call it what it is. Your mind will begin to rewire with every truth.
DOUBTING yourself about something you know happened or is true. (The earth IS round.)
Trivializing your feelings ("You're too sensitive")
Shifting blame ("You made me do it")
Rewriting history ("That's not how it happened")
4. Pay Attention
You can rewire your mind with your attention to simple things. Every day, sit in full sensory awareness and affirm your truth.
Feel your body in the chair
Notice five things you can see
Name four things you can touch
Identify three things you can hear
Acknowledge two things you can smell
Taste one thing
This grounds you in your true sensory reality. It rebuilds your mind's connection between your experience and your truth.
5. Look Away
Nobody likes this one but I have done it and I will tell you - YOU NEED TO DO IT TOO.
Our general digital society is poisonous. STOP POISONING YOURSELF. Specifically:
Stop reading the news every hour. Do a 25 hour news fast and then, stop if you can. You'll learn all you need to know from the world around you. Believe me. If you can't stop, then limit the time and only scan the headlines. I can tell you, within 3 minutes of scanning media, I feel my heart start to increase and my gut begin to churn. I STOP READING and it's gone. Guess what? I finally learned and stopped doing it at all.
Establish Social media boundaries. I think for those of us who were on social when it was, well, social, hope still springs eternal. Let's be serious, a huge majority of social is not about real conversations. It's about hype, self promotion, luring followers for future sales and leverage. Considering over 70% of internet content was written by AI - social now seems a waste of time and energy.
Avoid sides. I decided to stop stepping into conversations and getting the shit beat out of me for speaking my truth. It went against everything I was raised to believe. I was meant to help others, to fix problems, to step in and step up for the truth. That was a different world. Now? I protect my mind and body and just look away.
6. Soothe Your ANS
If your nervous system has turned against you like mine did:
Gentle movement tells your body it's safe
Breathing exercises reset your ANS
Cold water on your face activates your parasympathetic system
Humming or singing calms the vagus nerve
You might need more help. I used my mind methods to heal my ANS. I had to rewire my unconscious mind pretty thoroughly to get my ANS to calm down. I literally had to teach my mind to stop telling my body to attack itself.
I still do a method daily to protect my ANS from this world of ours.
The Bottom Line
Reality hasn't just been questioned—it's been hijacked. Systematically. Deliberately. By individuals and groups who want us all to doubt ourselves, our world, our very fundamentals of life as humans.
They are attempting to rewire our minds to depend on the very sources that are gaslighting us, so we will follow their new "truth." All those alternative facts.
In a world where reality itself has been hijacked, holding onto your own truth isn't just sanity.
It's a form of rebellion.
It starts with three words: "I trust myself."
Even if you don't fully believe them yet. Even if your hijacked mind argues. Say them anyway. Repeat them often. Believe deeply.
Every time you affirm your own truth, you're rewiring your hijacked mind.
That is the last thing the hijackers want. So do it.
Ready to learn more about your mind in today's insane world? Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly lessons on the intersection of science, our minds, and a chaotic, what the hell world.
Use Your Mind, Beat the Gaslight Hijack
Bottom Line Up Front: Alternative facts and competing headlines, friends and coworkers locked in silent contention. You're exhausted from trying to figure out what's real, wondering if everyone is going crazy. They're not. You're not. Your reality is being deliberately hijacked by people and systems that need you confused and doubting yourself. When you understand how hijacking works, you take back control. You learn to trust your truth again.
Check the news. The economy is thriving. No wait, it's collapsing. Experts say that food you're eating is a poison. Wait, another says it's a superfood.
Every fact has an "alternative fact" presented with equal authority.
You're exhausted all the time. Not from work. From trying to figure out WTF is actually true. Your gut churns, your shoulders are up around your ears. You just snapped at your barrista over nothing.
Welcome to the gaslighting epidemic.
Reality itself has been hijacked. Your mind is breaking from it.
The Neuroscience of Having Your Mind Hijacked
When a person, the media or a group gaslights you again and again, you're hijacked. What does that mean?
Your Memory Maker Goes Haywire (Hippocampus)
Your hippocampus is your internal truth-keeper. It records everything that happens. Under the spell of gaslighting, it literally SHRINKS. Yup, brain scans show the tissue deteriorating.
Here's the wild part. As it shrinks, it doesn't just lose memories. It starts creating false ones to fill the gaps. In this state, when someone repeatedly tells you "that didn't happen," your hippocampus eventually goes, "Well, I'll make something up that works."
That's your mind protecting you by creating a coherent story, even if that story is totally false.
BTW, the same thing happens when your memory is questioned. Let's say you saw a robbery. If someone continues to question your memory of a blue vs red coat on the robber - over time, you'll begin to believe it was a red coat. Your memory will fill in to match the new belief.
Scientists call this confabulation. Your brain FILLS THE GAPS with false information that it genuinely believes is true. It's been called "honest lying" because you genuinely believe the false memory is true. It's not lying. It's trying to make sense of a reality that's been hijacked.
Your CEO Mind Takes a Vacation (Prefrontal Cortex)
The prefrontal cortex is your executive function—the part that makes decisions, solves problems, knows what's real and what's not. It's the voice of reason that says, "Hold up, this doesn't add up."
Under chronic gaslighting, it goes offline. Not reduced. OFFLINE. BYE BYE.
You can't make simple decisions. Deciding what to wear, what to eat becomes overwhelming. You need external validation. Your internal truth-detector is MIA.
You become dependent on your gaslighters for reality.
Your Alarm System Gets Stuck ON (Amygdala)
Your amygdala alerts you to danger. Gaslighting makes it hyperactive—everything is a threat, you just don't know why.
You're constantly on edge. Walking on eggshells. Your body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline even when you're "relaxing" on your couch. Your heart races for no reason. You jump at shadows.
Worse, it triggers your entire Autonomic Nervous System into chaos...
Your Body Is Gaslighted Too
Gaslighting doesn't just attack your mind. It hijacks your entire nervous system, turning your body against you.
I lived this. After decades of my ANS being hijacked by abuse and chronic stress, I developed mold toxicity. Nasty shit. I kept getting worse whenever I took a med or supplement.
Finally, we figured it out. My nervous system was so freaked, it started treating everything as poison.
Everything.
Supplements, medications, food I could eat before? The next day Id be so sick in bed Id think I was dying. Massive symptoms. One patient was so hijacked she could only drink one specific type of water. Everything else sent her system into revolt.
Not psychological. Pure ANS, doing its job to defend and protect. So overwhelmed, it just decided to label everything as BAD.
Gaslighting doesn't just make your mind question. It makes your body doubt too.
Your Prediction Machine Is NOT Broken (But They Want You to Think It Is)
Your mind is a prediction machine. It expects the people you trust to behave predictably.
When Mom says the sky is blue, it stays blue. When your partner says they love you, their actions match.
Gaslighters deliberately break the predictions your mind depends on:
They act unpredictably (loving one moment, cruel the next)
When your mind says "What the hell?" they say "You're too sensitive."
Your mind tries to resolve this by deciding YOU'RE the problem
After enough repetition, your mind literally rewires to doubt YOU instead of them
Welcome to Prediction Error Minimization (PEM). Your mind NEEDS the world to make sense.
When someone or something you trust keeps violating predictions, your mind doesn't conclude they're untrustworthy.
It concludes that your prediction mechanism is broken. But here's the truth: Your prediction machine works fine. THEY are the ones breaking the rules, not you.
You know what else is a prediction machine? AI. Just like human minds, AI can be "gaslighted" through training. Feed it contradictory information repeatedly, insist the contradictions are true, and watch it break. We're training AI on contradictory data, and it's breaking the same way we are.
Sound familiar? That's what's happening to us. Every. Damned. Day.
Your Mental Double Bind
Cognitive dissonance isn't just uncomfortable. It's neurological torture.
Your mind cannot hold two contradictory things as truths:
"I'm intelligent" vs "I can't trust my own thoughts"
"This happened" vs "it didn't happen"
"They love me" vs "They're hurting me"
"I know what I saw" vs "Everyone says I'm wrong"
When faced with these in your face contradictions, your mind has to choose. It will usually choose a version that keeps you "safe" in the relationship. Even if that relationship is with society itself.
The mental energy required to maintain these contradictions is exhausting. Your brain burns through glucose, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. You're literally depleting your cognitive resources, just trying to figure out what's real. As your mind rewires itself to create memories that make sense of it all.
The Collective Hijacking
Hijacking has become the new black in our world.
Organized groups are using gaslighting techniques every second to change your beliefs to what they want you to believe. Or to confuse you into submission.
News that contradicts itself
Facts that change depending on who's funding the study
Social media bots creating false and contrary news everywhere
Paid spokespeople positioned as experts, lying through their teeth
Our minds are bombarded with contradiction after contradiction. We're all walking around with hijacked minds, depending on the very systems that are gaslighting us to tell us what's true
Ready to Take Back Your Mind?
You can't flip a switch and un-hijack overnight. The neural pathways are carved too deeply.
You CAN start building new ones. Here's how:
1. Create Reality Anchors
Your hippocampus needs backup. So write things down. That's one reason I've journaled every day for decades. It keeps my facts straight. My journal acts as an external drive, to jog my memory and keep the facts as the facts.
2. Trust Your Body More Than Your Mind
Your body keeps score when your mind can't. That tight feeling in your chest when someone's sharing an alternative fact? That's the truth. That sick feeling in your gut when you are reading, or watching something? Trust it.
The body hasn't been gaslighted. Use it as your truth detector. TRUST IT.
3. Call a Spade a Spade
When you say, "That's gaslighting," the spell starts to break. Recognizing it gives your prefrontal cortex a path to begin coming back online.
Be sure to recognize the common patterns. Then call it what it is. Your mind will begin to rewire with every truth.
Doubting yourself about something you know happened or is true. (The earth IS round.)
Trivializing your feelings ("You're too sensitive")
Shifting blame ("You made me do it")
Rewriting history ("That's not how it happened")
4. Pay Attention
You can rewire your mind with your attention to simple things. Every day, sit in full sensory awareness and affirm your truth.
Feel your body in the chair
Notice five things you can see
Name four things you can touch
Identify three things you can hear
Acknowledge two things you can smell
Taste one thing
This grounds you in your true sensory reality. It rebuilds your mind's connection between your experience and your truth.
5. Look Away
Nobody likes this one. I was reticent but now, I have done it. I will tell you - life is better.
Our general digital society is poisonous. So stop poisoning yourself.
Stop reading the news every hour. Do a 25 hour news fast and then, stop if you can. You'll learn all you need to know from the world around you. Believe me. If you can't stop, then limit the time and only scan the headlines. I can tell you, within 3 minutes of scanning media, I feel my heart start to increase and my gut begin to churn. I STOP READING and it's gone. Guess what? I finally learned and stopped doing it at all.
Establish social media boundaries. I think for those of us who were on social when it was, well, social, hope still springs eternal. Let's be serious, a huge majority of social is not about real conversations. It's about hype, self promotion, luring followers for future sales and leverage. Considering over 70% of internet content was written by AI - social now seems a waste of time and energy.
Avoid sides. I decided to stop stepping into conversations and getting the shit beat out of me for speaking my truth. It went against everything I was raised to believe. I was meant to help others, to fix problems, to step in and step up for the truth. That was a different world. Now? I protect my mind and body and just look away.
6. Soothe Your ANS
If your nervous system has turned against you like mine did:
Gentle movement tells your body it's safe
Breathing exercises reset your ANS
Cold water on your face activates your parasympathetic system
Humming or singing calms the vagus nerve
You might need more help. I used my mind methods to heal my ANS. I had to rewire my unconscious mind thoroughly to get my ANS to calm down. I literally had to teach my mind to stop telling my body to attack itself.
I still do a method every day to protect my ANS from this world of ours.
The Bottom Line
Reality hasn't just been questioned—it's been hijacked. Systematically. Deliberately. By individuals and groups who want us all to doubt ourselves, our world, our fundamentals of life as humans.
They are attempting to rewire our minds to depend on the same sources that are gaslighting us, so we will follow their new "truth." All those alternative facts.
In a world where reality itself has been hijacked, holding onto your own truth isn't just sanity.
It's a form of rebellion.
It starts with three words: "I trust myself."
Even if you don't fully believe them yet. Even if your hijacked mind argues. Say them anyway. Repeat them often. Believe deeply.
Every time you affirm your own truth, you're rewiring your hijacked mind.
That is the last thing the hijackers want. So do it.
Ready to learn more about your mind in today's insane world? Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly lessons on the intersection of science, our minds, and a chaotic, what the hell world.