The moment I knew something was wrong

Gaslighting doesn’t break you all at once — it unravels you, thread by thread

I’ll never forget the meeting that changed everything.
It wasn’t even supposed to include me, I’d only found out about it by accident. As I sat there quietly, trying to make sense of the conversation, I listened to my boss presenting my work as his own. He spoke confidently, like he’d created every piece of it, and didn’t even seem to notice I was sitting right there.

I remember staring at him in shock. The room kept moving, the meeting carried on, and I felt completely invisible. Not angry, just hollow. Something in me shifted that day, the quiet awareness that something was very, very wrong.

Up until then, I’d spent months blaming myself. I thought I’d somehow lost my edge. I was constantly confused, questioning my memory, my performance, my worth. Deadlines blurred, meetings vanished from my calendar, and my confidence dissolved a little more each week.

A few days later, my mentor gently suggested I see a clinical psychologist. I agreed, because honestly, I thought I was losing my mind. During our first session, after I’d poured out everything that had been happening, she looked at me and said, “You’re being gaslit at work.”

I had to look it up afterwards. But once I did, it was like someone switched on a light in a dark room. Suddenly, everything made sense. I hadn’t suddenly become useless at my job. My memory hadn’t suddenly stopped working. I hadn’t magically started missing deadlines. I was being manipulated, undermined, excluded, and discredited, systematically.

That realisation was both devastating and liberating. It was painful to see what was happening, but it also gave me back something precious: clarity. It wasn’t all in my head.

If you’re reading this and any of it sounds familiar — please believe yourself. The confusion, the exhaustion, the self-doubt — those are signs, not flaws. Naming what’s happening is the first step to taking your power back.