Everyone talks about getting over the person. Nobody talks about getting over what they did to your relationship with yourself. After three years with someone who questioned every decision I made, I left the relationship with more than just heartbreak. I left with a broken internal compass. I couldn’t make a decision – even a small one – without hearing his voice in my head. Are you sure? You always overreact. You’re being too sensitive. The relationship ended. The gaslighting didn’t. It had moved inside me and set up shop. Here’s how I evicted it.
What gaslighting does to your brain – literally
Gaslighting isn’t just someone disagreeing with you. It’s a systematic campaign to make you doubt your own perception of reality. Over time, your brain adapts. You stop trusting your memory. You stop trusting your feelings. You outsource your reality to the person who’s distorting it – because it’s easier than constantly fighting for your own version. Neurologically, this is devastating. The part of your brain that connects felt experience to judgment gets severed. You feel something – discomfort, anger, sadness – but you’ve been trained to override it. That’s not actually what’s happening. You’re imagining things. That’s not really how you feel. By the time the relationship ends, you’ve lost access to your own internal GPS. You don’t know what you feel. You don’t know what you want. You don’t know what’s real. Rebuilding that connection – between what you feel and what you know – is the core of post-toxic healing. It’s not about forgiving him. It’s about believing yourself again.
The first thing I did: tiny decisions, on purpose
My therapist gave me an exercise that sounded stupid and turned out to be transformative. She said: make five tiny decisions every day. Not big ones. Tiny ones. What to eat for lunch. What to wear. Which street to walk down. And then – crucially – do not second-guess them. The decision is made. It’s done. Move on. For someone who’d spent years having every decision picked apart, this felt revolutionary. I wore a shirt he would have hated. I ate at a restaurant he would have mocked. I walked a route he would have said was inefficient. Each tiny decision was a brick in the new foundation. I decide what I like. I decide what I want. I decide who I am. Not him. Not anymore. Never again.
The body keeps score – and so does your bedroom
One thing nobody warned me about: after a toxic relationship, physical intimacy with someone new can feel terrifying. Your body has learned to associate closeness with danger. Touch that should feel good feels threatening. A new partner reaching for you can trigger a freeze response you don’t understand and can’t explain. This is not a sign that you’re broken. This is your body protecting you. It learned – correctly – that intimacy was dangerous. It needs time to learn that it’s safe again. Start slow. Start with non-sexual touch. Start with yourself – reconnecting with your own body through movement, through touch, through wearing something that makes you feel powerful. A body chain helped me here. Not for anyone else. For me. The weight of it reminded me I was real. The beauty of it reminded me I was worth adorning. It sounds small. It wasn’t.
What I know now – and what I’d tell anyone still in it
Your judgment was never the problem. The problem was someone who benefited from making you doubt it. Trusting yourself again is not a linear process. Some days you’ll feel rock solid. Other days you’ll spiral about whether you made the right choice about lunch. Both are normal. Both are part of healing. The voice in your head that sounds like him will fade over time. Not because you fight it. Because you replace it. Every time you make a decision and don’t second-guess it, you’re building a new voice. Your voice. Quieter than his at first. Steadier over time. One day you’ll realise you haven’t heard from him in weeks. That’s not forgetting. That’s freedom.
You survived the relationship. That took strength. Now you get to rebuild the self that got buried. That takes time. Both are worth celebrating.
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