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"We Cannot Continue to Let Doctors 'Gaslight' Chronic Illness Patients" Oct 18 (mostly on ME/CFS)

hellytheelephant

Senior Member
Messages
1,137
Location
S W England
Thank you for posting this @Dolphin I have shared it on Facebook. It is is a very shocking account...yet also not that surprising. As someone who has experienced 'Gaslighting' on a personal level I had not made the connection with the treatment of ME patients, but it certainly makes sense. Many of us have experienced some of this abuse on a one to one level with medics and all disabled people are labelled that way by society and by the social security system:
 

Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,321
Location
Southern California
I was thinking the other day how hard it is living with an invisible illness. I look well, I tell very few people about ME/CFS because they don't/can't/won't get it and most of those I do tell about it still don't get it. So essentially I act most of the time as though I'm fine, even though I'm confined to my house a large percentage of the time due to PEM etc. and am very limited in my activities overall. But I look well when I do manage to go out.

I had to cancel a doctor appointment a few days ago because I was crashed. I lied and told the receptionist that I was sick - can only imagine what she would have said if I had said I was crashed (this is a regular M.D.), so then she asked did I want to see the doctor (nurse practitioner actually) for whatever was making me sick? I wanted to laugh or something - no way could I explain why going to see the NP would do nothing for me, and would actually make me worse.

It's almost like I'm gaslighting myself. It can be hard to hold onto your reality when not only others deny it, but when you are forced to do so yourself. You do feel a little crazy.

Anyways, this article was very well-written - thanks @Dolphin! (and Gaslight, for those who haven't seen it, is a great movie)
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
It can be hard to hold onto your reality when not only others deny it, but when you are forced to do so yourself. You do feel a little crazy.

Quite so. As social creatures we normally rely on the checks and balances of those around us to keep our own sense of reality more or less aligned. But for ME/CFS sufferers it is akin to how people accused of being witches must have felt, back in history; they knew the were not, but everyone else insisted - and believed - they were. The checks and balances are distorted.
 

Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,321
Location
Southern California
Quite so. As social creatures we normally rely on the checks and balances of those around us to keep our own sense of reality more or less aligned. But for ME/CFS sufferers it is akin to how people accused of being witches must have felt, back in history; they knew the were not, but everyone else insisted - and believed - they were. The checks and balances are distorted.

When I first saw the movie Gaslight, pre-ME/CFS, I wondered how a person (Ingrid Bergman, fantastic as always) could let her sense of herself and reality be so badly skewed and undermined by someone else's (Charles Boyer, also very good) deceit. And now I know - we are not the stable unmoveable creatures I used to think we were!
 

ebethc

Senior Member
Messages
1,901
When I first saw the movie Gaslight, pre-ME/CFS, I wondered how a person (Ingrid Bergman, fantastic as always) could let her sense of herself and reality be so badly skewed and undermined by someone else's (Charles Boyer, also very good) deceit. And now I know - we are not the stable unmoveable creatures I used to think we were!

my super twisted view of the whole trump candidacy: there's a silver lining! at least now ppl will truly know that Narcissism is not taking a bunch of selfies; it's profound cognitive distortions, along w verbal & emotional abuse.... including - but not limited to - GASLIGHTING! You really have to experience it to understand it, and now we have a common cultural reference point. ....(we can now use it to explain how we feel...remember when #orangey said "x" and we were like, "whaaa??")... it's overwriting someone's reality w a different, agenda-driven narrative

I tell ppl: If I went over to your house when you had the flu and told you that you were actually mentally ill and not physically ill, you'd think I was the nuts! Well, that's what it's like for me all the time... On a subjective level, it feels like I have a virus that ebbs and flows but never goes away... I hardly ever feel hopeless & teary, however, thankfully I DO occasionally, b/c that helps me distinguish depression from illness (and when I took nystatin I had an extremely intense depression, too.)
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
When I first saw the movie Gaslight, pre-ME/CFS, I wondered how a person (Ingrid Bergman, fantastic as always) could let her sense of herself and reality be so badly skewed and undermined by someone else's (Charles Boyer, also very good) deceit. And now I know - we are not the stable unmoveable creatures I used to think we were!

Unfortunately the older you get the more you realise fiction is much closer to reality than you like to think.