"The ways we survive can harm us – and harm those around us. It’s a hard truth to face, in part because it’s so complex. When abusers deny us our reality, it’s gaslighting. When we enact that denial on ourselves, it’s equal parts survival skill and self-harm.

Excavating ourselves out of denial, out of realities constructed of lies meant to harm us, is no small task. It requires grieving, letting go, and a whole lot more that I still hope to learn. Yet the challenge is worthwhile as this is necessary work for all of us who hope for a more supportive society. Once we start the process of undoing the hold gaslighting has on us, the work of self-accountability for our own healing process can begin.

I have repressed a lot of trauma. When awareness of my reality crept in, the shock was violent. Naming that truth spurred a year-long breakdown, which ultimately became a necessary breakthrough. I couldn't keep living under the weight of that denial. I was on that path originally because something in me said that avoiding the full truth (which for me involved going back in the closet) would be safer. Safety is contextual, not absolute. We know safety in relation to the least amount of safety we’ve ever felt. And those levels of “more safety” we rise to have an expiration date and quickly become not enough to continue forward. So I didn't have a choice but to move through that first very heavy layer of denial and start developing a new survival skill: honoring my truth.

I’m often afraid of falling back into the gaslight-formed realities of my past. But that fear comes from understanding how easy it is to get manipulated again, that the familiar, while knowingly harmful, can feel soothing and alluring. Nobody else can stop me from entering an abusive relationship, being codependent, or trying to play the model minority game (aka seeking false hope for equality by throwing everyone under the bus including myself). Those choices are on me, and even when I have little to rely on, I don’t need to solely rely on people or realities that harm me.

We live in an abusive society, and so realistically we’re never fully free from gaslighting, especially as marginalized people, but we do have the agency to name it and other forms of abuse. Sometimes we only have agency to name it in our thoughts, but that’s no small thing. Our thoughts are the most necessary battleground to recover. Holding ourselves accountable for denial is a series of tiny choices we make in our thoughts every day.

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Taking accountability for our past choices is the freedom to make new ones. Once we can see where we’re contributing to feelings that weigh us down, it becomes possible to redirect and carry a little less stress. Simply not suffering isn’t an option on the table, but the choices we do have agency to make can help us suffer a little less.

Learning to recognize how we treat ourselves badly isn’t the end goal, but the process itself. It’s an ongoing commitment to love ourselves and others more fully, to spot harm as it’s happening, and to cultivate sustainability in our lives and communities. There’s no way to know exactly what good we’ll get out of self-accountability until we start."

(Dom Chatterjee https://www.restforresistance.com/zine/holding-ourselves-accountable-for-internalized-abuse)