You Know Your Body. You Always Have.
Medical gaslighting happens when a doctor, specialist, or healthcare provider dismisses, minimizes, or contradicts your symptoms in ways that cause you to question your own experience. It is one of the most common and least talked-about barriers women with chronic illness face on the road to diagnosis and treatment.
I remember sitting in a doctor’s office, listing my symptoms for what felt like the hundredth time, and watching his expression shift — not toward concern, but toward dismissal. “You seem like an anxious person,” he said. And just like that, years of real, documented suffering got filed under probably in her head.
If you’ve been there, you know exactly what that does to you. Not just to your treatment — to your trust in yourself.
Medical gaslighting delays diagnosis. It delays treatment. And it quietly convinces you to stop advocating for yourself at the exact moment you need to fight the hardest.
This series exists to change that.
In this series you’ll find:
- How to recognize medical gaslighting when it’s happening to you
- Why it disproportionately affects women with chronic and invisible illness
- The lasting impact it has on mental health and self-trust
- Practical tools for advocating for yourself in medical settings
- How to rebuild confidence in your own body’s signals after years of dismissal
Because you are not dramatic. You are not anxious. You are not making it up.
You are a woman who knows her body — and you deserve a doctor who believes you.
Browse the articles below and start reclaiming your story.
Explore the Series
What Is Medical Gaslighting? Understanding, Recognizing, and Reclaiming Your Health
If you’ve ever walked out of a doctor’s office feeling worse about yourself than when you walked in, this is where to start. This article breaks down exactly what medical gaslighting is, what it looks like in real appointments, and how it intersects with the wave of health misinformation that makes an already confusing experience even harder to navigate. Includes Leisa’s own story, her daughter’s experience with a dismissed knee injury that required surgery, and actionable steps to start advocating for yourself today.
About Cultivate an Exceptional Life
Cultivate an Exceptional Life is a chronic illness community for women who are done waiting for their hard season to be over before they start really living.
Here you'll find honest stories, practical tools, and hard-won wisdom for building a life you love — alongside your illness, not in spite of waiting for it to get better.
Because an exceptional life doesn't just happen. It has to be cultivated.
Meet Leisa Watkins
Leisa is a chronic illness writer and advocate living with MS, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, and CFS/ME, and a mom navigating her kids' chronic illness journeys alongside her own.
She writes from lived experience and years of research, sharing practical strategies and compassionate guidance for women building a full life alongside chronic illness.
Not a medical professional. Please consult your healthcare provider for medical advice.