I am no stranger to being gaslit. Hell, the last year, I have felt like I have had it from all sides of my life. Whether it was my boss at work, his boss, or even the IT team, I had it everywhere I looked, hello #momboss! Then, in my personal medical journey, I experienced gaslighting by physicians at every corner. What is going on with the world that moms, especially, are not taken seriously or listened to?
Women are the keepers of stories. We are the ones who know our bodies, our kids, and our jobs like the backs of our hands. So, experiencing gaslighting by physicians feels like a slap in the face. FOR REAL! You’d think moms would be trusted the most when it comes to our medical history, symptoms, and—of course—the medical history of our kids. But… you guessed it: gaslighting by physicians strikes again.
In my 8.5 years as a mom, I’ve learned one critical thing: navigating the healthcare system requires knowing when to advocate for yourself and when to walk away. I’ve had to face gaslighting by physicians head-on to ensure that I or my kids get the care we deserve.
My Journey with Gaslighting by Physicians
For myself, this year, I had a personal goal of taking charge of my health. From having four pregnancies in five years, three c-sections, two of which were emergencies and led to further complications, to breastfeeding three kiddos, to say that I have not “bounced back” would be an understatement. I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the person staring back. I have been really unhappy with how I have been feeling, and honestly, not feeling well at all. I started exercising regularly again in spring of 2023 after I stopped breastfeeding my last nursling (after 2 long years – YAY me!) and I felt like nothing was changing. I was actually gaining weight. And the symptoms were getting worse – in particular I was really struggling with digestion issues, swelling, and water retention, and I felt like I looked pregnant. My stress was also through the roof. I was just coming off of a year of fostering two children, and being a mom of five was the HARDEST thing I have ever done in my entire life. I needed help.
I got a colonoscopy. I was seeing a urologist and women’s health doctor, and my primary doctor. And I was NOT getting any support. I was up at night googling symptoms, testing our over the counter supplements that were served to me via incredible retargeting ad campaigns based on my googling, and it was not changing. In fact, things were getting worse! And, the stress from that getting worse on top of the stress at home, the stress at work, things were BAD with a capital B. After my maybe 12th visit to my womens health doctor I decided I needed to take matters into my won hands. I went to my regular gynecologist and asked for a hormone test. I was pretty convinced I had high cortisol, but also wanted to ensure that it wasn’t endometriosis and/or that I wasn’t in perimenopause. I got non answers back from the test results and got an age old “you could go back on birth control” response, followed by, if you lose weight your symptoms would improve. Are you kidding me?! Have you not heard me when I said that I have been exercising and eating right and gaining weight? That is why I am here!!!
Finally, after talking to my specialist, she echoed what I already knew. She told me that she could continue treating the results of my symptoms, but that she wasn’t trained (and many people were not) to get to the root cause. She recommended going to a dermatologist and back to the colonoscopy folks to get more testing done. And guess what they did? Gave me more creams to treat the symptoms, and at the colonoscopy location, actually denied care because they didn’t think that I should get another exam so close to my last one despite me saying I had tons of symptoms. Gaslighting, Gaslighting, Gaslighting.
Finally, I found an INCREDIBLE functional doctor near me that, no joke, spent three hours with me on my first visit. No nurse, no administrative people, just HER. She listened to me, she did every test under the sun, and documented everything that I had told her. She heard me, saw me, and I cried through the whole appointment, both from stress, and from relief. She had a plan for me, and it included major changes to my diet (that no one had recommended up until this point), and a supplement plan to combat some of the symptoms that I was having and heal my gut. Breaking the cycle of gaslighting by physicians was life-changing, and within 60 days, 80% of my symptoms improved.Have I lost weight? No. But, I feel stronger. Do I see a visible difference? No. But she does. Other people that don’t see me often do. They think I look less “round” and swollen, and that I smile a lot more, and seem lighter spiritually and mentally. Both my coach (more on that in another post too) and her felt like I also needed to quit my job or go on leave, as the emotional toll it was taking on me, my mental health, and my physical health, was detrimental. I was in full burnout. But, no one else said these things to me. No one else heard me, listened to me, took me seriously, or tried to get down to the cause of any of these symptoms. Every just kept throwing medications and treatments (or dismissal as the treatment) to me to try to make it go away, but I ended up back in the office over and over again, because the cause of the symptoms were not being treated.
You know what is semi-embarrassing, as I have built my career as a #momblogger on food allergies and intolerances, and everything that I have done to help my kiddos? My symptoms have been primarily solved by removing dairy, gluten, and other trigger foods for my blood type (o+) out of my diet. She put me on a modified version of the Blood Type Diet with supplements for stress (hello high cortisol), digestive enzymes to try to heal my broken gut, an omega 3, and a blood vessel supplement and voila. Things are SOOO much better. And, whenever I get “glutened” either by myself from slips, or inadvertently from restaurants/eating out, the symptoms come immediately back. I have clear food intolerances that i didnt have before kids. And, I am not stranger from food elimination diets. I have been gluten free and dairy free for the last 4/8 years of my life as a Mom from when I was breastfeeding my kiddos. I don’t know if my body, during the times of being gluten and dairy free, became intolerant and cannot handle it anymore, or if I always was (hello, genetics), and its just become more prevalent since having kiddos, but its a real thing, and were here. If I could just get my ENTIRE family on this diet plan so that I wouldn’t have to cook 3 separate meals a day my life would be SO MUCH EASIER! If anyone has any tips for this, please send them my way!
My message for this one is, I had to keep advocating for myself. I kept getting the door slammed in my face, or shut down by providers, and I had to KEEP going. I had to leave past providers, go search out more on my own, and keep pushing until I found this angel human that has totally changed my life and the way that I look at medicine in general. And I am SO much better off. And, it was so hard. Also, I have gotten a really good piece of advice from this experience, that I have been able to apply to my experiences advocating for my kiddos too. If you are at a doctor, and you ask for a test, a medication, a further analysis, anything, that your doctor refuses, or doesn’t respond to, a simple trick that you can try is “Okay. I would like you to document in my chart, that you are refusing care for me for XYZ. And, I would like you to print out that note for me so that I can have a copy of it before I leave today”* and see what happens. 9/10 they will tell you that they don’t want to do that, or they will change their minds.
My Journey with Gaslighting by Physicians for My Kiddos
This actually happened to me recently at a doctors visit with my kids. We were seeing our pulmonologist and immunologist for our quarterly visit, and the timing was such that the kids were in their “red zone” for care when we arrived. Within the last two weeks, my youngest had been to the ER and had been to the doctors and put on antibiotics, so things were not going well. We definitely needed this visit and to get an updated medical plan. And, what happened? We were totally blindsided by this doctors ego, when he heard that I had been working with another allergist and immunologist on a diagnosis for my kiddos. I was updating him on what her recommendations were for a treatment plan and he immediately got defensive. He told me that I was confusing myself by bringing in too many doctors and that the plan was too confusing because there were too many different specialists involved. He asked me why I was even there to see him, since he was an immunologist. I stood there, dumbfounded. And, as tears began to well in my eyes, I stopped myself and reset. I resisted the urge to cry, and scream and yell, swallowed, took a deep breath and said “Well, we have been seeing you for almost three years now, and you have never once talked to us about the immunology side of our case. We have been here multiple times, and even reached out to you via mychart to connect our cases and bring you up to speed on what we were doing. I have uploaded records, and still, you have not investigated what is the root cause for our symptoms”. He got defensive again and said that he didnt have access to the records, and I cut him off, and said, “Again, as I just explained, thats not accurate, as I have connected all of our systems and have even called you to ask for updated reports and questioned the mg on prescriptions that had changed and I didn’t think were correct only to be told I was wrong. So, I sought care for immunology elsewhere. Him – “Again then, I ask why you are here. What do you want me to do.” Me: “Well, I guess I want you to treat them for their asthma, as you have been doing for the last three years.”. He promptly left the room with no update, or indication that he was coming back.
We waited for a few minutes, and he returned and didnt say anything to us. Just began barking orders about prescriptions for the inhalers. He did not take one look at my kiddos – not in their ears, nose, throat, nothing, again, despite me telling them that we were on the red zone of our plan. Then, when I told him, as he was solidifying the prescriptions, that we were out of our red zone steroid medication, which is ON HIS PLAN, he refused to write a new prescription refill for it. He told us that if we needed it, we could contact our pediatrician. I told him, that didn’t make sense to me, as our asthma action plan from him, had the steroid listed in the red zone, and was supposed to be our last ditch effort to keep the boys out of the hospital, and he said no. I then told him that I wanted him to document it in our chart, and he refused.
I literally left there in a flurry. And, within hours of getting home we received a call from the nurse that the insurance company had denied the prescription that they gave us, saying they would not give us the milligram dosage, but would give us the step up. Which, is nonsensical. This is, remind you, the milligram dosage that I questioned them on in September, when I called and told them that I thought that it was wrong in the action plan. They had denied it then, but conveniently updated it now. I made the decision that we would not be going back there, ever again. I also called my husband in a fury. He was supposed to have met me at that appointment and taken the kids. But, I was even more frustrated with that option, because he doesn’t have the details of the kids cases like I do. He doesn’t push back or ask questions when things don’t make sense, and can’t recall the dates/times/occurences of illness to use as leverage for more support. So, I really felt like, damn if I do, damned if I don’t. It will have to be a co-parent endeavor moving forward – have him there, so that he can elevate my voice and make physicians actually listen to me, and then me be there to actually have the documentation needed to support said claims.
Since that visit, we have been diagnosed with Whooping Cough. I know, WHAT? My kids, are all v@xxed for this. And, I don’t want to get in any arguments with people on good or bad related to this topic, I am not interested in engaging. However, what I am interested in, is, WHY do we have Whooping Cough, and at an emergent level that required hospital grade steroids with both of my boys, if we were v@xxed for it in the first place?! It has been such a headache. Everyone in the family has to be on a 5 day antibiotic protocol regardless of symptoms or it is highly contagious. The county health department had to be notified, all of the schools, etc. and the kids have been home for over 2 weeks from school because of how sick they were. We missed championship basketball games, championship football games, and cub scout volunteer opportunities over the weekend because of this. And, I know that doesn’t sound like a really bit deal, but its my kids firsts, and I know they would have been core memories for them. Its just really disappointing. So, I will take my advocacy skills, and am applying them to documentation.
Yesterday, I spent the day documenting a play by play for my allergist/immunologist in their mychart so they are completely up to date with everything that has transpired since we last saw them at the end of October, with dates/times/prescriptions/etc. I will also be doing the same for our pulmonologist that we are “leaving”, so that they have documented that we had to go to the ER 2x because we didn’t have our red zone medication on file. Hopefully we will then be getting a new action plan and/or guidance from the immunologist on what to do next, at least, have them check for more things in our recent blood panel that we did.
Tips for Moms Facing Gaslighting by Physicians
If you’re a mom dealing with gaslighting by physicians, here are my top three considerations:
- What are my goals for this visit? Establish those ahead of time so I am clear on what I want to get out of the appointment, whether for myself, or for my kiddos, and what do I want to walk out of there with. If, at the end of the appointment, I feel like I am closer towards that goal or there, that is when I am going to continue advocating, and using my voice to push forward.
- Do I feel as though I (and my children) are being seen, heard, and respected during my interactions with both the physician, and their supporting staff? And, what is the definition of this for me? What are my boundaries? I need to know this before going in, and I need my husband to know this as well. For me, it looks like this: Are they not spending any time actually physically looking at my body (where the ailment is), or my kiddos? Are they up to date on my wellness, i.e. have they looked at my chart and do they know my situation prior to my visit? Basically, do they know me from the next person that walks in? Have they asked me any progress questions about how I (we) have been doing, and did they listen to my responses? Are they hostile or rude in any way to me? If this is a hard no, and especially if it has happened more than once, we are walking. No questions about this.
- Is the care plan I am being presented with, and the progress that I have seen with this physician to date, making progress? Meaning, am I (or my kids) improving? For me, ahead of time, this would mean putting together a timeline of events (like I talked about above) and noticing if we have had more symptoms since our less visit, or less. Have we been constantly sick? Are my symptoms getting worse or better since my last visit? Am I seeing noticeable improvement in my well being based on the guidance and support that I have been given? If so, continue to advocate. If not, explore more. Ask questions, do my own research, and advocate again. If still, there is no progress or I am not feeling like I am seeing improvement, then I would make the decision to consider finding a different provider.
Advocacy Is Key
I’ve learned to stand firm in advocating for myself and my kids, even in the face of gaslighting by physicians. If a doctor refuses a request or dismisses your concerns, ask them to document it in your medical chart. This approach often forces them to reconsider or provide a valid explanation.
Final Thoughts
Facing gaslighting by physicians is emotionally exhausting, but you don’t have to navigate it alone. Remember, it’s okay to walk away and seek care from providers who respect and validate your concerns. Advocacy takes effort, but it’s worth it for the health and well-being of you and your family.
If you’re starting this journey, I have resources to help:
- Starting your feeding journey new? Take my FREE Quiz!
- Ready to advocate, but don’t know where to start? Get the Scripts!
- Full steam ahead, and ready for the course? Get it Now!
As always, make sure you are following me on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest! I am ramping up with my favorite things this season, and you should definitely go check them out!
Disclaimer* I am not a medical professional and cannot legally give you medical advice. However, the tips and things that I have left here are things that have worked for me and me only. I am not liable for anything that happens if you were to take my advice, and you need to make medical decisions at your own discretion.
