Am I Overreacting?

Most survivors don’t start by asking “Is this abuse?” They ask “Why do I feel crazy?”

This episode dives deep into the emotional confusion that defines so many abusive dynamics—especially when gaslighting, blame-shifting, and chronic invalidation are at play. If you’ve ever found yourself apologizing after being hurt, doubting your memory, or shrinking yourself to avoid their reactions, you’re not alone—and you’re not overreacting.

We’ll explore:

• How emotional abuse trains you to question your reality
• The difference between lying and gaslighting—and why the distinction matters
• Subtle red flags that keep you stuck in self-blame
• The questions that help you reconnect with your truth

This episode is here to help you name the thing you haven’t been able to name, and to remind you: confusion is a tactic. 

Join the Patreon: https://patreon.com/Youarenotcrazy

Transcript

 Welcome to the You Are Not Crazy Podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes. And healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others, and heal the relationship with yourself so you can learn to love in a healthy way.

You can connect with Jessica and find additional resources, content, and coaching@emotionalabusecoach.com.

Hello, and thank you for. Being here before we dive in, I wanna go through the fine print and share how we can work together, because healing from this kind of pain takes a lot more than time. It takes the right kind of support. I work with people entangling themselves from emotionally abusive relationships, abusive relationships, course of control, trauma bonds, high conflict co-parenting dynamics.

And if you're at the beginning of the road and wondering what divorce would look like, they offer one-on-one coaching at every stage. If you're still in the relationship, if you're unsure, if it's abuse, if you know it's abuse, but you're having trouble understanding what that looks like or if it what to do with it, I can help you name what's happening.

Start setting boundaries that work for you and figure out what you need. If you're thinking about leaving, we'll explore what that might look like in a grounded and personalized way. If you're navigating divorce, or custody or co-parenting with a high conflict person, I can help you document, strategize, and stay emotionally anchored, especially when you're being gaslit, discredited, and re-traumatized by the legal system.

If you've already left and you're stuck in the trauma bond, or if you've been discarded and struggling to feel like yourself again, I can help you rebuild self trust and reconnect with your own nervous system in a way that actually feels doable. Everything I do is highly personalized. I don't walk you through a one size fits all program.

I listen, I reflect, and I guide you based on what you are facing right now. And some people work with me. Through a one-time validation call, which is offered on my website where we zero in on what issue you're struggling with and start to untangle it together. Others work with me on a weekly or biweekly basis depending on what's going on in your specific situation.

And this is especially helpful when healing from emotional abuse and also in divorce. If you're curious about starting, I offer a $25 intro call, which if you listen to my older episodes, I call it a clarity call. It used to be free, and I talk about it at a later episode, but really a lot of people were, um, no showing to those calls, and that was taking away time from.

Clients that clients I do work one-on-one with, and so if we move forward, I just take that fee and apply it to your first session. That intro call is just for us to get on the same page. You can share what's going on for you, and I can share how I might be able to help. I only take a limited number of those calls per month because one-on-one coaching is the core of my work.

Out of all these offerings that I have, one-on-one coaching is the thing that I do. Most, and I do it six days a week, most of the time, five to six days a week. And so if my calendar looks full, and if there's not a time that you can get in, you can email me at jessica@jessicaknightcoaching.com. And I always try and make space where I can.

And I may also always have a few openings from one-on-one client reschedules. You can also explore self-paced courses and toolkits at Jessica Knight com, including divorcing a Narcissist 1 0 1 and the Emotional Abuse Breakthrough Course. I have a documentation course and my new signature program, unhooked, which is a private podcast and course that walks you through the full cycle of abuse, helps you map it in your relationship and how to break and how to begin to.

See what it really is that you're going through. If you want ongoing support in a more flexible way, you could always check out my substack at Jessica Knight at substack com. Each month I focus on a different theme from trauma bonding to divorce, to cluster B, to sexual coercion, to emotional abuse, to toxic breakups.

Those are just some from this year. Paid members get access to monthly deep dives, master classes. Q as strategy kits, and I'm working on some more group options, there is also a free option and a monthly option, so please head over to substack. The link is in my show notes. You also can just search Jessica night coaching and I'll come up.

Everything that I create is meant to help my coaching, my writing, my courses, this podcast. It's built around the one truth that you're not crazy. You are conditioned to doubt your reality, and we want to help you change that and understand what you're going through. If you like this podcast, the best thing that you can do is subscribe and rate the episode five stars.

You can find me on my websites emotional abuse coach com and high conflict divorce coaching com. All of the offerings that I just mentioned are also in the show notes below. Now let's get to the episode.

Most people don't Google. What are the signs of emotional abuse? I didn't. A lot of us, we Google. Why do I feel crazy? Does every argument have to go this way? Why do I always apologize? Is it normal to feel so afraid when they're angry? Am I overreacting? We just don't start by asking, is it abuse? Because that's not what we're thinking of at first.

We start by asking what's wrong with us, and that's not a coincidence, but that's what emotional abuse is designed to do. It's designed to. Gaslight us into thinking that we are the problem. And it shows up in a lot of moments when you feel hurt, but end up apologizing when you start justifying their moods.

When you begin trying harder, working more, loving deeper, and still feel like you're failing the question, am I overreacting, is often the loudest red flag in the room. When confusion becomes your baseline, something deeper is happening in that relationship, it's. Emotionally abusive relationships. That confusion is rarely accidental, but it's purposeful.

They wanna get you to that place. One of the most common tactics behind that is gaslighting. And gaslighting isn't lying. Gaslighting is also just not a word thrown around on the internet. Although it is a times it's so hard to name confidently, which is why it's such an important thing to get to know.

Do so hurtful and then deny it ever happened, and then tell you that you're too sensitive. They claim you always twist their words or they flip a script on you. They call you abusive. And so gaslighting isn't a difference in perception, but it's a strategy and it's one that makes you question your sanity.

So you stop trusting your own voice and start relying on theirs. It sounds like I never said that. You're remembering it wrong. You always twist my words. You're the abusive one. These statements might seem a little subtle, or maybe they are just blaming, but when it's repeated over time, over and over and over, it becomes a pattern.

And that really starts to rewire your brain because you begin to doubt your memory and your judgment and your instincts and eventually yourself altogether. And so you stop speaking up and you replay these conversations on loop in your head and think about them constantly. You hesitate before expressing how you feel afraid of the reaction, and slowly you start to believe the narrative.

You are the problem. That's how gaslighting works. It doesn't confuse you, but it dismantles what's going on inside of you. And I know that for me, my mind really began to feel like such a hostile place. I became so un anchored, unsure, and emotionally unsafe with myself. In a healthy relationship, that discomfort that you feel doesn't get twisted into guilt, you're allowed to have needs.

You're allowed to speak. You're allowed to feel unsafe in your own skin. You're allowed to say that, right? And when you express that, somebody usually cares if you said, I'm not feeling right, something's wrong. I'm not feeling myself in a healthy relationship. They'd say, what's going on? What's pause?

What's going on? In an abusive relationship, they blame you and name that as one more thing, and now you're putting something on them and that you're never okay. That's the trap. You're not supposed to be able to name it. You're supposed to feel unsure because certainty would give you that power to walk away.

And so, so many people ask me, how can I tell it's abuse? You don't need a black eye or a police report to take your experience seriously. Abuse is about power and control, not just physical violence. You can ask yourself, do I feel like I'm always walking on eggshells? Afraid, even small things because of how might react.

Do I feel worse after sharing how I feel? Do I feel like nothing I ever do is good enough? Trusting my memory? If these questions land in your body, if they feel true than anything you've been told, then something is already off and you're not overreacting. You're recognizing a pattern that's been there for a long time.

I always tell people to try asking these questions instead, especially if you're stuck in the loop of doubt. When did I start doubting my instincts? Who benefits from me believing I'm too sensitive? Why do I feel guilty for being hurt? Why do I feel like I need their permission to say something is painful?

The goal of emotional abuse isn't just to hurt you. It's to get you to accept harm as normal. It's to convince you that pain is love, and silence is somehow strength, and it's meant to make you doubt your reality. Isn't. Okay, but you're not sensitive and you're not the problem. You're not imagining it.

You've been conditioned to distrust your own perception, and that's why your perception is still there. It's trying to help wake you up. You're not overreacting, you're waking up. And that question is this abuse that is your inner self speaking to you? 'cause it's the part that still knows and adheres you and it's trying to protect you.

You don't need confirmation or a, to take it seriously. You don't have to explain why it hurts. You can decide that that has to stop. And if you're asking whether it's abuse, there's already enough harm to pay attention to. If this resonates for you, if this is lighting something up in your brain, my emotional abuse breakthrough course is a good place to go.

It's designed to help you entangle the confusion, understand what's happening, reconnect with that voice. And begin to see what is going on in this relationship. You don't need more examples. You don't need to explain it better. You really, really just need to believe that what you're experiencing is what you're experiencing and waking up is disorienting at first.

But clarity really does lead to power, and then power leads to powerful choices. Those choices, no matter how small is how you begin to reclaim your reality. I know that this is really hard. And I promise you that there are so many people that feel the same way that you do and are asking very similar questions.

And those are the questions that I really do try and answer in this podcast. If this was helpful or if you need any support, you can always reach out to me. Emotional abuse on Instagram, emotional abuse coach, and all my S are below in the.