Gaslighting

Growing up in the Mormon church, the weight of faith was always shoved onto the individual. Leaders flat-out said criticism of authority should never happen—even if it was true. So when you had doubts, or noticed something broken in the system, it wasn’t the system’s fault. It was yours.

That kind of thinking—religious gaslighting at its finest—leaves your nervous system running on high alert. It’s exhausting to know something is wrong and be told, over and over, that it’s fine, and you’re defective for even questioning it.

Now I see the same tactics playing out in the corporate world: monopolies pretending to serve customers while gaslighting anyone who calls them out. Religion, capitalism, politics—it all blends into the same ugly machine. Some days, I just want to find the emergency exit from this whole rigged hellscape.