A candid conversation on medical gaslighting—why it happens and how to protect yourself. Greg, Rich, and guest host Jay share personal experiences with chronic fatigue, TBI, and cyclical vomiting syndrome, highlighting how insurance pressures, rushed visits, and bias (especially affecting Black women in maternal care) erode trust and delay care. They offer practical self-advocacy tactics: prepare a symptom timeline, ask direct questions, bring a supporter, document everything, request appropriate specialists, and seek second opinions. The episode also weighs AI’s promise in diagnostics against its limits, emphasizing that listening and compassionate care remain essential.

Greg
00:00 - 00:11
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Support and Kindness podcast with Greg and Rich. I'm Greg and in the room today we have Rich. We also have a special guest joining us today. His name is Jay you'll hear from in a little bit.

Greg
00:12 - 00:48
Today is episode 6 and we're discussing medical gaslighting. And if you're unfamiliar with the term medical gaslighting, it's a form of psychological manipulation that occurs when a healthcare professional dismisses, invalidates or minimizes a patient's legitimate medical concerns and that can lead to the patient doubting their own symptoms, experiencing anxiety or delays in seeking or avoiding the necessary medical care. It's quite an interesting topic and it is a problem of our times but it goes back in time.

Greg
00:49 - 01:00
If you are part of a minority group you are more likely to run into this than another person. Jay, do you want to introduce yourself and then we'll get the conversation going?

Jay
01:00 - 01:10
Sure thing. Hello, everyone out there. My name's Jay. I participate in groups with Greg and Rich four days a week and very constructive chats.

Jay
01:10 - 01:23
I'm lucky to have these fellas. I've experienced a lot of diagnoses, misdiagnoses, pain. And so I've experienced a lot of this. Of course, I know it's worse for minorities, which I am not.

Jay
01:23 - 01:27
But I certainly had many experiences with it, so I look forward to discussing this topic.

Greg
01:28 - 01:34
Absolutely. Well, welcome aboard. Glad that you're here. Rich, what are your thoughts on this when we talk about medical gaslighting?

Greg
01:34 - 01:35
What comes to mind for you?

Rich
01:35 - 02:19
I guess just thinking about my experiences trying to explain symptoms and appointments being rushed along, whether it's because of insurance, trying to speed appointments through and doctors trying to see as many patients as they can because of their their practice requirements now or whatever but you get so little time with the doctor and you start to explain what's going on And they just jump to a conclusion before you've really gone through your symptoms. They don't listen, they interrupt you, they diminish your symptoms before you've had an opportunity to really explain what you're experiencing. they jump to a conclusion.

Greg
02:19 - 02:46
Some of the common things that a provider might say, which could be a sign of gaslighting, they could say something like, it's probably just stress, or you're a bit young to have that problem, you've got a low tolerance to pain, it's in your head. Hopefully they don't say that, but you know, it happens, right? Many people will just deal with it as a normal aging thing, or thinking that it's normal, because they're being dismissed by their provider. You might just need to lose weight, was another one you mentioned before we came on air.

Greg
02:46 - 02:48
Jay, have you run into any of this personally?

Jay
02:49 - 02:58
Yes, yes I have. I've been in hospitals many a time. I have a problem with my stomach. I basically have a weak stomach and all the different small symptoms you can have.

Jay
02:58 - 03:23
I have something called cyclical vomiting syndrome and it took a long time for them to diagnose it and they immediately went with assumptions because I was young. They, for instance, I was in a treatment center and I got taken to the hospital because of my vomiting episodes. And I get to the hospital and they just assume that it's my stomach thing. I tell them, no, I think there's really something wrong.

Jay
03:23 - 03:45
It took a couple of days before I could even get them to do a CAT scan on me, CT scan. And when they did, they determined I had a bunch of hernias that had been there for months, if not years. So finally, I got the care I needed. But then I ran into problems at the end by having an extreme amount of pain and them saying that my pain tolerance is too high.

Jay
03:45 - 04:07
And one of the best things I ever did inside the hospital to advocate for myself was to actually ask for a pain specialist, not a doctor that comes in and pops in and says, hello, how are you? And goes off that. This man sat down and said he understood where I was coming from because I had a problem with opiates in my past. that I had a high tolerance and that he would take care of it.

Jay
04:07 - 04:16
And he really did. It's one of the best things I ever did inside the hospital. Of course, I'm sure there's many more extreme cases, but this is just the one that stood out in my head.

Rich
04:16 - 04:57
That's a great example. Thank you. Something that, while preparing for this, I was talking to some family members who work in medicine, and it really stood out to me. They had a practice through the 80s to 2013, and what they experienced was the way insurance became really predatory in medicine in America, in the United States, and insuring profitability placed constraints on physicians and hospitals with insurance constantly trying to get the physicians being limited to the test

Rich
04:57 - 04:59
that they can run. Well

Greg
04:59 - 05:25
physicians are dictated to how long they can see their patients for and under what circumstances as well as the order you know ordering the test and that can play a role as well it's almost if you fall outside a set of certain medication you know medical diagnosis criteria and something that requires a little bit longer time spent on you might be kind of out of luck you may not get the cheese that day right

Rich
05:25 - 06:15
right you have limited time to talk to your doctor you talk to them through my chart or through you know some type of electronic media you you don't have a lot of time to communicate with them and then you want like Jay was saying you want a CT scan or some type of diagnostic testing and the insurance company is telling the doctor no and you're telling the doctor your symptoms I wonder what the pressure I talked to a medical professional family member of mine and they really started to feel stuck in the middle between patient and insurance company as insurance crept in over the last 40 years while they were practicing. I don't think all medical gaslighting is strictly because of provider.

Rich
06:15 - 06:39
I think a lot of it now is becoming more and more common in the medical community as a result of insurance companies putting pressure on physicians and hospitals to cut down costs and balance patient care to keep it financially profitable. And that's a terrible thing when you put profit over patient outcomes. it

Greg
06:39 - 07:17
is but they've got to put bread on the table at the same time don't they so whether we like it or not whether certainly it's our model of health care in this country where it's you know an incentive more so because of the insurance companies are more involved than you know some some countries with say socialized medicine like the uk there's you know good and store bad stories from both right but certainly there's a disparity in the care but i wonder one of the things we talk about a lot and everyone is discussing it we can't get away from it and that's ai and i wonder how that is going to creep into and affect this. Could it be a good thing or a bad thing in medical diagnosing with AI?

Greg
07:17 - 07:34
You know the physician's not going to be replaced but over the years they've become more and more reliant upon technology for diagnosis. Could this be a good thing? Could it lead to people not being overlooked or could it just lead to more people being crammed in in an hour? What do you guys think?

Jay
07:34 - 08:05
I'd have to say in certain instances, I think it would definitely help. I think there's other instances where it wouldn't, but especially with mine, I had this stomach illness and they went through every type of illness that they could think of before they finally got it right. They pulled my gallbladder, even though the gallbladder was healthy and was now outside of my body. So there was many misdiagnoses, but I think if we had an AI, it may be able to search all those symptoms and shorten that time that it took for me to get diagnosed.

Jay
08:05 - 08:32
I was also very lucky that I was under the age of 26 and you could be on your parents' insurance then, which is usually a lot better insurance company than now being on Medicare and Medicaid. So I got a lot more attention back then, but that's completely unfair. Why, when you turn 26, are you discarded almost? So I think AI could be good in diagnosing, but I think it could also be good at misdiagnosing too.

Jay
08:32 - 08:34
So it has its ups and downs.

Greg
08:34 - 08:41
Rich, do you have any thoughts on the AI aspect of it and how that might pertain to gaslighting, you know, good thing, bad thing?

Rich
08:41 - 09:16
I certainly think that you'd have some upset doctors. I can just imagine the feeling of a doctor who is a million dollars in debt for student loans and med school and all that. And you come in and tell them that your chat GPT search tells them what is wrong with you and you're not even listening to i can just imagine how they take it when you walk into their office and tell them that you've done their job for them you just need the prescription or something

Greg
09:17 - 09:30
i'm sure that would go down like a house on fire i was thinking perhaps more of the from the flip side of the maybe if this was coming to us from the medical field being brought in by by my physician's practices automated diagnosing

Jay
09:30 - 09:44
Well, it does come down to a computer can't feel. A computer can't understand the emotional effect. All it can understand is what it's been told and what it researched on the internet. It can't feel what you're feeling on the inside.

Jay
09:44 - 09:44
Right.

Greg
09:45 - 09:47
Yeah. Yeah. It's fantastic. It's double-edged sword, isn't it?

Greg
09:47 - 10:12
I can certainly see some, I mean, for diagnosis and far as like noticing things on diagrams, for example, noticing masses and things like that. I think that they've proven that those can be detected more accurately, more consistently than some things with the human eye. So, this is going to have its place, you know, and certainly does have its place. Rich, have you had a personal experience with gaslighting?

Rich
10:12 - 10:57
With TBI and my brain injury, I've received quite a bit of long-term care from my neurologist and brain support team that over time, has become very helpful. At first, it was very, very dismissive as to what was wrong with me. And I was just a 19 or 20 year old kid. And the research behind head injuries and traumatic brain injuries and long term effects of repeated blows to the head was not anywhere near what it is 25, 30 years later.

Rich
10:57 - 11:26
I definitely was my best advocate, and I had to be persistent in my appointments. I had to continually advocate for myself, and bringing somebody else along helps. Bringing a journal helped. Journaling my symptoms would help going into appointments another thing that i found that helped over time was being concise so they had less to challenge.

Rich
11:27 - 11:31
The more i dribbled on the more they had to attack right.

Greg
11:31 - 11:48
I think trying to use clear and specific language about the symptoms and asking direct questions, you know, what else could be causing this? Well, there are all great things that you'd mentioned. Personally, I'm dealing with something at the moment. I'm chronically fatigued and it's really taken over my life in a horrible way.

Greg
11:48 - 12:02
Some days I'll go to bed at, you know, two or three in the afternoon and maybe I'll get up for a couple of hours and go back to bed again. And at first I thought it was a dosage adjustment to one of my ADHD medicines. I don't believe that to be the case. Yeah, I remember that.

Greg
12:02 - 12:21
Yeah, it's been too long. I just got some lab results and, you know, it took a while to get those back and finally they released them. There's a couple of numbers which are low and I asked the receptionist, so where do we go now? Now that I've got the test, do I need an appointment to come in and discuss these?" And she said, no, you don't need an appointment.

Greg
12:21 - 12:29
I've just discussed them with you. And I said, so what's the next steps? And where do we go finding out what's causing this fatigue? Because I can't live like this.

Greg
12:29 - 12:37
It's not working for me. And she said, well, you can discuss that at your next follow-up. And I said, but that's a couple of months away. That's a few months away.

Greg
12:38 - 13:04
So that's something that I'm dealing with personally. And you gave some great pointers on things that you can do. and I like the idea of taking an advocate and maybe to my next appointment I've just got Jay nodding and Jay is an awesome guy he he'll volunteer to help anyone he'll give you the shirt off his back don't write in and ask him for it because because he might prove me wrong but Jay's the kind of guy that'll take you to an appointment and help advocate for you.

Greg
13:04 - 13:15
Really sound guy. So is Rich as well. I'm fortunate to know them both. And besides using that clear and specific language and asking questions, afterwards the appointment, right, there's some things that we can do.

Greg
13:15 - 13:41
They say second opinion, right? If you feel dismissed, you can always ask about a second opinion. Consider filing a complaint, you know, if it gets to that point and you're not being heard. there is recourses in that way practicing self-care to process the emotional impact because there's a huge emotional side to this as well you know because they're questioning your sanity you can think you're going crazy and there is a disparity in age groups and then connecting with the patient

Greg
13:41 - 13:46
advocacy group to to help support you as well any other thoughts on this gentlemen

Jay
13:46 - 14:07
I just want to say for one thing, what always helped me when I went in a doctor's office is you're going to go some months before you have your next appointment. And what I like to do is write down specific questions, even if it's small things, which can lead to something bigger that you're not aware of. I didn't, I wasn't aware of the patient advocacy groups. That's something that I think could help a lot.

Jay
14:07 - 14:31
I actually, and this is a little embarrassing for my age, but I take my mom with me. to certain appointments because I too have had a brain injury and I worry that I'm not going to ask the right things. And sometimes I catch myself when a doctor comes in the room and they ask me how I'm doing and I say, oh, I'm doing great on accident because I'm so used to being in a conversation where you just say, oh, yeah, I'm great. So I tend to skip over things.

Jay
14:31 - 14:49
But I think it's great having somebody there with you. They can see the symptoms a lot better than you can. And they're generally in the room with you if you're in a hospital or something like that. And like we've mentioned before, the doctor is in your room maybe three minutes out of each day that you're at the hospital.

Jay
14:49 - 15:09
That's three minutes out of 24 hours. And yeah, you got some nurses coming in and out, but I'd say you're watched a fraction of the day. So having someone else there to watch for you and explain that to the doctor and explain your circumstances to explain what illnesses you've had in the past and things like that. I think that's a great idea.

Jay
15:09 - 15:09
Right.

Greg
15:09 - 15:27
And that, you know, could be another, you know, not staying with the same provider for too long. If you're not getting anywhere, you're not being cared for. But conversely, if you're, you know, you've got good care, not jumping around, you know, some people use the emergency room almost as a doctor's office, right? And that's not necessary.

Greg
15:28 - 15:53
Yeah. that's exactly and so you know there's those things as well but one a statistic that really stood out to me and that's black women are three times more likely to have complications and death in childbirth because of medical malpractice and you know that just highlights the you know the seriousness of the situation that's just one statistic just shocked me but yeah some some some great advice gentlemen any other thoughts or tips before we leave it here

Jay
15:53 - 16:14
Just the thing that you mentioned about the women with their pregnancy issues. There's so many tests done for men, and we are not the complex one. There's so many more things that can go wrong in childbirth than can go with a man. And they're more worried about getting chewable Viagra for men than they are diagnosing women in their pregnancy.

Jay
16:14 - 16:16
So it's definitely an unfair system.

Greg
16:16 - 16:33
Yeah, your sexual orientation and that as well can be biased sometimes. But yeah, it's a serious issue. And if you're feeling unheard, you know, take someone with you. Like Jay said, write some things down like Richard mentioned before your appointment, or some great tips and advice.

Greg
16:33 - 17:08
And these will be in the show notes. if no one's got anything else we'll wrap up for the day but i've really enjoyed the conversation rich thank you very much indeed jay thank you let us know about you have you ever experienced medical gaslighting yourself or do you know someone that has and what was the outcome i'd love to hear that let us know visitors at kindnessrx.org and that's in the show notes that's kindnessrx.org in the meantime come back again next week if you've got a topic that you'd like us to discuss let us know that as well be safe and have a wonderful rest of the week and let's build a kinder world together