Everything You Need to Know About Medical Gaslighting, Including Preventing It

mai 18, 2025

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Everything You Need to Know About Medical Gaslighting, Including Preventing It

If you've ever gone to the doctor with a concern and felt like they were downplaying your symptoms—or straight up not listening to you—you've probably experienced medical gaslighting. I'm all too familiar with the topic, because it's happened to me.

The most frustrating time was back in 2019, when I decided to get an IUD. Once it was inserted, my gynecologist told me I might experience some cramping in the coming days and weeks, and explained how to check the strings to make sure it was properly in place. (When an IUD is sitting in the uterus correctly, you can only feel the tips of its strings at the top of your vagina.) For the first week or so, that was exactly what I felt whenever I checked. But after experiencing some intense cramps that literally made me double over in pain, I checked the strings again and noticed they were hanging a lot lower.

When I reached out to my doctor and explained what I was experiencing, and that I thought my IUD might be falling out, she told me that the strings were probably just hanging lower since I was in a different phase of my menstrual cycle. She reminded me that IUD expulsion (where your IUD falls out or is pushed out of the uterus by cramps) only happens in 2 to 10 percent of cases, and that she'd never seen it happen to any of her patients.

Still, I felt like the pain I was experiencing wasn't normal, so I made an appointment. After a physical exam, my gyno wasn't totally convinced that my IUD was falling out. She told me that if I wanted, I could get an ultrasound to double-check its placement. I did. The ultrasound confirmed what I was already 99 percent sure of: My IUD was falling out, and had to be removed.

As far as medical gaslighting horror stories go, mine is pretty mild. My doctor was at least willing to somewhat hear me out and order the ultrasound. If she hadn't, I could've ended up with a perforated uterus or an unwanted pregnancy, both very real risks of IUD expulsion.

Which brings me to the purpose of this article. I spoke with four experts with backgrounds in medicine, patient advocacy, clinical medical ethics, and sociology to bring you information on what medical gaslighting is, why it happens, how to tell if it's happening to you, and what you can do to make sure you feel heard at the doctor's office.