Spot on!
We have touched on the topic of her gaslighting her followers on a couple of previous threads but you explained it brilliantly.
This is what got me as well - i wasn't going to go into the topic of how I got on and off sez (just because i've mentioned it a few times in the threads but loved reading all of yours!) but it comes down to gaslighting really.
I found her quite at the beginning, I think she only had like 15 videos on her account and I watched them all. I loved her positive attitude and she seemed like someone who was all about being strong (back then she did more handstands, yoga inversions and things like that), which inspired me. I then followed her religiously, did her stupid workouts, developed an ED, the usual "i follow sezza" starter pack.
I started questioning her when she lost her period but kept working out regularly and completely ignoring it. Her content became really repetitive as well with a lot of contradictions. I kept thinking to myself like "i'm sure you said the opposite last week", trying to read through the comments and not finding anything similar. I was like.. surely I'm not the only one thinking that. But I must have been right? In a way it felt so.. lonely and horrible, like am I the only one seeing something wrong here? And then she did the 5k runs while losing her period and got looaaads of comments on the fact that you really shouldn't do 2 workouts a day when you've lost your period. There was one comment which I interacted with and it had hundreds of likes and replies etc, it was a fairly nice one as well, no hate what so ever. I went back one day to read more replies and it was gone.. completely... and then it hit me
Ofcourse I am not the only one seeing her questionable behaviours. She is just creating her own narrative, making you think that you're the only one thinking those things. I then found the sarahs day rants page and from there on GG etc.
I can just remember so vividly how I genuinely thought that I was going crazy. And then I found GG etc and it was like that "Spoiler alert" episode from HIMYM when the glass shatters. And it just kept shattering lol. Everything I had thought about her got validation. All of my passing thoughts that I threw in the "maybe it's just me" pile got some type of confirmation. It was a wonderful liberating moment haha.
I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of us cannot just stop following her and might get personal with her etc. Because that kind of gaslighting (raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by sarahs day lol), it felt personal. Especially after putting so much of my attention and energy into her and then being made to feel like this..
Look - this is why I didn't want to get into this topic lol, it always comes out as such a long rant haha. Well, rant over.