How "Cassandra Complex" hijacked my nervous system

Cassandra is alive and unwell, silent all these years.

The 2025 cast of LTYM Boulder on May 4th!

• Listen to Your Mother Boulder was magical! You can purchase a recording of the livestream here.

• I am starting a virtual version of my therapeutic writing circle, Writing Womanhood. Learn more and try a drop-in here—it’s not scary, I promise. 😉

ChatGPT helped me write this post. Partly because I needed a succinct way to describe Cassandra Complex to those unfamiliar, but also, I find it truly fascinating to ask her questions (yes, I have gendered her) and experience an objective wide lens perspective on things.

Dear readers, we are diving deep this week. Are you ready for it? I’ve been writing this post inside my head since my week off for LTYM Boulder, and it’s been an emotional undertow wrestling with all these thoughts tumbling around. So today I’m going to release them onto the page, along with some snapshots of therapy, Greek mythology, and a dose of misogyny. What a combo! 😍

Longtime readers know that I’ve been doing Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, otherwise known as “parts work” for the past three years. One of the “parts” of my system I’ve written about previously is The Octopus—the frazzled multitasker who tends to lose her shit—but there are countless others: The Lazy Daydreamer, The Good Girl, Little Liar, The Backyard Bitch, The Fire Goddess . . . (this is also the cast of characters featured in my memoir, for which I just began seeking representation after endless revisions to the manuscript, proposal, and query letter—you know, just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. . .)

But last week I met a new part. She had been silently screaming at me for a long time; I could feel her undulating under the surface but I couldn’t place her, couldn’t identify her name or her purpose in my system. In IFS, there are no bad parts—each one plays a role and most of them are there to protect you in some way. To clarify, different parts of your system represent aspects of yourself—this is not like Dissociative Identity Disorder (e.g. Sybil) where one is taken over by another personality without their awareness.

I have felt the essence of this new part bubbling up during these months of rage, frustration, silence, and paralysis. She is the one who led me to create Redacted and put out the call for submissions. Because she is so fucking angry and so tired of being quiet.

When I found her, I named her Cassandra. She has been with me for so, so long.

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was gifted with sight—she was a prophet, a seer—but she was also cursed. Because nobody believed her. Here’s where ChatGPT is going to take over to get you all up to speed. I think I’ll go have a lemon lavender CBD cocktail and put my feet up while she fills you in. I’ll add my own additions in parentheses, and please consider anything in bold as my SHOUTY ALL CAPS (!!). Take it away, Chat:

The Cassandra Complex: Myth, Modernity, and the Silencing of Women's Truths

In the rich tapestry of Greek mythology, few figures are as hauntingly resonant today as Cassandra, the doomed prophetess of Troy. Her story is not merely an ancient cautionary tale but a timeless metaphor for the way truth-tellers, especially women, are silenced, disbelieved, and dismissed in society. (Timeless—I’ll say. Will we ever shed this legacy?) The modern psychological term, the "Cassandra complex," reflects this enduring pattern: when individuals, often women, voice truths or warnings that go unheeded, they suffer a unique form of psychological and social exile.

According to myth, Cassandra was gifted with prophetic sight by the god Apollo, who hoped to win her favor. When she rejected him, he twisted his gift into a curse: she would retain the ability to foresee the future, but no one would ever believe her. She foresaw the fall of Troy, the deception of the Trojan Horse, and the slaughter of her people, but her warnings were ignored. She was labeled mad, hysterical, irrational.

(Hmmm, hysterical. I’m sensing a centuries-old paradigm emerging…)

Cassandra by Evelyn Pickering de Morgan

(Hey, me again. I asked Chat to elaborate on how this syndrome continues to affect women in the present day. Here’s what she said):

This mythic silencing is not confined to the pages of ancient epics—it echoes through centuries into our present moment.

In contemporary society, many women experience the Cassandra complex in deeply personal and systemic ways. They speak, and they are not believed. They warn, and they are dismissed. Their insight is recast as irrationality. (Have your heads exploded yet? I think I just ejaculated cortisol. Sorry, too far?)

1. Speaking Out About Abuse

One of the most pervasive modern-day manifestations of the Cassandra complex is seen in the stories of women who come forward about sexual harassment, assault, or domestic abuse. Time and again, survivors are doubted, interrogated, or outright disbelieved. They are told they are imagining things, exaggerating, or seeking attention. The #MeToo movement brought these patterns into public consciousness, but the struggle for credibility remains ongoing.

2. Medical Dismissal

In healthcare, studies show that women are more likely than men to have their pain underestimated or their symptoms dismissed. Whether dealing with chronic illness, reproductive health, or even heart attacks, women must often fight to be heard by medical professionals. They are, quite literally, not believed about their own bodies.

3. Whistleblowers and Women in Leadership

Women who speak out against institutional failures—be it in politics, the workplace, or activism—are often marginalized or vilified. They may be branded as alarmist, emotional, or unstable. Their credibility is attacked rather than their concerns addressed. Like Cassandra, they warn of disaster, but those in power refuse to listen until it is too late.

4. Emotional Insight and Gaslighting

Women often possess strong intuitive and emotional intelligence, yet when they express discomfort, concern, or emotional insight, they are frequently met with accusations of being too sensitive or dramatic. This is a form of gaslighting—a psychological tactic that makes people question their own reality. Like Cassandra, they begin to doubt themselves, even when they are right.

OK, hi, I’m going to just pause right here. I cannot make that passage bold enough or big enough. Because that analysis is precisely what makes me feel like one raw, exposed nerve. It’s what brings my heart into my throat and makes me want to scream and burn shit. This phenomenon is what drove me to identify a clear part of my system that I named Cassandra. It drives me in so many ways.

This is my gift; this is my curse. I am a deeply intuitive person. I am self-aware and insightful. (Listen, if it feels like I’m bragging or full of myself, I’m happy to provide you with a list of my accompanying flaws. Self-deprecation is my specialty.) I know myself well; I can read the room; I can sense the moods and thoughts of my beloveds without them saying a goddamn word. People love this about me—who doesn’t enjoy having their interior landscape hijacked by someone’s clairvoyant emotional intrusiveness? See, told you I was self-deprecating.

I am sensitive. Too sensitive. Too loud. Too talkative. Too emotional. I am too much of a lot of things. But despite my two divorces, I am actually quite fantastic at relationships. Actually, that’s probably why I’ve been divorced twice. Because, as they say, it takes two to tango, and it’s hard to tango with a refrigerator. When your emotional intelligence, communication, and desire for connection far outpaces your partner’s, well: Knock, knock, motherfuckers: The grim reaper of divorce just rolled up. Sorry, don’t shoot the messenger.

My continual adaptation to other people’s preferences and deficits—modifying my baseline to incorporate theirs as the new default—has a delightful name: Self-abandonment.

It’s been my signature move for decades. Because when you grow up thinking that you must be the crazy one, it’s much safer than the alternative: Everything is fucked.

That’s not exactly a safe world-view for a highly sensitive, neurodivergent bookworm. So when people say, “I’m fine, nothing’s wrong,” you believe them and dis-believe yourself. When your partner tells you you’re asking too much of them, you tone it down and find reasons why it’s ok. Your expectations are unrealistic. You are selfish. You are too much, and you’re lucky someone is willing to put up with you, so you’ll just go ahead and change the Love Language listed on your driver’s license to “changes my oil without complaint.”

Guess what happens next? You get sick. You lose your voice. I mean, it’s really only a formality, isn’t it? Because you lost it long ago. I’d say it was stolen, but that’s not exactly true. You gave it away. You handed it over wordlessly What choice did you have? What was the point? Nobody was listening anyway.

And when bad things happen to you—unfair things, unjust things, things you should be shouting about to everyone—you will keep quiet. Because you’re not allowed to talk about it, and also? It will accomplish nothing.

And that’s the kicker. To me, that’s the tragedy of Cassandra. She must have just given up at some point. Nobody was listening. Nobody believed her. Her warnings were disregarded.

Well, this is fucking chilling. Cassandra by Frederick Sandys, circa 1863–1864, via ArtUK

When silence turns to rage

Which is how I found myself deep in a therapy session, conjuring a woman in a glass cage in the middle of a forest. She was draped across the floor lifelessly, like a prisoner of war who had gone mad. She was the part of me who had tried screaming to anyone who would listen about any matter of truth and finally just gave up, desperate, drained, crazy.

But that’s the thing. I asked Chat: “What happened to her? Didn’t she go crazy, and then they killed her?” Chat, with her usual friendly, accommodating tone, corrected me gently:

The idea that Cassandra “went crazy” is more of a patriarchal reinterpretation than a literal truth in the myths. She was rational, clear-eyed, and consistently correct, but because her truth was disruptive and unwelcome, society labeled her as irrational.

This labeling of women as mad or hysterical when they speak hard truths is exactly why her story still resonates today—her “madness” was the world’s refusal to accept her reality.

Jesus Christ, you guys.

One of my favorite tracks on Taylor Swift's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, is the underrated Cassandra.

So, they killed Cassandra first 'cause she feared the worst
And tried to tell the town
So, they set my life in flames, I regret to say
Do you believe me now?

They knew, they knew, they knew the whole time
That I was onto something
The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line
They all said nothing

Blood's thick but nothing like a payroll
Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul
You can mark my words that I said it first
In a morning warning, no one heard

Chat acknowledged this song, saying, “Swift’s “Cassandra” is not just a lament—it's a reclamation. It honors the truth-teller and underscores the enduring pain of being silenced. In a culture still reckoning with how it listens to women, the song becomes both a mirror and a warning.

A reclamation. That gave me chills, for obvious reasons.

Cassandra, painted by by Marc Burckhardt (What a fucking badass. Cassandra, not Marc. No offense, Marc.)

I’ve been trying to teach my daughters a relationship lesson for awhile now:

If you are the ocean, don’t let anyone else be the moon that pulls your tides. Pull your own tides. You must also be the moon.

But I realized there is another layer—I need to be the moon that pulls only MY tides. I cannot pull other people’s tides. If I am to be a lighthouse, that should be my only job. A lighthouse merely shines its light. It is not a megaphone or microscope or newspaper or map or psychiatrist’s couch. It does not grab sailors from their ships and scream, “THIS WAY, MOTHERFUCKERS!”

But I want to. To adapt a little Mel Robbins up in this bitch, maybe I should just “let them.” Let them steer their ship into the rocks. Let them be idiots and assholes. Let them think they are right. But goddamn, is that the right thing to do? My father told me that when he knows other people are incorrect about something and want to get into a power struggle about it, he quietly smiles and takes satisfaction from his own inner knowing. He does not need to convince them.

This Mona Lisa-esque self-assuredness is a quality I wish I had. To be so Zen that you can rest quietly in your own navigation system and wisdom that you’ve transcended the need to convince others—to be heard, to be right—sounds like a combination of diplomacy and enlightenment. But—and I said this to him, you guys; my dad is the best man on this planet and I would never trash him—he’s a man, and it’s different for a woman to shut her mouth and rest comfortably in her own moral or intellectual superiority. Isn’t it?

So enter my newly discovered Cassandra. She is so tired of not being able to speak her truth. She is tired of doing the emotional heavy lifting for everyone. She wants to quietly be the lighthouse but she’s also desperate to draw the map, to broadcast the injustice, to be heard. She wants the villagers to hear her prophecy, and to listen. But when she takes over my system, the result is nearly constant rage. And it’s frying my nerves and disrupting my health.

My doctor told me that my perimenopause-induced insulin resistance is likely primarily due to stress. I believe her. I believe that the cost of the divorce trauma, the injustice, the silence, the daunting responsibility of single parenting while self-employed, has been paid by my body. My health. My nervous system. Here’s what Chat says about it:

The Cost of Being Unheard

The psychological impact of the Cassandra complex is profound. Persistent invalidation leads to anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and isolation. It erodes confidence and can make women question the value of their own voices. The pain lies not only in being right, but in being right and ignored.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

This post is too long, you guys. I wanted to tell you about what I’ve learned from Cassandra, how I’ve been working with her. I want to tell you about the other part of my system that steps in as executioner when Cassandra isn’t being heard, how this other part has been the architect of my confrontational fantasies for decades. I want to tell you about how I plan to un-fuck my nervous system.

So I’ll do that next week, how does that sound? In the meantime, if you want to let your inner Cassandra speak, join me for a series of virtual 90-minute women’s writing circles. You can drop in or do the whole session—all levels of writers welcome. This is a sacred space to process what it means to be a woman in the world through writing prompts, free-writing, sharing, connection, meditation, and witchiness. It would be an honor to write with you.

XO,
Steph