Follow up to this post (https://www.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/hnsfk2/how_to_deal_with_gas_lighting/ ) because this shit is so much more destructive than I think people realize.

Mental abuse like gaslighting literally makes you dumber, it's one of the key ways guys will waste your time and hold you back (if you don't recognize it or allow it). I've always been a "high performing" student and employee, but I realized a common theme from the periods where I had cognitive decline intense enough to make school and work noticeably more difficult (despite taking steps to lighten my workload, etc): shitty, abusive men in my life.

They know the mental toll it takes to question and doubt yourself when someone is fucking with your head all the time, how exhausting it can be to brainstorm a bunch of different scenarios to explain inexplicable garbage behavior, how fucking maddening it is to have someone override your reality with nonsense revisionist history time and time again.

Consistent gaslighting and other psychological abuse puts you into a mental fog. The most heinous men are fully aware of this and weaponize it to cripple women they feel threatened by, or would like to make more malleable to control for other purposes (sex, free labor, etc). They get close under the guise of a relationship, friendship, work connection, etc and use their proximity to subtly shave you down over time with mental mind games.

As soon as a man gaslights you, cut him off or (in cases where you have to see him like at work) limit your contact to what is absolutely necessary. It's the only way to defend yourself from the harm they are intent on inflicting. They know what the fuck they are doing, don't allow them to trick you into becoming a depleted shell of yourself through mental exhaustion.