There’s a moment in every difficult situation where something inside you whispers, “This doesn’t add up.” That moment is cognitive dissonance — the tension between what you know to be true and what someone else insists is true. Gaslighting doesn’t just create that tension. It weaponizes it.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that the confusion I felt at the beginning of that ordeal wasn’t a flaw in me — it was a predictable psychological response to an environment built on contradiction.

I had tenants from the workplace trying to claim they knew my thoughts, motivations, and what I did or didn’t do, even though it was clear they didn’t know me at all. That realization changed everything.

When I began therapy in November 2018, I was finally given the language to describe what I had experienced. Those terms became the foundation of my education, and that education led me back to self‑trust and confidence in my own truth.

What Cognitive Dissonance Actually Is

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort you feel when two realities collide — my internal truth that I was doing my job and following the rules, and an external narrative created by tenants bullies, that contradicts it. Your mind can’t comfortably hold both at the same time, so it works overtime trying to make them match. This isn’t weakness or confusion. It’s your brain trying to protect your identity, integrity, and sense of reality. When someone repeatedly challenges what you know to be true, your mind enters a loop of trying to resolve the mismatch, searching for coherence where none exists.

When Your Truth Collides With Their Story

Gaslighting begins with a simple clash:

• You remember something clearly, but they insist it happened. I know that the restaurant meeting they claimed we had in June 2016 never happened. It was a restaurant I had never been to.
• You express a boundary, and they tell you you’re overreacting. They claimed the filing for their eviction was illegal and that I forged documents, as I had handwritten notes on them.
• You describe your feelings, and they say you’re imagining things. They made claims that my mental health issues were fake, and they acted as if they knew me better than I know myself, even though we were strangers.

That’s the spark. Your mind tries to hold two opposing realities at once, and it can’t. The discomfort you feel is your brain trying to protect your sense of self.

Gaslighters know this — sometimes consciously, sometimes instinctively. They don’t need you to believe them right away. They just need you to doubt yourself for a moment.

The “Easy” Resolution They Offer

Once the tension is there, they present their version of events as the simpler, more stable option:

• “You misunderstood.”
• “You’re too sensitive.”
• “You’re remembering wrong.”
• “You’re the one causing the problem.”

If you accept their version, the discomfort disappears — temporarily. But the cost is your self‑trust.

This is how the cycle begins.

Repetition Wears You Down

Gaslighting doesn’t work because the story is convincing. It works because it’s relentless.

Each contradiction forces your mind back into the same exhausting loop:

• “I know what I saw…”
• “But they’re so certain…”
• “Why would they lie…”
• “Maybe I’m wrong…”

Eventually, your brain chooses the path of least resistance. Not because you believe them, but because you’re tired of fighting for clarity.

That exhaustion is the point.

Isolation Makes Their Voice the Only Anchor

Gaslighting thrives in environments where you have:

• no witnesses
• no validation
• no neutral perspective
• no one saying, “No, you’re not imagining this.”

Without external grounding, the gaslighter becomes the only reference point. Your internal truth is still there — but it’s constantly being pushed aside by the louder, more insistent narrative.

This imbalance is exactly what keeps the cycle going.

Your Integrity Becomes a Target

People who gaslight often choose targets who:

• care about fairness
• reflect on their own behaviour
• want to resolve conflict
• value accuracy and truth
• try to understand, not escalate

Your desire to make sense of the situation becomes something they can twist. You’re trying to find clarity; they’re trying to keep you off balance.

It’s not a fair fight.

The Pressure Increases When You Start Seeing Clearly

The moment you begin to regain your footing — when you start trusting your own perception again — the gaslighter escalates:

• more accusations
• more contradictions
• more rewriting of events
• more emotional volatility

Fresh dissonance. Fresh confusion. Fresh attempts to pull you back into the loop. That was the point of their websites, even though many of the posts were similar, just under a different name.

1. 859kennedyroad.com
2. stellareddy.com
3. davidstrashin.com
4. sjtomemberkevinlundy.com
5. sjtomembervandanapatel.com
6. socialjusticetribunalsontario.ca
7. lorriereddy.com

It’s not random. It’s a control tactic.

The Loop Breaks When You Step Out of It

Gaslighting doesn’t end because the gaslighter stops. It ends because you step away, physically or psychologically, and reclaim your own reference points. 

I quit that job and spent a couple of years in isolation, going to therapy, reading and learning all I could about toxic traits and narcissism, while waiting for the legal processes these tenants started to finish. I hung on to the fact that I did my job to keep me sane. If I had truly done something “illegal” in my job duties, I knew the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) would have found it, as they found the redundant second form n5 I gave them.

Distance gives your mind room to breathe. Thankfully, I can breathe here in Newfoundland & Labrador, far away from that toxic environment. Education gives your mind a framework to work with, and you learn to recognize the traits. Reflection and sticking with the facts give your mind coherence again.

Once your internal truth has space to settle, their narrative loses its power. The mental noise quiets. The replaying stops. Your self‑trust returns.

That’s the real end of gaslighting — not when they stop talking, but when you stop believing the conflict was inside you.