I read your whole post and just want to say congratulations to you for making it through all that. I also wanted to point out that people with bipolar are more susceptible to abuse such as the gaslighting you went through. It could be a chicken & egg type situation. I know that I constantly seem to manifest stressful situations in my life unintentionally that probably do make my illness worse...but I would not have been in those situations in the first place if it were not for my bipolar.