Well, I used to think the same way. I trusted my perceptions, my ideas. In fact, I thought I was pretty smart. I also got defensive when some of my own ideas were challenged. Took me a while to be able to receive direct feedback and not take it as a personal attack.
The great wisdom traditions around the world and throughout history state that it is best to question everything - in particular one's eyes, ears, as well as even one's own critical thinking skills. In fact, we need to question every single aspect of our experience here.
After all, we're here in 3D, and mostly hypnotized until we can learn to see the invisible 'Third Man', if you're familiar with the term from The Wave. Without this ability to deeply question ourselves, and to accept direct questioning from others, evil aliens can hijack our perceptions quite easily.
There's a book called You Are Not So Smart that lays out over 40 common ways that we can't trust our eyes, ears, and critical thinking skills. The info from the C's adds another spiritual dimension to this, in the sense that we were born into an induced hypnosis, and need to work very hard to get over ourselves into order to break free.
Anyways, that's kinda the basis of this forum as I see it. Its very different from gaslighting, in the sense of psychological manipulation in order to harass and control. But hey, if you're not ready to question the chemtrails narrative, so be it.