Is OTHER wrong in the post ? POST : I have a deep relationship with a friend from undergrad. We now live a few hours away from each other by car but often call each other on the phone. He introduced me to Buddhism and overall we've been supporting each other for a while now. At least so I thought.

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Recently I was writing a thesis to graduate, and it wasn't easy. Though I started seeing writing as a tool for discovering my thoughts, meaning I had to write through my confusion (as opposed to putting down thoughts in writing, meaning I had to think through my confusion), I was still feeling very confused and many of my unresolved insecurities were coming back up. So I would call up my friend, believing he'd lend a kind ear.

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Now mind you, my friend is going through a depression with its ups and downs. Recently, he's been battling with how neither stopping weed nor getting into a relationship with someone he is deeply attracted to solved his loneliness. He also is staying with his grandma because she's getting very old.

We tripped on New Year's and he realised how his worldview might have been limited by his lack of seeing different perspectives (through e.g. travel), and how he may not agree with the way the NGO he's organising for is going about its intentions (he doesn't work, his only job is that NGO). I realised how much of my confusion around the thesis was coming from a place of arrogance/hubris, and how accepting that I didn't know anything helped me see what I had refused to learn about and opened the door to changing my relationship with confusion.

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So last time I called him, he more or less hangs up on me and tells me he doesn't have time for me, then texts me I am not his soapbox and if I seek help the only thing he can advise is to "sit" (i.e. meditate) and "journal". I respond to him that if those words were enough they'd have worked ages ago, and to check his own hubris, i.e. that he was acting towards my situation the way I used to act around my thesis.

He doesn't take it well, and I tell him that since he's not in the headspace to do so, I'll just hold off on it until the thesis is done and just get support from e.g. my parents. But he believed I was trying to guilt him into being there for me, which I said was his interpretation. Then he links me to a post about gaslighting, and tells me how I kept saying it was his interpretation was an attempt to absolve myself off the responsibility for making him feel bad to not have the space to help me with my problems.

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I think he's the one gaslighting me (albeit unconsciously), and it's not the first time either. This event brought up all the times he projected his self-flagellation onto my behaviour. Whenever I criticise him on anything touchy he blames me for making him feel bad. One example: he told me about a project that could happen where he'd partner with his friend to provide yoga and Buddhist teachings to groups, and then proceeded to lash out at me for twenty minutes because me saying "then make it happen" was me "sounding like \[his\] father". Combined with the fact that most of the times when he comes visit me it's a byproduct of an event of his sister (who lives in the same city as I do) that he's attending (wedding, graduation, etc.), whereas I often go to where he lives just to see him, despite having other friends there.

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Overall I'm tired of talking to him, because I do not want to be blamed for putting expectations on him that I'm not putting. It's a pretty basic matter of trust between friends to accept that I do not have an evil or burdening intent towards him when I tell him my opinion.

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This pattern has got so bad I'm almost led to ask a WIBTA. Right before this shit happened, he told me he won't end up traveling because he took more responsibilities with his NGO, and I felt like he might have backtracked on his new year's realisations. But I didn't tell him that, I guess because I was so worried about walking on eggshells around his feelings. So I didn't tell him anything, and waited to submit my thesis before getting back and offloading to reddit the judgement on who's gaslighting whom.

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**TL;DR**: My friend believes I gaslit him because I told him that it's his interpretation that me telling him I understand he's not in the place to support me is actually guilting him into emotionally supporting me through a tough time. I think he's unconsciously gaslighting me by blaming me for his own perfectionism, and distorting my words to put in them an intent to burden him.