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    Stop Dancing in the Gaslight
    Stop Dancing in the Gaslight
    Stop Dancing in the Gaslight
    Ebook148 pages1 hour

    Stop Dancing in the Gaslight

    By Victoria Summit

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    About this ebook

    Is your love life a series of ups and downs?

    Are you walking on eggshells?

    Are you nervous and jumpy all the time?

    Are you doubting your own memory?

    Are you afraid to make decisions in your private life even if you have a powerful career?

    Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse that some types of people (narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths) use to manipulate others.

    The victim of gaslighting may feel like he or she is slowly going crazy with paranoia and forgetfulness.

    The gaslighter delights in confusing the victim. Sometimes he or she is covering up affairs, gambling, drugs, rapes, serial killing, and other secretive activities.

    Did you used to be a happy, compassionate person but now your angry and frustrated all the time?

    Do you yearn for the "early days" of your relationship when everything was picture perfect?

    Do you wonder how your relationship crumbled so quickly and WHY?

    You may be dancing in the gaslight and not even know it.

    Everyone is guilty of gaslighting other people in minor ways, and media certainly gaslights everyone. The gaslighting discussed in Dancing in the Gaslight is focused on abusive romantic relationships.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScarlett Publishing
    Release dateOct 29, 2013
    ISBN9781311104571
    Stop Dancing in the Gaslight
    Author

    Victoria Summit

    Victoria Summit is a life coach.

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      Book preview

      Stop Dancing in the Gaslight - Victoria Summit

      Dancing in the Gaslight

      How Do You Know if You're Being Romantically Conned?

      Victoria Summit

      Book Three: Gaslight Survivor Series

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy.

      Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Copyright 2013 Victoria Summit

      Copyright 2013 Scarlett Publishing

      Smashwords Edition November 2013

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Gaslighting: What Is It?

      Gaslighting as Mental Abuse

      Phases of Gaslighting

      Get Help

      Personality Disorders

      Cell Phones

      Computers

      Online Friends

      Being Late

      Word Games

      Moving Objects

      Sex Games

      What You Feel During Gaslight Phases

      Withholding

      Blocking

      Pretending to Be In the Know

      Trivializing

      Countering and Memory Games

      Illness

      Passive-Aggressive

      Isolation

      Triangulation

      Polygamist

      Cults

      What to Expect After the Gaslight Dance

      Strategies for Healing

      About the Author

      Introduction

      In my previous book, How Many Lies Are Too Many? I discussed how to recognize compulsive liars and decide what kind of life you think you deserve.

      However, lying is only one part of what happens when you're dancing in the gaslight. Or participating in what Dr. Robin Stern calls in her excellent book, The Gaslight Effect, The Gaslight Tango.

      For people who have never been through a gaslighting experience, it can be hard to understand how a rather sane, often very intelligent, person can be lured into a web of manipulations and lies. However, for those who have clawed their way free from the crazy maze of mirrors, there seems to be some common threads that run through experiences.

      This is what is the most chilling about the tools abusers use on their subjects. They follow patterns. Every single one of them. The abuser follows patterns. The target or victim reacts in patterns. Yet it is all a very subtle dance. The abuse is nearly invisible at first.

      The idea is that if the target is constantly confused, the target won't notice the patterns. People from the outside of the toxic relationship won't be confused and if they have enough information, may be able to decipher deception and make an attempt to warn the target. However, most of the time, the target/supply has become 'hypnotised by his or her abuser and either doesn't hear the warning, chooses not to believe the warnings, or confronts the abuser only to be subjected to more abuse.

      Gaslighting is a form of abuse. Mental abuse. It is not easily recognized by the target. It may not be easily recognized by observers. The target senses, something isn't quite right but is unable to put his or her finger on it. The target begins to doubt his or her own memory and perception. The more the target loses self-confidence, the more the gaslighter will take control through various means of manipulations.

      Abusers can be men or women. Targets can be men or women. Gaslighting knows no class, no race, no gender, no sexual orientation. It exists across the board.

      This little book will attempt to illuminate some of the common threads I've observed in gaslighting experiences, namely where a narcissist attempts to bully the target to manipulate the situation into his or her own favor in a romantic relationship.

      Gaslighting: What Is It?

      Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse.

      Many horror stories evolve from relationships with people who exhibit traits of Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Sociopathology, and Psychopathology. Gaslighting is a favourite tool the abuser uses to manipulate situations into his or her own favor.

      Gaslighting is brainwashing, trickery, and lies. The technique is designed to make the target doubt his or her own thoughts, memories, and actions.

      Most of the references in this book will be towards Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Abusers can be men or women. Targets can be men or women. There is no specific sex, class, culture, or race that is excluded from the mental mind games of gaslighting. Evil exists everywhere. It is up to you, and you alone, to recognize it and protect yourself from it.

      The slippery thing about gaslighting is that it can be hard to detect when you're the victim. You may have a nagging sense that something isn't right but you can't put your finger on it. This is why it's important to educate yourself as much as you can once you recognize that you're in a gaslight relationship with a lover, sibling, parent, child, co-worker, boss, or even friend. Recognizing gaslighting is the biggest step, for seeing it requires snapping out of your fog and going against everything your lover has tried to convince you to accept. As a people pleaser, you become conflicted and you keep hoping that you're wrong about these bad feelings and bad situations. You can't believe it's happening to you. You can't believe that your lover doesn't have your best interest at heart. You can't believe that your life isn't happy at all but just a series of manipulated unending nightmares. Days become less about joy and more about keeping the peace.

      We live in a culture that accepts and even rewards gaslighting.

      What/who is Santa Claus? This is likely the number one gaslighting event that exists worldwide outside of religious organizations. Santa Claus is a mythical story that has been expanded on for a century or two or more, depending on your version, where really, children are held hostage by their own behaviour under threats of gifts or punishments from some omnipotent man who is almost like God but not. During the holiday season, millions of households perpetuate the ruse that during the night, a fat man in red clothes drives flying reindeer from house to house and leaves presents for the good children. Never mind that rich kids get cool rich presents and poor children might be lucky with a candy bar. Santa never gives the poor kids expensive clothes, computers, TVs, game systems, and so on. Santa continues the class segregations. Santa skips by all the starving children in famine-ridden countries and ignores children in war. Santa may bring expensive presents for Fluffy the cat but Timmy who lives under the bridge in a van with his dad receives nothing. To keep children from questioning these inconsistencies, the gaslighter (parent, teacher) has to invent lies upon lies to maintain the myth.

      To understand gaslighting, you can take something like the Santa Claus myth and understand how it works.

      There is a lie.

      People go out of their way to make the lie true.

      People may even be furious if the lie is revealed too soon, as in, a child watches the news and discovers there's no such thing as Santa Claus.

      Many people are in on the lie. Lies are told about the lies. Lies about presents, lies about how the whole myth works, lies about getting to bed or Santa will fly over the house, lies about Santa might leave coal, and so on.

      Another example of a story that illustrates gaslighting is The Wizard of Oz.

      In the MGM musical, The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland, we learn about Oz and how he fools an entire nation into following him. He demands strict obedience and sends his subjects on fool's errands. He makes promises he doesn't keep. He gets angry for no reason and people walk on eggshells so as not to upset him. At the end, he's exposed as a big liar.

      In the Disney movie, Oz, the Great and Powerful, Oz's gaslighting schemes showcase his extreme case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. To see a charming narcissist at work and how far he'll go to cover up his lies, go and see Oz the Great and Powerful. Like the MGM movie, life in Kansas is depicted in black and white. Oz (James Franco) in Kansas is a carnival con artist and lothario. He is shown breaking hearts, giving gifts of music boxes to his targets, lying in his act, conning his peers, and

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