Surviving in a Gaslight World: Gaslight Survivor Series, #5

By Victoria Summit

You finally escaped from that toxic relationship!

Perhaps you were married to someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Maybe you were a target of Love Fraud.

Perhaps you keep attracting cheaters and liars. 

At some point, you had enough. You went No Contact and began a new life.

You may have gone to therapy or you may have begun the healing process on your own. 

You might have lost your life savings, your home, your family, your friends or perhaps you got away before you lost anything of monetary value.

However, those months or years of turbulence likely took a toll on your mind. 

You've spent a long time reprogramming your thoughts from the time you were being Gaslighted. 

You don't want to experience that feeling of being gaslighted again. 

But now what?

How can you face the daily onslaught of life in a Gaslight World?

You may not have your own personal gaslighter anymore but there are plenty of others to fill those shoes. 

Who can you trust, if anyone?

Trying to survive modern life while you're still healing can be rough but not impossible.

Stop walking on eggshells and embrace your new life!

Surviving in a Gaslight World is written for those people who have left a toxic or abusive relationship with someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, is a con artist, a chronic cheater, or a pathological liar. This book hopes to bring support to those who may still be feeling the effects of the toxic relationship but have done some work on healing and moving on with their lives.

Books in the Gaslight Survivor Series by Victoria Summit 

100 Red Flags in Relationships
How Many Lies Are Too Many?
Bad Boys, Bad Girls
Stop Dancing in the Gaslight
Surviving in a Gaslight World

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scarlett Publishing
• Release date: Jan 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386525851

Book preview

Surviving in a Gaslight World

Reclaiming Your Life After a Toxic Relationship

Victoria Summit

Gaslight Survivor Series

Surviving in a Gaslight World

Copyright © 2018 by Victoria Summit

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Printing, October 2018

Copyright © 2018 Cover created by Scarlett Publishing

Scarlett Publishing

Toronto, Ontario

Table of Contents

Introduction

Who Is This Book For?

Flying Monkeys

Forgiveness

Shame

Not Again!

Body Language

Exercise

Music

Crystals

Candles

Affirmations

Hoarding and Collections

Fake News

Social Media

Happiness

About the Author

Introduction

Help! I’m surrounded by liars and gaslighters!

How to stay sane in an era of insanity!

The current thrum of society can be a challenging time for Gaslight Survivors and everyone else. We’re living a tricky dance every day just by being alive, let alone avoiding toxic people and situations.

Who are Gaslight Survivors?

These are the men and women who have managed to disentangle from the sticky threads of someone who might have narcissistic personality disorder, is a sociopath or psychopath or has some other type of personality or behavior disorder where gaslighting was one of many tools of abuse in a relationship. Gaslight Survivors might be completely free of their abusers or they may have to continue to interact with their abusers because there are children or jobs or other factors that don’t allow the survivor to completely break free and go No Contact.

Gaslight Survivors are all those people who survived an abusive relationship.

The #Metoo movement can be triggering for many who are freshly healed or thought they were nearly healed after a destructive relationship with a narcissist. The gaslight survivors had to go through many hurdles and steps and various phases of healing. The #MeToo movement and other social topics might trigger memories that these survivors had hoped were buried.

It takes a lot of courage to leave a malignant narcissist or other abuser. It can be dangerous. It can be deadly. Some people are never able to untangle completely because there are children together or other concerns. People who haven’t been through a gaslighting relationship may not understand how to help or that they should help someone struggling in one or trying to leave one. However, for those who got out and rebuilt their lives, the ground can feel shaky when all around, people are stepping forward with stories of their own abuse, often at the hands of a narcissist, with one extreme yet current example being Hollywood mogul, Harvey Weinstein.

Gaslight survivors already had their tango with Weinstein-like people. The endless parade of Hollywood stories may be triggering. Just because most people don’t know your secret pain doesn’t mean that it didn’t and doesn’t exist. Your pain is as important as that celebrity on TV. That celebrity is speaking up so that you don’t have to. Consider the outing of all this information as a validation of the pain you went through in your own struggle to break free and take pride that you succeeded. It’s okay to feel grief or sadness hearing about other people’s experiences. It’s called empathy and it’s something you can relish that you feel again especially if you were one of the types of people who lost empathy for a while in the turmoil of your previous life with a narcissist.

It’s okay to want to turn off the TV, to avoid the news, to only watch a specific type of entertainment that holds no surprises. You’re still healing. You may be healing for the rest of your life and that’s okay.

Hollywood is only a microcosm. There’s a whole world, a whole universe out there brimming with life and relationships.

It seems like there’s a new swell of hatred on the horizon fueled by world events and the clashing of ideals by political parties. The tolerance in the age of Aquarius is now turning to battle. A new civil war is being fought. As the earth evolves, erupts, burns, and floods, the human race is over-populating with selfish, greedy people who will see it all destroyed before the next century turns.

The individual relationship with someone who has narcissistic personality disorder is a symptom of the current issue with the human race as a whole. With the survival of the fittest attitude turned from true hand-to-mouth survival in the wild to the acquisition of monetary wealth in the biggest of castles, each human generation has been bred more selfish as the goal for self-validation turns towards accumulation of goods.

We, the human race, needs to slow down. We need to embrace the healing we’ve been able to do thus far on our journey, no matter where we are on the journey, and continue to look towards our true goals; loving ourselves and those around us.

The hate and fear around us along with the threat of nuclear war being very real for all countries can reduce any of us to a point of depression, apathy, or hysteria.

Remember that social trends go in waves. Rise up to protect those you can protect. Go to marches for women’s rights, children’s rights, gay rights, environmental rights, housing, job security, or whatever cause appeals to you. You feel less helpless when you are out with others. You don’t have to carry a sign. You don’t have to yell. You don’t even have to march. You can just show up and be counted. You don’t need to go with anyone. Just remember to dress warm and don’t go anywhere with strangers no matter how kind or cool they may seem.

In our current world, we are gaslighted from every angle. Entertainment, politics, jobs, spouses, children, and education are teeming with people who want to gaslight you for your money, your sex, your home, your mind, your body, and any other assets. The biggest trick seems to lead right back to separating you from your wallet.

Anyone can be the victim of gaslighting and you can be gaslit by multiple people and partners through the course of a day. Stay alert and aware.

As a gaslight survivor, you’ve battled your partner and won. Many of you may not feel like you’ve won as you walk around broken-hearted, lost jobs, lost money, lost investments, lost homes, lost family, lost friends, but in fact, you won it all. Keep in mind that the person who gaslighted you has to continue on living in his or her head, which must be an unbelievable nightmare. The gaslighter will never truly be happy for that person wants what others have and even if he or she gets it, there is that burning desire for more. You, on the other hand, maybe have lost lots or you may have gotten out before you lost anything, but you will always be the winner, for you have empathy, goals, dreams, emotions, and so many more tools that will help you continue to heal and grow stronger every day. These tools are beyond the comprehension of a true narcissist.

Stay alert and aware in this gaslight era. We are truly living the dystopian fiction that consists of mere dreams and nightmares of only a few short generations ago.

Who Is This Book For?

The Gaslight Survivor series was originally created to help people in toxic relationships identify what they are going through, recognize that it’s not normal or healthy behavior, and discover methods for how they can disengage with their abuser.

This book, as with the other Gaslight Survivor books, focuses primarily on those who have had relationships with people who have or appear to have full-blown narcissistic personality disorder or malignant narcissism. However, a lot of these ideas can apply to healing from any kind of toxic relationships that were abusive. Both men and women can have narcissistic personality disorder. This book will generally refer to narcissists as he for simplicity’s sake, but it means both men and women.

This book is for people who have already done a lot of work towards healing from their toxic relationship.

When I began writing this series a few short years ago, information wasn’t readily available about this topic. Sure, you could find information about narcissistic personality disorder and gaslighting techniques once you had identified that this is what is happening in your relationship. However, to get to that point was very difficult. Information about domestic violence with regard to gaslighting and other techniques used by a person with narcissist personality disorder weren’t as obvious or as readily available as they are today. You had to know what you were looking for in order to find it. If you don’t know what you don’t know, you can’t get help or identify what is going on and why it feels so wrong. As more people step from the shadows to share their experiences, the easier it will be for targets to recognize their situation and do something about it.

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