And that is when you lose your voice. Your desire to say something back. Your desire to confront. Or assert yourself. Or even leave the situation. The risk is just too great. The mental anguish. The nightmares. The ruminations that occupy you all the time, as you replay the arguments and flashback to all of the panic attacks had during them. The risk of losing your home, your children. Your livelihood. The pain of isolation from your family and friends. It’s all just to high a price to pay.
With such attack, such deliberate, vindictive attack on your entire personhood.
Well, that is why so many will tell you that gaslighting is really the sadistic abuse of the narcissist. And that it is blind to race, creed, color, age, gender, sexual orientation, culture, or socioeconomic.
The truth is. No one is immune from the pain of being constantly guilted or blamed. Or humiliated. Degraded. And shamed. No one is immune to the pain of being deceived and lied to again and again. No one is immune to the pain of hating oneself, and blaming oneself for all the drama and misery in your life. No one is immune to believing their empty promise to protect you from the very hurt they’ve caused.
No one.
And that is a basically what The Gaslighting Memoirs is all about. Or rather, who it is all about. Anyone. And everyone. All walks of life.
Including, quite possibly, someone, who knows someone…who knows you.
In The Gaslighting Memoirs, L.C. Barron takes a close look at these issues that now affect all of us. With the inspired stories of individuals who’ve broken down from the trauma of narcissistic abuse that we today call: gaslighting. It begins with the story of Romy Podilskyi, taking stock of her life as she considers how she has come to be so isolated over the years, feeling as though living in exile. Inspired to journal, to write letters, and explore her personal interests and values in life, including her talent and love for painting, Romy speaks of her experience of gaslighting. Romy’s writings and paintings are part of her journey of self-discovery, along with a dreamscape that guides her search for her soul. And from all of Romy’s reflections — her reveries by day, and dreamwork by night, are born The Gaslighting Memoirs, and the stories that could speak of anyone of us.
Some reference to history, social studies, and current events to further round out the stories. And to make the point that gaslighting, and the narcissistic abuse that drives it, really can affect anyone and everyone. And to drive home, admittedly, that gaslighting has been burning furiously well into our own times.
Of course, some things just cannot be expressed in words. Descriptions of thoughts and feelings, and explanations of them, can only go so far. Which is where the artwork of The Gaslighting Memoirs comes to play.
For so many, pictures really are worth far more than a thousand words.
In The Gaslighting Memoirs, the stories themselves are telling of the trauma. Of it all, The imagery alone is the narrative. You will be able to see for yourself what the characters in these stories are going through. You’ll see the look in their eyes. The expressions on their face. Why they are sitting or standing or staying perfectly still. Or running sometimes. Or simply, or not-so-simply- walking a mile in their shoes.
See for yourself, what their walk just may be like. In a way, come together with them from the six degrees of separation that may just be saying something about us all. And perhaps, discover yourself what it can mean to be cleared of the suffocating smoke and mirrors of gaslighting. To liberated to hear the stories of someone you know with a renewed point of view. And to hear your own voice, too, in a new way. And with your own life, breathed anew.
