Dimming The Gaslight: Our Healing Journey From Narcissistic Abuse

he was seven years old the first time her uncle called it a game. Twenty years later her own father skipped town on New Year's Day and left her a letter blaming her for it.
This week, Mac and Phil sit down with Sofia Moreno, survivor turned author and founder of a nonprofit supporting survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
🚨 What happened when Sofia's mother walked in on the abuse firsthand, and the local police response that amounted to nothing but a piece of paper
👨‍👩‍👧 How her father's side of the family closed ranks around her abuser while blaming a seven year old for "dressing promiscuously"
🎭 The Jekyll and Hyde covert narcissist playbook her father ran for years, beloved by everyone outside the house and a completely different man behind closed doors
💸 The secret second mortgage, the drained accounts, and the affairs her father tried to pin on her mother instead
📺 The Dear John letter waiting on top of the television the day he disappeared, and who he blamed for making him leave
⚰️ Finding out her grandmother's memorial had happened without her, and the email that finally severed the relationship for good
📚 How Sofia turned decades of trauma into two published books, a nonprofit, and a biweekly support group for survivors still finding their words
This one goes to some of the darkest places the show has covered and still lands somewhere hopeful, proof that the story doesn't have to end where the abuse did.
⚖️ Disclaimer (because our lawyers make us say this): Dimming The Gaslight is based entirely on true events — except for the stuff we totally made up. Names, locations, and other identifying details have been changed. If you think we're talking about you in this podcast… newsflash: you're the narcissist.
Check out Sofia's books, "I Am a Survivor" and "A Message to My Abuser" (available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble)

Follow us: @dimming_the_gaslight
Join us on Patreon | Discord | DTG Merch Store | dimmingthegaslight.com

She spent years trapped in a cycle of love bombing, addiction, and violence with a man who once strangled her unconscious. Then one night, scrolling Facebook on her back porch, she watched his death unfold live on her screen before anyone told her.
This week, Mac and Phil sit down with Randin Steed, who writes as Sunshine Faye, author of Dance With the Devil and The Manipulation Whisperer, and cohost of the podcast Stories We Weren't Supposed to Tell.
🕯️ The night she said goodbye to her abuser, not knowing it was the last time she'd see him alive
📱 How she found out he'd been murdered, not from a phone call, but from a Facebook Live video of the scene
🚓 The time police drove her to jail instead of him, after he choked her unconscious and dragged her by the hair
✍️ Why she wrote her first book raw and unfiltered, and what happened when she realized how many people needed it
🧠 Her breakdown of the hook, the love bombing and future faking that gets survivors stuck before they even see it coming
♟️ The difference between gray rocking and what she calls yellow rocking a co parent who won't disengage
💬 Why she believes healthy people gaslight too, and where the real line between normal conflict and manipulation actually sits
This one is heavy, unfiltered, and honest about the messy, nonlinear road out. Randin doesn't hand you a bow on top. She hands you the truth and tells you to stand up.
⚖️ Disclaimer (because our lawyers make us say this): Dimming The Gaslight is based entirely on true events, except for the stuff we totally made up. Names, locations, and other identifying details have been changed. If you think we're talking about you in this podcast, newsflash, you're the narcissist.
Books: Dance With the Devil and The Manipulation Whisperer by Sunshine Faye, available on Amazon
Podcast: Stories We Weren't Supposed to Tell
Follow Randin: @sunshine_solitude_softball_
Follow us: @dimming_the_gaslight
Join us on Patreon | Discord | DTG Merch Store | dimmingthegaslight.com

After years of therapy before she even had a word for what happened to her, Jenny Rudd built an AI that could see it plainly — and it started with her own decade-plus marriage.
This week, Mac and Phil sit down with Jenny Rudd, founder of Dispute Buddy — a platform that scans years of text messages with an abusive ex and surfaces the patterns of coercive control survivors can't always name themselves.
🔍 What happened when Jenny finally ran her own texts through her own app, and it handed back a decade-plus documented pattern of coercive control she'd normalized for years
⚖️ How the system finds tactics like being accused of the exact thing your abuser is doing, disparaging family to isolate you, and disguising financial abuse as "consequences"
📵 Why responding to messages out of order isn't disorganization — it's a deliberate way to control the narrative and keep you confused
🧠 Jenny's take on why 25% of Dispute Buddy users are men, and what that number reveals about who's actually suffering coercive control and staying silent
♀️ Her view on feminism as fundamentally about emotional equality for men — and why she believes that's the missing piece for real economic equality for women
👨‍👩‍👧 How the app approaches parental alienation, and why she believes both sides of that debate are carrying real, valid pain
🏛️ Why she built Dispute Buddy to close the access-to-justice gap for people without the money, time, or safety to document their own abuse
This one is validating, sharp, and unexpectedly funny — proof that the patterns you couldn't explain to anyone finally have a name, and now, receipts.
⚖️ Disclaimer (because our lawyers make us say this): Dimming The Gaslight is based entirely on true events — except for the stuff we totally made up. Names, locations, and other identifying details have been changed. If you think we're talking about you in this podcast… newsflash: you're the narcissist.
Learn more about Dispute Buddy: disputebuddy.co
Follow Jenny: @[handle]
Follow us: @dimming_the_gaslight
Join us on Patreon | Discord | DTG Merch Store | dimmingthegaslight.com

Last week, Taelor told us her story for the first time. It was heavy. It was raw. And we promised we wouldn't leave it there.
She's back.
This week isn't about what happened to her. It's about everything she built after.
🪞 The moment she realized her own body had been keeping score for years, and finally let it stop
📓 Reading her abuser's old Facebook posts and recognizing every classic narcissist tactic in real time
👊 The exact moment her abuser stopped being a bully, the second she started fighting back
💉 A senior year "diet" involving an unregulated hormone injection and 500 calories a day, orchestrated by her own mother
🧠 A viral question she asked the internet that stopped people cold: is the "good" parent in an abusive home actually safe?
🔥 What it actually took, over a decade of inner work, to go from surviving to leading a community of other survivors
This is the episode about what comes after the worst chapter. Not closure. Not a bow on top. Just Taelor, fully herself, telling the rest of the story on her own terms.

⚖️ Disclaimer (because our lawyers make us say this): Dimming The Gaslight is based entirely on true events — except for the stuff we totally made up. Names, locations, and other identifying details have been changed. If you think we're talking about you in this podcast… newsflash: you're the narcissist.
Follow Dr. Taelor: @sos.with.doctor.taelor (Instagram/TikTok) | Podcast: Overcoming: The Podcast
Follow us: @dimming_the_gaslightJoin us on Patreon | Discord | DTG Merch Store | dimmingthegaslight.com

Five years ago, Mac was couch-surfing, sleeping in his car, and scrolling Instagram from his dad's basement — and one page stopped him cold: a woman healing out loud from complex trauma. That woman is here today.
We sit down with Dr. Taelor — Doctor of Occupational Therapy, trauma advocate, and founder of Survivors Overcoming Silence (SOS) — for a story she has never told publicly before. This is complex trauma at its most complex: a childhood built on walking on eggshells, a "golden child" competition with a parent who saw her as competition, a national news scandal, false restraining orders, death threats, a grandmother who called her a devil child, a faked cancer diagnosis, and a parent's transition that Taelor says was less about identity and more about becoming her.
We go deep on gaslighting, "destiny swapping," psychological conditioning, and what it actually takes to reclaim your identity after someone spent a lifetime trying to erase it. Fair warning: there's a voicemail in this one that will haunt you.
This one's heavy, it's raw, and it's only 10% of the iceberg — so buckle up, because we're already bringing her back for Part 2.
⚖️ Disclaimer (because our lawyers make us say this): Dimming The Gaslight is based entirely on true events — except for the stuff we totally made up. Names, locations, and other identifying details have been changed. If you think we're talking about you in this podcast… newsflash: you're the narcissist.
Follow Dr. Taelor: @sos.with.doctor.taelor (Instagram/TikTok) | Podcast: Overcoming: The Podcast
Follow us: @dimming_the_gaslight
Join us on Patreon | Discord | DTG Merch Store | dimmingthegaslight.com