Childhood trauma from malingering Factitious Disorder of narcissistic parents

Hello my friends. Today on the path to healing CPTSD, I'm exploring childhood trauma from malingering and Factitious Disorder behavior of narcissistic parents. So malingering and Factitious Disorder may be different, but they have similarities when combined with narcissism. And in both malingering and Factitious Disorder (aka Munchausen's Syndrome), the person knows they are faking medical symptoms, for attention, pity, to get out responsibilities and for financial benefits. And the impacts on childhood trauma are multiple. 

Both my narcissistic parents showed signs of malingering but my mother was and is the most extreme. She has classic behaviors of Munchausen's and Munchausen's by Proxy (faking and exaggerating a child's illnesses for personal gain). She has many mystery ailments which don't respond to treatment (usually because they don't exist). She doctor hops when she doesn't get the results she wants. She is cagey and tells different people different stories. 

Her narcissism shows especially in the seductive attention seeking sexual nature of ailments. Since I can remember, she has discussed her vagina, vulva, clitoris and breasts openly in mixed company, to me and at family gatherings. It's often men she targets, including her son-in-law (my husband) and even her grandsons (my sons) or my daughters' boyfriends. 

She calls her body parts by their correct name and also by little nicknames picked up from her husband and her golden child daughter. She thinks it's cute to say "hoohah" or however you spell it. She calls penises, "pee birds." Pause for cringe. If her golden child uses the c-nt word she laughs. When I once repeated it as something someone said, she feigned shocked virginal modesty and jumped all over me. So a lot of hypocrisy and double standards.

A further contradiction is that faked innocence I alluded to. When I took her to the doctor, she asked all kinds of sexual questions such as how to please her husband without intercourse. (gross). Then when the doctor and I tried to explain, she went all innocent and pretended not understand when we were using clear clinical terms. Then finally I blurted out "bl-wojob." And funnily she understood that loud and clear. But giggled like a child. My husband said she just wanted to hear us "talk dirty." So she could feel a sense of moral superiority. He's probably right. 

The doctor certainly was annoyed because it wasn't that kind of visit. Also, I could see the doctor was thinking "why are you asking this at 79 years old?" I could tell her why, because my mother likes bringing up sexual things to make other people feel awkward. She likes to preen herself that she's a model of virtue while behaving very sexually off. 

And it's not just medical issues of a sexual nature. My mother tells everyone that she sleeps "in the buff." It comes up at every gathering, just in case there's someone new who doesn't know. She did actually sleep naked when she came over to stay. And in fact came parading out, in the altogether.  . I see now that she is trying to get them to lust after her. She tells stories of men hitting on her, with a side eye to her husband (ex husband now) to rile him. 

He would attack at the person she accused (including my elderly grandfather) and then turn on her, saying she cheated on him.  I used to soothe her saying it was in his head. Now I wonder if she did. She certainly has a history of cheating and adulterous affairs. Now I think she rage baits, spreading lies and rumors to smear one person and egg another on. 

She basically told us she sets people up. When they were first married she boasted how one she would run around the house naked while cleaning (as you do). One of her husband's friends came to the door and she "forgot" she was naked and answered it. She is also very flirty, which is weird enough but adding the nudity references and sexual talk, it's obvious she wants men to lust after her. 

I only use this archaic term "lust" because she uses it, to point out what other people are doing wrong.  She is a self-styled Christian preacher and very loudly and proudly talks her religion to anyone who will listen. She uses it to shame and browbeat. Which is quite the contradiction to her very sexualized behavior. She says she likes to shock people, that God calls her to "startle people out of complacency into conversion." This is a very strange perversion of what the Bible actually says and she is nothing like the kind of person called to do this. 

My mother is a hypocrite with contradictory double standards. And I think the part about God calling her to shock people is a cover for the fact that she is an exhibitionist, not a evangelist She does melodramatic, bizarre things simply to get attention. Which is in complete contradiction to the Biblical call to preach the good news by living a holy life. It's God we're calling attention to, not ourselves. And God says to do that by showing love, mercy and kindness. Not flashing people!  

The ones who are complacent (arrogant, entitled, holier-than-thou) are people like my mother. It's they who need a wakeup call. And in no way shape or form is someone trying to lure them into sin, a call to conversion. The two cannot coexist. If we have grievous sin, we're called to confess and stop it. Not brag about it. And that's if we're not preachers. Ministers have a calling to be even more righteous. She's just playing both ends for the middle and that's heretical gaslighting. 

Life with my mother has been a nightmare, with all the sex talk alone. Not to mention the sexualized behavior. She had many boyfriends, several of whom were married. She would make out with them in front of me. One woman came over, caught them and slugged my mother. I was horrified but she said just go to school. I did and we've never discussed it since. 

She did actually explain to me as a kid that she was leading men to Jesus by sleeping with them. Can you imagine how confusing that is for a child to hear? So now it's mostly just inappropriate sexual references. If you remind her of past behaviors, she will lie and twist and pretend she can't remember. She says it in the fake pitiful voice that makes you feel guilty for questioning her. She's fake humble too, saying if we want her to say she's sorry she will but she doesn't know what for. (Bullshit, DARVO, bullshit)

She talks as if not remembering erases it. It doesn't. I remember. But her gaslighting is convincing. You might be surprised at the outrageous stuff she says she forgot, like kicking me out of the house at 16 and leaving me with her abusive (to me) boyfriend and making me take care of four special needs foster care kids while she went away for a week. That's part of the Factitious Disorder, pretending to have dementia so no one holds her accountable for her past crimes. And to get pity, oh see how Marilisa is, making her accountable. She tried that gaslighting game with her now ex-husband, lying and saying she never did things she did. He divorced and now she still plays the DARVO game. 

Now I think of it, she's always DARVOs. They could have invented that term just for her alone. So cue to the weird sexual medical references which just sound so Munchausen's. She makes everyone uncomfortable talking about it  but if I say anything to check her, she gets on her high horse and scolds me for not letting her share her ailments. Or she pouts and sulks. Which does kick in the old guilt. So I started asking other people if it was weird she does that. And survey says a unanimous VERY!! 

No one is shaming her for having medical issues of a sexual nature. Although I do wonder about how convenient they are to get her out of doing things. She's always so frail when anyone is watching. Or when there's work to be done. Or when there's attention to be stolen. My mother doesn't just upstage the bride at weddings. She has upstaged the deceased at their own funeral with her faked feebleness. . But when we go to the restaurant afterwards, she's spritely and runs up to the buffet. So malingering if not completely Factitious. 

She upstages babies at their baptism wearing nightgowns for pity and to look like patient. She kept everyone wondering and worried not showing up and not calling for her great-grandson's baby shower, just for attention. She leaves early because she "has a stomachache" at holidays just when it's clean up time. She did this at her grandson's wedding. And another's rehearsal dinner (after she ate her free meal, of course). She had to be rushed to ER with a faked injury just to upstage that wedding, too. She pulls NCNS (no call no show) all the time. So we quit inviting her. 

So how does this cause childhood trauma? Because all these years I believed her, let  her get away with murder because she was "sick" or "weak." Didn't hold her accountable for her selfish behavior. Took care of her when she was supposed to be taking care of me. Oh, and one other thing I must note. 

Hypochondriacs and malingerers have no interest in anyone else's very real ailments, only their own fake ones. Their scapegoat kids get no help and their goldens get a Munchausen's by Proxy so no real help either as that's just about the star attraction narcissist parent. When I had insanely painful (where I fainted) shoulder surgery, my mother pooh-poohed it and talked about her hangnails (serious). She leaned on my bad shoulder and I screamed in pain. Then she scolded me because she "might have fallen." 

And that is just one reason I've gone no contact. I'm sick of the drama. 

10 gestalt ways to access and heal childhood trauma

Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm going to share 10 gestalt ways to access and begin to heal from childhood trauma. Gestalt, if it's an unfamiliar word, means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. These ways to access and heal pain are bigger and further reaching than the simple words used to describe. And they have profound impacts on healing. 

Share your pain. And by share, I do mean just that. Communicate your experiences to loving, caring people. AND allow them to share their burdens with you. It's a two-way street of give and take. You probably don't need to be told that last part. Those of us with childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse have been everyone's sounding board, toxic waste dump, therapist, parent, except our own. 

Avoid trauma dumping. If you've experienced childhood trauma I probably don't need to say this but I will just as a disclaimer. Don't trauma dump on anyone who will listen. Don't take advantage of compassion. I know, the rage is so overwhelming that shouting it from the rooftops doesn't seem enough. I feel that. (And I have a better platform for it so keep reading.) But if you turn every situation into an opportunity to air grievances, you will soon find yourself with no friends. 

Don't let FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) silence you. So trauma dumping is a concern but probably a larger one for kids with childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, is that we wall it up. We've been squashed by narcissistic parent bullies into thinking we're stupid nuisances with no right to speak up. We've wrongly been afraid of, obligated to and guilty that we're not catering to them always. And we shouldn't. Let empathetic listeners hear your stories. You deserve that. 

Use your words. And I do mean your words, not someone else's paraphrased, interpreted, translated version. A listener may check for comprehension, if it seems unclear, by saying what she heard you saying. Even that's at bit dicey. But anyone who insists on putting your experiences "in their own words" is gaslighting you. What they are saying is "you need to hear my OPINIONS on your suffering." They don't get to have opinions on what are your experiences. These blind guides are invalidating and minimizing you and should be avoided. 

Participate cautiously in group therapy. Choose confidantes carefully. In groups there's more likelihood of shaming, invalidation, judgementalism, blind guides, know-it-alls, etc. I experienced this even in Alanon which is supposed to be non-judgmental with no unsolicited advice giving. I shared that childhood trauma made it difficult for me to know right from wrong. I was told sarcastically that "of course you know." Leaders told me later she should have been checked. But no one did. It really derailed healing. 

Say uncomfortable things. Not like your narcissistic parents did for shock value, attention seeking or showing off. I mean don't go along to get along if your experience is different. So often there's a group think that doesn't fit childhood trauma survivors. Yet we just keep quiet which implies agreement. In a Bible study, women were talking about the virtue of endless servitude. I said that you can serve too much. I was literally attacked and scolding before I could even explain what I meant. I was humiliated and about to backpedal like I always do till one woman said, "I know what Marilisa means and I agree." It only takes one. But if there's not that one, still don't backpedal. Sometimes yours is the voice of common sense others may need to hear. (side note: on serving, those women told me by their actions that they had not been made to endlessly serve selfish arrogant parents or they wouldn't be waxing so eloquent about it.) 

Child and pet therapy. It always amazes me how healing it is to spend time with children. My own children were literally my lifelines. And their children, my grandchildren are continuing the therapy, just by reading books, playing little cars and babies (dolls). And pets are quintessential unconditional love sources. Just petting my little cat when he jumps on my lap and demands affection, is so healing. 

Blog/Vlog/Write about it. I'm not to the vlogging point yet because two of my narcissistic parents are still alive. I'm not strong enough yet to face the inevitable backlash if I went more public than this blog. But I intend to. There are many great vloggers already discussing narcissistic parent abuse, like Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise, Patrick Teahan, Danish Bashir, Kris Reece, and Dr. Les Carter. But each story has a place and you'll find writing yours so therapeutic. 

Start a Trauma playlist. Here's one called Trauma that a dear friend began and invited me to be part of. There's so much good music out there that helps access and heal childhood trauma. Sometimes, only in song, can we spell out the pain. 

Write poetry. I have a blog called The Writer's Garden here. I've explored a lot of experiences and themes related to my childhood trauma experiences, the abuse, neglect, invalidation, exploitation, endangerment, abandonment, scapegoating, gaslighting, toxic shaming and parentification. I go really big with feelings of fear, anger, confusion, guilt and shame. 

Reach out. Sit with other people in their pain. Hold space for them. Develop relationships of mutuality and reciprocity. All your life, probably, like me, you've been in transactional relationships where you never got your part of the bargain. You've been paying on things you could never possess. Look for new healthier relationships in which you support each other. And if you can't find anyone, I'm here. We can meet in this blog. And you can know that I hold space for you. 

Be the change. What got me started on my journey to heal from childhood trauma, (at 59!) were the AITA threads on Reddit. So often, too often I read kids stories of narcissistic parent abuse. And I finally got it that, wow, that was me. Is me. I began responding to some of the posts, encouraging these young people, as I wish I'd been encouraged, to see the gaslighting abuse for what it is. So I pay it forward and in so doing, hopefully pay back in healing to my inner child for all the pain she endured alone. 

So I gave you 12 gestalt ways to access and childhood trauma, bonus added! 

Beware of these red flag dehumanizing, invalidating things malignant narcissist parents say

Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal childhood trauma responses from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm going to share toxic things malignant narcissist parents say. Beware of these red flags as they signal gaslighting, invalidation dehumanizing and toxic shaming. Just a disclaimer a few of these depend on context and others are just simply things no one should say, especially not parents to their children. They are all, when said by narcissists, hypocritical, devious, double standards. These people preach a lot to other people but never themselves. They say to do things but they do not do. That is part of what makes them toxic red flags.  Also this is just a partial list which I've added to as I recall toxic things my narcissistic parents said to me. 

You should/shouldn't (do, say, think this or that). This requires context but in general, should is a dangerous word, especially when it preface some thing a narcissist parent is saying to a child. And it's usually bass ackwards. What they tell us not to do, we usually should do and what they say not to do, we probably should. 

Don't question me. Kids question. Kids are supposed to ask questions. It's how they learn. Narcissistic parents see even the most innocent of questions as a threat to their perceived superiority and authority. However they are not superior and very often have not earned the authority they wield. By their behavior, we know that they don't take responsibility for themselves which is the driver behind any good authority figure. They just like to order their child around. If I'd questioned my parents more, instead of just exonerating and excusing their bad behavior, I'd be a lot healthier person now. 

You must (obey, comply). Must is a big red flag word word because it implies the person saying has power to force the child to do something. They don't. It is the child's choice to obey, just as it is the parents' choice to obey those in authority over them (which they struggle a lot with and that's why they like to throw their weight around). And really what good is forced compliance? It doesn't teach anything but unthinking obedience. Children are autonomous whether parents like it or not. We all are. They  should be allowed to use their autonomy to make their own choices as much as possible and be taught ways to do that safely. 

You need to/ you have to. No. The fact is we don't have to do anything, as children or adults. It might be better if we do. There may be consequences if we don't. But you cannot coerce compliance. Parents with the "you have to"  mindset show their own immaturity. They also often prove they themselves defy authority inappropriately. Most narcissistic people don't cooperate, accept authority or  and don't take criticism gracefully. While telling their child they have to. And those that browbeat, hound, bully and punish independent thought are disturbed control freaks. And what we know of control freaks is that they do not control their own behavior. They are chaotic loose cannon. Call me contrary, but I always see commands as challenges. It makes me want to go out of my way to do the opposite. And that is the red flag of "must, have to." It pushes children in the opposite direction. Much better to help a child determine through common sense and logic what are the healthiest courses of action. 

You always/You never. Beware of the many red flags in generalizations, which narcissistic parents spew out. Generalizations are almost always dangerous because they illogical, uninformed and exaggerated. Along with this are the "everyone, no one, us and them" generalizations. Life is just not that binary and those who think it is tend to be very short-sighted and ignorant. And generalizations are usually used against a child. You won't hear narcissistic parents say "you always do such a good job. They says things like "you always screw up, you never listen to me." Which ludicrous hypocrisy. Usually it's the parent screwing up and never listening. Relying on generalizations and exaggerations is very poor parenting. 

You owe me.  Said no good parent ever.  We don't want our children doing things out of a false sense of FOG (fear obligation and guilty) This is flat out gaslighting, DARVO (deny responsibility, attack, reverse victim offender)  and an admission that the parents themselves are not fulfilling their obligations to the child. Our children owe us nothing. We owe our children. Any parent that gets those order of operations wrong, is clearly weaponizing the power differential for narcissistic supply. 

You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Shame on you. I'm ashamed of you. This is straight out of the Crappy Parenting 101 textbook.  No matter what the child has done wrong, shaming is the worst thing a parent can do. It's a sign of lazy parenting too. My mother routinely shamed me like this. But she never once identified what it was I was supposed to feel ashamed about. So I just felt ashamed for everything. I literally did not know right from wrong (safe from unsafe, etc). because I was taught I was always wrong. And very often, I would later find, she was the one who had done the shameful thing but was shame-shifting it on to me. And she never showed any signs of feeling remorse. 

You're disobedient. Another generalization the narcissist parent uses to gaslight and invalidate the child. Not "you sometimes disobey" "you ARE disobedient" as if I was the embodiment of it, and again, never made good choices. To make it worse I was never told what obedience was supposed to look like. I was supposed to just guess. And expectations changed all the time. It usually meant serving, kowtowing to, dancing attendance on my narcissistic parents and their families. Berng religious narcissists they equated obeying them with obeying God which in non-narcissistic parents is kind of true. But narcissists expect you idolize THEM AS GODS. Which is contrary to the entire Bible.  

You're disloyal. Oooo, this is a major red flag. One problem with traumatized kids is that we were made to be loyal to people we shouldn't have been. Loyalty involved silence about abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation and  a host of other illegal and unethical parent behavior. And ironically, narcissistic parents are incredibly disloyal to their children. They kick them to the curb, favor their new people over their kids and do all manner of betrayal and sabotage to the child. 

Keep that secret. This one goes with the disloyal red flag. No child should keep a parent's dirty secrets, especially those that involve the child in dangerous situations. They implicate her in all sorts of shady stuff. And paradoxically, narcissist parents never keep a child's secrets but should. They blat private things they know will embarrass just to watch her squirm. That's sick. 

Because I said so. Parents can play this card only in very specific situations like when there is an emergency and no time to explain. Narcissistic control freak parents play it all the time. They never explain and usually can't give good reasons why the child should listen to them. This is gaslighting and coercive. The child complies because she thinks the parents know what's best, even when they have demonstrated they don't. 

You have no right to (question me, ask questions, ask me for something, expect something) Oh, but we do. The child has every right to expect care, love, nurturing and support. That right is conferred at birth. In fact, that's one way malignant narcissistic parents gaslight, invalidate and dehumanize children is by claiming to be able to strip them of their unalienable rights. And by preventing us from exercising our rights. 

You have no business (insert thing) My mother relied on this red flag gaslighting to confuse me about what was and wasn't in my purview. And also what was and wasn't normal child behavior. It goes along with the you have no right to" or "you can't." It dehumanizes by making the mother appear to have power over the child to dictate, to grant or remove a child's basic rights. She'd use this to coerce me into subservience to her lazy, unemployed, mooching, abusive to me, live-in boyfriend (who wasn't even legally supposed to be living in our house) as if he were my father and head of the household and ruler of the world. She just spun things to suit her narrative. 

You know better than to do that. Another of my mother's favorite gaslighting tricks was to shame me into feeling stupid, inept and a failure. Actually, no mom, I don't know better because you didn't teach me AND more importantly you led by example how to do this thing you say I should know better than to do. YOU are the one who knows better and YOU are the one who should not be doing the terrible things you do. 

You're lying. That's not what you said before. You're making that up. Or some such gotcha type backstabbing.  It comes out of the blue. They find because they looking for contradictions in what you said not because you were being purposely shady, or shady at all. They point out what they call flaws strictly to humiliate you preferably when people are hearing. And make no mistake. This is every bit the entrapment and betrayal it feels like. They act like KGB agents waterboarding you into confessing some deep, dark secret. And because you never expected them to twist your words and use them against you, you were honest and genuine. You didn't know they would leverage what you said to prove some weird conspiracy theory against you. You don't even recall what you did say and it certainly wasn't a lie or contradiction. Because traumatized kids do not machinate and plot and deceive like their narcissistic parents do. 

Gotcha! And on that note let's talk about how malignant narcissistic parents set up and orchestrate situations to make you fall. They do it with pranking, entrapment, set ups and ambushes. So they can say "gotcha" and make fun of you. This goes along with the previous one. And you never expect it because what parent wants to humiliate her child? Who wants to set up a child to fail? A malignant narcissistic parent trying to throw suspicion off her own disingenuous behavior. You need to know that this is maliciously cruel and a sign of a very toxic person. 

You're always angry. Generalizing, DARVO, blame-shifting. Funny how narcissistic parents trot this out so often but they never address HOW THEY anger, frustrate, confuse and lead the child astray. My parents gaslit me that I was the angry one when they were all always seething with rage  and setting me up to be angry by depriving, stealing from, lying to and lying about me. Actually  I wasn't nearly as angry as I should have been given the way they treated me. 

You're showing off and attention seeking They used this all the time. They had an insulting comeback for everything I did or said, no matter how innocent. There was no breaking even, let alone winning. When I sang in the bathroom my dad said I was just showing off and fishing for compliments. I didn't even know he was listening. It took my husband asking me, at 61 years old, what the hell my dad was doing in the bathroom with me in the first place, for me to start exploring what was wrong with that. He also pointed out that my dad was a big show off with his violin and posturing preaching. But I never saw it till now. I believed my narcissistic father that I was just an attention-seeking show off. 

You can't do that. This one has it's own post but let me just explain it. It occurred to me after hearing a talk by Dr. Ramani or Jerry Wise (can't remember which but both have had good points to make about the issue), that narcissistic parents run us down all the time. They nit pick, find fault and dehumanize us to the point where we feel helpless. Instead of encouraging, they actually, no lie, tell us we can't do things we can. Things we've never even tried. They enfeeble us and zap our confidence. So pretty soon we believe we can't. And the worst part is that they are so convincingly arrogant that we never question it. I was shocked hearing that YouTube podcast how often I'd allowed my parents to dictate my abilities to me. It insane. They have no basis nor authority for saying such demeaning things yet they speak with confident swatter that you accept that they know things you don't. They DO NOT. They are talking shit out of their asses. Sorry to be crude this just enrages me how many traumatized kids have believed their lunatic narcissistic parents. How we let them limit us, clip our wings and cripple us. 

When you hear someone say any of these things, stop and take a long look at what they are doing. Just saying, normal loving good people don't talk this way. It's the malignant narcissists trying to undermine our confidence. Please, see these red flag comments for the invalidation, dehumanizing and destruction they are. 

How I lost 100 pounds by healing childhood trauma responses and chronic anxiety disorder

Hello my friends! I've been working to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. I've also been sharing how I lost 100 pounds without GLP-1 drugs or weight loss surgery. The more I explore, the more I find that how I lost 100 pounds was also how I am healing childhood trauma responses to narcissistic parent abuse and resulting chronic anxiety disorder from people-pleasing, fawning and hypervigilance. 

Narcissistic parent abuse creates childhood trauma responses from living in a hostile environment where chronic anxiety, fixing people, fawning, hypervigilance to narcissistic parent expectations, is norm. But all this is not normal. And it takes a huge toll, in many dangerous forms, on our bodies. Several involve unhealthy weight gain, obesity or weight loss. 

So a lot of how I lost weight  without a GLP-1 diet drug or weight loss surgery was by dealing with the  inner childhood trauma and all the dangerous concomitant trauma responses (freeze, fight, flight, fawn and fixing). And wow, the more I unpack the more crammed I realize my emotional suitcase is. 

I cannot hear anyone express any frustration, problem or concern without feeling an unbearable need to rush in and fix it. Which is wrong on so many levels. Especially if this person happens to be manipulating me into these feelings or gaslighting me that their problems are somehow my responsibility. It makes it very difficult to sort out which are actually mine and which aren't. I'm a sitting duck target for bullies who would exploit my hypervigilance and overly-empathetic nature. 

And having said that, I see that empath and chronic anxiety fixer/ people pleaser are similar but also different. My empathy makes me sensitive to other's pain. But narcissistic parent abuse drove my people pleaser behavior and heightened the urgency to fix others' problems. It added inappropriate FOG to empathy: fear, obligation and guilt. 

Narcissistic parent demands generated a false sense of responsibility in me. This manifested as parentification (child parenting parents and other siblings), scapegoating and enmeshment of them in my self. So part of how I lost 100 pounds was also how I am working to get my parents out of me. Thank you to YouTube psychologist Jerry Wise for coining that most helpful term. 

It's not just figurative, to say that how I lost 100 pounds was by losing, or going no contact with them. Literally, I'm shedding the weight of responsibility for my narcissistic parents. I'm working to lose weight of their unrealistic and wrong demands. I working to clear the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) over their misdeeds, that I never earned nor deserved. 

The hardest part is convincing myself of this. Inbred childhood trauma responses are like cattle prods goading me to freeze, fight, flight, fawn and fix. I have to find a way to not feel the artificial pressure, the manufactured crises, the weaponized empathy, they indoctrinated in me. I have to learn to feel healthy empathy without the chronic anxiety of needing to fix it. I'm working to stop the constant self-debasing, groveling obedience and hypervigilance to others' moods. This will help in all areas of my life and those who live with me. 

It must be exhausting to feel they can't share without having me swoop in like Florence Nightingale to tend them. It must feel patronizing and enabling and enfeebling. That is what my narcissistic parents wanted from me: mothering, nursing, caretaking, coddling. That is neither normal nor healthy. And normal healthy people do not want that. I don't want that from other people I just want someone to sit with me, hold space and affirm that I know what I need and can do it. Just like how I lost 100 pounds: by seeing what I needed and doing it. Here are some more posts on blind guides, red flags and toxic advice on childhood trauma. 

Ignorant invalidating nonsense I've been told about my narcissistic parents 

Snakes in the grass and pitfalls to avoid in healing childhood trauma (the snakes in the grass would be different types of blind guides.)

Toxic positivity and irrelevant unsolicited advice from blind guides

How I lost 100 pounds reading red flags blind guides were putting up

Beware of Blind Guides how shame childhood trauma survivors (part 1)

Types of Blind Guides (part 2) 

Detoxing from Blind Guides' gaslighting on childhood trauma

Do this now to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse

 Hello my friends. Are you dealing with childhood trauma? Today I'm going to share one essential thing you so do now to heal childhood trauma from malignant narcissistic parent abuse. Start seeing blind guides for their toxic positivity the red flags they wave. Begin to hear their agenda-based unsolicited advice for the poison it is. Avoid blind guides at all costs because they will derail your healing faster than a boulder on the tracks. 

Who are the blind guides? They are people who don't see, know or understand situations but talk as if they do. They are ignorant, arrogant hypocrites. They make you think, with gaslighting, deceit and manipulation, that they know all and are sent from God to call you to the right path which you are avoiding. They aren't and you aren't. All they do is lead you astray. Check out my other articles for more details on blind guides. 

Ignorant invalidating nonsense I've been told about my narcissistic parents 

Snakes in the grass and pitfalls to avoid in healing childhood trauma (the snakes in the grass would be different types of blind guides.)

Toxic positivity and irrelevant unsolicited advice from blind guides

How I lost 100 pounds reading red flags blind guides were putting up

Beware of Blind Guides how shame childhood trauma survivors (part 1)

Types of Blind Guides (part 2) 

Detoxing from Blind Guides' gaslighting on childhood trauma

Blind guides are everywhere: in families, schools, workplace, churches, the doctor's office, friend groups, even psychologist's chairs. Not everyone who tries to help is a blind guide. But anyone who makes you feel uncomfortable, destabilized, insecure or worthless, is. This is their tool and you need to recognize it for what it is. It is not, in fact, a tool but a weapon to destroy you with. 

Truly loving, caring people do not make you feel stupid or foolish. They may be trying to help you find a better way, but they do not do it by shaming, undermining, questioning, humiliating, scolding, attacking or invalidating, as blind guides do. And what's most sadistic, cowardly and telling about their cruelty is that they target the most vulnerable and fragile ones to attack. And there's none so vulnerable as one with childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. 

So now you may have some questions which I'll attempt to answer. I said that they make you feel uncomfortable and you may be wondering if maybe discomfort is part of learning new healthier behaviors. Ehhh, a little yes, but mostly no. Unfamiliar might be a better way to describe new patterns we try to learn to heal. 

This is not the discomfort that blind guides make you feel. Oh they will say their job is to unsettle you and shake you up. That's a religious trope that Christian narcissists have taken and run with. My mother firmly believes that God has given her dispensation to "shake people out of their complacency" and "call them to repent" despite her own unrepentant, unprincipled, unethical, unkind and illegal behavior. He categorically has not and makes that explicitly clear. 

Blind guides make you feel ashamed, insecure, foolish and stupid. They confuse you with their hypocritical double standards, twisted ethics and made up rules. They say things that sound nonsensical because they are. We know this, it's just that we have been conditioned by malignant narcissistic parents to devalue and ignore our own common sense. We have been taught to believe their gaslighting over God's Word. 

So you may be wondering, how do I recognize a blind guide. Excellent question and one I'm still working to answer. But the more I learn about their toxicity, the easier they are to spot. Every blind guide I've encountered (and I've encountered a lot) has left me with a vague bad taste in my mouth and a sick stomach. Because they don't heal, they harm. With arrogance, lies, machinations, they sow seeds of doubt and shame. They are the embodiment of what God hates: lying, conniving, violence, pot-stirring, malicious tale-bearers, gossips, 

You will know them by their deceptions. Which sadly resembles our narcissistic parents' abuse. Their narcissistic smirk, haughty eyes, deaf ears and scorn, belies their proclaimed good intent. I know, you might fear, as I did, that you won't see these things. But you will. You just have to start listening to your own wisdom and looking for the wolf in granny's nightgown. We must see the big eyes and big teeth that we've ignored. 

Once you start really listening to what they say, how they say it, and how it makes you feel, it will get easier to recognize the toxicity. Read my post on toxic things blind guides say. You'll know what I mean. You'll start to see it, not as helpful advice but shaming, belittling and invalidating. You'll begin to hear how they dismiss your feelings, thoughts and even experiences, as if they know you better than you know yourself. 

I was once told by a raging narcissist blind guide that he knew me and that I was a vain fraud and a poser (pot meet kettle). He would "call out" my deceptions for my own good (sound familiar?) He would speak the truth about me that everyone else was afraid to say. (Way to echo my narcissistic dad.) He was going to set me straight because he knew the "real" me like no one else. He saw the "TRUTH" about me (how they love that word) that I had somehow blinded others to. Yikes. 

That blind guide is also insanely arrogant, abusive, dangerous, sociopathic, manipulative, violent, rageful, passive-aggressive, aggressive, oversensitive and insensitive, uninformed and ignorant. This isn't me saying it. I typically defend him when everyone else is saying it. He has been gaslighting me for years with his BS. 

It took me so long to accept it because this kind of behavior was exactly how my father and mother and their new spouses acted toward me. Cunning, calculating, devious and exploitative. They would set me up to love them, make excuse for them and then pull the rug out from under me. All the while proclaiming to have my best interests at heart when their only interests were selfish. 

Not all blind guides are as bad as this. See my article on the types of blind guides. The similarity is how their unsolicited advice makes you feel. If it triggers trauma responses, shame, self-loathing, self-doubt and destabilization, they and their advice should be avoided till you can sort out why this is so unsettling. Very likely  you'll find that they are trying to undermine you and even sabotage your healing. 

Which may sound paranoid but isn't. It's finally being honest and seeing ulterior motives for what they are. All our lives, people with childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse have kicked ourselves to the curb. We've believed and trusted other people over ourselves. To being healing, we need to get priorities straight. We need to affirm and trust ourselves. We need to understand that if something feels off, we must stop and acknowledge that. We need to quit rushing past red flags that are in place to help us. They are the guides we should follow, not the blind guides who would lead us astray. 

My toxic parents were so bizarre that I have nothing in common with ordinary kids

Hello my friends. Today's task in healing childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, is to address  head on what I've been skirting. And that is that my toxic parents were so bizarre that I have nothing in common with ordinary kids. If that sounds extreme or exaggerated, it's because it was and they were. Their odd, off, chaotic, hypocritical, cruel, insane, exploitative, manipulative, self-centered behavior bears no resemblance to any normal parent behavior. I could not make this up. No one could. How I was raised goes against any culture, in any time period, whenever and wherever. 

I hear their stories and they are horrific. Mine are horrific too but in a way I can't articulate. Or don't dare to. Actually, I only just, at 59, realized how bad they really were. Or I hear normal childhood stories and I have nothing to add. Because mine were so abnormal. For example, I read an FB post in a memories group about teens coming in late and sneaking in a window. The entire group of responders laughed to recall. How could I say that if I'd done that, I'd have suffered a fate worse that death? That I WAS literally kicked out of the house for nothing. Normal greasy kid stuff was a luxury forbidden me.

Here are back posts to give you an idea what I'm talking about

Bizarre backstory up to age 7 

Bizarre backstory up to age 11

Parentification back story 

Super creepy was I was endangered

Cringy things my narcissist parents did for attention

What I learned when my mom threw a pie in my face

My bizarre and traumatic childhood experiences defy explanation 

Shocking things my dreams teach me about narcissist parent abuse

Why I'm just now recognizing parent and stepparent abuse

My religious narcissist parents shocking hypocritical behavior

Am I saying that no one else has suffered as I have? Yes and no. Sadly countless children have been subjected to horrific suffering of many kinds. Too many kids suffered the kinds of toxic parent behavior I have: abuse (physical, emotional, mental, sexual, financial, medical, religious), neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, parentification, invalidation, enmeshment, enslavement, humiliation, shaming, triangulation, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all. 

But I have never heard of a single person who experienced the uniquely bizarre and contradictory, hypocritical, parent behavior, in combination with divorce and remarriage to other narcissists, who then had new families whom I was made to serve but gaslit that I was not part of. This put me in a parallel universe, with an assortment of four narcissistic parents and their  hodge-podge families. I lived coincident with but experiencing nothing like normal family life. Even the dysfunction was abnormal. 

Because family, parents, parent and child relationships, society, have a formula for how it works. Even the bad parts. Time and time again, I hear how it works for others. I hear the rules they lived with. I'm not saying they had it easy or good. I'm saying that even the abuse had a pattern. There were others who could relate to it, having similar abusive or alcoholic parents. What I lived with bore no similarity. There is no one I can talk to about it because it fits no recognizable format. 

Whenever I hear a psychologist speak on childhood trauma, such as Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise or Patrick Teahan, I get so much from them and I appreciate their wisdom. But I've never heard anyone address the uniquely weird shit that went on in my life on the daily. My patchwork existence in which everything changed from one month to the next, for shits, giggles and selfish whims.. New places, homes, people shoved at me, new rules, new chaos. Not because it made any sense. No one agreed with their crazy choices. But their arrogance won every time. So my next "patch"  looked nothing like the one next to it. And the reason no one addresses it is because no one has ever heard of anything like it. 

Now I know, as I write this, that it sounds strange. BECAUSE IT IS!! But not because I'm setting myself up as some kind of oddball paradigm. I don't want to be different. I never did. I just want a fucking framework for understanding why my life was so weird and how I can heal from the off-the-charts childhood trauma it caused. I'm not blaming anyone for not getting me. I DONT' GET ME! 

But I'm also sick of my trauma responses to fawn and fix, to make my life palatable to others. I want to tell the weird shit that happened and have it acknowledged as effing mental with no precedent. But all too often all I get are blind guides who pooh-pooh and dismiss what happened to me. They say gaslighting stuff like it couldn't have been that bad, could it?  Or "your parents probably just did the best they could." Which tells me these blind guides weren't listening. They were just promoting some pet agenda. They proclaim to know better than I, how to cope. Which is so extra special disturbing because none of these people were there or lived, through their  own admission, experiences anything like mine. 

Because if you read back through my posts where I spell out the bizarre things my narcissistic parents did, the very normal things I didn't get, the oppressive expectations coupled with deprivations I lived. I mean really read it. Without preconceived ideas or a prepared  homily. If you just hear the weird and let it read as written, I would challenge anyone to say they've ever heard anything like it before. 

I just want someone to say, wow, that's crazy. But having said that, it is probably because I don't tell people. Partially because I was indoctrinated to keep secrets, to absorb their shame and take on myself the consequences of it. I was groomed to think I deserved it. That God expected me to be their scapegoat. But also because my backstory is so weird that I expect not to be believed. I've been gaslit that they weren't mistreating me (even though I saw no one else being treated quite like this), that I was showing off, attention seeking, too sensitive. 

Which I can hear now, was all gaslighting because I NEVER COMPLAINED! This was all just my narcissistic parents abuse and backpedaling. They knew damn well their behavior was awful AF. They knew that if anyone else saw what they put me through, they'd have lost custody and very probably been jailed. So they shamed me into keeping quiet to protect their abusive behavior and I did. 

So I probably minimize my own experiences. In fact I know I do. It's a kneejerk trauma response. I say things in such as way as to normalize it. My then boyfriend, now husband said I sanitized their terrible behavior from the first time we met. I told him how they'd kicked me out of the house and that it was my fault. He neither accepted that explanation nor believed it was my fault. His first reaction was "wait, what? what kind of parent evicts a teen and how could it be  your fault?" and he may have said that. But I didn't hear it. Because our trauma ears can't hear common sense or compassion. We only hear shame. 

So a very few people get us. And maybe more would. But traumatized kids are accustomed to hiding abuse and shielding parents. We're used to being disbelieved, shunned, scapegoated, shamed. So we don't take chances. We also don't tell, in unvarnished black and white, what happened. We paint it pretty with nonsensical excuses. 

And layer on that, the blind guides who have been enabling our perpetrators. Saying things to us like "she's always been like that." And?? How is that helpful? Okay so  you're kind of acknowledging she's "difficult" but you're offering no support. And you're kind of trauma dumping on me, her child, by alluding to how she's mistreated you?? 

Well, to quote Sidda in Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood. "Ya'll have your little Ya-Ya scars but it was nothing compared to what she left on me." Preach. Because no matter what my mother did to siblings, they had 1) good parents 2) each other 3) choices and 4) were adults. I had none of those. No one save 3-4 friends, has had the balls to come out and say. "That's bullshit!" I never  heard of anything like that!! What kind of parent does that to a child?? I never had any experiences remotely like that!"

They HEAR what is weird about how my narcissistic parents treated me. And they call it out. They help me hear what is wrong with it. I don't have to get them to see. They help ME see.  They don't make excuses for the perpetrators. They don't fall for their  DARVO nonsense. They don't fall for my trauma responses of taking it on myself. They hold me accountable TO MYSELF to accept that it was not my fault, no matter how much my gaslit trauma brain thinks it is. 

And having mentioned Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise and Patrick Teahan as healers, I fully believe that they would acknowledge my unique hell as unique and  hell. I'm just always so afraid of ever sharing because in my core trauma brain, I believe the old parent gaslighting. I WAS my fault. I AM making it up (yes, I hear the contraction in that but nevertheless...). It WASN'T that bad. 

I am afraid that these experts on childhood trauma and narcissistic parent abuse will say those things. That they will echo my narcissistic parents. Even though I have zero reason for fearing that. Trauma brains don't think in common sense. They think in brainwashed, indoctrinated broken patterns. In fact, the trauma brain doesn't really think at all. It trauma responds. 

THAT is what I want to get out of my head. That is the point of the exercise. Not to compete for Worst Childhood Award, to reach my inner child and give her some hope. Which is really just a fanciful hope because the years of being trapped in the nightmare are long gone. The window for help, closed. There was no one to help and there's no do-overs or second chances. Yet the nightmare goes on. I'll blog more on that tomorrow. 

What people with childhood trauma do and don't need from you

Hello my friends. So this post is written to people who do not have childhood trauma issues, who would like to help those of us who do. I'm going to explain from my own childhood trauma what we do and don't need from you. Because there is a LOT of confusion around childhood trauma because a lot of people are not trauma informed, which makes dealing with our CPTSD so much worse. 

Childhood trauma survivors don't need no education. Thank you Pink Floyd. We don' need thought control (gaslighting), no dark sarcasm (toxic shaming) required. We aren't idiots, we are injured. We don't need indoctrination into your pet dogma. Good God, we got enough narcissistic cult indoctrination from our narcissistic parents. We don't need your shame-splaining or any other kind of explaining. We need you to hear us. 

Childhood trauma survivors need affirmation, not advice. It's ludicrously foolish how people with no idea or experience with childhood trauma, yours or their own, will pedantically preach  to those of us who do. Why would you think you have the ability, much less the right, to advise on what you do not know. You're what the Bible calls speaking from ignorance. You don't understand because you were not there. So stop pretending you have some insider knowledge that we need to hear. 

Childhood trauma survivors need autonomy not autocrats. All our lives we've been told what to do by people with a vested interest in keeping us subservient. And it's killing us. So, no directors, bosses, supervisors, comptrollers nor chief whatevers need apply. It's time for us to live in an autonomous collective not an oligarchy. 

Childhood trauma survivors need salving, not saving. We need balm for our wounds and comfort such as the Good Samaritan provided. We don't need Pharisees proselytizing, pontificating or an altar call from blind guides. We don't need to go to your church and hear your preacher. The last thing we need is another ignorant, arrogant person putting his spin on our truth. 

Childhood trauma survivors don't need you to tell us "how it is." We need you to hear how it was for us. We don't need you of all people, translating for us, telling us how we really think and feel. We don't need you putting our experiences in your own words. We don't need you putting words in our mouths. You don't get to have a say on our lives. Hands off my truth and my life, get your own. If you can't just love me, then get thee behind me. 

Childhood trauma survivors need encouragement, not exhortation. I am sick to death of this wrong-headed practice, preached from the pulpit, about calling other people to repentance. God, the arrogance and hypocrisy in that! We don't need to be told what we are doing wrong. Especially not by people who are doing the very things they preach against! Save your finger wagging for the narcissists but be careful. Because even against narcissists, the one finger you point means four more pointing back at you. Which  makes sense because hypocrites very often are narcissists and narcissists are always hypocrites. 

Childhood trauma survivors need to be held by people who hold space for us. We don't to be held accountable, held to inappropriate expectations and selfish demands of others. We got that all our lives and that's why we're in the mess we're in and why we need people to hold space for us, till we can hold it for ourselves. 

Childhood trauma survivors need caring, not controlling. FFS, what do you think we've lived with all our lives BUT coercive control by our narcissistic parents? Have you been listening or just thinking up what you're going to say next? Stop trying to divert or direct us. Anyone who would presume to dictate terms, shows that they are power hungry control freaks. 

Childhood trauma survivors need acceptance, not agenda. We need helpers not heroes. And I'm not even sure we need helpers. Definitely not the patronizing, condescending kind. All too often, for whatever reason, when someone hears I was mistreated as a kid, it becomes their goal to "reach me" Like I'm some kind of Lost Boy. We aren't problem children that need discipline, direction, taking in hand. We aren't your project. Take your do-gooder missionary work elsewhere.

Childhood trauma survivors need neither validation nor invalidation. We require neither your imprimatur nor your Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. We're not asking for permission. We would like your validation but we don't need it to proceed with getting healthy. 

Childhood trauma survivors need to be seen not sorted. So often people act like childhood trauma is something the child brought on herself. It is galling and gaslighting. WE DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS. But that is exactly what our parents taught us. I just wanted to be loved as a child should be. And yet, we are dogged into adulthood by this pernicious notion that we have some lesson to learn from abuse. All I learned was to keep dancing attendance on narcissistic parents. 

Childhood trauma survivors need perpetrators identified, not abuse perpetuated.  It just boggles my mind that this even needs to be said. And yet, so often, the would-be help just makes it worse. Such as the aforementioned comments that tell me off, scold and shame me for my own good. How is that good for me??? Bloody hell, Harry, that's what my narcissistic parents said! That's what I'm trying to heal from! I don't need calling out, they do! It's time somebody said enough. 

Childhood trauma survivors need listeners, not tellers. That's all it takes, to get childhood trauma from an outsider perspective. Hearing and listening, not deafening yourself. Seeing, not blinding. Acknowledging, accepting and believing, not gaslighting ignorance and stubborn refusal to admit what's in front of your eyes. We don't need to you to paraphrase, define, translate for us. That's just more gaslighting. And if that's all you have, move along. 

Childhood trauma survivors need healing, not helping. We don't need problem-solvers, saviors, fixers, Maytag repairmen, rescuers. We can usually discover what we  need on our own. So long as someone isn't derailing, scolding, criticizing or fault-finding our every move. Having said that, there are people who help in healthy ways, such as YouTube's Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise, Danish Bashir, Patrick Teahan, Dr. Les Carter and Kris Reece. These folks help by holding space, encouraging, informing in non-directive respectful ways. 

Childhood trauma survivors need good judgement, not judgementalism. And the wise judgement comes from within, from following personal truth, inner wisdom and common sense. It comes from  listening to rational, reasonable, empathic speakers, not the self-driven, selfish motives of blind guides.  We don't need judges, juries, hecklers, trolls, etc. And don't worry, we know the difference by the love we feel in the one and the harm from the other. 

Childhood trauma survivors need friends, not flying monkeys. If all you're going to do is defend my narcissistically abusive parents, then hit the road. Supporting them shames me. You can't have it both ways. And it's arrogant to think you can and gaslighting to tell me you can. I've heard enough scolding about what I owe them, because they are my parents, yada yada to last a lifetime. You wanna support them, be my guest. But don't say I didn't warn you. It will come back to bite you and they will bite the hand that feeds them. I know from experience supporting, excusing, exonerating, expunging, exempting them. It only makes things worse. 

Childhood trauma survivors do not need your toxic gaslighting. And we are not going to take it anymore. If you come at me with your "brutally honest" "you won't like this but you need to hear it" "it's for your own good" bullshit, watch out. If you come to start trouble, be prepared to finish it. Because the good girl is done trauma responding, fawning and letting you drip poison in her ear. That's what I have narcissistic parents for. 

In short, we don't expect anything of you, other than to just sit with us and hold space. If that's uncomfortable, I'd appreciate you just telling me honestly. I can understand it's difficult. We can part company and I won't  hold it against you. But then, you don't get to come back and start telling me what to do. No more two sets of rules for me. You don't have to fix me. In fact, I'd rather you didn't try. It's counter-intuitive and frankly humiliating to me. You don't have that power. Just work on being the best version of you, you can be and leave the fixing of me, to me.