Dark tetrad narcissists make sense once you accept one single fact

 Hello friends. I've read and written a lot on the confusing, gaslighting, deceitful behavior and words of narcissists and dark tetrads. But then I realized after living with four dark tetrad parents that they aren't confusing at all once you understand their language and behavior. They make perfect sense once you accept one single fact. But you have to crack their code and I'm here to do that today. 

The fact you must accept for it to make sense is that they are all about themselves. But not just in a self-absorbed way. It's not enough that dark tetrads get their way. It must happen at someone else's expense, preferably in ways that humiliate them publicly. And in ways that make the dark tetrad look like the victim and the actual victim look like the  perpetrator. Other people must see the victim being made a fool of by the dark tetrad but not see that the dark tetrad is pulling the strings. 

Which is where the confusion and gaslighting come in. The dark tetrad is secretly manufacturing and orchestrating problems with the innocent victim in the crosshairs. But it's so clandestine that no one sees her as the puppet master. The just see her victim hanging out to dry and flopping around on the invisible strings the puppet master is pulling.

Once you understand that the dark tetrad is the agent provocateur, all she says and does suddenly makes sense. Because she doesn't just lie, she is lies. Her entire persona is deception. She operates on double standards, mimicry, hypocrisy and trickery. There's nothing genuine about her except her genuinely psychotic and sociopathic behavior. She plays a long game and so the fraud is complete and complex. She's been crafting it for so long that she now believes her own lies 

She has forgotten more wrong things she's done than most people have done right. She's convinced herself of her own and superiority, self-righteousness and above-it-all-ness. She's pursued her own agenda and directed her own one-woman play so long that it's all she knows. She's been exploiting, conniving, manipulating, taking advantage of others for long that she can't accept that she's not in control of herself, let alone anyone else. She has been living the hypocrisy and blaming others for her wicked behavior, preaching to them but not practicing, so long it's normal for her. She has been playing by two sets of self-serving rules so long that she now believes she's not only entitled to but that God actually approves this. 

Once you get that it's all smoke and mirrors, that she's a self-deluded fraud and that she perpetuates her fraudulent schemes to shield the con, the pieces fall into place. And this is why she is so baffling to us. We are authentic selves. She's artificial. We speak from sincerity. She speaks with a forked tongue. We humble ourselves and admit wrong. She arrogantly keeps elevating herself higher and claiming complete exoneration and diplomatic immunity. We work for peace while she creates conflict. 

She has been lying so long that not only does she believe, she has to tell more lies to sustain the false image. She has to keep gaslighting to preserve her concocted story of her own holiness. She does not want to act with righteousness, purity. She's dug herself so deep that there's no way out. And yet, because she's convinced herself, conned herself, she is now blind and deaf to reality. So everything she does, says and is, must be aimed at protecting and promoting this scam. She is so fake that she doesn't see how fake she is.

Even when she appears genuine, you have to know it's an act. Even when she does happen to say or do something for the good of others, know that it will come back to bite you. It has to. Her addiction to self will not let her let up, not even for a moment. Everything must revolve back to her as the center of the universe. She must be obeyed and served and you must be hurt to achieve it. She is god and a very ungodly one. Her world is built on untruth. 

Once you accept that she's ALL lies, your truth emerges. 

 

 

Healing CPTSD from narcissistic parents by translating their gaslighting word salad correctly

Hello friends. Today I'm going to discuss how healing CPTSD from dark tetrad parents is about learning to translate their gaslighting word salad correctly. If you're not familiar with the term word salad, it means nonsensical gibberish of brain injured patients. But narcissists use it too, only not because they can't think clearly. They purposely speak in disingenuous and confusing ways. They say crazy stuff to bewilder and gaslight the listener with evasions, blame-shifting, switching topics randomly, interruptions, contradictions, dismissing, undermining, denying, lying and rewriting self-serving narratives. They may feign dementia to gain sympathy and avoid responsibility but they know exactly what they are doing. 

It's so awkward and childish that it's embarrassing to listen to them. They posture and pontificate about things they know nothing about. They make grand gestures, waving their arms and pounding their fists. They make outlandish statements, sweeping generalizations and exaggerated exhortations. Their lurid facial expressions are straight out of Marx Brothers with sneers, fake asides and googoo eyes. Except what they're saying isn't funny. It's alarming. If you've seen a televangelist or hellfire and brimstone preacher in action, you'll know what I mean. They are caricatures not people. You can tell they really fancy themselves the voice of truth. But there's nothing reasonable or intelligent about it. They're just whipped up into an imagined power trip frenzy. They literally look like asylum lunatics because they kind of are. 

They will drum up artificial slippery slopes, dramatically point accusing fingers and cry victim when no one did or said anything to them. They talk behind their hands in stage whispers. They point and mock. They accuse people of looking down on them as they are acting ridiculously. They take stands when there's no question of an issue. They make shit up and rage at nothing. They will insult, heckle and pick fights and then play the innocent if someone responds. My mother once threw a pie in my face out of the blue and then got mad at me because no one else laughed. 

It's so uncomfortable. My mother (who has abandoned me more often than not and never took care of me) once yelled loudly into a public bathroom "IS THERE ANYONE IN THERE?? MY KID IS COMING IN AND I CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL!" to the shock of people who were exiting. The kid was my golden child 40-y/o sister. Yet when I was five she sent me to play in a park alone three blocks away where locals were warned not to let their children go, because known pedophile to hung out there. 

Dark tetrads are so exaggeratedly polarizing and binary in their thinking. They use such ignorant, immature phraseology. Good/bad, right/wrong. Christian, unchristian. What do those words even mean? I don't know and I doubt they do either. They just have very odd, uninformed, goofy ideas. Because they are that dangerous combo of ignorant and arrogant. They are too proud to actually admit they don't know things so they just make up nonsense as they go along. They generalize. They purposely misunderstand. They proclaim to be clairvoyant and say they can "read" people. And their minds and motives. When they don't even know a thing about the person. Because they are always looking to one up and take down someone else. 

My mother says she loves to shock people. Which she imagines is one of her God-given tasks. She claims that this is what proud people (and everyone is proud but her, supposedly) need to shake them out of their sins. But nothing could be less true. What she really is, is an arrogant exhibitionist who wants is highlight her own self-determined wrongs in people, to throw suspicion away from herself. And the shock is just her sadistic love of humiliating people. 

Because this narcissistic nonsense is so much worse when they have decided they are Christian. There's no dark tetrad like a religious one. They weaponize everything to suit their devious motives, especially God. They are hypocritically self-righteous without being the least bit righteous. They assume the worst in other  people. He accuses them of things he is actually doing himself and excusing. They make up a lot of foolish tales, all bad, about other people. My mom and her husband have lied, cheated, scammed and sinned their way through life. Yet they proudly "call out" other people on bad behavior which they have invented. They act like they are some kind goon squad for God. That He has issued them a license to ferret out sinners while completely exonerating them of all wrong-doing which they will never admit to. I can't tell you how many times I've caught them in lies and gaslighting. But I've rarely confronted them because they are violent and vicious when crossed.  

Even as I write this, it sounds ridiculous. Because it is. It's painful to watch and humiliating to be around. It's embarrassing to admit. And I never did. I just somehow found a way to go along with it. I said nothing and endured the weird looks. Because they made life hellish enough without having to deal with the tantrums if I confronted it. And because the very ridiculousness of their behavior kept me silent. How can I explain to normal people your parents VERY abnormal, dangerously psychotic behavior without looking like a psycho myself? And they knew that and used it against me. My parents were accomplished liars and gaslighters. They knew their behavior would earn censure if the extent of  it was known. They also knew it was too incredibly awful to be believed. So they bullied me into silence with that knowledge. 

And it's even worse for us their kids, because we sometimes end up acting like them because we grew with their antics as our norm. We often pick up these frustrating habits like a cold. And we look and sound like idiots around normal people. It's even more embarrassing because it feels so juvenile to talk like this. I'm a "bad girl"  Or a good girl if I do thus and such and I'm 60 damn years old. So childish. I don't even really think this way, it's just their yammering in my head. 

We are not ignorant. But we got so used to hearing them babble on in their native gibberish that we sometimes talk and think that way too, even if we are mature and educated. We have to fight against falling into their bizarre way of thinking. What I have to do is remind myself how irrelevant and baseless are the ridiculous things they say. That they spew as gospel truth what are just ill-formed, self-serving opinions.

Operative word: self-serving. They put about lies and deceptions as truth. And silly statements as essential knowledge. What I must remember is that their nonsense has no bearing on me. It only did as a kid because I had the misfortune to be born to these devious people. I got used to hearing nonsense like a native language spoken in my home.  Which is so much more bewildering and exhausting when you compare it to the rest of  the world. All around me I heard sane people speak in rational ways, yet my norm was irrational and insane. 

So how do I navigate all this bullshit? By learning to translate their nonsense correctly.  By understanding that it is just that, nonsense. It makes no sense because it isn't meant to. It's meant to baffle and befuddle which is how gaslighting operates on the brain. It confuses right with wrong. It lies. It thwarts healthy relationships and turns them into master and slave. Boss and minion. It twists logical, forward moving into irrational backward regression. It makes sane insane and healthy dangerous. It manufacturers self-serving double standards. 

And it is totally dark tetrad: arrogant, entitled, malicious, malignant, Machiavellian, remorseless and cruel. The only way to have conversations with them is not to have them. You will speak clearly and authentically from a place of collaboration while they will speak from dishonesty, coercion, distortion and manipulation. 

Healing CPTSD by doing uncomfortable things that should be comfortable

Hi friends. I'm writing a lot today, on a day when I'm normally working. And that feels weird because work is familiar and not working is uncomfortable. All the shame monkeys are screaming at me to get up off my dead butt and get busy. Which might be a warning that this is exactly what I should not be doing. I think that healing CPTSD might be about doing uncomfortable things and seeing what's wrong with that. I mean seeing what is broken in me that makes me feel uncomfortable doing things that should be comfortable. 

I told my husband that I decided not to work and he asked how that felt. And I said terrible! I had to keep talking myself into laying around. He laughed saying that most people had to talk themselves into working! Ah such is the nature of childhood trauma. We go around in a fog of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). We strive endlessly to please demanding and unpleasable people so the idea of  not striving is scary and dangerous. 

I am so used to getting my sense of worth from accomplishment. Or rather, let me rephrase. Not sense of worth. I have little to none of that. Just a little less self-hatred. I have this constant sinking feeling that I'm letting people down. Failing. Dropping the ball. No matter what I do. Which of course is a contradiction. You can't be damned if you do an don't. But we who lived in childhood trauma could. Our dark tetrad parents made sure we knew we were failures. 

But that illogical logic is the failure. What they selfishly thought is that if we were kept short of praise and long on fear, obligation and guilt, we'd keep trying. And we did until we didn't. Sooner or later, we gave up. Oh don't get me wrong, we didn't give up obeying them but we gave up on ourselves. We committed the mortal sin of despair because we were pushed to it. It's the ultimate and ongoing existential crisis

But I guess even that is a win for dark tetrads. They get to work you to death and then punish and shame you for quietly dying inside. They gaslight you that, "see, you are the problem. We're not expecting too much of you. You're just oversensitive, lazy, selfish and disobedient. Look you're even sinning against God by giving in to the devil." Which just goes to show how really nasty they are. Anyone who would exult in the misery they caused someone, who would put a millstone around their necks and push them in the deep end, is not a safe person to be around. 

But you can't tell them that. You just have to show them by cutting contact. You have to prevent them putting more fear, obligation and guilt on you. However, that doesn't do anything to get all their old fog messages out of you. Ergo the struggle to just take one darn day off without feeling ashamed and useless. 

How anger heals narcissistic abuse but not the way you think

 Hi friends. This is yet another controversial and triggering post about healing from narcissistic abuse. I'm going to give tips that will seem to contradict religious, moral and psychological teachings. But hold on because what I'm suggesting is actually crucial for treating the pain you're in. And that is by getting angry and staying angry, but not in the ways you may think. I'm also going to be completely honest about how I feel about the way my narcissistic dark tetrad parents treated me. Another trigger warning. 

There's a lot of teaching against anger and some of it is actually helpful. But most if not all of it is aimed at the wrong people. Abusive, exploitative, arrogant, ruthless people (narcissistic dark tetrads) are the ones who need to hear this. They are so viciously, maliciously rage filled it spews out of their pores. They are the ones getting anger wrong because they are self-righteous, hypocritically and spitefully angry at  innocent victims. If they're parents, those would be their children. 

On the other hand, the children of narcissistic dark tetrads do NOT and should NOT be warned against anger. They are already too biddable, too controllable, too bullied and shamed by these perpetrator parents. Children of narcissists were never allowed to show any emotion other than dogged loyalty (which isn't an emotion). They were humiliated, punished, dismissed, ignored, invalidated, manipulated and gaslit for any feeling, need or want. 

God forbid we even thought to show anger. I got beaten just for not smiling wide enough. I was indoctrinated in their cult that I should roll over and let anyone do whatever they wanted to me. I learned fast that I was the problem and just being made others miserable.  I was a human doing more than human being. My job was to serve and like it. So I managed, I don't know how and unsuccessfully, it would prove, to quash anything that angered them. 

And so much angered them, I don't  know where to begin. I never really understood what exactly I'd done or hadn't done, I just knew I must have. Gaslighting is fucking insidious. But I couldn't always contain my big  painful emotions so I took them out on myself. I bit and hit myself and still will if the hakken-kraks howl too loudly. (Please God, deafen me to them) 

Because you can no more heal a blister by suppressing it than you can intense emotion. Just try not to cry when you feel yourself start. It's impossible. But yet we kids of dark tetrads somehow managed to keep a lid on it, mostly. It did seep out sometimes and we'd be punished for it. But for the most part we masked it well, too damn well. And it seared our insides carbolic. 

So WE the burned, need desperately not only to feel but to express our emotions, those now and those back then. Ever time I'd melt down when my reactor failed to cool, a lot came out besides the current pain.  There are a ton of back payments for those of us who lived under a dark tetrad's reign of terror. Whenever I've seen someone melt, my inner child feels for hers. I recognize the symptoms.

So how does anger help? Righteous anger is awareness and realization of all that was done to us and all the old festering wounds it's caused. And that heals by lancing psychological pus that is stored in those wounds. Pus that built up from decades of their abuse. Saying the words of frustration and bitterness, calling out the wrong by name, raging out our shame disinfects our wounds. Our post-explosive tears with safe people in safe situations, cauterizes the dead tissue And the hugs of loving people puts salve on the burn scars. It doesn't happen all at once. Often it needs to be re-opened and irrigated again. 

So what I'm not talking about in anger is lashing out at the perpetrators. I'm saying not to exact vengeance. Not because they don't deserve it. Oh do they deserve it. Not because we have to be some superior being that rises above and is the "bigger person." That's all just quack psycho-religious nonsense spoken by nitwits who were nowhere to be found when we were being hurt. They either didn't know or pretended not to and so are just speaking from their anuses. I'm saying not to for very pragmatic reasons. It hurts us. 

But us counter-attacking dark tetrads is good for them. It's the only thing they understand. Giving, not as good as but better is the only way to bring them down from their elephantine arrogance. The only thing a bully respects is a bigger bully. Kicking their asses out of your life and back into their own is the only solution. All the gentle requests, longsuffering, good examples and fond hopes that they will back down on their own recognizance is a waste of time. Firestarters only stop when they get bored or burned. 

Prayer helps but only those willing to help themselves. God cannot soften hard hearts that buck his efforts. And these are the hardest of the hard-hearted. Better to pray for yourself that you can get and stay our of their paths, heal and be a saner person. Better to pray for their other victims. You can ask God to reach them and hope he does, but I wouldn't focus too much on that. And NEVER make excuses for them. You don't have to set up consequences. They have caused so much damage that you can sit back and wait. Just quit shielding them from the consequences. Which brings me back to vengeful anger. 

Exacting retribution on a dark tetrad is a bad idea but not for the reasons you think. God doesn't mind if you feel vengeful about acts done to you. Initially at least, you should. You'd be kind of weird if you didn't. There's no high moral code you're breaking wanting to see them taken down a peg or 12. That was just part of them crap they fed you "you have to be the bigger person and forgive." Why? You're not sorry. 

The reason for not taking revenge is that there's nothing you could do to them to make up for all the hurt they did to you. It would feel futile. They stole your personhood, identity, childhood, joy, peace and sanity. They poisoned everything. Nothing you can do can level that score. Do I want to level it? Damn right I do. I want what was mine, back. I want to have been loved. But I'll never get it. So forward is the only way through. 

But not without my anger. It's my armor. If I forget what they did, if I let up, it will be far too easy to go back to status quo with them. It would be too easier to let the voices keep me in shame. I have to keep my edge to keep my nerve and my resolve. I can't go back again. If I let go my anger, I will. I owe it to all the little Marilisas in me to move us to a safer place of peace.  

So maybe it's not anger as much as confidence that I'm doing something good for us. Maybe ending the abuse and treating my wounds and not allowing any more, is not the selfish, self-centered behavior I was told it was. Maybe that is what this self-care and protection of which they speak is all about. 

Healing CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse begins by accepting ain't gonna be no reconciliation

 Hello my friends. I'm supposed to be working at my day job but instead I'm doing something different and taking a mental health break. I'm hot, tired and sick of shopping groceries for people. And a big part of that is not from the work itself. It's from the exhausting amount of energy it takes to work on my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse. It makes me sleep poorly and trauma dream. Trying to juggle family, a job, relationships, a home plus recovery work is a Herculean task. And I can't do them all at once. So, just for now, I'm opting to work on recovery by sharing how healing CPTSD from narcissistic dark tetrad parent abuse begins by accepting one thing. Or should I say by accepting collection of interrelated concepts about dark tetrads in general and narcissistic dark tetrad parents in particular. 

And that one thing is fairly simple in nature but oh so complicated to consider. What we who were raised by narcissists must accept is that we will 

NEVER win with them

ALWAYS lose in interactions with them

NEVER be loved by them

ALWAYS be enmeshed by them and expected to be for them what they refuse themselves

NEVER be the child like we should be 

ALWAYS be expected to parent them, perfectly. 

NEVER be cared for by them but 

ALWAYS expected to care for them 

NEVER treated with respect or devotion

ALWAYS punished for anything but automaton-like respect and unswerving devotion

NEVER be right, correct or good enough to please them

ALWAYS expected to accept whatever crazy, immoral, unethical, dangerous, selfish, exploitative thing they do

NEVER praised, treasured, cherished, celebrated

ALWAYS kicked to the curb, betrayed, exploited, manipulated and gaslit

NEVER laughed with 

ALWAYS laughed at, scoffed at, scolded 

NEVER right

ALWAYS wrong

NEVER affirmed or supported

ALWAYS blamed and pinned with other people's shame like a paper donkey at a birthday party. 

And because of all that there ain't gonna be no reconciliation. No sir. Because it really is that extreme, Double standards, chaos, confusion, double dealing, gaslighting, deception, trickery, Machiavellian political intrigue, backstabbing, set-ups, ambushes, public character assassinations, humiliations, torture, triangulations, setting up camps, smear campaigns, all the norm for a child of dark tetrads. It was SO consistent in my life that THIS is why I never understood it till I had lived six decades. But wait, there's more. 

We were groomed from childhood to attend them, to pay into their morally bankrupt account from which we could never collect. We were battered, barmy and broken. I do not remember any truly happy times in childhood or at least any that didn't very quickly come back to bite me. AND SO now, I have to accept that 'twas ever thus and that 'twill always be thus. Forgiveness is just accepting that the past will never be any different than it was AND healing is accepting that it never will be any different. Even if there were some kind of realization on the part of the dark tetrads that they were wrong (and believe me there never will be), it won't matter. Too much water has gone under the bridge. Too many hurts. 

Now, having said that, it's important to pay attention to this next part. If you take your stand and die on this hill, if you refuse to allow any reconciliation, know that you WILL very likely be attacked, gaslit, scolded, bullied and browbeat for it, by them, friends, family, society, the church, even therapists. Gasp! They'll cry, wringing their hands. Cut ties? Go no contact? But they're family. (No they're not. They're power mad maniacs) We have this weird, delusional fetish about "forgiveness" and mending relationships, which in normal ones may be good. But with dark tetrads reconciliation isn't just impossible, it's deadly. 

And um, raising hand here, question? Where were you flying monkeys when all the shit the dark tetrads put me through was going on? Hmmm? Where was all your smarmy-ass self-righteous platitudes when I was going through hell alone? Playing alone downtown at the docks. Left with strangers. Crying my eyes out and no one knew or cared.  No one was there. No one. Not even God going by how it felt to me. So now you're going to tell me I have to, what, make peace with them? Why would I do that? For my own peace of mind? Friend, if you think my peace of mind relies on them, you crazy. Peace means getting them out!! 

And about this sparkly reconciliation of which you speak, consider this. If they've been exploiting all my life, why would they not exploit a reconciliation? I don't like this phrase but I'm going to use it. Been there, done, was burned by and have the scars to prove it. I have allowed the four people who called themselves my parents and their children to guilt me repeatedly for taking care of myself. Not even standing up to them. Just not being taken in by them. Let's just let that stew a bit. HURT me for taking care of myself. Hell, they've punished me for taking care of them! Perfectly, obediently, humbly. You couldn't ask for a better slave than me. But all it got me was more abuse. 

So you call a truce or you let them call one. Which of course it isn't a ceasefire because it isn't a conflict. Aggressions are all one-sided. They just call it that because they like the sound of that better than the unprovoked attacks on you they really are. Because this means you are part of the problem, that it's a fair fight. And damned if I didn't fall for it. Looking back I did all the apologizing for shit I NEVER DID and they neither admitted to or apologized for anything. They just graciously allowed me back into their abusive clutches.  Because truth is, they were missing all the good they got non gratis from me. But they had to extract the maximum pain and humiliation from me for the privilege (arrogant, manipulative, sadistic psychopaths that they are). 

So what should you do? Get out and stay out. Ignore the harpies. Run don't walk as far as you can get. There is no damn winning for losing with these people. They do not reconcile. They don't collaborate or cooperate. They trespass. The more you back down the more they step on you. The more you try to make peace the more aggressive and entitled they become. The more of you that you concede the more encroaching they become. 

It's pathetic, sad and hurts like a bitch but a fact none the less. The best thing I ever did in this respect was to give up the idea that I had a family and accept that I was beaten senseless by cruel, evil, ruthless, remorseless, muthafukkas who thought as much of me as they did dogie doodoo on their shoes. That sounds harsh and I may amend it someday but right now it stands. Selah. 

Retaliation and paybacks are crucial in dealing with narcissistic dark tetrads

 Hi folks. Today I'm writing what might be my most controversial post on dealing with narcissistic dark tetrads. I'm suggesting that retaliation and paybacks might be necessary. Responding in kind is about your only choice. But again, it's not in the way or for the reason you may think. 

We're always taught that retaliation is petty. That holding grudges is wrong and forgiveness is the be-all-end-all. That getting even is low. That relationships shouldn't be transactional or punitive. That paybacks or responding in kind are childishly vengeful. And that revenge belongs to God. Oh they're vengeful all right. And but they have to be when you are dealing with a selfish, Machiavellian, manipulative, exploitative, remorseless person. 

And they would be if you were in a normal, healthy give-and-take relationship. But dark tetrad narcissists aren't normal or healthy. They are twisted, cunning, demanding and soul-stealing.  Those of us who were stuck with them by virtue of our birth have known only unfair, abnormal, unsafe, take-and-take, dangerous. We didn't get the luxury of normal rules just double standards. So we have to do things a little differently to heal. 

Because for one thing, all relationships are transactional. Does that mean that everything has to be completely fair? Well, in a way, yes. There might be a little wiggle room but unbalanced relationships are not safe. At some point, if one person is only giving good, positive, caring love while the other person is dishing out a lot of vicious, nasty, hurtful behavior, the relationship will fail. Or worse, the victim will surrender voice, identity, needs, wants, sanity all to "keep peace" with a psychotic bully who's idea of peace is complete hostile takeover of his partner. 

So how does retaliation work in a healthy way? We have to give back what we receive. If we get consistently let down, stop showing up. If we get stolen from, report and get it back. And don't give anymore. If we are excluded we stop inviting them to participate. If we are expected to do all the heavy lifting, we stop. 

What I'm not talking about with retaliation is lowering ourselves to their standards. Which probably sounds like it amounts to the same thing but it doesn't. I need to make behavior choices that are in keeping with my personal ethics. If someone calls me a name, publicly humiliates me (such as when my mother threw a pie in my face) or screams at me, I'm not going to call them one back or get in a screaming match with them. But I might refuse to take them home after promising a ride. I might tell them to leave my house and not come back. 

I might pay them back for not showing up or calling when I needed them, by not showing up or calling when they need me. I might turn a deaf ear to all mother's ailments as she has done to me all my life. I might leave them stranded occasionally to show them what it feels like. I might be a little less reliable myself. Is that petty? Well, yes, it does sound petty to me if I consider doing it myself. But that's because they conditioned me that "two wrongs don't make a right." Which translated says, "we can do whatever crappy thing we want to you but you'd better treat us with perfect kindness." 

If you were to tell me that your parents treated you the way mine treated me, I'd be cheering you on paying them back, petty or not. And it's not petty. What's petty is that they did it to us in the first place as kids and that we learned to let them take advantage of us. What's pathetic is that we even have to consider doing this to get ourselves to a healthy place where we don't get walked on. What's sad is that all our  conscientiousness and loving care got spit back in our faces to the point that we ACTUALLY EXPECT PUNISHMENT  for doing good. That we've come to expect ill treatment from them. 

And two wrongs make it righter for us. Because contrary to popular belief, being the bigger person with a narcissist doesn't make them stop doing wrong. It convinces them of their invincibility. And they just get more and more entitled and cruel. In fact, the nicer you are to a dark tetrad the nastier they are to you. That's the Machiavellian for ya. No good deed goes unpunished. They see you as weak and continue to amp up the abuse. 

Now, when you institute these "retaliations" (aka stop putting up with their dreck) they going to give you hell. Dark tetrads will cry victim. They will holler that you are mean, vindictive, too sensitive, can't take a joke, disrespectful etc. But that's where we confuse the notion of retaliation. We let nasty, arrogant, control freaks define terms. What it really is, is consequences. For the first time in our lives, their choice to behave badly comes with a price THEY pay instead of us. They play stupid games, they get the stupid prize not us anymore. 

So what it amounts to is not so much responding in kind but allowing these logical consequences to occur and not shielding them anymore. It's removing the positive which the narcissist has gotten used to receiving from us. It's not giving him a taste of his own medicine but refusing to take his medicine for him.             

If this resonates, please feel free to drop me a comment! 

Healing CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse by doing what they hypocritically said was wrong

 Hi friends! So I just discovered a really helpful tip to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse by doing what they hypocritically said was wrong. Let me start by saying that pretty much everything dark tetrad narcissists say is wrong for you to do, is actually right. And what they say is right for them to do to you, is usually wrong.  

So we start by flipping the script they twisted, right side up. Assume that if a selfish, self-serving, manipulative person tells you to do something, that they are not doing themselves, it will be unhealthy and unsafe for you  to do. Which is the crazy-making double standards of narcissist. But you can de-crazy it by just turning it around. If they say you shouldn't you probably should. It's that binary. 

And a biggee that I was taught was taught by my four (count them) dark tetrad parents was that if they were angry, spiteful, punitive, upset, hateful (and they always were) it was my fault. AND I damn well better take it personally if I knew what was good for me. AND there was the double bind expectation that I would react and they would punish me, no matter how I reacted, or if I just calmly responded which I did surprisingly well given the amount of attacks I got. 

You cannot win for losing with dark tetrads because of their constant hypocrisy. You have to take their petty, immature attacks on you personally but you have to do respond with perfectly adult composure. You have to be the bigger person, rise above and respond maturely. BUT then they will attack for "showing off" (showing up their wretched behavior) and being prideful. Because you didn't overreact as they always do and it shows how foolishly arrogant they are. They need to you be both right and wrong. Good and bad. Victim and perpetrator. At the same time. So that they can always have the upper hand while maintaining complete lack of  accountability. 

If you don't play along, it wrecks their carefully constructed house of cards. You get used to doing a shit ton of humoring, dancing to their tune, changing when they change the tune, playing the schlemiel, apologizing for things you didn't do, taking responsibility for them and letting them use you like a tool for whatever weird purpose they want at the moment. You get so used to adjusting yourself to suit their demands that you have no idea who you are. You become a personless chameleon. You lose yourself in this endless rigamarole they play. 

Have I lost you yet? Small wonder. I'm lost myself.  But getting back to doing things differently. What I found helps a lot is ignoring the tune they're playing and not dancing. When they say provocative, antagonistic, idiotic things, just don't respond at all. Don't justify, answer, explain or defend. Pretend you didn't hear it. Don't play their game. If they ask a stupid, shaming question you know is designed to humiliate you, don't answer. Just look at them and move on. Don't dignify it. And don't say why you're not answering. You don't owe anyone and answer to any question that feels awkward. Or actually any question. 

And you know what, sometimes, you do return evil for evil. You pay them back. Turn about is not only fair but necessary play. You retaliate and sometimes two wrongs make things better. I'll blog more on that later.