Unmasking ignorant advice about narcissist parent abuse for the poison it is

Hello my friends. Today on the road to recovery from childhood trauma, I'm going to share some ignorant advice about narcissist parent abuse we all should ignore. First, what constitutes ignorant. It's almost always unsolicited and it's not really advice. It's trite, nonsensical cliche dressed as wise or even prescient. But it's said without any pause for thought and usually has no bearing on what you said. They just pop out with it so you know they weren't listening. And you also know that if they say silly platitudes once, they do this all the time. And by all these, you know to avoid them as not helpful, but poisonous, insidious brain rot that derails your recovery. 

"Every family has problems."   Said after you have just told them some horrific thing that your narcissist parent did, like my mom throwing a pie in my face at her company work party. It's not even advice but argumentative retort. Like your story is up for debate? And you might feel ashamed for "dramatizing" because it is partially true. But don't be. Because the part that is true is a generalization and the more important part that's not is that not all families DO NOT have problems like what you describe. And your "friend" wants you to feel guilty or that you're overreacting. Or even lying or showing off. You're not It's just her weird agenda.  Hear it for what it is: gaslighting, minimizing and invalidation. 

"Just don't think about it." A lifetime of abuse and neglect by narcissistic parents. Don't think (feel, remember) it. Right. Well, that's actually impossible. There's a psychological theory outlining how impossible. Ironic processing theory or the "white bear problem." If told not to think of a white bear, that's immediately what we think of. Trying not to think of something makes you think of it more. And cutsey adages like this are hypocritical because these same people cling like barnacles on to wrongs done to them. AND, been there, been forced to not think or feel. And that's why I'm in the mess today. 

"Let go and let God." Love to. Problem is, it won't let me go. I've prayed to be released from endless, nightly trauma nightmares. And still they come. Does God have a plan? We're told He does. But me clicking my heels together and chanting this does about as much good as trying not to think of a white bear. And again, it's much easier preached than done. You let go and let God next time you're stuck in an abusive family system. Or any other impossible situation. What you seem not to get is that the damage was done from the womb. My mother thought it was funny to go out dancing and drinking at a bar when pregnant. For attention. And that was with her golden child. I can't imagine what she did when preggie with me. How is a fetus, infant or little child, groomed to serve her narcissist parents as God, supposed to differentiate between these evil deities and some benevolent one they are told loves them? 

"Let it go. Forget about it. You're stuck in the past. You're dwelling on it." And other such ridiculous comments. One big problem with these judgmental shaming sayings is that they are just that, nonsensical preachy prattle. But you might be surprised at how often people trot them out, especially, weirdly, after you have just told them some outrageous thing your parents did. And you might also be shocked that THERAPISTS say this shit. To people who are trying to do just that. But then when you say that you want to forget, to bury the memories and be done, they turn around and say "you can't do that." Ummm, am I missing something here? One minute you are accusing me of purposely clinging onto past hurts and the next that it's impossible not to? WTF? 

"You should just forgive." Oh, lovely. So now, you're accusing me of being unforgiving? Of cherishing some kind of resentment? What do you think I've been doing all these years but excusing, exonerating, covering for, blaming myself, taking responsibility for, their actions? If that's not forgiveness, please, tell me what is? AND THEY ARE NOT SORRY!! They've never even admitted to anything or they've just gaslit me that "it wasn't that bad. You're too sensitive. You're showing off. This is God's will that we abuse you." Even God doesn't forgive what hasn't been repented from. Yes, forgiveness is conditional not just a blanket to cover it up. So I have to give them what even God doesn't? Free license to keep abusing? Oh, you didn't meant that, huh? So tell me, what do you mean? Because if they aren't sorry, and you know what they did, it sounds to me like you're saying to turn a blind eye, pretend it didn't happen, say it's okay. And that is in direct contradiction to God's idea of forgiveness. AND I've always done that anyway. And look where it got me! Even more harmed. Because this, like all other toxic positivity, gets the order of operations wrong. It victim blames and shames and puts all the responsibility on them. Which is what our parents have always done to us. 

"You have to make peace, be the bigger person, rise above." Hell, lady, it took me almost 6 decades to realize any of what they did was wrong. But now, before I've even begun to process it, when I have no self-care skills beyond trauma responses. When I'm destroyed by CPTSD, I still have to fix it? I don't even fully understand the full extent of the damage. I don't even know what that means (and neither do you) But I know that I have been keeping schtum, making peace, rising above and being the bigger person all my life. These are THE VERY TRAUMA RESPONSES  that are killing! But the priority, according to you, is not me being healing but me tolerating more abuse. It's still and always about defending them at my expense. And, AND, after all their expectation, entitlement, manipulation, cruelty, I'm STILL the one who OWES THEM something? They stuck the dagger in and you're pushing it deeper telling me this. 

"You're not going to like this but I'm going to be brutally honest, as your friend." This shit is said after you have just shared something super sensitive. Or it comes out of the blue. And it is twistedly passive-aggressive. I can feel my stomach tensing for the blow, just writing this. She sets you up to feel ashamed by predicting you won't like it. As if you are naughty child resisting her wise reproof. But you can read her motives in the fact that she says it precisely when you are vulnerable. She's neither honest, nor your friend. She is a bully and knows it. So she plays DARVO to make you think you're the problem.

"Cheer up." This might be the creepiest one of all for its insidiousness. It sounds affirmation-ish but it is actually imperative toxic positivity. The full statement is "you should cheer up." And what they also aren't saying is that they won't help you by doing kind things that might make you feel better. They're just scolding you. And who are they to dictate how you feel or should feel? No one knows what another person is feeling. Also, cheer is not a verb in this sentence. So it is nothing you can actually do. They don't care if you are depressed or not. They just want to feel guilty feel guilty for not being Rosie Sunshine at every moment. It is also insanely dismissive of your very real pain. 

"Lighten up." This "cheer up" on crack. And again, what does it mean? I'm not the Lorax. I can't lift myself. It was said to me my dad, with his customary smug, supercilious finger-pointing. Ironically, after he had done or encouraged his wife or one of his shiny new kids to do yet another awful thing to me.  Like I was doing something wrong by being, what too serious? They punished me if I didn't take their cruel punishment serious enough!  And further, the "heaviest" more oversensitive,  easily enraged, melodramatic man I ever knew, who routinely, since I was 5, described to me how he was planning to commit suicide, telling me I'm over-sensitive. Me who absorbed all their shit so they didn't have to, should lighten up????  He could strain at a gnat but told me to swallow a camel. I'm so saturated with their ick, it would be impossible to lighten up. And he knew it. The translation is "put up, shut up, paste on a perma-grin, bend over for more and like it." God forbid Jack actually feel or admit to doing his daughter wrong. Much easier to DARVO and make her feel suicidal. 

So obviously, there's a lot wrong with each of these sayings. And with people who say them.  But they reveal themselves as the self-righteous, hypocrisy they are by several facts. If you ask what they mean, they can never tell you. They only recite, never explain. "Rise above" what does that look like? It's nonsense. Wait, no not just nonsense. These are, hurtful, undermining, invalidating, condescending covert attacks. The person saying them does not care for you. They're trying to make themselves feel important by belittling you. And they NEVER actually take their own advice. The same people who preach peace, patience and rainbow pony poop, will in the next breath, bitch and moan about the most inconsequential petty gripes they've hung on to for decades. But don't you dare preach their advice back at them. Because they will DARVO and call YOU insensitive, cruel and nasty. They only hear what's wrong with this nonsense when it's said to them. They have two distinct sets of rules for you and for them. 

It took me 61 years to begin to understand just how destructive these saying are. To hear the insidious shaming. And to see the folks who say them for what they are. And, too late, the brain damage is done. They've embedded in my core. The toxins poison my dreams. And I repeat them to myself, by default. I have to continually and consciously talk back to these voices, these flying monkeys in my head. And it is exhausting, debilitating and overwhelming. 

So I challenge us all. If someone launches any of these missiles at us, hear them for what they are. And end the conversation and friendship there. Before they have a chance to take root.  And start immediately to detox with healing affirmations. I'll blog more on that later. 

How to expose malignant narcissist parents to heal from their cruelty

 Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm reflecting on some vlogs by my favorite Youtube therapist/psychologist, Dr. Ramani. She shares a great deal of insight on narcissism. And based off that and my own experiences at the hands of four narcissistic parents (two bio and their partners), I'm going to explain how to expose a narcissist parent to avoid their cruelty. 

First let me make a disclaimer. I'm not talking about publicly exposing them. Or even exposing them to themselves. I don't have near the experience or fabulous for that. I'm running on fumes, emotionally, and confidence is not in my toolbox. And furthermore, it's not advisable, as per the experts and my own experiences, to do that. Malignant narcissist parents, with their dark tetrad exploitative, arrogant, entitled, manipulative, nasty, spiteful behavior  are FAAAARRRR too good at the this game for me to safely unmask them. 

What I'm talking about is exposing, to myself and my trauma brain, what they did and how it affects me now. I'm taking my own side, for a change. I'm taking myself out of the scapegoat seat they stuck me in and putting responsibility back on them, where it belongs.  And I'm doing this by showing myself (and you if you need to hear it) just how they operate, and what red flags to notice, so we can avoid their cruelty. 

Look past the gaslighting fog. So we use this term gaslighting to mean a con job in which they deny reality and paint a false new one for us. But I think gassing is a more accurate description. They pollute our minds and damage our brains with sick, twisted lies, poisonous fabrications and evil spun narratives. Narcissist parents reinvent our reality and implant wrong ideas which we grow up thinking are true. And I know, you're thinking, oooohkay but how do we do this? Good question. We begin to...

Hear the lie for what it is. Catch them in one lie. It just takes one. And their entire narcissistic fantasy starts to unravel before your eyes. You may have to orchestrate by asking them about something you know for a fact happened, but they've never admitted to. Pretend you don't remember and are just asking for clarification. Make it something tame, or better still, something that makes you look bad, but beware. Nothing is simple for narcissists, especially vulnerable ones, who are always looking for insults to personalize. The most innocent question can set them off. But that over-reaction in itself is revealing. And so is the way they deny, lie and DARVO.  I managed to trap my mom by "admitting" that I had disobeyed her, at FOUR by using bathroom at the park, three blocks away, where she had sent me to play ALONE and where a known pedophile hung out. She had previously denied this but after I "confessed" she smugly said "I knew you lied about it" Which she thought would make me feel ashamed but which was in fact, an admission that she was not supervising me at the park. 

Stop auto-gaslighting. I've always defended, shielded and took responsibility and did damage control for my mom's chaos. It's like I had hands on eyes and fingers in ears so I couldn't see or hear accurately. Over the years, I took her gaslighting of me on myself. My memory is very patchy as a result (gaslighting rewrites not only history but your memories of it). But some things, by their egregiously bizarre nature, stand out. What opened my eyes to my mother's lies was, when at her doc appt, she was asked to list all her surgeries. I reminded her of one she had in Alaska. My dad was on some kind of mission trip and she had left him and moved us to a remote island. After we were there for a few weeks, she left me with strangers for a week, to go to Seattle to have surgery for a bladder infection, she said. (This is how it was presented to me). When I brought it up, she irritably shut me down and denied ever having surgery or going to Seattle at all. Which I know by the trauma nightmares of that experience happened. 

Stop making excuses for them to yourself. I realized that she was lying then and is still lying. I don't know why she lied, but it wasn't to protect me, just herself. I have no idea where she went or what happened. I just know she disappeared, just like my dad, and it terrified me. Now as an adult, I call it what it was. Abandonment.

Connect the dots. Looking back I recall they did that a lot, left little me alone, in unsafe, unfamiliar places. With dangerous people. And they did it and other neglectful, abusive things away from eyes who would have cared.  I also see that my mom's lie at the doctor's office was more than just a lie. It is part of a lifetime pattern of gaslighting. So many disturbing she said and did, and made excuses, and hypocritically preached against, have now proved to be the unethical, illegal, immoral, unsafe things they always were but I didn't see.  Things like telling 8 y/o me it was good she was sleeping with a married man because she was trying to win him over to Jesus. Yes, that is a true story. 

Ask trusted people for feedback. Ask what their childhood experiences were. Ask objectively, without sharing personal experiences immediately, their opinion of things that happened to you. Ask how they would feel if thus and such happened to them. I'm not saying be cagey and if they ask, you can say this happened to you. If they knew your parents, ask what their impressions were/are. I've gotten incredible awareness from things friends have shared. My cousin met my mom for the first time and she did some weird thing which I had overlooked, as usual. He immediately identified what was wrong with it. He was able to help me who was too close to and too historically gaslit by her to see clearly what she was doing. 

Ask AI. I'm serious. I have conversations with Gemini about things that happened to me to get perspective. Ask if this is narcissistic type behavior. Many of the things they did, that I've downplayed over the years, turn out to be actionable abuse, abandonment, endangerment, neglect, then and now. And Gemini has sound sources to prove it. In fact, AI will often say, if this is happening to you or someone you know, report it and here's where. One benefit of asking AI over real people is that AI does not have the capability of gaslighting, shaming or invalidating you. AI has no personal agenda to protect unlike flying monkeys do. 

So let's recap. We're not looking to "out" anyone, except to ourselves. That's not our motive. And it wouldn't be safe anyway.  A cornered malignant narcissist is deadly. We're not attacking. We're just trying to quit being attacked by them, by identifying that malignant narcissist parents are dangerous. We ARE blaming them and we need to. They have blamed us for their problems all our lives. They've scapegoated, manipulated, triangulated, exploited and abused us. And it's time to put responsibility for that back where it belongs and stop taking their issues on ourselves. 

How aging narcissist parents ultimately and inevitably end up (spoiler alert, not well)

Hello my friends. I've been writing a lot about my past with four narcissist parents, two bio and their partners. I've explored my childhood, growing up, early and middle adulthood.  Now at 61, I've finally gone no contact with the ones that are still alive. We've discussed how their abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, invalidation, triangulation, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all, damaged me. What we haven't discussed are the effects of this lifetime of nastiness on the narcissists themselves. So today, I'll share, from my experiences, how aging narcissist parents ultimately and inevitably end up. And, spoiler alert, it ain't pretty.

Narcissists implode on themselves as they age. Narcissists are very dysfunctional, to say the least. Their grandiosity, arrogance, entitlement, exploitative and often cruel behavior isn't sustainable. Their pathological jealousy, deceit, bitterness, rage, disagreeableness, competitiveness, haughty pride, petulance, venom, bile is corrosive not only to others but to themselves.  All their dark tetrad traits rot them from the inside out. 

Narcissists collapse under the weight of their own pride-swollen heads. Pride goes before a fall, we're told. Narcissist believe they aren't  just equal to God, they are gods. Which of course, being just mortal these delusions and illusions are impossible to maintain. They trip over their own inflated egos. 

A narcissist's charm fades. When they were younger, sexier, cuter, they got away with more. They were never as awesome as they thought but people were more inclined to turn a blind eye. She's young. She'll outgrow it. That's just how she is. But she never grows up. She just grows more entitled, arrogant and full of herself. And it's not cute anymore. 

The narcissist parents are outshone and outdone. Kids come along who are cute and they are kryptonite to their narcissist parents. They expect to always be in the spotlight but now they have to share. Their  masks slip and what they passed off as "just joking" and high-spirited is revealed as passive-aggressive and mean-spirited spite. She knows she's not getting younger and resents this. And the child just throws petrol on the flames. The sweeter and more loved the child is, the more jaded, vicious, malicious and petty narcissist parents become.  And what was mildly annoying, toxifies as they age. 

Narcissists get caught in their web. Like spiders, narcissists spin elaborate webs of deceit. Initially, when they are younger, they may be able to get away with spinning their alternate realities. But decades of continually twisting, distorting, convoluting and gaslighting comes back to bite them. They get confused by their own deceptions. They forget who they told which untruths. They get trapped and have to tell more lies which tighten the web around them even more. 

Narcissists burn bridges and blow through people like a torch. The old saying goes you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all the time. Pretty soon, folks catch on to the narcissist's game. They start seeing the double standards, hypocrisy, superiority complexes, condescending, self-righteousness, back-stabbing, love bombing only to get their way. People start seeing that they don't matter to the narcissist. They are just useful. The narcissist wears out her welcome and people close the door to her. The few that hang around either can't leave, are too gaslighted to kick out the narcissist or have a vested interest in staying. 

Narcissists are both outed and blindsided by narcissism in others. Both my narcissistic parents ended up with others narcissists when they remarried. Their response proved them narcissists. Instead of soldiering on, trying to make the best of it, as I did when I got stuck with them as parents, they weaponized it. They pretend to suck up and then malign them behind their backs. Double whammy. Then they gaslit me into thinking I was responsible to and for them all. Triple whammy. They played DARVO and used me as a confidante to get pity because they were so "mistreated" by their new people. But also made me serve them. Then they got narc supply sanctimoniously calling out the other arrogant people for their arrogance. Then, they switched again and suddenly were martyrs "forgiving" their narcissist mates and telling me I had to do likewise. For shit that  had only been done to me. How many whammies are we even on?? But it doesn't matter because sooner or later...

Narcissists suffocate themselves over time. It doesn't matter how many costume changes they make, how much twisting they do, how much gaslighting nonsense they say. All their immoral, cheating, scamming, unethical, irresponsible, impulsive, risky, chaotic, abusive, wickedness comes full circle. All the infidelity, bed-hopping, attacks, smear campaigns, property damage, threats, insults, set-ups, slandering, child abuse and neglect, shady deals, theft, deceit: You cannot live like this and not have some backsplash. They face medical, financial, social, legal, disciplinary consequences that are direct results of poor choices: bankruptcy, prison, lawsuits, STDs, divorce, revenge cheating, you name it, it's coming for them.  

They run out of people to trample on and end up alone, helpless and afraid. You who have always rescued them, will be tempted to rescue them again. But you can't and shouldn't. No I'm really serious. Don't. They're not as helpless as they would like you to think. They just want you to do for them. They like being catered to. They won't thank you. They'll just criticize, nitpick, whine, DARVO, punish and take advantage of you like they always have. All their usual dirty tricks. You will only get shit on for your trouble. Because they have never been accountable for their actions and always blamed and made others clean up after them. And look where it's gotten us. 

No amount of money, pity, love, bailouts will stop that. Nothing will save them from their colossal arrogance but complete ruin. If anything can. If it can't, it's still not your problem. If they die in their pride, it's their choice. They got what they wanted. This is from the Bible, not me. 

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Weirdest of the weird ways my narcissist parents sabotaged simple joys for me

Hello my friends. Today on my journey to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm unpacking one of the many sucker punches my parents pulled on me.  I haven't thought of in 43 years. And in unpacking, I recall the intense pain and confusion it caused. So I said yesterday that narcissist parents are only interested in themselves. And they expect and demand their child will be so too. It's JFK revised "ask not what you can do for your child but rather what your child can do for you." They weren't interested in me, my needs, my hobbies, anything I did, unless they could insult or exploit it. And here's one of the weirder examples of that. 

The time is 1981. I'm in 10 th grade. Despite  having been shunted from pillar to post between my two chaotic, neglectful parents and their new partners, and being their servant-surrogate-scapegoat, I was an excellent student. My dad had moved yet again and uprooted me from yet another school. (He would not do this with his other kids). I moved in with  my mom because I needed a job and times being what they were, jobs were scarce. Why a 16 y/o needed a job was down to the fact that my parents refused to properly provide for me. My dad had plenty of hack for himself and his family but not enough to  provide even basic care for me. My mom and her chronically unemployed boyfriend/husband were on the dole. What I had was stolen or sold to "pay for my upkeep." Even my child support. 

So I say I was living with my mom and her husband. If you can call sleeping on an unheated porch, working as many hours as possible and keeping up with school,  buying my own clothes and sanitary products, supporting my lazy ass stepdad so he can sleep all day and throws a tire on the fire occasionally, living. And then it wasn't even that. At 17, I came home 15 minutes late and he ragingly kicked me out of the house with my mother's fond approval. I was homeless. Finally an impoverished elderly lady with a two room house, from our church took me in. Mom and stepdad continued to keep my child support. My dad was unconcerned about all this. Just told me God would take care of me. Hmmm. Did not visit me because "it was too far to drive." 

Anyway, through all that, I kept up my grades, job, was in a play, got myself to NYC and DC, was class secretary, on every committee, in honor society, etc. At church, I helped to start a youth group and a weekly church music jamboree, both of which became very successful. How it began was that several families were practicing for church service. These were family groups of musicians. I was helping set up for some church thing. I'd sung with a large choir in Grand Haven when living with my dad. But he sabotaged my confidence in singing, by telling me I was "showing off for attention" when I sang in the bathroom. (it wasn't till my husband asked, that I wondered why he was in the bathroom with me.) He also said I shouldn't aspire to solos because my voice was choir grade at best. And before you ask, no, he had no vocal training with which to judge. Yet he himself would sing loud and proud. 

Anyway, at this music practice, probably 12 people were tuning instruments, trying out songs, etc. On a whim, I timidly asked the pianist if he knew "I feel good" (Andre Crouch) as I saw he had the sheet music. He didn't, but asked me to sing it and maybe he could pick it up. As we worked it out, a woman stopped everyone, turned a mike toward me and said "don't be shy! Belt it out!" Then everyone began riffing along and our little group was born. 

We started meeting on Saturdays to practice and that led to the formation of what we called "gospel jamborees." We sang all the old songs plus some new ones. I got the idea to host companion bake sales to raise money for those in need. Several women offered to coordinate craft bazaars too. We added liturgical dance to our repertoire. Other people designed signage. I think these events were even advertised on local radio and news. There was a way that everyone could participate. We pulled in huge crowds for our small community, on Saturday nights. Kids at school came and said how impressed they were. I feel funny saying this but some treated me like a minor celebrity. I literally had groupies. 

And you know what was my favorite part? The sense of belonging. Every member was valued and we got along great! Because we all celebrated each other. By that time, I had several accompanists who loved playing for me. And I loved singing for them. No one ever said I was showing off. I was begged to sing as often as I could. It's hard to admit because it sounds vain to me, but everyone loved singing with me. I went on to represent our school at the first F.A.M.E. arts competition at the Frauenthal in Muskegon County. It included around 20 different school and thousands of kids. It still goes on today. 

Now you might think my parents would be proud. But they couldn't care less. No one except my grandparents showed up to this ginormous event. As I recall, my dad just sniffed and said he was too busy and anyway, he didn't want me to get a big head. To a kid who was basically homeless. 

But back to the singing group. When I invited my dad to hear us, he said, with his usual belittling that he wasn't interested. Then I invited him to come join us. He played violin of which he was very proud.  I liked my dad's playing, even though he was always sneering and supercilious about my singing. When they invited him to play, he was suddenly very interested. And from then on, it was the Jack Show and he was in charge. He couldn't be bothered to help me out when my mom and her husband kicked me out, at 16, to live on my own. It was too far to drive to attend any of my school stuff. But boy could he make it weekly for "his" group. 

Not only that but he told me I sang far too much and should give others a chance. I was ASKED to sing! I helped start the damn thing.  Everyone wondered why I stopped participating as much. They begged me to come back. Everyone except my dad. Oh he wanted me there to hear him. Even when I went off to college, he pestered me to come back to hear them. I was to be his audience not a member anymore. Never once did he ever offer to play and sing with me. He turned me down when I asked. My organist mother never wanted to accompany me either. 

My dad had a falling out with the other members left the group shortly afterwards. Maybe other people saw his arrogance too, I don't know. Wherever I went, I was asked to sing. In every other venue and church. Not bragging. Just a fact. It made people happy, especially the elderly who would ask me to sing this or that old song. But for me, it was heartbreaking and freaking confusing how everyone but my own family wanted to hear me. I can never sing without hearing the shaming voices. I thought it was because I wasn't good enough. Now I wonder if it was that neither parent collaborates. They compete. They don't sing in the choir, they dominate. But it's too late because the power of gaslighting, invalidation and shaming has crippled me. 

I'm 61 now. 44 years later and 38 years into marriage. And finally, I really examined that difficult experience. I told my husband and he was appalled. He'd never heard about this wonderful little thing we had in a tiny backwater called Holton and how my dad had ruined it. Evidently I'd never told him.  Because I never felt confident enough to share the good things we'd done. Nor admitted to myself THAT my dad had ruined it. I made excuses for him. Smoothed his feathers. Praised him. Felt sorry for him that people in the group (my friends) had "treated him so badly." Had not appreciated all he had done for them. Never a word about my involvement or any gratitude for welcoming him as he excluded me. 

It never occurred to me until two days ago, just how that experience affected me. How wonderful it was to be part of that lovely group of people. Then how a narcissist parent exploits and trashes every good thing for their child. How the joy of singing together must be destroyed so that the narcissist can get supply. That I never saw it. I just felt the pain. 

I want to thank Youtube psychologists like Jerry Wise, Dr. Ramani, Patrick Teahan, Danish Bashir and Dr. Les Carter. They have helped me understand where this was coming from. How narcissist parents sabotage their child's identity, peace of mind, confidence and joy. And why I have hurt so much because of it. 

Narcissist parents double standards ruin even the most innocent things for scapegoat kids

Hello my friends. Today in our quest to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse, let's look at how narcissist parents' double standards ruin even the simplest, most innocent childhood things for us. I'm thinking of things like hobbies, leisure activities, interests, friendships with other children, basic stuff.

ALL about them. NONE about us. The first and foremost thing to remember about narcissistic parents is that everything centers on them. This is very abnormal to the average family in which each member is a valued part. Many parents prioritize their kids to the exclusion of themselves. It may not be perfect, no family is, but a point is made to give kids their own space, bedrooms, preferences, possessions, special interests, etc. However all that is upended in for kids living under narcissist parents. Parents command  command the spotlight. Everyone else is just tech crew. Our focus is completely taken up by them so we have little time or energy for our own pursuits. Even my toys, belongings, college fund were stolen or "repurposed" to fund my parents hobbies. I was told it was "for the family." But I was only part of that "family" as live-in staff. 

Groomed to serve Children of narcissist parents, particularly the scapegoat, come into this world carrying a huge burden of debt to their parents. It wasn't great when my parents were married. They both exploited me for personal gain. But when they remarried (other narcissists) my list of obligations to them and all their offspring rivaled the national debt. I was indoctrinated into thinking was mine to pay off. I owed them loyalty, service, blind obedience, caregiving, parenting (!) They owed me nothing.  Even the simplest needs and wants were thwarted and diverted to feed their voracious appetites. I often went hungry or lived off my dad's MLM scheme Shaklee vitamins so my stepmom could have expensive diet food and cigarettes.  And my dad could fund his pricey nautical collection.  

One-sided transactions. So relationships are transactional even though we're told they shouldn't be.  Healthy people don't stay in situations where they are being taken advantage of. Unless they have no choice, like us poor children of narcissists. It was made very clear to us that they owed us nothing. Everything we get from them, which isn't much, comes with many strings attached. Moreover, we were also trained to believe we owed them the world with a fence around it. We exited the womb in debt to them up to our eyebrows. The world had let them down (sic) and they were gonna make damn sure their kid suffered the consequences. As TINY CHILDREN, we were already working like slaves to please our narcissist parents. And we spent our childhoods and lives paying off their bad debts, while they just kept irresponsibly incurring more, knowing their scapegoat would deal with it. And never once did they appreciate any of it. They just pocketed it and held out their greedy, grubby paws for more. 

Narcissist parents are alarmingly egocentric. They aren't just self-centered. They expect that everyone else revolves around them. When they arrive (loudly), they make theatrical entrances and grand gestures. It drives them nuts if no one notices them. Even sneering is preferable to ignoring. It seems not to even occur to them that others exist as individual people who have no interest at all in the narcissist and certainly won't cater to them. Needless to say, they constantly receive ego injuries because the rest of the world didn't know His Majesty was arriving and failed to roll out the red carpet. And then, oh how they punish their children for other's not giving them their due reverence. We must soothe, smooth, humor, buffer, make up for and bow even lower to salve their wounded pride. 

Narcissist parents upstage us. The level of venomous jealousy and entitlement in narcissists knows no bounds. And narcissist parents are the dead worst of all. Because they have young, as yet unmatured captive audiences whose little minds they can warp carte blanche. And because little kids are guileless and adorable without trying, this incenses the narcissist. They make everything a competition, from abilities, to relationships with peers, to games, everything. They will try to outshine us in our most innocent or vulnerable moments. When we thought we could count on them for cheering or support. We got jeering, shaming, prancing attention-seeking from the people who were supposed to enjoy our sunshine. 

Narcissist parents are insane hypocrites.  Judgmentally critical and scoffing when we're being applauded and larger-than-life braggarts when it's them. When the narcissist feels threatened by our abilities, like singing, they'll pull us aside (away from others who celebrate our talents) and tell us to quit showing off. All we're doing is singing and getting attention for it. They'll demean, belittle and humiliate. BUT they are crazy show-offs, ridiculously parading around like trained seals. We never saw that because 1) we were used to it 2) we were taught to showcase them and diminish ourselves. 

Narcissist parents are Pick-Me.  They don't share, they hog. Especially center stage. Attention from others, they think, is a commodity of which there is a scarcity. So where normal parents celebrate their children, narcissistic parents are jealous of and feel threatened by them.  They will do ANYTHING for attention, including shockingly dangerous, exploitative, humiliating and repulsive things. My mother used to strut around in weirdly provocative clothing when she was young, believing herself the sexiest  thing in the room, and working it. She always bragged about her body and freely tells anyone who listens that she sleeps naked. Then as she aged, she began wearing nightgowns in public. If she couldn't be the sexiest, she'd be the most pitiful. Either way, in the spotlight. 

Malignant narcissist parents get off on shock value. They don't just compete with their kids for attention, they do outrageous things to humiliate the child and then laugh at them. At their child's performance, social gathering of friends, or even place of work, the narcissist will do and say bizarre things loudly to assure all eyes are on her, whether for good or bad. A narc doesn't care how you attend her as long as you do. Best of all is when she can embarrass her child, such as shouting AMEN! at mass when she visits. 

So what exactly do narcissist parents ruin for their children? Pretty much everything they can get their mitts on. And because they have (or have gaslit us to believe they have) supreme control over their kids, that's pretty much everything. Everything from friends, to hobbies to talents, to needs and wants, to identity, to self-care. It's all belongs to them. They just let us to use, occasionally, what they don't currently need. But we're to keep it in readiness because that will change at a moment's notice. It's like we're the caretakers of their massive estates, never owning just working like hell to maintain. 

We can play but only when the narcissist has no need of us. And then they are so oddly and neglectfully absent that it beggars belief. I've told you how I played alone, in dangerous places, far from home starting around age 4. Neither parent had any idea nor cared where I was or with whom. I could have friends unless one of my parents needed them. My mother has actually hit on my boyfriends and husband, then vilified my girl friends when she needed to feel superior and then used those same people as confidantes, telling them highly inappropriate things to elicit pity. 

I could have a place to live when it was convenient for stepmother but I was presently with a long list of duties to earn that keep. I was my dad's buddy when he needed someone to dump on and his whipping girl when he wanted a scapegoat. I could have opinions whenever he told me what they were. I could eat if they didn't need the money for something else. I could have hobbies if they didn't interfere with Cinderella's mountain of  housework. But I had to pay for them myself and find rides. They didn't care who with. That didn't go well. I could only feel good about what I'd done if my dad didn't need an ego boost which he got by cutting me down.  I could share problems only if they could find a way to weaponize or shame it. Otherwise they didn't care. 

When I sang in the bathroom, trying out a vibrato, my dad said I was showing off. (Why he was in the bathroom with me, never occurred). When I got a new haircut, my mom insulted it. Then when I had  long beautiful hair she had it all cut off. When I made supper for her family, my stepmother tsk-tsked that I served it 20 minutes "late." (We did not have meal times because she never cooked). When I asked if I'd done the household cleaning to his specifications, my dad said I was fishing for compliments. When I made the mistake of expressing interest in ballet, I was told I was too fat, they couldn't afford lessons (there was plenty money for everyone else's hobbies) and besides dancing was immoral (!). My mother let her other daughter watch "Halloween" when she was 5.  And then when we chose Lord of the Rings when she stayed the night, she said it was evil and the devil was making her spirit restless. When I wore a bikini she said I was flaunting. When she wore one, it was fine. 

My dad so insulted my acting ability that I just kept quiet about the plays I was in. They came to see me in a Shakespeare show and while everyone else's family was congratulating their kids, mine just lookee pursed-lips disapproving and said it was "sinful." And yet my dad sang and played his violin very theatrically. He never wanted to hear about his grandkids' achievements, yet when we visited, all he could talk  about was "his" radio show, brag, brag, brag. When I did something that gave others' joy, it was "selfish attention-seeking." When he did things, in his big, self-important way, it was selflessly serving God. 

I got all kinds of confusing, manipulative, gaslighting messages about every single person I ever met. Unsafe, unscrupulous, unhinged and coercive people (including their creepy friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses) were pushed on me as good for me. Meanwhile actually good for me people were attacked, belittled and lied about. It just occurred to me today how my parents drove a wedge between me and all of those people whenever they could. More on that later. 

So where does that leave me now? Completely clueless as to what healthy needs and wants are. And baffled by and ashamed of my talents and gifts. And gaslit about being unable to do things they said I failed at. I fear doing anything and have zero confidence in my own abilities. I'm sure I'll screw it up because they always said I did. To be quite honest, I have no idea what I actually do well or poorly. If someone praises me, I hear only my (very show-off-y) parents voices scolding me for being "a show off." So I demure because God forbid I do that. 

When asked my preferences, I demur to others. I feel guilty for saying I want spaghetti for supper, even if I'm cooking it. I over-enthuse about everyone else's hobbies. I overcompensate so they'll never feel any consequences of their own behavior. I listen ad nauseum to their opinions and interests. No one ever asked about mine. And were bored to death and told me so, if I mentioned it. They weren't interested in anything I did, unless they could insult or exploit it. Nothing is sacred--school success, graduations, wedding, children, funerals. When my dad died, my mom never once said condolences. Her only thought was what she'd get from his estate and how she and her new husband of 50 years could lay hands on his social security. I am not kidding. 

So nothing escapes their greed and exploitation. In tomorrow's post, I'll tell a story about one such experience. Which might be of the weirdest of my life of weird. 

How narcissist parents' undermine confidence and embed self-doubt in their children

Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal CPTSD from narcissist parents' abuse, I'm exploring how these abusive parents undermine confidence and plant self-doubt in their children. I'll also show how they foster chronic low self-esteem and insecurity, which renders the adult child unable to make decisions without paralyzing fear, anxiety and guilt. I know they do this because I lived under a reign of terror from four malignant narcissist parents. So without further ado, here are some of the many dirty tricks narcissistic parents use to cripple their children. 

Cruel double standards. I don't even know where to begin detailing the many ways they double deal with the child. Suffice it to say that any wrong thing they do to the child is right. For them to do. Any good thing the child does is wrong. They demand service from her and it's  never good enough. Meanwhile they deprive her of basic life  necessities. And NEVER serve her. And any good or right thing the child needs or should have, is not only withheld, she's selfish to need it. If she sings in the shower, she's fishing for compliments. But dad playing his violin is serving God. If mom's boyfriends attacks the child, it's all fine. If the child resists, she's disobedient. 

Parentification AND infantilization. Yep, both. Like Cinderella, who might be the OG scapegoat prototype, the narcissist wicked stepmother and ugly sisters make her both wait on and care for them (parentify) and play subservient idiot child (infantilize). And like our heroine, neither slipper fits.  

Exaggerating the child's normal childhood behaviors into horrific crimes. The child moves, looks, says, does THINKS (yes they read minds) something, anything, NOTHING, that sets the narc off. My dad once beat me for je ne sais quoi. Literally, I don't know what. I've raked myself over the coals for years because I've never dared say dad was the problem. But he was. But then, if confronted, they...

Minimize, dismiss and lie away their own truly horrific behavior. They blame the CHILD because THEY threw a hissy fit and made a fool of themselves. The child is "showing off" or "holding grudges" "pouting" etc, etc, if she reacts in any way other than humiliated. Even crying gets her scolded for being "too sensitive" or "overreacting for attention." 

Constant questioning. Not to find answers or because they want to learn. Oh no, these aren't humble people. They know it all. Including your mind and motives. They question your choices and poke holes in your ideas to run you into the ground. To make you feel bad or stupid. They interrogate to break you down, like you have some kind of guilty secret to hide. Which after awhile of this inquisition, you start to think you do. 

Constant nagging, patronizing and heckling. They pester the child with endless chores, "duties" and responsibilities, most of which aren't age appropriate or are someone else's job. All of which are too many for one adult let alone child. No one else shares the load, not even the adults. I lived with "mental load" as a child. They don't help but they do find fault a lot. They condescendingly nit pick over tiny flaws in chores they never lifted a finger with. I had to mop the floor on hands and knees and scrub with a toothbrush, the baseboards. My bossy, hypercritical stepmother had ridiculous standards for me but she never got her fat self down her HER hands and knees. They repeat ad nauseum your list of expectations like you're too dumb to have heard the first 900 times. If you say, "I know" you're being "lippy." They make you question your own abilities with this incessant hounding. All you do is never good enough. There's always "room for improvement" and if you did get it perfect, they won't tell you because they "don't want you to get a big head." While they are arrogant and big-headed AF. 

ALWAYs the servant, never the served. My stepmother met me at the door with a list of chores when I first "was allowed" to live with them. In their house. Not mine. Not a little celebration, no welcome home, just a bunch of backbreaking, exhausting work she didn't want to do and never would have done if it was her having to. It was made clear that my residence was conditional and I had to do to earn my keep. 

Fake clairvoyant. They feign the ability to read your mind to undermine your confidence. To make you auto-gaslight and second guess yourself. They hint at being able to "read" the dark reasons for your actions, such as how you "said yes but didn't mean it even though you did it because you didn't do with a true servant's heart even though you did do it you still got it wrong because you did it for attention not in humility.." Wha-wha-WWhattheactual???  How could I possibly have done all that and how would you know and WHY would slander me like that? Isn't it enough you got your shit done for you?? But, no, it's not. They must extract maximum suffering from you. You can't even smile because they twist it into you looking down on them?? It's like voodoo-y seance--y ESP-y with the googly hypnotic eyes.  None of which they really can do, just so you know. It's just smoke, mirrors and paranoia. But sadly, because you are a child, you believe them. Because charlatans don't need to be proficient at it, with children. They just need to be sick SOBs.  

Expect mind reading. So having said that, though they can't read minds, they expect you to. You must divine by some prescience, what they need, want, expect of you at any given moment.  They should not have to tell you. Because you should just KNOW his majesty's wishes. Actually you do a pretty good job because HRH is always on about himself and his needs and wants. But because they're always moving the target and rearranging the hoops, you don't. And you fall. My child, this is done on purpose just so you WILL fall.  This will keep you humble, always striving and enslaved to them. 

God's little Gestapo. I've called this God's KGB before too. Now, the fake clairvoyant is bad enough. But at least they know they're frauds on some level. But the batshittier ones, like my parents, believe, or try to make you believe they have a higher calling, a divinely-led insider knowledge. They are initiates of some secret society. That the almighty has given them dispensation to ferret out dirt on people. As God's little Gestapo agents, they machinate and speak in strange mumbo jumbo, they say you can't understand because you're not Chosen. (thank God for that!). They're not trying to make you repent. Narcissist Christians don't want that. Because then you'd be in their little club and they wouldn't be special anymore. No, they do this for good old garden variety public execution. Smacks very much of witchfinder general.  And as in witch trials, it's all nuts and nonsense. 

Assigning sinister motives to innocent things. And like the witchfinder, if they can't find dirt on you, they make it up. They plant evidence. They concoct the most lunatic explanations for perfectly rationale  things. It's absolutely demented. But if no one tells you that, you think you're the demented one. 

DARVO. Which sounds like a 1970s drug and which in a way, is. DARVO is (when confronted) Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. And the purpose, like a drug is to mask. It is laughable how lightning fast the offending narcissist can switch costumes to attacker then victim. Just like they were expecting and prepared for it. Dayum, Lady Macbeth, slow clap off the stage! 

Shell game with facts. And this is the real reason for all their covert ops. It's a big blame-shame-game cover-up they play to divert suspicion and censure off themselves by throwing it on someone else. Yanno, skunk smells it's own smell first kind of thing? 

Inappropriate and impossible expectations. Continually shifting demands. Pity parties. Vicious backstabbing. Nasty, surprise attacks. Dangerous set-ups. I just lumped all this ewww into one bullet point. I don't have the oomph to elaborate on each. They can speak for themselves. And you very savvy people don't need elaboration. You get it, sadly. Except just one word on the..,

Surprise attacks. Just, wow. You hear of people in Britain preparing for dawn raids during the war. But who expects their parents to launch a TET Offensive against their kids, huh??? And yet, they do. If I wanted to, I couldn't begin to detail all the sneaky nasty offensives they launched. And why? Why take out your kid? What good did it do you? You still died alone and afraid?? 

Maybe we need a key change here? Nawh, it's still very minor. 

Cutting out the legs from under the child. Narcissistic parents can't handle competition even from their kids. That includes us just being born. And other people loving us. They're seethingly jealous of us and we didn't even know we were competing. We were just happy and thinking mom was too. But oh no, if mom's pissed everyone will suffer. And mom's always pissed, jealous and resentful.  They do this to "cut you down to size" because you're so conceited, they say.  So they amputate the child's supports so she can't stand alone.  And then they laugh at her. 

Sabotaging good things. Narcissist parents are masterful at making shitshows of normal things. They drum up drama like a majorette. Unprovoked, they'll make vicious comments at a family dinner. They start fights at an Easter egg hunt. They humiliate the child at her school performance. My dad screamed at me at Christmas for going to the bathroom to try on my new sweater. After asking permission. And then told me to quit crying. He insulted me at graduation because "it's only a piece of paper." When all the other dads were hugging their daughters and almost bloody crying with pride. He said my solo was 
showing off. They leave everyone mouth gaped at their crazy behavior. But no one says anything. 

Warped, self-serving lies presented as reality. You might think I'm a little dense and maybe I am. But it took me till I was 60 to learn that narcissists are proverbial liars. And that my parents, especially my mom, lied every time she opened her mouth, pretty much. Or near as damn all, because if a person lies most of the time, you should assume it's all the time. They don't lie to protect their child but their own trashy ways. 

Draconian punishment. Narcissist parents love the upper hand, literally. My mother enjoyed smacking me in the face for no particular reason. Oh she said I was mouthy or whatever, but if that's the case, how come this constantly fawning, self-loathing kid has no memory of it? If I'd done something wrong, you can be sure I would. 

FOG: The narcissist parents' modus operandi is to maintain a continual gaslighting fog Fear Obligation and Guilt in her family. Everything is about her. If mother is upset everyone must flock to her aid. They OWE her, supposedly. 

Petty, immature, passive aggressive posturing. There is no low a malignant narcissist parent won't stoop to to get his way. He pouts, whines, tantrums, sulks, gets on his imaginary high horse, Lord's it over. Nobody actually did anything to him except give in. He sees to it that his children, especially the scapegoat, toes the mark, humors his vanity, plays the game and let's him win. 

False sense of power. Because everyone gives in, the narcissist thinks he's won. The great and powerful Oz fancies he has us all in our place. But we don't play along because he outsmarts us. He's just makes such an exhausting pain in the ass nuisance of himself that we give him his way so he'll shut up an go lay down. The only one who can't see what a fucking travesty he is, is him. 

Confusing and unsettling. Narcissist parents do and say bafflingly weird, disturbing icky things just to disturb their child. It's not accidental, it's intentional. They know it will upset their child and they get off on that power. 

Chaotic out of nowhere behavior. Narcissistic parents rule by chaos and confusion. My mother changed boyfriends more than most people change sheets. She would spring some crackheaded thing, like surprise, we're moving, on me with no preparation. I've had the rug pulled out so often that the floor under me is polished. She always managed to do this just when I was feeling okay to put the other foot down. She once threw a pie in my face at her company picnic. Come to think of it, she's thrown a lot of figurative pies, too. Just to see me gasp for breath. I think she found it funny to traumatize me. 

Manufactured stress put on the child and ONLY on the child. They deprive her of resources so she's tired and more malleable. They put waaaay too much work on the child leaving her barely enough time even for homework. They set impossible deadlines only she has to meet. They do time motion studies and set ridiculous standards for her that no one else has to let alone could, complete. 

Abrupt, arbitrary, extreme changes in the child's life with no warning or involvement of the child. My parents were legendarily irresponsible and self-servingly chaotic. It wasn't failure but unwillingness to launch. My mother says she never grew up, like that's a charming trait. It isn't. It's  hell to live with. She tells everyone she can't be held responsible and that others should just accommodate. Both my bio parents believed it was their right to live as they wished and everyone else's job clean up their messes and do for them.  Primarily their scapegoat child slave. 

Rumor-mongering. The parents pit people against the child with spiteful smear campaigns. Just for being. They spread lies that the child is too sensitive to their harsh criticism and too critical of their very wrong behavior. (Both are nonsense and couldn't coexist). The child is so browbeaten she wouldn't say boo to a goose. And she wouldn't know where to being finding fault with them because everything they do is selfish, manipulative and irresponsible. 

Terrorizing, threatening. Life for a child of narcissistically abusive parents is dark and foreboding. Nothing is just happy. Peaceful. Everything is weaponized, twisted and unsafe. When you live with your sleep-around preacher mom, her deadbeat boyfriend, her 15 y/o pregnant just had abortion about to have another psycho foster kid, her 26 y/o Vietnam drug addict boyfriend, a porno addict uncle and his pregnant girlfriend (living in your bedroom), plus assorted foster children YOU at 11 are supposed to parent, well, life ain't nothing like the neighbor's. It's a bloody paranormal. And that was just one little scrap in my crazy quilt life. 

Make the child look cuckoo. Please,  my friends, help me here. Leave me a comment if anything I've shared sounds off or weird to you. Because all this, THIS that I share, I can't begin to describe. I feel like a nutcase. I couldn't make it up if I wanted to. And yet it sounds, I don't know, not fake but surreal. I see all these images of life back then, so Mountain Dew, Hostess, Jif happy normal. But all I remember is hell and shoved in it. Seeing but not seeing, only feeling. 

Random rage fests. If you want to get everyone's attention (and scare the shit out of them), pitch a surprise bitch, was my dad and stepdad's motto. Target the already nervous, anxious child. My mom's and stepmom's weapon of choice was their passive-aggressive self-pity parties, thrown just because. A. These worked wonders at keeping me always on my toes, ready to jump in and save. I attended these events with presents, of care-taking, sympathy and fawning. 

Pretending their abuse is normal (gaslighting) and the child is abnormal if she protects herself. Which I rarely did, so no fears there. My mother would hit me for being "mouthy." Though as I've said before, I've no idea what I could or would have said to warrant a crack in the head. I didn't learn anything except fear and flinching. Then she'd cry on my shoulder how grama once slapped her. Then I slapped my daughter's face, not because it felt right or because "what's good enough for me is good enough for you" idiocy. I did it because my mother told me to and mother is always right. And then she accused me of doing what she told me to do, saying it was abusive. For me to do, not her. Two sets of rules. And then lied and said she never did hit me. I was making it up. The mind boggles at how quickly her stories change. 

Betrayal. Taking another child side against you and not even listening to yours, always. Then shaming you publicly for having a side. Twisting what you said or did into bad things. Lying about you. Setting you up. Making fun of you. Making you out to be some kind of demon when you're just a kid (you believe their version of you, over your own common sense, by the way) Reporting you for doing things you didn't do but she did. Always believing bad about you, even when the person who said it is a liar and it's in his best interest to lie about you to protect himself. Lying about you and calling you a liar. 

"Calling out" the child on things the parent actually did. I'll take to my grave things my kids did, not because they were terrible things. They're just kid stuff. But they might get misread. And they're no one's business. And mostly because they're my precious bebe. You do that for them. It would have been nice if someone had felt this way about me. But no, they called me out, like it was some fucking gotcha moment. Mufu, that is seriously nasty shit.  To call her out in general is messed up, but on things you did yourself?  Wow. Hell holds a special place.  

Force the child to ask permission for everything. To think, need, feel, want, decide. Then demand endless dogged service from her. I did not know till my husband told me that normal kids do not need to ask permission for everything. Not from parents and certainly not from a damn step-parent who she is waiting on hand and foot. She doesn't have to obey her lazy, jobless stepdad because it's "his house, his rules" because it's not his house. It's not his girlfriend's either. It's paid for with his girlfriend's daughter's child support. Her abusive stepfather does not have authority to demand anything of the child and certainly cannot kick her out of "his house." 

Making conditional what were my basic rights as a kid. I'll just let that marinate in its own juices a bit.

Brain damaging her so she thinks she's unable to cope without them. She must take all her cues from them because she's too stupid to decide for herself. Jesus Christ, they parentified you, which is a fancy way of saying make you parent them. Answer to and for them. Cover for them. Change their diapers. Wipe their faces. But yet somehow,  they also make you think you need them for the simplest of tasks. How, HOW?? (We need a revolution!)

Painting the child like some kind of monster. Malignant narcissistic parents make up stories about their kids to portray them as evil and themselves the long-suffering parents just trying their best. Nothing could be more bullshitty. The parents are the ones doing all the nasty shit they say about their child while she just tries to keep her head above water. 

Controlling everything even and especially things they have no business controlling or actual control of. They just make her think they have power they don't. Good God, there are not enough bottles of wine in this world to make it make sense. 

Seizing assets. Literally stealing, usurping and then wasting or ruining them. Narcissistic parents don't just waste their money. They insist on controlling then "speculating with" their kids as if it is their own. They feed the kid a line of BS that she's unable to manage so they'll have to manage for her. And they screw everything up. Because they're not able to organize a cheese roll let alone their own lives let alone anyone else's. They are inept. 

Bullying and coercive control. Everything about these people is bossy, pushy, autocratic, harsh. They say they have to be this way because it's the only way the child will cooperate. Cooperate,  hell, there's no cooperating with them. There's just rigid, militaristic obedience. 

Playing the hero. Narcissistic parents treat the child even in adulthood, like she's feeble. They don't look after her, mind. They never have. If she's feeble it's from harassment, exhaustion and depletion. They mess her up and then stand back tutting oh what a mess she is. Then they swoop in, not to help or rescue but to take charge and then gloat. 

Force her to live in awful situations. Life with my parents was very much like a POW camp. No rights, basic needs and rights (privacy, time to do homework, rest and sleep) spun as privileges. Everything had to be earned. And no matter how hard I tried I never earned it. They were completely transactional when it came to expectations for me. Things no child should be expected to do. The family dog ate better. Yet they reneged on their responsibilities. They withheld things that they owed as just basic parental duties. All I ever heard about were my duties to everyone else. Never anyone's duties to me. I was family when convenient and unpaid staff most of the time.

So what all this accomplishes is to create a pre-emptive fear of failure. As the child grows, she is  increasingly more anxious about making the simplest of decisions or performing the easiest of tasks. She feels obligated to obey parents long after she is no longer under their control. Yet she feels responsible to them to cover all their bad choices. She fears displeasing parents even when she is well into adulthood. There's a nagging confusing vague sense of impending doom. That somehow, no matter how sure she is of the rightness, of having her facts straight, of having done it all just so, it will fall apart. 

Her narcissistic parents have steadily and surely broken her down, weaponized her resilience to heap even more pressure on her, drained her resources, deprived her of necessities. They, who are well rested and well nourished have loads of energy to keep up the barrage against her which she hasn't the strength to resist. They have orchestrated such toxic and frightening scenarios that every day feels like a fight for survival. A struggle to avoid drowning in despair but also to keep up appearances. Because God forbid anyone actually see and acknowledge and try to do something to help her out of the hell they're keeping her in. 

The malignant narcissists' goal is to steal all the child's light and power and what they can't steal, they damage. This renders her useless, or makes her feel she's useless for anything but service to them. Boom. There it is. Their endgame. Pathetic. Because spoiler alert. They don't ever acknowledge or apologize. They die and take your pain and shame to their damn ( I wish we had more swear words, more rocks) graves. If you get an apology be wary, be VERY wary. I got one once. It ain't worth the paper to blow your nose on. It was a lame joke that made it all so much worse. Because now I know she knew what she was doing and she didn't care. 

Addendum: I know, each of these is becoming its own self-contained Sheol. Sometimes these articles get away from me as awful memory collides with awful memory. Over and over again. Each gets longer and longer till sometimes I wonder if can ever stop. I wish I could stop the nightmares, the dry socket ache, the soul cancer sick pain. Please believe I'm not trying to trauma dump or scare you. For the first time, ever, I've been saying what happened. What has been buried under, cleared away, paved over, built on, for going on 60 years.

How narcissist parents' abusive double standards and gaslighting broke my brain

 Hello my friends. Today on the path toward healing CPTSD, I'm looking at how my narcissistic parents' abusive double standards and gaslighting about it all, broke my brain. That's not a figure of speech. The adult brain of a traumatized child shows physical damage from the corrosive cortisol and adrenaline from constant stress and chaos. We are dry drowning in all the fear, obligation, guilt and crisis they flood us with . Our coping abilities are crippled from neglect, deprivation, hypocrisy, manipulation, selfish demands of parents. We are always confused and haunted by all the manufactured chaos and weaponized anxiety our parents put on us. We become hypervigilant. 

We bring this damage with us into adulthood. We are chronologically grown up, but the wounded child within has never been able to escape and develop. She is trapped inside us because she was never allowed to be, to need, to want, to express herself, to live. We lack identity because it was stolen from us by greedy, demanding people who took advantage of our youth, dependence and vulnerability. Everything is backwards and upside down for us. Because we were being harmed by the very people who were supposed to be protecting us. We were serving, nurturing, defending, caring and doing all for our parents what they were supposed to do for us. They said I owed them everything. But they owed me nothing. I was an endless slot machine, paying out with nothing being paid in. 

And one of the most disturbing things they groomed me to think I owed them was taking their burdens on me. I sacrificed my all, on their altar. I gave it all away to them. And I took responsibility for all their actions. I was pretty  much born an adult, never being permitted to act or grow like a normal child. And I was born their parent, always expected to not only do for them but also cover for all their foolish, selfish choices. 

And to make it even more baffling, I was also their child, not in the caring for way, in the possessive way. They owned me, body, mind and spirit. I was endlessly repurposed into whatever each needed at the moment. And because they were divorced and remarried, that mushroomed into four people, plus their new kids, that I had to wait on. And the demands were ever-changing, without warning. And I was just expected to know what was expected and provide it. 

So I had to think like an adult and parent when I was a kid. Like a parent, I had to excuse their behavior. And that's strange for many reasons. Because parents don't excuse as in ignore bad behavior. They have to correct it. But I could never do that. I couldn't even say that what they were doing hurt. I had to be completely on board with everything Jack, Ginny, Nancy and Bill did not matter how dangerous it was to me. Because I had to also be subservient and under their rule like a child. I had to say it was okay by me when it wasn't. I couldn't even defend myself, let alone call them out. And then when things went wrong, I was taught to exonerate, excuse, explain away, expunge, justify and then accept responsibility for it. 

I was both savior and scapegoat, servant and slave, surrogate parent and spouse. I carried them all, all my life with them. And now I've cut ties, and two have died. Which by the way, I've heard how I'd miss them when they were gone and regret missed opportunities. False. I don't miss them any more than I'd miss an abscess. It's so much easier without them around. I don't regret missed opportunities because there never were opportunities, only expectations. And I never let them down. What I miss is me. I want my childhood, peace of mind, and self back. 

But even with none of them in my life anymore. They're still in my head and in my nightmares. I still feel responsible for them all. I feel all the guilt and shame over their actions, as if they were mine. Literally, my brain is so damaged that I am constantly confused. My memories are shot to hell by decades of gaslighting. And it's that gaslighting plus the double standards that caused the trouble. My dream now gaslight me that I actually did the wrong things they did. 

So how did my narcissistic parents manage to substitute me as the sacrificial lamb? Therein lies the power of gaslighting. By indoctrinating me that I was the problem and the cause of all theirs problems they were able to Frankenstein my brain. They did crazy, outlandish things no one does let alone a parent. They were so insane that no one would believe it happened. And my devilishly cunning and deceitful parents knew this. 

They purposely broke my ability to process all the shit they did. They wrote false narratives which they implanted in my head. They lied and brainwashed and got me all mixed up. And because a vulnerable child can't face the fact that their parents are actually the child's enemy bent on destroying them, the child has to protect herself. So she lets them spin lies painting themselves as victims and her as the perpetrator. 

And being a very conscientious child, I worked for the rest of my life to make up for all the bad things they said I'd done. I let them endlessly use me because in my gaslit mind, I created the problem. And they took full advantage of this confusion on my part. No amount of service could fix this. They kept me dancing by withholding love and forgiveness. Now I see I did nothing that needed forgiving. But they did. And again, my young mind had no ability to conceptualize arrogant, self-centered, cruel manipulation on such a grand scale. By parents. 

In my confusion and exhaustion, I somehow misfiled experiences in the wrong memory drawer. I put their wrongdoing in my drawer. I took on myself, their wrongs. My broken mind remembered their actions as my own. I just realized that last week. I'm 61. So for six decades those recollections have lain in the wrong drawer, toxifying. My dreams have been trying to properly sort them. Night after night, they show me endless images of myself, horrified and ashamed but I'm never shown what I did to feel this way. My dreams also show me in impossibly difficult, unsafe, gross situations with endless inappropriate demands. I thought the former was memories and the latter were consequences. 

Now that I look closer, I see it's the other way around. The former dreams are consequences of my parents' cruel brainwashing. that I'm never shown what I did because I did nothing. They did. The shame I'm remembering is theirs. Not that I've never done wrong, obviously. But I don't dream about that because I've recognized, admitted, humbled myself, apologized and made amends. I dream about wrong that was done to me because the guilty parties have never done any of that. I think my mind is trying to help me see that it is not my fault what happened to me. 

 And the dreams of being overburdened, made responsible for everyone and everything, being abused and neglected, well, those are memories.