Hey friends, piggybacking on the last post, I'm looking today at how, after parental narcissistic abuse, I'm not reparenting but OG parenting myself. There is a lot of talk in childhood trauma survival about reparenting the wounded inner child. But if you missed out on a lot of it originally, as I did, you need to start from scratch. Especially if you were taught a lot of wrong things and gaslit about what was actually happening.
Therapist and Youtuber Patrick Teahan and I must telepathically channel each other. Because just as I began to consider the many deficits I had in upbringing, he makes a video on developmental delays experienced due to abuse and neglect (which is just another form of abuse, thanks Patrick for affirming that). I've heard it called brain damage which is so accurate too.
I can't remember any time that my life, up to early adulthood with my parents and their new spouses and families didn't include multiple forms of abuse. There was physical, sexual, emotional, mental, social, financial and medical abuse. At various times I was abandoned, endangered, exploited, gaslit, manipulated, shamed, parentified, scapegoated and always neglected. I was subjected to Draconian punishments for minor to nonexistent infractions. I was expected to do kinds of very adult things since around age 4 or 5. I was left to wander alone with no supervision, throughout my life . I was left out and left behind and regularly lied to. I was subjected to incredibly inappropriate adult behavior. I was gaslit that this was okay because my mom or dad was doing it but that others were wrong to. There was a looooot of hypocrisy.
I was not taught to take care of myself. In fact, I was systematically indoctrinated not to care for myself. That it was sinful and selfish. My place was to care for others, to wait on, serve and let them hurt and exploit me. I was told that my normal kid behavior was wicked and selfish. Punishment was Draconian and cruel. I learned that to think or feel was wrong. If I expressed frustration or questioned, I was showing off or being "lippy." I had my mouth washed out with soap when I was 5 and by 8, was getting slapped across the face on a regular basis. I still don't know what I did or said that was wrong. Yet I was expected to know how to do things that many adults couldn't do, without any training. I spent a lot of time on my own, except when I had chores to do. Which was a lot. But even then, they pretty much ignored me, unless I randomly annoyed them. This happened a lot without warning too. And again, I still don't know what I did to upset them.
So in all of this, I learned a lot of very dangerous things about myself, the world, and my place in it. I learned to expect to be hurt and exploited and that was what God wanted. What I didn't learn were , healthy coping skills and survival skills. I also had no social skills. I was used to watching my mom and dad and their spouses for cues. And that didn't serve me well. They did and said a lot of weird things I discovered did go over too well outside their little narcissistic fantasy worlds. They had a lot of odd ideas that didn't fit in well either. And being narcissists, they often behaved in awkward ways.
I know you might think, oh yeah, all parents are weird to a kid. But it wasn't that. They weren't overprotective or anything like that. They weren't protective at all. They didn't care what I did so long as I was around to do the work. It was other adults who thought they were weird: kind of show-offy, oddly flirty, melodramatic, pouty, loudly Christian but also provocative and overtly sexual. Off behavior around kids. It wasn't me that thought so. I was always team parents. They could do no wrong in my eyes. I'll blog more on this later.
The long and short of it is that I got zero, zilch, nada good and a lot of bizarre examples, of how be with other people. I had to kind of separate "real world" from "parent world" because the two were so different. I had to juxtapose how they did things and how everyone else around me (including their parents) was doing things. I had to be puppet-like, rigidly obedient, subservient and military respectful at home. I could never say how different my life outside home was. I could never bring problems home. They didn't care what happened as long as I played my part.
Dissociation and cognitive dissonance became my norm. I saw what was going on around me. I could see how polar opposite much of my life was. I was continually bewildered by my parents very unparental care of me vs. their apparent need for me to care for them. I saw other kids be kids with fairly reasonable expectations while I had all these adult things I was supposed to do. I saw other kids and adults react negatively to my parents' immoral and unsettling behavior. Yet I could never articulate that it was. It was wrong but okay because they did it. It was like living in parallel universes with very dissimilar rules, both of which were baffling to me.
Living in this constant flux, had a disastrous effect on me. It caused my mind to existentially fracture. Then factor in all the neglect, gaslighting and constant nightmares. I literally believed that whatever bad I got was good enough for who it was for. There were many times when I did not know reality from illusion. I still have trouble sorting it out.
And factor in that it was very dangerous for me to express anything contrary to them. I was horribly embarrassed for example, that my mom was living with her boyfriend and that they behaved in rude, uncouth and immoral ways. She moved her brother and his girlfriend into my bedroom. They smoked, drank, cursed, partied and no one worked. It was worse because we went to church every Sunday and she considered herself a model Christian.
But in 1972, where I lived, no one did this that I knew of. It was considered trashy, Christian or not. I know people were talking about her, calling her loose and accusing her of "running around." Which she was and had been for years. But how does a child process all that? What kind of a terrible daughter would I be if I said anything.
But I had to just paste a fake smile on and pretend it was okay. It wouldn't do to question my mom or do anything to thwart her getting what she wanted. Even if it meant me getting really busted up in the process. And with her loose cannon boyfriend whom she pitted against me and anyone who crossed her, I definitely wasn't safe. Better to just play along and wear the perma-grin.
So this is getting to novel length, lol. And I haven't really even touched on parenting vs. reparenting. I'll blog more about it but for now I'll end with this. When all you've gotten is shit in the upbringing department, better to throw it all out and begin fresh. That's what I'm trying to do.
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