Hi friends. I'm finally sharing about childhood trauma from narcissistic parental abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, toxic shaming, family scapegoating, exploitation, manipulation, triangulation, invalidation, parentification, enmeshment, intimidation, weaponizing of God and gaslighting about it all. Four narcissistic parents, two biological and their two new partners, wreaked havoc in my life, leaving me with permanent brain damage and CPTSD.
I know, you might be saying, wait, brain damage? I could see sadness and fear, but actual physical brain damage? Isn't that a bit extreme? Yes and yes. Continual emotional abuse and trauma damages the brain in extremely disturbing ways. Here's how that happens and what it means for adult CPTSD sufferers.
Stress is hard on adults. It's harder on kids who've developed no coping skills. And that's just stress over things beyond anyone's control: natural disasters, job loss, death of loved ones. Unnecessary or manufactured stress, such as that caused by unreasonable, immature, narcissistic parents, is particularly difficult. And complicated. Unnecessary chronic stress is unbearable.
Children who live with self-centered parents endure constant unnecessary stress. My childhood was one of constant and needless upheaval. Selfish parents were constantly disrupting my life, running off on wild goose chases, making irrational choices, leaving me in strange places with strange people, putting me in risky and dangerous situations, leaving me unattended, neglecting my basic care, moving every few months. They divorced when I was 6 after moving us to Alaska on a whim to "mission to the Indians." That was the easy part.
And then all hell broke loose. They divorced and immediately began hooking up one weirdo after another. My mom actually began that when I was around 6 and still married to my dad. He was off on his own on some narc fantasy or other. If you think that didn't cause anxiety, being in a completely foreign place with mommy on daddy and daddy too busy preaching to give a damn about me. And us moving every week or so, not knowing where my next meal was coming from.
Then my mom moved her then-boyfriend into our house when I was 10. And they both married people who were just as self-centered and dysfunctional as they were. People I was made to not only serve but also parent. I've been slave, surrogate spouse, surrogate parent, scapegoat for them all. I can't remember a time when I wasn't being abused, neglected, abandoned, endangered, triangulated, exploited, bullied, intimidated, invalidated, shamed and gaslit by them, each with his or her own secret recipe.
I was anxious, afraid, confused and uncertain. Or full. Or comfortable. Or not in pain or discomfort. Food, medical care, love, warmth were in short supply. Stability, non-existent. I was always afraid of displeasing four people all demanding odd, dangerous, inappropriate things from me. And when their kids came along, make that nine people. I was shoved back and forth. Houses came and went. Never my home though. I was always there on sufferance and earning my keep, always expected. Harsh, unprovoked punishment came out of nowhere. Shaming was constant.
I was never at ease. Never not stressed. And if stress releases cortisol and adrenaline, I was a human fountain of them. I was always poised for problems, someone's wrath or mocking or humiliating or disapproval or passive-aggressive venom. I don't know what it is not to live in crisis mode. And all that stress releasing all that cortisol had corroded my brain. It's shot my nerves to hell. It destroyed my ability to differentiate joy from pain, my problem from theirs, truth from lie, reality from gaslighting, me from them. I don't know where others stop and I begin. With them, there was no end and I as a distinct person did not exist. So I don't know that I do. I give too much. I give in too much. I tolerate WAAAAAYY too much. And I expect little.
And you know what angers me so much? It was all so damn unnecessary!! None of their other kids lived with such chaos. And I'm glad they didn't. But why me? What good did any of it do any of them? My dad and his wife died as they lived, selfish, delusional, bitter and blaming. The two that are left divorced and hate each other. They just sit in their house, resenting and demanding and lying. None of them loved each other. But they loved me less. No good came from it and my life was destroyed.
And now it's on me to try to bring some good from the shambles they made of my brain. I've got to constantly rethink and relearn. I've got to accept they didn't care about me, and only used me to get what they wanted. I've got to find a way to stop it hurting, to stop gaslighting myself. Dammit, I'm tired and sick of it.
At least one good thing, I'm pretty good at faking happiness. Most people who know me, don't realize what shame and pain I carry. I don't want to bring them down. But it doesn't make it go away or get any better.
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