Hey my friends. Rereading yesterday's post about odd and surprising ways to heal from CPTSD caused from childhood trauma, I realized I missed the oddest, most controversial but surprisingly most healing, one of all. And this is going to cause some raised eyebrows and questioning. But it seems to fly in the face of scripture, God's will and Christian teaching. Seems being the operative word.
And that way is by getting mad and staying mad at the perpetrators of narcissistic abuse and at the abuse itself. Now I know, if you're steeping in conventional wisdom about God's plan, you'll be waving your hands and saying "no, no, Mar! Anger is wrong!" And certain kinds are. So are certain behaviors we do when in anger. Such as the vicious, selfish, exploitative, abusive anger wreaked on me in various ways by four covert, grandiose and malignant narcissistic parents. That was wrong. This is different.
And if you've never been abused by a self-centered parent, I'm glad for you. You have learned that God is love. You've felt loved, wanted and cared for. Maybe not always but for the most part. I didn't. Scripture was weaponized against me by my parents to dehumanize me and aggrandize themselves. But even those who see God as loving are misreading scripture.
God doesn't say don't be angry. He himself was angry. He says don't SIN in your anger. And that's where the anger I was subjected to and the anger I must feel about that part company. My anger is righteous, theirs is self-righteous. I'm not sinning in my anger. It's helping me to stop sinning by quitting hating myself and beginning to love myself. To stop enabling this demonic abuse, neglect, abandonment, exploitation, endangerment, scapegoating and shaming of me. This is me clearing the temple of money-changers who are desecrating my Heavenly Father's house.
My self-absorbed parents were sinning, arrogantly, bombastically and blatantly. Yet they believed themselves fully qualified to preach to others how to live their lives. Which translated to a lot of shaming of their listeners. They bound others up to burdens they didn't carry. They were hypocrite pharisees. They loudly and proudly talk the Christian talk (in a weird, wrong and twisted way) but don't walk it.
My father used to routinely tell me that he would be committing suicide at some point. STARTING WHEN I WAS 5. This was while he was missioning to others about the "good news" of salvation. (?!?!)I would cry and beg him not to (jolt of narcissistic supply for him) He would coldly and cruelly keep twisting the knife till I stopped reacting and just went numb. Because that's what he seemed to want. And then he shamed me for being unfeeling toward him.
And then when I was an adult, I, not surprisingly, struggled with similar demons. However I fought them instead of exploiting them as he did. I, stupidly I see now, reached out to him for help. I foolishly thought he'd feel sad that his little girl was hurting so. But when I told him how I was battling suicidal thoughts, he suggested that maybe I should just end it all. And I realized that it was never about me. It was always The Jack Show. And that he would see me dead and never bat an eyelash.
My mother ran "good news" clubs for kids (which never happened) while cheating on my dad, leaving me alone to fend for myself and putting me in the path of dangerous people. She ran a foster care home which turned out to be more of a brothel. And left me to care for all of the kids alone. But still played the organ in church. In 1974, this was not only immoral and illegal, it was completely countercultural. No other kid I knew lived anything like this. If my extended family knew, they'd have been horrified. But no one bothered to find out and I never told them.
These are just two of the countless freaky things they did to me. I lived in this disturbing parallel universe in one way or another, all my life with them. I was subjected to very weird things other kids couldn't even dream of. They were always scapegoating and gaslighting me about it. So I faked it was all good, buried the shame deep and just powered on. And was shoved further and further down the rabbit hole of misery. I can virtually guarantee that no other kid has a backstory as unusual as mine.
Till I finally began to take my hands off my eyes and realize how bad it really was. And how messed up my mind was. And this brings us to the anger which I now must feel. I have to stop feeling anger and hatred toward myself. It wasn't my fault. It was theirs. I didn't bring this on myself. They did. I had all the obligation to them and they believed they had none to me.
Because my life was so flip-flopped from what was normal. my way out will look different too. Because no one took care of me, and I had to care for them, I have to reverse that and start caring for me and stop enabling them. And that's where the anger comes in. I have to get angry for the little girl left behind in Alaska, made to wait on strangers my parents brought into the house, left out and yet put in the middle of it all. I need to get furious that a little kid didn't even get enough to eat or a bed.
And that's where my healing begins. It's only when I can see how wrong this is that I will be able to fumigate the gaslighting, or actually gassing of my brain. I need to stop tolerating, excusing and taking the blame on myself. And it's God who has made me see all this.
So if my way looks different or sounds "wrong" don't judge. You haven't walked in my shoes. If anyone's road to healing makes you uncomfortable, take a look in the mirror. Ask yourself why. Why would you find fault with and not encourage them to get better? Are you defending perpetrators and shaming the victim? If so, shoo, be off, flying monkey.
Believe me, you could never gaslight or shame me any more than I've been gaslit and shamed already. You could never hurt me more than I've hurt myself. It needs to end here or I'll drown in despair. And I am pretty sure God doesn't want that. I think that He is angry on my behalf. I don't think He likes how they treated me.
So I need to get angry on my behalf and on behalf of the little girl whom every stood by as she was wounded. Will I sin in my anger? Possibly. I'm human, not perfect. But I'm less likely to sin as much as I was sinned against. Not like Lear, but like the lamb who knows what it feels like and could never be as viciously angry as those who were angry at her. And which caused me to have to step outside me comfort zone and be angry. At people who made me angry in the first place. Lead not your children to wrath, scripture says.
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