Hello my friends. I'm working to heal from a lifetime of narcissistic parental abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, enmeshment, parentification, invalidation, triangulation and gaslighting. Today I'm going to explore how narcissistic parents distort their scapegoat child's reality. One essential tool they use is double entendre. They purposely misuse words to deceive and confuse the child. They speak with forked tongues. They use words contrarily and weaponize benign words against the child. Unbeknownst to the child, they are actually saying the opposite of what the child believes them to mean.
Case in point in my life is the concept of family. Or actually, let's take it back a step, to include the concept of parents and children and the nature of their relationship. My "parents" called themselves this when referring to things expected OF me. I had to do things because "I'm your parent." " You have to obey me." etc. Which would be sort of normal except that they didn't act like parents.
I was also expected to parent them. They made very immature, unsafe choices and left me alone in countless dangerous situations. I was a more reliable babysitter at 10 than they ever were as parents. They confided deeply personal, uncomfortable things in me, as a kid. (which I've learned is emotional incest). They expected adult behavior from me that they didn't model. And in situations most actual adults would struggle with. They scolded and shamed me for acting like a kid. So I stopped. I just played the "guess what they want now" game. The stress of these constantly shifting roles has damaged me in irreparable ways.
Then add to that, their divorce and remarriage, which are other words they misused against me. They both lied about why they got divorced. My mother claimed abuse which didn't happen. She was actually cheating on my dad. They told me it was God's will and made me feel like it was my fault. Then they told me I was lucky because they had a "good" divorce. Then they married other very dysfunctional people and threw me at them to be used and abused.
So back to the word "parent." They called these people parents as in, I had to serve, respect and obey them. Not as in they had to respect, care for or parent me. I "owed" them life, loyalty and they owed me nothing. Now all four of them were exploiting me each with his or her own unique spin. I was pushed back and forth among four adults who acted like irresponsible teenagers.
And then they had kids. Now I had siblings, they said. But that was just to get me to serve (parent, wait on, nanny) their new kids. It was made clear that I was only in the "family" on sufferance. I had to earn my keep. It was never my house, I just had to take care of it. I was an unpaid housekeeper, nanny, cook and caregiver before age 14. I was not cared for. I was hungry, cold, homeless and excluded. What was expected of me was optional for them.
Another irony was that while I was expected to act, think and work like an adult, I was also treated like a foolish, immature child. I was both infantilized and parentified. I was expected to abide by very rigid, inappropriate rules and shamed and shunned if I stepped out of line. At 16, I was working to support my mother's husband and family while going to school. But still given a ridiculously early curfew. Not because my stepfather needed me home for anything. He slept all day. Or because he cared about me. He just liked throwing his weight around. When I came home late, he kicked me out of "his" house. I was left to fend for myself.
When I was 20 and in college, holding down a job and student teaching, I was made to co-sleep with my dad's and his wife's baby. I had to be home every night at 9:30 to babysit. Even with back injuries, I had to do all their housework including ironing, lugging a heavy vacuum, mopping floor on hands and knees and scaling snow hills to get frozen diapers off the line. Despite doing everyone's work, I was still treated like a naughty child, scolded, shamed, ignored and made fun of.
You might wonder how they got away with it. The secret, I've learned is to keep it small and not let anyone see just how badly you're treating someone. And lie a lot. We never had company over. No one saw that I was sleeping on a cot in the baby's room. They presented an image of me as the problem. Occasionally they were caught out. But I still didn't see how wrong this was because they had me so gaslit.
This odd parallel universe, of being adult child and child adult went on all my life. I continued to rise or lower to their expectations, as needed. Lots is trapped in my head. I didn't see it for what it was. But some incidents are beginning to show me the way out. My husband and a few trusted friends are helping me understand that they presented a false image of reality to me. And this brings us back to misuse of words.
My mother has always called her new family (husband and children with him) "my family." She would come over and then say she had to get home to her family. It was said very intentionally, to show us that we were NOT her family. She would say it in such a way as to sound like we were selfishly keeping her from them. She behaved as if the slightest amount of babysitting was a monstrous expectation on our part, though I cared for her children, free of charge, all my life.
And the funny thing is that she usually came over to get something, not give it. I've been my mother's sounding board, sex therapist, and dumping ground all my life. And they don't like it when you have a spouse or kids of your own either. They get jealous because you're supposed to parent them, not anyone else. That's the flip-flop nature of narcissist parents. We want what we want from you when we want it.
Every time she came over, she'd bend my ear with complaints. One time, my youngest daughter wanted me to play and my mother snapped and said "quit bothering your mother. Sometimes I need her to be my mother too (?!?)" What went around never came around. I'd give loving family support and care (often inappropriately too much) but did not receive it. I was family when it suited them. I was outsider when I needed anything.
And one thing to know when dealing with narcissist parents is that it will ever be thus. They don't give much and never without expecting much more in return. Their greed knows no bounds. You can never be, do or give enough to fill their gaping black holes. For that reason, I've been forced to cut contact, to stop my very natural and generous giving. Because it only comes back to bite me. No good deed goes unpunished with narcissist parents.
I'm sorry to sound so defeatist but there it is. I didn't ask for it to be this way. I wish there was another way. I'd have liked to have a more normal, healthy family of origin. But they didn't. They liked me enslaved. What I had to finally do is to realize that this wasn't good for me. Or my family. I couldn't be a healthy person or parent being so enmeshed with them. So I'm cutting the netting.
I'm trying to find the me in all this "family." I'm writing the script instead of just letting them feed my lines. I'm determining how I want to interact with them instead of hopping through their weird, constantly changing hoops. I don't want to be their perpetual parent OR child. I'm an adult. I want to be me. If that's good enough for someone, fine. If not, also fine. Take it or leave it. Actually, at this point, I prefer they just leave it. I don't want their version of family anymore.
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