Hi friends. I'm on a quest to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parental abuse, enmeshment, scapegoating, neglect, exploitation, parentification, scapegoating and gaslighting. And one piece of the puzzle I've not talked much about is parental rage, both overt and passive aggressive. I'm looking today at how I developed CPTSD from being raised by angry narcissistic and histrionic people. And also how that carries over into adulthood, living with a partner with chronic rage and IED (intermittent explosive disorder).
I come from a background of chaos. My "family life" was a constantly changing, complicated sticky mess. My histrionic, narcissistic parents were all over the place. We moved constantly, were periodically homeless, frequently jobless and into one odd situation after another (self-proclaimed missionaries to Alaska, running foster care homes). Both of them had Peter Pan Syndrome (refusal to grow up and act like adults) Then they divorced and married equally immature, selfish people. All of them were angry and resentful. My mother and dad's wife were passive-aggressively angry and my dad and mom's husband were full of rage and exhibited what we now call intermittent explosive disorder.
My mom and stepmom would pout and sulk if they didn't get their way. Or just because. I was expected to fix, please and cater to them, like a parent. They were both lazy and left a lot of their work to me, including raising their new kids. My mom didn't display it so much but then she didn't often get crossed. She just carried on with her bizarre lifestyle and I fell in line. When she hooked up with her boyfriend, all that changed. He moved in and hit the ground running with the abuse, neglect, etc.
I laugh when I think of just how much gaslighting went into that shitshow. He'd lost his job for hitting a supervisor, though he said he got laid off. He who prided himself on being able to ferret out a liar, lied his way through everything. He sponged off my mom and my child support, never holding down a job much after that. I had to get a job at 15 to buy my own clothing and Kotex. While she bought him all kinds of toys. She never took my part and let him bully, mock sexually assault me, lie about and scream at me over stuff he lied about me doing. He kicked me out at 16 for coming home an hour late. Because it was "his house" mind you. I never called a house "my home" after he moved in. It was always theirs. Even though I did the lions' share of work to keep said house. They're divorced now but live together. They can't stand each other. She lied and gaslit me about it never happening on the one occasion that I brought it up. She only ever talks about all he's done to her and never what he did to me. And feels sorry for herself.
My dad's anger was loud and randomly explosive. He'd come unglued usually when he wife was pouting. She'd triangulate us, sullenly whispering to him about some way I'd failed her. That would set him off and he'd lash out at me (for what I never found out). He'd say "you upset your stepmother." He'd then expect me to somehow make her happy. He never asked me outright to do things. He'd broadly hint, saying things like "maybe Mary could help?" and then invite her to think up something that I might do.
I'd cry with shame, though I never identified why. I'd beg her to tell me what I could do for her. It had to be pretty difficult for her to think up something because I was already doing all the work. But she managed. And I'd run off to do it. And it just got rolled into my growing chore list. What I don't get is how, if I was failing so badly, how could I possibly be competent enough to satisfy her? Anyway, one thing was certain. My dad wasn't going to do anything about it. In his mind, I screwed up his first marriage and he wasn't going to let me screw up the second. They lived and died despising each other.
Come to it, that's how my mom feels about me too. She has her real family in which I have no place. How dare I exist to mess up her narcissistic fantasy? But yet, if I wasn't around who would be in the hot seat? Who would they find to blame for their stupid choices? I now see that no matter what a buzzkill I was to their delusions, I was also very convenient as a ready scapegoat, enabling them to never take responsibility for themselves or their shiny new families.
I know I promised to write about how this affects me now, with a partner with chronic rage. But I'm just too tired. This dismantling of the false reality they stuck me in is exhausting. I'll blog more on that later. Thanks for reading.
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