Hello friends. Recently I shared how narcissistic parental rage creates Complex (also called childhood) post-traumatic stress disorder. Now I'm delving into how living with someone else's chronic anger and intermittent explosive disorder triggers my CPTSD reactions. Childhood trauma creates of vicious downward spirals of rage, shame, guilt and more anger. Here's how.
So part of my childhood trauma developed from my four narcissistic parents' anger problems. My mother and stepmother were often passive-aggressively angry, resentful and sullen. My mother masked hers with a veneer of "Christian holiness" that cracked and spewed toxins when she didn't get her way. So I gave her her way all the time in all things. Not to protect myself. I was taught that to do that was selfish. To help her maintain her narcissistic fantasies that wrong was right for her. (It took me all my life to realize that's what I was doing.) Consequently, she didn't look angry, except in private.
I placated my stepmother because my dad made me run interference and would triangulate me against her. Actually, they all exploited my good nature and scapegoated me. My mom pitted her boyfriend against me. He was viciously, bullyingly angry and would goad and mock, lie about things I'd supposedly done and then attack me. And my mother went right along with this. She'd make up lies or say things about me in such a way that she knew would provoke his rage.
When my dad was mad which was most of the time, he'd find a way to make it my fault. He also targeted me when he was angry with his wife or other kids. And she when she was upset about something else. Or nothing. This perpetuated their narcissistic fantasies that they were perfect and I was the only problem in their lives. And my constant guilt, shame and feelings of failure both fed and were fed by this gaslight-y scapegoating. It's impossible to please selfish, angry people. But I didn't know that then. I just thought and they told me that if I would just try harder...well, you can probably imagine the tail-chasing that led to.
I also didn't know that a child/ teen shouldn't have to. Actually no one, even an adult is responsible for someone else's happiness. They got that part alright. Which is why they pinned it all on me. They had no intention of actually working together to make their family work. Why would they when they had such a convenient fall girl in me? They had me believing that I was at fault for being unable to do all they expected. Which I actually did but the hoops were always moved and expectations were always changed and I wasn't told.
And it's also weird because the placating (fawning) involved dancing attendance on them, parenting them, doing the majority of their work and caring for their children like a parent. So I was both the problem and the solution to the problem. I know, it doesn't make sense to me either.
And so what this caused in me was constant cognitive dissonance and chronic guilt and shame (CPTSD). Whenever anyone in my adult life is angry, my trauma response is to jump in to fawn and fix. Living with someone with explosive disorder and dealing with chronic rage just sends all that into overdrive. All the advice about staying calm and detached with others' rage is impossible for me. Because I learned so young that this (very healthy) response was wrong and wicked. How dare you not attend to our every petty whim, you selfish lazy brat! Stay calm and not react, will you? We'll soon make you care, dammit!
And to add further confusion to chaos, I was told I was OVER sensitive about anything that upset me. I took things "too personally" when they were attacking me. However, I was also expected to be "sensitive to" their every "need" (petulant temper tantrum). I was SUPPOSED to take their endless fault finding seriously. Yet I was also "too critical" of them. So I was hypervigilant for an opportunity to jump in and fix. Which requires being in constant reactive mode. And it's impossible to react and not react to others at the same time.
So essentially, all the common sense about dealing with rage in others flies out the window in my case. I can't not react. I'm wired to. And it feels wrong because I was told it was wrong, not to. It's like having had an emotional stroke and having to learn all basic functions anew.
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