How dark tetrad parents weaponize the CPTSD trauma responses they created

Hi friends. Here are some more thoughts on what CPTSD looks like and weird ways narcissistic parent abuse makes a victim act. Today I'm looking at some trauma responses. I'll show how a dark tetrad (self-serving, exploitative, malicious bully) parent weaponizes the very dysfunctional behavior they helped to create. 

Trauma response one: flinching, or the startle reaction. We who've been traumatized regularly are on ultra-high alert. We perceive threat everywhere because there always was danger. It wasn't accidental and we weren't prepared for it. It was manufactured by dark tetrads to keep us in subservient fear. Instead of protecting us, like normal parents, dark tetrads destroyed our defenses rendering us constantly fearful and helpless. We don't know how to prepare because it comes out of the blue. Dark tetrads love the weapon of ambush. So we get caught off guard and flinch every time. When we hear a loud sound, we hit the dirt, even if it's just a passing car. 

Now you would think this would this would soften our parents' hearts. But no, in fact, they harden them. Our flinching pisses them off. I don't know why because I'm not a dark tetrad. I think it's because someone might see us and start to question why we're so jumpy. It reminds them that they've put us through hell and broken us. But do they take any responsibility for us our the mess they've put us in? Not a chance. 

They blame us for being "so dramatic" They tell us to quit showing off or they'll give us something to be afraid of. Mind you, we can no more control these trauma responses than we could stop breathing. THEY conditioned us to do these things. My mother got it in her head when I was 7, to start slapping me across the face. She said I got "lippy" with her. I've no idea what the hell she even meant by that. At the time, I just figured I did yet another thing wrong. No I look back and remember how people pleasing I was and what a lot of wretched things she did that I overlooked. And I can't think of one thing that would cause me to earn a smack in the mouth. 

She even humiliates me in front of others telling how she had to smack me, but stopped because I "hit her back" once. Or raised my hand to. My mom's never been one to let accuracy get in the way of a good story. I believed I did, for the longest time, till, again, I stopped to really consider this. I never ever accused my mom of any of the wrong she did to me that I should have. I just excused it all. So why would I hit my mother I had worked so hard to defend??

Answer, I wouldn't. What I probably did, was flinch. And one thing you tend to do when you flinch is to throw up your hands in a startle response. Or I was protecting myself from her oncoming blow. Like shielding your face. But no, mom has to tell it like her big mean daughter hit her mother! Gasp, where are my pearls to clutch! What a bad seed! 

Never once does she admit to throwing the first punch.  Never do we address why she was hitting me in the first place. Now I have slapped my daughter and I admit it. I'm not proud but humiliated and ashamed. I've confessed it repeatedly and told her it was my fault not hers. And I did it because that's what I learned from my mom, that not doing it was "spoiling the child." After all, mom had slapped me and mom is always right, right? Interestingly, my mother had now flip-flopped on that. She saw what she said were red marks on my daughter's face and decided to punish me for doing what she had taught me to do. 

She said she was planning to call the police on me for child abuse. She has had run-ins with CPS but I hadn't. So I guess she was punishing me for her bad choices too.  My kids (God love 'em) said "err, you hit mom, Grama." The one with the supposed red mark said she was always mouthy and deserved it (she was but didn't, and I would never tell her she did, even if I did get mad and slap her. Just saying). My mother lied to their faces and said she had NEVER hit me once. And that daughter was just protecting me her abusive mom. 

But lest you think she did all this because we were in some kind of fight, no. I've only covered for her. Never confronted. She did this is the most passive-aggressive, underhanded way possible. We were effectively homeless having just sold our mobile home to buy a house that was about to be condemned. It had been trashed and the landlord, our church, hadn't checked up on it. We were conned into buying it and I was hustling to get it livable. I had four young kids. And I had just lost a stillborn baby. 

I was at my wits end and struggling again with my old demons suicide. Demons that my mom and dad had put on me, him by constantly threatening me with it and her by dumping his threats on me. Anyway, I didn't want to leave my kids like my dad wanted to leave me. I wanted to do better and get better for all of us. So I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital day program. 

My husband was working two jobs and my mom had volunteered to watch the kids. She was a little to quick to drive me to the hospital and told them some lies which exaggerated my behavior. At one point they asked her to step out of the room and asked me for the real story. I told them and they said it sounded like I needed a rest from her, as much as anything. A counselor told me that based on my brief stories, my mom sounded delusional, narcissistic and spiteful and that I had far too high a pain tolerance. 

And then I come home to four crying kids terrified that Grama is going to take them away from mama and daddy. I found out later that she said all these things behind my back, and that she and her husband who had routinely abused me, and whose other child was killed due to their negligence, were planning to file for custody of my kids. All while showing me her fake-caring "Christian" face. When I was struggling just to survive and not perpetuate the shit they'd put me through. 

I told you this shit comes from out of the blue with these dark tetrads. And yet, not. Oh to the victim it comes from nowhere but, in their heads it's deserved. They've been storing things up against you. Not things you did, but things they said you did. Lies, basically. Fake, invented, twisted, trumped up stuff. They've been playing a long game and they're out for your blood. You didn't do anything to get revenge for. But they don't' need a reason. They're sick, deviant sadists who like to punish. And they, sickest of all, use God as an excuse for their vengeful spite. He supposedly called for the attack. 

So they bide their time till you're at your most vulnerable and them, BAM! Gotcha! You never see it coming and the shock takes your breath away. Then gaslight you that you're imagining it or you brought this on yourself. They never explain how both could be true but you're in too much pain to think of that. You forget that it was their 

A direct kick in the solar plexus would hurt less. 

. . 

What CPTSD from dark tetrad parent abuse looks like

Hello my friends. Last month I covered some of the many normal things dark tetrad parents fubar for their kids. And there are more, but some are just too sick to write about. Maybe I will later, but for now, I haven't the stomach. So starting in April, I am writing a series on what it's like to live with CPTSD (complex or childhood post-traumatic stress disorder). Mine came from being raised by four narcissistic dark tetrad parents (two bio and their new spouses whom I used to call stepparents but now don't). Today we explore what CPTSD looks like from the outside and then why that is from the inside. 

Fearful, jumpy, cringing CPTSD is an emotional disorder but it's physical as well. Many of the scars are internal but there are external ones too. Ever see someone who seems inordinately jumpy and nervous? Does she fawn-smile, laugh at everyone's jokes no matter how stupid, smooth feathers a lot, apologize for everything and nothing and hunch herself into the smallest space possible? There's a good chance she's got childhood trauma issues. CPTSD sufferers have lived with constant firing on. They have lived in war zones not homes. They've been everyone's target. Does we look ridiculous, nearly wetting ourselves when a balloon pops? If you said yes, then maybe you should try living our lives. See how strong and brave you are. 

Subservient, acquiescent, cowering We get accused of being cowardly suck ups. Usually by big strong  gun-slinging men who fancy themselves fearless. Or good "Christian" women who self-righteously and condescendingly accuse us of lacking faith. And who obviously have not lived with the shit we have. All we know is placating, groveling and people pleasing (or attempting to, no one in our lives was ever is). It was dangerous as hell not to agree to everything. I lost my home when I came in an hour late. Think of what would happen if I'd stood up to them. By 7, I'd been through things that most adults only see in horror movies. And I had no weapon strapped to my side. So hell yeah we suck up. We had to use whatever was at hand to survive. And that was our rigid, groveling hoop-hopping. So we're adults now? So what? Outgrowing this fear is nigh on impossible. 

Shame-face We look embarrassed, uncomfortable and worn out, because we are. We exhausted from constantly being "on call" to dark tetrad parents. We're ashamed of being such failures and let downs to our parents. We have been routinely humiliated by adults and placed in invidious, awkward and dangerous situations with creepy people. We've seen our parents do shockingly immoral, irresponsible and disturbing things. We've been left alone to just cope with no help. We're afraid to admit that any of this goes on. We've been gaslit to think that no one will believe us. We've been told we're liars that exaggerate to show off. Or that we're disloyal if we don't keep mommy's and daddy's (stepmommy's , mommy's boyfriend's) dirty secrets. We take all their ick on us like it's us doing it not them and our fault, not theirs. 

Too others-focused We treat others like royalty and ourselves like crap. We kick ourselves to the curb if you tell us to. Since we took on all our parents' crap we take on everyone else's too. We bend ourselves to buffer and humor. We cushion the from fallout of your actions. We feel guilty for your bad choices and take punish for them. We don't know where you stop and we begin. We lay down so you can walk over us. We are all for you, even if none is for us. We ask all the time "are you okay?" and agonize over anything we may have done to offend you. If you are a dark tetrad, we're putty in your hands. Fortunately, I've landed with new people who don't take advantage and who are trying to help me see how dangerous this is for me to do. 

Too patient then BLAM! We take and take and take crap and give and give and give good.  We absorb and internalize others' shame and guilt till we're saturated and spilling over. We have emotional leprosy and can't feel pain till we've damaged ourselves. And sometimes not even then. That's because all we feel is pain so we don't know what it is anymore. We don't dare admit, let alone show the intense frustration we feel. So it bottles up and then a random thing pushes it up and out. We blow up and dysregulate. But since no one sees the provocation from years of silent suffering, it looks like we're just idiots. We get ridiculed and shamed. We look out of control because we are. Others have pirated control of our lives and keep us dancing on strings that we don't see. When they pull too hard, the string snaps. And we lose it all over the shop. And then feel even more guilty and sorry and pathetic. 

If any of this sounds attention-seeking, well, just you come on over and give our lives a try. You'll see how real it is. I wouldn't wish CPTSD on my worst enemy if I even had one. No one asks for this kind of pain. Even a masochist would run screaming. 

Controversial ways God is helping me heal from narcissistic abuse, explained

 Hi friends. In my last post, I said that God is or may be showing me a shocking way to heal the CPTSD I developed from a lifetime of dark tetrad parent abuse. It's shocking because, I don't think I've ever heard or read of anyone saying anything like this before. And it sounds heretical. What it seems God is saying is that because my childhood and innocence was stolen by selfish, narcissistic, manipulative, cruel (dark tetrad) parents, God may be giving it back to me now as an adult. He may not be holding me accountable for sin as if I were a child again, because it was put on me too young. For a Christian, it will definitely be controversial. But let me explain some further insight I was given which I think will clarify. 

My parents did not care for or parent me except in a very cursory way, but also conversely force me to parent them when I was a child. I had to pamper fragile egos, pacify and humor immature demanding adults as if they were fussy babies. I had to figure out how to solo navigate dangerous situations while most kids were learning to ride bikes. They leave me alone for days and then remember I was around and start issuing commands. They would literally pout, like whiny, spoiled brats and I'd rush in to fix, like a hover mother. When I was 7. 

I forced to grow up without ever being allowed to be young. Me being a child seemed to anger them as if I was infringing on their right to be children and not the other way around. Me doing childish things was deemed selfish. It angered them and I was severely punished for doing things every kid did. 

But weirdly, they also didn't care what dangers they subjected me to. I was ignored and left on my own at 4 or 5. But if I did anything they disapproved of, while I was unsupervised, there was hell to pay. How I was supposed to cope or behave on my own was never explained. Only when I transgressed their unspoken rules did I feel their wrath. 

Using weapons of neglect, abuse, abandonment and endangerment, they crippled my coping skills. They made it seem self-centered to even consider myself in anything. When I was six, they moved us to Alaska, to be "missionaries," my dad took off for parts unknown, leaving us alone. No family income, no job, no home. Then my mom, who had been having affairs and leaving me to wander down in the bowery, took us to a remote island and then left me, while she went God knows where. So I was alone with strangers, thousands of miles from family. When she came back she announced she was divorcing my dad. When I asked what would happen to me, she got angry that I would even think of worrying about myself and not her. 

Those terrifying experiences, have shell-shocked me and left me completely vulnerable. I had no help from anyone. Not even God, it seemed. They made themselves gods to me and destroyed my understanding of the real God. They didn't tend to me but made me serve them and told me that this was how I was to serve God. They made me responsible for their bad choices, with blame shifting, enmeshment, triangulation, gaslighting and exploitation. It seems He's taking me back to a pre-accountability state, until we can retrain me in a healthier understanding of sin and responsibility. 

Consequently, I don't  know right from wrong. I was indoctrinated by four very self-righteous preachy-religious narcissists, to think that evil was right for them to do (immorality, adultery, fornication, infidelity, child neglect and abandonment, divorce and remarriage, lying, deception, stealing, scamming) and good was wrong for to do (self-care, protection). And bad for me was good for them (exploitation, endangerment, abuse, inviting in new people to hurt and exploit me). 

I've never been able to relate to much of anything that other kids had or did. Now as an adult I still struggle to fit in or comprehend their lives. Christianity particularly doesn't make sense in my heart. Everything I do is an assumed role, with no life material to work from. I imitate others because I have no experience from my own life to draw on. Sermons, homilies, scripture readings aren't relatable because nothing in my life fit the patterns they describe. 

I don't struggle with disobedience, sloth, immorality, selfishness, greed, pride or arrogance like, apparently, others do. But not for healthy reasons. Because it was far too dangerous to do any of these things. The gods in my life were terrifyingly vengeful. I only got confused and thought I did because parents were putting their sins on me. And I learned to absorb them as mine. I don't even get angry when I should and yes there is a time for that and a way to do it. 

The time is when there are hurtful things being done, that people, including myself, need protection from. The way to do it, I'm learning, is to speak up in love. To get the injured parties away from the perpetrators. And that would also include me. But I don't move away from pain. That, I was told, was selfish. I let people hurt me because I've learned it's what I deserve. And when I get mad, it's out of exhaustion. I've been worn down and used up and I'm trauma responding. 

Am I saying it's okay for me not to follow the rules of God, that they don't apply? I think so. Because I don't understand them in the correct way. Am I saying it's someone else's fault every time I do wrong. No but it's not mine either. I don't willingly get angry. I have to be pushed to it. And I let people drain my resources in unhealthy ways. I don't speak up and say enough is enough. I only lose it when I've lost everything. 

See, dark tetrads pirate your everything. They take the helm in your life. They strip you of everything. But they still expect you to behave as if you have control and the necessary resources. And shame you when you don't. So I have all the expectations with none of the resources. I'm expected and I expect myself, to make bricks without straw, clay or water. Or even the knowledge of how to do so or the strength to do it. I'm in the danger zone with all lights flashing buzzers sounding, all the time. 

And then layer on all that, the endless double standards I was held to. I was told  that normal things that I saw everyone else doing, including my parents, were wrong for me. And other people's burdens were mine to carry as the scapegoat. When they did wrong, I was told it was my fault. So I had to shoulder all these trumped up sins plus everyone else's. Any real sins I may have committed got all mish-mashed into this toxic demon brew. 

I could never sort out what was real and what was invented, what was mine and what was not. Consequently, I don't really know right from wrong. I certainly don't know what's safe for me and what's dangerous. I wouldn't know a red flag or a safety precaution if it hit me over the head. I'm all enmeshed in them, their issues and their lives. I don't exist except to serve. 

I've been told all this was God's will, so needless to say, I've been both scared shitless of God. I'm uncomfortable with any talk of him because all I can see are my parents. Which is no basis for a relationship. I don't think it's what He wants. But I am conditioned do it. I could no more stop my pulse that to stop these responses. 

So I think God is coming at it from another angle.  I believe God might be putting me in a protected status of early childhood, again, because I missed that step. And it's one that can't be missed to grow to adulthood. I think He's rewinding to the part before all this happened.  He's going to have to go pretty much back to the beginning of the tape. Because I can't recall a time when it wasn't like this. 

I think that temporarily, till we can sort this mess out, I might not be being held accountable. Till I can learn to understand what is my fault and what I can fix. And what's not. What is my sin to feel remorse for, confess and do penance for. And what isn't. Because things can't go on as they stand. I'm feeling guilty and ashamed of pretty much everything that others in my world do. And they've been quick to let me take that on myself. They're pretty limited in the personal responsibility dept as it is. And someone like me who takes on others' problems as her own is meat and drink to them. 

Maybe what God is giving me, is a do-over. A chance to see the real Him not the fake one in the mask. I think He's saying, "Hi, I'm God. I don't believe we've met." And only till I get unstuck from the lies that my parents were the only deities in my life, will I be able to take charge of what is and isn't mine.  It's not so much that He's making me not accountable for what I do, but what others' have done and blamed me for. I think He's also helping me see that things I thought were sins, weren't. I was just told they were by people for whom it was convenient to have me believe this. 

Is there the chance that I will take advantage of this? I'm guessing that's a chance God's willing to take. I know if I, being very imperfect, give my children and grandchildren endless chances, He, being perfect, probably can too. And there's not much chance of me suddenly being irresponsible now anyway. I've been too responsible. Yes, that's possible. And very dangerous for my wellbeing and for others who exploit that. 

It's the Serenity Prayer with some additions. God grant me the serenity to accept what I can't change, which is other people. But also the self-care skills to get out of their path. And the vision to see what I don't have to change because it's not mine to change. To see the double standards and quit playing the game.  And not only the courage but the strength to change what I can, like my emotional location. To revoke access to my brain and permission for toxic to make a home there, rent free.  To find my voice and use it to speak up. To find my legs and use them to run from dangers. To find my arms to remove the target on my back. To find eyes and ears to see and hear what's happening and what I've turned blind eye and deaf ear to. The wisdom to see how my trauma responses are being fiddled and to slap hands off the switch. To know the difference between mine and thine, between what's sin and what just is, what's love and what's pain, what's God and what's gaslighting. 

Shocking ways God is (or may be) helping me heal from narcissistic parent abuse

Hi friends. Recently I've written a lot about my CPTSD and other injuries from dark tetrad parent abuse, neglect, enmeshment, enslavement, exploitation, endangerment, abandonment, scapegoating, invalidation, shaming, bullying and gaslighting about it all. I've shared how this damaged everything for me, including childhood and any relationship with a higher power (I call Him God). And just yesterday, God showed me (or I think He did) some shocking ways that He may be helping me heal from this. This will be my most controversial post and it might even sound like heresy. So read on if you wish but know that if you're a Christian this will probably disturb you. 

Okay, first, I never like to claim divine revelation because it seems so pompous. That's why I say that God might be doing showing me these things. Because what He seems to have showed me is only for me and people like me who've experienced childhood trauma. I seem to be being offered special dispensation  and a different set of rules to live by. 

I know, that sounds very Jim Jones-ish. I warned you this was going to unsettle. God knows we've all had enough of self-righteous, hypocrites  claiming divine messenger status plus diplomatic immunity from all all rules God is supposedly telling them to lay on others. I know I certainly lived with it. All four parents were dark tetrads, two biological and their two new partners. And all four called themselves Christians. And all four felt justified to preach against behavior that they were blatantly living. 

They put restrictions on me that they did not follow. They behaved immorally, licentiously, selfishly and in complete contradiction to the very Bible they beat. They didn't parent me, but made me parent them, their new spouses and kids. They set me to inappropriate, dangerous tasks, in neglectful, risky situations with unsafe people. And told me this was God's will for me. 

They told me to read my Bible but not to believe what it said.  I was to pray, but not to God. It all had to go through them. I see now because if I actually read and believed the Bible or heard God in my prayers, I would likely see all the sinful things they were doing for what they were. I might  tell someone or get out. And they couldn't  have their nice cozy little delusional fantasies challenged. 

 Anytime I would see the wrong they were putting me in, or just seem to, they'd shame and shut me down, saying I was "too sensitive" or "too critical" "unforgiving" (they never apologized) and that I needed to "lighten up." If I claimed any of God's blessings, I was "showing off" or (my dad's favorite) "leaning on my own understanding" of scripture 😕

Yet my parents claimed all these things for themselves including the right to neglect me while still forcing me to do their constant bidding. This was how I was to serve God, apparently. To keep me shamed, cowed and obedient, they indoctrinated me into a very manipulated version of Christianity. They twisted themselves to be gods and hid the real God, his son and Holy Spirit from me.  They put a huge millstone around my neck and forced me to the edge. I very nearly fell over many times. See past posts for details. 

So, where does this leave me? Unsure of who God really is, unable to have a relationship with Him, confused by scripture and sacraments that don't seem, because I was told, to apply to me. I'm baffled by teachings on sin because everything I did, I was told, was sin. If you're told everything you do is wrong, how can you understand good vs. evil? If you are taught that right is wrong for you and wrong is right for them, you develop an ass-backwards view of right and wrong. Everything I hear and see, at church, with other Christians, in prayer, in the Bible is diametrically opposed to what I lived. 

In short, they not only broke God for me, but also my entire sense of self. I'm a victim of identity theft. I was deprived of a childhood. Of innocence. I was made accountable to and and responsible for them at birth. I was a parent around the age of 4, to my parents and not cared for as a child. So, 

What is it that God may or may not have revealed to me? Well, prepare yourself. I think God has shown me that because my childhood was stolen, He is giving it back to me now. Along with innocence and a return to my pre-accountability for sin self. He is giving me back the blanket state of grace that my parents took from me. He is putting the usual rules, expectations and commands that adults are held to, on hold for me because I'm not an adult. I'm a child trapped in a grownup body. Because I was forced to grow up too early, God is taking me back through the childhood I missed. 

So yep, that's pretty different. And if you've not experienced what I've experienced, it may, as I said, sound heretical. Like I'm claiming freedom from original sin or that I'm sinless. But if you think about it, it makes sense, even from as human, secular perspective. I'm a teacher by trade. And we know that if a kid doesn't learn his times tables, for example, he won't be able to do higher math. He has to be taken back to the steps he missed and taught them. No matter if he's 10 or 90. Age doesn't matter. We have educate him like he's in third grade. 

And developmentally, we know that a child who has not learned to walk cannot run either. She has to learn first things first. Or if her leg is broken, even if she's 55, she has to learn to walk again, as if she was 12 months old. I think that's how it is for me, right now. 

So this moratorium, I think, is in place until such time as He and I can retrain me in the real ways of God. All their religious gaslighting crippled me. And I need to learn how to walk. I think this last until I can unlearn the twisted, self-serving image of God as them,  my parents taught me. Because I don't understand right from wrong, because I was taught wrong ways. Am I saying I don't sin? Umm, maybe? Or at least not yet, anyway. Not until I can learn right from wrong.

Will I take advantage of this protected status? Not a chance. I've always tried to hard to be perfect. Yes you can try to hard at that and for the wrong reasons. I have a very over-developed moral compass and I take responsibility for other people's actions. I apologize and grovel all the time. for things that aren't my fault. Now what I need to learn is what is actually in my jurisdiction and what isn't. So it's not the sin that is mine that I'm being exonerated from but from all the sin of others, that I have been saddled with. 

How narcissists pirate their kid's childhood and taint innocent things

 Hello my friends. If yesterday's post on normal things dark tetrad parents ruin for their kids was the darkest, today's is the most disgusting. Today I'm looking at how narcissistic dark tetrad parents pirate their kids' childhood and taint innocent things. I'm doing this to sort out why I was and am so dang broken when it comes to normal child behavior others seem to take for granted. 

And I learned my lesson yesterday when I forgot to cover this entire writing process in prayer. The devil got into my head and gave me a hell of a time for daring to call out evil behavior. So please, if you're reading, offer up prayers, incantations, duas, whatever your belief system dictates, for us as we take this deep dive. This is treacherous territory and I'm playing with fire here. 

So what exactly does a narcissist break in their kids' lives? In a word, childhood. They steal her birthright to be a child. To think, feel and behave, like a child. They usurp that role for themselves and force the child to be the adult and parent. They punish her for normal child things and then do those things themselves only in a really creepy, demented way. 

I'm going to give you some examples but not in a cohesive, outlined way. I'm going to bombard you with them randomly, to give you some experience of how bombarded I was by these chaotic experiences. By peppering you with one weird after another, I'm trying to give some idea of the endless and constantly shifting chaos, the crazy quilt of stress and anxiety that was my life. Crazy WAS my normal and the only consistent thing was inconsistency. All these memories are jumbled in my mind and are confusing AF. 

Normal things like hugs, cuddling, being rocked or snuggled, I didn't get. I don't recall ever sitting on an adult's lap as a child. I suppose I did but it wasn't frequent. Having someone stroke my hair, hold my hand, any tenderness wasn't there. Things I did habitually with my kids, didn't happen with me. Before they divorced, my parents were very hands-off. When they both got married again, they detached even more from me.  I've always said they divorced me from their lives. But yet still expected me to parent and do for them like an adult. The only touch I recall was getting hit. 

I grew to think that they didn't touch me because I was somehow untouchable and gross. I assumed, because I was told, that I got hit because I was bad. And then later, when I was a tween, the touch I got was sexual in nature. And the spankings. When I was going on 14, my dad "paddled" me. Beat would be a better word. Because I failed him in some way he wouldn't explain. But I assume it was for something he expected me to do for him and his wife. Some adult responsibility which I was unable to do if I wanted to. 

See, I was taught that if someone wanting something from me, it was my duty to provide. No matter how age inappropriate, icky, humiliating or simply not my job to do, it was. To refuse would be selfish. . As you can imagine, that teaching got me into some sick and dangerous situations. It put a target on my back for perverts. 

Yet I was told that any harm I experienced, I brought on myself because I was dirty. My parents preached a very rigid doctrine of moral purity. They made me vulnerable by not teaching me how to be safe and to just be a servant to all. They drummed modesty down my throat till I thought that wearing anything but a turtleneck was slutty. So, I was to offer myself up as a sacrifice for anyone who wanted a piece yet when (not if) I was molested, it was my fault for being easy. Or I was exaggerating or showing off. I do not remember any time when they took my part of defended me. I do remember them joining in the persecution and making a public spectacle of me. 

So the humiliation and not having my back was pretty weird, but the repression wasn't that uncommon back then, unfortunately.  Women, especially moms,  were pretty buttoned up and then blamed for causing men to lust. As if. But it didn't end with just shaming. Would that it did. At least it would have been consistent. At least the entire family would have lived by the same principles. 

But not mine. I was singled out while their other kids got away with everything. I was their scapegoat. And even my two parents lived very (by their own standards) "immoral" lives. So now juxtapose all their puritanical dogma, shaming, enslaving and betrayal of me, with their blatant adultery, infidelity, fornication (right in front of me), immodesty, and pedophilia and you'll have some idea of my childhood. 

When I was 5, we moved to Alaska to be missionaries, I was told. We squatted in different places and neither parent worked. I was left on my own all the time. They lived off the charity of the Tlingit native tribe. No mission work that I ever saw, occurred. He'd go off on months-long self-styled "mission trips" with teenagers. Then he lit out to go convert Charles Manson's girls in L.A. Meanwhile, my mother was hooking up with men behind his back and leaving me to play downtown at the docks. Then she took me to an island 1,000 miles away, dumped me there with strangers and left to go to Seattle.  

Then she moved us back to Michigan. My dad went walkabout in Alaska and was incognito for a year and a half. I just learned that this constitutes child abandonment. My mom became the proverbial "swinging single", having flavor of the week hookups, cheating with married people, "shacking up" (as it was called then) with boyfriends. She dressed as a "hooker" for a church (?!?) Halloween party. She wore go-go boots, bikinis and mini skirts (when everyone else's mom was wearing twinsets and slacks). 

She would flirt all the time, and behave very seductively. She has hit on my boyfriends. She plays the ingenue, dressing in weird baby doll dresses, even when pregnant, making wide-eyed, coy pouts and talking in this babyish voice. Think of the old Love's Baby Soft ads. While, I as a child, was dressed in strange, body-shaming clothes. My hair was badly cut in unflattering styles. My health was not tended to. There was money for anything she or her boyfriends wanted, but not for me. Things given to me were stolen and sold. 

Icky sex stuff was as common as Saturday morning cartoons for me. She brags to anyone who would  listen about sleeping naked, paraded around naked and was accidentally on purpose caught. When staying with us, she came out naked despite my husband and sons sleeping nearby. And asked me for a Bible because watching LOTR with us, made "her spirit restless." 

I recall a punchup when I was 8, when her boyfriend's wife caught them at it in our kitchen and knocked my mom down the stairs. My  mother forced me to listen to her anecdotal sex stories. She moved her boyfriend into our house, set up an apartment for them in the basement, kicked me out of my room so her brother and his girlfriend could sleep there, and put me in (illegally) with four foster kids under 5. She and her boyfriend mocked me for my "small tits."  When my dad finally did come back, he started dating (I use the term loosely) a 17 y/o when he was 36. 

My life has been a revolving door of endangerment and sexploitation. And yet, through it all, they maintained a guise of Christian holiness and purity. I was trotted to church every Sunday. She played the organ. He demanded to preach (though not ordained nor even of the church he wanted to preach in). Morality was for everyone else, not them. It boggles the mind how they got away with it all. I'll never figure that one out. 

One thing I do know though is that my childhood was permanently ruined. And, as if losing the innocence of childhood isn't bad enough, there's more. Remember I said, that dark tetrads rob your childhood FOR THEMSELVES? They didn't just want me not to have a normal childhood. They wanted mine. They lived like perpetual spoiled teenagers. Both did very immature, hurtful things. They were precious with themselves and reckless with me. They routinely made impetuous, selfish, irresponsible decisions that put me in terrible situations with no concern for my safety. The only consistent in my life was chaos and and inconsistency. And endless expectation and demands to be the designated adult.  

Because dark tetrads don't just want to play their part. They want it all. They want to be adult, parent, child, debutante, party girl, teacher, preacher, boss, baby, whatever suits at the time. With all the perks and none of the work. They leave the heavy lifting to others and claim the rewards with none of the sacrifice. They do what feels good, to hell with consequences. Someone else will suffer those. This someone did. 

How did I not see this hypocrisy then? Why did I just accept that this is how mommy is even though she tells me to do very different things? Why did I believe the gospel according to Daddy when the one in my Bible was so different? I guess it just goes to show that dark tetrad parent gaslighting, shaming, exploitation and invalidation are real and really potent. They didn't touch me in ways they should have and then touched me in very sick ways and encouraged others to do so too. And I just absorbed it all as my just desserts. 

They were so successful at destroying my innocence that even now, the thought of being touched makes me sick. I feel like a weirdo using the word. Normal things like hugging, pats on the back, stroking, massages, just feel wrong. I hug people because I think it's the right thing to do and because or if, they seem to expect it. It doesn't come easily or comfortably. 

And don't even get me started on morality, modesty, purity or seductive vs healthy behavior. I have no idea how to begin framing those. They've all been fouled up beyond repair for me. Thank God I have a patient husband who has helped me overcome some of it. I'm finding that I really enjoy being hugged by him. He encourages me to dress how I want, it's okay. He reminds me that I am a moral person. But the bulk of the shame is still there.  

Even my concept of innocence is effed, from a child's perspective. I feel grubby and tainted. But I think, approaching this as an adult, whatever that is, might help. No, let me  rephrase that: as a parent and grandparent. If I look at how I think of and do things with my kids and grandkids, I might, just might, be able to reach the kid in me. 

Because for all that touch has been destroyed for me, I was able to hug and give healthy touch to my kids. I enjoyed rocking them, brushing their hair, giving them back rubs and snuggles. All the things I did not have. Their touch was good, their little hands so warm and trusting, in mine. The way they'd pat my face and cuddle up under my chin. 

So having said that, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I never did lose my innocence. That they didn't succeed in taking it. I think innocence is something you can't steal from someone, it's innate. They can only distort it for you. They do this by exposing you to unhealthy things and not teaching you healthy self-care tools to navigate. The very fact that these things were PUT IN my life by people who were supposed to protect me FROM such things, is the problem. 

They are the agents provocateur, setting up stumbling blocks for the child. Because they know that her childhood and innocence can never be theirs. It is hers and hers alone. They had their time to be kids. And as for innocence, they destroyed that for themselves when they chose selfishness. So the best they can do is play saboteur, destroying as far as possible, any good thing for the child. And making her feel that she's the one to blame. 

But the winds of change, they are a blowin'. Selah. 

How dark tetrad parents sabotage a child's relationship with God

Hello my friends. In a series of dark posts about dark things that dark tetrad parents do to their kids, this might be the darkest. Dark Tetrad parents sabotage a child's relationship with God. I know because it's happened to me. Here's how. 

So to begin with, in order to understand my situation and experience, you're going to have to put on a shelf everything you know, think, think you know, believe or feel about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Bible. If you really want to walk a few minutes in my shoes, you have to pretend that everything about God was not as it was told to you. That it was all a hoax. 

This won't be easy, especially if you're a Christian. Because I'm going to tell you some things that will sound very wrong or even heretical. No one to date has been able to fully understand. Anyone I've told, husband, family,  kids, friends, fellow church members, no one gets it. Bless their hearts, some like my husband, have tried really hard to. But even he can't help faulting (gently) and disparaging. 

But he and everyone else didn't live it like I did. Their experiences of church, God, prayer were as different than mine as red and green. They can only speak from those. And I can only speak from mine. So I make no apology. These are my experiences. I don't control them.  

So if you can't read this without condescending platitudes, shaming or false positivity, please, do us both a favor and move on. I'm full up and don't need anymore of that, thanks. Now, if you think you're up for reading this with an open, caring mind, let's begin. And you'd better buckle up because my story is one bumpy MFer of a ride. And lets get the worst out there first. 

None of the Bible applies to me, in the same way it does to other people who've not lived what I lived.  Not the rules, commandments, beatitudes, none of it. God was not there for me, as a child. At various times, I was periodically abandoned, endangered, left  on my own by every adult. I had no one with me through the most traumatic experiences you can imagine. I told you this would be bad. It gets worse. 

At 4, I was left to wander in busy streets. I was sent to play alone in a park with a pedophile, At 6, I was abandoned to strangers 1,800 miles from my parents and 4,000 miles from any  family. There was no way to contact anyone. I was not give a bed or home, much of the time. My parents did not care for me or provide medical care. We moved almost weekly and squatted with other people. My parents were never around, but they were not working nor providing either. 

When they divorced and remarried and had new families, I wasn't welcome to be part. I was made to serve, wait and care for them all. I was hit, screamed at and humiliated routinely. I was set up and lied about. I was exploited, parentified and scapegoated constantly. And the most damaging thing of all is that they did all this in the name of God. And they terrorized me with all the anger God had for me. 

They read the Bible and quoted from it. They prayed and said they were missionaries. They hopped churches as often as they moved. But the God they presented to me was themselves. They were the Holy Trinity. They also lived very immoral lives, completely contrary to the Bible. Divorcing wasn't bad enough, they ran around on each other. My mom moved a boyfriend into our house and made me sleep with all the foster care kids. She gave my room to her unmarried brother and his girlfriend. She let all her boyfriends mock, abuse and punish me. And she marched us all to church and played the organ. 

But for me, it was all fire and brimstone. That's why I shudder when I hear someone say they like a good fire and brimstone preacher. My parents, especially my mom, did too. That's because they liked hearing about how God would punish others. They have never applied it to themselves. Every rule was rigidly and harshly forces on others but they  have never followed any way but their own. 

My rightwinger pro--life mom took a girl to have an abortion with me in the car. She has never confessed that to me. She may have had an abortion, while married to me dad, which is why she left me alone on an island. I cannot make this up. At 8, I watched her boyfriend's wife knock my mom down our steps and felt guilty for not being able to stop her. I was a latchkey kid (illegally it appears) at 8. She and her abusive husband kicked me out of their house because I came home an hour late. Turns out this was illegal. I didn't know. I didn't know it was sexual harassment when he made fun of the size of my "tits" when I was 12. 

These are only random samples of the abuse. I wish I'd been raised in a cult. At least there might have been someone who cared. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, no one reached out to help. I guess they didn't know. But it would have been damned hard to miss. 

Now, you would think with that I would have run screaming from religion of any kind. But I didn't. I went to church gladly. I sang in the choir. I read the Bible faithfully and prayed daily. I even led a little youth group and was a Christian camp counselor.  I really believed it all. And I still do, just  differently. What I believed then, because I was told, is that there was no God but my parents. Pleasing them by doing all their work, dancing attendance and being ridiculously obedient,  was pleasing God. But because they were impossible to please so was God. 

I hated myself all my life. I would have committed suicide many times over but I didn't want to hurt my grandparents. My dad threatened regularly to kill himself and then just scoffed when I cried. So I missed the message that this was sinful despair. Yet another way I screwed up. I guess it's fine to be forced to live in desperate situations but don't admit you are. God's only interested in the letter of the law, not your personal experience, was what I was taught. 

Now, you might also think I'd be tempted to ask where God was when all this shit was happening to me. Would you believe, I never did? It's weird, but I believed there was a God who loved but just not me. I can't explain it well. But I think that what they did was to well and truly superimpose themselves on my understanding of Him. Like a filter. 

I read all about God but I never saw anything like what I read about. I felt guilty for not seeing God in my life, only in others. When it was time to share how God worked in our lives at youth group, I'd hear everyone so joyful. I'd feel so miserable, knowing I couldn't honestly say those things. I determined to make myself smile if it killed me. It's hard to smile through constant inward crying but I must have managed. Because no one picked up on all I was going through. They didn't seem to see how different my life was from theirs. Well, I never told anyone. And my parents thoroughly gaslit me that I was just showing off and too sensitive. All kids slept in a cupboard with babies, did all the heavy housework and never had friends over, right. I worked so hard to bury all the abuse. To keep quiet. And I succeeded, sort of. It only came out in the nightmares.  

So I made up my mind that all I read and heard about God's love must have been withheld from me because I was such a terrible daughter. Such a failure. Bible verse after Bible verse, I memorized but they never hit home. I just quietly hid the sickening realizations that washed over me, that I was somehow so very broken that I'd even managed to break off any relationship with God. Shame was my gospel.

So now, with all that being said, I'll repeat. The rules don't apply to me because they didn't apply to me. I don't know God's love because the gods who posed as God didn't love me. If I want to continue in this Christian path, I now have the exhausting job of sorting out where it went wrong, dismantling and rebuilding this relationship along healthier lines. I know, you who haven't lived this will say, just pray, let go and let God, love Him. Well, my friends that's what  I've been trying to tell you. I have always done those things. However the God of my understanding was flawed for me. I prayed to and trusted the wrong gods. I don't know if it's safe to believe. It's a choice I'll have to make or not. 

I have to make my own way and if God is who he says in his word He is, He'll help me. But He too has a lot of work to do to undo that which was done wrong. 

Normal things dark tetrad parents fubar for kids: woke vs. ignorant, light vs. darkness

 Hello my friends. Today in my series on normal things dark tetrad parent fubar for kids, I'm exploring concepts of "woke" vs. ignorant. And yet again, I'm reminded how they twist words to suit their purpose. And how they define words one way for themselves and completely differently for other people. What baffles me is how folks just fall in with their machinations. 

So, to begin with, when I was a kid growing up under a dark tetrad regime, we didn't use the term "woke." But I was woke, as in the general meaning now, before it was a thing. My eyes and heart were opened to suffering, captivity, enslavement and exploitation of others. (It would take me 60 years to awaken to my own). I always understood that seeing clearly was preferable to lies and deception. 

However, now, MAGA wingnuts have done their utmost to taint the idea of being "woke" to others' needs. They've thrown sand in our eyes to make it look like a bad thing. And they've exalted ignorance, prejudice, profiling, racism, bigotry and hatred to cult status. So let's look at what "woke" actually means. It means to be enlightened, awakened, made aware of, to see the light. Curiouser and curiouser.

Because, um, these are good things, as per the Bible which the haters quote ad nauseum at others. God's word commands sleepers to wake from their slumbers. We're to rejoice that the people who walkrf in darkness have seen a great light! Jesus opened the eyes of the blind. Jesus is called the light of the world. St. Paul says that once we saw dimly as if in a darkened mirror, now we see clearly. And yet these same Bible-Trumper-thumpers, preach against light and clear vision. They favor blindness and obscurity. 

Well, that is their stock and trade, to blindside, to muddy what is clear and to do nefarious things in dark shadows. And pass off their darkness as wisdom and enlightenment and "truth." Wow, nothing could be further from. We're told that there are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see. We're warned off being misled by people who commit dark acts in secret. We're told to keep clear of those who plot and deceive. 

Proverbs 6:16-19 takes it further. God, it says, hates "haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers." Sound like any 47th president we know? A president, I might add, whom my parents worship. Yes, I said worship. 

So back to these dark tetrad parents of which I had four. I'm told they read their Bible. But I don't see how they could. Either that or they aren't reading THE Bible. Because the gospel they preach is so very contrary to the word of God. And what they live is not Biblical, nor Christian nor even just garden variety good human. They do the very things they punished me for doing. They bound everyone else and especially me, up to burdens which they do not carry themselves. So I have no choice, now, but to accept that they're not agents of God. They're passing their own whack-job agenda off as the "good news." And believe you me, it's not good at all. It's shamed -based, self-righteous, finger-pointy, judgey as all get out and completely  hypocritical. All I can say is ya better watch out. Because God will not be mocked. 

How did I not see, for all these years, their dark hypocrisy? Why did I just accept that there were rules for me and different rules for them? Well, all I can think is that I did the wrong thing for the right reason. And I did what I  had to, to survive. I trusted my parents and loved them. I believed that they had my best interest at heart. I let them get aways with all manner of wickedness against me because it seemed that this was "honoring my father and mother." The Bible said nothing about me honoring (obeying, being enslaved to) their spouses. That was value added religious gaslighting on their part. But I say again, God will not be mocked (or weaponized, or used as a pawn) so, yeah. 

It wasn't till I "woke" to the fact that they didn't love me or have my best interests at heart, that I began understand how damaged I was by their exploitation. When I let God pry my hands off my eyes, I saw their evil (that's not too strong a word). When I quit looking in their dirty  mirror, I saw so their real motives so clearly that it took my breath away. If I'm honest, I'm still in shock.  So, riddle me this. If being woke's so terrible, how's come it was awakening to my parents' deceit that saved me? Seems to me that waking up from a nightmare into the light of day, is no bad thing. 

Dark Tetrad parents are agent provocateur saboteurs

Good day, my friends. I'm on a quest to heal CPTSD from a lifetime of abuse, neglect, exploitation, endangerment, abandonment, scapegoating, enmeshment, invalidation, parentification and gaslighting about it all, by four narcissistic dark tetrad parents. And you know, once I began to see them for what they are/were, I realized that they aren't just a little off. Nothing is genuine, real, honest or pure. Everything is tainted by their avarice, spite and malice. They have two twin goals: to get to the top by climbing on and stomping down everyone else. Nothing is inadvertent. It's all intentional. She doesn't just accidentally break things, she sets bombs to destroy everything and anyone in her path. 

Because, I have come to see, once I pried my hands off my eyes, that the dark tetrad is an enemy operative. She's an agent provocateur and saboteur. I know, I know, this sounds like KGB tinfoil hat paranoia. I wish it were. I wish this was just a MAD cartoon of Spy Vs. Spy.  Then I could have a laugh, close the magazine and be done. But unfortunately for us kids of dark tetrad parents, it's not some cloak and dagger comic book. It's real. The nightmare is never over. We wake to worse things than we could ever dream about. And I can dream some pretty seriously borked shit. 

So what is an agent provocateur and how is a dark tetrad parent one? First, let's define dark tetrad. These are people with very, well not to put too fine a point on it, evil ways. Words that have been used to describe them are: psychopathic, sociopathic, exploitative, callous, egotistic, narcissistic and sadistic. They are arrogant AF, spiteful, vindictive, passive-aggressive, aggressive and nasty. As an agent provocateur they machinate dangerous, terrifying situations as land their victims in it. As saboteurs, they clandestinely work to sabotage, undermine and implode every good thing their victim does. 

Wearing their agent provocateur- saboteur hat, dark tetrads incite violence and anger in others to get them to do destructive things in their name. They sow discord among people where none existed before. They create false scenarios to pit people against each other who were never enemies. They do this by dripping evil suspicions, into their ears. They fill our heads with lies. They lie to us and about us. 

These puppeteers set up controversy and conflict. They tell whisper falsehoods to each person that they know will goad them to do the dark tetrad's bidding. Oh, they don't frame it this way. They present it as "truth-telling" "whistle-blowing" "saying what others are too cowardly to" and worst of all, God's will. They manipulate people to do dangerous or illegal things to incriminate themselves. The dark tetrads then sit back, watch the shitshow and sell popcorn. Think beer hall putsch, Netanyahu, Jan. 6 riots and burning of the Reichstag. Think Trump. I think of my parents. 

Because as crazy as it sounds, that's what they did to me. They sabotaged my efforts. They set me up as the fall girl. They tunneled under my confidence and collapsed it. They undermined my good deeds and painted them black. Anything positive I did was "selfish", "arrogant" and "showing off." If I sensed this and backed off, they were "just  kidding" and I was "too sensitive." Effectively, they wired me with explosive devices of fear, self-doubt, lies about God not loving me, etc.. Then they set the timer and enjoyed the fireworks. Yep, it sound made up. Nope, no parent would do this to their kids. But mine did.  

 

Normal things dark tetrad parents fubar for kids: childish vs. childlike

 Hello my friends. I haven't thought of a good title for today's post on normal things dark tetrad parents fubar for their kids. That's part of the devious nature of dark tetrads: they leave you at a loss for words to describe their cunning. I'll just have to explain it as I go and hope it makes sense. It has to do with how these selfish parents destroy concepts such as childlike vs. childish behavior. It has to do with them transposing who is the child and who is the parent in the relationship (parentification). But there's more to it. For sure, they demand to behave like the dependent the child, with no accountability and expect the child to play adult and parent, taking care of them. 

But they don't act like any child I've ever known. And I've worked with thousands. Children are still under construction so they make "immature" decisions. But that's just them acting age appropriately. It  might get tedious but you expect it. And you comfort them when they fall. You forgive when they say they're sorry because at heart, they are. Adults acting this way is bizarre and disturbing and impossible to live with. They don't apologize because they're not sorry. They're entitled to act this ways, they believe. And they expect you to constantly support, reassure and make excuses for them. Even when you are the child!  

And then there's this dichotomy between childish and childlike, the first being less preferable than the second. But really they mean the same thing "of or like a child." So a child doing childish or childlike things is her doing exactly what she should be doing. Even breaking things, pouting, slamming doors, lying, or hitting, are "of childhood" in nature. No matter how goofy or even dangerous it might be, kids will be kids. They're little loose cannon that adults have to watch out for and keep safe. 

Consequently, children don't "sin" as such. Their understanding of right and wrong is still in formative stages. They aren't of the age of accountability for their actions. This would be on their parents' patch.  To chastise them maybe, but ultimately parents take responsibility for kids' actions. Though they may make the child contribute, they're the ones who pay for what got broken. They teach their children better ways and listen to their side of the story. 

A dark tetrad only gets the "punish the child" memo.  And they love that bit because they are dark and sick. They only want the rights part of parenting not the responsibilities.  They hypocritically leave their children in dangerous situations with dangerous people. They do not take care of the child. They often do unhealthy, unsafe things themselves with no apology or remorse. And so the child, being a child who makes mistakes anyway, makes more because she has no supervision, role model or nurturing parent to care. Often, as in my case, the parents set her up to fail. They sabotage any success. 

We sometimes say, and wrongly I might add, that parentified children play adult while the dark tetrad parent acts like a child. And as I said, they don't. Dark tetrad behavior isn't an accident of youth. They don't act selfish and spoiled because they are learning, like a real child, to care for themselves. They know better. They choose to act whiny, petulant, demanding, immature, licentious, intentionally for a self-serving, malicious, malignant agenda. Everything is orchestrated and schemey-scammy. 

Unlike children who are genuine and innocent, dark tetrads are disingenuous and culpable. They're backstabbing, spiteful,  passive-aggressive and flat out aggressive, like no child ever. If a kid acts this way, it's because he's been taught to or he does it to protect himself. And it's never as poisonous as an adult who does these things. Dark tetrads aren't on the defense but offense. 

Dark tetrad behavior doesn't even resemble a child's childishness, if you know anything about children. It's fakey, stagey for effect done for effect, to entrap. Dark tetrad women (like my mom) will play the pretty baby in sick, uncomfortable ways, to trap men who have a thing for children (aka pedos) into lust. The dark tetrad man plays along to satisfy his sick fantasy. She, being a master manipulator, gets off on this power. It's so gross I can hardly write about it. 

On the other hand, real children are kind, loving and helpful or try to be. Even if they are being horrible, they don't really mean it. They are sad about their choices and want to give hugs. Most of them are morally superior to many adults. They're functioning on a much higher level than they should be, given how we've messed them up. In a word, they are GENUINE. 

Dark tetrads don't act like animals either. A serpent for example, may be venomous but only to protect her young. Wow, operative phrase there, that doesn't apply to dark tetrad parents: protect their young. They don't. They hurt, manipulate, exploit, endanger and abandon theirs. Animals don't have a mean bone in their bodies. They instinctively do what's best. Even my thieving little rascal cat Mordecai only takes food because he feels he needs more than we give him. And he's cute about it. 

Dark tetrads aren't cute. They just think they are. Look at me, breaking the rules, pouting, throwing hissy fits, stealing, lying, scamming, treating people like dirt and getting away with it all. Aren't I a caution? No they're not. They're hellish nightmares to live with, especially for their scapegoat, parentified children. They "get away with it" because they make anyone who challenges them miserable, if they don't get their way. 

Dark tetrads are neither adult, child, animal nor, I presume, mineral nor vegetable. So what are they? Unliving, undead, zombies? Well, they do parasitically feed off others. But, no. They also don't take direction well. And they don't run in packs. Which makes it easier, I suppose for them to hide in plain sight. They are shape shifters. They can take on different forms at will. They may pose as the loving parent or dutiful spouse. But the facade is only for show. Once past the front door, it's a way different story. 

They may play the organ in church, quote the Bible or feign goodness. They pontificate on God's laws, others' sins and the "ways of the world." But funny thing is, you see them doing exactly what they preach against. And you never really see any good fruits of their "work." Just your own suffering by them. Well, Jesus said a tree is known by its fruit, or lack thereof,  or poisoned fruit. God sees the heart, the intentions, the ulterior motives, the agenda. And God will not be mocked. 

It doesn't even take much for the facade to fall apart. Just wait till the audience goes home and no one is watching the performance. Then costumes and greasepaint come off. Then you see that they are really Dementors (thank you, Rose, that's a perfect analogy). They're not soul-less and heartless. They've given their souls and hearts to evil and they are bent on everyone else's destruction. Nothing is pure. It's all tainted with lies. If only they were like Scooby Doo's villains, nasty and misguided, but human.  Dark tetrads are a mask without a man inside. 

Deadly effects of rising above, faith over fear and other toxic positivity gibberish

Hello my friends. I'm on a quest to heal CPTSD from a lifetime of abuse and neglect by four dark tetrad (narcissistic, exploitative, sociopathic, cruel) parents. If you've experienced anything like this, you know the kind of advice you get from people who haven't.  Just have "faith over fear" "forgive them" "rise above" their abuse, "be the bigger person" and "do the right thing."  And you also know the deadly effects this "helpful" advice can have on your sense of self. But what I want is for you to know it for what it is: gaslighting, minimizing, invalidation and toxic positivity gibberish. And it is NOT of God. Arguably, it's of the devil. 

Now I know, people who say these things want to think they're being helpful. Well, people in hell want ice water, too. But even a cursory look behind the scenes, shows they're not. This isn't well-meaning. They are speaking from their own self-righteous need to pontificate and, I'll say it, to victim-shame and to kick folks when they're down. Which in itself is dark tetrad-ish: spiteful, arrogant and undermining. 

See, this is code talk. These trite aphorisms have double meanings. Saying things like "you should be the bigger person" indicates that they have deemed you small-minded and petty. "Rise above" means you're lowering yourself to poor standards. I have no idea what "have faith over fear" means and neither do they. It just sounds good on a T-shirt. And makes them feel virtuously faithful in contrast to your sinful "fear." 

"Do the right thing" is blatant flying monkey-speak. It's like this MAGA nonsense about "the truth." Everyone's got their own idea of right and truth. Very often, what flying monkey mean by doing what's right is to stay in the path of abuse and let yourself be hurt. "Just forgive them" might be the most destructive of all. Because how it's meant is all fouled up. What flying monkeys mean is to turn a blind eye to abuse, reassure them it's okay cuz you forgive them and roll over for more. And this just plays right into abusers' hands. They don't think they're wrong, don't apologize and aren't sorry. They feel entitled to continue their abusive behavior. And this just give them your imprimatur to do so. 

The proof of all that's wrong about toxic positivity is that when flying monkeys are faced with their own difficulty, you don't hear these platitudes coming from their mouths. They're finger pointers, not pointees. If you were to give their own advice back to them (especially in the glib voice they used) they'd say you're insensitive, you don't understand. This is different. Huh. They have just identified the problem with preachy advice. It casts judgement without being in full possession of the facts. It's generalized, hypocritical and insensitive. 

Toxic positivity is about as helpful as a nuclear war. It gasses your mind with deadly poison. It makes dysfunctional trauma responses, especially fawning, seem healthy. It corrodes any healthy behavior and reactions. It baffles, distorts and deceives you. It shames you into not taking care of yourself and allowing more abuse. It makes you believe lies about yourself. You're the problem, not them. You're making it up, exaggerating, too sensitive, attention-seeking, showing off. If only you were more loving, a better person, a more forgiving person, they wouldn't hurt you. All the nonsense the abusers fed you all your life. 

And nothing could be farther from reality. 

Doing this simple thing frees me from narcissistic parent enmeshment, exploitation and parentification

Hi friends! Happy spring! I'm on a mission to spring clean old habits that have kept me trapped in endless cycles of narcissistic parent enmeshment, enslavement, control, manipulation, exploitation, parentification and gaslighting about it all. And just today I realized that doing one simple thing can free me from those abusive cycles and the CPTSD it causes. 

And what is that one simple thing? Well, first, let me just clarify that while it's a simple step it's not so easy to do. I've done the opposite all my life because it was unsafe not to. And that's to surrender control of my life, choices, even beliefs, to forces outside myself. It may have looked like I made my own choices, but nothing could be further from the truth. I just put on a good show and hid the puppet masters' strings. 

All my life, I've been at the beck and call of four narcissistic dark tetrad parents. As a kid, I was subjected to whatever crazy, chaotic, abusive people, situations and shit they chose to dole out. And I was told to like it. And in later years, while maybe not physically, but emotionally and mentally, I was under their collective shaming, humiliating, gaslighting, mind-gaming thumbs. I heard one or more of them disapproving every move I made.  I let their scorn and derision live rent free in my head. 

The funny (in a heart-breaking way) thing is that none of them really cared what I did. They didn't care about me. They left me to wander alone as a tiny kid on up. It really showed it when I was in crisis. No one was there. If they did know, they just pooh-poohed it. Not a big deal, quit showing off, too sensitive, you know the drill. And yet they felt entitled to cast judgement on me, my choices, my spouse and kids, everything. Without giving two shits about anything. 

I realize that irony now. Oh they may have cared in a token way, occasionally. But that was just for show. When I was hospitalized in a nearby city, with Placentia abruptio (like trying not to lose a baby), no one called or visited. When I was losing my mind with grief over the loss of another baby, and trying to make a condemned house habitable for my four kids, no one lifted a finger to help. Or at least a finger that didn't come with a huge price tag. They stole my car (you can't make this up) when we  were living on a shoestring and asking for no help.  

So without undo modesty, I was basically keeping myself together with school glue and a prayer. Just barely. This was the story of my life. Exploitation by the people who were supposed to care and about whom I'd over-cared all my life. And yet I didn't have the confidence to make a simple decisions without consulting their voices in my head. I was a nervous wreck trying to please everyone. Even people who were dead! (oh, you didn't know? their voices don't end at the grave.) 

And about that constant neglect and abuse I was subjected to, I somehow believed that I had to be the "bigger person." To rise above. To "do the right thing by your mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, brothers, sister, etc" no matter how poorly they treated me. That's what toxic positivity BS gets you. Shame and shoved in it. But I'm here to call that BS for what it is. 

Rising above only gets you further shoved down. Being the bigger person gets you called "arrogant" "self-righteous" and "holier-than-thou" by the very people who actually are those things. You can-do spirit makes them angry and they try even harder to knock you down a peg or six. I was flat out told I needed "cutting down to size" and so they did. So much for doing the right thing. And so I'm here to also tell you that trying to rise above abuse is like trying to get out of quicksand. It only makes you sink faster. 

That's the enmeshment. They attach leechlike and suck the life out of you. They make you think you're somehow bonded to them because you had the misfortune to be born to them. And in my case, I wasn't even born of two of them. They were just other barnacles my parents encouraged to attach themselves to me.  Plus all their offspring.  They pirate your being and exploit you. They knot the cords so tight that movement only makes them tighter. And that's the gaslighting of dark tetrad parents. You exist to serve them. End of. 

So my new plan, that is both simple and difficult,  is to avoid the swamp altogether. Now that I safely can. Back then, I had no out. I just had trauma responses, mostly freezing and fawning with some occasional fights with windmills . And I took those dysfunctional responses with me into adulthood. I thought we were family and they cared for me. So I needed to be a good daughter and care for them and about what they thought. Their gaslighting was very effective. But that kind of  interaction only works in a family. In the hodge-podge of manipulative, narcissistic, cruel, hypocrite dark tetrads I lived with, it's an A-bomb. 

And so, since none of the rules applied to me about what I could expect from a loving family, none of the rules apply to them about what I owe them. They don't get to not care and also have a voice. This simple (yet very difficult) thing I can do now, is to evict their squatter voices from my brain. And to evict their unhealthy expectations from my conscience.  I can own my own decisions, opinions, choices and actions. I get to be selfish now. I need to do what heals not what hurts more. 

If I choose to be in contact, that will be because it's safe and good for me. And it being unsafe, I choose not to. I don't welcome nor even want input on anything anymore. I'm not accountable to them anymore. I'm accountable (in some respects not all) to my family and to God. I don't owe anything, least of all explanations, defenses and apologies. 

And I get to make mistakes and stupid choices. I get to even do hurtful things if I want. This is not about vindication. I'll never get that. It's not about revenge. There's no thing I could do to make up for the hurt they caused. And I don't want to. That's not me. I want nothing but inner peace if that's possible. It's about me giving myself permission to be a human, flawed and imperfect. To do things on my own volition. Right or wrong, I'll take it up with God. 

I've been sorry all my life for things that other  people have done wrong. I've let them make it my fault when it wasn't. So even  knowing right from wrong has been challenging. I'll blog more about that in another post. 

Normal things dark tetrad parents fubar for their kids: shame vs. joy of childhood

Hello my friends. Working to heal from CPTSD is taking me on a strange odyssey full of turns and surprises. I've come to realize finally, after 59 years, that what I experienced growing up in the abusive, neglectful homes of four dark tetrad parents, is nothing like normal. Basically everything was flip-flopped and bass-ackwards.  Everything. Nothing in my childhood fits or matches anything resembling normal. My life was like a crazy quilt of tiny, mismatched pieces all jumbled together. The result is constant chaos and stress. 

I've begun a series on normal things dark tetrad (malignant, exploitative, selfish, cruel) parents fubar for their kids. Today I'm looking at how these parasites enmesh themselves in their kids selves and rob them of not only of a childhood but also the joy that comes with it. They substitute it with manufactured chaos, stress, anxiety and adult pressures. They force the child to think and act like a child when she hasn't the maturity to do so. They make her parent them. Then they shame her for not being more child-like. And I cannot begin to tell you the existential pain and confusion this causes.  

It's much worse when the parents are "religious" (by that I mean self-righteous because nothing they do resembles real spirituality). They weaponize scripture. They continually subject her to very unBiblical, unChristian, unGodly behavior and situations. But the hold her up to every letter of the law. They fault her for being imperfect when they've provided no model of morality, goodness or even decent parenting. 

You know how Jesus talks about being child-like in your faith? And that a little child shall lead them? And how parents are supposed to let the children come unto me? Well, children of dark tetrad parents get a twisted version of that. Because our childhood was stolen. Our innocence usurped and our joy smashed.  Every child-like thing we do is shamed. Where normal parents think a kid's behavior is sweet or cute, narcissistic parents shun and shame it. 

They do their utmost to sabotage our innocence because they resent it. They make us feel weird, ugly, stupid, awkward and clumsy. They push us away. Where a normal parent can't get enough lap time with their children, a dark tetrad wants none of it. They make the child feel distasteful and weird for wanting hugs. They make touch sexualized. And boom goes the child's innocence. Her sense of wonder tainted. Her joie de vivre pissed on.  

They endanger, terrorize, abandon, neglect, manipulate, extort, humiliate, emotionally water-board, betray, lash out at, future fake, gaslight, scapegoat us. They demand disturbingly unnatural things of us . They exhaust, deprive and wear us down. But then they also punish us for not being like "happy, normal kids." I was told I was unlovable because I was angry, bad-tempered, selfish, attention-seeking, show-offs, too sensitive. 

They show blatantly partiality to their other kids. Whom they do not subject to these tortures and so do not act so broken and messed up. They take everyone's part over ours. Toward us, they show only vendetta, for what, we don't know. But it's a pretty effective way of wiping the smile off the child's face, for sure. But I tried to smile, to make them happy and to make them love me. Albeit through my tears. And I got even that wrong. That apparently is "fake" and "attention-seeking."

They act bitter, sarcastic, two-faced, spiteful, shaming, backstabbing, malicious and deceitful. Then accuse us of being all these things. And we believe them and it grieves us. Since we care too much about pleasing them and too little about ourselves, we're in a constant torment of self-hatred. Which they very much approve and exploit. If we feel any good about ourselves, it's "prideful" and "arrogant." 

We must feel constant shame but not show it because then that's showing off. I got so caught up in their toxic waste tip that for much of my life, self-harm seemed the only option. I never blamed them. And yet my dad told me I was "too heavy" and "exaggerating." And that I "needed to lighten up." Mind you, my dad had been threatening me with his own suicide since I was 5. He felt no qualms dumping his "depression" and woes on me. 

Now I understand, or I think I do, that my parents were putting all their shame on me, as scapegoat. But that realization doesn't do me much good against a 60 years-in-the-making wall of shame. This shame lurks in vague shadows in my waking hours. Occasionally it bursts out, when triggered, in odd trauma responses of freezing, fawning, fixing, flight and fight.  At night, it's a different story. 

I dream terrible nightmares in which I do unspeakably awful things. For most of my life, I thought these were memories of my wicked behavior. I'd have floods of sickness from "remembering" things they'd said I did. I wake up crying, screaming and begging, not for help but forgiveness. And everyone just looks on in scorn. It has crushed my soul. 

This is what caused me to start looking into my past. And now that I'm removing the blinders, I'm recalling that what I thought were things I did, were lies made up about me. I think. I'm still not sure because their gaslighting was very convincing. But the scorn, shaming, humiliation, that happened. I recall now, the shock of the sucker punching. The ooof of having the wind knocked out of you by people who call themselves your parents. I know now why my stomach feels so sick. I was held up to the family firing squad and repeatedly fired on at till my entire self was shot to pieces. 

All I am now is a tattered soul, riddled with bullet holes, more bits than whole person. That's what dark tetrad abuse does to you. It fragments your heart. It splinters your self. It shatters your peace of mind. It irreparably destroys your inner child. You're left with a damaged brain, neither adult nor child, never grown up nor young at heart. Always old, used up, dessicated. 

It's safe to say that children of dark tetrad parents aren't children at all. Consequently we never really grow to healthy adults without a lifetime of working out these problems. We are conundrums, never adult nor child. We are creatures Frankensteined by mad scientists, warped out of natural shape. We're always in the wrong body, either forcefully grown ups in little bodies or misaligned little people in big bodies, with the entire child self missing and trapped in it all. 

I know all this must be really hard to read. It really hard to even think about let alone write. It all feels so incredibly fouled up beyond belief. 

Normal things dark tetrad parents fubar for their kids: role-reversal and responsibilities

 Hello my friends. In my quest to heal CPTSD from abuse and neglect by four narcissistic parents, I've started a series on normal things that dark tetrad (arrogant, self-centered, exploitative, cruel) parents fubar for their kids. The short answer to that is everything: every normal thing in the child's life is flip-flopped, distorted and perverted. Wrong is right, good is bad, bad is good, etc. 

In that bass-ackwards scenario, the dark tetrad parent, twists messes up even the parent-child dynamic. The child is expected to provide for the parent, the childish things they demand. The parent whines, pouts, threatens, coerces, enslaves and manipulates the child into doing their bidding. The child is forced into very unnaturally adult situations which require adult skills she hasn't yet matured into. The parent pushes the child into the deep end of the grownup pool and told to swim or drown.  

As if that wasn't bad enough, the parent does not care for the child or even provide the modicum of help. It's a reverse ratio. Normal things that the child should expect from the parent, are withheld, or parsed out so randomly and sporadically that the child learns not to count on them. And this I might add, is the scapegoat's experience. The other kids get what they want and need.  The scapegoat is told that to expect anything, even basic necessities, is selfish. 

But wait, it gets worse. The parents don't just neglect the child.  they arrange stumbling blocks for the child to fall over. They sabotage her efforts so it looks like she's failing, so that she will keep trying harder. They do not thank or praise, they nitpick, fault find, lie, invent and rewrite versions that sanitize their behavior, exaggerate any wrong-doing of the child. They invent stories that paint them as the long-suffering hero/martyr. 

But wait, it gets more twisted than that. The child is expected to act as parent but it isn't accurate to say that the parent acts childishly. Because I've known, taught, cared for thousands of children in my life. And not one was as selfish, petulant, out of control or demanding my narcissistic parents. Because the narcissist brings to it all the adult weaponry (backhanded, manipulation, two-faced), with none of the innocence of a child. A child acting bratty from time to time is to be expected; an adult doing it is infuriating, humiliating and exhausting. And utterly baffling to the child. 

And wait, there's more. The more they do it, the better at it they get. And if the longer they're unchecked, the more outlandish and audacious the behavior gets. Along the years, my parents have done and said things to me that would shock most people. And they think they're so cute when they do. And people just turn a blind eye and humor them. Which they take as consent. The child is so shamed and bullied that she's too frightened to do anything but dance to their tune.  

But wait, there's more.  They twist again and take back the parent role, whenever it's convenient, well the rights, not the responsibilities. They cherry pick the preferred jobs: bossing, demanding, harassing and ignore the real parenting work (loving, nurturing, supporting, encouraging, helping) They set unreasonable rule and issue harsh discipline all while still depriving the child and expecting her to cater to them. They scold, hit, preach, scream and insult, in the name of "good parenting." 

Their idea of parenting is so messed up that I think they believe that other people will be impressed by how they control their child. You know what I mean. You've seen those parents in the store who use their kids to get sympathy and attention. They yell at the children and then look around to see who's watching and feeling sorry for them. All we're feeling is sorry for the  kids. Because their parents are completely out of control. 

These parents aren't human. They are parasites that feed off their kids like a tics or lampreys. They enmesh themselves into the child, pirate their minds and take over their will and  emotions. We think and feel what they tell us to.  We're their puppets. What people saw was little me. What they didn't see is that it was my parents controlling me. I was just like Pinocchio with a smile painted on, dangling on the end of their strings. 

They gaslight us that we are responsible to them, but they aren't to us. No one is responsible for us and so we grow up way too fast. We have no idea how to just be a kid. That is far too dangerous. We owe them everything and can never pay. While they owe us nothing. And how dare we think they do, how selfish! It's THEIR house not ours. And we can lose our home at any moment (raising hand here). Even though it's our child support paying for it. Nothing is ours, not our money, toys, clothes. They control everything. 

We worry too much about them  and they don't give two shits for us. We wait on them. We do everything they tell us to and they're still angry with us. We work oh so very hard to make them happy. And then when we ask if they are, they shame us for "looking for attention." We can never feel good about anything or we're arrogant, conceited, showing off. We're  told that God expects us to serve without reward or praise (as if!!) 

But we dare not show depression or sadness. Then we're attention-seeking, too critical, showing off. We need to "lighten up." When dad has just screamed at us and beat us for not being happy enough about having our room taken away and being made to sleep in the baby's room. Or for asking to try on a Christmas sweater. So I developed this way of grinning like a skeleton through my tears. I would pray to stop the tears, swallowing, choking and pressing my lips together so hard it hurt.  Crying was a sure way to incense my dad. 

We're so messed up and confused. There's no winning for us or even just breaking even. There's only losing and feeling stupid, ashamed and disgusted with ourselves. And that's where they want us, helpless and hopeless. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't. We're trapped in their nets and harder we try to free ourselves the tighter the bonds get. 

Accepting one simple truth helps free me from narcissistic family enmeshment and parentification

 Hello my dear friends who follow this blog. Dealing with CPTSD and pain from four abusive and neglectful narcissistic family is pretty grim, I know. Hashing through memories of emotional torment, bullying, abandonment, child endangerment, invalidation, shaming, enslavement, exploitation, gaslighting about it all, is miserable. So today I want to share how accepting one simple truth helps free me from family enmeshment and parentification. 

And that fact is, that I was not in any of their families, neither the initial one of which I was the only child, nor the two new ones they created when my biological parents split up. I was an unpaid servant, scapegoat, surrogate spouse (to all four, creepy) and surrogate parent to their kids. They gaslit me into thinking I was a family member, so that I'd do all (and I do mean ALL) the heavy lifting. But the benefits of family, no. Those I did not receive. I did the work without the perks while they claimed the perks and did none of the work. Here's how they managed it.

By gaslighting, deception, distortion, lies, manipulation and mind-messing, they convinced me that I was responsible to them but also for them. All of them. You have to do her bidding, she's your stepmother. He can harass and abuse you, he's your stepfather. Even when he was just my mother's boyfriend. You have to care for me like I was the child and you, the parent. Why? Because I say so. I'm your MOM. You're my kid. I possess you. You owe us loyalty, servitude, obedience, etc., because...

Well, that part was never mentioned. They talked a lot about their expectations for me. My dad's wife greeted me at the door with a lengthy list of demands, when I moved into their house (notice I say their house, not mine). As you would for a paid nanny and housekeeper. As I look back it wasn't just help with housework, it was all the housework, particularly those tasks she didn't want to do. My dad gave her complete authority over me and probably encouraged her to make a nice long list. My mother and her boyfriend did likewise, including placing me in a tiny bedroom with four special needs foster children under 5. They then made a cozy apartment for themselves two floors down. 

But when it came to expectations I could for them, there were none. To expect, I was told, was selfish. For me. For them it was Godly parenting. See how they twisted definitions? Rules for me and another set for thee. So even minimal care and the most basic of necessities, was denied me. I was deprived of anything that  inconvenienced them and everything inconvenienced them. I was also relieved of anything someone else gave me. My child support, paid by my dad for MY care only, was taken to fund toys and pipe dreams of my mother and her new husband. My toys from childhood were sold or given aways without my permission of knowledge. I'd come home to find them gone. 

And about those rules for me, wooboy were there a lot. Rules, however that they did not follow. Throughout my life, beginning around 3 or 4, they'd leave me unattended, send me out to play alone in hectic, dangerous and unfamiliar places (they were always upsticksing and moving). Several times they literally dumped me on strangers and left to go I'd know where. My grandma commented when they came to visit us in Alaska (I was 6), that when they arrived "Jack went one way and Nancy went the other and left us with Marilisa." What she didn't say but probably meant was, who the heck do they leave her with when we're NOT here?" Well, gram, the answer is, no one. I didn't see my mom or dad for years of my life. 

BUT when they did chance to be around, oh the ridiculous rules they laid on me. At 15, I had to walk to school along a dangerous highway because I had to work two hours before and after school. Because they wouldn't provide even basics. And yet they gave me a super strict curfew that kids who didn't work, didn't have. They put with creepy, nasty people yet dictated to me who I couldn't associate with. They punished me when a guy they didn't approve of showed up where I was hanging out. I was grounded for two months. 

My sorry stepfather refused to hold a job. Yet demanded I do the housework and childcare on top of my job and schoolwork. My mom told me I had to comply because "he's my husband." Same with my lazy stepmom, issuing all kinds of ultimatums and rules and doing nothing herself. And my dad taking her side every time. Yet when I came home 15 minutes past that crazy early curfew, they kicked me out of the house. I was 16. And still they expected me to follow their rules! 

So the truth I now must accept is that I wasn't a family member I was a possession. I didn't have a home, I lived at work. I didn't have family, I had employers. I had no parents, only dark tetrad (malignant, self-serving, arrogant, cruel) slavedrivers. And accepting that is so incredibly freeing. Because since the rules of normal family didn't apply to me, they still don't. 

I learned to play by dangerous, unhealthy, unsafe rules no one else in my family had to. So I learned dysfunctional, overcaring, fawning behaviors. They who never cared for me, still expect me to care for them. That's the enmeshed narcissist M.O, for you. "You have no life outside me and what I allow you to have. I pull your strings, puppet! You do as we demand, not as we do." And do they play the " you have to we're you parents and we're old" card. 

BUT, good news! Now that I see all this (it took me 59 years), I see that I don't have to anymore. They never kept their part of the bargain and I don't owe them anything. Anything I may  have owed them was repaid decades ago. And so they're old now, well, they should have thought about that before they exploited and took advantage of me all those years. You don't get to shirk your responsibilities to your child all her life and still expect her to fulfill hers to you. 

You made it abundantly clear that I was not welcome in your family, now you aren't welcome in mine. The gravy train has derailed, the ATM is broken and your primary caregiver has left the building You don't have any parental rights. You surrendered those when you quit caring for your child. You lose. And you don't even get the lovely parting gifts. 

So is that weird? Yeah. I see people caring for their parents and it triggers extreme guilt that I'm not caring for mine. But I was and always have until it got too toxic for me. I have to remember that they set the terms, not me. The people I see caring for their parents very likely had a more normal set of  rules. I didn't. They care for their parents because they were cared for. I wasn't. It's transactional in the best way. Mine was one-sided. And to keep trying to have a relationship that was never there to begin with, is a fool's errand that only leads to more pain. 

Normal things dark tetrad parents fubar for their kids: goals, abilities and even career path

 Hello my friends. I know it's been heavy weather around here, with me coming to terms with the many levels of abuse and neglect I experienced from four dark tetrad (narcissistic, malicious, exploitative, cruel) parents. I'm working to heal CPTSD from childhood trauma, including endangerment, abandonment, neglect of basic care, parentification, enmeshment and enslavement, scapegoating, constant shaming, boundary smashing by my two bio parents and their new families. 

I started a series on normal things that dark tetrad parents fubar for their scapegoat kids. As this is a stream of conscience blog, they're in no particular order. They're coming to you as I realize them. Today I'm looking at how narcissistic parents mess us their victim child's goals, understanding of abilities, dreams and even career path for her. 

To do this we have to go back to the beginning of her life. Dark tetrad parents systematically (operative word) deprive her of even the simplest of things, that most kids in her milieu take for granted. And they do this is a clandestine way that makes it appear that she's no different that anyone else, and has access to what most others have. Or they go so rogue but gaslight people into thinking it's normal that people miss the abuse that's actually taking place. I know, confusing. Welcome to my life. 

Now, you may say and you'd be right, that many children have experienced neglect and that it's not the  parents fault. They were doing the best they could. For example, children of parents who are working poor, doing their best, working their butts off just to provide. But my situation was different. My parents didn't work consistently. And never at plebian jobs everyone else did. They were too good for that. They were "called by God" to be missionaries and I was dragged off on a  "mission trip" to Alaska that never materialized. They just, as my grama put it, "ran off to do their own thing and leave Marilisa on her own." I was 6. 

And we weren't poor, I was. They had money for expensive breed dogs, an organ, new motorcycle with matching leathers, English riding lessons (I can't make this up). For that mission trip across the globe from Michigan to Alaska. And they did this by, bluntly put, stealing, denying me basic things, funneling resources from family for themselves. My grandparents never knew that most of my life, I didn't even have a bedroom or proper bed. 

So I said this was systematic and that was a critical point. Dark tetrad parents groom their victim child by 

1) keeping necessary things from her like safety, security, people to watch over her and even food or shelter.  

2) endangering her in bizarre terrifying ways that destroy her self-care abilities. Actually they frown on her self-care and call it self-centered showing off. Her needs are selfish whims while their entitled selfish whims are God-demanded expectations that she must fulfill. 

3) routinely abandoning her, not showing up, not being there, leaving her alone in scary situations with no one to help and no explanation of how to navigate. Leaving her alone in situations that would traumatize adults. 

4) putting far too much and too adult responsibilities on her, bullying her into doing  their work, and then the coup de grace, attacking her for being unable to satisfy their endless demands even when she does manage to perform pretty well, better than they as adult perform. They create a constant feeling of failure, worthlessness, being a burden and in the way. 

5) indoctrinating her into a fake reality, a parallel universe, a cult in plain sight, using endless lies, humiliation, distortions, twisting, deception, exploiting fears, invalidating, gaslighting, boundary crashing, enmeshment, parentification, role reversal. 

6) grooming her to her into believing this is God's will for her. Even though no one around her, cousins, their other children, friends, are living anything like this deprivation. 

7) manipulating her empathy and genuine care, making her believe it's her job, from little girl on up, to keep them (and anyone else they decide to make her subject to) happy, no matter what it takes or how much it hurts 

8) damaging her brain with endless stress and chaos. Causing her body to spray cortisol like a sprinkler. Creating a shell shock condition in which she doesn't sleep but only cycles through endless nightmares. 

9) sabotaging self-confidence, calling it arrogance and pride, wearing down her resilience so that just staying awake and upright is a challenge. Walking, thinking, feeling, interacting is exhausting and everything hurts. But she learns to suck it all up. 

10) infantilizing and making her feel no use to anyone, ultimately shaming her into thinking that this is all she deserves and it's as good as it's ever gonna get. 

So what's left is one damaged, ashamed, scarred, scared girl who doesn't know safe from dangerous, right from wrong, parent from child. Who has been color-blinded and can't tell red flag from green. And that's exactly what they want, a kid who not only doesn't know how to protect herself but who feels guilty doing so. And she's putty in their hands. 

So how does that screw up her ability to set goals or even choose a career path. Her sense of accomplishment has been destroyed by them endlessly moving the target and raising the bar. She's been worn down and made to feel never good enough. She's been drilled into servitude to them. Having goals requires believing you have the right to have them. But the damaged child has been dictated to all her life. She's been forced to fulfill THEIR goals, dreams, wishes. She's been punished for  having organic ideas and thoughts of her own, let alone aspirations. 

Here's a case from my life. By the time I was 13, I'd been so thoroughly enslaved to both sets of parents that I wouldn't have knows a wish or want if it hit me in the face. I raised them and their kids. I did what I was told and then was made fun of for failing. My only thought was them. So when, in 8th grade, I took the COPS and CAPS test, it showed that my abilities far exceeded my goals. My scores were in the top 2 percentile and I'd listed as my goal, childcare or housekeeper. 

Not being a mom, myself, mind you. They'd convinced me I was far too messed up to ever parent a child myself. My chief "goal" if you will was to care for others' children and clean their houses. Well, that's all I ever did. No one had ever talked to me about going to college. I didn't even know the names of different universities except from reading books. And they certainly weren't going to cough up for any furthering of my education. Let alone give up having me around to do the heavy lifting. That's the infantilizing servitude: destroy her confidence to do anything but wait on them. 

Now, you might say there's nothing wrong with childcare or housework. The test proctors thought otherwise, if the student was capable of more. My teacher called me aside and said that something unprecedented had happened. The test assessors who apparently never comment on results, had contacted him and said he needed to have a chat with me regarding my choice of career vs. my ability. Usually what they saw were kids expecting to have big jobs without putting effort in. I was the exception.  "This kid could design fighter jets and she's settling for babysitter. You've got to stop her letting her potential go to waste. Get her some college and career counseling!"

I didn't go home and tell anyone. They would have just scoffed and taken it as an insult anyway. When I did go to college, I got no help and a fair amount of hindrance and dismissive pooh-poohing.  I still didn't grasp as far as I could reach. Fear will probably always hold me back to some extent. 

But I did cherish that middle school affirmation random strangers. It only takes one person to believe in a child, to make a difference.