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.
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