Hello my friends. I've been working to heal CPTSD (complex or childhood post-traumatic stress disorder) from narcissistic abuse and neglect by the four adults in my life who called themselves my parents. What does CPTSD mean for me? Endless triggering of trauma responses, pervasive anxiety, brain damage from constant cortisol release, nightmares and amnesia-like memory loss. Let's talk about the memory loss component.
You may contend, that we all have memory loss and you'd be right, of course. However the memory problems from narcissistic parent abuse is not so much fading or forgetting certain things. It's memory damage by destructive forces purposely intent on damaging memories for ulterior motives. My narcissistic parents and their two new spouses were also dark tetrads, having malicious, manipulative, entitled and cruel behavior traits as well.
How do they destroy memories? Dark tetrad parents place the child in hostile, frightening situations. They subject her to disturbing things like abandonment and angry mean people. They neglect basic care and don't teach her how to be safe. They groom her to serve and parent and take the blame for them. They say and do icky things about sex which make her uncomfortable and vulnerable to predators. They do creepy things other kids' parents don't do. They preach about immorality and then behave in very immoral ways.
All of this is very out--of-sync with the more normal world the child sees outside the home. Perhaps kids see more inappropriate behavior now. But I still think, by and large, we try to keep it child-friendly. In my time, life was moderate, outside the house. No one else seemed to live in anything like I did and they looked at me like I was crazy if I told anyone. And it is crazy and crazy-making. It's like living in a cult in the middle of an everyday community or a parallel universe.
Then they compound all that routine craziness with lies, distortions and deceptions. They connive and trick her. Then they gaslight her into distrusting her perceptions and experiences. They say none of this happened, that she's lying, showing off and making it up for attention. Or if it did happen, she deserved it. They mock her and make fun of her trauma responses. They openly resent her, call her names and accuse her of being jealous of them (?).
So the child is left bewildered, nervous, anxious and unsure of what to do or think. This normal little girl is made to feel like a freak. She learns to see herself wrongly, as a problem, a nuisance a bad person. She mistrusts everything she thinks, feels and wants. Because someone along the line said it was wrong. And wishing to please and be a good girl, she smothers anything that they say is wrong. She smashes down impulses, feelings, wants and needs. And doing this over time, has the cumulative effect of squashing memories too.
Memories of bad things they did, can't be allowed in because then she would have to admit that these things DID happen to her. And dark tetrads can't have any questioning. So she compartmentalizes the memories. Memories are parsed by her damaged brain and by parenting brainwashing, into those to retain and those to repress.
Good memories are exaggerated, by self-serving parents, and made much larger than they were. Any time spent with me or thing done for me was to be endlessly appreciated. Even if it was just a normal thing parents do for kids, like feed them. Extended family never did this. Just my dark tetrad parents. Culling back through my memories, I realize that aren't many good ones. And of basic care and simple things like meal times, toys, a bedroom, patterns of wallpaper in my bedroom, I have no recollection. And I have a very good memory for such things. So my conclusion is they weren't there.
Memories of bad things parents did are neutralized by the servant-child's mind. They never have to say sorry or even admit it because I already absolved them. I never even remembered they did it. These things just passed right through me as being all fine and dandy. I think on some level too, my brain was protecting me by doing this. It put these memories into little drawers, like a library card catalog, and then shut the drawer, locked it and threw away the key. But shut in is not forgotten by the subconscious mind. The drawer's contents leak out, in bad dreams, trauma responses (fawning, flight) in panic triggers and half-recollections. A little digging and then I remember...
Now, memories that painted me in a bad light, accusations made against me, things twisted, even lies, stay in my mind as truth. Dark parents must scapegoat the child to take on all their sins. So they drill into her head all the wrong she's supposedly done. They catechize her on her many failings and sanitize their own wrong-doing. They gloss over their part in problems so all the child recalls is her wrong.
Then they go even farther. They trump up charges, evade questions, feign ignorance, ignore hurts to the child, rewrite history, invent wicked things she has done. They imbed memories of transgressions that probably never happened. I say probably because I'll never know for sure, thanks to their complete gaslighting. I've always assumed they were true though I could never recall doing these things. And believe me, with all the self-hatred I had, if I'd done them I'd remember.
So is all this newly remembered trauma just a figment of my imagination? Am I really just looking for attention? No. I know it was always there. It just wasn't safe to admit and and now it is. And I won't get much attention out of it because I've only told a few people outside this blog. Someday I may tell more when I write my book. If that's attention-seeking, it's about damn time. As for as using it against anyone, I have no intention of using it at all except for my own growth and healing.
Bottom line, which I've said before and I'll say it again. If something is so bad it has to be lied about and kept secret, it must be pretty bad. Telling the truth about what someone did isn't what's wrong, it's that they did it in the first place.
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