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.