Hello my friends. So this is not a great title. But what I'm trying to explain is how dark tetrad (selfish, arrogant, entitled, cruel) parents steal basic things from their target kids. And by basic I mean essentials that other kids just for granted. These are things kids should be able to take for granted because they are human rights but which we as children of dark tetrad parents were denied. Or had stolen from us by selfish, demanding parents.
So first, a look at one component of dark tetrad that I don't think gets enough discussion and that is enmeshment (which is not a great word for it). What narcissistic parents do is steal, at birth, their target kids' selves. They entrap the child and put her to work bolstering their entitled, self-absorbed fantasies. They deny her an identity and personhood outside her assigned role of supporting character. Childhood, innocence, interest, wants, feelings, even needs are sacrificed at the altar of their insatiable greed. A lot of her life ends up being and feeling like no life at all, just a shadow or puppet.
And let me explain what I mean by target kid. This is the one whom these dark parents have singled out to be their scapegoat or victim. This is the child upon whom all the family toxicity, blame and shame is heaped. And because they've stolen everything from her, she's not even a member of the family. She's not even unpaid staff. She is pariah. A nuisance, an evil, but a necessary one to fulfill all their demands.
If the child is, like me, a product of their first marriage and they've divorced, remarried and have other kids, it's so much worse. Because now she is a living reminder of their failed marriage. She is as unwelcome as the plague because she doesn't fit in their spun narrative. She is the X variable they can't factor out of their shiny new families. Narcissists who divorce are extra especially delusional. And don't even get me started on the all the crap their new spouses dump on the kid, at her real parents encouragement. Now she has four people ganged up on her. There's even a joke about the "red-headed stepchild" (which isn't very funny if you are that person).
As the victim child I was in impossible situation. Damned if I did and didn't. Painted in a corner. What they would have liked to do was dispense with altogether but, BUT they also needed me to make their little dream world happen. Dark tetrads are also lazy. They expect others to do for them. So getting rid of me would have meant losing all the many services they demanded of me.
Their workaround was to make my life as shame-ridden, transactional and difficult as possible. To exploit me and leverage the fuck out of everything they did for me (which wasn't much because they also withheld basic necessities like food, shelter, clothing, medical care, privacy, love, support, a bedroom and bed). And did they get maximum value out of their minimal to non-existent investment.
Even now I can't do the simplest thing without hearing their self-righteous, shaming, demanding voices in my head. I don't know how to get out of the painted in corner. I think I'm just going to have to walk across that wet paint and make a mess.
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