Odd trauma response triggers that make sense when you see the emotional flashbacks behind them

Hi friends. I did something really strange and dysfunctional yesterday. And since I'm learning new healthier behaviors, I did what I've never done and looked deeper instead of just assuming it was failure on my part. The microscope revealed that my emotional pool was a cesspit, teeming with all kinds of trauma pond scum. Decades of dark tetrad narcissist parent abuse has created a legion of weird trauma responses in me. They are triggered by things that seem odd or unrelated but  make sense when you see the emotional flashback behind them. So I've made a kind of working flow chart of triggers, trauma responses and emotional flashbacks. 

Trigger one: husband forgetting phone. I was out in the yard and I called him only to hear it ringing in the house. This set off a chain of trauma responses: panic (freezing) fear of abandonment, ridicule, humiliation, flight (immediately taking off in car so without leaving note so he would feel the fear, panic and insecurity I was feeling). Rage at both him and myself, him for "kicking me to the curb" and me for reacting. For letting it get to me and not being stronger. 

And when I dug deeper I found that I was frustrated with him for carelessness but I was also angry at my parents and their spouses and children, for consistently doing shit that left me alone, humiliated, afraid and vulnerable. And that is the emotional flashback. It's also the healthiest, most justifiable anger I could feel. 

I was able to regain my composure before I talked to him. And that's thanks in part to giving myself permission to use my best judgement and not immediately return his calls and texts. The old trauma responses told me that I had to fawn and jump to answer, that "two wrongs don't make a right" and that it was petty retaliation to ignore his calls and texts. I have been gaslit into believing that it doesn't matter what anyone else does to me, how they provoke, bully, manipulate or harm me, I must always respond with what the bully deems the "right" response. Ergo, people pleasing, absorbing the shame, fawning, groveling, bending over for punishment.

And I will admit that on some level I did want to show him how it felt to wonder where someone was and why they weren't answering. But that's healthy too. It's the only way to get the point across that being unavailable when you need to be is disconcerting and very risky. Sure, now that we're older, it's not such a big deal. But there were too many times when our kids were young that he left me stranded. He would say he'd be back in 15 minutes, taking our only vehicle and leaving me with the kids. Two hours later, no Albert. 

He always had a perfectly logical answer. And I believed him. Yes, I know that sounds really sketchy but it was also true. He did have a good reason. But not good enough for leaving us stranded. Countless times I had to remind him, what if one of the children got hurt? He'd give the classic response--they didn't. Yes, but not by any intelligent design on your part, I'd say. You didn't follow through on promises. You put whatever agenda you had in your head before your concern or responsibility to us. You took chances and just expected that I'd work out whatever came along. Most frustrating of all, you didn't even think about how I'd work it out. You felt no concern just diddled around, oblivious to your family. Hurt, fear and anger made me lash out or sometimes just explain why it was a  problem. 

But either way, he would get defensive because he knew he was in the wrong. And either way, I'd feel in the wrong because there is no right way to deal with  someone else's hurtful choices. You can't make them stop. You can only take care of yourself. And I was taught that self-care is selfish. So there's that. Plus, I've yet to find the manual that explains how to navigate in a relationship with a very self-absorbed, stubborn person who refuses to cooperate. That's why so many end. I knew he was responding to his own trauma but that only made things worse for me. I already took on too much responsibility and that triggered even more caregiving at my own expense. 

And it also triggered endless emotional flashbacks to a mom and dad who from the time I was 3 or 4, were randomly there and randomly nowhere to be found. And who put no care into seeing to it that someone was responsible for this little child. Or they dumped me with strangers and dangerous people. They purposely left me exposed and confused to groom me. I don't know what they did but they were sure as hell gone. I have been left to fend in shocking situations that I normalized and internalized. I think they did this to achieve exactly what they have achieved. That I'm anxious, confused, awkward and scared and don't have proper self-care skills. The point was to render me helpless, starved for love and desperate for bread crumbs of care which they would withhold until I was so conditioned that I thought it was a banquet. 

So, stranded and desperate are not good places to be. It makes you do weird things. Like panic. Especially when you're caring for other people besides yourself. I have trauma nightmares that not just I but a bunch of children I'm responsible for, have been left in dirty, dangerous and unfamiliar situations to fend. It's terrifying and mind-blowing. Terror makes you react in unglued ways. Yesterday's situation was not at all the same. My husband understands now how his past irresponsible behavior has caused so much trouble even now, in emotional flashbacks.  And he is very careful and responsible now. Forgetting the phone was an accident. 

However, my trauma didn't understand that. All she remembered was the sick dread of it happening again. So I did new things. First, by not responding immediately it gave him some uncomfortable moments he needed to feel. More importantly it gave me time to process and work through what I was feeling and how I could get to a better place. I explained to him how him forgetting the phone made me feel. 

I felt humiliated, like someone had set me up to look foolish and was jeering at me. It is yet another pie in the face (my mom once threw a pie in my face at her company picnic). I felt let down and worried. I felt mocked. I felt betrayed. I felt anxious and like fighting, fawning, freezing and fleeing all at one. This will make sense to you if this type of thing is a trigger for you. It doesn't' really matter if it does or not. Because it does to my brain. It senses threat and is firing on all neurons to protect itself. 

It's amazing how therapeutic it is to talk it over with someone who cares. Who doesn't weaponize or punish. Who wants to work for harmony. Who gets it. My brain was able to comprehend that though it looked the same, it was not a threat. It's going to take time, however, because old traumas and gaslighting about them cast long  shadows. 

Relationship status with narcissist parents once you go no contact: it's complicated

Hello my friends. Many of you may be wondering, so I've gone no contact with my narcissist parents, now what? Do I still love them? What does that look like? What is the relationship status with those I've cut off? You may also wonder how I know that my readers aren't also narcissists themselves. For the same reason I know I'm not or at least have fewer tendencies than normal (we all have some for survival). Narcissists and dark tetrads don't go looking for help. Their victims do. So I know because you're reading, that you're struggling too. 

So back to the original question. What's my relationship status with parents I've gone no contact with? It's complicated but also simple. And MMUUUCHH simpler than being in a relationship with them. Do I still love them? Eh, only in the same general way that I love all personkind. I don't want to see them suffer but I'm not buffering it anymore. I'm not absorbing. Not shielding them from the logical consequences of their own foolish, irresponsible, hurtful choices. I don't care in that obsessive way that I worried over them when they were enmeshed in me. I never spent a moment considering all the damage they'd done to me. I just agonized over them. How I'd let them down, supposedly. 

Because DARVO is the name of the game with dark tetrads. Deny (all harmful behavior wreaked on their victims) Attack (the victim) Reverse (roles of) Victim and Offender. Narcissists love to play the martyr. Oh how I've suffered, no one understands me, pass me a Nembutal and fix me a drink, worn out Scarlett O'hara thing (thank you Ya-ya Sisterhood for that gem!) And what I now feel for my narcissist parents is nothing, really. I just don't care anymore. 

I don't hate them. I don't even resent them. I never have. Which actually might be a good thing for me to do for a little while. Not to blame like they do but to put blame where it belongs. On them and not on me. To be angry about all they put me through and how they ruined so many things for me. That would be a realistic part of the loss of relationship grief healing process. Part of the awareness that they were never parents to me, only perpetrators. Part of the letting go. 

But I just don't have that much fabulous in me. It requires more energy than I have. I'm exhausted and burned out. All I want now is out of their cult.  And them out of me. I want distance. I don't want to be their crutch, whipping girl, emotional support lap dog, sex therapist, loyal cult follower, worshipper, servant, possession anymore. The caretaker has left the building. And the grounds and the Branch Davidian complex. 

So how do I deal with them? I don't. I send short happy birthday, merry christmas texts and call it a day. I may send an occasional gift but usually not because anything I send triggers too many awful memories. Everything is weaponized and unfairly transactional and I always come out with the short of the stick, feeling and being made to feel like shit. End of. 

Healing CPTSD from dark tetrad narcissist parent abuse by listening to emotional flashbacks

Hello my friends. I've been listening to a lot of Youtube videos on narcissistic parent abuse in an effort to heal CPTSD from the four dark tetrad parents in my life. Even with all the experiences that I've shared I still struggle to accept that I was actually abused, neglected, abandoned periodically, endangered constantly, manipulated, scapegoated, triangulated, enmeshed, invalidated, bullied and gaslit about it all. That is the sick nature of gaslighting by narcissistic parents. They make it all seem normal. Even though there's no way on earth, in heaven or hell I'd treat my child this way. Somehow I've internalized deep into my core the idea that this was all okay for me. 

So naturally, I struggle also, to accept that my parents were dark tetrads (narcissistic, arrogant, entitled, Machiavellian, sadistic, psychopathic). If their abuse of me was normal then they're just normal parents, right? That's what their voices in my head say. But my emotional flashbacks tell another story. And what triggers those is also my pathway to healing. 

Listening to a series by Danish Bashir on weird things narcissists do, I was not only triggered but also shocked by how he nailed my parents' behavior. All kinds of memories that had been squished into cupboards came rushing back. With every act he listed I instantly recalled them doing these things. I didn't have to struggle to make the shoe fit. It was like he was using them as examples, the behavior was so spot on. I found myself oh, yup, forgot about that. Oh and that one too. Bam, bam, bam. 

It sad how many shitty memories a child can compress over 60 years of life. It becomes sedimentary rock in her brain. But hearing it named, was like a geologist had tapped into that solid mass. Like that old log you roll over and all the exposed creepy crawlies scuttle out. It takes your breath away to see how disgusting and how many there are. You feel the gut punches, again, one after another. You recall the many times they pulled the rug out or hung you on the fry wire. 

The intensity hijacks your system. You are assaulted with the horror. And you know with cold certainty, that these are not the only times it happened. You've only just scratched the surface. You feel short of breath, dizzy, nauseous, suicidal. During one, I was overwhelmed with despair and felt the demons impelling me to drive over a cliff. The suddenness was like a jolt of electricity. Thank God I had my baby in the car or, who knows, I may have done. 

And that is what emotional flashbacks felt like to me. I use the past tense because, hearing their horrible behavior enumerated clearly, I realized it didn't have the same sting. I felt a calm, dispassionate, quiet resignation to the fact that these people who called themselves parents were perpetrators. Self-serving, remorseless, psychotic, sociopathic, cruel agent provocateurs who considered themselves God. While proclaiming to serve God. Does it really get any more demonic than that? 

It really makes no difference to me whether they would be clinically diagnosed dark tetrad narcissists or not. Though I'm 99% sure they would be. I know how awful they were to live with. Or at least I do now. Because I'm paying attention to triggering things and emotional flashbacks. This is treacherous territory. The damage to the child mind is so great that you risk further harm just accessing those memories. This is why the mind seals over them. If the child were to actually know how much danger she was in, it could irrevocably destroy her. 

Even reliving them decades later is terrifying. But I believe in a higher power who lets me remember them when I am ready. Not to do me more harm but to being to heal the complex childhood post-traumatic stress disorder. To bring some soothing balm to the fevered, perseverative trauma responses that I autoloop in. Soon, I'll share some emotional flashback triggers and trauma responses that look really odd but make sense when you understand the origins. 

How narcissistic dark tetrad parent "discipline" is abusive rape of a child's mind

 Hello my friends. I've been thinking lately about the hidden physical abuse kids suffer from narcissistic dark tetrad parents. I listened to a Youtube video by Danish Bashir (he's amazing, you should listen and subscribe) in which he explored different kinds of physical abuse narcissist dark tetrad parents subject  their kids to. I was glad to hear him address the issue that those of us in special education have wrestled with for decades, that abuse isn't just physical. It's mental, emotional, spiritual, medical, financial and more. So today, I'm starting to look at the many ways dark tetrad parents abused us kids. 

I'm beginning with the most obvious type which is physical abuse and the most apparent example is hitting. But if you've been on the receiving end of hitting, you'll agree that it's not always obvious to us as kids of dark tetrads. Their punishment isn't clean. It's muddied with blame, shame, finger-pointing and self-serving gaslighting and sadism. It isn't about chastisement for correction of behavior. It isn't about discipline. It's about sick, devious, controlling, power mad love of cruelty for cruelty's sake. And their way of punishment is nothing short of rape of a child's mind. 

They go so far as to distort the child's memory into believing they weren't abusing because they weren't hitting when actually, they were. They just had a lot of cutesy bullshit euphemisms, quack-psych machinated reasons and fake religious self-justifications for it. They made you believe it was your fault. You caused it. You made them hit you. They did it because they care. They were so proficient at gaslighting that I thought it was normal punishment, not vicious bullying and narcissistic rage. 

But they don't do it in ways that other people who love child will see. When my grandparents witnessed my dad at a Christmas party rip me a new one for trying on the sweater they gave me, they checked. I wonder what they would have done if they'd seen the times he beat me. To the child they act all proud, haughty and self-righteous about it. They'll brag to fellow child beaters whom they know will approve  and/or they'll twist it to be "Godly" discipline so it seems to comply with the Bible. But the dark tetrad is very careful to craft a version that is sounds very different form the vicious abuse it is. 

For example, my mother started slapping me across the face,  hard and frequently beginning when I was around 7. It hurt a lot, not only my skin but my jaw and neck in which I developed early onset arthritis from. This one's really tricky because I also slapped my daughter's face and will never stop regretting it. But the reasons were completely different. My  mother was spitefully angry and I was sad, remorseful and shame-ridden and trauma responding. She was self-righteously on her high horse whereas I felt like shit.

She'd spin this yarn about how it hurt her more than me. Bullshit to that. I happened to look up once (I didn't make eye contact much and kept a low profile) Her eyes gleamed with malicious gloating. She had that sick smirk narcissists can't quite hide. She wasn't hurt she was loving it. She would verbally abuse me, calling me names, insulting and mocking, while hitting me.  I have been a terrible mother at times but I NEVER got anything but self-disgust out of spanking my kids. 

AND my mother did it to punish me for her mother supposedly slapping her while I did it BECAUSE my mother told me to. Oh how she weaponized her mother's "abuse." She'd tell me that she was the perfect mom and what she did to me was nothing compared to what she suffered. Interestingly, her mother didn't abandon, endanger, leave her with strange men, make her care for four foster care kids for a week, move her out of her room to sleep with the babies, play church lady while shacking up with her boyfriends, sleep around, kick her out of the house, allow her to be sexually abused and then publicly shame her. To name a few. 

Mother was just always right. No matter how self-aggrandizing, deceitful, hypocritical and ungodly she was. She had indoctrinated me not to listen to my good judgement which was screaming not to spank my children.  And I had a lot of fundamentalist Christian parenting BS floating in my head. I thought I'd fail my kids and God, because all my parents told me so, if I didn't hit them. We'll just let that marinate. 

I've always repeatedly apologized and reassured the kids that it was me and not them. I was the problem. Whereas I was the problem with mom, too. My mother continues to blame me for her having to hit me. I was supposedly "mouthy" and "sassy." I have no idea to this day what I actually said to set her off. I was so biddable and empathic. I also can't recall what my daughter said to make me slap her so I think it was a case of gaslighting by proxy. My mom's voice was in my head haranguing me with the "spare the rod" crap. While both my daughter and I were just being normal kids. 

Which is interesting too. On some level she knew she was wrong. But dark tetrads will  never admit that. So someone else must take the blame so she can feel justified. Because down the road, she stabbed me in the back with it. When I checked myself into a mental hospital after losing twp stillborn daughters (which she was overjoyed to drive me to), she accused me behind my back to my children, of hitting my them. Which she'd basically said I'd go to hell if  I didn't. She told the kids that she and her abusive-to-me-with-her-approval husband might have to take over custody of them. (yeah, fuck that noise. I was pretty far gone but not that far gone. I lay under a train before I'd let them screw up another generation of kids). But that's how entitled and arrogant these dark tetrads are. They want to not just screw you up but everyone you love, too. 

My kids reminded her that she'd hit me and she back peddled, lied, said she never did. But she also forgets who she told which lie to. She proudly tells my husband how she smacked me around. But how she had to stop when I "hit her back." I felt so guilty over that and he has had to remind me repeatedly that if I did, I was defending myself from her attacks. I grew up thinking I was a terrible kid because my mom "had" to hit me. None of my friends experienced this. They were all disobedient and mouthy from time to time. 

My dad got furious once and out of the blue, beat me too. He was sick of his wife whining about having to get up at night with the baby so he moved me out of my room and into the baby's room to shut  her up. I was 14. He would send me to bed with the baby after I'd already done all the cooking and cleaning. I hadn't even had time to do my homework and I couldn't because there was no room and I couldn't wake the baby. I used to sneak and do my homework under the covers in our closet of a room. I don't know why he beat me. My fawn mask was pretty secure. I think now he was mad at her for being so bitchy and selfish and was too wimpy to deal with it so he took it out on the whipping girl. That happened a lot with the four of them. 

So why do these dark tetrads hit their kids? You might say, well, you hit your kids, Mar. Wasn't it the same for them? Are they just following Bible guidelines? No it was not. If you've ever been hit by a dark tetrad you know the difference. They enjoy it. They are getting charged up whereas someone like me got depleted and exhausted. Their eyes get this disturbing gleam and you can till they're quietly getting high on hitting you. Or, like my dad, they just get more enraged. He was literally drooling and almost frothing at the mouth. Every narcissistic injury he'd ever felt was distilled into his arm and he couldn't hit hard enough. And when they were done, neither was sorry. They just told me to quit crying and go wash my face. They never apologized or even admit. Kind of  like rape.

Dark tetrad parents don't hurt their children because they were hurt and don't know any better. They're not confused and shell shocked by a lifetime of gassing and gaslighting. That was me. I thought they were right to hurt me because they said I deserved it. I never felt my kids deserved it but I did think my parents were always right. So I should do likewise. I wish I'd cut my hand off before raising it to them. I wish even more that I'd cut my sick abusive parents out decades ago. Dark tetrads don't hurt because they're out of  control. They are very much large and in charge. They know exactly what they are doing. 

Dark tetrads hurt because they're dark tetrads--malicious, malignant, Machiavellian and manipulative.  Hurting is their modus operandi. Blame and Shame are the names of their game. They never tell you why they're hitting you exactly. I've never known what I did. So learning anything but trauma responding was a bust. They don't say what you did because you did nothing. And they can't admit they're frigging demented sadistic control freaks who get off on hurting people. That it's their heroin fix.

But they are also good at DARVO--deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. Once they've gotten the payoff, they turn on their victim (again like rape). They blame them for making them do it. Or they lie and say they never hit you, like Mommy dearest did to  me. Which of course is completely contradictory. You can't not have done it but also have a good reason for doing. See, they manufacture mutually exclusive paradoxes like trees grow leaves. But their victim is so shell shocked that she can't defend herself or even think straight. They make it too dangerous, if she even had the energy to. 

Dark tetrads also hit because they hate their children and we hate ourselves too. They resent and are jealous of our light, our sweetness, our charisma, our Zen. They hate how other people are attracted to us. They think they are the only ones entitled to attention. They hate how we make folks smile with our genuine authenticity. While just drain everyone. They keep grabbing all the good things and sucking up all the oxygen, trying to smother our fire. But they can't  because they are dead and cold. They kill everything they touch. 

And they hate that. So all they can do is douse, quench, put out. They isolate us and cut off our resources. They try to kill us. Sometimes they succeed. When I confided how miserable I was to my dad, he told me I should commit suicide. Thank God for my beautiful husband and kids cuz I almost took him at his word. But even that isn't enough for them. They're the malignant enemy prowling the earth seeking the ruination of souls. They are Wendigo, getting hungrier the more they kill and eat. They are restless spirits ever roaming. Because they are human, not Gods as they believe themselves. 

Because the core of the problem is that they go contrary to all that is logical, loving, kind and proper. They go against the natural order of things. But instead of fighting this deadly impulse, they indulge it. They're keep trying to force a square peg into a round hole. And they just damage the peg and the hole. And the older they get, the more they do it, the more entrenched they become, the more convinced they become of their own godhood. But also the farther they get from light and love, the darker and colder they get. 

And we who are their children thought that what they gave us was love because parents by nature, love their kids. So we gave them our good love, in exchange for their counterfeit self-serving harm. We threw good money after bad. The older we are when we realize it, the harder it is for us to change too. We have days, weeks, months, years, decades of conditioning to be their possessions, not children. We're practiced at giving ourselves to them, body, mind, heart and soul. We literally know no other way. 

I'm going to be 61 soon and it has taken me that long to start processing that what I experienced was not normal and healthy but abuse of  many kinds. I'm grateful to  my husband for helping me put that in perspective too, to quit shielding, defending and excusing and to begin admitting that what happened was very wrong. And I sound really confident now because I'm faking it till I make it. But I'm going to wrestle with their gaslighting for the rest of my life

 

Healing CPTSD from narcissistic abuse means rethinking some Christian teaching

 Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm seeing how I need to rethink some Christian teaching. And I'm recalling a time, years ago when I was in a Christian homeschooling group Bible study and the scripture about being a servant came up. How we need to give till it hurts and be a servant to all. You know the whole "JOY means Jesus first, then others and you last" meme. Well, I was in a really raw, emotionally tapped out place. If you're read other posts you know how I have spent my life being an overachieving empath who gives away everything, lets others walk all over her and thanks them. And this just hit a nerve and I said that sometimes you can give too much and it's not healthy. 

Oh my goodness, you'd have thought I'd said to torch a church full of kittens. Eyes flew open, hands wrung and I was immediately chastised and told "you must NEVER say that! We must always serve like Jesus and we could never give enough!!" And other gaslighty stuff. I was running on the fumes of fumes. Just giving to that group had cost me more than I had to give, in money, time, energy and emotional pain. As usual, I'd let myself be guilted into signing up to do far more than I could. And this was the match to the Molotov shame cocktail. 

Bear in mind these women didn't know me from Adam and cared even less. They didn't ask what I meant just judged that I was being heretical. As if I'd have dared in that self-righteous bunch. Nobody noticed that as they drove up in their enormous new 15 passenger vans, I was trying to keep up in a beater that broke down more than it ran. My husband was working all the hours God so we didn't go bankrupt. We were both working round the clock to fix up a derelict house as they complained about their palatial estates. They were having babies right and left while I was losing mine. I was drowning in post partum misery and trauma nightmaring all night long and getting no help only hinderance from family. This wasn't me resenting what they had, just admitting that I couldn't keep up. I thought it would be safe to share but boy was I wrong. It was just a stick to beat me with. 

One  woman did say that she knew what I meant. But it was too little too late. Marilisa was the problem child, again. A real voice of evil. Funny they were always more than willing to dump their kids on me. They actually exploited the fact that I was a certified teacher, telling me God expected me to "use my gifts to serve."  Which translated to the person barely able to afford groceries teaching all the little rich kids pro bono. Funny how generous some people are with other people's resources. This has been a common theme in my life. 

It called to mind all the times narcissists including my parents, had weaponized this kind of scripture against me. How they rubbed my nose in all God was supposedly expecting of me. How they tied burdens on me they didn't help carry. How they were never servants to anyone, least of all me, just expected and demanded my service. How God was calling me to raise them and their kids, clean their homes, support their asses. There has been a shame chorus playing on autoloop in my head all my life. 

But just tonight after listening to a podcast on dark empaths and narcissists, I realized something. I'm glad that homeschool group incident happened because it showed two things. 1) That these women and my parents and all the other selfish takers were speaking to themselves in my presence. They did need to serve more and demand less. But I didn't. I had and always have given much more than I could. I've always given from my lack instead of my largesse. I've paid far more than what is owed. And I've been paying on investments I never agreed to and which I've never gotten a return on. 

And the second thing I learned is that I needed to learn these things. I get to decide whether to give, what to give, when and to whom. I choose who I think deserves my help.  And if I have energy to or even want to. I don't have to. That instead of driving ahead in bad weather, I need to halt. I need heed warning signs of burnout instead of blowing through them. That I'm the best judge of what God is calling me to. That I can and should say when the playing field isn't level that I'm not playing. 

I was also gaslit to think that I should give just as much or more, regardless of what other people gave. That translated to lots of people sitting around watching me do their work. I was told I had to always be correct and perfect in all my actions no matter how confrontational and hurtful others treated me. But just what that perfect behavior was, was never explained or modeled.  Now I'm thinking that it's okay if I give what I determine I have to give. I think we can assume that when scripture tell us that to whom more is given more is expected, that less is expected of those with less. 

I'm learning that I don't have to play by rules some person made up for me that I didn't agree to or no one else is following. I can choose to disobey especially if the rules are set by hurtful people to hurt me. I'm working to understand that I didn't owe anyone anything. That I can and should do things by choice not fear and obligation. That I don't have to give where there is no reciprocity. I don't have to give period unless I want to. I get to decide upon my own moral code of ethics. This is not vindictive or vengeful. It's self-protection.  

This all has been especially problematic for me. I was gaslit and groomed to believe that I was too stupid to determine for myself. That I was too selfish and immoral to be trusted to read and interpret scripture for myself. That I was disobeying God if I didn't comply completely with all their very self-serving demands. That self-care was selfish. That I (and only I) should give till it hurt. That they were entitled to take all they wanted and leave me helpless. That others could bleed me dry and my job was to like it. 

The voice of FOG is loud. And old sins (of parents wrong teaching) cast long shadows. When the podcast said tonight, that a healthy dark empath gives of her bounty, not her resources, I immediately triggered into old trauma responses. Pandora's demons in my head screamed NOOO! That's sinful!! You have to hurt to give! You have to give up and away huge non-renewable chunks of yourself!! That's what God expects!!" 

I immediately ( because I was conditioned to) called to mind the parable of the widow's mite. How I'm supposed to give all I have and then some. But then a new voice called hope said, no. Jesus simply used her generosity to correct the pharisees' flawed math. That they gave what they didn't need while she gave all. He wasn't saying I had to drain a vein every time someone wanted blood. He was simply telling THOSE who were selfish to be more generous. 

And about the cloak parable. I've already given mine away plus all my other garments too. Maybe he isn't telling me, like my dad did, to give everything when no one else is giving anything. Maybe Jesus is  telling those who are weaponizing this scripture against people like me, to preach to themselves. Maybe he's not telling me to let demanding takers use and abuse me. He's telling them to quit and begin bloody giving. What a revolutionary thought. And it does feel a little bit heretical because my parents made themselves gods so theirs are the only voices I hear when I listen for God. 

But we're told he's patient and doesn't give up easily. So if I keep listening, hopefully I can start hearing his voice over the rabble. 

 

Horrific ways religious narcissist parents destroy God for their child

Hello my friends. I just listened to the last Youtube video by one of my favorite speakers on narcissism, Dr. Les Carter. He has been so instrumental to me in starting work to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse. I appreciate his emphasis on Team Healthy. Thank you, Dr. Carter. This one's for you. And Gus <3  

Today I'm looking at horrific ways religious narcissist parents destroy God for their child. Sorry Dr. Carter, I know that doesn't seem like an honor to dedicate this to you. But it is. Because you helped me see how they ruined my understanding of God and why nothing about religion, the Bible or Christianity seems to fit for me. And that's important because I see now that I didn't break it. They broke it for me. AND you also showed some ways to find my way back home. 

My parents were selfish enough from the get-go. But then when I was 5, they moved to Alaska to be missionaries (no church affiliation or support), went way rogue leaving me with strangers or alone in all kinds of dangerous situations. My dad wandered off to the wilds of Alaska for months on end. He never worked and neither did she. We were homeless. Then he decided God was calling him to convert the Manson girls and he hitchhiked off with half their money ($10) to L.A.  

Then they decided, selfishly, to divorce. My mother was running around with an assortment of creepy men and my dad probably was cheating too. I know he took a lot of young teenage girls with him on his "missions." But never his little daughter, me. No one explained anything to me and I was scolded for being confused and thinking I would lose my grandparents too. I was left unsupervised so often that I thought it was normal. Then they hooked up with new people who were just as abusive. I say hooked up with because she was living with her boyfriend in our home. She had a lot of boyfriends. Interestingly the second husband just divorced her on claims of cheating. But I digress. 

But through it all, they remained convinced that they were actually preachers. They have always loudly preached the Good News as they called it. But looking back it didn't seem very good, at least for me. There was a lot of talk bad, wicked, sin, evil that people were supposedly doing and that they in their strangely unholy self-righteousness were somehow above? They literally did exactly what they were preaching against, blatantly. Thank you, Dr. Carter for helping me understand that they were not above these rules. They are narcissists. And very dark tetrad narcissists at that. 

So how did they break God for me? Narcissists don't serve God. They don't serve anyone. They think they ARE God and they gaslit me into thinking so too. They made me serve them like they were God. They equated my obedience to their demanding, irrational, arrogant, self-serving dictates, with obedience to God. And the Bible bore them out. Kids obey your parents. I always got that part loud and clear. What I missed was the part where they were supposed to care for me and humble themselves to God. Because it was never about God it was about them and they weaponized Him to their own ends. They always have. All four of them. 

So when they abandoned me (while still expecting and getting love, service devotion, care, parenting--yes parenting, obedience from me) it was as if God had abandoned me. Because he kind of did, if they were God. They were the only Gods I knew. I see now they wanted me to believe that God abandoned me. Leaving me alone, uncared for or supervised, they were showing me, "see this is how little God thinks of you." All that you read about in the Bible, it's not for you. You're the exception, the one God doesn't love. 

I didn't know then that it was them that didn't love me. And so now, it's hard to wrap my head around it still. See, people will assure you that "God was really there with you all those times you were alone and scared." And it probably was true. But a child doesn't get that. All my little kid mind knew as afraid and alone. Children are very concrete. They only know what they can see and feel and touch. They don't get that there is an invisible presence that loves and cares for them when the grownups who are supposed to don't. I'm not sure adults get that either. I certainly didn't and don't. 

The best I can do is kind of click my heels and repeat to myself, he loves me. Lather, rinse, repeat. And maybe if I do that enough, I'll start to feel it. You hear from a lot Christians about faith over fear and belief in things you can't see. I've been gaslit and shamed all my life over this. That I was somehow failing God for not believing He was there. But belief and faith were never the problem. I had those in abundance. 

What I didn't have was the luxury, and I use that word intentionally, of allowing myself to trust that God really did love me. My parents would not allow that. THEY were the only God as far as I was concerned.  And they were judgmental, hypocritical and hateful as, well, hell. And then I would feel sinful because I was told I was, for not taking God at his word. I would confuse the hell out of myself trying to juxtapose the complete lack of care from parents, and the utter expectation that I would serve them, with a God who loved me. 

How do you frame God's love when the people who make themselves God not only don't love you but withhold God's love from you? What do you do when you have been groomed to believe that you are the exception? How do you form a relationship with a God who you have been told to trust and then punished for trusting? How do you both love and serve Him and them? 

So none of scripture fits for me. But that didn't stop me following God's laws to the best of my ability. You make damn sure to tow the line as a child of dark tetrads. But it all felt like shit and shoved in it when I could claim none of the good from God. I was told to do all the work with none of the perks. That was not for me. That was for them to exploit and steal from me. 

Yes, I see now that they broke God for me. It wasn't my fault. But I didn't see it then. Children ONLY know what they are taught by the adults in their lives. Even if it's wrong as hell. Maybe especially if it's wrong. The devil one devious SOB.  The poison goes right to the roots and grows up with the child. The longer they drip poison in your ear, the deeper the poison goes. By the time you  realize that you are fighting the devil himself, you are so soaked in their poison that you're drowning in it. 

And it's worse because there are very few if any people you can talk to about it. They just layer on more shame repeating their one-size-fits-no one rules which make you even more suicidal. They don't listen. They just keep pratting the same shit that got you in this mess to begin with. And, small segue here, do they think they're being helpful? I've been hearing those rules and commandments since before I could speak. I get it. I could recite them when I was four. With all due respect, just shut up if you have nothing more than that for me. 

I'll be honest here. I don't know the way out for sure. I think it's going to take a lot of brain delousing. And reindoctrination if that's a thing which spell-check doesn't think it is. I'm going to have to keep repeating to myself some new ideas. But I also have to say, and no one wants to hear this. Or maybe they do because it affirms their struggle, too. The poison that was planted in my brain will always remain to some extent. Sad but true. 

You can regret, apologize, make amends for till you're blue in the face but  you cannot fix what you broke. You can only mend and make do. The shattered cup will never pour properly again. And dark tetrads will never regret let alone apologize or try to fix. Also sad but true. Can I find a superglue to fix it? Maybe? I hope so. I do know that the love (nurture, support, affirmation) of loving people is the best binding agent I've found. 

 

What CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse feels like

Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm going to share what cptsd feels like. 

CPTSD feels nervous and anxious. Relaxing was not something I was allowed to do as a kid. I had to be hypervigilant awaiting the next command. And the next chaotic stressful life change. And the next expectation and demand. I had to anticipate their every flip-flopping mood swing. I had to be prepared for double standards that doubled back on themselves. I had to know as a young child, without guidance or instruction, how to do things many adults don't know how to do. 

CPTSD feels ashamed, humiliated and belittled. Being frequently scolded and chastised with no reason given or if there was one it didn't make sense. And rarely if ever praised. 

CPTSD feels like fluid rigidity. My narcissist parents were very rigid and dogmatic in their beliefs what other people should do but also very loose with their own morals and behavior. But then they switched sides when it was convenient and didn't tell me. They just punished me for not reading minds and keeping up with their Tilt-a-Whirl of strange, self-serving doble standards. 

CPTSD feels like trying to dance on a razor's edge. I had to color to perfection, inside very tiny lines and stay small so is not to attract attention to myself thereby robbing the narcissists who demanded all the oxygen in the room. I had to keep a lot of balls in the air at once, while jumping on a lava floor. I kept myself tight with clench teeth which gave me a weird grimace that looked like I was angry when I was actually afraid. Mistakes cost me a lot. 

CPTSD feels like intense shame around benign things that are made to appear unspeakable wicked. I grew up thinking a lot of things were of the devil. Things that were just normal kids stuff like liking certain kinds of music. My parents did, thought felt and acted exactly as they pleased heedless of the devilishness of it all because the rules were for them to preach not to practice. Consequently, I believed rock music was evil. All of it. Then Pink Floyd help me turn a corner. When the Wall came out in high school I found I not only understood it but that it resonanted. I was able to pry my hands off my eyes and fingers out of my ears. The world did not explode in a ball of flames because I listened to a led Zeppelin song. Go figure. 

CPTSD feels like emotional leprosy. I was constantly getting burned and then punished for pulling my hands out of the fire. I have a lot of trauma scars and missing bits, physical and emotional. Here's a secret I hope you won't share with narcissists. If you scold me I will automatically roll over and take it all all the blame and shame. I will let you sucker punch me and thank you for the privilege. 

CPTSD feels like exhausted confusion. Constant gaslighting, lying, deception, twisting, revisionist history, spending the narrative. Just when I thought I was actually doing something right, wham, I was hit with the old you're too arrogant, you're showing off etc. They exaggerated everything to feel like treason if not done to military standards. But those standards weren't explained or taught. I just had to divine it. But I couldn't' clarify either. I was set up to fail because those constantly shifting expectations shifted without warning. If I asked if the dishes were done to their satisfaction, they would say I should just know without having to ask. Asking was fishing for compliments.

CPTSD feels like failure because success is impossible (but still expected). I was told that I was useless and lazy because I didn't get things perfect the first time. Things like mopping the baseboards on my hands and knees so not really mopping, scrubbing, to her rigid specifications. I don't know how she could know because she was so fat and lazy that she couldn't or wouldn't get down in her hands and knees to actually see. She just knew by osmosis somehow, that I'd flubbed it on purpose to piss her off. She was pissed off a lot. I used to think it was at me because I was always ALWAYS in her crosshairs. Now I see it was just narcissistic rage. And they called me the angry one. 

CPTSD feels like I'm stupid and nasty and gross. My mother's husband laid around all day while we did all the work and brought in the paychecks. He was a filthy pig who smelled and never washed. He'd throw used oil and old tires on the wood burning stove because he was too lazy to cut wood. Their  daughter got worms as a child. They left their son to play unattended and he got killed. I had to sleep on an unheated porch. I was sick a lot with headaches and heavy menstrual periods (that's common in girls who've lived in trauma). I had to hold a job to buy sanitary products because my mom wouldn't. She gave me old diapers. There was always a soak bucket of them. I would be doubled up with agony for hours on end and sometimes forget and leave a pad neatly rolled up on the tub edge. My mother would scold me because "Bill doesn't want to see that. He's mad at you." 

CPTSD feels baffled. My dad would play this weird game of Daddy Bright and Dark. He'd write me notes saying "we (as in me) sometimes don't feel appreciated but we should just know without anyone saying anything that we are. " And then proceed to enumerate all the ways my step "mummy" was angry with me. And how new tasks would be added to make up for how I'd let her down. Yeah. Tons of confusion. 

CPTSD feels like exhaustion. I know I just listed that one but it needs further unpacking. Exhausted trying to keep up with all of their demands and failing miserably. Very conflicting demands too. Mom wants this. Her husband wants that. Dad expects this. His wife expects that. Their kids expect expect. There are pictures of me as a child where I'm barely able to keep my eyes open I'm so tired. From having to sleep with their babies and get up at night with them. Plus having to keep up with all the housework and school work and school. Dark tetrads keep you exhausted so that you're too tired to see what they're doing to you. They flood you with demands and then fault you for not getting it right so that you will feel ashamed and keep working your ass off to please them 

CPTSD feels isolated, claustrophobic and also agoraphobic. They keep you enmeshed and chained to their little cult. They disallow you outside opportunities or promise then make them inaccessible. They move you to isolated places with no way out. You feel cut off and claustrophobic. They cripple your ability to interact with other people by zapping all your resources. So you are also agoraphobic and afraid to be with people. They destroy your ability to sleep with all the traumatic experiences you relive every night in nightmares. You can't even join a sleepover without scaring the shit out of everyone crying out at your trauma dreams. You can't have many friends because they won't let you and your home life is such a hell hole that you don't want anyone to see. You can't participate in after school activities because you have to be home doing chores chores chores. And child Care, child Care child Care. 

CPTSD makes me look and act like a freak in a circus side show. I don't know how normal people act because they didn't let me be normal. The one thing that saved me was that I'm a good actress. I watch people for cues and a good at mimicry. But normal does not come natural. And I feel like an imposter a lot of time because I kind of am. 

CPTSD feels disturbingly and inappropriately sexualized. I was a pretty moral kid if I'd been left on my own. But they ruined this by subjecting me to horrible sexual experiences, shaming me for them and nasty sex talk around me that gave me nightmares. I thought i was a dirty little slut for having them. I didn't learn till I was an adult that it wasn't my fault. But I've never stopped feeling that way. Another thing ruined.