Surprising tips on Childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse

 Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery journey I'm going to share some tips to heal from narcissistic parent abuse, that may surprise you. I've experienced narcissistic abuse, neglect, toxic shaming, invalidation, exploitation, scapegoating, abandonment, endangerment and gaslighting about it all, by four parent authority figures with various forms of sociopathy and malignant narcissism. 

Healing CPTSD with poetry

I've got another blog called The Writer's Garden (you can click that link to be taken to it). Writing poetry helps me process the grief, anger, confusion and pain of childhood trauma in a creative format. Offering it online, to be read by others gives my inner child a voice she never had living with narcissistic and enmeshed parents. Narcissistic abuse tells a child that her needs and wants don't matter, only those of the entitled, arrogant, self-centered parents. They use coercive control, intimidation, humiliation and FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to shame her into silence. Writing my story in narrative form on this blog helps me understand it in technical terms. Writing it in poetry gives it a three-dimensional visualization. I can't explain exactly what I mean but suffice it to say both forms of writing are therapeutic. 

Art therapy for Adult Children of Narcissists

ACON (Adult Children of Narcissists) have struggled not only to be heard but also seen as anything but a prop in our narcissistic parent's main character fantasy play. Our one purpose was to be narcissistic supply without any autonomy or individuation. And too often, enablers and flying monkeys seemed to approve and support our parent perpetrators by victim shaming us. They all created false images of reality with DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) in which we were problem. Creating graphic art repaints their gaslit version correctly. Art can be a vehicle to show not only us but the abuse we suffered clearly. 

You can't gaslight art. It shows and tells truths that all the trauma bonding and betrayal blindness can't hide.

 

Singing in the pain 

You probably see where I'm going with these childhood trauma healing tips, and that is how art, whether written, graphic or performing, can be a recovery tool. Singing, playing a musical instrument, dancing and even acting in theatre are helpful in many ways. Performing arts provide a channel for the pent-up energy from trauma responding especially freezing and fawning. It gives our tendency toward hypervigilance a healthier focus. And it puts positive attention on us, instead of always on our attention-seeking parents. 

Be Aware and Beware

Having said that about attention being given to us, know that narcissistic parents do not like being outshone. They're great performers but a poor audience. They soloists, not choir members. Not that you are trying to compete with or steal their limelight. They're jealous, competitive and take others' success as a narcissistic insult (or ego injury).  My narcissistic father loved playing his violin, expected to be asked to play everywhere he went and got pouty if he wasn't. Yet when I was singing privately, in the bathroom he told me to quit showing off. He couldn't be bothered to come to performances of a music group I started. Then when I invited him to join, he took over and kicked me out saying I had no talent, yet still expected me to attend and applaud his performances with that group. He has never once said a kind thing about any success I've had and has found a way to attack, belittle or insult me. I don't recall him ever complimenting me. He said he was afraid I'd get a big head. Then he said I was too sensitive and couldn't take constructive criticism (which was always destructive shaming). Meanwhile this arrogant, insensitive man was incredibly oversensitive to the faintest hint of reproof. But knowledge is power. Now that you know your parent is jealous of you, don't feed him any data to use against you. Grey rock. Keep your own secrets. Don't go looking to him for advice or affirmation. He will always undermine you. And for heaven's sake, keep singing. 

Protect yourself

What narcissists can't steal they sabotage, including your innocence, personhood, childhood and joy if you let them. Children of sociopathic narcissists learn very young, to be neither seen nor heard. There's no room for anyone else in the narcissistic fantasy spotlight. The child is merely a tool to get them what they want at no personal cost. If you do get paid positive attention, they will ruin it with mocking, humiliation, exhibitionism, dirty tricks and cheap theatrics. They will get the attention on them no matter what they have to do. My narcissistic mother wore nightgowns to family celebrations and lied that she didn't get enough to eat, just to get pity and keep eyes on her. She yells AMEN and PRAISE THE LORD loudly when visiting other people's churches where they don't do that. She even upstaged her deceased brother at his own funeral. You can't have nice things, like sanity or a new car, around envious narcissists because they will destroy them if you let them. Don't let them. Don't invite them to things they'll just ruin. Go no contact if you have to. Don't support their habit. If they have run-ins (which narcissist frequently do) don't hurry to take their side. Set boundaries around what you will do and not do if they act up. They can be idiots all they want but you don't have to be their fall guy. Don't JADE (justify, argue, defend or explain). Just do you. 

Turn off the gas. 

Four gaslighting tactics a narcissistic parent uses against the child are parent enmeshment (blurring boundaries between you and them, teaching you that they own you and you owe them), parentification (making children responsible for them) infantilization (overcontrolling and treating the child like she is inept. My parents did both, parentifying and while also rigidly controlling me) need shaming and triangulation (targeting and pitting people against the child). All of these form an inaccurate sense of self.  And the first step to see the inaccuracies and correct them. Children are individuals not parent extensions. They don't have a debt of obligation to parents. Parents are obligated to care for their children. The child is always the child. But not childish. Needs are not wrong and self-care is not selfish. If you feel targeted or set up to fail, you probably are. Limit their access to you. They don't have buy-in on your life. 

Leave the Egg on and Pie in the Face

But making themselves the center of attention sometimes backfires. Once, I was having a nice time with my children at my mother's work party we were invited to. And out of the blue, in front of everyone, she threw a pie in my face and laughed hysterically. My narcissistic stepfather joined in because he loves embarrassing people. No one else laughed. And it was her turn to have egg on her face. Then when she was chastised by her boss, she and her husband threw a narcissistic rage fest and blamed me. They ambushed me, saying I made them look bad (yes, I am serious.) And this points out a key flaw in the sociopath's plan: by trying to make people look foolish, they make fools of themselves. And that starts a shame spiral which the narcissist can't tolerate. They have to have a target which is usually the scapegoat child. Which even as an adult I let them do. I took the brunt and placated them instead of letting them experience the consequences of their bad choices. So one way to practice recovery from this narcissistic abuse, is to let the pie stay on your face and the egg on theirs Don't rush to wipe it away or make excuses for them. Let people see what they have done.  Some people will only believe your abuse story if they see evidence of it with their own eyes. Let your parents sit with their shame, alone. Stop warming them by setting yourself on fire. Hold space for yourself. 

So this is a long, rambling list of trauma recovery tips but they are interconnected. Not like a set of steps, more of a safety network. I wish you peace and healing in this fraught journey. 

"Good Christian" parents like the Duggars trigger childhood trauma responses from narcissistic parent abuse

Hello my friends. I just read something about the Obedience Game the Duggars of "19 Kids and Counting" play with their kids, and it triggered childhood trauma responses of shame spiraling. The good thing is that I noticed the shame spiral starting, so while it's still pinging, I'm going to unpick the stinking thinking before it does any more damage. 

The "good Christian" parent trauma trigger

I have always felt inferior and ashamed around people who proclaimed or who I perceived to be "good parents", especially the "good Christians." We tried to teach our children Godly principles. I did my best raising my kids and made a lot of mistakes and even bad choices. I feel guilty about the wrong I did and I have apologized and received their forgiveness. My children have told me they admire and try to emulate how I parented them. And yet, I default to auto-shame and feeling wrong, whenever a parenting style conflicts with my own. And even when it doesn't. I feel ashamed of  myself for having a core flaw. 

The fact that is was the Duggars...

It's interesting that it's not just Christians that I share ideology with, that trigger this sense of self-loathing. I defer to people I don't even agree with, who have been caught in many hypocrisies, the pedophilia of their son Josh Duggar and their very problematic IBLP Bill Gothard brand of quasi, cultish Christianity. However, if I hear something they did no matter how diametrically opposed to my own professional training in child development, it triggers feelings of self-doubt.  I know what's wrong with blanket training and blind compliance. I see how it endangers a child. But no matter how wrong and dangerous I know it to be, I believe I'm wrong and they're right just because they are them and I am me. Which ironically is what these obedience games teach a child,  to ignore their own common sense and good judgement and let people control them like puppets. Now think how vulnerable that makes me to people I have great respect for who turn out to be unsafe. 

Toxic shame or guilty conscience?

This comes up in politics, too. I'm a pretty far left progressive because as I read scripture, that's what God calls me to. I can see the hatred in MAGA and don't support it. I can hear the heresy when Christian acquaintances tell me I can't be a Catholic and not support Donald Trump. But still I have that sense of being wrong, again. Some would argue that what I'm feeling is a guilty conscience or promptings of the Holy Spirit to examine my conscience. Fair enough, we all need to do that. But we are also called to be careful not to follow warmongers, pharisaical blind guides or wolves in sheep's clothing. Not to serve two master. Which some sectarian fundamentalists,  like my parents,  have proved to be. So is it more toxic shame from narcissistic parent abuse driving this?

Childhood Trauma Responses from parent gaslighting

Based on what I know about God, who is love, I think the "guilt" is shame. It doesn't feel like being  held accountable for a reasonable error. It feels like sick, nauseating shell shock. Like someone sucker punched me. It dread and disgust and terror. And I cannot figure out what I have done wrong. If I had done wrong, God would not leave me in this confused limbo, but would show me clearly. God does not backstab us. He deals in mercy. So if I'm feeling this utter revulsion, it must be coming from a malignant source. 

Childhood Trauma Nightmares

This nameless, faceless evil is the same oppressive horror that stalks my nightmares. Every night. I cannot begin to explain how brain damaging they are. I'm also the adult child of narcissists who experienced lifelong narcissistic abuse by four malignant parents. So this sense of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) was inbred in me by hypocrites with a God complex, playing by their own  made-up rules. They made themselves gods to me and kept me from the real God by their deception and exploitation. Gaslighting,  trauma bonded betrayal blindness and self-abnegation are just nursery tea for me. 

Self-care was called selfish

I struggle with Imposter Syndrome which tells me that anyone who compliments just doesn't know me very well. I have called myself  the divorced child who was cut off from care while being expected to care for parents. I'm the Broken Vending Machine Child, endlessly giving with no reciprocity or even basic care. I was groomed to believe that other people were always right and I was always wrong. If I protected or defended or spoke up for myself, I was severely chastised. So I learned not to. I learned fawning, kowtowing, deferring to anyone else, no matter how dangerous they were. I was taught that it was sinful to see red flags and avoid them. Which put a target on my back for predators and child molesters. It conditioned me to expect abuse as my due. 

The take-away

I'm grateful to have seen this shame spiral coming on and so be able to  head it off at the pass. It makes sad to think how often these panic attacks happened. I'd be in fullblown dissociative split with all the dysregulation and destabilization that goes with it before I even knew what hit me. My advice to you who like me are working on childhood trauma recovery, is to start seeing those red flags for what they are. I need to see that the childhood trauma responses that were supposed to keep me safe, are hurting me now. 

Childhood Trauma Recovery from narcissistic abuse means understanding the Divorced Child Dilemma

Hello my friends. Welcome to part two of the Divorced Child Dilemma series.  Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring how healing requires radical acceptance of this uniquely fraught space. 

Two conflicting and invalid documents

The malignant parent divorces from himself from responsibility to the child while also binding them to endless obligations. He issues the child a decree of divorce along with a contract of debt into perpetuity. The child grows up believing these are valid and binding but they aren't because the child didn't sign or agree to either. So how does a parent achieve this bizarre setup? 

Parent enmeshment

Enmeshed parents believe they are infinite and god-like, omniscient, all-seeing and supreme. The child is just and extension of themselves. She has no more rights than plunger used to clean the toilet. Individuation and autonomy are punished. Self-care is selfish. The enmeshed parents violate the child's boundaries and invade her privacy with no more thought than they would to entering their own bedroom. They walk in without knocking and eavesdrop on conversations. They feel entitled to criticize things that are none of their business. They read the child's diary not to help or understand but to gather data they cause shame her with. The child gets used to be caught in their gotcha traps. 

False responsibility ratio 

In the narcissistic family cult, the parents create a parallel universe where there are two sets of janky rules, one for them and one for each child according to the role they have cast them in. The narcissistic parents make it up as they go along, lying, gaslighting, script-flipping and narrative-shifting, role reversal and creating an artificial parent-child debt burden (the contract of obligation) in which the child owes all to the parent, yet nothing is owed to her. The parents implant a false sense of responsibility to and for them in the child. Then they deny all responsibility to and for her. It's win-win for the parents and lose-lose for the child. 

The Parentified Child 

Part of that invalid contract is the parentification clause. The parentified child is groomed in a FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to the parents with no reciprocity. The Broken Vending Machine Child (who is elements of all of the family system roles, especially scapegoat child) dispenses everything demanded of her, with nothing good coming back to her. The coin slot is broken and the family takes whatever they want, free. Caring, nurturing, mental load, housework, support, chores, loyalty, obedience, respect, compliance, duty, being a punching bag, listening ear, all that and more, the child pays out in endless debt to the parent, yet receives only the most cursory, if any, care in return. She is expected to parent the parent like a child, yet infantilized and treated like an incapable idiot when it suits them to paint her as such. There is never a real, healthy parent child dynamic. 

Coercive control

But still, you're asking, how do they manage this. By weaponizing the power differential. Parents naturally hold the power differential to protect, defend, nurture and guide the child. And the child naturally loves and trusts the parent. The dark tetrad parent exploits their authority and the child's attachment to them, to break the child down. They enslave the child in their narcissistic cult of  FOG and even intimidating coercive control. 

Surveillance with safety

Malignant parents monitor ridiculous things with micrometer-like precision yet don't provide even basic care or necessities. They engage in surveillance to entrap rather than protect the child. The set the child up with disturbing sting operations. They keep tabs on things they have no business monitoring. All four of my "parents" were hypervigilant over my every move or facial expression, not because they were anticipating my needs or fawning. They were looking for something to ambush me with. They got narcissistic supply off humiliating, baffling and terrifying me. That's no conspiracy theory. Though I wish it was just me exaggerating or too sensitive. 

My lazy, jobless, abusive stepfather, with my mother's smiling approval kicked me out of the house at 16. The curfew which was supposedly to protect me, endangered me by making me homeless. These parents hide malevolent fascism behind a guise of concern which shows itself in the illegally abusive ends to which they will go to wield power.

Owned by not owed

"My wife is married, I'm not." I once heard a serial cheater say this laughingly about his relationship. And this illogical fallacy perfectly demonstrates the bespoke gaslighting hypocrisy that the traumatized child is subjected to. The parent effectively says "You are my child, my possession, with all the rights of ownership that go along with it. You are indentured to me forever. I own you. I am your parent authority figure, but I am not responsible to or for you. I owe you nothing. You are accountable to and for me, and I'm accountable to no one, least of all you." Yes it really is this ludicrous and insane. 

Divorced yet still married

Malignant parents sabotage the child's natural attachment to them, to confuse and destabilize her. The enmeshed parent divorces themselves from responsibility to the child while also, hypocritically, keeping the child "married to" them in terms of what she is groomed to believe she owes. These control freaks leverage essentials like food, shelter, safety against her. They create a false burden of debt that they bind her to. They steal all good things like personhood (identity theft), sense of self, independence, autonomy. They sew her up into a tight net of obligation from which there seems to be  no escape. The "wedding ring" that only the child wears, is actually manacles and shackles. She is handcuffed to them for life. 

Trauma bonded betrayal blind bondage

The enmeshed parent plays a double dealing hand of "blanket training" and senseless carrot dangling which she snatches back for no reason. The narcissistic mother makes necessities into rewards that must be earned and which can be removed at a moment's notice. The narcissistic father uses love bombing and future faking and bread crumbing to trap the child in endless tail-chasing. The more the child purses the parent the more the parent plays hard to get. Till the child is twisted into a pretzel and stuck in a cycle of lawless, anarchic punishment and deprivation. And this is so normal and everyday for the child that she develops betrayal blindness. She believes them that she is the problem and caused this chaos. Even though no one around her lives anything like this. 

Gaslighting and grooming by deprivation

Normal people have no concept of this unique hellish reality that kids with CPTSD live in. They are given essentials as rights, not rewards or contingencies. They don't have to earn a roof over their head with constant hoop-hopping only to have it randomly taken away. They are not told they lost the privilege of a home or a bed by some trumped up charge levied against them. And the parents know this. They use the very craziness of what they put her through, to keep her quiet. Who would believe you, they say. The child gets worn down and worn out. The neglect and abuse deplete her basic resources. Through a kind of Munchausen's' by Proxy they keep her sick and tired and hungry so that she is biddable. 

The transactional one-sided contract

Malignant parents make everything transactional. The child has to earn basic unalienable rights. They wrote a contract of obligation before she was even born. They bound her to duties, expectations and demands before she could speak or walk. The child never signed or even read the contract. They just told her she  had to guess what they, and anyone else they bound her to, wanted. Then they punished her failing mind reading. Then they changed this imaginary contract again. But then they violated this contract that they coerced the child into. They didn't keep up their end of the bargain because they are entitled, arrogant, ruthless, believing no rules or contract binds them. 

The Divorced Child is Forever Thwarted

Adult Children of Narcissists grow but we don't develop. I don't mean we're immature. Most of us have had to be far too mature too young. While the grownups in our lives acted like irresponsible, immoral, feckless, reckless failure to launch-ers. What we lack is not adulthood but childhood. We weren't allowed to differentiate, to individuate. The power they wielded over us dogs us. We struggle to see anything clearly. They may not have actually had that power, but tell that to our trauma brain. Tell that to our inner child who forever lives in this blanket of burden they crocheted for us. 

The way out is walled up

I would like to promise you and my inner child that there is hope, a way out. But that was sealed off for us strategically to keep us enslaved to them. So maybe what we have to do is tunnel another way out. Going no contact is one exit for me. I'm also seeing the prison has a glass ceiling that is breakable. Enablers and flying monkeys have smugly told me it's me that is trapping myself. Aka, I'm imagining it. Well, they would say that. They always took the narcissists side over the wounded child. So maybe I need to go no contact with anyone and everyone who holds me back from healing, from getting unstuck from family of origin. 

Breaking contracts I never signed

Actually, what I have to do first is to find a way to realized this contract they wrote, never existed. It was never notarized nor signed by me. It's as worthless as the nonexistent paper it was printed on. These were just made-up unethical, illegal, immoral demands placed on me by unethical, law-breaking, immoral people. Then I have to emotionally tear up this invalid contract.  The tricky part will be to help my poor inner child understand that this was a fake.  

The Divorced Child: Gaslighting hypocrisies about going no contact with narcissistically abusive parents

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm starting a new series called "The Divorced Child" in which I'll show how malignant narcissists (who I will also interchangeably call dark tetrads) divorce themselves from the child while still remaining "wed to" or enmeshed with them. I'll begin with gaslighting hypocrisies about going no contact with our abusers. Adult children of narcissists (ACON) are fed all kinds of gaslighting nonsense, not only by our parents but enablers in society, religion, family, media, even professionals in the field of psychology. One of the most complex is the parent-child debt paradox, fed by parent enmeshment and wrong ideas about the narcissistic family cult. Let's debunk these dangerous myths. 

Going no contact is something someone does.

But it's not. It's what they stop doing. They stop responding to texts or calls. They disengage which though it sounds like an action, it's more of an inaction. The scapegoat child stops allowing herself to be used as a scapegoat. The Broken Vending Machine child lets her auto-giving machine, that they broke, shut down completely. She discontinues doling out treats with no reciprocity. The abused child quits fawning and people pleasing. She moves from trauma responses and toward healthy self-care skills. She ceases taking the bait, being hoovered back, in and falling for the bread-crumbing and love-bombing. She sees that it was all ever going to end it devalue and discard. And she just quietly, without fanfare, steps off the merry-go-round of narcissistic abuse. 

Going no contact is an action verb. 

In fact it is a passive, being verb. If it's a verb at all. The traumatized child begins to see the red flags and hear the gaslighting lies for what they are. She starts to understand that the bonds, demands and expectations that parent enmeshment crocheted for her were just FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). They didn't exist. It is quiet resignation to the fact that the action verbs were done by the parents. They DID abuse, neglect, exploit, manipulate, endanger, abandon, exclude, triangulate, coercively control, toxically shame, invalidate, dehumanize, destabilize and then gaslight her about it all. 

Going no contact is something the child does. 

To the world, it looks like the child has made a choice to cut ties to the abusive parent. After all, it's the now adult child who has stopped interacting with the parent, right? Wrong. What the child has done is leave shut the door the parent repeatedly slammed in her face. She is practicing radical acceptance that she was the one divorced from, excluded, used and abused, taken advantage of and then shut out. And she let all that read as written, instead of covering for them and making us excuses for them. 

Going no contact is a choice. 

Nope. It's a logical result of living in a lose-lose situation with narcissistic and enmeshed parents who wielded the power differential like a weapon against her. It's an inevitable recognition that the past is never going to be any better than it was. Which is my personal definition of forgiveness and radical acceptance. When the trauma bonded child's betrayal blindness scales start to fall off, radical awareness shows her that the family system was broken and failing the children to prop up the narcissistic family cult. 

Going no contact is the easy way out. 

No it's one of the hardest things to accept that your parents didn't love or care for you. That they did not have your welfare only their selfish agenda at heart. That these dark tetrads could and would do any cruel Machiavellian thing to you that they wanted, just because it was Tuesday. That you hadn't seen any of it till you were 60 years old. That they so misused you that it caused cognitive dissonance, brain damage, dissociative split and autoimmune diseases. That you are now consigned to a life of CPTSD and trauma nightmares. If that's easy, I'd hate to see the hard way out. 

Going no contact is infantile. 

Nope it actually a very mature and healthy response to the parentification and infantilization they put on us. The infantile ones are the parents with their temper tantrums, silly double standards and immature hypocrisies. They wanted it both ways, grooming us to think we owed them endlessly while they owed us nothing. So going no contact is re-reversing parent role reversal back to the correct framework of parent-child dynamic. 

Going no contact breaks up the family.

Your narcissistic parents and their enablers and flying monkeys will fill you full of nonsense about this happy family you supposedly had and how family loyalty is the be-all-end-all. But they've chosen to blind themselves to the fact that the parents busted up the family right from the get-go, either by divorce or by dismantling healthy family for a toxic family system in which you were just a pawn. Then after blowing your world apart, they gaslight everyone that they are starting over with a new family as if the old one never existed. And the OG child is coerced into a role of unwanted stepchild or problem child.

Going no contact is divorcing from parents. 

No, it's accepting that they divorced themselves from us. That's why I say when narcissistic parents divorce, it's not so much each other but their child, the responsibility for her, they are divorcing from. They create this parallel universe where they write any crazy rules they want. They feed everyone this web of lies that they don't owe the product of the first family anything because that family was dissolved. Which is gaslighting 2.0. So child lives in a chaotic limbo of existing only on their sufferance. BUT while they refuse to honor obligations to the child, they also refuse to relinquish control of her. It's win-win for them, all the perks with none of the work. 

Going no contact simply acknowledges that the parents never provided a loving family for the child in the first place. It gets the order of operations right: who went no contact with whom, first. 

Going no contact is a reckless and dangerous. 

No it is actually stopping being the reckless parent's source of  narcissistic supply. It is getting out of the path of their dangerous narcissistic rage. It is ceasing to body block the narcissistic mother from the consequences of her own unethical, irresponsible, immoral, illegal behavior. It is letting her feel the narcissistic injury of censure for said reckless behavior, full on and not buffering and fluffing. It's not falling for the DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) and realizing that this is just more gaslighting deception. It's steeling oneself against the narcissistic father's blame-shifting and projection. 

Going no contact is an attack on someone. 

Wrong. It's the opposite of an attack. It's a withdrawal, an evacuation. The person cutting ties ceases to JADE (justify, answer, defend, engage or explain). And context matters. The people on the "receiving end" of the no contact, went no contact with me pretty much since birth. Or shall I say, no contact with benefits. They pushed me away when I was inconvenient then pulled me back when they wanted anything from me. They set me up to fail so that I would break and have to stay in bondage to them. They ambushed me with smear campaigns and family mobbing. Then as soon as I gave them what they wanted, boom, I was out in the cold, again. Now I've just stopped playing the game by their rules. I left the arena. 

Going no contact is controlling them. 

No this is self-control. I'm setting boundaries around what I won't do or tolerate anymore. How they choose to act is up to them. They were the control freaks who thought they could call the shots and dictate terms with no repercussions. Well, actions have logical consequences. For every action, there's an equal opposite reaction. They called the tune by shutting me out, then expecting me to keep banging on the door and begging to be allowed back in. They wanted payout with no input. But I'm not doing that anymore. The locked door stays locked. They dictated the rules of engagement kicking me out and I'm simply abiding by them and staying out. 

You'll regret going no contact. 

No, what I regret is that it had to happen, that they went no contact with me, ignored, excluded, shut me out, rejected, neglected, used, exploited, scapegoated me. Mistreatment that has hounded me all my life, has confused and bewildered me. Has affected my ability to sleep, move, parent. That's what I regret. And cutting ties with all that toxic shame, never did something feel so right. It's the first paving stone on the path to individuation. 

Childhood trauma amnesia: cognitive dissonance from narcissistic parent gaslighting

 Hello my friends. Let me just say before beginning how much I appreciate you. Whoever or wherever you are and whyever you read this childhood trauma recovery blog. Thank you. Thanks for letting yourself get triggered, as such content does. I hope you find some healing reading as I do writing. So today I'm exploring what I call Childhood Trauma Amnesia or the cognitive dissonance from narcissistic abusive parent gaslighting. 

Gaslighting and brain gassing

Gaslighting is willfully manipulating reality with lies, deception and twisting facts. Narcissistic, enmeshed parents do this to cover their bad actions, for narcissistic supply, to destabilize the child and make them doubt themselves. But what drives gaslighting is gas: colorless, odorless, tasteless and completely lethal. In the famous movie Gaslight, the husband fiddled with the switches making the light flicker and then told his wife she was imagining it.  I liken the resulting CPTSD and brain damage from gaslighting, to being gassed with a toxic substance. Gaslighting has the same net results of confusion, disorientation, dissociative fugue and mental collapse. 

How narcissists create cognitive dissonance (confused reality)

Sadly, these are just a few of the demented, dementing things dark tetrad parents do to destroy a child. 

• Weaponized and disrupted attachment: the parent uses the child's natural attachment to the parent against the child. She violates trust, boundaries, respect, innocence, safety. She sabotages the sense of self. 
• Love-bombing: The parent showers the child with fake affection to get what she wants. 
• Trauma Bonding: the enmeshed parent plays cat and mouse with the child, clutching her close then pushing her away. Love-bombing is followed by devaluation and discard. The back and forth because a glue which cements the child to the parent in an unnatural codependency. 
• Grooming: The narcissistic father uses the child as a confidante saying she's "special" "lucky" and "chosen." The narcissistic parent is like a cult leader, indoctrinating the child for a life of enslavement. 
• Isolation: The parents keeps the child from loved ones or helpers by moving her around in a complex shell game. 
• Needs insecurity. We were not poor and my parents had what they needed plus luxuries. Yet I can't remember a bed or a bedroom. I went hungry and experienced food insecurity. They didn't. 
• Sleep deprivation: the parent sabotages sleep by not providing a consistent home, bedroom or bed. They make the young teen co-sleep with babies and younger children, caring for them as a parent. They cause CPTSD nightmares. 
• Parentification: making the child care for them as a parent, then not caring for her. 
• Infantilization: They treat her like an inept fool (even while also parentifying her.)
• Role Reversal: They make her responsible for things that are their responsibility, 
• Overworking: putting all the housework, childcare, laundry, meal prep on her, making her carry the mental load. This wears down her resistance and weakens her. 
• Boundary crashing and shaming. I never dared to set boundaries because those would be the very things they'd go out of their way to violate. 
  
• Theft. They stole everything of value that I ever owned. 
• Privacy violation They barge in without knocking. My dad would enter the bathroom when I was in there. 
• Sexual harassment and hidden incest. They violate natural body boundaries in overt and covert ways. They let anyone else do it as well. This might be the most destabilizing of all. 
• Surveillance without protection. They monitor the child's moves, dress, speech, with military regulation yet don't safeguard her. I was kicked out at 16 for coming in 15 minutes late. Then I had to steal food to survive. I was at the mercy of predators because no one cared what happened to me. 
• Coercive Control: they use threats, intimidation, emotional "waterboarding", corporal punishment, inappropriate and inconsistent discipline. My father once went into a narcissistic rage furiously spanking me, in front of everyone, when I was 14. I had done nothing. 
• Lies, deceit, backstabbing.
• Double standards:
• Moving hoops: They make up arbitrary rules then change them on a whim without telling you. 
• Entrapment: They set up "gotcha" stings to make the child stumble. 
• Smear campaigns: they start completely false rumors to make the child look bad. 
• Mocking and Humiliation: malignant parents prank, haze and jeer at the child. 
• Narcissistic rage: They randomly go ballistic then blame the child. 
• Triangulation: Pitting people against us with lies. 
• Faked trauma drama: My parents routinely and melodramatically trauma dumped on me, things that never happened. 
• Oversensitive insensitivity. These exhibitionist crybullies fell apart over silly narcissistic insults (not real, just ego slights). Then had the gall to call us "too sensitive" crybabies, attention-seeking showoffs. 
• DARVO: they deny actions, counterattack and reverse victim offender roles. 
• Instability: I was shuffled around among 41 different homes and nine schools before age 20. 
• Future faking: The malignant parent promises the child things he never delivers on, nor has any intention of delivering on. It's a Machiavellian a$$hole move to keep the child compliant. If he ever does do anything for the child, it comes with endless strings attached. 
• Bread-crumbing: the cruel dark tetrad parent strings the child along with tiny crumbs of goodness, to keep her one step from starvation. To keep her normal enough so no one suspects. 
• Destroyed individuation. Enmeshed parents punish individuality instead of encouraging it. 

Amnesia of Trauma bonding and betrayal blindness

All this deceit, double standard, and alternate reality causes the child to live in constant dissociative fugue. Her outside reality and the real reality is diametrically opposed to her malignant parents' narcissistic cult fantasy. It wipes memory or drives it deep inside because it's too dangerous to confront narcissistic parents with the the facts. We go into a kind of chosen betrayal blindness, born of trauma responses like fawning and people pleasing. 

Go along to get along

We keep peace at any price, even when it means selling ourselves. We sacrifice everything to preserve our parents' narcissistic fantasy. We surrender common sense, our home, a bed, our future, our success, our toys, money, anything they want, we give with the only reciprocity being shit and shoved in it. Anything to keep our bullying parents in narcissistic supply. 

Memory repression, not loss

I recall very little about my childhood except bad times and those live in vivid color. Other memories hover at the fringe, threatening me in nightmares. I have been told things that I did or was involved in that I have no memory of. Not bad things, just things. I have forgotten whole people. Looking back, I recall walking around in a fog of fear, obligation and guilt. Toxic shame was my companion. I was so hypervigilant and overwhelmed by this fraught life, that I had no time for relaxation. I think to keep myself sane, my brain had to compartmentalize experiences and lock certain drawers tight. I had to press down anything contrary to my parents' demands. I had to think, eat, breathe and live them, never me. As I've explored in this blog, those memories aren't lost, just in limbo, frozen in carbonite. 

Some examples

I gave up middle school, literally.  I was all set to go to our local junior high and excited about it, when my mom got it in her head to marry her abusive live-in. She had a foster care home which she moved him into and hid him, illegally. I was the main caregiver in that home, also illegally.  She got it shut down due to child abuse. Suddenly, I was rerouted to a completely different city, different school, different home, away from my friends and other family. I ended up with my dad and his new wife who didn't want me but saw it as an opportunity to get a live-in maid and caregiver. I was 12. Here's where the amnesia comes in. 

All my life,  my mom told me and anyone else, that I had come to her out of the blue and said I was going to move with my dad so she and her new man could "have their private time like my dad and his new wife got theirs." (envy, guilt-tripping) I always accepted this though it make zero sense. 

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me how disingenuous this was. I asked a few same age trusted friends who said, no kid is going to want to move to a new school at an already difficult time, let alone volunteer to. And why would I? It would be so self-sabotaging. Private time would be a weekend away, not yet another complete upheaval that would affect me for the rest of my life. Private time is not something a kid thinks to give their parents. It's gross and they already had plenty of that living in apartment in the basement, separate from me and the kids. And hello, parents don't "deserve" years away from their child. They're parents. It's not like they did their time and now get to  move on. And they didn't even do that. 

My friends helped me identify how these were her words, fed to me as gaslighting narrative flipping. What she was saying was that I was being evicted so she could get on with her shiny new life without me. Funnily enough, my also narcissistic dad did the same thing when I was in high school. What probably happened is that I was taken out of their home in the child abuse closure. They may have even done some time or been forced to move out of their home, who knows. She would never admit to that and she never tells a straight story. And yes, weird as it sounds, my mother could very well have been jailed and me not know it. She was cagey and crooked as hell. 

But what I did which normal kids wouldn't do, and which is more to the point of this story, was to keep quiet, and just file it away as part of my double life. It never occurred to me that any of this was messed up AF. I am a special needs teacher for God's sake. I know child abuse, developmental risk factors (like frequent unnecessary moves and parents co-habiting), vulnerable kids, childhood trauma like the back of my hand. What I didn't see was how all that was me. It took me till 62 to start questioning their crazy versions. 

Helpful Hints for Healing

If you're as exhausted reading as I am telling it, let's end softly with a gentle exercise or two. My advice on your road to radical acceptance is start small. If you suspect that you were the victim of child abuse, or you just have some uneasy feelings about things that happened, stop and take a look. Don't rip the bandage off. Just begin to slowly uncover your eyes and give those experiences some ungaslighted airtime. You may find a new trauma-informed perspective. You don't and probably shouldn't confront your parents. But you can quietly affirm your inner child that this should not have happened. I can almost guarantee that you will, as I  have, found some relief knowing you weren't crazy. It wasn't you. It was them. 

Biggest Impacts of childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse

 Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery I'm looking at some of the biggest impacts of childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. This may be triggering but rest assured that I will end by sharing things that have helped me. 

Theft of Birthrights

Narcissistic and enmeshed parents robbed us of our birthright to innocence, childhood, autonomy, healthy development, attachment, peace of mind, joy, self-protection and care, owning our own self. They commandeered what was ours and made us think it belonged to them. They made us think they owned us body, mind, heart and soul. They groomed us by privacy invasions, boundary crashing and trauma bonding to think they had buy-in on our very selves. They constantly monitoring and criticized us for things that weren't their business then failed to protect us and provide things that were their responsibility. 

Rigged Whack-a-Mole Blame-Shame Game

They used the Narcissist's Prayer to gaslight us. They owed us nothing we owed them everything. We were told we were too sensitive, an attention-seeking showoff.  My hypercritical insensitive dad said I was too sensitive and couldn't take criticism when he raged nonsensically at me and quietly approved his shiny new family bullying me. While he was hypocritically oversensitive, calling me too critical of him and his also hypersensitive, bullying wife. Then he flipped the script again, trauma dumping on empath me, about how my grandparents were too critical of him saying he should get a job and support his family. It is an endless game of Whack-a-Mole with narcissists that you can never win. 

Trauma Brain FOG

Narcissistic parents conditioned us with toxic shame and FOG, or fear, obligation and guilt. They pirated then damaged our brains to turn on us. So the leveled up shame haunts us in insidious, sneaky ways, like a slow drip of poison corroding our ability to think and feel in healthy ways. All we know are trauma responses of frozen, robotic fawning and people pleasing. I am dogged nightly, all night long by dreams and nightmares of their endless Machiavellian exploitation, narcissistic abuse, neglect of basic care, endangerment and abandonment, scapegoating, triangulation and gaslighting. 

DARVO destabilization

I wake utterly baffled, feeling like I've been letting people down all night long. They're not just dreams. They are memories of the ongoing narcissistic rage and demand cycles. Using parentification and infantilization, gaslighting then DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) they have convinced my trauma brain that I am the problem and also the one responsible to fix everything. I am responsible mommy and enslaved daughter but never me.  I was the OG  "Broken Vending Machine Child" giving good with no reciprocity and receiving undeserved bad. 

Twisted Future-Faking

Some narcissistic parents use future faking as bread-crumbing to lure the child into a false sense of security. My four malignant narcissist parents used future faking to convince me that I was stupid and would never amount to anything. I see now that this was to render me unfit only for service to them. They made me do all the menial labor and childcare while teaching me no useful skills including self-preservation, safety or stranger danger. I was sent to play alone blocks from home starting at age 4. They designed a future for me where I would be able only to dance like a puppet. 

Destabilized by Deviance

My parents forced me into disgusting, humiliating situations with perverted people and by their lascivious and exhibitionist behavior. My father was a pedophile always going off on "mission trips" with young teens. He dated a 17 y/o when he was 36 and I was 9. My mother carried on numerous adulterous affairs, forced me to hear sex talk and witness her debauched behavior, used me as a sex therapist, all while preaching from the Bible. My mind is scarred by appalling memories of their deviance. The cognitive dissonance of living in a normal world with these abnormal people has caused me to auto-gaslight myself that I did it. My dreams can't sort it out. And my parents were quick to exploit that to paint me as the culprit. 

Deflection and Projection of shame

Narcissistic shame and arrogance plus entitlement plus remorselessness tells narcissists that they are never at fault. So they assign a scapegoat which was me. They lie and deceive the child that she is the real problem. Religious narcissists use the Bible to browbeat the child but they never practice what they preach. And I was the perfect target. Children naturally love and and defend their parents. Very abused kids will body block parents from consequences at their own expense. Malignant parents know and weaponize this to sabotage their children. 

Bespoke Sabotage

Dark tetrad narcissists know just how to destroy you. They gather intel on what you value and use it against you. They violate your trust. They do outrageous things normal parents would  never think to do let alone do. Mine sabotaged me every step of the way. I was ripped randomly out of homes and schools and shuffled around. I lived in 40 different places before age 20 and went to 9 different schools.  My pervy and narcissistic stepfather kicked me out at 16 with my mother's smiling approval. I was yanked out of schools on a whim or because of bad choices on their part. All my life, my mom had me believing I volunteered to switch schools to give her and her boyfriend "private time." They sabotaged my ability to protect or defend myself. They made me a target for bullies, creeps and pedophiles. 

CPTSD nightmare loop 

All night long I dream that I have Herculean tasks to perform, without proper tools, resources or support. I have numberless children put in my care to somehow educate, feed, clothe, protect, you name it. There are mountains of laundry and never-ending chores upon chores to do. I'm always late and in trouble. Scornful people are angry with or mocking me. I AM CONFUSED. I wake with my hands, arms, hips, back screaming in pain, as they always did as a child when these were very real expectations put on me. And they still feel real now. I could sleep all day and still be exhausted. I cannot function in daily life from the overwhelming burden placed on me by dark tetrad parents. 

Disorientation spiral

I really struggle to think clearly. In fact, I don't know what clear thinking is. Simple tasks are difficult. I second-guess myself and am endlessly hypervigilant. I wish I could say it gets better with age, but it doesn't. It gets worse because the confusion from brain damage spirals down on itself. Then factor in betrayal blindness which tells traumatized kids that their parents are loving and trustworthy. Oh do these imposters use that to retraumatize us. It has taken me 62 years to even start to unpack all their abuse and neglect of me. 

Some thoughts on childhood trauma recovery

• Take care of yourself, kiddo. 
• Fake it till you make it. Self-care feels selfish, at first, but only because they told you that. It's not. It's vital to your survival. 
• When you have a choice to follow your wisdom or someone else, like your family system or their enablers, go with yours. It might lead astray but mostly it won't and they ALWAYS will. 
• If it feels good, do it. This mantra has been eschewed as selfish but usually by self-centered hypocrites who take damn good care of themselves and who took shite care of you. 
• Sleep late if you can. You need it.
• Pet cats and soft blankets. 
• Do yoga. 
• Breathe. 
• Play with your grandkids in the woods. Build forts. Have tea parties. 
• Socialize as it feels right to you. 
• Eat when you are hungry. 
• Respect you sense of danger. If something or someone puts up red flags, note it and don't  drive right through. 
• Practice gratitude but also radical acceptance. Thankfulness is fine but don't gaslight yourself that you have to be grateful to hurtful people. That's just hogwash your parents taught you. 
• Go no contact with invalidation and invalidating people as you are able. 

Be a little kinder, be a little less blind

We've always heard this in reference to blindness to faults of others and kinder to them.  I say be less betrayal blind. See it where it exists. You don't have to take revenge but staying a bit angry over hurt that damaged you, will help you get to a safer place of awareness. It will  help you prevent further injury. And kindness to others is great but so is kindness to yourself. 

Love mar. 

How Narcissistic Abuse Enablers and Blind Guides Sabotage Childhood Trauma Recovery

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring how enablers sabotage healing and actually perpetuate narcissistic abuse. I've written about this several times but you can never really say enough about how insidiously harmful enablers are. I'll try to explain the complicated flow chart of this leveled up abuse. 

What is enabling? 

Enabling is choosing to overlook, ignore and make excuses for abuse that someone is suffering. It's not simply inability to see it. It's not being unsure that what you are seeing is abuse. It's not missing one abusive behavior. It's not choosing your words or keeping quiet to prevent further harm. That's more about being between a rock and a hard place and making a judgement call. But doing it with full radical acceptance, not chosen blindness. Enabling is a pattern of unwillingness to recognize and acknowledge what is right in front of your face. It's deceiving the abused person into believing it isn't happening or that it's their fault (gaslighting). It is siding with the perpetrator and victim-shaming the abused one into compliance. 

Who are the enablers?

I wish I could say they were rare, obviously dangerous people who are easy to spot. Unfortunately, enablers of narcissistic abuse are much more common than truth-tellers calling it out for what it is. So enablers hide everywhere in plain sight. When I have told anyone about my narcissistic parents' harm, I encountered enabling at a rate of at least 10 to 1 compared with affirmation of the abuse as abuse. Society, family, religion, even psychology sides with abusers, especially abusive parents, against children far too frequently. 

Group Think aka Societal Gaslighting

As a people, we tend to be reluctant to accept a child's version of events over an adult's. We have developed this crass insensitivity toward helpless victims, as if callouses had grown over our ears. At least this is how it feels to a child experiencing neglect, abuse, invalidation, endangerment, abandonment, scapegoating, etc. It seems that how we are being treated is perfectly acceptable because NO ONE IS SAYING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY. If there was one word to encapsulate all that's wrong with denial of abuse, it's gaslighting. And on a society-wide level.

Gas-litany of shame

We as children of narcissistic parents are force-fed a dogma by an enabling society, a litany of gaslighting that sounds very similar to the "Narcissist's Prayer" we were groomed on. These are just a few of the nonsensical things enablers say. 

• It's not their fault. (It's yours for being too sensitive, disloyal, disobedient and attention-seeking showoff.)
• It wasn't that bad. (You're just exaggerating for pity. )
• It's just normal punishment for your own good. (You're the problem, because you're selfish, lazy, immature and can't take criticism. This one is a hugely fraught dilemma that opens us up to all kinds of abuse, in the name of preparing us for the "real world." 
• They did the best they could. (so that exonerates all the hell they put you through).  
• You have to get over it, move on, be the bigger person, rise above. (So they aren't held accountable for any of their bad behavior and the responsibility to fix it all, falls on us.)
• Those were different times. (So there was a point at which abusing kids was okay.)
• But they're your parents. Family is family. (So anything they did to you was fine because they "owned the rights" to you. That is the enmeshed parent mantra. You owe them FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), care, support, trust, respect, obedience with no reciprocity from them. 
  

All this translates to Dr. Ramani's spot-on DIMMER acronym (dismissiveness, invalidation, minimization, manipulation, exploitation and narcissistic rage) which perpetuates the Dimmer-ing of the original abuse. Yes even the enablers exhibit a rage of sorts, in that they are angry at you for being the truth-teller and showing up their complicity. 

The Loudness of Silence

If they get wind of anything your parents did, these enablers treat you and speak to you as if you had divulged some big secret or betrayed your parents' trust. When usually all you did was to stay small and quiet. My dad used to make snide comments about how I'd better not write one of these tell-alls outing him when I grew up. Which was so bizarre because I was his biggest cheerleader and loyal servant. Childhood trauma responses kept me the silent, frozen, fawning, forever people pleaser. So he must have known that had I chosen to, I could tell quite a different version of him than his narcissistic fantasy cult leader. But I never told anything they did. I kept quiet on outrageous abuse, but shouldn't have. My silence must have spoken louder than any words. And all their reactive gaslighting was preemptive narrative revision, gotten in first to cast doubt on any truth I might tell. 

The Hypocritical Double Standards of Abuse Enabling 

None of the ridiculous things enablers say (and those I listed were just a few), are actually true or appropriate. It's all nonsensical hypocrisy. The lazy ones are the enablers who can't be bothered to be supportive and caring. So they throw shade forward to destabilize you while making themselves feel better. But it's all deceptive smoke and mirrors to distract you from the reality of abuse. Enablers (whom I call Blind Guides) are full of shit. They don't practice what they preach, have no understanding of, nor willingness to understand what really happened. They don't care. They just think they have buy-in on your pain. But they don't, because they weren't there for you then and still aren't. What they are, are a bunch jibbering flying monkeys. 

Blindsided by Blind Guides and Betrayal Blindness

The toll that enablers and blind guides wreak on abuse victims is horrific. As these are often people that you trust (counselors, clergy, teachers, doctors, family members) they blindside you with this toxic positivity crap. They add more layers to the FOG, DARVO dilemma, trauma bonding on top of the future faking plus bread-crumbing your parents put you through, to create an even more entrenched betrayal blindness. They feed the abusive parent's monstrous ego appetite with narcissistic supply by bolstering your narcissistic enmeshed parents' delusions of grandeur and entitlement. 

New Trauma + Retraumatizing

This 2.0 trauma is its own narcissistic abuse with retraumatizing besides. It creates new wounds and opens up old, unhealed ones. This lasagna of abuse, invalidation, devaluation and discard becomes a solid Lego brick wall that preserves the abuse deception and shields the abuser. Altogether, the original abusers plus their enablers sabotage any recovery from childhood trauma, if we let them. 

Where to go from here? 

In my relationships with my dark tetrad or malignant narcissistic mother, father, stepmother and stepfather, the only thing that has helped is going no contact. Even going low contact was too much for me because as narcissists age, they get better at tailoring their abuse to your trigger points and more convinced of their diplomatic immunity. They weaponize their age and their flying monkeys use this to guilt you further. "She's old, needs you, doesn't understand, you have to care for her, yada yada." I fall victim to "rosy reflective recall" where the actual abuse feels softened by the passage of time. I forget that they are just as capable of hurting me now as they were then. But once I started cutting the poisonous plants out of my life, I got better at identifying other toxins in my life garden. And the more you prune the easier it gets.