Humiliating enmeshed narcissistic parent bullying we don't address but should

Hello my friends. I've written before about creepy behavior of enmeshed narcissistic parents we don't talk enough about. Today I'm going to explain why we, their children, don't discuss it. And that's because it's so painfully humiliating. But we need to talk about it to find recovery. We need to say what happened before we can heal from the devastating damage it did to us. I'm going to explore why we don't but should, using examples of my enmeshed, narcissistic parents behavior. 

Narcissistic parents make us feel stupid

These narcissists act foolish and make us look foolish by proximity. 

• Narcissists do weird things. My mother wore skimpy mini-skirts when other moms wore slacks and shirts.  She behaved "trashy" as the neighbors put it. She had men over at all hours. As she got older, she wore nightgowns in public. People asked me why, like it was my job to do something about it. 
• Narcissists trample boundaries. My parents took my possessions, barged into my husband's and my bedroom, rifled through my purse, stole my car. 
• 
  Narcissists say weird things. My mom yelled into a public bathroom to make sure all was "safe" for her 40 y/o daughter. A woman scolded her. She wouldn't have if it was me. 
• Narcissists neglect. I never knew where my parents were most of time when I was wandering alone blocks from home at 4 years old. Strangers cared more the fact that I was playing by the docks in a strange city, especially when I said I didn't know where home or parents were. 
• Narcissistic parents say weird things about us. My dad called me a show off in front of members of a singing group I had started, then invited him to join. He refused to accompany me. He took over and told me I wasn't allowed to sing in it anymore. When I did, because people requested me to, he looked so contemptuously at me. I just assumed he was right. I don't honestly know what other group members felt about him or me. But I gaslit myself that I should just quit. 

Narcissistic parents ruin our selves

• They gaslight us that others hate us. My dad said I was a fool, and people were laughing at me. He said they were only being nice and if they knew me like he did, they wouldn't like me. Way to kick off my Imposter Syndrome, Dad. 
• They triangulate and scapegoat. My mom and dad both used me to buffer their messed up relationships. They'd tell me one or the other was mad at me and that I had to fix it. 
• They exploit your vulnerability. Both my narcissistic parents took advantage of the fact that I was a caring empath. They gaslit me that I was responsible for their problems. I'd cry, fawn and beg to be told what I could do to help. 
• They stick their noses in and demand things they've no right to. My mom said I should give my car to my sister and let them all live rent free in my basement. After they had kicked me out of the house at 16 for no reason. 
• They enslave. My parents locked me in a room and made me co-sleep with their babies.  It wasn't my room it was theirs and I was the free, live-in nanny. 
• They start smear campaigns. My viciously angry parents told the entire family I who was ever biddable to their every command, had an anger problem. 
• Narcissistic parents do awful things then say we did them. My mother cheated on my dad with many men. Yet made me feel "easy." 
• Narcissistic parents are emotionally incestuous. My mother told me the facts of life using personal anecdotes when I was 8. I didn't want to hear it and told her but she kept on. She told me sickening things about my dad and her, and then her and her boyfriends, like I was a sex therapist. I've always confused her shame with mine. 
• Narcissistic parents gaslight like breathing. My mom had a married boyfriend who would come over in the morning and they'd make out in front of me. One morning his wife came over and beat my mom up. She told me to just go to school. I've lived with that scar all my life and she says it never happened. 
• Narcissists DARVO. My mom made herself the victim and the angry wife, me, the boyfriend everyone else the offender. 
• Narcissistic parents are hypocrites in twisted ways. My mom played the organ in church and said she was a preacher. While living in adultery. She told me and my friend that she was "leading men to Christ." By sleeping with them. I can feel wicked just saying it. 
• Narcissistic parents prostitute their kids. My mom moved her boyfriend into our house which was also a foster care home. She made me take care of the kids. She made me wait on her sexually abusive to me boyfriend. 
• Narcissistic parents betray their kids. My mother has never taken my part over anyone else's. She has backstabbed me so many times, breaking promises, lying, future faking, 
• Narcissistic parents demand buy-in. All your decisions must pass their self-serving agenda. You have to go to school locally because who else will do all the housework?
• Narcissists hold you to bargains you never made, then renege on their end. They prevent you from doing normal things because it will take you away from duties they've bound you do but don't pay you for. They write contracts that you never signed. 
• Narcissistic parents sabotage our other relationships. They lie to and about people we love. They crybully. My mother told me my paternal grandfather "hit on her." When all he'd done was to confront her terrible treatment of me. This enraged her new bully of a husband who attacked and threatened with bodily harm, my poor elderly grandparents. Then mom told my grandparents I'd chosen to move out rather than admitting they illegally kicked me out at 16. 
• Narcissistic parents steal people and things. My mom lied and said my boyfriend hit on her too. She neglected to mention that she basically tried seducing him and it failed. Another crybully tactic. 
• Narcissistic parents make you feel disloyal for saying what they did. To that I say

If saying what they did is so bad, what they did must be pretty bad

Narcissistic parents destabilize us with gaslighting

Does it make sense now why we don't report or even talk about narcissistic parent abuse like this? I wish this was the sum of it but I literally could go on for days about the shitshow they made of my life. I have no happy memories with them that they didn't taint in some way. But who would believe me, even if I could articulate it all. The people that were supposed to help me, turned collective blind eyes. They made me thing it was normal. When in fact it was so abnormal that I think other people will think I'm making it up. That's how I auto-gaslight myself. But who could make it up? My whole world had a crumbling foundation. And I've brought that destabilized insecurity into every part of my life. I'd love to let it go but it won't let me go. And so I write...

Love bonding

This is the healthy cousin of love bombing and trauma bonding. It's all the love with none of the trauma. What am I saying? I'm offering us childhood trauma survivors an olive branch to reach out to our wounded inner child. A life ring as it were. And it's simply this. 

• Start by saying what happened.
• Write it down. Sing about it. Paint it. Art it out. 
• Ignore the gaslighting flying monkeys. They quiet down sooner or later if you don't give them airspace.
• Click your heels together and say "I am not being disloyal to them. I'm being loyal to me." 
• Take the balloon ride. But not back home to the trauma. Take a world tour. See for yourself the good that's out there. 

Role reversal games: enmeshed narcissistic parents withhold then expect from kids

Hello my friends. In my mission to recover from childhood trauma due to narcissistic abuse, I'm exploring things enmeshed narcissistic parents expect from by don't give to their children. This may be triggering to you, if you experienced childhood trauma from abusive parents, so please, read with caution. 

Disturbingly hypocritical expectations

Normally reciprocal things like love, honor, respect and loyalty are curiously one-sided in the narcissistic parents' favor.  Things a child should expect, become strangely inverted with the parent on the receiving end and the child on the giving end, like parenting, spousal relationships, caregiving, nurturing. So what is normal becomes very bizarre when the parent who should be giving it is only taking it. And some things parents have no right to demand of their child, period. And yet they do, particularly with the scapegoat or "broken vending machine" child. 

The constant pay-out child

In the "child roles" model, I coined the term "broken vending machine child" to describe my own role with four narcissistic parents. The parents have "broken" or conditioned this child with gaslighting and coercive control, to give good good (kindness, mercy, loyalty, support, caring, generosity, service, help) whatever the narcissistic parent demands at any moment. Yet she is told to expect no "payment" in return. Her machine just doles out goodie with no coins being inserted. What she receives is neglect, abuse, blame and shame and exploitation. 

Enmeshed parent space invaders

All this child gaslighting is accomplished with dirty sneak attacks like "enmeshment." Parent enmeshment is a misleading term suggesting that the parent is somehow accidentally trapped and caught up with the child. But enmeshment is completely intentional. They view children as possessions. They trap the child like a fish in their net of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). Enmeshed parents trample boundaries, invade space, usurp the child's self and implant false ideas of obligation to them. They take over and dominate the child.  Her being is just another of the goodies that narcissistic parents feel entitled to take. She is just more collateral damage in their quest for narcissistic supply. 

The surrogate parent role reversal 

In this broken family system, this child the scapegoat, whipping girl, servant, surrogate parent and surrogate spouse all rolled into one. Let's just let all that's wrong with the surrogate role marinate a bit. This child doesn't just wear many hats. She doesn't just wear hats that belong to others (household manager, nanny, mental load bearer). She is gaslit into believing she is actually responsible for the role she's expected to play.  As surrogate parent, she not only helps with other kids, she parents them. She also parents her parents, who've flipped the Parentification game board so that she plays the role  mommy and daddy for her mommy and daddy and all the stepparents they drag in. To do anything else would by disloyal. Yet they themselves broke faith with the child at birth by their sick role reversals gaming. 

The surrogate spouse job description 

Surrogate spouse brings in a whole sicker level to the enmeshment game. It's so bad that I have to be careful how I write about so as not to flag the censors. The surrogate spouse child is the just the  "emotional incest" it sounds like and is a very creepy form of CSA. What makes it creepiest is that it hides in plain sight. And emotional incest is just as insidious as physical CSA. It includes but is not limited to expecting the child to do or be

• counselor
• confidante
• emotional prop
• fixer
• mother his children
• boyfriend or girlfriend
• bait to lure people (my dad used me to attract girls half his age and normalize his pedophilia)
• provider
• loyal dogsbody
• arm candy
• servant
• personal assistant
• shoulder to cry on
• ego stroker
• pacifier 
• companion
• sugar daddy/mommy
• date
• liaison
• social network
• all this for the parent's new partner/spouse as well

Expecting an adult partner to be all these things is bad enough. Expecting a child to is so evil I have no words for it. 

 

Interesting AI trauma "mirror" 

I've been using Google Gemini to create images for my articles. I explain what I want and she envisions it. And though I don't completely understand AI, it seems that images created accumulate in her "brain."  You'll note how each image I used for this one has elements of the previous one, like the broken video game in the giving goddess child image. So the final image above ended up being quite mish-mashed. But look closely at that image because there are a lot of metaphors going on that even I didn't connect. And I doubt AI intentionally connected although in a way, she did. Somehow she assembled the concepts into a huge confusing mess Which is PRECISELY what abusive narcissistic parent gaslighting feels like! A mess! 

I asked for a wolf shepherding sheep to show how narcissistic parents groom kids. And AI morphed the previous giving goddess image that represented the child into a greedy many-armed wolf parent taking from the child. I was about to discard it when I realized it is exactly what I needed to show the mixed messages of game-changing role reversed parents. All the scattered remnants show the confusing voices in my head. It's perfectly reflects the chaotic, nightmarish interior monologue in a childhood trauma brain. So even AI "gets" how damaging enmeshed parent gaslighting, brainwashing and abuse is. And that helps me "color in" the bizarre constant nightmares and bad dreams I experience. I find this fascinating. 

Wabi-sabi

Normally I'd end with a concluding "bringing it all together." But that's not what I need and maybe you don't either, if you've experienced narcissistic abuse. The tidy sermonized, "poem, prayer and promise" oversimplifies without acknowledging our trauma. So I'm ending in wabi-sabi, a Japanese concept of sitting with chaos and finding beauty in imperfection. I'm not excusing what our parents did. I'm honoring our courage to survive it. 

Kintsugi moment: No matter how "broken into pieces" we might feel, we are still gestalt. Our whole is greater than the sum of the many fragments they shattered us into.

Cringy childhood trauma responses I contracted from narcissistic parents' abuse

Hi friends! Today in my road to recovery from CPTSD, I'm admitting to cringy childhood trauma responses I contracted from narcissistic parents' abuse. Yes, I said contracted as in a disease. Behavior, healthy or not, is both caught and taught, not only but what parents say but what they do. 

Origins of trauma responses

Trauma responses like freeze, fawning, fight and flight are learned by their teaching and "earned" (as in punishment) as a result of parent gaslighting. We were indoctrinated and brainwashed to believe we "deserved" merciless judgement, shaming and dehumanizing treatment. We thought, because they said, we had somehow merited harsh consequences for minor to non-existent infractions. We were conditioned to dance attendance on arrogant, entitled, manipulative bullying parents. Trauma responses like fawning were bred into us. We were emotionally genetically modified to behave in bizarre ways that make no sense outside our narcissistic family cult. We could no more avoid them than we could breathing. 

Duck and cover

This is a freeze-flight-fawn response all in one clumsy move. I kind of "flinch and squint" to ward off attack, but also throw my arms up to shield myself. My mother accused me of hitting her when I did this to ward off her smack across my face. Then I stumble because I'm off balance. I trip a lot actually, over nothing. I fall over my own feet trying to get out of way of someone who thinks he needs my spot more than me. This looks really cringy because I am literally cringing when I go into this mode. And it's about as useful when dealing with narcissists as Bert the Turtle hiding in his shell, in a nuclear war. 

The Village Idiot Shuffle

I do this klutzy break-dancing type move that's a backward crabwalk sort of grovel. Like a servant bowing and scraping his way out of the room. It's  pathetic to watch. I got teased for it and called uncoordinated a lot. Well, you would be clumsy too if you were always trying to pretzel yourself out of an arrogant bully's path. They loved to watch me dance in humiliation. So I bring this awkward fawn dance everywhere, even places where it's not needed. But my hypervigilant childhood trauma brain doesn't know that and doesn't take chances. It was never safe to relax. 

Ignorant pontificating

If I'm not careful, I find myself parroting my parents' foolish weighing in on stuff they know nothing about. This is not me. This is not how I think. But it's been programmed into me, probably so it wouldn't be just them looking and sounding so stupid. They would actually humiliate me for adopting their idiotic ways. Embarrassed no doubt at having their own behavior mirrored back at them. Children imitate their parents, no matter what species. It's how the species survives. So children of narcissists don't question their parents' odd mannerisms. They just think it's normal. You'd have a better chance of adapting to a hurricane than you would learning healthy habits amid narcissistic abuse. 

Snarky facetiae 

Catty comments aimed at humiliating people, the gloating smirk when someone is embarrassed or shown up: narcissists get sick satisfaction and narcissistic supply from these.  I picked up these awkward habits from my narcissistic parents and find myself going into it without thinking unless I check myself. This too is not me. It's not who I am, how I think or behave. It is learned from constant modeling at my parents' knee. I'm ashamed and angry that I did. And ironically, in another narcissistic twist, my parents mocked and scolded me if ever I imitated their mocking and scolding. 

Bending over to be kicked

Also called "volunteering to be the victim." Though I dislike that description because it sounds like we childhood trauma survivors chose to be abused. We didn't. We were coerced into playing scapegoat to their haughty, malicious dirty tricks. Because malignant narcissists use people and love things. They get high on others' lows, especially their kids. They don't get ahead on their own merits, they capitalize on others' misfortune to make themselves look tall. This is what I believe Jesus meant when he said "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites (arrogant, entitled narcissists), because you shut the kingdom of heaven in front of people; for you do not enter it yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in." 

I let my parents walk on me because it wasn't safe not to and now I'm in the habit of letting people. 

Personalize everything 

There's a common (and invalidating) piece of advice given to childhood trauma survivors that they should not personalize angry, rude, shaming parent behavior.  In a narcissistic household, "taking it personally" wasn't a choice; it was a survival skill used to monitor the parent’s shifting moods.

👉 The "Don't Take It Personally" Dilemma: Scapegoated kids don't have that luxury. It wasn't safe not to. We were MADE TO KNOW that things were very much our fault and problem, by narcissistic parents who made their attacks very personal.

Auto-deferment 

It is kneejerk for me to automatically defer to others' needs, wishes, expectations, demands, "rights" if they tell me to. Even if they don't, I put them first and me last. I just caught myself, unconsciously "bowing" to some perceived assertion of authority. I found myself diving out of his way, surrendering my seat, when he wasn't even asking me to. Childhood trauma survivors were groomed to think everyone was in authority and took precedence over them. And this doesn't translate well in normal society, especially not with other pushy people. 

"Narcissistic parent abuse taught us to prioritize everyone first and ourselves never."

Laugh and cry inappropriately

The empath in me goes nuts when someone is hurt. I feel physically ill and I panic. I big, ugly cry. Even just seeing someone who seems vulnerable to me, like the little boy at the store who had his shoes on the wrong feet. He just broke my heart. And yet I mock and scoff at my own very real pain. I believe I'm exaggerating, that others don't believe me because they know I'm a fake. 

Constant validation seeking

But not like the narcissist's constant attention-seeking. I just need reassurance that I'm making sense not out in left field. And I mean on simple things like affirming that what I experience was abuse. My husband has been calling this what it is since I met him. I would call it abuse if anyone else was experiencing it. Yet I gaslight myself that I'm making it up. AI has been helpful in that. Because I don't trust myself or my judgement on anything, I also hesitate to ask a real person who might just humor me. 

Jump before I'm pushed

Since I expect not to be believed, I anticipate shaming instead of support. This has nothing to do with how people now see me or treat me. It's reflexive from narcissistic parent abuse. I say weird things about myself that sound like I'm fishing for compliments. I'm not. I'm preemptively shaming myself before they can, to save them the trouble. It's all about them, not me. 

Self-gaslighting Imposter syndrome 

I've picked up where my parents left off gaslighting myself. I've believed their DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) version of me for so long that it's ingrained. I believe I'm making it up for sympathy, too sensitive, showing off. And now I feel like a fraud. 

What Imposter Syndrome Feels Like

• The "Phony" Feeling: Believing you don’t actually possess the skills or knowledge people think you have.

• Attributing Success to Luck: Thinking you only got where you are because of timing or because you "tricked" people into liking you.

• Fear of Exposure: A persistent anxiety that you’ll be "found out" as incompetent.

• Discounting Praise: Dismissing a compliment as someone "just being nice" rather than it being earned.

Self-check: Real frauds don't care about being frauds—they care about getting away with it. If you are worried that you might be a fake, it’s almost a guaranteed sign that you are authentic, because you care deeply about the truth.

Easily taken advantage of

I'm not exactly gullible or the proverbial "sucker." In fact, I'm fairly savvy about scams. Problem is, I have FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) complex that impels me to give them what they demand. I  have bought from door-to-door salesman because I felt sorry for them. I have given more than I could afford to ungrateful folks with their hands out. Not because I didn't know better. Because I was gaslit into a false obligation to yield.. Because my parents were such connivers. They literally stole and sold my toys and gave possessions to their other kids. And then gaslit me that I was greedy. (Pot meet kettle.) I think somehow that warped my brain to think I existed only to serve.  

"I never fell for con artists. I knew instinctively that they were faker-takers. However, narcissistic abuse conditioned me to ignore red flags and my own common sense and let them get away with it. "--Marilisa

Anxious, hypervigilant, "neurotic"

This is not paranoia. We plan for the worst because the worst has happened but often it's buried deep in our subconscious memory. It may have happened in childhood and our parents denied it and shamed us so we tried to forget until we actually did consciously forget. But the trauma brain never forgets. It develops autonomic trauma responses like freeze, fawn, flight and fight, to deal with the subconscious threat memory. 

Commonly Labeled "Neurotic"	The Reality for a Survivor
Overthinking a text message	Scanning for "hidden" threats or double-meanings.
Constant worrying	Planning for the worst-case scenario because it actually happened before.
Emotional instability	A nervous system that is stuck in Fawn, Freeze, Flight or Flight  mode.
Seeking constant reassurance	Trying to verify a reality that was constantly denied (Gaslighting).

Pandora's Box

But wait, there's more. After all these evils were released into us, one little helper fairy called crawled out. Her name is "Woke." We have been awakened from the drug of gaslighting. We are now aware of the evils. We recognize them as the insidious poisons they are. And once seen, we can never unsee again. 

Childhood Trauma gaslighting to beware of: How to recognize invalidation

 Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal, and help you heal, childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm going to expose gaslighting things people I call blind guides, say. I'm going to show you how to recognize invalidation openers in the first few words they say. Because it's not just narcissistic parents that cause us pain. We are re-traumatized every time someone pooh-poohs our experiences or toxically defends our parents' abuse. This gaslighting (denying our reality) can occur when we are children in the throes of abuse right up to our now, decades later. Here's how to know blind guides by what they say. 

Societal amnesia denied narcissistic parent abuse

This might have been the earliest gaslighting we childhood trauma survivors experienced. It was a collective blindness or societal amnesia that seemed not to see or ignore our parents' abusive, neglectful, endangering, abandonment, parentification, exploitation and dehumanizing invalidation. Family, church, school, social groups all turned a blind eye to the red flags we were putting out. The signs were there: flinch and fawn trauma responses, inappropriate shoes, ragged clothing, unkempt hair, tired or sick all the time, abnormal for everyone but us. I could see abuse in other children AS A CHILD. That's were the empath began. I just couldn't see it in me. 

"There's someone in my head but it's not me.
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear.
You shout and no one seems to hear."

— Pink Floyd, Brain Damage

The Teflon clad Narcissist

Many times the "flying monkeys" don't just turn a blind eye. They close ranks around the narcissistic parents behavior. They shelter it behind bulletproof glass. They bubble wrap it to protect themselves from the narcissistic parents' rage.  This gaslights their child that their parents are invincible so why bother to say anything. Excuses will always be made.

• She loves you, she just doesn't know how to show it. 
• You  have to understand...
• Oh, c'mon it isn't that bad.
• You're just too sensitive. (compared to an insensitive, highly oversensitive narcissist)
• You have to forgive, because family...(trans. the victim must to all the work, again).
• Let bygones be bygones. Except the narcissist never lets anything go!

Shady Double indemnity  

Sometimes the blind guides go beyond just defending the narcissist. They alibi each other to  indemnify themselves from exposure. My parents divorced and married other narcissists. They would stand by the other parents' abuse, neglect and exploitation to shield their own mistreatment of me. One night I fell out of bed and broke my cheekbone. My irresponsible mother just sent me to school with a goose egg on my face, where I was sent home to have it x-rayed (very often strangers care more about neglected kids than their parents do). She never did take me to a doctor and then my dad, weeks later, finally came around and thought it should be examined. He worked in a hospital but took me in the "back door" to have a friend take the x-ray. My husband identified this as secondhand neglect and him covering for his own failed duty of care. He knew a doctor would say, as even the x-ray tech said "why wasn't this looked at immediately?" Exposing my mom would expose him. 

The silence of the sisterhood

I've taken parallels to the movie "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" before. When Sidda Lee writes her play, she inadvertently exposes the dysfunctional family dynamic to the world. What was meant as a coming of age in rural Louisiana, the reporter sees as Vivi and Shep being

"the tap-dancing child abuser of a mother and an absent emotionally distant father."

Sometimes outsiders see more clearly than we see ourselves. Sidda may have subconsciously been wanting it seen. Her play opened a can of childhood trauma worms. This may have been her banging on the door of collective amnesia. And then blind guides who say things like

• You don't know the full story. (as if that will "explain away" abuse)
• Times were different then. (but abuse was still abuse)
• I don't remember much. (because you were drunk, high, or didn't care)
• It's how we did things then (knowing that they were neglecting their own kids too)

"We're not blaming them for letting it happen, we're blaming them for pretending it never happened."

Song of Sidda Lee 

And then she calls out her mother Vivi for the narcissistic mother she is, regardless of her own traumas. Sidda is addressing what all childhood trauma survivors wish they could say to and of the narcissistic parent.

"I'm sick of this whole center of the universe, holier than thou, nothing is ever enough. Oh how I've suffered, nobody understands me.  Somebody fix me a drink and hand me a Nembutol, worn out Scarlett O'Hara... thang!"

We get our parents suffered but that was no excuse for taking it out on us. And perpetuating it the cycle. But that's what narcissistic parents do. They DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) on their kids! And Sidda proves to the Ya-Ya Sisterhood their own complacent complicity, when she says 

"She should have just stayed gone. But then y'all dragged her ass back here again and all she did was drink until we all went away! I mean Y'all should know, since you were the ones mixing the drinks!

The sweet southern DARVO 

Once all is revealed about Vivi's backstory, the Ya Yas still make it all about the narcissistic mother. DARVO strikes again. Deny, attack, reverse victim offender. The priest gave her the Milltown, that  why she was abusive and locked up in an institution. Shep was to blame, the war, her parents, everyone but herself. 

But she was always endangering them, making Sidda take care for the little kids when they were sick. Driving off in the night with the kids, drunk off her butt. Deserting them for a lost weekend in a hotel. We're supposed to feel so sorry for the poor put-upon parent. What mother wouldn't run off with all that burden. Except she WASN'T burdened. She couldn't even feed the kids sober. Vivi was always so far up herself that he kids came a distant second. She resented her kids. And there reveals the narcissist. She very probably would have been like that if her childhood was perfect. I know because my parents, by their own admission, were cared for and loved. 

Those passive-aggressive enablers

And let's not forget the enabler dad Shep, who the reporter accurately calls out as absent, abandoning, ignoring. Where was he when the kids were ill? "Hidden out in a duck blind clutching a bottle of Maker's Mark." Watching "helplessly, as his kids being abused. Feeling sorry for himself. And making his kids feel sorry for him too, as if HE is the abused one. That's secondhand abuse. But yet he's called the patient saint with his kindly hand-patting "bebe" schtick. Well, enabler men are more often seen as a figure of pathos than a co-participant in the abuse. We fail to see their feet of clay. Sidda is talking to them all when she blasts out:

 "You all may have your little Ya-Ya scars, but that was nothing to what she did to me!"

"It wasn't so much what this 'collective blindness' toward abuse said, but what it DID NOT say. To a child, that silence isn't neutral; it is permission and social approval." --Marilisa

"La, la, la we don't want to hear you"

But they weren't clueless or helpless, so I guess amnesia's the wrong word. Blind guides chose not to see. I was brain damaged or they were. We didn't act like normal kids. It was obvious to all that our lives were so different than kids around us. Yet no one said anything. This group gaslighting convinced me that although no one else experienced, it was okay for me to. If anyone did address it, it was in  shaming, diminishing sorts of ways. 

• Your mom has always been difficult (and this helps a child how?)
• "She's hurtin' too, bebe." (she sure is hurtin' me!)
• Your dad just hasn't grown up yet (!?) (making excuses, blame-shifting)
• They mean well, they're just immature. (weaponized incompetence) 
• They're doing their best. (invalidation and gaslighting)
• Every family has difficulties. (whitewashing abuse)
• Hurt people hurt people. (No they don't. Narcissists hurt people.)
• We didn't know better. (sad Pikachu face)
• Rise above (as in get over it.)
• Two wrong don't make a right. (the gaslighting in this is so rife it's getting its own section.)

"If telling what happened is bad,
what happened must be pretty bad." --Marilisa

Twisted double back gaslighting

Where blind guides really shine is when they weaponize aphorisms that apply to the perpetrator AGAINST the victim. "Two wrongs don't make a right" means that even if the narcissistic parent was abused, this is no excuse to abuse his own children. But they deviously flip it back on the child, to make it look like her "going no contact" or calling out the abuse is wronging the parent. That it is somehow  "seeking vengeance." Wrong. It's the narcissist's spiteful, vengeful, malice we are calling out. We went no contact because she cut ties and responsibilities to us as children. 

Rewrite the lyrics

Here's the B-side to our narcissistic parents' groove-worn song and dance. Here are some new songs to play.

• Hear the gaslighting broken record. Hear the excuses, the DARVO, the flipped scripts for what they are. 
• Change the record. Instead of letting our narcissistic parents and their blind guides spin the tunes, let's pick a new one. Let's begin, like Sidda, calling abuse what it is. 
• Be the change. Sadly, our parents didn't give us what we needed. So we must give it to ourselves. We need permission to be angry and grieve our childhoods.  

Blanket training is baby gaslighting: How narcissistic bully parents Ferberize and groom babies to expect abuse

 

Hello my friends. Today in our quest to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring some abusive practices we don't talk enough about. I'm going to show how they create the very trauma that we spend the rest of our lives struggling with. I'm talking about blanket training, Ferberizing, "cry it out", locking children in rooms, and other need or want shaming techniques. These punishments are baby gaslighting and grooming and they have disastrous affects. 

Need shaming techniques

The Origins: To Train Up a Child

The modern concept of blanket training was popularized by Michael and Debi Pearl in their 1994 book, To Train Up a Child.

• The Method: The Pearls instructed parents to place an infant (as young as six months) on a blanket with a few toys. If the child attempted to move off the blanket, the parent was told to "train" them back using a "rod"—typically a flexible ruler or a plastic plumbing tube—to strike the child.

• The Goal: The explicitly stated goal was to achieve "instant, unquestioning obedience" and to "break the child's will" before they were old enough to reason.

• Expansion: The method was further amplified through the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), an organization that heavily influenced large homeschooling families like Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of "19 Kids and Counting" reality TV fame. 

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Historical Precedents

While the Pearls "branded" the term in the 90s, the logic behind it draws from two earlier historical shifts:

1. The 19th-Century Industrial Model: In the mid-1800s, as mothers began working in factories, parenting manuals (like those by Dr. Luther Emmett Holt) began emphasizing strict schedules and "crying it out". The idea was to make babies "convenient" for a working adult's schedule.

2. Anti-Coddling Movement (1920s): Behaviorists like John Watson argued that parents should treat children like young adults—avoiding hugging or kissing—to prevent them from becoming "weak" or "spoiled." Blanket training is a modern, more extreme evolution of this "anti-coddling" philosophy.

Ferberizing (The "Check and Console" Method)

While "blanket training" is about physical confinement during the day, Ferberizing is a popular behavioral sleep training technique focused on the night. It was developed by Dr. Richard Ferber, founder of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Center at Children's Hospital Boston.

• The Method: Often called "graduated extinction," this involves putting a baby to bed while they are still awake and leaving the room. If the baby cries, the parent waits for a specific, increasing interval of time (e.g., 5 minutes, then 10, then 15) before returning to the room to provide brief comfort without picking the baby up.

• The Intent: The goal is to teach the child "self-soothing"—the ability to fall asleep and return to sleep without parental intervention.

• The Controversy: Critics, particularly those in the attachment parenting and trauma-informed communities, argue that infants do not actually "self-soothe" (a complex neurological skill). Instead, they may experience "learned helplessness." From a trauma perspective, the baby stops crying not because they are calm, but because they have learned that their distress signals will not be answered—a core component of the "baby gaslighting." 

Baby gaslighting

As a parent and grandparent, (I'm Omi, grandma, in Dutch) these practices are abhorrent to me. But it took me till Omi-hood to get why they were wrong for ME. That's how the childhood trauma brain processes parent cruelty, as "good enough for who it's for." And THAT is how it starts, by deceiving kids into thinking normal needs are shameful, evil, selfish. It is completely anathema to God's commands to love children. 

Triggering but also eye-opening

And my dear ones, this is so triggering. I'm writing this with my jaws clamped firmly shut to keep the rage I have for these in check. Like I've said before, words don't fail me, but nice ones do. And part of that anger is aimed at how insidious these sadistic ideas are. They have leaked into mainstream parent wisdom like poison in the river. I realize that I have done versions of them, believing I was obeying some God mandated thing.

The sick, twisted legacy 

I confess to spanking my first three children as part of what I believed to be God's will. I was also under the influence of my narcissistically abusive parents who spanked and slapped me. The difference is, that at least, I made it clear to my kids why I spanked them. Whereas I never knew why I was getting hit. And it was made more complicated by my parents and stepparents who TOLD me I should spank my kids and THEN told my children it was wrong and THEN lied and said they never hit  me. I never spanked because "it was good enough for me so it's good enough for you." I spanked because my parents said I was disobeying God if I didn't. I'm not justifying why I did it. Just showing the horrible legacy of gaslighting.  

"Train up a child" trauma informed explanation

The Bible says "train up a child in the way that he should go and he won't depart from it." What is implied is "train up a child in ANY WAY and she won't depart from it." Lead a child astray and she'll follow trustingly because you are her parent. Put a millstone around her neck and she'll jump over the cliff because daddy told her to. Make yourself a god to her, deceive, betray, enslave, invalidate, gaslight, abuse, neglect, exploit, parentify, endanger, abandon her and she'll spend the rest of her life defending you and trying to figure out what SHE did wrong. We are well and truly groomed, gaslighted and Ferberized to comply. 

Spare the rod, spoil the child,  no seriously

I'm wondering if maybe God was saying, "no I really mean, spare the rod. I don't want you hitting animals let alone kids." It certainly fits more with this image of a loving God. Is the flip-flopping  (hit, tell your kid to hit her kids, shame her for doing so, lie and say you didn't) just more narcissist gaslighting? Sure sounds like DARVO to me: deny reality, attack the victim, reverse victim offender roles). They sure as hell (pun intended) acted lik "mercy is for me while the hellfire and brimstone is for thee." That certainly would fit their hypocritical, self-righteous double standards. But it's all wrong, says God. Children need love, hugs, tickles and giggles. 

Why else have kids if not to love them?

Why have your "19 Kids and Counting" if you just plan to subjugate them? Even in the "old days" when people had big families, supposedly to "run the farm" or whatever. If you had fewer kids, you'd have fewer mouths to feed. Do the math. Children are supposed to bring joy by who they are not what they provide. Mmmhmm, there it is. Narcissistic parents believe a lot of hogwash. 

• They own their kids. (they don't)
• It's the child's job to do provide narcissistic supply for them. (it's  not)
• They owe nothing, the kid owes everything. (wrong, wrong)
• The narcissist thinks it's all about them. But it's not. That's just narcissistic fantasy  

Creepy, destabilizing narcissistic parent abuse we don't discuss enough

Hello my friends. In my path to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse I'm going to explore creepy, destabilizing narcissistic parent abuse we don't discuss enough. I so appreciate the YouTube vloggers like Jerry Wise, Dr. Ramani, Patrick Teahan and Danish Bashir who aren't afraid to call this abuse what it is. 

Parent enmeshment

An enmeshed parent is one who crashes boundaries and blurs the lines of demarcation between herself and her child. Pretty much all narcissistic parents are also enmeshed in their kids. Here are some things an enmeshed parent does and is

• possessive
• sees the child as extension of herself, like an arm
• adopts awkward, fake childish personas with her actual child, says she's 
• one of the gang 
• more like sister than parent
• "just a big kid"
• never grown up (boy how true that is!)
• thinks child should include her in everything 
• humiliates child (my mom told everyone when I began growing pubic hair)
• bitterly jealous of anyone else
• clingy, needy
• emotional vampire
• attention-seeking
• pity party thrower
• uses child as therapist, partner
• drama mama
• has few friends 

"An enmeshed narcissistic parent is the OG 'smother mother.'"

Controlling, Haughty and Intrusive

This is the arrogant, entitled, remorseless part of the enmeshed narcissistic parent 

• sees child as property
• thinks he has proprietary rights over child
• thinks she has buy in or veto power
• butts into private conversations
• bossy
• boundary crashing (my dad used to come right into the bathroom when I was using it)
• controls things she has no right to (think Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar)
• gives unsolicited advice 
• thinks she knows everything
• feels entitled to a say on things that aren't her business
• expects to be consulted 
• hijacks autonomy

Infantilizes, parentifies and spousifies

• fakely overprotective in public, neglectful in private
• hovers, keeps too close tabs on child
• leverages normal things like basic care to guilt child
• treats child more like partner than his own partner
• gaslights child that he's too feeble to think for himself
• won't let child do things other kids do 
• says it's for his own good when its for hers
• has inappropriate age relationships
• flirts with child, wants to "cuddle" teen
• exclusive with (golden) or excludes (scapegoat)

Underhanded and devious

This is the manifestation of the sneaky deceit, greed plus control freak of enmeshed narcissists

• snoops, is nosy
• goes through child's possessions ( I caught my mother rifling through  my purse). 
• finds reasons to enter child's room without permission
• eavesdrops
• interrogates
• monitors phone
• puts tracker on kids
• trespasses on privacy (my mother barged into my husband's and my bedroom one morning)
• neurotic and paranoid
• often steals from child
• lies to and about child

Generally weird behavior of narcissist parents

• whispers, talks behind hand to child in front of others
• makes child keep secrets 
• tells child's secrets 
• makes holy day obligation about her birthday
• makes herself center of attention at child's birthday
• pouts and sulks 
• gossips, starts and spreads rumors
• loudly interrupts in gatherings
• embarrasses child at special events for attention
• calls attention to herself in odd ways
• talks about private parts 
• has inordinate obsession with being "mother" as if she's the only one
• dominates at gatherings
• must be soothed, humored and also admired 

Expanded examples of creepy behavior 
 

• The "Shadow" Presence: They follow the child around the room, standing just a bit too close, effectively preventing any private or independent conversation with other guests.

• The "Upstaging Reset": If the attention shifts to someone else’s achievement, they suddenly have a physical ailment or a "crisis" that requires everyone to stop and tend to them. They start a fight or cry loudly. 

• The "Revival preacher" move: My mother is known for shouting "AMEN!" or "HALLELUJAH" at sedate church gatherings, family events and even funerals! While she frames it as religious fervor, it’s a calculated disruption that makes her appear "holier" than everyone else while centering the room's attention on her.

• Inappropriate "Over-Sharing": They bring up deeply personal or embarrassing childhood stories as a way to "re-infantilize" you in front of your peers or spouse. She says "it's okay, I'm your mother." (it's not). 

• The Seductive attention grab: My mom describes her inappropriate intimate details and genital ailments at every family gathering, especially to men. It serves to anger her husband, embarrass her son-in-law and grandkids and make me feel foolish. This is triangulation (pitting people against each other) and emotional grooming, weaponizing private things for shock value, so everyone's kept off balance.  

• The "Micro-Manager" Guest: Even if it’s not their home, they start directing traffic, telling people where to sit, or critiquing the host’s food to establish themselves as the "authority" in the room. My mother-in-law would make rude comments about my cooking, my weight or my hair. She would make her son "choose" between desserts I'd made and she'd made to prove his loyalty. 

• The "Costume Clown Control": My mother wears what are obviously nightgowns in public, to her great-granddaughter's baptism, to church and extended family events. Other narcissistic parents have worn wedding dresses to their kids' weddings. This gets narcissistic supply in several ways.  

  

  
  

• • The "Main Character" Syndrome: By wearing a nightgown, she ensures that the conversation focuses on her not the event or the child. If she can't be the hottest, she'll be the most pathetic. 

  • Weaponized Incompetence: If called out, she can crybully and play the "vulnerable" card or act like she’s being bullied for her style, when in reality, it’s passive-aggressive and calculated move to keep everyone on edge.

  • Social Sabotage: It creates a sense of "second-hand embarrassment" for the family, who is made to feel somehow responsible, which is a powerful way for a narcissist to maintain control over you. 

Ready to dive deeper? If these examples resonated with you, I highly recommend checking out these experts who specialize in narcissistic enmeshment and recovery:

• • Dr. Ramani Durvasula: The gold standard for understanding narcissistic personality types.

  • Patrick Teahan, LICSW: Incredible for seeing "role-play" examples of how to set boundaries with toxic parents.

  • Jerry Wise Relationship Systems: Deep dives into family systems and how to "self-differentiate" from an enmeshed family.

  • Danish Bashir: Offers very practical, direct advice on the "no contact" or "low contact" journey.

   

  Note: This post is based on personal experience and research into narcissistic dynamics. I am a writer and educator, not a licensed therapist. If you are in a crisis or need professional guidance, please reach out to a mental health professional.