Why you feel joy in narcissistic abuse and it's not what you think

Hello my friends. Today on my childhood trauma recovery journey, I'm unpacking a bizarre phenomenon that occurs with people experiencing narcissistic abuse. And that is the positive glow they report feeling occasionally, with the narcissist, despite the ill treatment. Here's a breakdown of why you feel joy in narcissistic abuse. And it's NOT what you think. 

No you're not a masochist. 

Dr. Ramani just made a vlog which you really must watch, discussing these feelings of joy at being with narcissistic persecutors. She said that so many people reported periods of joy (they used that word) in narcissistic relationships. I can relate to this experience from having lived with four narcissistic parents who were frequently malignantly cruel. And yet, I often (FAR too often) felt only self-blame with none the anger a normal kid feels, let alone one who is being unfairly targeted. I felt happy and lucky to have them because they told me I should. Even when I didn't have them, even when they abandoned, endangered, severely neglected, exploited, humiliated and coercively controlled me. Does that mean I was a masochist, and a glutton for punishment? No. This was betrayal blindness, a trauma response to survive their sadistic treatment. 

The Joy Dilemma

But why joy? Why do so many childhood trauma sufferers use that specific word to describe relationships with their parents? Because this is all we know of joy with sociopathic or narcissistic parents. We don't know love from pain, suffering and abuse. Fear and hurt are our normal. We have deep betrayal blindness, what I also call emotional leprosy, which makes it impossible for us to differentiate pleasure from pain. Hypervigilance, fearful fawning, chronic anxiety, looping panic attacks, sick dread and terror are our daily life. We are never relaxed and comfortable (our malignant parents make sure of that) and certainly never anything like truly joyful. We have heard others describe joy and so we think that occasionally not feeling quite so awful must be what they are referring to. 

It's not reciprocity or generosity, it's bread-crumbing.

Narcissistic enmeshed parents take and steal all our selves. These self-absorbed people absorb us into them. I call them Black Hole Parents always consuming and never satisfied. And conversely, (because everything is flip-flopped) they only parse out bare minimum to string us along. This is bread-crumbing and that is not generosity or parental nurturing. It's a rationed scraps occasionally thrown to us, just to keep us alive. But we are so used to deprivation and pouring into them from our own empty cups, that it feels like a banquet. And this is not reciprocity either. My narcissistic stepmother and father demanded that I as their Broken Vending Machine Child, pay out whatever they wanted at my own expense. Yet failed to provide a basic bedroom, bed, pillow or enough to eat. 

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The Broken Vending Machine Child experiences food insecurity and deprivation, while the toxic family has plenty. And yet is expected to dispense any goodies they demand of her, at her own expense.

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Why you are confused

Because narcissistic parents purposely confuse you. They lie, deceive and con, by nature. Gaslighting and DARVO (deny responsibility, attack, reverse victim offender) are their trademarks. My narcissistic mother and father wove a blanket of lies which they wound around me. This is one manifestation of parent enmeshment in which the abusive parent entraps the scapegoat child in their narcissistic fantasy cult of servitude to them. They create a parallel universe of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) in which the parentified child is made responsible for the parent. This caused me intense cognitive dissonance, emotional and even physical pain. That fact that none of this is real and that my narcissistic father and mother do not have this power, doesn't matter. My trauma brain thinks they do. 

It's not joy you're feeling. 

You know how when you're in great pain, having it hurt a little less feels like relief? Sometimes you may even cry. These are trauma reactions to shock which raised cortisol and adrenaline. As they subside, you are left shaky and crying tears of relief. You may even feel "high" or euphoric. That's your brain's neurotransmitter releasing an enkephalin and endorphin rush. These mood boosters are natural opioid peptides your brain sends to help you cope with intense pain. Your brain perceives narcissistic abuse with the same high alert threat level as extreme pain. This precise process happened to my husband recently when he dislocated his shoulder. The shock and pain caused this chain of events, including the "tears of relief." But it wasn't joy. It was feeling level 7 instead of level 11 pain! 

It's not "Happy Families", it's trauma bonding

Narcissistic parents not only sabotage your ability to feel, they weaponize the child's natural attachment to them and exploit her love of and respect for, them. They play the fake love-bombing with Devalue and Discard Game. Then there's the hoovering you back in.  They make you responsible for them when you are a dependent child and then needs-shame your natural dependence on them. They lie to and about you. It's a constant lose-lose game of hypocritical double standards and moving hoops. By setting you up to impossible standards, they assure that you will fail. And then they punish you for "failing" their impossible standards, all while legitimately failing you in the simplest and most basic necessities. This fear of failure keeps the child forever hopping through their hoops hoping to one day be good enough.  This endless tug-of-war cements the child with super glue strength trauma bonding. But it's not love. It's coercive control. 

And it's NOT a sign that you are wrong

This "joy" you feel isn't real. It's not lasting. It isn't the narcissistic parent suddenly turning over a new leaf. It's not that love you've so longed for. Narcissists only stop abusing when THEY get sick of it or if it's not getting them narcissistic supply. Often it's just a temporary ceasefire to keep you baited and hooked. They have to be nice sometimes or you'll see through them. Well, I say, read the red flags they are waving, now. Narcissists don't change unless it suits them and then it's only to change tactics. This is not a reason to distrust yourself or let your guard down. Going no contact was when I first began feeling anything like joy. Because now, I can begin to manage my own pain. And I know what pain and love and joy are and are not. 

Bizarre CPTSD Trauma Responses from Narcissistic Parent Abuse

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring bizarre trauma responses that malignant narcissists condition in their children. Using destabilization, abuse and neglect, trauma bonding and gaslighting, our coercively controlling parents brain damaged us into acting in humiliating, dysregulated knee-jerk patterns. These odd behaviors dog us adult children of narcissists all our lives. 

Hijacked and Hacked Childhood

We traumatized children had our lives hijacked by parent enmeshment and coercive control. The malignant or dark tetrad parent hacks into the child's brain HTML and implants what I call "command prompt Trauma Triggers." Malignant parents passive-aggressively "wind us up" using command prompts only we recognize. We unconsciously and robotically react from our trauma brain, then they scold us for trauma reactions they bred in us.  They say and do things they know will make us anxious and hypervigilant because they are the ones who trained us to. They punish us for not dancing to their tune, and mock us if we do. 

Disturbing Childhood Trauma "Mind Effs" 

Psychology defines trauma responses as freezing, fawning, fight and flight. From my own experience living und the regimens of four narcissistic and enmeshed parents, I've added a few more "mind effs." 

• Fright. Narcissists are truly terrifying to live with because they are deceitful, back-stabbing and violent over the most inconsequential things. They take narcissistic injury over non-issues and suddenly they are in a towering spiteful, vindictive narcissistic rage and you have no idea where it came from. We walk on eggshells and still they go ballistic over nothing. I have spinal and foot damage from "pretzeling" into contorted shapes to somehow appease them. This ungodly terror they instilled looks pretty weird in normal society. 

• Floundering. I am clumsy and stumble over nothing because I am out of balance. I could never walk confidently because my narcissistic mother and father were always springing some random chaos on me. They set up "gotcha" stings just to humiliate me. They jerked the rug out from under me on the daily. Betrayal blindness kept me from seeing that this was intentional. What parent sets their child up to fail? 

• Brain FOG. All this narcissistic abuse is utterly baffling. We were terrified into disturbing reflexive behaviors we didn't even realize we were doing. The narcissist gaslights the scapegoat child into obsessive compulsive preoccupation with fear of, obligation to and guilt over the self-absorbed parent. A few years ago, I was scolded for not being able to deal cards correctly. The scolder asked how I was unable to do so simple a task. Welcome to childhood trauma brain damage, buddy. It impairs everything. 

• Fugue state. Nothing makes sense in this narcissistic fantasy cult they created for us. There are two sets of ever changing self-serving rules. The authoritarian parents demands total control. And this looks nothing like the real world around us. No one addresses our upended reality. We experience cognitive dissonance with every step. 

• Flip-flopping. Insecurity has taught us never to make a decision until we get approval from high command (our Machiavellian parents). And they withhold and deprive us of basic things we need to live. And individuation is punished. And just when we do land, they move the target and scold us for not reading their minds. In the adult world, this translates to "waffling." You better believe that abused kids are indecisive. It was too dangerous not to be. 

• Frenetic and frenzied. Traumatized kids run on nervous, hypervigilant energy. Life moves in an unnatural fast-motion. It's a constant game of Twister trying to navigate their hoops. But no matter how fast we move it's never enough to outrun their rage. 

• Trauma Frowning. Our parents get narcissistic supply from confusing us. We have to take their every whim seriously yet we're scolded for being "too sensitive" "too serious" and not smiling more. Our frowns are from having to concentrate too hard on people pleasing and figuring out what they want. 

• Fear of Failure. This is terror like no other. I have a sick dread of my narcissistic father that borders on manic. And he's been dead for 6 years. That's how shockingly horrific emotional abuse is. 

• Fragility. I hurt all over, all the time from many autoimmune issues. I am exhausted and do not know how to ask for help or that it is okay to. I'm very vulnerable to toxic shaming and toxic positivity from "blind guides." I am codependent on gaslighting to narrate my reality. 

• Freak out. I have had full-on breaks with reality not because I am broken but because reality was broken for me by narcissistic parent gaslighting. I have fallen apart. I am fallen apart on the inside and sometimes it shows on the outside. But not as often as it should given the chaos I lived in. 

• Fraught. Everything narcissistic parents demand of the child, is a desperate high stakes, do or die emergency. Serving them, in the most mundane tasks, takes an insanely high precedence over all else. Just carving out time to do homework requires the strategic planning of a major engagement. Every expectation is marked urgent. While the child deprived of basics. 

• Fracturing. Trauma bonding with all the ick that goes with it, caused cognitive split personality. Their bread-crumbing (being strung along) and future-faking (being lied to, made promises to that were always broken) destroyed any sense of reality. The love-bombing followed by Devalue and Discard ruined us. But no matter how we resiliently rose above, stayed silent and managed, we were told we were "overreacting" and "exaggerating." When we said nothing. 

The Final F

You might think my "great amen" will come in forgiveness. But I have been doing that all my life and it has just made them more arrogant and entitled.  And you know what the definition of insanity is: doing the same thing and expecting different results. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. So I'm going to practice a little Alanon wisdom. I think recovery might lie in doing something different than all this insanity. I am trying to practice mindfulness and "free floating." Not rising above in some vain attempt to "be the bigger person." Not endlessly forgiving. Just letting it happen. Let them be as off as they want, and watching them burn bridges without rushing to put out the fire. That's includes letting slammed doors stay shut. I didn't go no contact with my parents that are left. I just didn't hold the door open. What they closed, stays closed. End of. 

CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent coercive control

Hello my friends. I'm working on childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse. Today I'm responding to a YouTube vlog by narcissism expert Dr. Ramani on the coercive control of narcissistic abuse. My entire backstory is peopled with narcissists (four parents, two bio, two step plus their children). I'm unpacking the CPTSD from this awful enslavement on this blog because it's such a huge, fraught issue that I couldn't address is fully in her channel comments. 

• Memo: Please, if you're dealing with childhood trauma from malignant parent abuse or narcissists in any relationship, run don't walk to Dr. Ramani's channel. She is the Shell Answer Lady on things narcissism. You will find comfort. 

Dark Tetrad Parent Abuse

Narcissism is characterized by arrogance, entitlement (above-it-all-ness), selfishness, low to zero empathy and remorse and pathological lying (gaslighting). The Dark Triad adds a Machiavellian component which basically says "I can do whatever I want, no matter how abusive, to get my way." Then the Dark Tetrad adds cruelty, which is fundamental to all narcissists if they are pushed but the Dark Tetrad requires malignancy for narcissistic supply. The dark tetrad narcissistic father, like mine,  "gets high on" hurting people, especially his scapegoat child. My narcissistic mother NEEDS to destabilize me to make herself feel powerful and superior. 

There are two types of people: those who succeed on their own merits and those who climb on others to make themselves look taller. The dark tetrad is the latter. 

Bizarre Hypocrisy of Religious Narcissist Parent

All I've just described flies in the face of Christianity. And it perfectly describes my hypocritical, two sets of rules religious narcissist parents. Yes, that's a contradiction in terms. Christians are called to be 

• Humble: the Christian narcissist is arrogant, bragging, cocky, sarcastic and cynical.  
• Merciful: the Christian narcissist is ruthless, grudge-holding, petty, malicious and unempathetic. 
• Contrite of heart: The Christian narcissist feels and shows no remorse. He doesn't lack it, he ignores it. He plays DARVO (denies and deflects blame, attacks, and reverses victim and offender). Instead of sorrow, he points fingers away from himself in angry resentment. 
• Teachable: The narcissist browbeats his children with punitive discipline, yet takes narcissistic insult if he is corrected. 
• Loving: The narcissistic parents withhold love while expecting god-like adoration from their children. The only love the child knows is trauma bonding. 
• Honor God: The religious narcissist honors only herself. She coercively controls her child into mindless  obeisance too. 

  Existential Crisis: My parents didn't just think they were gods. They each acted like they were THE ONE TRUE God. And I believed them and disobeyed the real God, serving them. Who would you obey: an unseen entity or the malignant humans with total control of you? Yep, that's who I chose too. 

Narcissism gaslights the narcissist

There is a litany of gaslighting and that narcissism itself feeds the narcissist. It paints a false narcissistic fantasy in which the narcissist is the supreme cult leader. It uses self-serving lies which the gullible dark tetrad already wants to believe. 

• Arrogant self-righteousness tells the narcissists that she is always right even when she is doing dead wrong things. That she is above all normal human rules. 
• Entitlement beguiles the dark tetrad with delusions of grandeur,  that she is endlessly owed whatever she wants and that she owes no one anything. Even her child. 
• Parent enmeshment dazzles her with promises that child is a possession not a person. That mother should sabotage any boundaries and violate privacy with a hypervigilant monitoring. Not to keep the child safe, but to control. 
• Parentification lulls the parent into a false sense of security that she is not held to  normal parent expectations. That she must always be pampered by her child who is actually her parent. 
• Machiavellianism promises the narcissistic dad that he can should do whatever he wants to get his way. No holds barred. No low is too low. 
• Sadism tells the parent that it feels good to hurt the child, that the child had it coming and that this is for her own good. It says ( and this is heretical I can hardly write it) that God wants the parent to abuse the child. 

The Nightmare Web of Coercive Control

The parent uses an evil bag of tricks and mind games to force the child into a destabilized place so she will be desperate and compliant. The parent randomly aims fear arrows to trigger the child. Just when the child starts to feel a little safety or predictability, WHUMP, another arrow lands. And the child's trauma responses activate. Fawning from FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), freezing, fixing and what I call pretzeling. The child twists herself into painful contortions to try and be whatever the parent demands at that moment. I have spinal damage from this. The malignant parent 

• Abuses the child in odd, often hidden ways. My stepfather mocked my breast size as a child, and my mother looked on approvingly. 
• Neglects and withholds necessities or makes them transactional (I was told I stay with my dad and narcissistic stepmother only on conditions of doing any and all chores they set me to). 
• Trauma bonding: The parent wields an arsenal of weapons against the child to create an unnatural codependency. 
• Natural attachment is punished then exploited in a Cat and Mouse game. 
• Power differential becomes a stick to beat the child with. 
• Bread crumbing: The parent feeds the child just enough for survival, but not enough to satisfy. Because the child is dependent for needs, this strings her along. 
• Love-bombing: This mind eff makes the child think for once she has earned the love she desires. But it's just for show and to make her compliant. 
• Future faking: Lying. Making and breaking promises to boost trust and create betrayal blindness while doing exactly as the irresponsible parent wants. 
• Triangulation and smear campaigns. Lying to and about the child to pit people against her. Whether people actually believed my parents or not, I couldn't know. All I knew was no one was speaking or standing up for me. It was all just swept under the rug. 
• Child endangerment. When a parent purposely leaves or puts a child in gratuitously unsafe situations with unsafe people, it creates cognitive dissonance and terror-induced brain damage. 
• Child abandonment. Leaving the child alone, or with strangers, is one of the most disturbing things a parent can do. Mine gaslit me that they were "doing God's work" while I was playing alone downtown in a strange city at 5. 

Gestalt and Bespoke Abuse

The whole effect of all these experiences of abuse is greater than the sum of the parts. Which is already a hell of a lot and way too much for the child brain to come to terms with. This bespoke abuse is tailor-made to the individual child. All of my natural, healthy inclinations and abilities were destroyed as much as was possible for them. My empathy was utilized to make me loyal and silent. My self-esteem was sabotaged so that I was insecure, ashamed and self-loathing. Self-care was punished. Individuation was shamed and scorned. And they never admitted to any of it. Which weirdly is where my salvation comes. 

"You're lucky, we're good parents." 

The fact that these abusive parents actually told me that I was so fortunate to have them, is the red flag I needed to see. Good parents don't preen themselves and use their parenting as a way to shame the child. This shows the gaslighting loud and clear. The fact that they had to create a slippery slope, comparing themselves to people who actually did care for their kids, says they live in lies. And then there are the passive-aggressive digs that I wasn't properly grateful for all they'd done for me. This made me see that it was always ever about my obligation to them, with no reciprocity. They purposely didn't keep a roof over my head, let alone provide a proper bed, bedroom, consistent food on the table, shoes, clothing, medical care, etc. I was the silent homeless "latchkey kid" without a key, before there were words for it. And that doesn't start to cover all the heavy burdens of housework, childcare, lack of privacy put on me. 

The Ultimate Coercive Control Horror 

All this chaos, gaslighting and trauma has left me with permanent brain damage of that FOG I  mentioned. I still live in ungodly terror of my dad and stepmom and they've been gone for 6 years. I had to go no contact with my mom because of the physical, emotional and sexual abuse she and her ex put me through. And I still live in shame for that, even though I didn't go no contact as much as simply allow the doors they slammed on me to stay shut. You may ask, what are you afraid of? And I answer, damned if I know. It's is visceral, gut-level baffling but utterly real. Or real feeling. It is a sucker punch they keep landing on me. I trauma nightmare about it every night. 

The Pandora's Box Reveal. 

If you identify with this parent-caused trauma, I'm so sorry. I have a feeling that too many of you are vigorously nodding your heads in agreement and that sucks. But out of this Pandora's Box, there is one small fairy of hope and she can light our path. Her beacon shows that no matter how real their reign of terror felt, it was fake. They did NOT hold the power they seemed to. They were not gods. They were cowardly playground crybullies. That fear that we felt, was simply a survival trauma response. We never owed them our lunch money. It was just all a mirage. They were just, like Scooby-Doo says, "a man in a mask." They cannot hurt us now. And no, we didn't "let them hurt us" then. We never signed up for this. We just got shoved into it when we were too young and helpless to understand. Where we go from here is now up to us. I'm practicing pushing past the pain and discomfort. I'm doing hard new things that are helping. I'm faking courage till I make it. 

Love always, mar. 

CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse requires new behaviors that are not trauma responses

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I am exploring healthy new behaviors that are not trauma responses. Also called trauma reactions, these unhealthy behaviors include fawning, freezing, fighting, fleeing and another one that I add, fixing (people pleasing, absorbing consequences of and making excuses for others' hurtful actions). And for me, change begins with radical acceptance that the gaslighting of narcissistic abuse was really potent by not real. 

Childhood Trauma Bonding Begets Trauma Responses

Every time I unpack a new concept related to narcissistic parent abuse, I begin by explaining the trauma bonding sequence. This is to remind us both how these dangerous trauma reactions came into play. The parent plays a treacherous Cat and Mouse game of love-bombing (fake shows of affection), bread crumbing (stringing the traumatized child along), future faking (systematically making and breaking promises) followed by random Devalue and Discard for no reason. The malignant parent does this to break the child and make her anxious, hypervigilant and codependent, always chasing the parent for love. The child learns that love is conditional and must be earned WHILE ALSO being expected to give love and respect unconditionally to people who have not earned it and do not give it. 

• New behavior to practice. Respond with love and respect only as merited. To anyone else, just maintain cool aloofness or go no contact. I'm learning to match energy, to stop indulging selfish arrogance and start investing it only in relationships where it is reciprocal. 

The False Reality of Parent Enmeshment 

I use the terms enmeshed parent and narcissistic parent somewhat interchangeably because selfish, arrogant parents are also enmeshed in their children's lives. Not with safety nets that protect us. They strangle us with the distorted narcissistic fantasy they indoctrinated us with. My narcissistic mother and father literally taught me that I didn't matter, that self-care was selfish. Needs were shamed. And being the Broken Vending Machine Child I was parentified to tend to and provide for my parents as if they were my children, with no reciprocity of basic things normal parents are supposed to provide. Individuation was punished and I was force fed gaslighting that my one job was to serve my narcissistic father and mother and any new people they chose to force on me, after they divorced. 

• New Behavior to Practice: I need to stop following my Machiavellian parents' self-serving agenda. I need to cut those unsafe ties that bind. I need to see that this FOG never existed and was as insubstantial as vapor.  I need to go no contact with fawning and people pleasing. 

The Divorced Child and the Black Hole Parent

The natural attachment in the parent-child dynamic only tie one way. Malignant narcissist parents (and they are all malignant if they don't get their way) cut ties and go no contact with their children at birth, as regards anything they owe the child. However the same parent who have shut her out, also trauma bond this "divorced child" to them with distortions, lies, deceptions and FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). They paint a bizarre gaslit reality of double standards, two sets of rules and god complex entitlement. The trauma bonded child is owned, ever-owing and obligated to the demanding never-satisfied Black Hole Parents while also being owed nothing by them.

• New behavior to practice: I have to stop dysfunctional trauma responding by endlessly trying to please unpleasable people. I need to please myself and those with whom respect and giving is a two-way street. Without reciprocity in relationships, one person will always give too much good and accept too much bad, while the other gives too little good and too much bad.  

The End Game of Destabilization

My narcissistic parents withheld, stole or sabotaged everything for me. That included security, shelter, a bed, food and clothing. I (and only I) experienced homelessness, child abandonment, food insecurity, medical neglect, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, among other things. I was sick and tired all the time, too tired to enjoy simple things other kids had. I was told that "we" were poor and yet I saw everyone else, including my parents, their new spouses and kids, with more than enough. Childhood poverty was for me and me alone. The ultimate end game was destabilization through invalidation, narcissistic abuse and coercive control.  Because a stable child threatens the dark tetrad parent's reign of terror. 

• New Behavior to practice: I need to get out and stay out of the path of destabilizers. I need to use radical acceptance that they will never be anything other than dangerous. I need to practice confidence to walk firmly steer clear of dangers by heeding the red flags. 

Narcissistic parents abuse creates OCD and addiction in children of narcissists

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery, I'm exploring how narcissistic parent abuse creates OCD and addiction plus an unnatural codependency in adult children of narcissists. This is a similar yet opposite addiction to the parents' addiction to narcissistic supply. Self-centered, arrogant control-obsessed parents engender an equal and opposite trauma reaction toward compulsive behavior in their children. Because everything is an ironic paradox with flip-flopped self-serving double standards in the narcissist parent-child dynamic. 

Parent Enmeshment Paradox 

To begin to understand the narcissistic parent, we have to understand parent enmeshment and all the entails for the adult child of narcissists. Some might disagree but in my experience the narcissistic parent is also the enmeshed parent who sees her children merely as extensions of herself. In her narcissistic fantasy, the child exists merely to get her what she wants, whatever narcissistic supply looks like for her. The parent doesn't just discourage individuation and boundary setting, she actively sabotages it. Because a separate autonomous child threatens the cult leader parent. Independence causes narcissistic insult (ego injury). 

The Emptied Child and the Black Hole Parent

The Black Hole Parent is one endless well of needs, wants, demands with expectation that the child will fulfill every one. Using role reversal and gaslighting, my narcissistic father adultified me, the child (this is coerces the child into filling adult roles). This immature baby-man co-opted my birthright to childhood. There is also spousification and parentification in which the endlessly demanding and irresponsible parent makes the child parent her while also playing the part of spouse and partner to the parent. The child is indoctrinated in eternal FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) toward the parent with the entire child being emptied into the Black Hole Parent. This manufactured obligation causes hypervigilance, trauma responses and cognitive dissonance in the child. 

Out-of-Control Control Freak paradox

The malignant narcissist (and all narcissists can be malignant if they don't get their way) lives to dominate. The narcissistic mother is an emotional BDSM dominatrix, an energy vampire that feeds off her victims. She is an anarchist in her own behavior and a fascist issuing commands to others. She wantonly and recklessly refuses to exercise self-control and ruthlessly and coercively controls her child. In her god complex, she believes she writes the rules and can change like a tyrannical dictator anytime it suits. This causes constant anxiety and panic attacks in the ever fawning child who is struggling just to navigate the parent-dictated chaos and confusion. 

Narcissistic supply addiction

Weaponizing the child's natural attachment and wielding the parent power differential like a whip, is how the dark tetrad parent obtains her narcissistic supply hit. She uses random ambushes of narcissistic rage to keep the child off balance. The narcissistic parent gets high on destabilizing the child. It makes her feel powerful, untouchable, golden, bulletproof. Each time the parent takes a hit, however, it satisfies less, like a drug. My narcissistic dad needed to go to greater lengths to get the same buzz. And to get high, he had to stoop lower each time. Which meant doing increasingly more damaging things to me, his scapegoat child. Both my narcissistic parents and their spouses enjoyed humiliating and watching others humiliate me. And that got more malicious with time till it was sociopathic. 

Trauma Bonded Codependency 

They were addicted to sadism, and I became addicted as it were to masochism. Not by choice, but necessity. I was groomed to let people hurt me. Self-care was punished. Needs were shamed while I was expected to dispense their wants like the Broken Vending Machine Child I was. I was made sick and debilitated by medical neglect and child endangerment. They played Cat and Mouse with me by future-faking and bread-crumbing with a dash of love-bombing tossed in to confuse me. But always followed by the Devalue and Discard mind f*ck. Being a child, I was naturally dependent on them and they exploited that by abandoning me for just because it was Tuesday. I developed a codependency in that I had to pursue them just for basic needs while they played hard to get. All this gaslighting and gassing left scars of betrayal blindness on my eyes. 

OCD and addiction in adult children of narcissists

The Adult Child of Narcissists grows up chasing the perfection demanded of him by his exploitative parents. But of course, perfection is a bitch of a taskmaster.  My parents were never responsible, reliable, caring, ethical or even moral. Yet they demanded rigid militaristic devotion and exemplary behavior from me. All my fawning and people pleasing just made them more entitled. Even when I achieved it, it was never enough because they moved the targets to keep me insecure and desperate to please them. I became obsessive compulsive about doing everything just so. I became almost superstitious, having to count and recount, check and recheck. They set me to impossible tasks and so did I. And my trauma nightmares reveal the futility of it all. All night long I dream about having to do impossible things without resources and obviously, failing because the expectations are unachievable. The nightmares themselves have become compulsive as I try and fail and try and fail. 

Will the real obsession please stand up?

It's probably no surprise that I suffer from Imposter Syndrome. My parents stole my identity and sabotaged my sense of self. I don't know who I am because they gaslit me into thinking I was a problem instead of a person. They taught me that I didn't occasionally, like any normal person, do wrong, I WAS wrong. And they being narcissists were always right and if they weren't it was my fault. The Narcissist's Prayer was their creed. What I realized is that all this obsessive, addicted chasing was not about perfection it was about love and respect, identity, personhood.  I believed, wrongly, that if I could just get it right for once, I would be able to "earn their love." As if a child has to. Well now I see, I got it right a lot more often than I thought. Much more often than such a brain damaged child should. And still it did no good.

But you can't pour from an empty or fill a black hole.

 

💡💡Stepping away from, instead of over, the edge. 

Because all the love, care, devotion and self I poured into them, would never be enough. Because THEY were never enough, not me. I tried to keep pouring even though my cup dried out ages ago. So I gave up. I had to. It was killing me. And not after irreparable scars and pain. I didn't go no contact. I let the door they slammed on me, stay shut. And now, childhood trauma recovery, not pointless people pleasing is my agenda. Amen. 

CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse: Ending gaslighting by turning off the gas

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'll share some "aha moments" about parent gaslighting, I had after I turned off the gas of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). That's when I was able to see not loving parents but fat, malignant spiders spinning webs of lies. These dangerous hypocrisies forced me to go no contact with the two of my four dark tetrad parents that are left: my narcissistic mother and her ex-husband.  

💡You can't be wrong all the time. 

Part of the gaslighting my narcissistic father, mother, stepmother and stepfather indoctrinated me with is that I was always in the wrong. It was the only thing they agreed on, that Marilisa was the cause of all their problems. I don't know who beside them actually believed this DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) nonsense, but I certainly did. And when people don't speak up for you against your abusive parents' neglect, child abandonment, endangerment, parentification, scapegoating, exploitation and constant toxic shaming, you think they believe it too. Silence implies consent. Some become flying monkeys with their haranguing toxic positivity and victim-shaming. But here's the lightbulb that just went on in my head: 

Mutually exclusive contradictions light the path. 

It was the paradoxical nature of these mutually exclusive contradictions that made me see. Each of these malignant narcissists scapegoated me. These toxic authority figures (note I don't say parents because they didn't care for me in any normal sense of the word) had a retort for everything I did or said. My dad said I was "too sensitive" and "couldn't take criticism" but also "too critical" of them. I was expected to take their demands very seriously always but was also told to "lighten up" and smile more often. I kept quiet on my own achievements and applauded my mom's grandiosity, I covered for her exhibitionist histrionics yet she said I was an attention-seeking showoff. If anything bad happened or anyone was mad, it was ALWAYS my fault. Right was wrong for me and wrong was right for them. There was no winning. But they took that blame-shame bucket to the scapegoat well one too many times. And that's how I finally figured it out. 

The Devil is in the double standards

In the very excessiveness of their behavior, the generalizations, the always-never double standards, I saw the parents for who they really were, arrogant, entitled, remorseless, self-serving control freak hypocrites living in one big narcissistic fantasy who would do anything to protect it. They had to always kick me under the bus to cover the deception. I was just narcissistic supply for them. My narcissistic stepfather and mother, got off on humiliating vulnerable people. My dad and narcissistic stepmother were terribly neglectful, abusive and exploitative toward me. They targeted me over the most ridiculous things because they could never admit to being wrong, so someone had to be. But that stopped working for them when their scapegoat child caught on. 

Impossible illogical fallacies

My enmeshed parents (who used me as a prop as well as a target) would make excuses for themselves all the time. They took narcissistic insult at any suggestion they were wrong. When they were caught in big ticket items like child abuse, procuring abortions (as pro-lifers) adultery, scamming, pedophilia, they had justifications a mile long. They'd blow it off, saying "no one is perfect" or my Bible beater dad's favorite "it's covered by the blood." Ironically, they would also entrap me in situations and then mercilessly attack. They would set me up to watch me fall. And trauma bonded me, fell for it. My betrayal blindness hid the fact that they were Machiavellian ruthless agent provocateurs. Then anything I did or said (and trauma response fawning made sure I kept quiet) was spun as defending myself. Even though I never did or said boo. I was too scared. They recklessly lied, twisted, gaslit and deceived and made sure I took the consequences of their actions on myself. 

Freaking mental Game of Cat and Mouse Trauma Bonding

Parent enmeshment is contradictory and purpose-built. They hate being so dependent on the child for narcissistic supply and punish her. Everything they do is underhanded and self-serving. The parent wields the power differential like a knife that cuts one way, not to guide but to control the child. They weaponize her natural attachment to them, against her.  They use bread-crumbing, future-faking and love-bombing to tenderize her. Then they randomly but strategically Devalue and Discard to groom her to think she did something wrong. This trauma bonding makes her desperate to get back in their good graces. They purposely violate her privacy and crash her boundaries to make her nervous and hypervigilant. Life is endless fraught spaces with two sets of ever-shifting rules I could never succeed at. Because just when I got it right, they changed the rules. They bound me up to burdens they didn't carry. They put a millstone around my neck and pushed me over the edge. 

Destabilized to sabotage 

I see now why in the narcissistic cult family they had to be so chaotic, hypocritical and unpredictable. My arrogant parents had to stay one jump ahead to retain this imagined moral high ground. They had to gaslight me with bullshit to preserve the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) I felt toward them.  They had to undermine me to make sure I stayed blindly subservient. Those comebacks they had for me, felt rehearsed because they were. They had a litany, much like the Narcissist's Prayer. And that narcissistic abuse was bespoke specifically to destabilize me and sabotage any hope of escape or individuation.  

Childhood Trauma Recovery Means Going Back to Square One

Once you uncover one parent lie, no matter how innocently you discover it, the entire fabric is compromised. Especially if it is a lie that hurt or framed you unfairly. Narcissistic parents deceive to protect their false image at your expense. So it's like ants: where there's one, there will be more. They lie to cover past lies they told. Here's a breakdown of the many ways narcissists lie and the reasons they do lie. And that's how gaslighting works. It creates a web of deceit. And like a web, it traps you so the spider can suck the life out of you. Healing begins when you recognize that what you believed, trusted, put your hope in, worked for, was a tangle of lies. Then healing continues when you start over, rewriting your truth correctly, reparenting yourself as you should have been parented. I wish you well and will hold space for you as you do. 

Healing CPTSD from narcissistic parent enmeshment of parentification and spousification

 Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) recovery, I'm digging deeper into child abuse from parentification, spousification and adultification. A narcissistic parent creates a toxic family system where children play roles to serve the parents rather than live authentic, individuated lives. And three very bizarrely contradictory child roles narcissists coerce the child into are that of adult, spouse and also parent. 

Narcissistic parents break every rule of parenting.

They flip-flop everything normal parents do. Everything is done for narcissistic supply rather than care of the child. They future fake to build trust then they break promises. They exploit the child's natural attachment to them into trauma bonding. They play cat and mouse with her, by bread crumbing (giving her just enough of what she needs to keep her compliant) and love-bombing (showering her with performative shows of affection to throw her off guard.)Then they play the discard and devalue game to make her desperate win them back. Narcissists weaponize the logical parent power differential into coercive control, not to keep the child safe but to destabilize her. They demand all good from her and deprive her of necessities to wear her down. They lie and distort everything so the child develops betrayal blindness. Then they DARVO spinning the story that the child is the problem and they are the victims. Do this enough and you have one very confused, beaten down, pliable child. 

Malignant narcissistic parents tenderize the child like a steak, wounding her and then rubbing salt in the wounds.

Narcissist parent gaslighting around child roles

Children are not people to dark tetrad parents. We were owned possessions and cat's paws. Narcissists create a false reality for their children regarding roles that the child expected to play. The child is just supporting cast in their main character narcissistic fantasy. They hypocritically use words like duty, family loyalty and responsibility which mean one thing for the irresponsible parent and the opposite for the hypervigilant over-responsible child. They set the child to inappropriate tasks. They demand that she do for them things that they should be doing for her. They place unfair expectations on her. They instill a pervasive FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to carry the mental load for them. Narcissistic parents expect children to act and think like adults while the grownups behave like immature, selfish brats. That is the adultification, as I call it. 

Parent enmeshment and role reversal

The enmeshed parent cares only about getting her way, having her needs met and wishes granted. She violates privacy and tramples on the child's boundaries. What she tells the child is that she loves him so and that's why she's so "devoted" to him. But what she shows him is that he does not exist outside her. I did not know where my parents ended and I began. Or if I even did. My narcissistic father indoctrinated me that I was to put everyone else ahead of myself. That self-care was selfish. What he meant was that he and my narcissistic stepmother should come first, last and always. Then my enmeshed mother punished any individuation on my part while she went no contact with me whenever she chose. I was owned and always owing them. She and my narcissistic stepfather used, abused and gaslit me that they owed me nothing. I was made to parent them like spoiled, whiny babies. Then I was made to parent all of their children. This is parentification. 

Spousification

This is what I call it when a parent expects the child to be a spouse and partner rather than a dependent. They groom the child to treat mommy like a girlfriend. They share inappropriate sexual things with the child. My mother forced me to listen to sex stories. They rely on the child to provide adult support. My parents made me do gratuitously heavy housework as a young child, even though I had a debilitating spinal problems like congenital hip dysplasia and scoliosis.  I had to co-sleep with their babies even the four special needs kids under 5, in my mother's foster care home. I had to work unpaid doing caregiving and cleaning tasks in my dad's adult foster care home that I just learned were illegal for me as a 14 y/o to do. I did chores that no one else had to or would not have done if I wasn't there to do them. My mother dumped all her woes on me like a therapist. She even did this a few times to my best friend, age 11. 

Parent Enslavement

I think the root of all this crazy bass-ackwardness is that narcissists enslave their children, emotionally, physically, mentally, all of it. And mine enslaved me to anyone they decided to shove on me, no matter how dangerous that person was. They accomplished this by scapegoating, abuse and neglect, endangerment, child abandonment, humiliation, invalidation, toxic shaming, triangulation and other destabilizing tactics. I did not think, eat, sleep breathe anything but them. I was their Broken Vending Machine Child dispensing all that was demanded of me with no remuneration or reciprocity. 

Narcissists do things to their children not for them. 

I just listened to a vlog by Dr. Ramani discussing how narcissists do things to people (hurt, abuse) while loving people do things for others, to help them. I would sum up my relationship with  my parents with this polarity. They did things TO me while I did things FOR them. I carried, nurtured, slaved for, supported, affirmed, loved them. And they antagonized, attacked, shamed, criticized, embarrassed, punished, harassed and hurt me. Is that a too broad generalization? I only wish it was.