Hypocrisy of the traumatized child's duty of care to aging enmeshed narcissist parent

Hello my friends. Today on my path to childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring the hypocrisy that religion and society feeds us. We traumatized kids are told we owe a duty of care to our aging enmeshed narcissist parents. But what they fail to account for, is that we have been caring for them all our lives and they have never cared for us. If this resonates, if you're sick of the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) over what you supposedly owe them, hang on. Cuz we're gonna do some myth-busting about that "duty of care" and who owes and who doesn't. 

Neglectful AND needy-wanty parents

It's ironic how often the most demanding, expectational parents were also the most neglectful and exploitative of their kids. That's because abusive, enmeshed parents start out as they mean to continue, using the child as a prop, a tool, a slave, a parent (parentification) and a source of narcissistic supply. And they keep doing it throughout the child's life. There never was any reciprocity with narcissistic parents and there never will be. It's just take, steal, demand, expect with them and give, roll over for, tolerate and be abused, for the child. 

Deprivation, gaslighting and brain damage

In healthy families, there's a balance. The kids are cared for and then very often (not always and they don't have to) they care for their parents appropriately as they begin to age and need help. Good parents don't expect "paybacks. We don't bring up what we're entitled to. We don't think like that. But for kids abused by narcissistic parents, it's all one-sided with all good coming to them, with no payout coming from them. They strategically deprive the child of very basic needs then gaslight and confuse her that this is normal. Or that it's her fault in some way. The chaos of cognitive dissonance causes brain damage with lowers resistance and resilience and makes her more vulnerable to abuse, which they exploit. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Brain damage from abuse further victimizes us

The gaslit child grows into a befuddling adult who literally doesn't know right from wrong. We are trauma bonded and think it's fine for our parents to have used and abused us. That's what they indoctrinated us to believe. We have betrayal blindness and pretty much only operate on childhood trauma responses, of people pleasing and fawning, rather than healthy interaction. This makes us so vulnerable to further narcissistic abuse, especially by our parents. It sets a pattern of being taken advantage of and not seeing it. 

The FOG and DARVO traps 

Enmeshed narcissistic parents have a line of bullshit a mile long. They spin fairytales of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt)-- enumerating all we "owe" them because of all they "did for us." Our betrayal blindness silences any clear recall about  how they never did for us, except harm. They were never there for us. They abused, neglected, abandoned, endangered, dehumanized, scapegoated, enslaved and exploited us. But because we are so run down by abuse we don't have the energy to fight back. We can't see clearly how we've always done for them and they never did for us. We keep them full up on narcissistic supply because it's dangerous not to. We believe their DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) lies which tell us we are the problem. And how we must spend ourselves making it up to them. 

Duty of care delusion

On top of all this pain, there's the way religion and society pressures us. In a reciprocal world, people help each other. But we were never on the receiving, only giving end of care. So our duty of care never ends. If we mention this imbalance, we're told "life isn't fair. Suck it up. She's your mom. He's your dad. Be the bigger person." And all this hypocritical hogwash. Hogwash, you note, these "blind guides" never live up to. Because blind guides give unsolicited advice (gaslighting) but they don't follow it. They're free with "shoulding" and stingy with doing. They're generous with your income, support, home, resources and cheap with theirs. They want to put your money where their mouth is. 

On the Myth of "Duty of Care"

"We traumatized kids are told we owe a duty of care to our aging enmeshed narcissist parents. But what they fail to account for is that we have been caring for them all our lives and they have never cared for us."

The never-ending obligations

My mother expects 24/7/365 care. I'm not exaggerating. She doesn't need it. She can walk, talk, hear, navigate. She just fakes she can't for pity and attention. Before I "got sober" from her, she'd guilt me into taking her to the doctor. She did not need a ride and was perfectly capable of driving herself. But mother requires an entourage wherever she goes. She takes it as an ego injury if you don't wait on her. Also, she gets far less pity mileage just going to the doctor alone. She can't play her little game of "poor me, can't hear, can't walk, can't think for myself." No one realizes how special she is so she has to fend for herself. So, being used to being in mother's service, I fell for it. 

No good deed goes unpunished

And entitlement only gets worse the more you keep paying out. It was like watching a quick change artist, in slow motion. Mother expects dutiful daughter to shepherd her along, hovering lest mommy trip and fall. That's true. She actually says she does it. She once told me how she would walk into traffic unless her other (more subservient) daughter pulls her back. Mom has been a Munchhausen's (Factitious Disorder) and Munchausen's by Proxy before there were terms for it. Now you might be tempted to say, oh poor mom and blame dementia. And she'd agree with you if she thought she could get something out of it. She does not have dementia. She fakes it. The fact that she knows she's PURPOSELY WALKING INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC demonstrates how far she'll go for attention. And she's been doing this for decades. I once walked downtown with her and she looked right at me and started out into traffic. I didn't do anything to stop her. I called her bluff which I know was a risk. (actually I wasn't purposely trying to out her. I just forgot this little trick she plays.) But she stopped and stepped back, then got angry with me for not pulling her back like her golden child does. What she was, was pissed off that she got caught in her shenanigans. 

The Doctor Debacle

And if she's bad on a walk, you should see her at the doctor. Mom was always an exhibitionist "pick me." She was full-on sexy vamp, plus pretty baby, plus preachy church lady. It was exhausting to be her child. Now that she's older, she figures if she can't be the sexiest in the room, she'll be the most pathetic. She feign deafness and incapacity as it suits her. As her supporting case, you must translate for (she speaks the language, she just pretends not to understand) answer for her and patiently explain basic things. She's capable. She just plays the role for attention and to make daughter appear cold-hearted if she doesn't carry mother like a helpless infant. They'll call her name and she'll look up, start to get up, then remember she "can't hear, look down again and put this imbecilic expression her face, waiting for you to tell her they called her. And we haven't even made it past the damn waiting room. 

At this appointment, a nurse asked her if she'd had breakfast (I had not because I had to rush out to get her there, but I digress). Anyway mom pulled her little trout pout, lower lip trembling, side-eyed me and said she couldn't remember. In this galling fragile voice. She'd eaten. She takes good care of herself. But it gets her more pity cred to make it look like daughter dearest had failed to "feed mom." (A grown ass woman perfectly able to feed herself.) The nurse scolded me and said I needed to take mother out to lunch immediately afterwards. Boy did mom preen after that. I literally watched her face go from piteous to smug "gotcha." 

Note to healthcare staff: please be wary of dispensing advice or falling for your patient's version of events. You don't know the full story. Be mindful that this can make the child caregiver's already difficult life, worse. 

The ickiest part

But there's more to mom's posing than just weaponized incompetence. There's a sick, sexual side to her which proves her dark tetrad nature. I thought we were there for a routine check. But come to find out, mom (a 75 y/o woman) wanted sex advice from the doctor. She snapped at me that "you won't want to hear this but I just have to ask." Which is true. I never wanted to hear all her gross sex talk, that I've been hearing since I was 8. I was her sex therapist and she spared no gory detail. Now what the doctor should have said was, how about you wait outside. I should have excused myself. But you know, fawning and people pleasing...Anyway, she launched into this weird discussion about how she wants to please her husband but can't handle sex because "he's so coarse." Blech. We both explained other methods which she (who was always free with favors) pretended not to understand. Finally I said "bl-wj-b, mom!" And she smirked her facetious narcissistic smirk of "gotcha." It was then I realized mom gets narcissistic supply humiliating me and making me feel uncomfortable. She actually feels self-righteous egging someone on to be "rude, crude and lewd" as she puts it. She sets them up, then laughs when they fall for it. That won't happen again. I'm done being her sex toy. 

What about if they "really need" you?

Therein lies the way they maintain control over you. Because the older someone gets, arguably the more help they need. I say arguably because 1) narcissists are very "needy" (translation: wanty) all their lives. 2) They feel entitled to your resources but are selfish with theirs when you need something. 3) They play by double standard two sets of rule. It's family does for family when they want something and business transaction when you need something. 4) your needs were called selfish wants and their selfish wants are called needs.  You are a better judge of what they need from you than they are. Bottom line, they may actually need legitimate help but it's not your responsibility to provide it. My mom would come over to get something from me then leave when it came to her reciprocity. She'd say she "had to get home to her family." Well, now that she's older, we play the family card back on her. When she comes with her hand out (the only reason she comes over) we turn out empty pockets. You have a family to get home to. Let them help you. And when she plays the pity card about how her second husband left her. Well, you effed around and now you are finding out. People get sick of playing bit parts in your show. Petty? Nope. Reality. And if she ends up truly stranded, well shouldn't have cried wolf so often. If that's cold-hearted, so be it. 

I can quit anytime I want

Thanks to my loving husband, I began to see that gaslighting, the humiliation, the set ups, the exploitation for what they were. And the flying monkeys, be they in the church, family, psychologist's chair, can keep their advice for themselves. I don't owe care to those who never cared for me. None of my parents EVER WAS a  parent to me. I was always their parent, possession, spouse, surrogate, scapegoat and servant. And I can continue to serve pro bono and non-gratis. I can continue to pay the doormat tax (thank you Dr. Ramani for that term). Or I can stop. I chose to go no contact and stop. 

Not as sure as I'd like, but surer than I was

Some of my bluster now is whistling past the cemetery. I'm not as brave as I may sound nor as bold as I may look. I'm vulnerable to old gaslighting voices in my head. I second-guess myself on going no contact. But I'm also the most free and authentic that I've ever been. I see clearly now the gaslighting fog has lifted. I feel relieved, like a self-flagellating backpack full of rocks has been been lifted from my broken shoulders. It still hurts with a ghost pain that may be with me for life. But I will proceed. Once you see their abuse, you can never unsee it. 

Not the popular option but the necessary one. 

If you go no contact as I have, don't expect praise. Prepare for the blame-shifting shame society heaps on us. But also see it for what it is. They don't and won't get us. They never have. They are just repeating unhelpful nonsense. And remember, these are often the same people who stood by and held the coats of your persecutors. They say how you were being treated and played dumb. So their voices now are just clanging cymbals you can feel free to ignore. When the hakken-kraks howl, stand tall in your shoes. Keep moving and if you can't move forward at least don't go back. I see and hear you. I'll hold space for you because you really do "got this." 

Dreams expose real perpetrators of childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery, I'm exploring how my dreams expose childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. This is part of a series, based on trauma nightmares I've started to deconstruct. Last night's was one of the most horrifying I've ever dreamed and the funny thing is, I can't recall what happened, only the sick, sucker punch nausea I woke up with. 

PTSD and CPTSD nightmare reality

From personal experience, I've become quite the expert on trauma dreaming. Every single night, I have upsetting, confusing, sleep-depriving dreams. I wake up choking and screaming. Thank God for my patient, loving husband or I think I'd have gone stark raving mad by now. I've never spoken to anyone who dreams like I do. I've never found a clinician who can shed light. They're so bad that those I've told are shocked and traumatized themselves hearing my nightmares described. I've tried everything to stop them but the persistence tells me that radical acceptance of them plus some deep dives into dream origins might be necessary. 

Wrong ideas about trauma nightmares

Before I look at that, I'm going to explode a few myths about trauma nightmares. Most of these myths come from misrepresentations in books and movies. Others come from outmoded psychological fallacies like "dream interpretation." I'm a Freudian at heart, but his teachings on dreams are just categorically wrong. 

☠💀🕱I can speak definitively on trauma dreaming, having had more nightmares than real life experiences. 

• Dreams aren't always recurrent. There's an misnomer that people dream the same dream every night. That's not my experience. Mine have similar themes--floods, children in danger, fear, oppression, chaos, coercive control by malignant parents--but the scenarios are wildly different. My dreams have taken place on every street in our city. 
• Dreams don't  have one "hidden meaning." I believe that nightmarish dreams stem from brain damage from parental abuse. I don't have research to prove it, just experience. But I do know that repeated cortisol bursts from fear, stress and chronic anxiety of chaotic, hostile, antagonistic parents, damages the brain. 
• Nightmares aren't always based on a specific event but on an accumulation of frightening experiences. And a pervasive, threatening, antagonistic, highly toxic, destabilized home environment. This is what I call a "trauma lifestyle" that began in infancy. 
• Nightmares aren't always the brain reliving the experience but the feelings surrounding it. In my case, anxiety, overwhelming parental oppression, terror, too much responsibility and FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). 

Trauma lifestyle

My childhood and adult life with four dark tetrad narcissistic parents was a Sears catalog of abuse, neglect, endangerment, chaos, abandonment, triangulation, manipulation, violence, aggression, scapegoating, enslavement, parentification, dehumanizing and gaslighting about it all. It was consistently inconsistent. I was shuffled around through 40 different homes before age 20. I understood none of this clearly because trauma bonding caused betrayal blindness. I didn't see how bad it was, but my dreams did and they remembered. 

Early dream iterations

Because home life was so frightening, and family was so hostile, I did a lot of compartmentalization, cognitive splitting and drowning out memories. I kept silent till I lost my voice and power of accurate recall. My earlier dreams alluded to this parent abuse, but didn't dare to expose the real perpetrators. The dreams put different safer faces on my abusers, to shield my mind from total collapse. I had what were called back then, a series, or maybe one long nervous breakdown. I was able to hide it by internalizing and absorbing everything but it leaked out in self-harm episodes and dreams. 

The masks are slipping

Over the last year and a half, since really digging into childhood trauma recovery, my dreams have shifted. My dreams are showing me the real faces, of the four people who called themselves my parents, who were behind all the pain and suffering. They've been revealing their true colors and wow, it's so much worse than I even remembered and what I remember is pretty bad. The malignancy, vindictiveness and malice is there in all its unvarnished evil. And the shock and nausea I feel aren't from fictional horror but reality. I remember now exactly how malevolent they were, feelings I'd squashed because it was just too much to contemplate. 

My husband, who has been helping me unearth the nightmare sources, and who knows my backstory, says these aren't dreams but recovered memories. 

Dreams drive recovery

My dreams are holding nothing back. They're outing the truth behind the web of gaslighting. They were showing me as a victim, not the problem their DARVO twisted me into. As awful and painful as all this is, it is also a relief. Before, nothing they said seemed to fit or make sense. It was all so dark and confusing. The gaslighting made me feel I was walking blind. Now I can see more clearly that all the terrible things they said about me, were actually true of them. I am not perfect, but I'm also not an evil monster. I am a shell-shocked survivor. 

My path forward 

In light of all this, I'm going to...

• Let the dreams play out. Let them have their say. Listen and watch what is really happening. 
• Stop defending, justifying, answering for, denying and explaining away THEIR hurtful actions toward me. 
• Stop auto-DARVO-ing them as victims and me as the offender. 
• Fumigate the toxic gas of gaslighting. All their lies, blame-shifting and perversions have left my little house filled with poisonous fumes that need to be purged.
• Hear and talk back to their shaming voices in my head. 
• Go no contact with anything that drags me back to those dark days. 
• Know that I'm not perfect but that I don't  have to be. 
• Continue to act in accordance with my own ideas and personal code of ethics.  

Love to you all and thanks for reading. For more geek speak on childhood trauma brain damage and the CPTSD nightmare connection, read on. 

Narcissistic parent hypocrisies: The vindictive, jealous, judgmental "pick me" parent

 Hello my friends. Today on the path to childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring the hypocrisies of the backstabbing, competitive, jealous, judgmental "pick me" parent. Both my parents and their second partners were narcissists. Mom is malignant, grandiose turning vulnerable as she ages. Dad and stepdad are grandiose with malignant narcissistic rage. Stepmom was covert, passive-aggressive vulnerable narcissist. Today we'll look at the jealous, vindictive "pick me" aspect of the narcissistic mother. Then I'll connect how she uses religious gaslighting, "Virtue signaling", triangulation, enmeshment and weaponized Christianity to maintain her perceived moral high ground while acting very immoral. 

Why all the descriptors for narcissistic abuse?

So that was a lot of jargon, because the narcissistic parent does so many audaciously nasty, underhanded things. She's a mess of contradictions, sneaky tactics, dirty tricks, control freak power plays and flip-flopping double standards. She has a complicated arsenal of weapons that she strategically employs like a general with a complex battle plan. A narcissistic parent doesn't parent. She doesn't nurture. She doesn't do any of the things that healthy parents do. She does the opposite. 

A malignant narcissistic parent ambushes, deceives, gaslights, parentifies, bullies, harasses, terrorizes, invalidates, dehumanizes, manipulates, exploits, neglects, abandons, harms and endangers her child all as part of her grand scheme to employ and then destroy the child. 

Everything is reversed and weaponized

Upon hearing the insane chaos and abuse I lived with, people ask "how could a mother and father do this?" Listeners struggle to believe my stories because they don't fit anything like normal,  healthy parent-child relationships. That's because they didn't parent and had no intention of  parenting me. To them, I was a utile possession, not a child. Everything was backwards for me. I was parentified AND infantilized (a common double whammy kids of narcissists experience). There were two sets of rules. Wrong was right for them to do, and right was wrong for me. I had to do a four-way cognitive split to accommodate not only two narcissistic parents but their bullying narcissistic new spouses. The cognitive dissonance this caused me was unbearable and later led dissociative splits and dissociation. 

The jealous, competitive, enmeshed narcissistic parent

I was trying to remember good times with my parents that didn't come back to bite me and I couldn't. I recall a few isolated happy times, always surrounded by so much chaos and hurt that it made those few times worse. Because life with a narcissist, especially a dark tetrad malignant narcissistic parent is like living in Mordor. Nothing is as it seems or should be. Each day is fraught with gratuitous peril, just because they are so bent on destruction. They lie, compete with and extort from their child. They are jealous instead of proud of her. They one-up, fault-find and undermine her.  Her goodness is something to attack and dismantle. They get off on seeing the child humiliated and set up smear campaigns to make that happen. They create an atmosphere of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) then DARVO and make the child feel responsible and at fault for their sick, perverted actions. 

Why? 

That's a good question. And the answer differs depending on the type and at that period of time, the gender of the narcissistic parent. Women were assigned rigid roles of motherhood that my mother didn't want to follow. Fair enough. But she wanted her cake and to eat it too. She wanted the perks of motherhood without the work. She was needy-wanty, attention-seeking and self-pitying. It was always the Nancy Show. Current terminology (thank you Reddit) would call her a "not like other girls" "pick me" with "main character syndrome." She was also loose, easy and immoral and got around (those are the old terms for it). BUT she was also self-righteous and religious. My dad had a lot of these traits too. They made everything all about them and indoctrinated me in their narcissistic fantasy cult to do likewise. And I did. 

Why did I let them hurt me? 

Gaslighting is real, especially parental gaslighting. Enmeshed narcissists start as they mean to continue when a  child comes along, grooming her to serve them. This abnormal-normal was all I knew. It was too dangerous not to give them what they wanted. My very life depended on keeping them full up on narcissistic supply which meant taking on myself the consequences of their abusive actions and being their fall girl. You might well ask, wasn't this worse for you than just rebelling? My own history of depression, self-harm, anxiety, hypervigilance, dangerous people pleasing and fawning trauma responses, and self-abandonment would prove that true. But I didn't understand till I was nearly 60 because trauma bonded induced betrayal blindness is also real and very potent. I thought this was my lot in life, that I deserved. 

Fake "Christian" persona effs things up further

I used to say both my parents "fancied themselves" good Christians and even preachers and missionaries. Now I say they wanted us to fancy them as Christians. It was entirely performative virtue signaling. They got their story in first about what good Christians they were and how they were doing God's work when they were just pursuing selfish ends. By telling their version preemptively, anyone else, like me, who might tell the true version would be more likely disbelieved. The onus of proof would be on me. 

Because people have a bad habit of believing what they're told  over the evidence of their own eyes. 

More on virtue signaling and how it confuses people

Virtue signaling is the public expression of opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s own good character, moral correctness, or alignment with a particular social or political cause. Said simply, it is faking and portraying yourself as something you're not. 

The term is often used critically to describe actions or statements that are perceived as being done more to gain social approval or "moral status" than to create genuine change.

Key Characteristics:

• Performative Nature: The focus is on the act of being seen to care, rather than the impact of the action itself.

• Social Currency: It is often used to signal belonging to a specific "in-group." By publicly stating a position, an individual reinforces their status within a community that holds those same values.

• Low Personal Cost: Critics of virtue signaling often point out that it frequently involves actions with very little personal risk, effort, or sacrifice—such as changing a profile picture, sharing a hashtag, or making a quick statement—rather than engaging in deep, sustained, or private work for a cause.

Why it is controversial:

• The Accusation of Insincerity: The primary criticism is that the person doing the "signaling" may not actually be committed to the values they are projecting. It suggests that they are using a serious issue as a prop to make themselves look like a "good person."

• The "Holier-Than-Thou" Effect: Because it is often used to separate the "virtuous" from those who disagree, it can be viewed as judgmental, dismissive, or designed to shut down debate by moralizing an issue.

The real version of the Christian narcissist's behavior

Both my "Christian" parents, and later their spouses routinely violated commandments and rules that they preached against. I'm talking big ticket items, not just little venial sins. They told me their adultery, scamming, stealing, lying, cheating, pedophilia, co-habiting, divorce, child abuse was wrong for everyone but them. Both of them illegally ran foster care homes under the Christian guise which they left me at 11 to manage. Both were shut down for numerous violations. My "pro-life" mother took a girl to have an abortion with me in the car. My 36 year old dad dated a 17 year old. My mother's boyfriend's wife beat her up in front of me. They were both considered immoral, lascivious, debauched, homewreckers by family. But yet he preached and read his Bible and she played the organ in church. Blatantly and openly living in sin and still preaching morality. And no one ever addressed any of this with  me. I coped by acting fine while being in extreme dissociative fugue. And my "normalcy" fooled a lot of people. 

What now? 

Another good question. My advice to myself is to keep seeing and hearing what was wrong with all of it. Name it and claim it. My advice to you who may be younger and still living in it, is the same plus these tips I wish I'd known then.

• Use social media, like Reddit. Especially #raisedbynarcissists and #AITA. Listen closely to the  stories being shared and look for similarities to your own. That's what woke me up, reading how kids today are experiencing abuse patterns like mine. My response was to reach out and help them but I remembered that ya gotta put your own oxygen mask on first. 
• Read up on narcissism. Listen to podcasts on Youtube. My favorites are

• Dr. Ramani

• Jerry Wise

• Patrick Teahan

• Danish Bashir

• Dr. Les Carter (Surviving Narcissism)

• Darren Magee

• The Crappy Childhood Fairy

Enmeshed parents aren't just needy and pathetic, they're malignant

 

Hello my friends. On my path to childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring parent enmeshment. I'm going to explain, from personal experience, what it is and what it isn't. I'm going to show how enmeshed parents aren't just needy and pathetic, they're much worse. Enmeshed narcissistic parents are malicious, malignant, cunning, arrogant, entitled and devious AF. They use all kinds of dirty tricks to literally (and I don't use that word lightly) dehumanize, hijack the child's self and enslave her to their Machiavellian purposes. They are worse than any tyrannical despot. I know: I lived under the chaotic, shifting regimes of four narcissistic parents. 

What an enmeshed parent isn't

People often get enmeshment wrong and others' leverage it for their own agenda. My dear friend's nasty narcissistic ex-husband called her family enmeshed which is ironic for so many reasons. What she is, is a loving mother who is involved in her children's lives. There is reciprocity and inter-reliance. But no wonder he misunderstood genuine care for "enmeshment." Dude was so self-absorbed and up his own posterior that he looked out his own mouth. His unbridled "arrogant-ignorance" meant he eschewed psychology and therapy, so wouldn't understand a psychological term if it bit him in the ass. Yet he felt free to wrongly bandy this about as an accusation. It's that typical? What he was, was jealous of their healthy family dynamic and the fact that she had other people in her life besides his whiny, petulant baby man self. And because he had so signally screwed up his own kids. 

"Enmeshed narcissistic parents are malicious, malignant, cunning, arrogant, entitled and devious AF. They use all kinds of dirty tricks to literally dehumanize, hijack the child's self and enslave her to their Machiavellian purposes."

The enmeshment euphemism

So parental enmeshment isn't loving interactive families. But it's also not the poor, pitiful parent who IS just a little clingy. This is a devious parent who refuses to accept that she ends and the child begins. She forces that child to believe that he is her possession, an extension of herself, like an arm but with less autonomy. AND with no reciprocity. The child is an appendage that the parent doesn't care for. He only cares about what the appendage can do for him. It's the dad who gaslights the child that he has proprietary rights to the child to use and abuse as he sees fit. He coercively controls her into servitude to him and yet neglects his basic parent duties to her. 

The gaslighting of pity

All too often, people I'll call blind guides say they "feel sorry for" the enmeshed parent. Well, don't worry, she does too. She's the consummate self-pity party hostess. And ironically, these same people who feel sorry for her, also do not have to live with her. They aren't she ones she demands from and depends on. So it's easy for them to pontificate from their safe distance. Or their own healthy, balanced relationships with their parents. They often parenthetically insert a generous dose of "shoulding" to guilt the already overburdened kid. "You should feel sorry for her. You're lucky to have a loving mom.  Be grateful, she won't always be with you! You shouldn't be so judgmental and critical of her." And the pity-partier, with her narcissistic smirk, sanctimoniously and self-righteously laps it up while managing to appear more vulnerable.  She weaponizes others' pity to be even more demanding. 

The hypocrisy of pity

I've watched my mother arrange her features to appear as pitiful as possible. She wears nightgowns in public to seem pathetic and to prove how her mean old family doesn't provide for her. She believes that she should just lie there and be waited on. That she has no responsibility to care for herself, let alone anyone else. She actually tells people that she "doesn't get enough to eat." As though she's not a grown woman able to feed herself and it's someone else's job to. My extended family, despite knowing how neglectful she was to me as a child, called me to verify, like I had some duty to see to it she ate. Funny how all the times we were struggling because of my parents sponging and stealing from me, no one was there. It kind of made me sick but also, made me laugh how gullible they were. Did they really believe this obviously well-upholstered woman was starving? For God sakes, they knew her histrionic main character energy and that it was historic. One distant cousin told me she knew my mom at 18 and she was high maintenance, center of attention even then. But flying monkeys are free with their unsolicited advice and stingy with actual compassion.  They never call her because she drives them nuts too. And no one volunteers to care for her, I noticed. They just judgmentally tell me I should. So excuse my honesty, but pity is a luxury the child can't afford. 

Conveniently "weak and frail" 

The images above perfectly reflect my mother's convenient frailty and "pick me" vibe.  At her brother's funeral, she loudly shouted and laughed how she was the fun, crazy "not like other girls" aunt while everyone was gathered TO PRAY. She who's God's little soldier, loudly preaching how other people don't respect God, was upstaging both God and the deceased at his own funeral! Then she had to be assisted upstairs where during the service she yelled HALLELUJAH" during the service. Then at the graveside she went frail again, feigning inability to walk. Doddering along, she positively simpered when her BILs rushed up to help her. She leaned heavily on everyone (even me who had just had shoulder surgery). Then dropped the frail act when no audience was watching and literally ran up to the buffet like a sprinter! 

Enmeshed parent entitlement knows no bounds

This arrogant mother is not needy. She is wanty, manipulative, demanding, spoiled and petulant. She shames and humiliates with "FOG" (fear, obligation and guilt). She's crashes boundaries, violates privacy, steals and usurps. She arrogantly believes she has buy-in on anything involving her child, despite having failed to give him essentials. This "rules for me and thee" hypocrite holds his child to endless expectations and duties "to him" yet arrogantly holds himself to no accountability to the child. He plays DARVO like a pro. My enmeshed dad disappeared for two years of my life then waltzed in demanding full "fathers' rights" to order me around, bully me and pressgang me into service to his new side piece. 

Infantilized AND parentified

She plays the concerned parent card. She "just wants what's best for her son" (operative words "HER son." She cares, worries, loses sleep over him, yada yada. After all she "gave birth to him." (Loving mothers never remind their child of this.) But make no mistake. This woman cares for herself first and foremost. She demands what's best for her. And that includes both patronizing, humiliating and infantilizing her son AND parentifying him. 

She enfeebles him to make herself feel relevant. 

Enmeshed parents play role reversal then switchback and reverse again as it suits them. My father used me a  servant, scapegoat, surrogate parent and spouse all the while belittling me and issuing orders and ultimatums he had no authority over. 

According to him I was too stupid to tie my own shoes yet mature enough to play alone at the docks of a strange city at five. And to raise his children. 

Everything is about the parent

Mother makes herself out as a patient martyr, suffering to provide. But she never stops to mention or even consider how much the child has done for her. Stop me if you've heard this one, but nothing is ever good enough. Gifts meet with an aggrieved sniff of disapproval. Every little or non-existent slight is blown up into a major failure. (What it is, is usually a narcissistic injury rather than a real insult). She tries to outshine the bride at the wedding and the deceased at his own funeral and God in his own church (story above). When "her baby" gets married, she cries ugly, resentful, awkward tears all the damn day long (another true story). Your special day is always about mommy or daddy dearest rather than you. Holidays are ruined by these showboaters. You dad loses his shite and starts screaming at you in front of the whole family and no one has any idea why. And because he's so hateful, no one challenges him. When you start crying, he tells you to quit sniveling and showing off. It's mental. 

Weaponized, purpose-built chaos

All of this is strategic bespoke gaslighting invalidation is designed to wear down the child's resistance. These egomaniacs pirate the child's identity and sense of self. They dehumanize her with terror, lies, coercion, shaming, backstabbing, smear campaigns and script flipping. They pervert the child's natural bonding into trauma bonding which causes betrayal blindness and blind loyalty and faith these faithless people. 

Why do they do it? 

Everything is flip-flopped to them. They are resentful and jealous of their children but also exploitative of them. They use their children to get what they feel they deserve and have been deprived of. Right is wrong for them and wrong is right. And vice-versa with the child. Her self-care, sensitivity and having needs is all twisted by the selfish, oversensitive, bossy crybullies into self-centeredness. Crying is pouting, say the whiny parents. Speaking up for herself against bullies is just "making excuses. They make self-defense out to be disobedient and disrespectful and that oh-so-beloved word of theirs "disloyal."  The child never learns to question why she's having to defend herself against people who are supposed to defend her.  She never asks why they are so disrespectful and disloyal to her. Why they obey no one but their own arrogant, self-serving selves. 

Enmeshed parents are human rights violators and child traffickers 

They things they steal would boggle a normal parent. My parents heedlessly subjected me consistently to blatantly illegal situations. They routinely endangered me by doing things no loving parent. hell, no stranger, would do. It was egregious and gratuitous--unnecessarily cruel and hurtful. They moved randomly on a whim. They uprooted me, shuffled me back and forth for fun. They put me in service to their new partners and demanded I cater to all four of them, collectively and separately. The core cognitive dissonance this caused was catastrophic. 

Where to go from here

"The time for diplomacy has passed. Been there done too much good-finding. Now it's time for fact-finding, reality acknowledging and truth-telling. The FOG is lifting. And I see that the only way out is out."

I've said before that I don't know where this leaves me now, but I do. I just didn't like to say because I'm diplomatic and try to find the best in people. If it seems I can only find negative things to say about my parents, it's because that's all I got. For too long, I let their bread crumbing keep me deluded that they really loved me. But I'm not satisfied with crumbs anymore. I'm wise enough to see past lies, distortions and gaslighting. The FOG is lifting. And I see that the only way out is out. I've gone no contact and I'm maintaining my boundaries. I'm being selfish and investing in relationships with reciprocity and real love. 

Helping children deal with narcissistic parent abuse: things I wish someone had said to me

Hello my friends. Today in my journey to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm sharing ways to help children cope. I wish someone had done and said these things to me. And I am practicing doing and saying these things with children experiencing dysfunctional family systems now. 

These are my own thoughts based on my experiences. And while they may not be a substitute for professional counseling, they do have merit coming from a fellow victim-survivor.

To call or not to call

Regarding the CPS (child protective services) debate, to call or not to call. Child abuse is a highly fraught and challenging issue. There are different parenting styles, some of which while being possibly repellant and very triggering to me as a childhood trauma survivor, are nonetheless not illegal. And arguably, not my business. Examples include parents yelling at, spanking or having overly Draconian rules. You may consider, if neighbors are screaming loudly at kids in the yard, calling the police on a noise complaint. This puts the parent on notice and on their police radar, while also making your life less miserable. 

It's not just punitive that counts as abuse

On the other side of the coin, are too permissive or neglectful parents. I have acquaintances who pride themselves on their "hands-off" parenting of their eight children. Hands off meant they were neglectful, lazy and didn't feed or care for the children properly. They infantilized the eldest special needs child. But also parentified him, by leaving him in charge of 6 siblings while the parents took a holiday. The youngest was severely burned on a grill they left on. Mom was "too traumatized" to visit the child in the burn unit. They then had two more babies in quick succession. CPS was called in because the child was so badly injured. Should we who knew them, have called in and maybe avoided this tragedy? I don't know. 

CPS calls can further endanger kids

It's all too easy for outsiders to pontificate on "right and wrong" while knowing nothing of the family or what they may be dealing with. It is important to remember that there is no "one size fits all" parenting style. And very often it does more harm than good calling in authorities. If the parent is narcissistic, volatile and reactionary, calling CPS will likely only dysregulate him further. And this will make the child's life even more difficult. I'm not saying not to call. I'm saying that it's important to examine my own motives for doing so and to weigh the consequences to the children and myself. 

Judgmental vs adjudicating

I may think the child is being neglected. Or has too many responsibilities. But as long as they seem fairly distributed, and one child is not the scapegoat or being made to do overly strenuous jobs too young, then it might be best to just let it go. In my situation, I and only I, was scapegoated and parentified to do tasks that were clearly the adult responsibility. I was made to literally wait on my parents new highly explosive, malignant narcissist partners as well as my own narcissistic parents. I was left alone in very dangerous, frightening situations, around age 3 o 4. Someone should have seen that but didn't. 

Markers for child abuse

I was routinely abandoned, endangered, neglected and abused. At 4, I was sent to play at a park alone, three blocks away.  I was left to play alone at 5, on the docks of a strange city. I was dumped at a strange camp with no care provided at 6. I was deprived of essential things the rest of the family received. I was made confidant to inappropriate parent sexual confidences (which constitutes sexual harassment, btw). My father often trauma dumped on me about how he was planning to unalive himself. I use that politically correct term now because "suicide" is verboten. But I as a 5 y/o was not spared that. My father also enslaved me to his new family where I did all the housework and childcare. I was gaslighted that I was responsible for them but they were not responsible to me. 

Signs of emotional abuse

I looked and acted very "autistic" as a child. I banged my head and bit myself.  I wasn't so much neurodivergent as shell shocked by mistreatment. I went into dissociative and fugue states and had episodes of cognitive split and emotional fracturing that were quite obvious just in family photos. I've grown up with extreme childhood trauma responses of fawning, people pleasing, zero self-care skills, self-harm, toxic shame, self-gaslighting, self-loathing, chronic low self-esteem and imposter syndrome.

Signs of physical abuse in childhood extend to adulthood

I have chronic, extensive back and hip damage from untended congenital hip dysplasia, scoliosis, spina bifida and other structural issues. I had shoulder surgery for damage that began in childhood from being coerced into harsh physical labor. My parents did not care for or about problems they knew I had. They made me mop floors on hands and knees, use an insanely heavy vacuum daily, do ironing and other heavy housework, regularly sleep in unheated rooms on an army cot or fold out bed and get up at night with the baby. All while being well aware of my health problems and being warned by doctors that I needed extra help for daily functions. I was malnourished while they had plenty.

Illegal child labor issues 

I was made to work, unpaid in their foster care homes, starting at age 11. I cared for four special needs children overnight in my mom's I slept two floors up with all the kids. I babysat them for a week with only her abusive boyfriend, who wasn't even supposed to be there, sleeping on the couch. I cooked for and cleaned up after multiple special needs adults, including several child molesters who slept next door to me. 

Parentification and role reversal

I was made to sleep with the children in foster care and their biological kids. I was locked in with the baby at one point. There was plenty of room for me to  have a bedroom of my own. They made themselves intentionally unavailable because they "needed their sleep." I was crammed in a tiny room with an unsuitable bed. No one ever considered that I needed mine too. Now as an adult I have constant trauma nightmares about that oppressive amount of responsibility. I'm hypervigilant, especially around children. 

Intentional parent neglect

All of the abuse I lived with was gratuitous. I was shuttled between them and lived in 40 different places, six different schools before age 21. These were not work related moves. Several were prompted by child abuse and CPS investigations. They both knew, when they opened their foster care homes, that I was not to be used as a paid, let alone unpaid worker. My dad and mom didn't care if it was legal. My dad left for two years, ignoring the fact that this constituted abandonment. Then came back and expected me to move in and be he and his wife's servant. But they did know it was wrong. I asked my mom about some things she did and she denied it saying, she'd be prosecuted.  When confronted my dad lied, gaslit me that it never happened, I was too sensitive, couldn't take criticism, yada yada. 

My abnormal normal

But I never understood that any of this was wrong. I didn't know that it was illegal for me to work in the family foster care home, and that if I did, I at least was owed payment for every hour worked. That would have helped when I moved out and had to pay for my college. But a larger problem was that no one is my extended family saw fit to identify to me how this was wrong. So I lived in a FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) of gaslighting. 

And that's why I'm writing this now, to help adults dealing with childhood trauma and to help children living with it, in situ. Here are things my extended family should have done and said, to help me then. 

Important Note:

You will not find any of those gaslighting "blind guide" platitudes in this list. Examples include: "be the bigger person," "rise above," or "your parents mean well." Do not ever say these to any child. They are harmful and can be incredibly damaging for those in abusive situations.

I see and hear you. 

I see the injustices you experience. I want to help in ways that help you. I wish I could fix it for you. I care about you. 

I am here for you, anytime. 

This is a big commitment so I only offer this to people I feel responsible for in my now family. I give out my phone number and answer calls from them. I cannot extend myself to everyone. But I can write these articles to hopefully help you. 

You are not crazy or lazy. 

What you feel is real. You are not imagining it. You are not too sensitive. I'm sorry it's like this for you. 

It is not your fault.

It never was. It is their problem that you have the misfortune to have to deal with because you live with them. No matter how they may say it is, know that I'm older and I know it's not. You are not the family problem. Parents are always parents and kids are always kids. 

It is NOT your responsibility. 

To parent them, to parent their children, to wait on them, to fix them. They are responsible to you.  

You deserve better. 

But life also is what it is. Sometimes you have to coexist in a difficult situation and work toward a better one. 

Speak your truth. 

Don't stop saying what you need. Try to say it as respectfully as possible but say it, nevertheless. (I wish I'd done that more.)

Say no. 

If you feel safe, calmly refuse to do what is too much. Don't throw a temper tantrum. Examine your motives. Are you making someone else carry what is yours? I wish I'd refused to mop their floors on hands and knees. I wish I'd said I can't. I wish I'd put the onus on them to figure out how to get it done. Ironically, the mopping was only done on hands and knees because it was me doing it. If I'd said no, they'd have gotten a damn mop or done it themselves. 

Ask for help. 

Find trusted people to share with and ask to help you. But having said that, I know that sometimes, it can just make the abuse worse. So make sure whomever you ask doesn't violate your trust. 

I believe you and I believe in you. 

What do you need from me? I will sit with you and hold space for you. I trust you. I love you. I know you have the capability to do what you need to do to take care of yourself. I will help however I can. 

Do your best. 

Try to live at peace. Try to be as agreeable as possible. But don't beat yourself up for reaching your tether because selfish narcissists will push every button you have. 

It is okay to "fail." 

I put that in quotes because we childhood trauma, were told by selfish, entitled, arrogant, cruel dark tetrad parents that WE were always the problem. It was always our fault. We caused the issues. We didn't. They just needed a fall guy. And so you will make mistakes. It's okay. That's how you learn. And sometimes you do the wrong thing for the right reason. Or you have no other alternatives because boundary-crashing enmeshed parents stripped you of your power.  So you did the best you could. 

Float above. 

I did not say rise above. That is just more toxic shaming dressed as helpful advice. What I do is to imagine I'm floating on a cloud looking down on chaos but not a part of it. Said differently, "observe, don't absorb." A raging parent is usually feeling more ashamed of himself than angry with you. No matter what he says, don't personalize that you are a terrible person. 

Own what's yours. 

No matter how aggressive a parent may be, remember that it's not easy parenting kids or just scraping by in this life. Bills, work, demands can be overwhelming. So if your parent is angry because you really did do something wrong, then own it. Say you left the water running and flooded the house, because you were preoccupied with your phone, then you do have some responsibility. Don't whine, lie or lash out. Apologize and find a way to fix what you broke. Start mopping. Offer to pay for wasted water. 

I love you. 

I think that's a good note to end on. 

Childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse causes cognitive dissonance, dissociation and emotional fracturing

Hello my dear friends. Today in my quest to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring how we who were harmed by abusive parents used cognitive split and dissociation to juggle the very disturbing, terrifying and dangerous reality we were daily subjected to. My reality was a relentless cycle of abuse: emotional, physical, financial, and sexual. I endured medical neglect, deprivation of basic needs, and routine endangerment. I was forced into roles of parentification and enmeshment, while being subjected to extreme scapegoating, dehumanization, and gaslighting by those who were supposed to be my protectors.

Abnormal-normal and normal-normal in various forms

This happened at the hands for four people who called themselves my parents. Both of my parents and their new partners were irresponsible, demanding narcissists.  I got shoved back and forth between them and moved randomly. I lived in 40 different places before age 21. My life was endless upheaval, chaos, stress and conflicting demands. Each environment demanded a different version of me, forcing me to treat these wildly unstable, abusive settings as 'normal' just to survive. It took me till I was in my late fifties to get any of this. When I did, it explained a great deal about my dysfunctional trauma responses, especially fawning, placating parents, not holding them accountable, tolerating abuse and taking on myself the consequences of their awful behavior. 

Multiple fractured realities

I had to juxtapose five sets of "normal": each parent's abnormal normal expectations place on me, plus the real world where this was not normal. To juggle the chaos, I had to do what I have since learned is dissociation. I had to fragment myself to appease their hypocritical, unsafe commands plus exist in the everyday world. Even with other family, I had to morph, to hid the bizarre "normal" that was my daily family life. I had to somehow navigate that very different outside reality that was so contradictory to the hidden "cult" reality of my narcissistic parents. And this narcissistic cult itself was multiplied four times by my four narcissistic parents. 

Manifestations of cognitive split in childhood 

Here are a signs to look for in a traumatized and abused child. 

• Neurodiverse "autistic" behaviors: As a child, I banged my head in order to be able to sleep. I understand now that I was trying to "reorient" my chaotic, disparate reality in the only way I  knew how. By trying to fit me to it, because I couldn't juxtapose it with normal. 
• Complex fantasy world: this is not to be confused with my parents' narcissistic fantasy of god-like power, control and entitlement. This was my land of  imagination where life was safer, straightforward and cohesive, not fractured and dangerous. 
• The "distant stare" or "side eye nervous tic": Traumatized kids literally hear voices and see ghosts, of haranguing, threatening, abusive parents. We're trying to cope and focus on our immediate reality while hearing their shaming, mocking scolding voices. 
• The "trauma grimace': We clamp our jaws shut to lock in secrets they made us keep. And to prevent ourselves from screaming with the agony of what we're enduring. 
• Fawning: Beware of the child who is too eager to obey. We are people pleasers who are terrified of failing and getting punished randomly. 
• Being too much because we're told we're not enough. 

Manifestations of cognitive split in adulthood

Here's a breakdown of the cognitive split of childhood trauma in adulthood. 

• The Apparently Normal Part (ANP): This is the side of the self that manages daily life, tries to fit into the family system, goes to school or work, and handles standard responsibilities. It actively suppresses the trauma memories to keep functioning.

• The Emotional Part (EP): This is the part of the personality that holds the raw trauma, the intense fear, the pain, and the defense mechanisms, like fawning, people pleasing, freezing, flight, or hypervigilance). It remains "stuck" in the traumatic experience.

Other Related Psychological Terms

Here are some ways we juggle all this cognitive dissonance. 

• Compartmentalization: The psychological defense mechanism where the brain forces conflicting ideas, values, or traumatic experiences into separate mental "drawers" so they don't clash or overwhelm the conscious mind. It's how a child can know a parent is cruel, yet still feel and express intense, unconditional love for them in the next moment. It's how we manage to cope with the outside world while struggling with the threatening interior monologue of their voices. 

• Cognitive Dissonance: The intense psychological distress that happens when you hold two fundamentally contradictory beliefs at the same time (e.g., "This person is my protector" vs. "This person is hurting me"). To resolve the agony of this dissonance, an abused child's brain will often default to dissociation or denial because they are physically dependent on the abuser to survive. it took me till I was almost 60 to start processing any of this. 

• Psychic Splitting: A psychoanalytic term for the inability to bring together both positive and negative qualities of oneself or others into a cohesive whole. It results in seeing things in extremes (e.g., "all good" or "all bad"), a defense mechanism often forced upon children who have to cope with highly erratic, unpredictable parents. We go outside ourselves to escape our horrible inner reality. 

Healing by bringing dissonance into music