Hey my friends. Before I get started today, let me just take a moment to say thank you. Deeply. For reading and hearing me. Working to recover (or just be aware of) the CPTSD I suffer from as a result of chronic parental narcissistic abuse is THE hardest thing I've ever done. Burying two babies was the most painful. This is the most complicated.
I always have to start with a quick backstory in case this is the first post you're reading. In my growing years, I was shunted between four narcissistic adults (two bio and then their partners and spouses) after my parents split. In 1970 Michigan, this was very unusual. There was constant abuse of one form and another, neglect, endangerment, abandonment (like leaving me alone in strange cities), exploitation, parentification, invalidation, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all.
I only just began to really look at this about a year ago. I knew things were weird and bad but I always believed it was down to unfortunate situations or, more usually, my fault. I believed I brought abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, financial, religious) on myself. I believed because they told me, that I was the problem. But also, weirdly, I was expected to provide the solution. That's the parentification and scapegoating.
I'll try to explain. So, being very immature and self-centered, my bio parents expected me to take care of them. They did not take care of me. I was left to my own devices a lot. In strange places. Now juxtapose that with the care I was expected to provide them. As young as 4, or as far back as I can remember, I've taken the brunt of their issues. My father used to unload his crap, including suicidal feelings, onto me, at 5. My mom dumped all her sexual ick on me. She used to say we were more like sisters and once told my daughter that sometimes she needed me to be her mom.
If I failed to provide whatever they wanted, there was hell to pay. Then they divorced and brought other demanding, narcissistic people into my life who exploited, manipulated and scapegoated me some more. Then they had kids who I was expected to parent. There were ever-changing, yet constant demands that varied depending on which configuration I was living with at the time. This on-going expectation has never stopped even when I had a family of my own. The level of care demanded was boggling.
But, being black holes every one, they were never satisfied. In all the care, housework, childcare, giving, being stolen from, being taken advantage of (actually being scammed by them several times) being the token target and scapegoat, I never heard a word of thanks. In fact, what I heard was all the ways I'd let them down. They gaslit me into thinking I was such a burden to them that they'd have to kick me out of the house to protect their other children (whom I was sharing a room with and getting up at night with, since they were babies).
My dad, his wife and my mom's husband would blow normal teen stuff way out of proportion and rage at me. My mom would triangulate him against me then take his part. Mind you, my mom's husband never worked, slept all the time he wasn't smoking or yelling, and was too lazy even to cut wood for the woodstove. He'd put oil or tires on it. They were living on my dad's child support. My dad was even worse, if that were possible. He made me his new wife's servant, surrogate spouse, surrogate parent and scapegoat.
He once beat me, at 14, in front of everyone because I wasn't happy enough about being moved out of my room and into a tiny closet of a bedroom with the baby. So his wife could have a suite of a room to herself and not have to be bothered getting up with the baby. I was also expected to work in their adult foster care home like a hired hand. Except that I wasn't paid. My mom did the same thing...had a foster care home with four special needs kids I was expected to share a room with and care for while she and her boyfriend slept in their little "apartment" in the basement.
So a lot of inappropriate expectations put on me which was confusing enough. But then when I "failed" they came down on me with the wrath of God. The littlest thing or nothing at all, was magnified into a national crisis. It was so damn confusing. I felt responsible for them all, as if the entire fam damily would fall apart without me. As if there were no adults besides me who wasn't an adult.
And yet there was NO FAMILY for me. They had blown that apart by the divorce. They made it perfectly clear that I had no family. That I was lucky they let me be part of their new ones. It is such a bloody narcissistic fantasy. That you can break up a family, ignore, actually divorce the child in that family. And then start over as if nothing ever happened. There are no do-overs in families. Just a lot of broken pieces left behind which I am many.
And that contradiction caused some of the most baffling and sickening feelings associated with CPTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder). And that is anxiety, insecurity, constant second-guessing, from a constant state of chaos. I never trust a single thing I think, believe, feel, want or need. I think I was finally pleasing them only to find out, oh f*** no you effed up again, kid. When I did EXACTLY WHAT THEY EXPECTED. It was a lose-lose situation.
I cannot begin to express the depths of self-disgust I feel. I say that I know now that they were wrong. It wasn't me. Too much was expected of me and not enough good given to me. But that does not stop the internal gas lighting and self-doubt. It feels like a riptide or flood that I cannot swim out of. It is overwhelming and all encompassing. I feel sick to my stomach just writing about it.
So the only thing I can do is fake it till I make it. Pretend I believe that I'm not the cause of everyone's problems. I know it sounds so ludicrous even as I say it. No one could be the cause of everyone's problems. That's so ridiculously exaggerated. But that is narcissism. And that's what abuse, neglect, endangerment, scapegoating, abandonment, exploitation and invalidation do to your brain.
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