Emotional incest and covert child sexual abuse are the ickiest type of narcissistic parental abuse (warning, raw)

 Hello, dear and lovely people whom I hope I may call friends. I just want to take a sec to thank you for reading this blog. So as you know, it's morphed into a journey of exploration into CPTSD I developed from a life of narcissistic parental abuse. This takes the form of physical, emotional, mental, sexual, spiritual, medical and financial abuse. My four histrionic and narcissistic parents enmeshed with me and took turns endangering, abandoning, exploiting, scapegoating, parentifying, manipulating, triangulating, shaming, invalidating and gaslighting me. 

Today I'm looking at the ickiest, nastiest narcissistic abuse and that's covert sexual abuse and emotional incest. Yeah, I know, we do have to go there and I hate it as much as you do. It makes me physically ill and livid with rage. It's going to be a bitch to write about. 

So overt CSA (child sexual abuse) and incest are horrific. But there are two forms that are possibly even more dangerous emotionally. And they are creepy insidious. And those are emotional molesting and covert incest. One of the worst aspects of covert incest is that you don't even realize it's happening. Because it's "touchless" and undercover, you just accept it as normal if albeit yucky. You assume all kids go through this. Because you've been gaslit into thinking it's normal and grossest of all, that God expects you to provide this service for your parents. 

So what exactly is emotional incest? Well, actually all forms of narcissistic abuse are emotional incest in that the parent parasitically enmeshes with the child, feeds off from them and lives through them. The child lives only for the parent (or in my case, four parents). The parents behave like children and expect their kids to parent and also partner them. They confide in and expect the kid to fix their problems. Blech. 

Covert sexual abuse takes it to another level. The parent confides intimate and personal sexual details with the child. She exposes the child to predators, almost dare I say, like a pimp. It's contactless sexual assault. And it worms its way into your very soul. In my case, my parents had divorced and I was forced to listen to not only my mother's experiences with my father, but with her multiple other partners, beginning around six. 

She got away with this by gaslighting me into believing it was for my own good. That she was just doing her job as a mother to "protect me" from abuse. But it was abusive in itself. These were not just the "facts of life." These were her personal experiences. I did NOT want to hear it and would cover my ears and beg her to stop. But (this is so disgusting) she seemed to take lurid pleasure both in telling me and in my objection to it. 

Being very histrionic she was overtly sexual, seductive and flirty. She dressed like a "hooker" for her singles group Halloween party and had me help with the costume. I was probably the only 8-year-old who knew what a "hooker" was. She would make out with various boyfriends in our kitchen as I got ready for school. She had at least  one affair with a married man twice her age. And she loved to flaunt her body in front of me. I didn't know till I was an adult that very few kids had seen their parents naked on a regular basis. 

And it turned out not to even be protecting but actually weaponizing it against me. She traumatized me to the point of nightmares describing how different men had "molested" her. Yet when the neighbor kid sent me dirty letters telling me he'd like to molest me, she told me to laugh it off and then started dating his father. She left early from "A Clockwork Orange" because supposedly it was so dirty. But then came home and told 9-year-old me the plot in graphic detail.  

She did not defend me when her next boyfriend openly mocked 11-y/o me about the size of my breasts. She laughed along. When they had a foster home, she brought in a teenage boy with a history of predatory behavior who promptly assaulted me his first day there. When I finally got up the gumption to tell her, she was annoyed, not on my behalf but on his because now he'd have to go back to Child Haven. I have never really recovered from that experience. I still feel like a dirty you-know-what a lot of the time. I cry after having intercourse. 

And to extend the prostituting metaphor, she essentially turned our home into a brothel when I was 11. On top of having a foster care home, she moved her boyfriend in and made an "apartment" for them in the basement. I was moved out of my room so my uncle and his girlfriend could play house. One teen in her foster care was given the living room to sleep with her boyfriend. I was left to (illegally) share a room with four special needs kids under 5. I was responsible for all areas of their care, her being two floors down. 

Now,  juxtapose this with her very weirdly strict "Christian" preaching. Yes. She fancied herself a minister through all this. She took us all to church and played the organ. All while living in what her church flatly called bigamy, adultery, immorality and sin. What she herself deemed wickedness in others, was just daily life for me. And all of it interwoven with a steady diet of dangerous people and situations. 

And that's to say nothing of the chaos from my dad. At one point, he, 35 was dating a 17-year-old. I was nine. We'd go to her house and hang out in her bedroom. She had stuffed animals on her bed. Her parents doted on me like I was her sister. It was both heartbreaking and nauseating. And if you  think that wasn't weird in 1973...Let me just say, I didn't even know anyone with divorced parents, let alone a mother with a live-in boyfriend and a dad dating a high schooler. 

So consequently, I lived in constant cognitive dissonance. I have huge gaps in my memory, and especially in the ages of 8 to 12.  But these things I can't forget. I wish I could. I wish I were making these stories up. I wish now that I could have had loving parents. Or at least someone to tell this to. But no one knew. And at the time all I felt was incredible shame. And fear, because to protect these delusions required a lot of gaslighting and a ready scapegoat. And that gaslit scapegoat was me. 

Even now, I feel ashamed of myself as if I was the one behaving so badly.  I dream almost every night that I'm failing under a mountain of crazy expectations and everyone is mad at me. I feel guilty for telling what they did as if the fault lies in my saying it and not in them doing it. I spent one summer trying to talk myself down from suicide, at 11. I shudder when I think how close I came to becoming a statistic. I've kept a lot of people's secrets. 

Which is so ironic because my mother made no secret then of her, for the time, deviant and immoral behavior. I just found out that my mother had even dumped on my friend too, when we were 11.  She must have felt some  kind of judgement because, unprompted, she told my friend that she acted so promiscuous because her parents had been too strict. So basically blaming us all for her behavior. My father not only made no secret of his bizarre behavior, he flaunted it. And then blamed me for being too sensitive and too critical. 

It's taken me six decades just to start coming to terms with all this. It felt gross but I interpreted it that I was gross. I had a lot of nightmares about it (CPTSD), but I was used to ignoring and dismissing how I felt. I tripped over red flags. Yet it never occurred to me that any of this was even inappropriate, let alone disgustingly wrong. They don't call it "covert" incest for nothing. It hides in plain sight. And being perpetrated on gaslit, shamed, blamed child scapegoats, who are afraid of their own shadow, helps keep it hidden. 

Uncovering it has been helped a lot having a husband who is not afraid to call it what it is. Thank God for him. 

Odd parasitic ways narcissist parents enmesh with and pirate their kids' lives

 Hello my friends. Thanksgiving approaches and one thing I'm thankful for this year is that I finally see what happened to me for what it was: narcissistic parental abuse and neglect. I'm grateful to have words for what they did, to be able to put the pain, fear and shame into perspective. As unpleasant as it is, I'm glad I'm no longer ignoring the CPTSD effects of parental abuse (particularly sexual, religious, financial and medical) exploitation, abandonment, endangerment, parentification, scapegoating, invalidation, shaming and gaslighting. 

Probably the most disturbing weapon of narcissistic abuse is one I've not addressed much. However it is integral in bringing off this weird coup that narcissistic parents launch against their kids. And that's enmeshment, which is the destruction of a child's natural boundaries, a hostile takeover of their lives and an exploitation of  their selves for the parent's selfish ends. 

Enmeshed kids don't express wants, needs, feelings and thoughts of our own. Because we didn't know we had them. Because we were indoctrinated into the cult of mom and dad (and in my case their new spouses). We were nothing more than acolytes, temple slaves, vestal virgins, there to serve, to be neither seen nor heard. We don't know where parents stop and we begin. If all this sounds like scary psy-fi, just wait. There's more. And I wish to God it was fiction. Here are bizarre parasitic ways narcissist parents enmesh with their kids and pirate their lives. 

They have Medea syndrome. Narcissistic parents don't just live through us, they devour our selves whole. At birth. Because the narcissist only sees others as extensions of their larger than life selves. People aren't just servants. Servants have lives of their own, if stifled ones. We aren't just owned by them, we are them, just like their arms and legs. We don't exist outside of the narcissist. 

They force us into a parallel universe. We appear from the outside to be separate and extant selves. But the narcissists have killed off any independence in use. They've terrified us into submission. They've laid siege to our identity and personhood. They've shamed us off from any efforts at self-care. They've taken away all means of support. Yet society doesn't see this. They just see us as kinda weird kids but perfectly capable of all things expected of normal kids. People expect us to behave like fully functioning individuals. But we aren't normal kids. Narcissist pirates are at the helm, controlling us remotely with fear, shame and deprivation, even as we go about our days. We are robots programmed to live for narcissist parents. 

They turn us into freak show oddities. We're groomed to grovel and kowtow. They are our organ grinders, and we dance like performing circus monkeys. This makes us perfect targets for creeps.  Our narc parents mock us for behaving weird yet feed off the attention we attract.  See the funny monkey beg. Isn't she ridiculous? 

They cut us off from help and isolate us. We're dependent on them but they are not dependable. Yes, it's terrifying. No, it makes no sense to anyone who has never experienced this. And it doesn't get better. It gets worse as the narcissists get better at manipulation and gaslighting. Is there a way out? Yes. But we have to first recognize what we are, or  have become. 

Demonic and deceitful ways Christian narcissist parents destroy their kids

 Hi friends! I'm working to heal from CPTSD caused by abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, manipulation, exploitation, parentification, triangulation, enmeshment, invalidation, toxic shaming, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all by four narcissistic parents. Today I'm looking at demonic and deceitful ways Christian narcissist parents destroy their kids. 

First, why do I specify Christian narcissist parents? Because Christianity gives them an arsenal of weapons, tailor-made to gaslight kids. Now I understand that sounds very wrong. And it is but not it the way you may think. It's not Jesus, God, the Bible or faith in those things that are wrong.  It's the way Satan twists the narcissist's  understanding of God into what the narcissist already wants to believe, that they aren't subject to God's laws and that they are god-like themselves. Satan then teaches his disciples to weaponize this against their children. 

Did I just call narcissistic parents disciples of the devil? Yes, and very intentionally. And so does God. Because they've made themselves his disciples by putting themselves above God. This is exactly why Lucifer was evicted from heaven. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Including yourself. 

Further, in his word, Our Lord identifies Pharisees who bind others up to expectations they don't help carry as evil-DOERS and hypocrites. They love the sound of their own voices. They are white-washed sepulchers full of death and destruction. He says that not all who call him Lord are actually his followers. Because they say one thing and do another. And because they serve two masters. Sounds pretty much like devil worship to me. 

And the way narcissistic parents do this is super sneaky, just like their master, whom we know is the father of deceit. They use words to paint a false picture of themselves. They do things that APPEAR (operative word) to be following God (read the Bible, preach, go to church). But it's an act. They don't follow up on it. It's all show and no go. It's a lot of word salad designed to baffle, deceive, gaslight and confuse. 

You'll remind me now that no one is perfect and everyone fails occasionally and I will agree. This isn't accidental however. Nor is it occasional. Narcissist parents consistently and blatantly flout God's commands. My parent did the very things they preached against and which God's word says is sin. 

The very fact that my narcissistic parents were so obsessed with "preaching" God's word shows how bass-ackwards it was. They wanted to TELL others how to live their lives not show them. Scripture warns us to be very careful about calling ourselves preachers and teachers. Because, obviously, people are watching our actions and if they don't measure up, it would be better to just keep our mouths shut. 

And if you do it out of pride, because you consider yourself beyond God's reach, above it all, or to hear yourself preach, you're destined for a fall. If you lure, tempt and seduce others to sin, woe to you, God says. All of these things I was forced to watch happening. They weren't shy or embarrassed by their behavior. They never apologized and later lied about ever doing it. 

Narcissist parents are the very worst type of hypocrite. They don't love God or other people. They love themselves. They are arrogance on crack. They treat their children like extensions of themselves. I was servant, surrogate parent, surrogate spouse and scapegoat to my parents and their new spouses. I was not allowed to have thoughts and feelings. Needs and wants didn't get met. I was supposed meet their needs (which were mostly wants). Scripture didn't apply to them, only  me. They went out of their way to do the very things they preached against. They made me feel guilty and responsible. And they gaslit me into thinking this was all God's will. 

The reason Christian narcissist parents are so successful at deceiving their kids, the reason children swallow this bullshit hook, line and sinker, is the unique place parents hold in their lives. They are, in a sense, God to their children. They are the first image of Him that little ones see. That's why the Bible is so adamant about not leading a child astray. 

And if the first God voice we hear is lying, tricking, undermining, mocking, conniving, shaming we believe it the same as if it were loving, caring and nurturing. In fact, it goes even deeper than belief which is on some level choice. I have, as an adult, chosen to believe that God loves me. Even though as a child, I didn't feel loved and was not cared for at all. 

This thing that kids develop when raised by narcissists is a core autonomic response, an instinct or kneejerk reaction. It's fear, shame, misery, self-loathing, hurt plus other terrible things all rolled into one. It's a sick knowledge that God loves everyone but us. That we are so far gone he's given up. Even though I know with my frontal lobe it's not true, it's somehow ingrained in my deep root brain. I have to fight it constantly. I don't think there is actually a word for this devilish evil that narcissist parents embed in us. But they certainly do a great job training us up in it and departing from it next to impossible to do. 

The most controversial way I'm healing from CPTSD caused by narcissitic parental abuse

Hey my friends. Rereading yesterday's post about odd and surprising ways to heal from CPTSD caused from childhood trauma, I realized I missed the oddest, most controversial but surprisingly most healing, one of all. And this is going to cause some raised eyebrows and questioning. But it seems to fly in the face of scripture, God's will and Christian teaching. Seems being the operative word. 

And that way is by getting mad and staying mad at the perpetrators of narcissistic abuse and at the abuse itself. Now I know, if you're steeping in conventional wisdom about God's plan, you'll be waving your hands and saying "no, no, Mar! Anger is wrong!" And certain kinds are. So are certain behaviors we do when in anger. Such as the vicious, selfish, exploitative, abusive anger wreaked on me in various ways by four covert, grandiose and malignant narcissistic parents. That was wrong. This is different. 

And if you've never been abused by a self-centered parent, I'm glad for you. You have learned that God is love. You've felt loved, wanted and cared for. Maybe not always but for the most part. I didn't. Scripture was weaponized against me by my parents to dehumanize me and aggrandize themselves. But even those who see God as loving are misreading scripture. 

God doesn't say don't be angry. He himself was angry. He says don't SIN in your anger. And that's where the anger I was subjected to and the anger I must feel about that part company. My anger is righteous, theirs is self-righteous. I'm not sinning in my anger. It's helping me to stop sinning by quitting hating myself and beginning to love myself. To stop enabling this demonic abuse, neglect, abandonment, exploitation, endangerment, scapegoating and shaming of  me. This is me clearing the temple of money-changers who are desecrating my Heavenly Father's house. 

My self-absorbed parents were sinning, arrogantly, bombastically and blatantly. Yet they believed themselves fully qualified to preach to others how to live their lives. Which translated to a lot of shaming of their listeners. They bound others up to burdens they didn't carry. They were hypocrite pharisees. They loudly and proudly talk the Christian talk (in a weird,  wrong and twisted way) but don't walk it. 

My father used to routinely tell me that he would be committing suicide at some point. STARTING WHEN I WAS 5. This was while he was missioning to others about the "good news" of salvation. (?!?!)I would cry and beg him not to (jolt of narcissistic supply for him) He would coldly and cruelly keep twisting the knife till I stopped reacting and just went numb. Because that's what he seemed to want. And then he shamed me for being unfeeling toward him. 

And then when I was an adult, I, not surprisingly, struggled with similar demons. However I fought them instead of exploiting them as he did. I, stupidly I see now, reached out to him for help. I foolishly thought he'd feel sad that his little girl was hurting so. But when I told him how I was battling suicidal thoughts, he suggested that maybe I should just end it all. And I realized that it was never about me. It was always The Jack Show. And that he would see me dead and never bat an eyelash. 

My mother ran "good news" clubs for kids (which never happened) while cheating on my dad, leaving me alone to fend for myself and putting me in the path of dangerous people. She ran a foster care home which turned out to be more of a brothel. And left me to care for all of the kids alone. But still played the organ in church. In 1974, this was not only immoral and illegal, it was completely countercultural. No other kid I knew lived anything like this. If my extended family knew, they'd have been horrified. But no one bothered to find out and I never told them. 

These are just two of the countless freaky things they did to me. I lived in this disturbing parallel universe in one way or another, all my life with them. I was subjected to very weird things other kids couldn't even dream of. They were always scapegoating and gaslighting me about it. So I faked it was all good, buried the shame deep and just powered on. And was shoved further and further down the rabbit hole of misery. I can virtually guarantee that no other kid has a backstory as unusual as mine. 

Till I finally began to take my hands off my eyes and realize how bad it really was. And how messed up my mind was. And this brings us to the anger which I now must feel. I have to stop feeling anger and hatred  toward myself. It wasn't my fault. It was theirs. I didn't bring this on myself. They did. I had all the obligation to them and they believed they had none to me. 

Because my life was so flip-flopped from what was normal. my way out will look different too. Because no one took care of me, and I had to care for them, I have to reverse that  and start caring for me and stop enabling them. And that's where the anger comes in. I have to get angry for the little girl left behind in Alaska, made to wait on strangers my parents brought into the house, left out and  yet put in the middle of it all. I need to get furious that a little kid didn't even get enough to eat or a bed. 

And that's where my healing begins. It's only when I can see how wrong this is that I will be able to fumigate the gaslighting, or actually gassing of my brain. I need to stop  tolerating, excusing and taking the blame on myself. And it's God who has made me see all this. 

So if my way looks different or sounds "wrong" don't judge. You haven't walked in my shoes. If anyone's road to healing makes you uncomfortable, take a look in the mirror. Ask yourself why. Why would you find fault with and not encourage them to get better? Are you defending perpetrators and shaming the victim? If so, shoo, be off, flying monkey. 

Believe me, you could never gaslight or shame me any more than I've been gaslit and shamed already. You could never hurt me more than I've  hurt myself. It needs to end here or I'll drown in despair. And I am pretty sure God doesn't want that. I think that He is angry on my behalf. I don't think He likes how they treated me. 

So I need to get angry on my behalf and on behalf of the little girl whom every stood by as she was wounded. Will I sin in my anger? Possibly. I'm human, not perfect. But I'm less likely to sin as much as I was sinned against. Not like Lear, but like the lamb who knows what it feels like and could never be as viciously angry as those who were angry at her. And which caused me to have to step outside me comfort zone and be angry. At people who made me angry in the first place. Lead not your children to wrath, scripture says. 

Odd and surprising ways to counteract narcissistic parent abuse

 Hi guys. It' me with more on working to heal from narcissistic parental abuse. I was abused emotionally, physically, mentally, sexually, financially, medically and religiously. I was both neglected and exploited, manipulated and invalidated, abandoned and endangered, scapegoated and marginalized and gaslit about it all by four narcissistic parents. For nearly six decades I didn't even see let alone work to heal it. Now that I have seen, I'm relooking at everything that happened. Every time I do, I see that it was much worse than I thought. I'm beginning to understand how I was brainwashed and gaslit to think it fine, or my fault or that I was oversensitive. 

And since the childhood trauma was so exaggerated and the CPTSD has gotten so bad, I'm going to have to take extreme measures to heal it. Desperate times call for desperate measures. With that in mind, here are some odd, surprising ways to counteract and heal from narcissistic parental abuse. Some might even shock you because we've always been taught they were wrong or bad. 

Fight back! I'm not fighting the narcissists. Two are deceased and with the other two it wouldn't be worth the effort. They've had decades of practice in humiliation, invalidation, manipulation, triangulation, exploitation and gaslighting. Lying and hurting come naturally to them. What I'm battling are the demons they've implanted in my brain. And I'm going to need every tool of spiritual warfare for this epic battle (prayer, scripture guidance, and St. Michael's intercession, plus the armor of God). 

Shout at the devil. I will not listen to the voice of evil, prompting me to hate myself. In my parents' voices, he's told me to end it all. Not because I'd be better off dead. Because everyone else would be better off without wicked little me. That's not God, like they said it was. It's demonic. 

Listen to God. Obviously? you're thinking.  Well, for me it's not so obvious. Because all my life, I've listened to what I thought was God and was really Satan speaking through my four self-centered, manipulative parents. He was always goading, shaming, twisting and deceiving me. But I'm a big girl now and I can read scripture and talk to God Himself. Every time I do, I see more wrong things I was taught. 

Go no contact. I'm not going to subject myself to one more of their random act of violence toward me. No more ambushes or drive-bys. No more weird, gaslighty, bizarre interactions that leave me miserable. I'm declining invitations to the self-pity parties. The mind games and power plays stop here. 

Quit forgiving and start accepting. What is forgiveness anyway? Well, narcissist parents would say it's something I had to do for them. Even thought they weren't sorry and believed they'd done nothing wrong. So word salad-y. We can hurt you and not be sorry but you have to forgive it? Oh and you must also be perfect. God says. But forgiveness isn't their carte blanche to keep hurting. It's simply aceepting that the past is never going to be any different than it was. And that I can do. Which leads me to the next thing. 

Read my Bible. Uh, again, you're saying, duh? But it wasn't that easy for me. Scripture was weaponized against me till I grew to dread and hate the Bible. They twisted it so that everything they did was perfectly fine and everything I did was wrong. But every time I read scripture I see how messed up that was. So I'm starting to...

Call them out. Maybe not to them in person because they are dangerous narcissists. But in my  head and on this blog. They have always proclaimed to preach scripture. My mom just posted on Facebook how "hell is still hot" so everyone better get their acts together. While she has consistently lied about every single thing she has ever done and not just to me but throughout their lives. My parents and stepparents blatantly broke the commandments, ignored the words of Jesus, rejected what they didn't like, gave their pet sins protected status and flouted God's word. And I defended them, excused their behavior and absorbed, like the good little scapegoat I was, every bad thing they did. Pretty soon I believed that it wasn't them at fault but me. So I'm going to...

Stop taking their sins on me. They'll need to start looking to Jesus for that because it's not my job. I was blamed for their bad choices, hurtful behavior and willful disobedience. They said I was both too sensitive (to their hurtful behavior ) and too critical if I confronted or just seemed not on board with all the crazy they put me through. But that's not true. I wasn't the one committing adultery, stealing, lying, cheating, exploiting, and hurting children. If they don't stop preaching and start practicing, it will be too late. But that's still not my responsibility. They can come to Jesus or not. Because I...

Quit enabling. No more making excuses. She didn't mean to. He meant well. She's old and senile. She can't help it. I misunderstood them, bad me. That stops now. I can't stand idly by and let them get away with it. God is calling them to repentance and if I keep letting them scapegoat me, He can't get through. I can't stop it but I can stop me feeling guilt and shame over someone else's behavior. I'm going to...

Stay in my own lane. I'm going to do me and stop trying to be and do for them. They were never there for me as  a kid except to take advantage of me. I was always there parenting them, even as a tiny girl. So I need to be there for me. If I don't' I'll drown in the despair they inbred in me. So I will

Swim out of this shame riptide and toward the harbor of God's love. He's there. In fact, he's rescue swimming with me. Will they get there? I can't worry about that. I hope so. But there's nothing I'm going to do about it. Been there, couldn't fix that. I'm not body-blocking anymore. Even if they want to talk about it. I'm going to...

Stop giving so many chances to hurt. Their need to unburden their souls doesn't constitute any obligation on my part. Any talk we have ends up in pity parties, shame fests, scream-a-thons,  lying, gaslighting, "forgetting" what they did to me, exaggerations of their victimhood.  I end up playing toxic waste dump and more confused and hurt. So I'm going to...  

Do what's best for me. And that is NOT to have more contact.  Been there and have the scars to prove it. So maybe that won't happen. Maybe they really will be sorry. Maybe I'm disobeying God by withholding my help. I'll take that up with Him. Thus far, He's given every sign that working on my  healing is His plan for me. And since my parents were the ones causing me to need healing, staying away seems the best idea. 

Disturbing symptoms of childhood trauma from narcissistic parental abuse

 Hi friends. I'm working to sort out CPTSD from decades of parental abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, invalidation, manipulation, triangulation, exploitation, parentification, shaming, family scapegoating and gaslighting by four narcissistic parents. Today I'm sharing disturbing and frightening symptoms of childhood trauma that persist in adulthood. 

Twisted body and face: I stand crooked, smile crookedly and just look bent. This is from years of staying small and crouched from deflecting verbal and physical blows. It's from sleeping in cramped, cold conditions. It's from keeping a smile which has become a grimace, pasted on my face. It's from gritting my teeth to stop hunger, cold, fear and shame. It's from biting my tongue too much. From being on jump ready to comply to their every command. It's from the physical effort of keeping pain and suffering, humiliation and shame squashed inside. It's from clamping my jaws together so as not to say anything especially not something that might set them off. It's squinting from years of neglected eye care. It's from staying frozen. And from too much parent-inflicted hurt.  

Confusion, fugue, dissociation: Brain damage from years of needless stress and chaos released floods of cortisol and adrenaline which have corroded my brain. I'm always in a fog. My brain works in spurts and so my thoughts get easily jumbled. I mentally edit and re-edit everything I say just in case it offends someone. Because the slightest thing always did. I can't even write a full word without shaking and fritzing. 

Easily wearied: I carried the weight of four narcissistic parents, their five kids and assorted people in their foster care homes. I was servant, surrogate parent, surrogate spouse and scapegoat. So now, the simplest of tasks exhaust me. 

Constant pain: Bearing adults' burdens from childhood, performing tasks that were too heavy and demanding, being deprived of basic care requirements have left me with pain everywhere. Back, neck, jaw, hands, feet, hips, headaches, ulcer, even sinus. My skin is damaged from autoimmune problems brought on by a depleted immune system. 

Speech problems: I lisp, stutter and often can't put two words together, let alone form sentences. Having to be on guard not to upset my mother and her husband, my dad and his wife or any of their children, plus having to anticipate their every need,  has made me hypervigilant.  And paranoid. 

Over-taxed limbic system. I'm jumpy. I start at every noise because it might be and usually was, danger. I was terrified, still am, of balloons, thunder, drums, explosions, guns, fireworks and other loud noises. They paralyze me. This is CPTSD. 

Damaged reflexes. My drained nervous system has made me clumsy. My over-activated stress response from years of narcissistic parents' manufactured crises, have left me unable to respond promptly to real problems. 

Poor coordination: Years of hopping through ever-changing narcissistic parents' hoops, from falling under too big a load, have crippled me and made me clumsy. 

Nightmares: from decades of bad memories vying for attention I always denied them. I'm always expected to do many things at once by demanding, implacable people. I don't know what it is or how to do it. I have to cook, clean, care for kids, teach school, drive people places. It's so overwhelming. I have more dream memories that actual memories. 

Sleep problems: I fall asleep everywhere and then can't fall asleep when I should. You can see the heaviness in my eyes even as a kid. I can remember maybe five times in my life when I slept soundly through the night. I haven't awakened refreshed in decades. Even as young child, I had to drag myself out of bed. 

How I felt and still feel, growing up with four Christian narcissist parents

Hello friends. In my ongoing quest to heal from CPTSD, I'm having to face some hard truths about my life, family and parents. What I thought was loving and normal was abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exclusion, exploitation, scapegoating, Today I'm delving into how I felt growing up under the thumbs of four "Christian" narcissist parents, two biological and their second spouses who were also self-centered. First, why do I specifically say "christian" narcissists? Because they are a special breed who wreak an extra layer havoc in their children's lives. They break God for a kid and  remake Him in their image. They twist scripture and use it against their children. 

Afraid. But afraid of the wrong things.  Fear of letting my parents down. Fear or doing something to displease them, of saying something, anything, to set them off. Fear of displeasing God. Not, oddly enough, fear from the dangerous situations I was placed in and left to face on my own. Not scared, as I should have been, of the harm the scary people they shoved on me, did, only of displeasing them too. I just sucked all that up as how it was meant to be and that this is what  God expected of me. 

Ashamed. But again, of the wrong things. I was ashamed of my parents immoral, abusive and neglectful behavior as if I was the one who'd done it. Or caused it. Or brought it on myself. Or wasn't supportive enough of them. Or that I actually needed them to do things they weren't doing for me. When they both abandoned me and left me with strangers, when I was 6, I felt shame at being afraid and missing them. When they decided to divorce, I believed because I was led to believe, that it was my fault. 

Confused. When they hit me, yelled at me, shunned me, let others hurt me, I believed it was because I deserved it. But I couldn't recall exactly what I'd done to. I was told I was disobedient, showing off, lying, etc. They just got their version into my head first and I never questioned it. 

Anxious. From constant stress of their chaotic, bewildering behavior, the hurtful things they said and did to me. The dangerous situations they put me in. The lack of care and basic needs. The constant wariness of random expectations and fear of failing to meet them. 

Sad. But for the wrong reasons. I got used to being "Ferberized" (ignored and shamed for any self-care) and I stopped crying for myself at a very young age.  Instead I felt a way too mature compassion and empathy for my parents, their new spouses, new kids, etc. Compassion that was exploited in their lavish self-pity parties and weaponized against me (you're too sensitive).

Exhausted. Used up. Burned out. Weakened from all the constant zapping of resources. Brain damaged from the constant cortisol flow from their incessant and disturbing demands.  

Inept. Decades of being told I was wrong and screwing up has rendered me unable to make a decision without agonizing self-doubt. I feel guilty about everything. When I got rear-ended by a kid who was texting and driving, I felt guilty. It is always my fault. I can't get my brain to stop believing that. 

Lies narcissistic parents tell and ways they twist stories to their own ends

 Hi guys. Just finished writing one of the rawest  posts I've ever written. I'm working to expose narcissistic parent gaslighting for the lies they are. Now I'm calling out lies narcissistic parent tell and ways they twist the truth to their own ends, against the child, which is gaslighting. And they're very good at it. My narcissistic parents had me believing their horse crap all my life. It wasn't till I caught them at it, that I began to question other things they'd said. And you know how it is with discovering lies. Many more are hidden underneath.  It's like knitting. Unpick one stitch and others begin to unravel till the entire sweater reveals itself as one long string.  

I'm mostly doing this for myself, to stop the intense pain in my brain. To tell the truth, to myself, about what happened. If you find it resonating or helpful, join me if you wish but please beware. This is very triggering. I'm breaking a lifetime habit of mincing words, and it won't make for easy reading. Still with me? Here goes. 

1) Narcissistic parents spin doctor a version of events to paint themselves in a better light. My parents moved to Alaska when I was 6. They told me it was to be missionaries to the Indians. When we got there, they never worked and we were homeless. My dad would leave for long periods on what he called mission trips. Which I realized were just excuses to absent himself from us. Both of them left me alone a lot. My mom would say, to plan her Good News clubs. But those never happened. And she spent a lot of time with other men. But because I was told they were doing God's work, it was all okay.

 2) Narcissistic parents orchestrate senselessly disturbing experiences and drop you in the middle of them. They manufactures crises to elicit your pity. Then they scoff at you for feeling all the things they set you up to feel. In Alaska, my mom decided to divorce my dad. They had some random strangers dump me at 6, in some random summer camp for a week where I knew no one. They guilted me for being afraid saying that my parents couldn't work out their problems with me in the way. They got back and both went their separate ways again. Then she disappeared for a week leaving me alone and terrified and in another random place with more random strangers.  

3) Narcissistic parents tweak the truth to make it more palatable. There is an element of truth but it's usually nothing like what really happened. In Alaska, my mom moved us to a remote island, dropped the divorce bombshell and then left me there. She said she had to go to Seattle (3,000 miles away) for surgery on a bladder infection. She did leave. But not for the reasons she said, I'm pretty sure. It was easier for me and the people she dumped me on, to accept than whatever the real reason was. She was having a series of affairs and it could have been an abortion, given the year, 1970 and that Washington had just legalized it. 

4) Narcissistic parents lie to leverage and weaponize. My mother told her Seattle story in such a way that not only would we fall for it more readily, she could also maximize pity. Poor thing, she sick not pregnant! It's her bladder not an STD.  And bonus added, guilt me in the process. What kind of selfish daughter would cry when her ill mommy left to get medical care? 

4) Narcissist parent tell lies to cover other lies. And when the original lie no longer serves their purpose I only learned that she was lying about Alaska when I reminded her of it, at a recent doctor visit in which she had to list medical treatments. She said she never left or went to Seattle back then. And she annoyed and very quick to shut me up when I mentioned it.  

5) Narcissist parents use a lot of euphemisms to downplay their bad behavior. My mom called her boyfriends, friends. She wasn't committing adultery, she was "dating." They weren't making out in front of me, just visiting. It was an "affair" not cheating. My dad wasn't beating the tar out of me, it was "correcting bad behavior." He wasn't screaming abuse at me it was "constructive criticism" which I supposedly "couldn't handle" was "too sensitive." 

7) Narcissistic parents do crazy things, then craft a story to blame you. I had long beautiful hair that my grandparents loved. When I was 8, she had it all cut off in a pixie haircut which made me look ridiculous. The stylist warned against having it all cut off but she insisted. Then told everyone that I wanted it cut for swimming. I believed that all my life and it may have been true. Though I don't remember saying that or wanting it cut. I think now, maybe she had it cut because she was jealous of the attention I got. 

8) Narcissistic parents exaggerate the child's smallest transgression.  They twist normal kid behavior into horrific acts, then rain down their wrath. The slightest facial movement is outrageous defiance. Walking away is "stomping off" and punishable to the full extent. Closing the door is slamming it. Saying how you feel is disobedience. Coming home an hour late, at 16, warranted getting kicked out of the house on the end of my mother's vicious husband's boot. Having an opinion is conspiracy against them. There's never enough enough punishment to sate their savage anger. 

9)Narcissistic parents blame shift then get their version in first.  Because the person who tells the story first is the one usually believed, no matter how ludicrous or obviously self-serving it is. Especially if the person their spinning it to, wants to or has a vested interest in, believing them. They don't have to prove it. Anyone with a different version has the burden of proof. My mother left me alone with her new boyfriend, at 11, for a week to babysit her four special needs foster care children. When the baby cried and I couldn't comfort him, her boyfriend who was sleeping on the couch attacked me and accused me of "shaking the baby." My mother never questioned his version and I was severely punished. 

10) Narcissistic parents future fake. They make promises they have no intention of keeping to con their kids into doing things for them. In the previous story, my mother had lured me into (illegally) babysitting these four very young foster kids, doing all the work with no help from her unemployed live-in boyfriend with promises of $15 pay. She had quit her job and was going to a "training seminar" for some pyramid scheme toy company. After his convenient lies about me shaking the baby, she punished me by docking my pay. She made me feel so horrible that I told her she didn't have to pay me anything. Boom. Problem solved. 

11) Narcissistic parents lie by omission of truth. They don't speak up for you when they should. They fail to defend you and leave you vulnerable. They leave out facts that show up their wrong acts. My mom accepted her boyfriend's version when she knew how viciously abusive he was. She leveraged the fact that I was easily shamed, against me. 

12) Narcissistic parents trap you into silence with disingenuous lies. They promise not to tell people some horrible thing you supposedly did when what they are protecting is their own bad behavior. In the babysitting situation, she said we wouldn't speak of it again. Which at the time was a relief because I felt suicidally ashamed. She knew this and used it against me. It took me nearly 5 decades to realize that she was afraid I'd tell someone that her abusive boyfriend was living there, and that she'd left and put me in charge of four kids. 

13) Narcissistic parents conveniently forget. I complied and kept the secret. The guilt got so bad it almost consumed me. I believed I should never have children. It came out a few years ago when I was trying to comfort her. She supposedly had no recollection of any of that happening. She had closed a door and moved  on. Leaving me alone and hurting in my 11-year-old brain. 

15) Narcissistic parents' versions morph and evolve. Shortly after this, the state closed her foster care home due to abuse allegations. She claimed that they were fabricated when I specifically recall her boyfriend switching the kids. Then she said it was his fault. As I remember she laughed when he did it. Then she said everyone overreacted and it was "just a little twig" he hit them with. There was no mention of me "shaking the baby" then. But there wouldn't be, because she would have been the one they found guilty. I see that now. I didn't then. 

15) Narcissistic parents backpeddle. When I mentioned what had happened, she denied ever even leaving me with the kids. Let alone with her boyfriend. Let alone me being forced to co-sleep in a tiny room with the kids while they slept two floors down.  Let alone my room being given to my uncle and his girlfriend. She said "I wouldn't have done any of that because I would have lost my foster care license." So she knew it was wrong at the time. 

16) Narcissistic parents make up scary fables about their children which they implant in their brains. My lazy, unemployed, sexually abusive stepfather who with my mother was living off my child support, would curse and rage at me about what a terrible person I was.  He accused me of unspeakable things, including but not limited to, the baby shaking. When he illegally kicked me out, he managed to convince me that it was my fault. He had me so traumatized that I damn near ended my life. It has taken all my life to begin to realize that he was actually guilty of everything he accused me of.  

17) Narcissistic parents accuse you of things they do. They concoct stories that direct attention onto their kids and deflect it from their bad behavior. My aggressively angry father and his passive-aggressive second wife told everyone that I was an angry, disobedient kid. The truth was that I was too biddable and they were exploiting my sweet  nature to make me unpaid servant. And routinely shaming me and blaming me for everything. 

18) Narcissistic parents embed memories in their kid's brain that never happened. My mother routinely slapped my face because she said I was "sassy." She say in an ugly facetious way, "listen here, Sister Sue, don't you dare talk to me that way!" I believed I must have been mouthy yet I can't recall saying anything. All I remember is the crack across the face, not what prompted it. In fact, I can't think what I could have said, being a cowed child who was very careful not to set people off. So I have to conclude that these are manufactured  memories though they seem real. 

19) Narcissistic parents defend their lies with lies. They can't keep their stories straight. My mother used to brag about slapping me. How I so provoked her. But it wasn't hitting it was just "correction". Then she said she had to stop because one time I raised my hand to "hit her back." Which I see now was just self-defense. But I was "hitting" and how dare you raise your hand to me when I'm  raising my hand to you! 

20) Narcissists use their past lies against you. They get you to believe something then turn it around to punish you. They hit you when you are down. I believed that she was right to hit me. And she would quote scripture about not sparing the rod and to punish my kids. And I, I'm embarrassed to say did spank them. I didn't feel right but she suggested I was failing God if I didn't. But then, when I had a nervous breakdown and checked myself into a mental health facility, she went behind my back and told my kids that I was abusing them. They reminded her of how she's hit me and she denied ever doing it.  So cunningly twisty. 

In summary, narcissistic parents constantly invent and reinvent lies. They play one endless shell game. They have to, in order to keep previous lies from surfacing. They inject their poison into their kids' little minds from the beginning. They infect them with evil till the child cannot think straight and cannot tell truth from lie. 

Exposing narcissistic parent gaslighting for the demonic lies they are (warning: raw)

 Hi there friends. For the last year, I've been discovering that a lot of what I believed about my parents and myself, was not true. I've been writing about the narcissistic parental abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, manipulation, triangulation, invalidation, parentification, shaming, scapegoating and gaslighting I was subjected to by four self-centered parents. So it's been a lot of heavy stuff. And today's post might be the worst of the worst. Because today I'm exposing narcissistic abuse for the devil's work it is and parental gaslighting about it, for the demonic lies they are. 

First, let's clarify this term narcissist. They're not just arrogant, delusional, self-centered and lacking in empathy.  They get off on hurting people, especially the covert and malignant narcissists. Narcissists believe they are God and not subject to rules and laws they hold other people up to. But  nothing could be farther from the truth which is that narcissists are agents of the devil. Because they gaslight (lie, deceive) with every breath. And we know who is the Father of lies. 

And religious zealot narcissists are the very worst of all. I know because I was subject to two who divorced and married other narcissists to whom they enslaved me. I basically lived in two separate but equally awful cults. They fancied themselves preachers and teachers of the good news. But it was very bad news for me. For me, there was no salvation from their demonic torture. And if you think this is exaggerated, I invite you to try living with four people hellbent on destroying you. They said and did things that made me so miserable that I thought everyone would be better off without me

So how did they accomplish this? First you take a kid, when she is very young. The bible says, train up a kid in the way she should got and she won't depart from it. Well, it's also true if you teach her wrong. She'll spend the rest of her life fighting those demons.  So you start systematically hurting, endangering, exploiting, neglecting her. You scapegoat her, abandon her from time to time, let horrible people hurt her and make her responsible for parenting you.  Next, you gaslight her that it's not happening, she's making it up, showing off, or it's her fault, etc. You tell her it's normal and that you're a loving parent. And worst of all, it's God's will for her to suffer and she's just being rebellious and disobedient. 

Now that you have her well-seasoned and groomed with all her resistance worn down, boundaries stomped on and self-esteem shot to shit, she's putty in your hands.  You can do any awful thing you want and say whatever crap you want and she'll absorb it. And when you offer her up as a sacrificial victim to your new F buddies, they can do as they like too. Anyone can have a piece. She'll take whatever you dish out and sit up and beg for more. She will do anything to please and appease your insatiable appetite for harm. You can sit back and enjoy the pathetic show she'll put on for your viewing pleasure. 

Because now she now not only believes all your gaslighting lies, she gaslights herself. Others might, too. The devil is devilishly good at lying. .But there's one you can't fool and that's God. The real one, not the one you've styled yourself as. He sees your wicked deceitfulness and isn't amused. He sees how you damaged your child to the point of self-harm with your self-serving lies. 

You'd better hope there's a purgatory. Cause you've got a lot of work to do and you can't lie your way out of this. God will not be gaslit. 

Exposing narcissitic parent gaslighting about God's Will for what it really is

 Hi friends. I started a blog post which is becoming a series about how I'm unmasking abusive parental gaslighting by flipping the script. I'm rewriting their narrative by defining words correctly. The worst way my narcissistic parents gaslit me was with a false portrayal of God and lies about what they were doing and what He expected of me in response to them. This has been devastatingly destructive to me, a category 5 hurricane to the brain. 

My parents got divorced for no good reason when I was 6. They gave me no help processing and made it all about themselves. Prior to this they had been systematically endangering, neglecting and even abandoning me. They failed in basic care, parenting and love. At least one had been cheating on the other and forcing me to watch. The other took off for months, to years at a time. They were always homeless and jobless. Immediately after divorcing (which they blamed me for), they found other self-centered people to foist on me as "parents" to be served. 

So all of this was disturbing enough. But factor in that they both believed themselves good Christians. They quoted the Bible and went to church. Sort of. They changed churches and denominations frequently always finding fault with the previous one. It was like they thought themselves Bible detectives tasked with ferreting out and exposing hypocrisy.  They even believed that they were preachers, teachers and missionaries. Despite the fact that no church supported this and when informed, they left that church to find another, hopefully more gullible. We were a cult of three. And that was before the divorce. 

Afterwards, there was a lot of adultery and affairs. My dad, at 34, started dating a 17-year-old. My mother hooked up with a married man. Then she moved her new, very abusive, boyfriend into our home. She'd quit her job to open a foster care home, leaving most of the care to me. She made an apartment for she and her boyfriend in the basement, kicked me out of my room to sleep with four special needs kids under 5 and gave my room to her brother and his girlfriend. And trooped us all to church where she sat, sanctimoniously fault-finding others, under the guise of "ministering." 

My dad moved me into his home with his new wife, so that I could wait on her. Most of the childcare and all the housework fell to me. I became surrogate parent, spouse, servant and scapegoat. I co-slept with all their babies and did all the work in their foster care home. They were passive-aggressively and just aggressively violent towards me. I don't recall when my dad wasn't angry with me. I feel sick remembering all the shaming and scorn. And I was gaslit to think that all this was God's will for me and to fail in any of their demands was to fail God. 

The gaslighting is many-fold. They proclaimed to be Christians and to be serving God when in reality, they believed they were God and I was serving them. Can you see the hypocrisy in all this?? You probably can. It's just me that's late to the party. 

They were willfully going against God's laws, breaking every command routinely. But spinning it all as God's will. I'm aghast at how they were able to convince me that adultery was somehow obeying God? How I was at fault for their divorce. How abusing me was in God's plan for me? They were thumbing their noses at him while claiming to follow Him. 

I will be working for the rest of my life, to process all this wickedness and overcome its evil effects. 

 

Unmasking narcissistic parental abuse and shaming by flipping their script

 Hi friends. If you're following this blog, you know that I'm in the process of healing from a lifetime of narcissistic parental abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, manipulation, triangulation, scapegoating, invalidation, toxic shaming and gaslighting from two narcissistic parents and their equally narcissistic new partners. So today I'm exploring how to unmask abuse, shaming and all the crap I've been thru, by flipping the script. Instead of letting narcissistic parents and other invalidators define the narrative. Here are the real definitions of common things they gaslight you with. 

1) Love. And loving behavior. Narcissistic parents euphemize abuse and neglect calling it love. We don't  give you a warm, safe home. Or enough food or basic medical care. We abandon you in strange places. We leave you unprotected while we do our own thing. We force you to serve dangerous people. We backstab, exploit and humiliate you. But rest assured, we love you. Because we say we do. 

Real love is the opposite. Loving people don't exploit your pain. They don't shame, especially not for things that are not your fault. They affirm and build up. They think the best of you. They give you the benefit of the doubt. They are very intentional about doing what is in your best interests, not manipulate you into doing what's in theirs. 

2) Discipline. This is their joke word for tyrannical, narcissistic, unprovoked rages. Supposedly it's "for your own good." However, they don't take their own medicine and are, completely undisciplined, self-centered and immature. 

Real discipline is demonstrated and modeled, not bullying. We lead by example, not random harshly punitive attacks. We do as we say, in humility and don't expect blind obedience to irrational, unhealthy demands. We don't expect children to be adults while we act like kids. We don't bind them up to burdens we don't help carry. We discipline ourselves and hope and pray they learn. We do what's best for them, not us. 

3) Divorce. My parents felt so sorry for themselves because they "had" to get a divorce. But there was no reason.  They would both dump on and triangulate me against each other. Then tell me I was lucky they had a good divorce. They immediately found new people and never once worried about how it affected me. So I'm failing to see how they were the injured parties. From where I sit, they got exactly what they wanted. New do-over lives. I got the shit and shame. They actually weaponized it against me, saying how I made them feel guilty and how it was my fault for hindering their happiness. Soooo much bullshit. 

What divorce really is. It's a choice parents make to explode their child's world. To baffle and brain damage them. There is no such things as a good divorce. What monstrous arrogance it was to suggest that. And no matter how hard it is for the parents, it's worse for the kids. Especially when you make it all about you and give them no help. Or worse yet gaslight them that you are guilting them.  Or worst of all, blame them for YOUR faults. 

YOU BLEW MY FAMILY APART!! I didn't blame you, tho I should have, God did. You feel guilty? You should. You did wrong, selfish things. And your guilt isn't the primary concern. I am. And you left me to face all the horrors alone. As you waltzed off to find new people to exploit me. Which bring me to the next gaslighting words. 

4) Family. Parents. Siblings. My family was blown to bits by my selfish parents. Who then subjected me new people on me in the guise of "family" and "parents" and "siblings." They made it clear that I wasn't part of their new families. But also that I was supposed serve these people. I was their family but they weren't mine. Just like I was their child parent but they weren't mine. And like their kids were my responsibility but owed me nothing, even basic courtesy. 

Real family is loving and inclusive of all. Ohana means no ne is left our or forgotten. Like I was. A child is part of one nuclear family only, which was taken from me and only  me. Family is not a hodge-podge her parents have patchworked from fragments of other exploded families. She has two parents, not an assortment of authority figures you force on her. Your new kids aren't her siblings. And certainly not her responsibility. 

5) God's will. This one was the absolute worst for me. My parents gaslit me continually with lies about what God supposedly expected of me. It's so big and bad that I'll have to start a new post about it. And will probably need a few stiff drinks to write. 

 

Weird behaviors developed from childhood trauma and adult CPTSD (I tick every box)

Hi friends. I just listened to a great podcast by Youtuber Jerry Wise, outlining signs that you've experienced significant childhood trauma. These are CPTSD behaviors. And I tick every box. I'm starting to see that I did not have the normal, healthy, happy or functional family I was gaslit into thinking I had. Just the fact that my parents divorced (blew up, ripped apart) my nuclear family and started new families, is dysfunctional, unhealthy and abnormal in itself. I'm still dazed that they could even suggest it was normal. I'll blog more on that later. 

What I had were four narcissistic authority figures (sic parents) who subjected me to a kaleidoscope of abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, scapegoating, triangulation, manipulation, exploitation, toxic shaming and gaslighting about it all. These are dysfunctional behaviors I have developed as a result. And while they are very dysfunctional, they're not me. They're defensive coping mechanisms. I am capable of functioning well, which the very fact that I survived, is proof of. I need to keep repeating this to myself as a mantra, continually. These CPTSD behaviors are in no particular order. 

1) I shift behavior when someone comes into the room. I go into what I call placating "perma-grin" mode, hoping to please others and ward off their expected anger, shaming, punishment and abuse. 

2) This is because I dwell in perpetual guilt and shame. The amount of adult expectation on me, from narcissistic childish "parents" was boundless. Which of course being not only a child, but also not being taught how, I constantly failed them. And the demands changed constantly. So as a result...

3) I'm unbalanced. The give side of the balance sheet is endless while the receive side is empty. I did not get the basics they owed me as parents.  I was expected to parent parents as a child. I was simultaneously a burden and a crutch. They demanded obedience like parents and care like children, service without serving. Consequently..

4) I'm always exhausted and depleted. They were ginormous parasitic battery hogs, continually sucking all my everything. They stripped my resources and broke down my resistance, leaving me with broken autoimmunity, emotional and physical. Because of that...

5) I startle easily. I'm jumpy and nervous. My dad conditioned me to be ever-vigilant to his and his wife's "needs" (demands) and to jump to their every expectation. He randomly hit and screamed at me. She passive-aggressively pouted which he blamed me for. Then he accused me of being "too sensitive" and told me to lighten up. So now, 

6) I'm too biddable with authority. I expect unreasonable demands, shame for failing to meet them and ridicule for being so "weak" and compliant. And that led to

7) Difficulty forming healthy relationships.  Not being able to recognize and so tolerating abuse. Being victimized by dangerous people. I was exploited and taught that God wanted me to let people take advantage of me. But also not allowed to make friends. Because they would keep my from all my "family" "duties". Being the family servant and scapegoat, 

8) I'm both childlike and parental with parents. They taught me that was their child (as in possession) but they were not my parents. They had no responsibilities to me but I had endless responsibilities to them, to be both child and parent. I was taught to give them whatever they wanted at any given moment. You need me to act childish to prove your superiority, you got it. Oh now baby needs me to be mommy, sure. And this chameleon behavior made caused to

9) Have no friends. My weird fawning adult-child behavior didn't fit well with normal kids. And not having things most kids had, made me even weirder. And my parents were so weirdly embarrassing I never wanted anyone to see. Any friends I did make were shamed and scorned or made confidantes of my parents. My mother dumped on my one friend and made her very uncomfortable. And then shamed her to me, behind her back. And now I 

10) Struggle to understand who I am, what I need, think and feel. I was so enmeshed in them I didn't know where they ended and I began. They so trampled any boundaries I might have had, that I did not know that I existed separate from them. And yet, they all excluded me from their families. I've become a kind of Caspar, the friendly ghost, always there but never seen, until someone wanted something. 

All this has led to me being very disconnected from reality. I had to dissociate or go mad, from the constant and constantly shifting trauma that came at me from all ends. I existed in a fugue state which I find now, almost impossible to get out of. I don't know how to make decisions, or maybe it's just that  I'm terrified to. I was so gaslit, second-guessed and undermined that right is wrong and wrong is right. 

The worst weapon invalidators use to sabotage your healing from abuse

Are you trying to heal from hurtful situations? Do you have "that" friend who while seeming to listen and care, actually ends up making it worse? Someone who purports to give"well-meaning" advice from scripture which turns out to be shaming and guilting? I call these people religious invalidators. And I recently wrote about 5 passive-aggressive ways invalidators gaslight you about abusive situations you've experienced. And then I realized that there were actually six weapons and the last one was so bad that it required a post of its own. 

And that's religious gaslighting.  This is the most insidious and therefore hardest to spot. It's also the most dangerous, in my mind as it's kind of a combo of all the previous ones (questioning, minimizing, lightening the mood, toxic positivity and brutal  honesty). And it sugar-coated with weaponized Christianity. 

Here's an example. You tell your friend about something that is hugely and horribly upsetting. She pretends to listen but then adopts this snarky, patronizing little frown. And says in a shame-y way "The Bible says God wants you to be joyful" "you need to trust God more" " are you reading your Bible daily?" "have you tried praying about it?" and "I think it's best of we just let the Lord lead." Which was breezily said to me by a woman on her 10th kid when I shared grief over losing my baby.

And for being so "helpful" it's about as hurtful as it gets. And it's meant to shame and guilt. They say these things at their best when you're at your worst. They preach what they don't practice. Really, you're going to guilt me with misquoted platitudes when I just told you I'm bloody well miserable? You try being joyful when you're hurting. I don't remember hearing much about the Bible when you were ranting about  your husband. 

Why would you suggest that I don't read scripture? Why you make it sound like a failing? I am suffering. Why would you make it sound like I had wickedly abandoned God? Who are you to know what I do or don't do? Does it make you feel better about your own lagging faith? Maybe you  need to look in the mirror? Cause you sound like a sanctimonious prig. 

Oh and you may want to take your own advice. I have actually read the Bible. Jesus speaks very strongly about the dangers of self-righteousness. We're also called to bear one another's burdens. And weep with those who weep. And that our joy comes from God, not in some fake pasted-on smile. And joy and sorrow coexist in us. They aren't mutually exclusive. We can obey God but still be sad. Our Lord wept, was sorrowful and even angry sometimes. 

What are all these weird attempts to undermine me really about? Why do you assume I'm not trusting God? Because it makes you feel somehow superior? Way to capitalize on others' misery. That's unBiblical too, btw. I also trusted you, to share my burden and that was clearly misplaced. And just pray about it? Oh what a great idea? Why didn't I think of that? And right back at ya when you were venting your spleen on me. If I'd said just pray about it, you'd have thought I didn't care. Oh, wait...

And thank you for the acid in my face, mom of many.  I'm so grateful you deigned to catechize me in accepting God's will. And why would you say it in a way that suggests I have not? It's not enough you have a baby and I don't. You've got to have some moral high ground too? Clearly, I have had to accept it. I just thought you might offer a crumb of comfort with your smarmy advice. More fool me. I may as well have peed into the wind. 

Tell me you don't think you're holier than me because you  have more kids. You obviously feel yourself entitled to pontificate on matters which you know nothing about. Tell me you don't think God measures your awesomeness in the number of babies he sends. Cause it's  hard to hear your humility through your smug self-satisfaction. And how easy it is for you to "accept God's plan" when you're holding a living baby. That's not you nobly obeying God and surrendering your will. It just you getting your way. Try cradling a dead child and see how it works.  I'm the one who should be preaching to you about accepting God's will. 

My friends, I want you to be very careful of anyone who behaves in this way. You might already know who they are or they might surprise you with unforeseen callousness. My friend with the large family completely blindsided me with her comments. Having already low self-esteem, I'm an easy target.  I always assume others are right and holy while I'm wrong and evil. 

So I was especially vulnerable when it came from someone who'd always been so kind. Or who I thought was kind. I didn't really know her. I assumed I must be really bad if even this paragon had to shame me. But then I stopped and thought about  what I'd do in that situation. I'd cut my tongue out before I shamed someone for losing a baby. And I realized that  I was used to shame, to excusing other's cruelty to me, to assuming I'd misunderstood it. I was taught to mistake harm for love.  

I assumed that because she sat in church she was a loving person. So when love didn't show in actions, I figured it was me with the problem. But then I recalled scripture that speaks of wolves in sheep's clothing and that a tree is known by it's fruit.  

And this put a whole new light on things. Now I'm working to believe someone when they SHOW me who, despite what they say.  Invalidators don't stutter. On some level, it's intentional. They aren't your friend. They don't have your best interests at heart and are not acting like loving Christians. They are exploiting your pain for some twisted end of their own. And it says a lot about them and nothing about you. 

Don't be gaslit by them, into doubting yourself or God's love for you.  It's okay to examine yourself, but not because someone else is questioning you. I've done this all my life, believing that others were always right and just and I was wrong and wicked. It hurt so much that I considered ending my life. And that is not God's plan for.

5 passive-aggressive ways invalidators gaslight you and sabotage your healing

 Hi friends, in today's post on my experiences with narcissistic parental abuse, I'm exposing 5 ways invalidators sabotage your healing. You're going to be nodding vigorously at these if you're dealing with CPTSD from narcissistic abuse. And if you want to help someone deal, don't do these things.

Originally, I was going to say that we've all probably accidentally done or said some of these things. Now I'm not so sure. Because when I think of doing them, my toes curl with shame. So I think that these are tools used specifically by narcissistic or chronically invalidating people, who I call invalidators. Invalidators will lie and say they're trying to help. They're not. They're purposely tearing you down, undermining your mental health and sabotaging your healing.  

1) Questioning. This is not asking questions for clarity. These tend to be who, what, when, where questions. I'm talking about questioning to poke holes in your story, undermine your courage in telling it, second-guess their experience and even "expose" them as frauds. "Are you sure about that?" Aren't you exaggerating a bit? There are accompanying tone and facial features: condescending, skeptical,  scoffing, and eye-rolling. They look like they don't believe you because they don't. Or they want you to think they don't. The worst ones who ask outlandishly hurtful questions with imitation sweet smiles. ("Do you really believe your mother would do that to you?")

Invalidators fake like they are "just trying to help" you be sure of yourself, to make sure you're not imagining it. And other such nonsense. But what they are doing is tearing down what little confidence you have.  They aren't working for clarity but confusion and self-doubt. Well thanks all the same, but those of us with CPTSD  already got those aplenty. And really how pompous can you be to assume you know someone's story better than them?  This is subliminal, passive-aggressive gaslighting. Run far from anyone who treats you like this. 

2) Minimizing. See also dismissing and downplaying.  "All parents do those thing." "It's not that big of a deal." That's easy for invalidators to say. They're not the one going through it. And they're far from  cavalier about their own struggles. They bitch and piss and moan constantly. And I've been pooh-poohing their narcissistic abuse all my life. It's how I got CPTSD in the first place. I don't need to downplay it, I need to highlight it!

3) "Lightening the mood." My raging narcissist father used to gaslight me with that shit all the time, telling me I needed to "lighten up" and not be so sensitive (to his horrendously caustic, backstabbing, nit-picking attacks). He who was the most over-sensitive, over-reactive, easily offended, heavy of them all! He routinely told me, as a little child, how he was so depressed he was contemplating suicide! Where's all your mood lightening now, dad? Who are these people to dictate when or that I should "cheer up?" Narcissistic abuse isn't some fucking circus. Pasting a smile is what I've done all my life. And look where that's got me. 

4) Toxic positivity. Oh how I hate this one. You've just told someone that your mom abandoned you at 6, and they come back with "well, at least you had a mom. Not all kids do." Or some other "upbeat" horseshit . You want to see the bright side of abuse, do it in your own life. Cause from where I'm standing, your are just cheering on the perpetrator. 

5) "Brutal honesty." Any time someone says they're just "telling it like it is" "for your own good" "as your friend" run. Because it won't be honest, just brutal. And it's only "how it is" in their self-serving opinion. And it's most definitely not good for you. I had this from a plus-sized narc recently. After blindsiding me with an insanely insane attack of venom, he said "I'm just telling you (nasty) things about you that no one else has the courage to (?!) Buddy, it ain't courage others lack. It's just you being, a cowardly, devious git.  Anyone who would presume to have insider knowledge into your head, or who feels entitled to shame you because you "need" to hear it, is neither truthful, nor honest nor your friend. They are insecure, ignorant, arrogant asswipes trying to make you feel as bad as they act. They wouldn't know truth if it kicked them in the butt. They don't even wait for you to share anything with them but just blast you with their unsolicited idiotic opinions. 

The very fact that these people hit you WHEN YOU ARE DOWN shows their true colors. They are not helpful and have no intention of being so. They are nasty invalidators. You trusted them with very sensitive and personal admissions. And they not only shat on it, they rubbed your nose in it.  You were vulnerable with them and they exploited you to boost their fragile egos. 

When narcissistic parents break God for a child, the rules don't apply

 Hello my dear friends. A lot of painful stuff I experienced in my life, has been unmasked recently. And I'm beginning to see that what I thought was normal family behavior wasn't normal and certainly not family, in the healthy sense of the word. It was abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, parentification, scapegoating, invalidation, dehumanizing and gaslighting by four narcissistic people I was made to call parent. Today I'm exploring how I never fit with God, in the traditional way others understand Him, and how, now, the rules don't apply to me. 

First of all, let me address the flak I'm bound to get on this. I've spent my life in many different Christian denomination group. I was bounced from church to church as a kid, with my parents. Then they divorced and married other people, and they all went in different directions. There are few denominations I haven't been pushed into, at one time or another. From Dutch Reformed to holy roller and all over the place. And I never once felt that I fit in, anywhere. I sat in Sunday School, sang in choirs, heard the sermons, read my Bible, prayed, helped at youth group. I even led a youth group. I was always part of but apart. I couldn't even understand their language though I spoke it fluently. 

As an adult, I went East to the Catholic church and that's where I've found my spiritual center. I might go even farther east if, as I suspect, God is calling me. But even in this home, I still mostly feel like an outlander. I've met more loving people here than ever before, but it's hard to believe they really like me or would if they knew me. Or would if I didn't say the right words. 

Now you might say, well, It's because you never accepted Jesus as your saviour. You didn't believe, it was just head knowledge, you're in the driver's seat not God. You lacked trust, didn't read your Bible enough, didn't pray hard enough. Went to the wrong church, trusted in good works, were baptized as an infant, didn't speak in tongues, wore a hat, didn't wear a hat, etc. Don't vote right. Believe me, I know all the group patois. Been saying it to myself all my life, trying to figure out where I went wrong. You could never gaslight me as much as I've gaslit myself.  

I have seen God in others' lives. I hear how they speak so eloquently, pray so beautifully, believe so single-mindedly. I see what looks like Christian joy. But I can't emulate it. I can only fake it. And I do because if I said how I really feel and think, I would be rejected. I don't feel God's love is for me. I am the exception. I've tried to shake that feeling for 60 years and can't. Then, you may say, you don't trust God. I wish it was that simple. That I could fix. 

You might add, also, that everyone feels this way sometimes, which is true. Except I feel that way all the time. And I know they don't because they've told me. They bask in God's favor. All those pious faces raised in praise. Either they are very fake, excellent actors or they know and believe God loves them. 

I think my unfitness is partly due to the fact that behind the holy smiles I saw a lot of judgementalism and arrogance. They were very sure of their own righteousness. I don't judge. I know Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven. But it has hurt someone like me who is too self-critical, a lot. They have this uncanny ability to ferret out my sin and are happy to expose it. They know I don't belong, am a fake, a plant of the devil. Even just admitting I have questions, is proof of my failing. That many people in my life, including my parents, have done this, is proof I don't fit in. No smoke without fire and all that.  

And believe me, I tried and tried. In whatever church I was landed in, I did it their way. I followed their prescribed path. I reached out, tithed, sang, prayed. I not only said the words, I believed them. I gave all that I had, but it was never enough. Not even close. I tried to prove myself, but they always knew, that I was in the wrong. 

Which of course, sounds paranoid, even to me. I can't help it. Maybe I am schizophrenic. But I will say, I'm also right. I cannot remember having a quality friendship that I didn't have to bend over backwards for, hide myself or put on my holy face for. In any of the churches I belonged to, I remember being shamed, scapegoated and humiliated a lot, and this was as a youth. 

You might also say that God came to forgive sin. But you don't understand. I'm not a sinner, I am sin. And a sensitive person like me takes all criticism to heart. I have always assumed others were wiser, better than me, no matter how broken they've proved themselves to be. I learned to accept early on, to bow, to scrape, to comply, as protection from hurt. I got really good at it. 

And this is leading me to understand other things. And may be a way out of this shame shitshow I've lived in all my life. Because I don't, and never have, believed God is the problem. Even though I don't know or feel it, I believe His love was supposed to be for me. I take Him at His word. But something got in the way. Or someone. Or several someones. Who prevented the feeling of God's love from  reaching me. 

I think the reason that what I say sounds wrong to people is because we've been given different versions of God. Parents are the first face of God a child sees. If your parents not only told you but also showed you that God is love, you believe it. If they humbly worshipped God, you learned to as well. 

But if, like me, you were raised that your parents WERE God, and not subject to Him. Not only them but their new partners. If the God you were shown was selfish, vengeful, petty, resentful, you believe that too. Or at least you'd better if you know what's good for you. It like there were two Gods, one for me and one for others. 

So clearly when we talk about God, we're seeing two very different faces. The one I saw has been proved to be a broken caricature. So where do I go from here? I'm at a crossroad. None of the rules apply to me. Because I hear them all wrong. I don't know how to unsee my original version and re-see the real one. I do believe that God wants to help me. That's how I got started writing this blog, by finally being able to hear God through the false voices. I have and always will pray that God will help me see past the fake one to his face. 

 

How Narcissist parents' religious gaslighting destroys a kid's understanding of God

 Hi friends. I've been re-examining pretty much everything in my life. I've finally admitted that my parents were both narcissists who divorced and married other narcissists. And that this collective of narcs abused, neglected, abandoned, endangered, exploited, manipulated, triangulated, parentified, scapegoated, invalidated, shamed and gaslit me throughout my life. Today I'm looking at a particularly insidious form of narcissist parental abuse, and that's religious gaslighting. I'm examined how it destroyed my understanding of God. 

Narcissists may talk a good Christian talk. They may get others to believe they love God. My parents even claimed to be "preachers" proclaiming the good news. But what narcissists truly believe is that there is no God outside of themselves. And they show this in their every action. And as we're told in scripture, it's deeds, not words that matter. A tree is known by its fruit. 

They talk about obedience to God but they are not obedient to Him. They lean on their own understanding. They go their own way and do their own thing. And then they further gaslight by calling their will, God's will. Their thing is God's thing. But even a cursory examination of scripture proves their agenda. They disobey scripture and act contrary to it. They literally believe, and show in their actions, that God's commands, which they regularly preach, apply to others, but not them.

My parents got divorced for no good reason.  They committed adultery. They neglected my care. They abandoned and endangered me. They exploited me for their own selfish ends. They married other self-centered people whom they called my parents and made me serve them. They pimped me out to be abused as their new partners saw fit. They had children whom they favored and they scapegoated me. They coveted money and possessions, and ignored my basic care. They used people. They stole from and cheated people, including me, out of things. They lied and gaslit. All while reading their Bibles, going to church, praying and preaching. 

And you would think this would confuse me, but it didn't. I wasn't at all confused about God because I knew it was my mom, dad and their spouses. They WERE Gods to me. Parents are the living image of God, to a kid. If it's a wrong or contradictory image, the parent is the one the child believes.  I never knew any others. The Bible God and my parent fused and enmeshed, so that I never knew there was a difference. Anything that didn't fit was put down to my wrong thinking. 

And they were very good at religious gaslighting. So good that my mom had me believing she was doing God's will shagging married me and conducting a series of affairs. She had me so guilted for asking why she was divorcing my dad, I thought it was my fault. Even her foul-mouthed, sponging, laybabout boyfriend knew God's will better than me. He took pride in exposing my "sins" (as a kid). 

My dad had me suicidal over my failure to guess what they wanted and provide it. I was a constant disappointment to all four of my parents. I routinely failed to meet their contradictory, ever-changing, selfish, and I see now, unBiblical demands. No amount of work I did was enough. Even co-sleeping with their babies and parenting them as if they were mine, wasn't.  I don't remember when at least one of them wasn't furious and disgusted with me. These were the Gods I grew up with. If you've never experienced anything like this, and can't understand it, think cult. 

How did they manage to so completely hoodwink me? In several ways. Scripture explains that if you train up a child in the way he should go, he won't depart from it. Well, the reverse is also true. Train her up in the wrong way, gaslight and brainwash her from the womb,  and she can't get it out of her head, either. Like I said earlier, parents are a child's first earliest "god." What they do with that determines how the child relates to the real God. 

If they are serving God, they humbly present Him as He is, as best they can, then the child is able to form a healthy relationship with God. If they present themselves as God, if they weaponize scripture to serve themselves, the child relates to God only through parents. They gatekeep God from her and put themselves in the role of Jesus, as the only way to the Father. 

They also quoted scripture accurately. The Bible did seem to be saying these things to me. And that's just the problem, I now see. They quoted scripture out of context and AT me, like a weapon. But they weren't LIVING it. They were preaching but not practicing. They were white-washed sepulchers, full of death. They were binding people to burden they didn't carry. They led little children astray. And once I saw that, all the rest fell into place. 

They fancied that everything they did was God's will. Even sin. When something bad happened to them, it was someone else's fault and was thwarting God. Even though the fault was usually theirs. When my mother lost her foster care license, it was everyone else's fault, when she abused the children. When she and her boyfriend conceived a baby, in adultery, shortly after the child abuse charges, this was God rewarding them and punishing those who stood in her way.  

Everything was twisted to their benefit. They expected blanket forgiveness and exoneration though they never once confessed a sin. However, for others, it was fire and brimstone for the slightest transgression (which were often made up when I wasn't sinning enough)And woe to anyone who suggested that they might be wrong. Even God. He was kicked to the curb, and exploited just like me. 

But God is not mocked. He is not a supporting actor in someone's show. His word is not a tool to use against people. There is one God in three divine persons, and They are not four narcissistic, self-centered, abusive human control freaks. I didn't know that then. Or maybe I did. Maybe it was just safer to play along. I'll blog more on that later. 

Where I find myself now is having to rethink God. It's my choice how I do that. I was abandoned, it felt like by even God Himself. And now it's me that has to find my way back, or forward. Please pray for me in that. It's a brave, but terrifying, new world ahead. 

 

What I learned when my mom threw a pie in my face

 Hello friends. I've been unlearning a lot, lately, about what I thought I knew about my parents and family. What I thought was normal and loving was actually them abusing, neglecting, abandoning, endangering, exploiting, parentifying, scapegoating, shaming, invalidating, triangulating and gaslighting me. In a lifetime of bizarre experiences with my parents, one in particular really brought this home to me. Here's what I learned when my mother threw a pie in my face. 

I've discussed the pie in the face before, as one of many disturbing things she's done over the years. Here's what happened. She invited myself and my children to her company picnic. As part of the activities, she wanted them to have a pie eating contest. No one wanted to, it not being in keeping with the tone of the event, but she prevailed. Day of, still, no one wanted to participate, including me. It was just she and her other daughter. She begged me to let my kids do it and I finally gave in. 

As they were about to start, she grabbed a pie and nailed me, laughing hysterically. My sister shoved my kids faces in their pies. No one else was laughing except my stepfather who loves jokes at others' expense. Everyone was shocked. I was mortified, furious and worried for my kids. The event ended abruptly and we had to ride home with them because they'd taken us. She was pouting that her co-workers were mad, annoyed with me and facetiously "apologizing" (you know, the sarcastic "well, I'm sooo sorry" which really means sorry you can't take a joke) but also sniggering at us. Stepfather (who was routinely ugly with my mom) angrily yelled at me for upsetting her (?!?!) I ended up apologizing. 

25 years later she brought it up to "apologize." And this is where I really learned some things about her. What I saw was that it was still all always about her. She didn't apologize to make me feel better, but herself. She didn't ask and we didn't talk about, how it made me feel. Or the kids. Instead, we talked about why she did it. And you may be wondering how she could defend such behavior. Well, my mother can and make you feel guilty in the process. I actually fed her some of the excuses. 

Supposedly she was nervous, embarrassed and felt she didn't fit in. Yada, yada (poor me) She felt I was criticizing her for wanting to have a pie eating contest. Even though no one else was on board or participated either. Including her husband who didn't want to make a fool of himself. Facts I didn't mention because one must never bring up reality or make mother feel bad. One must just know that one has let her down, again, and feel ashamed. 

I'm pretty sure she was only apologizing now because she and husband were getting divorced and he was nailing her with her past misdeeds. Which of course, he had a big hand in, but I digress. If she was sorry, she'd have said so at the time. It doesn't take you 25 years to realize something like that is wrong. If I'd confronted her, she'd probably lie or say she didn't remember, as she has so many other shameful things she's done. She said she had no idea what came over her and it's not like her. Well, I do and it is.  

It was planned and personal attack on me, and it's just one of many over the years. People weren't making her uncomfortable, she was making us uncomfortable. It wasn't a joke because we weren't all laughing. None of the other people who wouldn't play got a pie in the face. Certainly not her husband.  It was her gift to him, a malicious, cruel prank to humiliate me and my children. And to draw attention away from their socially inappropriate behavior.    

It was also her mask of goodness and piety (ahaha, pun) slipping and her narcissistic rage exploding out. It was her screaming at the top of her lungs, "I'm jealous of you! I feel insecure around you!! You know too much about me and I hate you for that. I want to cut you down to size!! You ruined my life and I've been going out of my way to ruin yours. The pie is just the exclamation point on that!"

And I also realized that it doesn't matter why she did it. There's no excuse for it. It may have then, but I couldn't care less, now. Because again, it isn't about her. It's finally about me. I've been spending my life helping, fixing, covering for, explaining away, defending, rationalizing, parenting, her. I've been a bit actor in her melodrama of a life, a supporting character to her leading lady. Albeit with a very large, critical role. And president of her fan club. And I'm sick of it all. I quit. Exit, stage left. 

What I needed as a child, were nurturing, guidance, uplifting and care, from parents but had to give it to them instead. What I got was backstabbing, shame, hurt, exploitation and abuse. I see that she has been throwing pies in my face all my life. Shame on her. It shouldn't have happened that way, but it did. I know that and now it's time to get out of her sights. I couldn't then, but I can now. 

I gave better and I deserve better. I gave and deserve love and affection and support and respect. If it's only a one-way street, I'm driving another route. I don't owe anyone anything, least of all not to be used as a punching bag. I have, not only the right, but responsibility to protect myself. 

I don't want my life to be just surviving the horrible abuse they put me through. I want to thrive. I don't want to be the motley fool in their court. I want to be me, to write my own story. Yes, the abuse is part of but not all of it. Maybe in a way, I'm glad for the pie in the face. It was a wakeup call I needed. If people use and abuse you, no matter and maybe because of, who they are, it's time to move on. If they won't move I need to. And I won't let the door hit me in the butt on the way out. 

Cringy ways narcissist parents humiliate their kids and why they do it

 Hi friends. I've been walking back through my growing years and finding that a lot of what I thought was true about me and my "parents" (they loved me, were always right), was not. Also  how what I thought was family (divorced parents, their new spouses, new kids) wasn't. Basically, everything I believed, turned out to be a lie, a false reality planted in my  head by decades of gaslighting from four abusive, neglectful, invalidating, endangering, manipulative adults who called themselves parents. 

Today I want to look at one form of narcissistic abuse, specifically humiliation. This is like shaming and invalidation only more flamboyant and obvious. I'll share cringy ways abusive narcissist parents humiliate their kids. 

1) What is narcissistic humiliation? So you might argue that all parents, at some point embarrass their kids. And I would agree, that yes, accidentally we do. But the difference with narcissistic parent humiliation is that it is purposeful, strategic and targeted. It's not accidental and they go out of their way to do it. A classic example with me was my mother throwing a pie in my face at her company picnic where my children and I were guests. 

2) Who do narc parents humiliate? Another thing about humiliation is that it's reserved, generally for one child, the scapegoat. Which in my case, being the "red-headed stepchild" the unwanted kid getting in the way of my parents shiny new lives, was me. In order to get the point across that I was an unwelcome nuisance (as if I needed proof), they would openly and publicly shame and mock me. 

3) Examples of parental narcissistic abuse. When I was 6, my never around dad told me to quit being stupid when I was playing dress up with some clothes in a missionary barrel. Over the years, he'd call me ridiculous, a show off, too sensitive, an embarrassment to the (his new) family.  When I was 13, my father beat me in front of everyone. He screamed at me at a family Christmas party. His wife loudly announced that I had a run in my nylons at a public gathering. My mom would shout into the fitting room asking if I needed a larger size pants. My mother's boyfriend made fun of my small breasts and my mother jeered with him. She not only threw a pie in my face, she and her daughter pushed my kids faces in pies. These are the folks who shame their kid on social media and laugh if they wet their pants instead of getting them clean underwear. 

4) How is this narcissistic humiliation? Well, anytime anyone goes out of their way to embarrass someone, it's for selfish ends. Healthy caring people feel sorry when someone is embarrassed. We go out of our way to protect and comfort. Especially with children whose awkward behavior is just part of growing up and not their fault. Narcissists humiliate. They point out things that most people would overlook or ignore (like the run in my nylons). They orchestrate situations designed to humiliate their target. With them, humiliation is an action verb. 

5) Why do narcissistic parents humiliate their kids? Because they get off on shaming them. Normal people like seeing their kids feel good. Narc parents love it when they feel awful. They like attention for good things they've done but they LOVE attention for bad things, that comes at someone's expense. You find yourself saying "who does that??" a lot with a narcissist. And yes, it's pathetic and sick. And really cringy. 

6) How do other people not see how weird it is? Oh they do. The narcissist makes sure they do. Making people uncomfortable is the payoff. Seeing others shocked, horrified faces just makes the narc's heart sing. It wouldn't be fun if no one was watching. But it's all based on delusion. 

7) How in the hell would anyone get off on hurting others? You don't and I don't. But ever heard of sadists? Narc parents who humiliate their kids are sadistic. And what drives it? A need to feel powerful. And cool. 

8) How do narcissists see themselves? Larger than life, above it all, omnipotent, omniscient. In a word, god. Anything they do is just grand, no matter how stupid or awkward. Their image of themselves is distorted like a carnival funhouse mirror. And soo deluded. Because where the real God is love, they are cold, empty, bottomless pits. Emotional zombies who feed off others. 

9) How do others see the narcissist? This is where the delusion comes in. Other people do not see them as cool and superhuman, but rather ridiculous, ludicrous caricatures. Cartoonish, clownish and fake.  

10) What is the core of parental humiliation? Beneath the power trip and weird high they get from humiliating their kids, is shame. But being self-centered and self-deluded, they believe other's are causing it. They identify the child as that cause. So they direct all energy at hiding their shame and trying to make the kid look bad. Which only splashes back on them, lather rinse repeat.  

11) Why does no one say anything and allow the child to be humiliated by these circus freaks?? That's the 64,000 question to which, if I had the answer, I could have saved myself a lifetime of pain. Maybe they're too polite. Or lazy. Or afraid of getting involved. Or under the narc's spell. Narcissists are awful when crossed. Narcissist parents are terrifying nightmares. Woe to anyone who doesn't join their cult and worship at their altar. And maybe it's hard to know how to help the child and silence seems the safest policy. I don't know. 

What I do know is the being at their mercy was devastating. Because no one stepped in or called out my narcissist parents' abuse, I figured it was okay. I deserved it or was making it up. Which is a contradiction but one I had to accept to cope with the pain. Someone should have said something.