Hi friends. To heal my CPTSD from narcissistic parental abuse, I'm going to the roots. I'm exploring not not only that but also how and why I was abused, neglected, abandoned, endangered, scapegoated, parentified, invalidated, enmeshed, exploited, shamed, invalidated and gaslit about it all. Today I'm looking at how narcissist parents enmesh, then exploit and then gaslight to make scapegoat kids responsible for their actions.
So, what do we know about narcissists? They are self-centered, arrogant, hypocritical, demanding, needy, control freaks without empathy, who plow over others' boundaries. They pirate others' identities, take over their brains. They see us as extensions of themselves like an arm or eye. They use us to get narcissistic supply and delusional fantasies of grandeur fulfilled. I experienced this from four parents (two biological and their partners). They were so enmeshed that I actually believed it was selfish of me to think, need, want and feel for myself.
Plus my mother is very histrionic and inappropriate sexually. She is seductive, manipulative and constantly demanding of attention. Being stripped of my sense of self, I let her use me as a sex therapist, pawn and object of comparison, as a child. (See my funny looking fat little daughter, now look at sexy me). She allowed and I see now, encouraged her boyfriend to mock me, at 10, for my small breast size. While she preened herself on her larger ones. She runs around naked and sleeps naked and tells everyone about it.
She openly cheated on my dad when we were in Alaska and dragged me along. She exposed and left me with various older men (sugar daddies I now suspect) who were mommy's "friends." My dad was on "mission trips" thousands of miles away and completely unavailable. I was left alone and vulnerable. All while planning her Good News clubs, she said. I don't recall those ever happening. At one point she left the native community to go be a youth group leader (she said) on a remote island. Now I wonder if she hadn't made herself a pariah and was being sent away. We had no home and no money. I've no idea how we lived.
She has always dressed oddly, wearing seductive clothing when young, dressing like a hooker for Halloween and then later, wearing nightgowns in public. When I was young, she'd make out with her various boyfriends blatantly, in front of me. Like I wasn't even there because I wasn't, to her. But she also wanted me to see and be jealous, I now know. Jealous that I wasn't as hot as her (at 8, mind). And also because she wanted me to feel sick and humiliated.
She talks about sex all the time and always has. She talks about her privates with my husband and kids. She got a boyfriend of mine to talk to her about his genitalia. She has shared intimate details of her sex life with me since I was a kid. I never asked her to stop, even including a few years ago when she talked to the doctor about sex problems in front of me. She didn't request I leave and snapped at me for not being for appearing uncomfortable hearing about it. I see now, she wanted me to feel icky.
My dad was off in a different way. He dated a series of younger women, one being 17 and young enough to be his daughter. He fully planned to marry her and pass her off to me as a mother. She was 8 years older than me. He had very blurred boundaries with me about who was my mother (authority figure). They were my family (not caregiver, boss) if he said so. Same with my mother. They made it up as they went along. I was just told how it was and expected to adapt. No questions, support or thoughts of my own. Well, you would, wouldn't you if you your daughter is not a person but an appendage.
And then they gaslit me into thinking this was all perfectly normal and that I should be grateful. God expected me to serve them and their new spouses and all their new kids. Even though no one I knew had a life remotely like mine. And even though it was made abundantly clear that I wasn't really welcome. I was family when things were expected of me but not in things I should have been able to expect. I was a useful nuisance and one they clearly resented.
But then, they preached such a different message. They were always reading and quoting scripture including that which called out their behavior as immoral. They believed themselves to be actual ministers (they weren't. It was just delusion). I was taken to church and beaten with the Bible on all the things God expected of me. But I never once heard them speak of their responsibilities. They were above it and the Bible didn't apply to them. There were two completely opposite sets of rules, both of which were made up by them for their own self-centered ends.
Anything they did, no matter how foolish, selfish or sinful was God telling them to. They were just following instructions. Even though the Bible plainly said it was wrong and forbade it. We were reading the same Bible but getting very different things from it. I always kinda wondered about that, but they were so convincing and who was I, a kid (and a gaslit one at that) to question?
But I see now that they were twisting God's word to make it seem like it says things it doesn't. They were taking bits they liked, out of context and distorting the intent. They were omitting anything that didn't support them or called out their behavior. Some things they just flat out lied about. For example, theft, child abandonment, lying, adultery and fornication. Those, my mom said, didn't apply to her because...well, I can't recall the excuse she used. But I know she did excuse it because she was so blatant about it, while still preaching against it. As I see now, they said they were God and I believed them. I literally didn't know right from wrong when it came to them.
And I never said anything about how awful all this made me feel. Ever. To anyone. You can't with an enmeshed narcissist parent. They get volatile when you do and make you feel even worse. So you keep silent, always. They do not feel ashamed for their very shameful behavior and they blame/ shame shift it onto you. And here's where the narc parent makes their scapegoat kid feel responsible for their behavior.
When you first draw breath, they take you over. They strip your personhood and indoctrinate you in the cult of them. You're their puppet. Anytime you begin to form a boundary, they smash it. You are shamed for feelings, needs, wants and individuality outside of them. But then, they guilt you with their needs you're supposed to meet. They don't care for you or even like you but you must attend them at all times. You are groomed to supply, fix, fawn, placate, provide, offer up and serve.
Then, once they have you good and messed up, they take it a step further. They exploit your boundarylessness, vulnerability, lack of identity, inability to protect yourself, confusion and intense shame. They contort truth, manipulate situations and gaslight you. They so baffle you that you take on their guilt and shame. They convince you, by trickery and lies, to think that you are at fault for their behavior. I don't know quite how they achieve it. I only know that they do. And the gaslighting is bewildering.
Why would they do this if they feel that rules don't apply to them? Why not just do as they please and not worry about it? I have come to think that even the most delusional narcissist knows on some primitive level, that their behavior is wrong. And there are people, not so hoodwinked as I was, telling them what's wrong. And this creates massive shame.
But being self-centered, they believe they don't deserve the shame. So they lie, backpeddle, distort, twist. They're being victimized and persecuted. They're never to blame so it must be someone else's fault. Someone must be making them feel this way. He is and it's God, bringing to mind their sin but they can't accept that because He would never disapprove them. They're only always just obeying Him, they believe.
So they land on the scapegoat child. It must be her fault. She's making us feel bad. Bad her. Which reiterates how deceitful it is because I never did. I accepted all they said as gospel truth. I made up excuses for them and defended them. So they knew they had the perfect target in gaslit, muddled little me. I would willingly take on myself their shame. Goodness knows I'd done it often enough. Over the years the perfected the method till I was too exhausted to protest if I wanted to or even knew I could and should.
And that as they say is that. A perfect circle of shame, beginning and ending with me.
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