Hi friends. Today I'm exploring a critical step in healing CPTSD from dark tetrad (narcissist, exploitative, psychopathic and cruel) parents. And that is setting boundaries with them. But boundary setting is not what a lot of people think it is. It's actually not setting boundaries with other people at all. It's putting in place protective boundaries around ourselves that we maintain. It's also instituting consequences (or just allowing logical ones to occur when the narcissists (or anyone) crosses them.
What most people think of when they think about boundaries is that they are restrictions you put on other people that they have to respect and abide by. Which is kind of narcissistic and control freaky in itself. We cannot police others' behavior or expect them to police themselves around us. Operative word being EXPECT. For one thing, it's useless. You can expect in one hand and pick berries with the other and guess which will fill up first. It's also a hypocritical power play, you know like that person who exercises no self-control while being overly controlling of others.
Because power and control are what it's about. Owning your own power and controlling yourself. Setting boundaries means identifying what you will tolerate and allow to be done to you and what you won't. And what you will do when intolerable things occur. It's making choices for yourself that are best for you. It's about you doing you, not letting other people rule you or your behavior. It's about policing yourself.
Does that sound a little like victim shaming? Am I saying, like my dark tetrad dad used to say to me, that it doesn't matter what anyone else does, you just have to do the right thing. No way. Because context matters with our actions. Provocation matters. If someone is hitting you and raise your hand to protect yourself (like what happened to me with my narcissistic mother) that's a whole other scenario than you just lashing out for shits and giggles the way my mom spun the story. But I am saying that you have to do YOU no matter what anyone else is doing and you have to protect yourself.
And that's why boundaries, especially with narcissists are so important. Those of us who have been victims of dark tetrad parents do not know where they end and we begin. We have no lines of demarcation between them and us. Nor do the narcissists. They see no end to themselves and no beginning of other people. It's ALL about them. They invade borders, enmesh with and take over everything. They firmly believe their rights don't end where ours begin. It's all theirs.
And we have to comply as kids to stay relatively safe. Not safe, actually, just to survive. We had to let them take whatever they wanted and they wanted a lot. We had to let them hurt us. We had to smile through our pain. And then be told we were showing off for our troubles. We had no tools, options, support or way out. But that was when we were kids. Now as adults, we have options. We have a voice even though it may be rusty from lack of use.
They will not acknowledge that however. They will continue to absorb, expect, take and boundary crash. So we have to delineate for them where they end and we begin. How far we will allow them into our territory. What we will put up with and what we won't. But again, we can't control them. And they certainly aren't going to give up any of this delusional control they feel they are owed. They aren't going to back off on the demands. So we have to take control of ourselves from them and give it back to whom it belongs to. Us.
We do that by removing ourselves from situations in which they are hurting us. We do that by reporting their actionable behavior. By filing restraining orders, suing them or calling in the police if we have to. We do that by ceasing to kowtow to their demands. By disobeying their unethical, immoral rules. By refusing to accept unacceptable treatment of us. And we do that not so much by punishing but by negative reinforcement (removing positive reinforcement) and withholding privileges such as contact with us, they previously enjoyed from us. We build walls to keep invaders out. We cut off the funding. We stop giving till it hurts. Maybe stop giving altogether. We stop rolling over to be kicked. We have to walk away and walk out. We have to stand up for ourselves because we've been falling for everything they dished out for too long.
They will say that this is punishment. They will cry victim. They'll say that we are the aggressors, we're being vindictive, spiteful, hateful, yada yada. But don't let them dictate terms. They're great at flipping the script back and forth to suit their narcissistic fantasy. And don't be gaslit. We aren't hurting them we're just not allowing them to hurt us. We're just getting our own selves, identity and space back. We're meeting our own needs, setting our own goals being guided by our own preferences for a change. We're making healthier safer choices. They're just pissed that they aren't getting their way. And if our choices make them feel bad, well, maybe they need to look at why they need us to be unhealthy and unsafe to feel good. Maybe they've gotten too accustomed to getting their own selfish way at our expense. Maybe they need to get their own boundaries straight and learn that they end. But they never will do that so we have to show them where we begin.
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