Hi friends, I just realized that a lot of what I do on this blog is to bust myths about childhood trauma and narcissistic parent abuse. Today I'm sharing more critical ways to heal CPTSD by doing things we've been told are wrong. These might be bad for some but for abused children, they are essential. And they fly against all conventional wisdom, Christian, psychological, etc. Some will undoubtedly sound "sinful" or unkind. And they would be but for the fact that we who lived in a dark tetrad parent regime are dealing in a whole different world than other people. We have to do things differently because all our lives we've lived with different, contradictory, hypocritical double standards. We didn't get the luxury of fair play. We were subjected unfair, cruel rules that no one else was. So that said, the rules for us now have to be different, too. Sometimes we have to make it up as we go, till we learn healthier ways.
Blame the guilty party. We heard so much about the dangers of blaming people and because we abused kids are conscientious little beings, we would never blame mommy or daddy even if it was blatantly their fault. But if blaming is so wrong, why are mommy and daddy blaming us for their problems? Why are they making us fix what they broke? Well, a child cannot juxtapose all that with her idea of what good parents are supposed to do. She just assumes she's the problem and her parents are doing the best they can with their rotten kid. She blames herself because she's learned to. So in order to heal, we have to start blaming the ones at fault and stop blaming our innocent selves. But don't' worry, we've been so conditioned to blame everyone but ourselves, that we'll never really be able to hold them as accountable as we should.
Resent our parents. Yep I just said that. In order to stop resenting ourselves, we have to get order of operations right. We've always heard that resentment is wrong. And us poor shell-shocked victims of narcissistic parent abuse worried ourselves sick that we might be wrongfully resenting. Just like we always worry that we're doing wrong. That it's not okay to be angry. But what we don't realize is that THEY are the angry, resentful, malicious, spiteful, vindictive ones. They've been resentful of us all our lives. We just think that their gaslighting is right. They're fine and we're just being disobedient, rebellious etc. if we don't like the mean way our parents are treating us. So the bottom line is that we take on ourselves all their anger, resentment, viciousness, maliciousness, spite, manipulation and cruelty (and dark tetrad parents have these in abundance.) And all that shame, stress and anxiety quietly kills us. The suicide rate among abused kids is shockingly high. Resenting in this case means seeing how they've harmed us and never forgetting it. This is how we get to a healthier place where we do not take their cruelty on ourselves nor allow them to hurt us anymore.
Two wrongs sometimes make it right. How often I heard that me reacting in any way to wrongs done to me was doing wrong. My selfish parents gaslit me right into a corner with that. There was no right I could do. I couldn't get angry, defend myself, feel sad, show disappointment, cry, be hurt or God forbid retaliate. Like I would even think of doing that. I just had to smile, like it and power thru. They didn't even like that and said I was "showing off" ?!?! because, I now see, it showed up how bad they were behaving toward me. The though of upsetting them terrified me. Still does. Problem is I didn't know then but see now that everything I did upset them. So by that illogical logic, I have to now do what I was told was wrong, to make it a little better for me. I have to feel and express the rage, sorrow, frustration and pain. And maybe even retaliate (or what they would call retaliate) a bit, just for awhile.
Get even. Yanno, I always wonder how it is that these self-righteous people who preach that vengeance is God's are so bloody vindictive themselves? Well that is a ruling trait of dark tetrads: hypocritical. They who are always out to get someone cry foul if someone pays them back. In my case, they were repaying evil toward me who had never done them an evil except I guess to be born. And the little "evil" they got repaid by those they'd hurt was but a tiny down payment against all they'd done. The horrible knowledge that my parents hated me has been incapacitating at times. So what I mean by getting even is getting myself to an even keel where instead of punishing myself for them hating me, I consider that the source were hateful, spiteful nasty people that I just had the misfortune to be born to.
Don't forgive too quickly or maybe not at all. I would say that you'll never have to worry about this because narcissists don't apologize or admit wrong. But they can play you and they will. The funny thing with arrogant narcissists is that they speak from both sides of their mouth and always for the middle. Mine actually said they never did any wrong BUT also that I had to forgive them. Which of course is complete nonsensical hypocrisy. Why would I need to forgive if you did no wrong? And why would I if you haven't apologized. (Whew their mental gymnastics are exhausting.) How about this? I don't forgive even if you do apologize because what you expect isn't forgiveness, it's exoneration. You want to be told all the wrong you did is right. You never admit to wrong, you lie and blame-shift, you aren't sorry for anyone but yourself, you show no remorse and feel fully entitled to do exactly as you've always done.
Hold grudges. Never forget what they did. Abused kids have never learned self-care. I was taught that self-care was selfish. I took on everyone else's wrong as my own. So we never learned that it was healthy to get righteously angry about wrong that was done to us. We were punished for having survival skills. Our rights were consistently trampled on. Our parents threw us at hurtful people. They looked on approvingly while outrageously abusive things happened. They did outrageously abusive things. They taught me that this was God's will for me. No amount of belated, eleventh hour apologies will make up for that. If I would even ever hear them. You can forgive all you want but you must not let them keep hurting you. The only way to protect ourself from our narcissistic parents' gaslighting abuse is to keep the memory of it in your head so that when you encounter them, you will remember to get out of their path.
Don't trust them. There are some sins which must be retained for sanity sake. And child abuse is one of them. Remember what they did and how it hurt and how they will always do that. Even if they suddenly decide that they have turned over a new leaf, approach with caution. Make them prove themselves over a long period of time, as long as the abuse went on at least. Even then, keep them at arm's length and grow long arms. Rattlesnakes don't suddenly stop biting. Dark tetrads don't start being nice unless it gets them something. And the longer a narcissist lives among her own lies, deceit, hypocrisy, double standards, manipulations, machinations, hatefulness, remorselessness and bullying, the less likely she is to give it up.
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