Hello my friends. Today in my journey to heal CPTSD from dark tetrad parent abuse, from four narcissists, two biological parents and their equally abusive partners, I'm trying to wrap my mind around some very sobering facts. Fact One: the abuse was and is so much worse than I thought. This is not me making up stories or digging around trying to drum up incidents I could spin as abuse. I have never needed to make stuff up. There was and is already enough abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, manipulation, triangulation, parentification, shaming, invalidation, enmeshment, scapegoating, exclusion and gaslighting to last several lifetimes. The problem was, I didn't see it for what it is, till I was in my late 50s.
What got me started on the path to understanding was a desperate need for help with the crippling nightmares, trauma responses, suicidal anxiety, FOG (fear obligation and guilt), chronic people pleasing at my own expense, non-stop insecurity and brain damaged thinking. In a word, CPTSD. And that led me to explore on Youtube, the work of various professionals in the field of childhood trauma and CPTSD. Dr. Les Carter, Danish Bashir, Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise and Patrick Teahan are the most helpful.
And, oh my goodness, once I started exploring, did I find that not only was I not exaggerating or "showing off for attention" (the narcissists' words) it was soooooo much worse than I thought. It was made even worse by the fact that all four of the people who called themselves my parents (translation authority figures, not caregivers) were raging dark tetrad narcissists. Between my biological parents and their second spouses and their kids, there was a panoply of narcissism: grandiose, covert, vulnerable, malignant, sociopathic, psychotic, sadistic, Machiavellian, religious, violent, you name it, this hodge-podge of chaos and stress they called family had it. They were the pantheon of demigods in my universe.
There was no cohesive, mindful parenting of me either when my mom and dad were married or after they divorced. They moved to Alaska to be self-styled missionaries and started sleeping around and calling it missioning to their bed partners. And left me on my own. Through it all they maintained a guise of Christianity. I'm not kidding. My 36 y/o dad had a 17 y/o girlfriend. My mom jumped in and out affairs while preaching the "good news." That was weirdly baffling for a 7 y/o, let me tell you).
They they upended my world again, getting married to very broken dangerous people. They just started off like it was a clean slate having kids, building their new "real" families as if I wasn't' there. Wait, let me rephrase that. As if I was ONLY there to await their pleasure. I was deprived of normal things like a bed, a bedroom, a normal sleep schedule, food, clothing, etc. It was like I was a dish to be discarded, passed back and forth as one or the other needed a live-in unpaid nanny, housekeeper or source of funds. My mother and her boyfriend cum husband lived off my child support.
And I was expected to do very abnormal things like co-sleep with and parent foster kids and babies, do hours of heavy housework and chores no one else did. I was sex therapist and counselor to my dad and mom. I was performing monkey for my parents' new spouses. I was everyone's general dogsbody and whipping girl including various unmarried couples whom my mom moved into my room to cohabit.
I did not have a regular anything. Between them, I lived, or should I say couch surfed in 32 different places before age 20. I attended 8 schools. Several within the same school year. They moved around willy-nilly for selfish reasons, giving no effs on the effect on me. I was pushed around like a hockey puck. Each one taking me on when they needed me. Having zero say and zero consistency. When I lived at my dad's and stepmom's house (operative words their house, not mine) my mom was nowhere to be found. She was off God knows where living her life oblivious to me. And vice verse with my dad.
No one asked about safety, health, friends, schoolwork or conditions I was living in. No one tended to my medical care until things were critical. Some medical conditions they put on me, such as damaged spine and hips, from not following up on my congenital hip dysplasia and forcing me to do back-breaking housework and chores as a child.
And boy howdy was I expected to work, work, work. I would come home from school, begin the chores and still be at it while everyone else was parked in front of the telly. And then I'd start my homework at the table because my "bedroom" was the baby's tiny room where I'd be sent when he went to bed. So I could care for him at night. Then back up at 5:30 am. This was pattern for both of them. Have kids, make oldest kid responsible.
I have never slept well to this day, being on call in case all the babies in my memory needed me. No one even asked how we slept. Then when I became a nuisance (as in, I now see, my mom's husband started having lustful thoughts about me) I was kicked out. Not to shelter but to shame me. My mom found an elderly lady for me to live with, not paying her and spinning it that I could be a help to her. She'd bring me a little food but nothing like enough. I have to admit, I stole some food from the panty I was so hungry. Just a swig or two of milk. She caught me and I admitted it. She asked why doesn't your mom bring you enough to eat? Good question. There should be plenty, if my mother had used my child support for my care and not to fund her new family and allow her husband to lay around jobless all day. So I was a live-in caregiver there too. I will say this. It was the first time I had my own room. And this is only the merest top snowflakes of the iceberg.
All these horrible memories float in my memory, getting more and more toxic. The gaslighting created a continual fog of fear, obligation and guilt. Their DARVO tactics kept me in perpetual confusions. They were the perpetual victims and I was the bad girl, the failure, the one who let them down. It was my fault they kicked me out, apparently. Yet I was an honor student with a spotless track record of behavior. Though I sacrificed everything for them: self, identity, childhood, adolescence, peace of mind, confidence, self-care, security. But, BUT once I began researching, OH WHAT revelations I found.
All that happened to me had a name: abuse. And my parents and their partners, it appears, were not the self-righteous preachers and good parents they said they were. They now had names too: dark tetrads, self-serving arrogant narcissists, cruel abusers, saboteurs, agents provocateur. They weren't, it turns out, servants of God but of evil. What they were doing was illegal. And all I was now hearing affirmed what I'd known but was too afraid to admit, all along.
I also discovered, though I've yet to be able to believe it, that they were wrong about me. I wasn't a liar, cheat or showoff. I wasn't "the problem" with all my "anger." I wasn't too sensitive and too critical (yeah my dad played that illogical fallacy all the time). I wasn't disobedient to God or to them. I wasn't having nightmares because God was punishing me for all my sins. It's called CPTSD and it comes from being forced into unnatural, terrifying situations.
And maybe, even more, I wasn't the dark agent but a child of the light. This is hard for me to accept. It feels like, I don't know, bragging. My old trauma responses tell me I'm bragging. But I'm not. And, excuse me trauma responses, but who would brag about being abused? It's shameful and humiliating. . And the reason I never fit it is that I wasn't supposed to. That's as per God. They were living evil, immoral, degenerate, prideful, hypocritical lifestyles. And God didn't want me to be part of that. He wanted and wants me to serve the real God, Him. Not their fake versions. I didn't know that then but I do now.
No comments:
Post a Comment