Hello my friends. I've been listening to a lot of Youtube videos on narcissistic parent abuse in an effort to heal CPTSD from the four dark tetrad parents in my life. Even with all the experiences that I've shared I still struggle to accept that I was actually abused, neglected, abandoned periodically, endangered constantly, manipulated, scapegoated, triangulated, enmeshed, invalidated, bullied and gaslit about it all. That is the sick nature of gaslighting by narcissistic parents. They make it all seem normal. Even though there's no way on earth, in heaven or hell I'd treat my child this way. Somehow I've internalized deep into my core the idea that this was all okay for me.
So naturally, I struggle also, to accept that my parents were dark tetrads (narcissistic, arrogant, entitled, Machiavellian, sadistic, psychopathic). If their abuse of me was normal then they're just normal parents, right? That's what their voices in my head say. But my emotional flashbacks tell another story. And what triggers those is also my pathway to healing.
Listening to a series by Danish Bashir on weird things narcissists do, I was not only triggered but also shocked by how he nailed my parents' behavior. All kinds of memories that had been squished into cupboards came rushing back. With every act he listed I instantly recalled them doing these things. I didn't have to struggle to make the shoe fit. It was like he was using them as examples, the behavior was so spot on. I found myself oh, yup, forgot about that. Oh and that one too. Bam, bam, bam.
It sad how many shitty memories a child can compress over 60 years of life. It becomes sedimentary rock in her brain. But hearing it named, was like a geologist had tapped into that solid mass. Like that old log you roll over and all the exposed creepy crawlies scuttle out. It takes your breath away to see how disgusting and how many there are. You feel the gut punches, again, one after another. You recall the many times they pulled the rug out or hung you on the fry wire.
The intensity hijacks your system. You are assaulted with the horror. And you know with cold certainty, that these are not the only times it happened. You've only just scratched the surface. You feel short of breath, dizzy, nauseous, suicidal. During one, I was overwhelmed with despair and felt the demons impelling me to drive over a cliff. The suddenness was like a jolt of electricity. Thank God I had my baby in the car or, who knows, I may have done.
And that is what emotional flashbacks felt like to me. I use the past tense because, hearing their horrible behavior enumerated clearly, I realized it didn't have the same sting. I felt a calm, dispassionate, quiet resignation to the fact that these people who called themselves parents were perpetrators. Self-serving, remorseless, psychotic, sociopathic, cruel agent provocateurs who considered themselves God. While proclaiming to serve God. Does it really get any more demonic than that?
It really makes no difference to me whether they would be clinically diagnosed dark tetrad narcissists or not. Though I'm 99% sure they would be. I know how awful they were to live with. Or at least I do now. Because I'm paying attention to triggering things and emotional flashbacks. This is treacherous territory. The damage to the child mind is so great that you risk further harm just accessing those memories. This is why the mind seals over them. If the child were to actually know how much danger she was in, it could irrevocably destroy her.
Even reliving them decades later is terrifying. But I believe in a higher power who lets me remember them when I am ready. Not to do me more harm but to being to heal the complex childhood post-traumatic stress disorder. To bring some soothing balm to the fevered, perseverative trauma responses that I autoloop in. Soon, I'll share some emotional flashback triggers and trauma responses that look really odd but make sense when you understand the origins.
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