Hello my friends. Today I'm going to share some discoveries I've been making about myself. As an adult child of malignant narcissist parents (4, two bio and two stepparents) I suffered a great deal of abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, manipulation, triangulation, parentification, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all. This doesn't end in childhood. It continued all my life with these people and would till one of us died, had I not cut ties. Adulthood for children of narcissists isn't the same as it is for non-abused kids. We grow up in it and it forms our core being. We get used to be stolen from, lied to and exploited. I expect to be treated badly. That's how they groomed me to to not only tolerate but believe I deserve mistreatment.
So as I grew, I didn't develop healthy coping skills or even survival skills. I learned only to trauma respond with fawning (groveling, dogged obedience), flight (running away when possible), freezing (staying small and quiet) and fighting (rarely and only when provoked beyond endurance and I had a surprisingly high pain tolerance for someone whose resources were so depleted). There's another trauma response I'll add which I did a lot and that's fixing. I constantly feel the need to repair for people, at my own expense, things they break. I let them gaslight me and put responsibility on me which is not mine. I placate, people please and endlessly serve. I hate that word. All the joy was stripped from it by unpleasable, relentless narcissist parents' inappropriate expectations and demands.
What I've discovered is that basically all my kneejerk behaviors are trauma responses not healthy choices. I never do what I want because I want to. I only donwhat I think I SHOULD do which is what others' expect of me. If that happens to also be good for me, okay. If not, okay too. I'm over-giving and riddled with guilt for not giving enough. Boy does that come in handy for the narcissists. I give too much and they take too much and then exploit my constant shame to get more. And they never face any consequences. I take them all on myself. I'm a broken slot machine that keeps paying out her own pocket and apologizing when I run out. Plus they get they malignant, safistic narcissistic supply from seeing me ashamed. Yes that's disgusting.
I give in and retract when someone eschews my ideas, puts me down or criticizes me. My first response is to believe they are right, then feel ashamed and apologize. Without thinking. Then I self flagellate myself for being so stupid. I'm raw meat for a malignant narcissists voracious appetite.
No comments:
Post a Comment