Hello my friends. Today, I watched a Youtube vlog by Dr. Ramani explaining how narcissists invalidate (shame, dismiss and criticize) and gaslight (lie and twist to deny someone else's reality) and the difference between invalidation and gaslighting. Today I'm going to explain how dark tetrad malignant narcissist parents invalidate and gaslight their scapegoat kids. They don't just do this occasionally. It is their modus operandi. Using a cocktail of invalidation, coercive control, deprivation and gaslighting, malignant narcissist parents systematically and strategically break their scapegoat child.
They are playing a long game of death by a thousand cuts, with the intent to destroy any good thing their child has, thinks, feels or does. They parentify the child, making her responsible for them and anyone they drag into her life and subject her to (hookups, boyfriends, girlfriends, new spouses, new kids). They also infantilize her, undermining her confidence, shaming and criticizing how she parents them. Yes I said that. They force the child to take on their adult jobs and responsibilities which the child isn't capable of doing. They also don't model, assist or give adequate resources for completing these tasks. The child is expected to complete tasks like an adult while being given no authority or power. They demand all kinds of unreasonable things of her. They indoctrinate her to believe she owes them everything and they owe her nothing. My husband has said that all four of my narcissist parents treated me worse than an indentured servant in that I could never work off my indenturement.
They also use coercive control plus deprivation to weaken the child and cripple her ability to see what they are doing or protect herself. They move the child far from any support. They deny the child basic needs and rights as a family member. They cut her short on sleep by making her co-sleep with babies in cramped rooms. They deprive her of a proper bed. I've spent many nights on couches, sleeping on the floor, in camp cots or on the ground. I rarely had any space of my own. There was not enough food provided for me while they had plenty. I didn't take a bath for my sixth year of my life because no one saw to it I had a roof over my head let alone running water or a bathroom. We were not poor. They had just decided to up and leave to be missionaries. What they ended up doing was abandoning me and then divorcing.
I've been tired and exhausted since childhood. I can't sleep without trauma nightmares. I'm too weary to fight it and they know that. They are not weary because they have always had me to do the heavy lifting. They are energized by their own arrogance. They are well fed at my expense. They've always seen to their own medical care even to the point of factitious ailments. Yet neglected my basic care which has rendered me even more run down. I have back damage on par with someone on a chain gang or who did hard labor.
Then they swoop in with the gaslighting and invalidation. They lie and manipulate memories painting the child as the problem. They deny that what happened happened. They downplay it. Or they twist it into something it wasn't. And they blame-shift. My memories are very, very confused and distorted. I've forgotten large chunks of my life. What I do recall is very bad. This is the effect of gaslighting and invalidation. I sometimes call gaslighting gassing because it damages the brain so badly. But they can't gaslight away the nightmares and physical damage they caused.
These conspire together to squash the child's sense of self and then to create a false sense that the child is nothing more than their scapegoat, slave, surrogate spouse and parent. The child is groomed to believe that she is not a unique self but just a possession to be used by her narcissist parents however they want. And as a possession, separated parents enslave her to any new person they decide to hook up with as well. So affair partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, new spouses, new children. And they categorically deny and ignore all that happened as if it never did. My first 21 years of life might never have been because no one has ever acknowledged any of the crazy. It's like they were keeping me around for their convenience yet trying to erase me as a person. And they succeeded in many ways.
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