Hello my friends. Today on the road to recovery from childhood trauma, I'm going to share some ignorant advice about narcissist parent abuse we all should ignore. First, what constitutes ignorant. It's almost always unsolicited and it's not really advice. It's trite, nonsensical cliche dressed as wise or even prescient. But it's said without any pause for thought and usually has no bearing on what you said. They just pop out with it so you know they weren't listening. And you also know that if they say silly platitudes once, they do this all the time. And by all these, you know to avoid them as not helpful, but poisonous, insidious brain rot that derails your recovery.
"Every family has problems." Said after you have just told them some horrific thing that your narcissist parent did, like my mom throwing a pie in my face at her company work party. It's not even advice but argumentative retort. Like your story is up for debate? And you might feel ashamed for "dramatizing" because it is partially true. But don't be. Because the part that is true is a generalization and the more important part that's not is that not all families DO NOT have problems like what you describe. And your "friend" wants you to feel guilty or that you're overreacting. Or even lying or showing off. You're not It's just her weird agenda. Hear it for what it is: gaslighting, minimizing and invalidation.
"Just don't think about it." A lifetime of abuse and neglect by narcissistic parents. Don't think (feel, remember) it. Right. Well, that's actually impossible. There's a psychological theory outlining how impossible. Ironic processing theory or the "white bear problem." If told not to think of a white bear, that's immediately what we think of. Trying not to think of something makes you think of it more. And cutsey adages like this are hypocritical because these same people cling like barnacles on to wrongs done to them. AND, been there, been forced to not think or feel. And that's why I'm in the mess today.
"Let go and let God." Love to. Problem is, it won't let me go. I've prayed to be released from endless, nightly trauma nightmares. And still they come. Does God have a plan? We're told He does. But me clicking my heels together and chanting this does about as much good as trying not to think of a white bear. And again, it's much easier preached than done. You let go and let God next time you're stuck in an abusive family system. Or any other impossible situation. What you seem not to get is that the damage was done from the womb. My mother thought it was funny to go out dancing and drinking at a bar when pregnant. For attention. And that was with her golden child. I can't imagine what she did when preggie with me. How is a fetus, infant or little child, groomed to serve her narcissist parents as God, supposed to differentiate between these evil deities and some benevolent one they are told loves them?
"Let it go. Forget about it. You're stuck in the past. You're dwelling on it." And other such ridiculous comments. One big problem with these judgmental shaming sayings is that they are just that, nonsensical preachy prattle. But you might be surprised at how often people trot them out, especially, weirdly, after you have just told them some outrageous thing your parents did. And you might also be shocked that THERAPISTS say this shit. To people who are trying to do just that. But then when you say that you want to forget, to bury the memories and be done, they turn around and say "you can't do that." Ummm, am I missing something here? One minute you are accusing me of purposely clinging onto past hurts and the next that it's impossible not to? WTF?
"You should just forgive." Oh, lovely. So now, you're accusing me of being unforgiving? Of cherishing some kind of resentment? What do you think I've been doing all these years but excusing, exonerating, covering for, blaming myself, taking responsibility for, their actions? If that's not forgiveness, please, tell me what is? AND THEY ARE NOT SORRY!! They've never even admitted to anything or they've just gaslit me that "it wasn't that bad. You're too sensitive. You're showing off. This is God's will that we abuse you." Even God doesn't forgive what hasn't been repented from. Yes, forgiveness is conditional not just a blanket to cover it up. So I have to give them what even God doesn't? Free license to keep abusing? Oh, you didn't meant that, huh? So tell me, what do you mean? Because if they aren't sorry, and you know what they did, it sounds to me like you're saying to turn a blind eye, pretend it didn't happen, say it's okay. And that is in direct contradiction to God's idea of forgiveness. AND I've always done that anyway. And look where it got me! Even more harmed. Because this, like all other toxic positivity, gets the order of operations wrong. It victim blames and shames and puts all the responsibility on them. Which is what our parents have always done to us.
"You have to make peace, be the bigger person, rise above." Hell, lady, it took me almost 6 decades to realize any of what they did was wrong. But now, before I've even begun to process it, when I have no self-care skills beyond trauma responses. When I'm destroyed by CPTSD, I still have to fix it? I don't even fully understand the full extent of the damage. I don't even know what that means (and neither do you) But I know that I have been keeping schtum, making peace, rising above and being the bigger person all my life. These are THE VERY TRAUMA RESPONSES that are killing! But the priority, according to you, is not me being healing but me tolerating more abuse. It's still and always about defending them at my expense. And, AND, after all their expectation, entitlement, manipulation, cruelty, I'm STILL the one who OWES THEM something? They stuck the dagger in and you're pushing it deeper telling me this.
"You're not going to like this but I'm going to be brutally honest, as your friend." This shit is said after you have just shared something super sensitive. Or it comes out of the blue. And it is twistedly passive-aggressive. I can feel my stomach tensing for the blow, just writing this. She sets you up to feel ashamed by predicting you won't like it. As if you are naughty child resisting her wise reproof. But you can read her motives in the fact that she says it precisely when you are vulnerable. She's neither honest, nor your friend. She is a bully and knows it. So she plays DARVO to make you think you're the problem.
"Cheer up." This might be the creepiest one of all for its insidiousness. It sounds affirmation-ish but it is actually imperative toxic positivity. The full statement is "you should cheer up." And what they also aren't saying is that they won't help you by doing kind things that might make you feel better. They're just scolding you. And who are they to dictate how you feel or should feel? No one knows what another person is feeling. Also, cheer is not a verb in this sentence. So it is nothing you can actually do. They don't care if you are depressed or not. They just want to feel guilty feel guilty for not being Rosie Sunshine at every moment. It is also insanely dismissive of your very real pain.
"Lighten up." This "cheer up" on crack. And again, what does it mean? I'm not the Lorax. I can't lift myself. It was said to me my dad, with his customary smug, supercilious finger-pointing. Ironically, after he had done or encouraged his wife or one of his shiny new kids to do yet another awful thing to me. Like I was doing something wrong by being, what too serious? They punished me if I didn't take their cruel punishment serious enough! And further, the "heaviest" more oversensitive, easily enraged, melodramatic man I ever knew, who routinely, since I was 5, described to me how he was planning to commit suicide, telling me I'm over-sensitive. Me who absorbed all their shit so they didn't have to, should lighten up???? He could strain at a gnat but told me to swallow a camel. I'm so saturated with their ick, it would be impossible to lighten up. And he knew it. The translation is "put up, shut up, paste on a perma-grin, bend over for more and like it." God forbid Jack actually feel or admit to doing his daughter wrong. Much easier to DARVO and make her feel suicidal.
So obviously, there's a lot wrong with each of these sayings. And with people who say them. But they reveal themselves as the self-righteous, hypocrisy they are by several facts. If you ask what they mean, they can never tell you. They only recite, never explain. "Rise above" what does that look like? It's nonsense. Wait, no not just nonsense. These are, hurtful, undermining, invalidating, condescending covert attacks. The person saying them does not care for you. They're trying to make themselves feel important by belittling you. And they NEVER actually take their own advice. The same people who preach peace, patience and rainbow pony poop, will in the next breath, bitch and moan about the most inconsequential petty gripes they've hung on to for decades. But don't you dare preach their advice back at them. Because they will DARVO and call YOU insensitive, cruel and nasty. They only hear what's wrong with this nonsense when it's said to them. They have two distinct sets of rules for you and for them.
It took me 61 years to begin to understand just how destructive these saying are. To hear the insidious shaming. And to see the folks who say them for what they are. And, too late, the brain damage is done. They've embedded in my core. The toxins poison my dreams. And I repeat them to myself, by default. I have to continually and consciously talk back to these voices, these flying monkeys in my head. And it is exhausting, debilitating and overwhelming.
So I challenge us all. If someone launches any of these missiles at us. Here them for what they are. And end the conversation and friendship there. Before they have a chance to take root. And start immediately to detox with healing affirmations. I'll blog more on that later.
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