Hello my friends. If you follow this blog you know that I'm on a journey to heal from narcissist parent abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, coercion, scapegoating, toxic invalidation and gaslighting about it all. And today I want to focus on a very powerful and dangerous double-pronged tool that narcissist parents wield, to keep their abused kids in line. And these are the dual weapons of forcing secret keeping on kids while simultaneously violating the child's privacy (telling their secrets).
The danger of this weapon lies both in the hypocritical, double standard duality and the manipulative, Machiavellian cruelty with which the narcissist parent enslaves her child. The narcissist parent passive-aggressively, and sometimes aggressively, forces the child, by shaming and blaming, to keep her own dirty, ugly secrets while at the same time, breaking the child's innocent and realistic confidences.
And by a narcissist parent's dirty secrets, I don't mean little indiscretions. I mean filthy, hurtful, purposeful, blatant, often illegal, always immoral and unethical behaviors which the parent is engaging in. Frequently, these involve the parent endangering or harming the child in some way. The parent uses an insidious combination of shame, blame-shifting, DARVO (deny attack reverse victim and offender) subtle attacks, deprivation of essentials, terrorizing, bullying, bringing in other people to strong arm, evasions, lies, gaslighting and other thug tactics to coerce the child into compliance and silence.
Interestingly, the parent may not actually keep her own behaviors that secret. My mother was pretty, in yo face about her own misdeeds. She moved her boyfriend into her foster care home, knowing she could lose her license. She left me to tend them for days at a time. She left me to wander streets alone from around age 4. She openly carried on affairs with married men. And continued, to proudly preach the "good news" to people and to play the organ in church.
She stole from people and scammed them. And then freely lied and invented stories when it suited. She made up all kinds of nonsense to keep me quiet and biddable, a lot of it framing me as responsible for her bad behavior. Or herself as the Godly heroine savior. She told me that she was "ministering" to her married boyfriend because his wife was "mean." And being 8 and loving and her child, I fell for it. She was vocally and sneeringly contemptuous of anyone else's infidelity, however. She who paraded around in bikini and mini skirts would loudly decry other women dressing this was as "immoral." It was that blatantly hypocritical.
I've never been quite sure how she managed to juggle this openly double life, to con other people into going along with it or at least turning blind eyes, to do all this without getting caught. I think she wove a web of lies in which she told different versions to different people, depending what served her purpose best. I see now that her lack of compunction or shame made her oddly convincing. I've heard it said that narcissists feel a lot of inward shame. I can tell you from experience, my mother never did and never has. I don't know whether she felt any remorse but I never saw any. I think she was just really good an knowing how to avoid getting caught. BUT remorse or not, I KNOW she'd have come unglued if I'd told my grandparents for example that she and her boyfriend made out in our kitchen before I went to school. Or any one of the other inappropriate, irresponsible and uncomfortable things she did.
So I walked this tightrope thin existence in which I had to juxtapose all the chaos in the various homes I lived, the revolving door of people in and out, the upheaval, the constant moves, the shifting scenarios, with the mostly normal, consistent, traditional families around me. I had no space, no privacy, no safe place to call my own. I don't even recall a bedroom or meals together for the first seven or eight years of life. I don't know what my parents did or if they worked. I don't recall doing much of anything with them and as an only child, that meant lots of time alone.
I remembering my parents and I squatting in a lot of places. And living off the kindness of strangers. I don't recall holidays with them, just grandparents. It boggles my mind still at how utterly and gratuitously weird my family life was. I say gratuitous because neither one of my parents needed to move as often as they did, married, single and dating or remarried. It wasn't job related. They just did as they pleased and dragged me along for the ride. I remember my grandparents chiding them for being so, irresponsible, saying that it wasn't good for me to be shunted from pillar to post. That they needed to settle down, get a job and create a proper homelife. As if my parents were two wayward teenagers instead of grown adults with a child.
So when I say my "normal" looked nothing like anyone else's normal, it's not exaggeration. All my immediate family groups and I had several iterations: Mom and dad married. Mom and dad married but dad wandering around in Alaska and mom going through a string of men. Then them divorced, single and dating. Dad disappearing for a few years. Mom with boyfriends. Mom with new husband, Dad with girlfriend and then remarried. And then with new families of which I was allowed to be part of but only as a unpaid staff.
Back and forth, and back again. I was what I now have a term for: hidden homeless. No one I (or anyone I've talked to) lived anything like such a chaotic, unpredictable upheaval I called life. The only thing predictable was unpredictability. I'd come home from school to find my dad or mom packing up to move. No warning. Sometimes it was just me they were moving out. At last count (because I keep recalling more) I'd lived, between them all, in 34 places by age 20. And not just being pushed around but being made to feel like I was the cause of the chaos. It was my fault they had to move me.
All malignant narcissist nonsense, I see now. Sort of. I still hear a cacophony of old blaming shaming voices. And it breaks my mind still that the double standard of trying to maintain normalcy in what was literally utter bedlam. Because again, no one had the faintest clue about chaos on this level. Not family, friends, school mates, neighbors. No one. Of any age, socio-economic background, religion, cultural group. Not one single person. Which makes it bitterly lonely. And coupled with several facts that made it so much worse.
First, my life was so abusively stressful and awful that people would have had difficulty believing my stories if I had told them. They do now. I get a lot of toxic positivity nonsense about how well, they are your family. We're sure they loved you and did the best they could. To the people who say that, I say, you cannot have been listening to what I've said. Because if you had, you would have also had to admit you've never heard a story like this. And if you can defend the needless, weaponized, malignant hell they put me through, then I don't want to know you.
Am I trying to compete for a Craziest Childhood Award? I know, you my readers probably aren't accusing me of that. BUT this is another part of what makes trying to heal so difficult. People really do accuse you of nonsense like this. They go right into victim shaming and defending the narcissist parent. It sickens me that the few times I've reached out for help. Or just didn't cover for my parents and told the truth, I've met with such condescending scorn and criticism. Like I should be ashamed of having been mistreated as a child? Like I should just put up and shut up. Been there done that all my life!!! And that is why I'm so shell-shocked by CPTSD now. Oh and if you're gonna gaslight me with your sententious claptrap, just move along. I've been gaslit all my life by people much better at it than you. And I now know it for what it is.
I don't know why people do this. What end does it serve them to make excuses for abusers? But they do, time and again. And this used to keep me silent. Because the narcissist parent KNOWS people will do this. They know their behavior is so egregiously awful that most people will not believe the child. And they coerce the child with threats like this. That she'll look like a fool. Or be betraying the family. And they have also bullied, deprived and beaten the child down for so long that she has no resistance or strength. They keep her in an exhausted, ill, in pain, cold, hungry and ergo confused state.
I recall being tired all the time as a child. Pictures show me half asleep. I could never keep up with sports because I had chronic ENT issues and trouble breathing. I had undiagnosed sleep apnea which my mom and her boyfriend made fun of and my dad and his wife ignored while making me co-sleep with their babies. They gave cast off mattresses or made me sleep on the floor on unheated porches. I have always had chronic nightmares which again, no one cared about. They just cared that they didn't have to be bothered with their other children. I was always left in charge of kids, even overnight. I had early onset arthritic conditions for untreated scoliosis, spina bifida and congenital hip dysplasia.
I had a constant sore throat that went untreated by my neglectful parents (who took very good care of themselves). I had multiple reinfections of strep throat each year. Strep throat can be deadly, just saying. Many of the conditions I have now were caused by lack of basic care then. And so, the toxically positive person might say, oh well you're family probably couldn't afford better. Oh snap silly me, why didn't I think of that. Because they were not poor. I was. They are well fed, well rested and had all they needed and more. They all have expensive hobbies, new cars, nice homes. None of them went without and they did this at my expense.
So by depriving a child and keeping her sick and tired, they also keep her too exhausted to fight back. It's similar to the POW camp mentality of wearing people down. And meanwhile they are full of narcissistic energy. They can keep this up indefinitely. While the child is prematurely aging they are getting more and more immature as time goes by and they get away with their crap. It's fucking mental how sick and deviant these egomaniacs are. They go from strength to strength by feeding off their child's soul.
And how do they fly all this under society's radar? They break her down with terrorist tactics. They use explosive and sullen anger, violence, rage, undermining, smear campaigns, ganging up, backstabbing, set ups, triangulation, scapegoating, humiliation, gaslighting, ambushes, deceit, DARVO, isolation, overwork and deprivation. They keep her in constant state of fear, obligation and guilt. They use her own natural empathy against her, dumping all their ick on her and forcing inappropriate confidences that make her uncomfortable. They throw themselves endless pity parties at which mandatory attendance is required.
And then they gull a child into keeping quiet about this. They use that arsenal I listed in the previous paragraph, to coerce her into silence. How often did I hear who will believe you? (well, since I've never said anything, why are you asking.) You're making it up. You're exaggerating. You brought it on yourself (which is it, it didn't happen and I'm lying or I brought it on myself. Cant' have both). You're the problem. You owe us. You're our child. We don't owe you. You have to obey my boyfriend. It's your fault. You're just jealous (of you and your creepy boyfriend, mom, mmm nope) You're too sensitive. You are too critical (when I didn't say a damn thing). You can't take criticism (meaning our spiteful, below the belt digs). On and on.
Which brings me to the second prong of that secret weapon that narcissist parents use to keep their scapegoat in line. As I've outlined, it's incredibly risky to make a child keep secrets. Especially if it involves the adult endangering the child in some way. Which so often, parents who bind their kids to silence are doing. Healthy parents do not require their children "not to tell" this or that. We don't even have phrases like "what happens here, stays here" in our repertoire. Now, having said that, I think there are some things kids just know by common sense are private.
But a parent making the home some kind maximum security unit and the family some kind of secret society is a big red flag that something is wrong. The child wouldn't be made to hide something if there wasn't something the parent was ashamed of. And they wouldn't insist on secrecy unless they knew it was something illegal, immoral, dangerous or in some way actionable. And that the people the child would tell would question, confront or even report the parent on. The fact that the parent is only concerned with exposure and not with the child's well-being, tells me that is a person who should not be trusted. Which just screams something the kid needs help with.
But having said that, children also need to know that they have a right to keep some things private and they should be respected by grownups. The distinction is whether the child's secret could be hurtful to her to keep or whether it is something she needs parental help dealing with. The fact that she wet her pants at school is something about which a good parent would want to find out details, to help her. WAs it an accident or maybe a bladder infection? It is NOT something that anyone else needs to know.
A good parent explains to the child why she is for example, seeking medical advice for her daughter on bedwetting. The parent also takes responsibility for anything she might do or have let others do, to cause the bedwetting. But a child should not be taken into an adult's confidence on things she is too young to understand or do anything about. Am I saying there are two sets of rules for kids and parents? Yes. Because children do not weaponize secrets while adults can and do.
An example. I was sexually harassed and then assaulted, several times once by a teen boy my mother had brought into her foster care (against a lot of good advice I might add) He had a history of sexual assault and she knew it. She then left him alone with me to "make friends." He acted so creepy that my friends' parents told her to make him knock it off. So she sent us inside while she and her boyfriend went to their room in the basement. He tried to rape me on the bed but I managed to get out. Needless to say I was horrified and disgusted. Something in me warned me not to tell my mom as she had made things worse at others times like this.
Well, I should have listened. Because my mother was not angry with him. She was mad at me. Because he would now have to go back to Child Haven. I see now what I didn't see then, that with him leaving she'd have to explain why or lie. Either way, some of the other illegal things going on in our home would come to light. First of all that she had her unvetted boyfriend and her brother and his girlfriend living with us. Anyway, she told me not to tell anyone. Not as I see now, to protect me. But because she didn't want to get called out. I readily agreed. God, I didn't want to think of it let alone speak of it.
I guess I assumed she'd keep my secret. But no, she weaponized it for her own sick, twisted agenda. She announced AT THE DINNER TABLE IN FRONT OF EVERYONE what had happened. And that she was proud of her boyfriend (!!) for how HE had handled me being sexually abused! All he had done was to tell the kid he had to go. She praised him like he'd fucking liberated Dunkirk. He who did not belong there in the first place and who was sexually abusive himself. I've never felt so much like dying as I did then. And indeed, went into a pretty dark fugue after that. And no one who could help, ever knew. How could I ever tell them? A child has no words for this. And what if, they, like mommy dearest, blamed me?
These kinds of shockingly horrible cruelty (and this is only one of many) are why I call these people malignant. You cannot make up trauma like this. There is no precedent for it. Even the Bible hails a mother's love as the last hope. So what do you do when your mother not only doesn't protect you but brings the abuser into your inner sanctum and then stabs you in the back and exploits in to win favor with her boyfriend? There's no reason for it save spiteful evil. And yet, AND YET, she managed to make me believe it was all my fault.
It's shit like this that slowly but surely sucks the life out of child. Over and over again, they make and break promises and then say they never said that and you are lying. They future fake. They flip everything cockeyed and then do it again till you don't know which end is up. They play pity cards to make you feel sorry for them and want to protect them. They make it clear they have no responsibility to protect you. They make you feel lucky by bread crumbing you with shit that isn't even nourishing. It's sickening. They "confide" all kinds of disgusting, inappropriate, dirty stuff because poor them, they have no one to talk to but you. It makes you sick and you can never unhear or unknow it again. It ruins intimacy and childhood and innocence for you. It feels a lot like being prostituted out by your pimp mom.
Some of it is illegal but now that you know, you're stuck, damned if you tell, damned if you don't. They beat you and the younger children and tell you that it's not abuse. They make you complicit. They cheat and steal and leave in the middle of the night. She dumps on you how her husband is so cruel. You're afraid, not for yourself as you should be but for them. You spend the rest of your life, until and hopefully, you get out, worrying only for her. It's ALL ONLY and EVER about what Nancy, Jack, Ginny and Bill want. You pay with resources you don't have because they have stolen all from you. You give blood and self and lifeforce.
And they take and take and like Wendigos are never satisfied. The child becomes only a worker bee in the hive with no personhood of her own. Everything must be sacrificed at the narcissist parent's altar. And if they are all narcissists, the child has no ally. She just gives up on herself and throws everything she has into dancing to their tune. Nothing is ever enough. The child keeps giving long after everything she has has run out. She's so burned out she doesn't even know. I was moving and breathing but I had died on the inside. I was a mask with two empty eye sockets.
AND because all this is so diametrically opposed to normal, healthy parenting and childhood, that no one expects it. My husband still tries to figure out why and how my parents could have done these outrageous things. I think it's because he's trying to think like a malignant narcissist with the brain of a caring, loving person. And that is impossible. There is no excuse for them or their behavior. The only way I can frame it is to say that everything is flip-flopped. Good that the child does is labeled bad. Parents' bad, dangerous, unethical behavior is called good. And right and godly. God help the child of the religious malignant narcissist. We are well and truly screwed.
We have no where to turn. Because even GOD was broken for us. We learned our parents were God. And so their nasty, hypocritical, self-serving, Machiavellian cruelty was our version of God. I can and have read the Bible till I'm weary and I can't erase the image of my angry, selfish, demanding, mind-fuck of a father was and is God. That my manipulative, underhanded, two-faced mother is God. That sounds blasphemous because it is. But it wasn't me preaching the blasphemy. I just had the dumb luck to be born into it.
But to get even a fraction of this, I don't even know what to call it, garbage out of us, would be impossible. A surgeon couldn't do it with the tiniest of instruments. Because trauma is embedded at the cellular level in us. The surgeon would end up cutting out any good to get at the malignancy. It's diffuse. Have you even seen that computer cleaning gel stuff? It's a clear polymer that collects yuck and absorbs it into itself. You cannot remove the yuck once it's inside because it's part of the gel mass now. That's how childhood trauma events are for us. Stuck.
The gel at some point will not longer be able to pick up yuck because it is saturated and no longer sticky. That's what life is for traumatized children. The constant traumatizing and retraumatizing of the childhood brain zaps its plasticity. As we age it becomes more and more set. I try to make progress healing. But I am aware that at least 70% of the yuck is stuck for good.
And that makes me sad.
