Hello my friends. Today on my quest to heal from narcissist parent abuse, I'm looking at weird, disturbing fawn responses that narcissist parents hardwire into their scapegoat kids. For the first 60 years of my life, I didn't understand them. I knew they were strange. I felt stupid and angry with myself. I was afraid of and hated them. But I had no way to conceptualize or stop doing them. Because I couldn't see "into" them if that makes sense. I had frame of reference to source them. But learning that these were in fact trauma responses born of chronic childhood trauma brought on by four narcissist parents, provides a viewing window into their makeup.
Okay so what is the fawn response. It's one of the 4 F trauma responses: fight, flight, fawn and freeze. I add one more: fix. It's what we who have been abused, especially as kids, learn to do to avoid further harm. I won't say to stay safe. There is no safe place with a narcissist parent, especially the malignant dark tetrads I lived with. Fawning is my go to and also the most debilitating of the lot. Freezing so you stay small, running away from, even fighting back, ain't great. But fawning is deadly.
In the fawn response, the child, in the presence of danger, goes into people pleaser mode. Her only thought is subservience, groveling, kowtowing, humoring, placating, offering herself up to be kicked. Letting people use and abuse her, walk on her and trample her boundaries. In fact, the child does not set boundaries because she's learned that to do so will merit punishment from parents. Yes, they literally teach her NOT to take care of herself. Which is a complete heresy to good parenting.
The demanding all-consuming parents take everything from the child. They deny her the right to feel, think, want, need, to BE. Everything must be done by that child and only that child, for the good of others. She is to think only of what they want. She must be hypervigilant, awaiting the next command. She must anticipate and have ready whatever they demand. She abandons any idea that she exists outside them. She lives only to please others and very often that is at her own expense. It's not enough that they win, she must also lose.
If they are angry, it will always be her fault. They have to make it up as they go to preserve this narcissistic fantasy that they reign supreme and are above all rules and expectations. They are deities who must be obeyed. They are so far up their own asses that they look our their own mouths. And the poor child caught up in this is in the invidious position of constantly playing guess what we want now.
And then the rules change. Because, from my experience, I don't think it's so much about getting what they want as it is the narcissist power jolt they get from watching her confusedly trying to keep time with their constantly changing tune. So often I've been forced into baffling situations with my narcissist parents, in which one of them was sullen or passive-aggressively angry and I was clueless as to why. But it was all just somehow my fault. And then there were the times in which all was well. Everyone happy and WHAM!! A switch flipped and suddenly someone is pouting or livid with me and I have no idea why. It's the curve ball that comes from out of leftfield.
So I think it's malicious. Weaponized. Malignant. Done just to keep me on my toes. Or to see me fall. There were so many bewildering "gotcha" moments when one of my parents would suddenly "catch" me doing something. Like they were lying in wait, looking for problems. Because they were. I don't get it but they seemed to get satisfaction from seeing me fail. Problem is, I wasn't failing. I wasn't doing anything but innocently going about my work. I cannot remember ever having an nasty, rebellious, or spiteful thought against anyone least of all them. I kept my head down.
So I think they had to orchestrate shit to make me feel like I was screwing up. To justify their vicious rage. Or something. Because narcissists never take responsibility for their own actions. It has to be someone else's fault. And who better than a trusting, loving, kind-hearted child. She's raw meat. She's vulnerable because she is a little girl with no self care skills. She has to mind read what they want. And she usually gets it wrong, not for lack of trying, but because the get their kicks off from moving the target. Playing mind games. Setting her up to fail. Actually I'm surprised at how well I did keeping those households going for those lazy, useless, incompetent, screw-ups.
This sounds screwy and a bit paranoid. But then, parents parentifying a child, making her care for them, setting her up to fail is pretty messed up. And there are paranoid people in this equation but one ain't me. I'm been conditioned to be ultra-cautious but that's not paranoia. That's common sense. Children don't grow fearful for no reason. I was groomed to be afraid, very afraid. Terrified. Because I was terrorized by their out of nowhere, pointless, egregious, gratuitous, nonsensical wrathful vengeful, spiteful sneak attacks. And I was punished if I didn't demonstrate enough fear. Purposely. That's how they kept me in line. That and with constant chaos and stress and shame. And invalidation. And gaslighting and abuse and neglect and deprivation. Yes it is that bad.
But all this proves I'm neither making it up nor exaggerating. It was all such unnecessary overkill. I never gave them any trouble. I never questioned all the vile things they did. The deceit, hypocrisy, adultery, theft, child abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, forging doctors prescriptions and selling the Vicodin. You name it. I just did my best to survive. And I loved them, through it all. I stood up for and covered for them. I lied for them. I took their punishment and body blocked them.
I don't know why they made my life a living hell. But they did. And the reason I'm writing so much about it over the last few years is that I'm finally sorting out why I've been so miserably confused and alarmed. They were alarming. And they developed in me some very strange fawn responses that don't translate well elsewhere.
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