Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal childhood trauma responses from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm going to share toxic things malignant narcissist parents say. Beware of these red flags as they signal gaslighting, invalidation dehumanizing and toxic shaming. Just a disclaimer a few of these depend on context and others are just simply things no one should say, especially not parents to their children. They are all, when said by narcissists, hypocritical, devious, double standards. These people preach a lot to other people but never themselves. They say to do things but they do not do. That is part of what makes them toxic red flags. Also this is just a partial list which I've added to as I recall toxic things my narcissistic parents said to me.
You should/shouldn't (do, say, think this or that). This requires context but in general, should is a dangerous word, especially when it preface some thing a narcissist parent is saying to a child. And it's usually bass ackwards. What they tell us not to do, we usually should do and what they say not to do, we probably should.
Don't question me. Kids question. Kids are supposed to ask questions. It's how they learn. Narcissistic parents see even the most innocent of questions as a threat to their perceived superiority and authority. However they are not superior and very often have not earned the authority they wield. By their behavior, we know that they don't take responsibility for themselves which is the driver behind any good authority figure. They just like to order their child around. If I'd questioned my parents more, instead of just exonerating and excusing their bad behavior, I'd be a lot healthier person now.
You must (obey, comply). Must is a big red flag word word because it implies the person saying has power to force the child to do something. They don't. It is the child's choice to obey, just as it is the parents' choice to obey those in authority over them (which they struggle a lot with and that's why they like to throw their weight around). And really what good is forced compliance? It doesn't teach anything but unthinking obedience. Children are autonomous whether parents like it or not. We all are. They should be allowed to use their autonomy to make their own choices as much as possible and be taught ways to do that safely.
You need to/ you have to. No. The fact is we don't have to do anything, as children or adults. It might be better if we do. There may be consequences if we don't. But you cannot coerce compliance. Parents with the "you have to" mindset show their own immaturity. They also often prove they themselves defy authority inappropriately. Most narcissistic people don't cooperate, accept authority or and don't take criticism gracefully. While telling their child they have to. And those that browbeat, hound, bully and punish independent thought are disturbed control freaks. And what we know of control freaks is that they do not control their own behavior. They are chaotic loose cannon. Call me contrary, but I always see commands as challenges. It makes me want to go out of my way to do the opposite. And that is the red flag of "must, have to." It pushes children in the opposite direction. Much better to help a child determine through common sense and logic what are the healthiest courses of action.
You always/You never. Beware of the many red flags in generalizations, which narcissistic parents spew out. Generalizations are almost always dangerous because they illogical, uninformed and exaggerated. Along with this are the "everyone, no one, us and them" generalizations. Life is just not that binary and those who think it is tend to be very short-sighted and ignorant. And generalizations are usually used against a child. You won't hear narcissistic parents say "you always do such a good job. They says things like "you always screw up, you never listen to me." Which ludicrous hypocrisy. Usually it's the parent screwing up and never listening. Relying on generalizations and exaggerations is very poor parenting.
You owe me. Said no good parent ever. We don't want our children doing things out of a false sense of FOG (fear obligation and guilty) This is flat out gaslighting, DARVO (deny responsibility, attack, reverse victim offender) and an admission that the parents themselves are not fulfilling their obligations to the child. Our children owe us nothing. We owe our children. Any parent that gets those order of operations wrong, is clearly weaponizing the power differential for narcissistic supply.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Shame on you. I'm ashamed of you. This is straight out of the Crappy Parenting 101 textbook. No matter what the child has done wrong, shaming is the worst thing a parent can do. It's a sign of lazy parenting too. My mother routinely shamed me like this. But she never once identified what it was I was supposed to feel ashamed about. So I just felt ashamed for everything. I literally did not know right from wrong (safe from unsafe, etc). because I was taught I was always wrong. And very often, I would later find, she was the one who had done the shameful thing but was shame-shifting it on to me. And she never showed any signs of feeling remorse.
You're disobedient. Another generalization the narcissist parent uses to gaslight and invalidate the child. Not "you sometimes disobey" "you ARE disobedient" as if I was the embodiment of it, and again, never made good choices. To make it worse I was never told what obedience was supposed to look like. I was supposed to just guess. And expectations changed all the time. It usually meant serving, kowtowing to, dancing attendance on my narcissistic parents and their families. Berng religious narcissists they equated obeying them with obeying God which in non-narcissistic parents is kind of true. But narcissists expect you idolize THEM AS GODS. Which is contrary to the entire Bible.
You're disloyal. Oooo, this is a major red flag. One problem with traumatized kids is that we were made to be loyal to people we shouldn't have been. Loyalty involved silence about abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation and a host of other illegal and unethical parent behavior. And ironically, narcissistic parents are incredibly disloyal to their children. They kick them to the curb, favor their new people over their kids and do all manner of betrayal and sabotage to the child.
Keep that secret. This one goes with the disloyal red flag. No child should keep a parent's dirty secrets, especially those that involve the child in dangerous situations. They implicate her in all sorts of shady stuff. And paradoxically, narcissist parents never keep a child's secrets but should. They blat private things they know will embarrass just to watch her squirm. That's sick.
Because I said so. Parents can play this card only in very specific situations like when there is an emergency and no time to explain. Narcissistic control freak parents play it all the time. They never explain and usually can't give good reasons why the child should listen to them. This is gaslighting and coercive. The child complies because she thinks the parents know what's best, even when they have demonstrated they don't.
You have no right to (question me, ask questions, ask me for something, expect something) Oh, but we do. The child has every right to expect care, love, nurturing and support. That right is conferred at birth. In fact, that's one way malignant narcissistic parents gaslight, invalidate and dehumanize children is by claiming to be able to strip them of their unalienable rights. And by preventing us from exercising our rights.
You have no business (insert thing) My mother relied on this red flag gaslighting to confuse me about what was and wasn't in my purview. And also what was and wasn't normal child behavior. It goes along with the you have no right to" or "you can't." It dehumanizes by making the mother appear to have power over the child to dictate, to grant or remove a child's basic rights. She'd use this to coerce me into subservience to her lazy, unemployed, mooching, abusive to me, live-in boyfriend (who wasn't even legally supposed to be living in our house) as if he were my father and head of the household and ruler of the world. She just spun things to suit her narrative.
You know better than to do that. Another of my mother's favorite gaslighting tricks was to shame me into feeling stupid, inept and a failure. Actually, no mom, I don't know better because you didn't teach me AND more importantly you led by example how to do this thing you say I should know better than to do. YOU are the one who knows better and YOU are the one who should not be doing the terrible things you do.
You're lying. That's not what you said before. You're making that up. Or some such gotcha type backstabbing. It comes out of the blue. They find because they looking for contradictions in what you said not because you were being purposely shady, or shady at all. They point out what they call flaws strictly to humiliate you preferably when people are hearing. And make no mistake. This is every bit the entrapment and betrayal it feels like. They act like KGB agents waterboarding you into confessing some deep, dark secret. And because you never expected them to twist your words and use them against you, you were honest and genuine. You didn't know they would leverage what you said to prove some weird conspiracy theory against you. You don't even recall what you did say and it certainly wasn't a lie or contradiction. Because traumatized kids do not machinate and plot and deceive like their narcissistic parents do.
Gotcha! And on that note let's talk about how malignant narcissistic parents set up and orchestrate situations to make you fall. They do it with pranking, entrapment, set ups and ambushes. So they can say "gotcha" and make fun of you. This goes along with the previous one. And you never expect it because what parent wants to humiliate her child? Who wants to set up a child to fail? A malignant narcissistic parent trying to throw suspicion off her own disingenuous behavior. You need to know that this is maliciously cruel and a sign of a very toxic person.
You're always angry. Generalizing, DARVO, blame-shifting. Funny how narcissistic parents trot this out so often but they never address HOW THEY anger, frustrate, confuse and lead the child astray. My parents gaslit me that I was the angry one when they were all always seething with rage and setting me up to be angry by depriving, stealing from, lying to and lying about me. Actually I wasn't nearly as angry as I should have been given the way they treated me.
You're showing off and attention seeking They used this all the time. They had an insulting comeback for everything I did or said, no matter how innocent. There was no breaking even, let alone winning. When I sang in the bathroom my dad said I was just showing off and fishing for compliments. I didn't even know he was listening. It took my husband asking me, at 61 years old, what the hell my dad was doing in the bathroom with me in the first place, for me to start exploring what was wrong with that. He also pointed out that my dad was a big show off with his violin and posturing preaching. But I never saw it till now. I believed my narcissistic father that I was just an attention-seeking show off.
You can't do that. This one has it's own post but let me just explain it. It occurred to me after hearing a talk by Dr. Ramani or Jerry Wise (can't remember which but both have had good points to make about the issue), that narcissistic parents run us down all the time. They nit pick, find fault and dehumanize us to the point where we feel helpless. Instead of encouraging, they actually, no lie, tell us we can't do things we can. Things we've never even tried. They enfeeble us and zap our confidence. So pretty soon we believe we can't. And the worst part is that they are so convincingly arrogant that we never question it. I was shocked hearing that YouTube podcast how often I'd allowed my parents to dictate my abilities to me. It insane. They have no basis nor authority for saying such demeaning things yet they speak with confident swatter that you accept that they know things you don't. They DO NOT. They are talking shit out of their asses. Sorry to be crude this just enrages me how many traumatized kids have believed their lunatic narcissistic parents. How we let them limit us, clip our wings and cripple us.
When you hear someone say any of these things, stop and take a long look at what they are doing. Just saying, normal loving good people don't talk this way. It's the malignant narcissists trying to undermine our confidence. Please, see these red flag comments for the invalidation, dehumanizing and destruction they are.
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