Hello my friends. Recovering from childhood trauma caused by narcissistic parent abuse, I'm learning a lot about myself and why I do what I do. I see how so much if not all of what I do is childhood trauma response conditioned by abuse and neglect. Recently I wrote how what looks like performative attention-seeking is hypervigilance to endless parent expectations. Today I'm looking at the vicious circle of abuse, trauma response and more abuse. Here are odd and awkward childhood trauma responses that enmeshed parents bred in us, which make us vulnerable to more abuse. We were prepared us to expect abuse. We are trapped in an endless loop of abuse, FOG (fear, obligation, guilt), self-blame, shame, trauma responses and then more abuse.
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Trauma Cost: "Pretzeling"
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We bend and twist ourselves into strange unhealthy positions to meet the "needs" of others—arrogant demands we were gaslit into believing were our responsibility.
"Pretzeling"
This odd behavior resembles metaphorically those circus contortionists. It's what childhood trauma victims do to both stay small and out of the way BUT ALSO activated to be of service. We reconfigure ourselves painfully into whatever they need us to be. Well, I say needs but they are more often just arrogant demands we were told we owed our narcissistic parents. My spine is a twisted mess from Cinderella-like fawn trauma responses and parentification to care for enmeshed, narcissistic parents and children at my own expense. And boy do narcissists exploit this handy feature of ours! They love having human pretzels always at their beck and call.
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The Backward Crab Shuffle
"It’s pretty hard to watch what you are doing when someone has disabled your protective mirrors and backup cam. It is literally destabilizing."
Backward crab shuffle
This the servile, bow and salaam we do placate implacable people. We "sir, yes, sir" and "no, ma'am" our way through life. It's a clumsy, dangerous move. I have fallen over things in my "backward crab shuffle" to avoid being in someone's way. No one ever cared if I got hurt. They'd just laugh and scorn my gracelessness. They tell me to watch what I was doing, but it's pretty hard to do that when someone has disabled your protective mirrors and backup cam. It's literally destabilizing. And it too is taken advantage of by pushy people who think they need the space you occupy more than you do. And yet childhood trauma survivors jump to accommodate anyone. It is a trigger switch for us.
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The "Self-check-out smile" is a jaw-clamp response to biting your tongue on years of chaos and neglect.
Self-check-out smile
That's what I call the weird trauma grimace I catch myself doing in security cameras or when I don't know I'm on camera. It's a pinched grimace childhood trauma response leftover from having to bite my tongue on abuse, chaos, stress, neglect, enmeshment, invalidation, endangerment, abandonment, parentification, triangulation and gaslighting by my narcissistic parents. It's painful to watch and to do. My jaw, cheeks and head ache from this DADT trauma response.
Loud noises break me
I am the jumpiest person I know. As a child, I couldn't stand loud noises. I was terrified at birthday parties if we played balloon popping games. The other kids loved them while I cowered and hid. Even drums in the parade sent me out of my skin. Thunder and fireworks were a trauma nightmare. It's hard to explain, but it's not fear. It's a visceral feeling that you are going to explode. It lives deep in our core and triggers a "hit the dirt" trauma response that gets called "overreacting" or "too sensitive" by those who don't understand. I lived in
Alaska as a child when they were testing the
Concorde. I've shared how my parents were usually nowhere to be found. And oh, the horror when that plane would fly by. I dreaded it. I can still feel that sickening revulsion when just the name Concorde was mentioned. Then when I went an air fair with my kids, and the
Stealth Bomber did a surprise fly-by, by kneejerk I went into the same panic mode. I pulled my kids to the ground. People were laughing. But it's no joke when childhood trauma has conditioned this shell shock.
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Childhood trauma victims must always be prepared but are never told what to prepare for. We hurl ourselves into fixing other people's fires that we didn't start.
Broken fire alarm flight response
Our security systems were always breached by narcissistic parents who trampled boundaries like grapes in a winery. Childhood trauma victims must always be prepared but are never told what to prepare for. We just hurl ourselves into doing whatever it is they told us to do. Even in my dreams, I'm always putting out other people's fires I didn't start. I'm fixing their user-created chaos. Endless gaslighting voices harangue me to do more, be more, give more, accept less, receive less.
Always hypervigilant, never-prepared Boy Scout
💰 The High Price of Hypervigilance
"Childhood trauma victims are little paratroopers always on jump but never trained or given proper equipment."
It's shocking and disgusting how unprepared we were to deal with all the impossible situations our narcissistic parents threw at us. Stuff they couldn't and wouldn't do. Stuff no one could do: all the household chores + cooking + childcare + child co-sleeping + school + homework plus anything else they didn't want to do. At 12 years old. I just hit the ground running each day, hungry, exhausted, improperly clothed and medically neglected. So I just carried this oddly subservient
people-pleasing into adulthood and got myself re-traumatized as thanks for all my trouble.
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