Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery odyssey, I'm going to talk about why we let narcissists, particularly narcissistic parents hurt us so much. Why do we care, invest, agonize over people who never cared for, invested in or worried about us? Why do we let them get away with their entitled, arrogant, hypocritical abusive behavior? Why don't we just go no contact and be done with it? It's because that we have practiced virtues and habits we were told were good, that are dangerous for children of narcissists. These "beatitudes" trap us into tolerating and even believing we deserve, their abuse. They are just more twisted, self-serving, gaslighting lies fed to us by our narcissistic parents, religion, society, even psychology.
Never giving up
We were told how important "stick-to-it-ivenss" was. How giving up is failure. So we toughed out endless cycles of parent cruelty. We never quit on them. Yet we never stopped to think how they had given up on us, let us down, failed and bailed on us. And yet we keep investing in these people. We keep on keeping on, in these one-sided relationships and our parents keep dropping the ball again and again. Because they have trauma bonded us into their service.
Being a good girl
What this even means, no one said. So it meant different things to different people. And how that has been perverted and abused by our narcissistic parents. To some it meant us letting them get away with abuse, neglect, abandonment and never saying anything. It was exploited to include every weird, inappropriate demand imaginable. It meant people pleasing, kowtowing, tolerating intolerable things, keeping dirty secrets and staying small. All while my parents were badly behaved, arrogant, haughty, trouble-making bullies. But I kept trying to be perfect to compensate for their misdeeds. I didn't learn till recently that this just made them worse. As we keep taking the consequences for them and bowing lower, they keep adding demands and moving hoops we're expected to hop through. And sadly we don't realize till it's too late, if ever, that we were never going to please them anyway. We could never be a good enough girl.
Conscientiousness
Every report card I ever got always praised me for being conscientious. I was called "mature." I followed through on promises, obligations and responsibilities. I paid debts. Turns out a lot of those weren't mine to do. My parents had parentified me with FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) into doing their jobs for them. With no payment or reciprocity. But it was too late. I was already a mini adult by age 5 and serving immature, demanding, whiny brat parents who future faked, broke promises and let me down as a matter of course.
Responsible
Another kudo I heard a lot which came back to bite. People said that being reliable, taking charge, doing the heavy lifting, was a good thing. And just another thing my narcissistic parents (all four of them) exploited to make me their forever servant, skivvy, scapegoat, surrogate spouse and parents, primary caregiver, live-in free nanny, provider. I was their Broken Vending Machine Child, dispensing treats right and left and never getting any coins put in. 
Helpful
Another virtue ruined by enmeshed boundary-crashing parents who expected us to fulfill every need, want, whim they had. Not only did my parents use me a slave, they enslaved me to their new partners and all their new kids. While being were very unhelpful to me. They didn't do bare minimum of caregiving, assisting, supporting me. They failed to provide basic necessities like shelter, a home, a proper bed, food, clothing, medical care. All the while pampering themselves and demanding that I pamper them.
Fortitude
This virtue of "strength" and endurance is praised in adults. In children of narcissists, it is exploited. Many of us had to be too strong, endure too much, awful things that would fell an adult. There's no soldier that has faced anything so traumatizing as the vile deeds of malignant narcissist parents. We can never leave the front line. Our war never ends. Our battle scars never heal. And society just turns a blind eye and calls it normal. And we go on enduring long past the point of no return. We keep reforming scars that they keep reopening.
Courage
To continue the "warrior" metaphors, courage and bravery mean very different things when applied to abused kids. Being brave for us means keeping quiet about things we should be shouting from the rooftops. It means absorbing parent toxicity and shouldering burdens we never should have had to. It means letting nasty people repeatedly hurt us and having nothing to protect ourselves with. Being told self-defense is disobedient and self-care is selfish. It means trauma responding and betrayal blindness. It means being coercively controlled, stolen from, taken advantage of and having to roll over for it all.
Resilience
It makes me sick when people parrot this stupid axiomatic nonsense about how kids are so resilient. They're not. They are young, impressionable and easily manipulated. They don't just "bounce back" from chaos, abuse and trauma. The people who tout this just prove that they are abusing the child's innate trust. Narcissistic parents, who are self-pitying, grudge-holding, spiteful whiners who never get over anything, assure themselves of their child's resilience, so they can sleep at night. But it's bullshit.
Humility
Ugh, how I hate how this seemingly positive virtue gets twisted. We get told to be humble by arrogant Machiavellian hypocrites who ride herd over everyone. Who never submit with grace to any authority. Who demand subservience and never serve anyone. Traumatized kids humble themselves too much as our parents walk all over us. What we believed was humility was humiliation. They mocked us and told us we're too sensitive. Our insensitive oversensitive parents do unspeakably things and tell us we're attention-seeking and overreacting if we react to it. Then they get their feelings hurt over the least little narcissistic injury.
Trust
Good in general, bad in specific. Because trust shouldn't be given until earned. Yet we were expected to trust strangers who had proved to be dangerous, because our parents got mad if we didn't. We were expected to trust our parents and believe the best of them despite them breaking faith and showing us that they did not have our best intentions at heart. They used us for their own ends and abused our trust.
Obedience
Funny how disobedient people tell everyone they should obey. Rule-breakers and those who feel themselves above the law, are very quick to "enforce" their own user-created rules on others. This is gaslighting 101. And we poor kids believed that obeying was a good thing. And it sure as hell was dangerous not to. Little did we know it would "break us" and make us into doormats.
Selfless giving
My selfish parents loved to browbeat me with a lot of religious mumbo-jumbo about how God said I had to give and give and not count the cost. This applied only to me. They counted every cent they gave me, which wasn't much. They said I "owed them" for being given life. And then reminded me they owed me nothing, not even basic care. That parenting was some kind of choice they chose not to do. But I had to parent them. "Family does for family" meant I had to pay out with no thought of repayment but when I needed anything, suddenly "family" expected repayment in full, with interest, literally.
Hard Work
Ever notice how some people brag, from their easy chairs, about how hard they work, and compare it to "others" who are so lazy. A traumatized kid like me could never see the irony in that. I never admitted that these same people were deadbeats who expected to be waited on by the same people they called lazy. And excuse me, raising my hand here, there's no hard worker like a child who is made to serve and parent her parents. The hours I logged mopping floors on hands and knees, vacuuming, ironing, dusting, washing dishes, laundry, cooking, co-sleeping and waking up with their kids so they could "get their rest." The list goes on.
Devotion and Dedication
Sounds good in theory. But simple problem here is we were too dedicated to people who dedicated nothing to us. We were too devoted, devoted too much time and energy to, people who were faithless.
Discipline
The paradox here is that we were too self-disciplined and then harshly and punitively punished by our undisciplined, erratic, chaotic, self-righteous parents. What they called "discipline" was beating, slapping, depriving, excluding, humiliating, shaming, goading, bullying, harassing, setting up, attacking, raging at, lying to and about, smear campaigns against us, scapegoating, emotionally blackmailing us. I still to this day, feel so ashamed of myself for things they said I did that I can't recall ever imaging let alone doing.
Respect
Again, it's the most disrespectful hypocrites who demand respect as their right, which they have not earned from others. Normal people never talk much about all this respect we're supposedly entitled to. We just go about the business being respectful. And then kids of narcissists take it too far. We do all kinds of self-harming things in the name of respecting others. We let them abuse us. We don't know that respect shouldn't hurt. And the self-respect is important too.
Sacrifice
Another one-way street we drive on. We were never sacrificed for, by our parents whose job it really was to do. We were groomed on this crazy idea, that "family" meant making sacrifices. And so we did, never considering how few if any were made for us. Or that parents are the ones who sacrifice, not kids. But if you are the scapegoat, you're also the sacrificial lamb.
Loyalty
I hate this word. It means nothing. It's a non-sequitur that gets misused all the time to create a false sense of obligation. Try to define loyalty. It's difficult to do without implying that it's something we owe. And narcissistic parents used it to gaslight us into believing we had to line up and sign up for every scam they tried to sell us. While being very disloyal to us. Narcissistic parents "cheat on" their kids at every turn. They use this blanket loyalty we're said to owe them, to justify very immoral, unethical, illegal, dangerous abuse.
Their mantra is: No matter what I'm doing, no matter how bad, you have to approve and stand by it.
Forgiveness
This is more observed in the breach with narcissists. They demand forgiveness without apologizing, being sorry or changing their behavior. They tell us it's carte blanche we have to give them. And they use forgiveness as a license to continue abusing us. And they never forgive us. They bring up every little mistake every chance they get. They have amnesia about their elephantine wrongs, and the memory of an elephant for anyone else's slightest error.
Thought for Today
Healing begins by seeing how these concepts or good habits of ours, were used against us. It means radical acceptance that people we thought were safe, weren't. It includes defining these terms correctly, applying them fairly to others and not just to ourselves. It means we start expecting them in return. It means we stop giving out goodies without remuneration, like a broken vending machine.
It means we start, one day at a time, to practice self-care, to protect ourselves from further hurt, that we find a way to get out of their target, whatever that needs to look like.
Permission Slip for Self-Healing
I, __________________________, hereby grant myself permission to:
- Stop being the "Broken Vending Machine" for those who do not invest in me.
- Set firm boundaries without feeling guilty or responsible for others' reactions.
- Prioritize my own peace over someone else's manufactured drama.
- Redefine "good habits" to serve my own health, not someone else's agenda.
- Accept that my healing is a priority, not a transgression.
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