Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm looking at one very disturbing hypocritical demand that enmeshed narcissistic dads bully their daughters with. Trigger warning: this gets dark.
Enmeshed dad and daughter dynamic
Actually that term "dynamic" is misleading when describing the relationship between narcissistic parents and scapegoat children. It implies reciprocity and a dual two-way street. But narcissistic parents see children as possessions not people. And while the relationship is one-sided (with all good things coming from the child to the parent and none coming back to the child), the parents mandates two sets of rules that serve only himself and that shift according to his whims. And this power differential is at its worst with narcissistic fathers and scapegoat eldest daughters.
Dangerous sociopathic dark tetrad meets innocence
This frightening malignant narcissist father uses passive-aggressive and aggressive intimidation tactics and sneak attacks to terrify his child into compliance. He crashes any boundaries she may, have stooping even to bizarre privacy invasions that seem like sexual harassment (because they are). It really is that bad. He nags, belittles, scolds, insults, mocks, scorns and humiliates his daughter using ambushes and set-ups. But because he is her dad, biologically, she trusts him. Trauma bonding causes betrayal blindness.
Eldest Daughter Syndrome
Eldest daughter syndrome while not a DSM-5 classification is nevertheless a real problem experienced by oldest daughters even in healthy families. Girls in my generation and earlier were more often parentified and infantilized. Being the "weaker sex" we were ironically made to do the family's heavy lifting. We had to be mini adults, show emotional maturity too quickly, (often being more mature than our parents). We were scapegoated and given too many responsibilities that oldest boys who tended to be the golden child, didn't have. And eldest daughters in dysfunctional families are particularly at risk. By childhood trauma stems from being raised by four narcissistic parents, two bio, two stepparents. Being the oldest and only child and a girl, from the original marriage, carried many extra burdens. Burdens I'd likely not have had if I'd been a boy.
- Parentification to parents, their partners/spouses and their children.
- Free nannying
- Co-sleeping with babies (my brothers were not made to sleep with their biological brother while I was locked in a room with him)
- locked in room with the children
- bedroom taken and given to uncle and girlfriend
- made to share upstairs room with four special needs foster children under 5 while mom and boyfriend slept in basement
- being left alone with mother's boyfriend to care for foster children for days on end
- heavy disproportionate housework load
- Carry the mental load (I cared more about my siblings more that their parents did)
- handmaiden mom, dad, stepmother and stepfather
- sex therapist to mother
- parents' confidante and support system
- scapegoat
- surrogate spouse
Quiet menace + terrifying rages
My parents and their new spouses were all narcissistic bullies in their own ways. And they'd change methods randomly. My dad would speak in this calm carbon monoxide voice with eyes glittering with rage and then BAM!! he'd explode and start hitting me. It was so horrifying I once wet my pants when he started spanking me out of the blue when I was 13. The irony was that I was being made to work like an unpaid adult slave in his adult foster care home (illegally, turns out), sleep locked in a tiny room with the baby while he and his wife slept in the only AC room and couldn't hear anything AND infantilized and treated like a wayward child.
Sneering contempt + Mind reading + Set-ups = religious narcissist
- My dad had nothing but arrogant contempt for other people. "They" were wrong, out to get him, didn't understand him, too critical of him.
- He was pouty, oversensitive and took narcissistic injury everywhere.
- Yet he called me too sensitive when I'd cry when he humiliated me in front of others (screaming a me on Christmas Eve for trying on my new sweater.)
- He'd say I "couldn't take criticism" (verbal harassment) but was also too critical of him.
- He would undermine, second-guess and devalue everything I did or said.
- I was always "showing off" and "attention-seeking" when all I did was sing in the bathroom. Why was he in the bathroom with me, was something I never thought about.
- All four parents would create situations to embarrass me, often with crude and lewd behavior.
- But they also gaslit me (because it's so easy to do to a child) that they spoke ex cathedra on all things Christian.
- They were God's mouthpiece, telling all the ways I failed, though they didn't obey his commands.
- They would set me up to "expose" wicked things I supposedly did though I have no memory of doing.
- But I do remember them doing very immoral, unGodly, unbiblical things all the time. (living with boyfriend, dating a 17 y/o at 36, abandoning me for two years, leaving me in a strange city with strangers to go 1800 miles away). It took my husband identifying these are wrong for me to see they were.
- I've since realized everything they accused me of were true of them. I don't know if they were true of me (my husband says not) because gaslighting causes confusing brain damage and cognitive dissonance.
Enmeshment: The invasive species parent
Parental enmeshment isn't the parent who trapped by the child. It's the child who is enmeshed as in caught up in the parent's web. The parent is the spider and the child is the helpless victim. The parent weaves a sticky net around the child to cement her to the parent. Mother and father purposely entangle themselves in the child's identity, like an invasive species plant. The child doesn't know who she is separate from mother or father. She only thinks what they think, want, need and tell her to think. It's like they lobotomize the child and surgically remove all sense of self and imbed only FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to them. Enmeshment may be one of the most insidiously sadistic forms of child abuse.
Endless autoloop of the blame-shame game
The enmeshed father sees his daughter as a tool do his bidding and she complies because he has indoctrinated her in his narcissistic cult fantasy. He uses her like a robotic arm or cat's paw to get what he wants without consequences and at his own daughter's expense. She is his fall girl, his shield which he hides behind. As his personal scapegoat, he blame shifts all his bad choices on her. She takes the brunt of all his dangerous, irresponsible, illegal and immoral actions. She only feels sorry for him, never for her own pain he causes. He so destabilizes, deprives, mistreats and neglects her that her resistance is worn down and she is vulnerable to abuse. And he weaponizes her empathy, people pleasing and fawning trauma responses. She plays the fool while he sits back and laughs at her because it makes him feel big to pick on smaller people. She is the Broken Vending Machine child, dispensing treats with no coins put in.
The creepy hypocritical demand of the narcissistic dad
So back to the point of this article: one of the creepiest demands that enmeshed narcissistic fathers make on their scapegoat daughters. The daughter of such a person resembles more of a performing seal than a person. The dad uses her to do everything he doesn't want to do. And she has to know, without being told what his next command will be. And yet, through it all, no matter how much it hurts, she has to
Keep on smiling!
My father would hit me, scream at me, humiliate me till I cried or just frowned. Then he'd sneer and say "go wash your face." Quit showing off. Quit making it about you. He'd was maliciously accuse me of always being "too heavy." Of pouting, being "over dramatic" or faking depression. Said I needed to "lighten up" and "cheer up." This was the same man who'd routinely threaten me, since I was five, to kill himself saying there was nothing I could do about it, it a "neener, neener" playground bully way. So often, my tears weren't for me so much as him and how sad he must be and how I must have let him down so badly that he wanted to end it all.
He pressed me into service to his selfish, lazy obese wife and made me do all kinds of backbreaking (really) dehumanizing, unnecessarily difficult labor on hands and knees. Scrubbing toilets, being locked in with her babies, serving, mopping, ironing. I was a scullery maid at 12. Every time she got upset which was often, he'd blame me and make me do some new task for her. And I had to do it all with huge goofy smile on my face. I developed neck and jaw aches from the constant Permagrin. I still have that iconic "childhood trauma grimace" from having to be on call and happy about it, 24/7/365.
The Trigger Part (stop reading here if you need to)
The sick, incestuous command performance
What made this grossest of all was that being told to "smile and like it" when you're being punished feels like deviant sexual exploitation. It wasn't just that my dad expected me to be all he wasn't. That would be bad enough. It wasn't just that he who never genuinely smiled expected me to fake a smile. It felt like faking an orgasm when really sex is hurting like hell. It felt like pathetic prostituting my heart and letting my soul be raped. It felt like BDSM with him getting off on the bondage, domination and sadism with me as the masochist smiling like a kicked little dog. It felt like grooming, and pimping me to serve others. It felt like all my natural God-given self-defenses were destroyed. Because, as my adult self sees now what my child self couldn't, they were.
It's left me so pliable to other pedophiles and predators over the years. I've felt so dirty and debased. I've felt like a pariah who makes others sin. I don't have clear recollect of what I actually did wrong. My parents filled my head with shaming about my wickedness. My dreams terrorize me with awful things I believe I've done. But none of it is specific. And no one ever identified one thing I actually did that was so wrong. It was mostly a lot of vague accusations of things I recall them being the ones doing. I'm considering hypnosis to try and uncover what may be prompting this shame. It's hard for me to say this about myself, because I never give myself much credit, only shade. But if I was helping someone else with a story like mine, I'd be able to say categorically that it was all parent gaslighting. And if the child did anything wrong it wasn't so bad as to warrant how they treated you. You were a kid.
So I guess I'll end with a few ideas for healing, if any of this resonates.
- You are good and worthy of love.
- You are a person, not a possession.
- You owe abusive parents nothing.
- The child is always the child and the parent is always the adult.
- You owe yourself compassion, love, protection and care.
- Going no contact might be the only solution if your parents were as enmeshed as mine.
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