38 Devastating D's of malignant narcissistic enmeshed parent abuse and CPTSD

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery I'm looking at the 25 devasting D's of malignant narcissistic parent abuse and how they create our CPTSD. There are more but these are the main ones. Sadly each time I revise this, I discover more. Each is in itself a unique bespoke form of child abuse. 

The 38 Ds of malignant narcissist parental abuse

• Deceit: The entire premise of narcissistic parent abuse (neglect, exploitation, manipulation, endangerment, scapegoating) rests on lies. It's a house of cards they construct that looks real but is just a hollow travesty. But this narcissistic cult is all you know. 

• Double standards. Double speak, hypocrisy, two sets of ever-shifting rules: everything is one-sided demand with no reciprocity. They take your good and give you bad. They future fake, renege on promises, then gaslight you, saying you made it up and are too demanding (!) and selfish.  

• Disingenuousness. These people are fakers, scammers and cheats. My narcissistic mother actually prefers a con to an honest day's work. She loves scoring off people. But she's the first to tell you she's a Christian. I call these Pyramid Scheme Christians. 

• Deviousness. My narcissistic mother once conned me and my husband into buying her piece of junk car for $900 AND selling her my very good car for $100. She flipped the title and offered no help when that car stranded me and my kids. She trashed my once-good car and let it go to pot. I think I knew I was being stung. But I still thought she loved me and that I must have missed something. Because whose mother would scam them? Mine.  

• Devaluation. They don't prioritize their children and value us only for our usefulness, not our individuality. They belittle, mock and humiliate us. They nit pick over non-issues while ignoring enormous wrongs they've done to us. 

• Demeaning. Narcissistic parents dress us in silly clothes. They cut our hair in ridiculous styles so they can outshine us. They are jealous of our childhood charm and competitive with us. They will do anything to make us look foolish. They do and say humiliating things to us and then lead the jeers. My mother threw a pie in my face and shoved my son's face in a pie at her company picnic. 

• Disregard not only for feelings but rules. Narcissist parents live by their own bizarre set of user-created rules that apply only to them. They believe they are beyond consequences. They use children as cat's paws and shields from accountability. They blame-shift. The immoral, illegal, unethical and outrageous things my parents subjected me to, boggles under the cold light of reality. 

• Defeat. You can't win for losing with malignant narcissists. They see you as a challenge to overcome. In fact the more you succeed, the more you rise above, the more they drag you down. When I graduated college was my narcissistic father proud? No. He sniffed his haughty nose and "humpf, college isn't for everyone." 

• Disdain. They don't just downgrade what you do but WHO you are. They say the most disgustingly uncalled-for insults. They let their kids walk on you and then laugh.  When I breastfed my babies he said sneeringly "not all women are cows." I don't remember he or my narcissistic stepmother or mother ever saying a kind thing to or about me, that didn't have a sting in the tail. 

• Discard + Demand. Narcissistic parents ditch responsibilities to you. BUT they also demand buy-in on you. It's ludicrous how they're able to con everyone including you into thinking you owe them, after they dumped you. 

• Discrediting. They take credit for our good actions. Then they find fault with innocent things to vilify us. They make up nonsense about us to make us look bad. They discount our good intentions, always looking for a way to make us appear as failures. 

• Denouncement. They arrogantly "call you out" feeling entitled to weigh in and run their mouths against you. They don't do it to teach or help. They're nowhere to be found when you need them. But if they can get narcissistic supply scoring off you, they'll jump in twist your words just to humiliate you. 

• Disparagement. You don't need to have done anything to earn their vicious scorn. They lie all the time and they will happily lie to character assassinate you. And they do it in such a backstabbing way you never see it coming. And these are your family who are supposed to love you. Why would you think they were out to destroy you? Very often, you don't see their gaslighting and catfishing because trauma bonding has given you betrayal blindness. 

• Diminishment. They are always looking to cut you down. Narcissistic parents get ahead by kicking you to the curb. They use people like ladders to make themselves taller. No one is every as smart, special or entitled as them. 

• Dismissal. They dismiss your feelings and invent tales about how you're too sensitive if you contradict them. They minimize you and brag themselves up. They act like totalitarian dictators who control you with the snap of their fingers. (this one really makes my blood boil.)

• Disrespect Trap. Narcissists are always squawking about respect they are "owed." They aren't. No one is. Respect is earned. But the child who deserves their respect just for being their child, is treated with abysmal lack of respect. They are crybullies. 

• Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Narcissistic parents manufacture endless dilemmas to trap you in. There's no winning, no low to which they'll stoop, no crazy enough hoop configuration they'll set for you to hop through. Narcissists want their scapegoat to fail.  

• Dream trauma. They stole our healthy dreams and aspirations and replaced them with CPTSD and trauma nightmares. They ruined our rest and made everything exhausting and frightening. But the dreams are never as bad as the reality. 

• Deception and illusion. Nothing is real except the harm and danger they put us in. Family is for us to serve not to be a loved part of. Home is a facade. It only poses as a shelter, like the witch's candy house. Inside it's scary and fraught. The monsters don't lurk outside. They live with us.  

• Denial. They denied us basic necessities and rights, then denied abusing us. It's just more of their lies. 

• Derailment. Their crazy-making behavior can drive us off the rails and into insanity. They do this intentionally to undermine us. They purposely break plans, sabotage events and keep everyone confused. 

• Discord. These people invent problems where none existed. They could set off a Quaker meeting with their pot-stirring machinations. 

• Dysregulation. Narcissists are the unstable ones but they use every underhanded trick to dysregulate the child who could no more survive their onslaught than she could hold back the ocean. 

• Dismantlement. The child is born an extant individual but the enmeshed parent begins early on to dismantle natural boundaries. She invades the child's space and takes over. She violates modesty and privacy. She pirates the child's brain to serve her own selfish ends. 

• Disruption. Abusive parents do everything in their power to keep their child anxious, nervous and hypervigilant. They flood the child's life with gratuitous chaos, moving her around, switching schools randomly, making and breaking promises. Dragging all kinds of dangerous, unhinged people into her life and making her subservient to them. If she says anything, they claims she's the problem or she remembered it wrong. 

• Deprivation. We were not just neglected. We were systematically deprived of sleep, comfort, peace of  mind, nourishment and care, to make us weak, tired, vulnerable and pliable. 

• Debauchery. They were debauched, dirty-minded dark tetrads. We were just kids caught up in the crosshairs of their sick narcissistic fantasy cult. But they drilled their shame into us by doing things normal kids and even adults had no framework for. How could we tell them? Why would I as an empath, put that on them? So all their ick made a home in our hearts. 

• Degraded. We were physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually molested. They made us do bizarre, disturbing things that poisoned our minds and destroyed our childhood and selves. We were innocent but being forced into it made us feel ashamed by association. Guilt by proxy. 

• Debasement.  This shit made us feel dirty. Shit we couldn't tell anyone because they'd think we were the freaks. Their shit we were blamed for. We weren't allowed to set healthy boundaries. We were punished for defending ourselves. Who'd believe us, they said. But it seeped into our relationships like carbon monoxide. I let people hurt me because I didn't know that I should protect myself. Sometimes I acted inappropriately because I was taught to. It made me look weird and there was no one to support or comfort. Shame loves company. 

• Deformation. Dark Tetrad parents deformed us with abuse, neglect and chaos. I have several disabilities that are directly attributable to autoimmune deficiencies and child abuse. 

• Defamation. They lie to and about us to damage our understanding of self. They twist and destroy our character. They spin false narratives and launch smear campaigns. 

• Destruction. These malignant narcissists don't construct they destruct everything they touch. They tear down your boundaries, reserves, strength till you're just a fragile, broken egg shell. They thwart success and joy. They feed off your good. They make Zombies look like Girl Scouts. 

• DARVO. They deny, attack, reverse victim offender. They're like human twist ties, twisting round and round, flipping scripts to make themselves look like victims and their victims, persecutors. I just shake my head and the number of times I fell for this and felt so much FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) that it almost suffocated me. 

• Destabilization. All this rotted the foundations our selves were built on. Nothing was secure. Every moment was a terrifying game Stay Alive with each step threatening a fall into a bottomless pit. 

• Disabling. I'm trying to put these in order of severity but they're all just terrible. Our abilities were stripped from us. We were infantilized and parentified. Our capabilities were not only not fostered they were crippled, by ruthless demands, bullying, coercive control and violence. 

• Debilitation. We became helpless and hopeless because help was denied and hope was stolen. The only thing we could do was robotically trauma respond with fawning, groveling, people pleasing and self-abasement. 

• Dehumanization. At the core of it was a complete obliteration of our own humanity. We were told self-care and being ourselves was selfish. So we became selfless little shadow ghosts hovering in the fringes, awaiting the next command. No life, thoughts, wants, feelings, needs, boundaries. We were possessions not people. 

Prescription for healing 

I won't patronize you with a cutesy little wrap-up promising quick fixes for this sufferings. It's real and deep and visceral and historic. They do these things over a few weeks. It was lifelong devastation. But I can offer you one little Hope Candle and that is that knowledge is power. Once you begin to see the past for what it was, you're on the radical acceptance path. 

They may or may not change (chances are they won't.) But you have been changed forever by your new understanding what love is and isn't. You may choose to stay or go no contact. You may stumble or get side-tracked.  But whatever you choose, once seen never forgotten. You know that you know what you know. And you can never unknow it again.