Bizarre CPTSD Trauma Responses from Narcissistic Parent Abuse

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring bizarre trauma responses that malignant narcissists condition in their children. Using destabilization, abuse and neglect, trauma bonding and gaslighting, our coercively controlling parents brain damaged us into acting in humiliating, dysregulated knee-jerk patterns. These odd behaviors dog us adult children of narcissists all our lives. 

Hijacked and Hacked Childhood

We traumatized children had our lives hijacked by parent enmeshment and coercive control. The malignant or dark tetrad parent hacks into the child's brain HTML and implants what I call "command prompt Trauma Triggers." Malignant parents passive-aggressively "wind us up" using command prompts only we recognize. We unconsciously and robotically react from our trauma brain, then they scold us for trauma reactions they bred in us.  They say and do things they know will make us anxious and hypervigilant because they are the ones who trained us to. They punish us for not dancing to their tune, and mock us if we do. 

Disturbing Childhood Trauma "Mind Effs" 

Psychology defines trauma responses as freezing, fawning, fight and flight. From my own experience living und the regimens of four narcissistic and enmeshed parents, I've added a few more "mind effs." 

• Fright. Narcissists are truly terrifying to live with because they are deceitful, back-stabbing and violent over the most inconsequential things. They take narcissistic injury over non-issues and suddenly they are in a towering spiteful, vindictive narcissistic rage and you have no idea where it came from. We walk on eggshells and still they go ballistic over nothing. I have spinal and foot damage from "pretzeling" into contorted shapes to somehow appease them. This ungodly terror they instilled looks pretty weird in normal society. 

• Floundering. I am clumsy and stumble over nothing because I am out of balance. I could never walk confidently because my narcissistic mother and father were always springing some random chaos on me. They set up "gotcha" stings just to humiliate me. They jerked the rug out from under me on the daily. Betrayal blindness kept me from seeing that this was intentional. What parent sets their child up to fail? 

• Brain FOG. All this narcissistic abuse is utterly baffling. We were terrified into disturbing reflexive behaviors we didn't even realize we were doing. The narcissist gaslights the scapegoat child into obsessive compulsive preoccupation with fear of, obligation to and guilt over the self-absorbed parent. A few years ago, I was scolded for not being able to deal cards correctly. The scolder asked how I was unable to do so simple a task. Welcome to childhood trauma brain damage, buddy. It impairs everything. 

• Fugue state. Nothing makes sense in this narcissistic fantasy cult they created for us. There are two sets of ever changing self-serving rules. The authoritarian parents demands total control. And this looks nothing like the real world around us. No one addresses our upended reality. We experience cognitive dissonance with every step. 

• Flip-flopping. Insecurity has taught us never to make a decision until we get approval from high command (our Machiavellian parents). And they withhold and deprive us of basic things we need to live. And individuation is punished. And just when we do land, they move the target and scold us for not reading their minds. In the adult world, this translates to "waffling." You better believe that abused kids are indecisive. It was too dangerous not to be. 

• Frenetic and frenzied. Traumatized kids run on nervous, hypervigilant energy. Life moves in an unnatural fast-motion. It's a constant game of Twister trying to navigate their hoops. But no matter how fast we move it's never enough to outrun their rage. 

• Trauma Frowning. Our parents get narcissistic supply from confusing us. We have to take their every whim seriously yet we're scolded for being "too sensitive" "too serious" and not smiling more. Our frowns are from having to concentrate too hard on people pleasing and figuring out what they want. 

• Fear of Failure. This is terror like no other. I have a sick dread of my narcissistic father that borders on manic. And he's been dead for 6 years. That's how shockingly horrific emotional abuse is. 

• Fragility. I hurt all over, all the time from many autoimmune issues. I am exhausted and do not know how to ask for help or that it is okay to. I'm very vulnerable to toxic shaming and toxic positivity from "blind guides." I am codependent on gaslighting to narrate my reality. 

• Freak out. I have had full-on breaks with reality not because I am broken but because reality was broken for me by narcissistic parent gaslighting. I have fallen apart. I am fallen apart on the inside and sometimes it shows on the outside. But not as often as it should given the chaos I lived in. 

• Fraught. Everything narcissistic parents demand of the child, is a desperate high stakes, do or die emergency. Serving them, in the most mundane tasks, takes an insanely high precedence over all else. Just carving out time to do homework requires the strategic planning of a major engagement. Every expectation is marked urgent. While the child deprived of basics. 

• Fracturing. Trauma bonding with all the ick that goes with it, caused cognitive split personality. Their bread-crumbing (being strung along) and future-faking (being lied to, made promises to that were always broken) destroyed any sense of reality. The love-bombing followed by Devalue and Discard ruined us. But no matter how we resiliently rose above, stayed silent and managed, we were told we were "overreacting" and "exaggerating." When we said nothing. 

The Final F

You might think my "great amen" will come in forgiveness. But I have been doing that all my life and it has just made them more arrogant and entitled.  And you know what the definition of insanity is: doing the same thing and expecting different results. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. So I'm going to practice a little Alanon wisdom. I think recovery might lie in doing something different than all this insanity. I am trying to practice mindfulness and "free floating." Not rising above in some vain attempt to "be the bigger person." Not endlessly forgiving. Just letting it happen. Let them be as off as they want, and watching them burn bridges without rushing to put out the fire. That's includes letting slammed doors stay shut. I didn't go no contact with my parents that are left. I just didn't hold the door open. What they closed, stays closed. End of.