Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'll share some "aha moments" about parent gaslighting, I had after I turned off the gas of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). That's when I was able to see not loving parents but fat, malignant spiders spinning webs of lies. These dangerous hypocrisies forced me to go no contact with the two of my four dark tetrad parents that are left: my narcissistic mother and her ex-husband.
💡You can't be wrong all the time.
Part of the gaslighting my narcissistic father, mother, stepmother and stepfather indoctrinated me with is that I was always in the wrong. It was the only thing they agreed on, that Marilisa was the cause of all their problems. I don't know who beside them actually believed this DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) nonsense, but I certainly did. And when people don't speak up for you against your abusive parents' neglect, child abandonment, endangerment, parentification, scapegoating, exploitation and constant toxic shaming, you think they believe it too. Silence implies consent. Some become flying monkeys with their haranguing toxic positivity and victim-shaming. But here's the lightbulb that just went on in my head:
Mutually exclusive contradictions light the path.
It was the paradoxical nature of these mutually exclusive contradictions that made me see. Each of these malignant narcissists scapegoated me. These toxic authority figures (note I don't say parents because they didn't care for me in any normal sense of the word) had a retort for everything I did or said. My dad said I was "too sensitive" and "couldn't take criticism" but also "too critical" of them. I was expected to take their demands very seriously always but was also told to "lighten up" and smile more often. I kept quiet on my own achievements and applauded my mom's grandiosity, I covered for her exhibitionist histrionics yet she said I was an attention-seeking showoff. If anything bad happened or anyone was mad, it was ALWAYS my fault. Right was wrong for me and wrong was right for them. There was no winning. But they took that blame-shame bucket to the scapegoat well one too many times. And that's how I finally figured it out.
The Devil is in the double standards
In the very excessiveness of their behavior, the generalizations, the always-never double standards, I saw the parents for who they really were, arrogant, entitled, remorseless, self-serving control freak hypocrites living in one big narcissistic fantasy who would do anything to protect it. They had to always kick me under the bus to cover the deception. I was just narcissistic supply for them. My narcissistic stepfather and mother, got off on humiliating vulnerable people. My dad and narcissistic stepmother were terribly neglectful, abusive and exploitative toward me. They targeted me over the most ridiculous things because they could never admit to being wrong, so someone had to be. But that stopped working for them when their scapegoat child caught on.
Impossible illogical fallacies
My enmeshed parents (who used me as a prop as well as a target) would make excuses for themselves all the time. They took narcissistic insult at any suggestion they were wrong. When they were caught in big ticket items like child abuse, procuring abortions (as pro-lifers) adultery, scamming, pedophilia, they had justifications a mile long. They'd blow it off, saying "no one is perfect" or my Bible beater dad's favorite "it's covered by the blood." Ironically, they would also entrap me in situations and then mercilessly attack. They would set me up to watch me fall. And trauma bonded me, fell for it. My betrayal blindness hid the fact that they were Machiavellian ruthless agent provocateurs. Then anything I did or said (and trauma response fawning made sure I kept quiet) was spun as defending myself. Even though I never did or said boo. I was too scared. They recklessly lied, twisted, gaslit and deceived and made sure I took the consequences of their actions on myself.
Freaking mental Game of Cat and Mouse Trauma Bonding
Parent enmeshment is contradictory and purpose-built. They hate being so dependent on the child for narcissistic supply and punish her. Everything they do is underhanded and self-serving. The parent wields the power differential like a knife that cuts one way, not to guide but to control the child. They weaponize her natural attachment to them, against her. They use bread-crumbing, future-faking and love-bombing to tenderize her. Then they randomly but strategically Devalue and Discard to groom her to think she did something wrong. This trauma bonding makes her desperate to get back in their good graces. They purposely violate her privacy and crash her boundaries to make her nervous and hypervigilant. Life is endless fraught spaces with two sets of ever-shifting rules I could never succeed at. Because just when I got it right, they changed the rules. They bound me up to burdens they didn't carry. They put a millstone around my neck and pushed me over the edge.
Destabilized to sabotage
I see now why in the narcissistic cult family they had to be so chaotic, hypocritical and unpredictable. My arrogant parents had to stay one jump ahead to retain this imagined moral high ground. They had to gaslight me with bullshit to preserve the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) I felt toward them. They had to undermine me to make sure I stayed blindly subservient. Those comebacks they had for me, felt rehearsed because they were. They had a litany, much like the Narcissist's Prayer. And that narcissistic abuse was bespoke specifically to destabilize me and sabotage any hope of escape or individuation.
Childhood Trauma Recovery Means Going Back to Square One
Once you uncover one parent lie, no matter how innocently you discover it, the entire fabric is compromised. Especially if it is a lie that hurt or framed you unfairly. Narcissistic parents deceive to protect their false image at your expense. So it's like ants: where there's one, there will be more. They lie to cover past lies they told. Here's a breakdown of the many ways narcissists lie and the reasons they do lie. And that's how gaslighting works. It creates a web of deceit. And like a web, it traps you so the spider can suck the life out of you. Healing begins when you recognize that what you believed, trusted, put your hope in, worked for, was a tangle of lies. Then healing continues when you start over, rewriting your truth correctly, reparenting yourself as you should have been parented. I wish you well and will hold space for you as you do.
No comments:
Post a Comment