CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse requires new behaviors that are not trauma responses

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I am exploring healthy new behaviors that are not trauma responses. Also called trauma reactions, these unhealthy behaviors include fawning, freezing, fighting, fleeing and another one that I add, fixing (people pleasing, absorbing consequences of and making excuses for others' hurtful actions). And for me, change begins with radical acceptance that the gaslighting of narcissistic abuse was really potent by not real. 

Childhood Trauma Bonding Begets Trauma Responses

Every time I unpack a new concept related to narcissistic parent abuse, I begin by explaining the trauma bonding sequence. This is to remind us both how these dangerous trauma reactions came into play. The parent plays a treacherous Cat and Mouse game of love-bombing (fake shows of affection), bread crumbing (stringing the traumatized child along), future faking (systematically making and breaking promises) followed by random Devalue and Discard for no reason. The malignant parent does this to break the child and make her anxious, hypervigilant and codependent, always chasing the parent for love. The child learns that love is conditional and must be earned WHILE ALSO being expected to give love and respect unconditionally to people who have not earned it and do not give it. 

• New behavior to practice. Respond with love and respect only as merited. To anyone else, just maintain cool aloofness or go no contact. I'm learning to match energy, to stop indulging selfish arrogance and start investing it only in relationships where it is reciprocal. 

The False Reality of Parent Enmeshment 

I use the terms enmeshed parent and narcissistic parent somewhat interchangeably because selfish, arrogant parents are also enmeshed in their children's lives. Not with safety nets that protect us. They strangle us with the distorted narcissistic fantasy they indoctrinated us with. My narcissistic mother and father literally taught me that I didn't matter, that self-care was selfish. Needs were shamed. And being the Broken Vending Machine Child I was parentified to tend to and provide for my parents as if they were my children, with no reciprocity of basic things normal parents are supposed to provide. Individuation was punished and I was force fed gaslighting that my one job was to serve my narcissistic father and mother and any new people they chose to force on me, after they divorced. 

• New Behavior to Practice: I need to stop following my Machiavellian parents' self-serving agenda. I need to cut those unsafe ties that bind. I need to see that this FOG never existed and was as insubstantial as vapor.  I need to go no contact with fawning and people pleasing. 

The Divorced Child and the Black Hole Parent

The natural attachment in the parent-child dynamic only tie one way. Malignant narcissist parents (and they are all malignant if they don't get their way) cut ties and go no contact with their children at birth, as regards anything they owe the child. However the same parent who have shut her out, also trauma bond this "divorced child" to them with distortions, lies, deceptions and FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). They paint a bizarre gaslit reality of double standards, two sets of rules and god complex entitlement. The trauma bonded child is owned, ever-owing and obligated to the demanding never-satisfied Black Hole Parents while also being owed nothing by them.

• New behavior to practice: I have to stop dysfunctional trauma responding by endlessly trying to please unpleasable people. I need to please myself and those with whom respect and giving is a two-way street. Without reciprocity in relationships, one person will always give too much good and accept too much bad, while the other gives too little good and too much bad.  

The End Game of Destabilization

My narcissistic parents withheld, stole or sabotaged everything for me. That included security, shelter, a bed, food and clothing. I (and only I) experienced homelessness, child abandonment, food insecurity, medical neglect, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, among other things. I was sick and tired all the time, too tired to enjoy simple things other kids had. I was told that "we" were poor and yet I saw everyone else, including my parents, their new spouses and kids, with more than enough. Childhood poverty was for me and me alone. The ultimate end game was destabilization through invalidation, narcissistic abuse and coercive control.  Because a stable child threatens the dark tetrad parent's reign of terror. 

• New Behavior to practice: I need to get out and stay out of the path of destabilizers. I need to use radical acceptance that they will never be anything other than dangerous. I need to practice confidence to walk firmly steer clear of dangers by heeding the red flags.