CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent coercive control

Hello my friends. I'm working on childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse. Today I'm responding to a YouTube vlog by narcissism expert Dr. Ramani on the coercive control of narcissistic abuse. My entire backstory is peopled with narcissists (four parents, two bio, two step plus their children). I'm unpacking the CPTSD from this awful enslavement on this blog because it's such a huge, fraught issue that I couldn't address is fully in her channel comments. 

• Memo: Please, if you're dealing with childhood trauma from malignant parent abuse or narcissists in any relationship, run don't walk to Dr. Ramani's channel. She is the Shell Answer Lady on things narcissism. You will find comfort. 

Dark Tetrad Parent Abuse

Narcissism is characterized by arrogance, entitlement (above-it-all-ness), selfishness, low to zero empathy and remorse and pathological lying (gaslighting). The Dark Triad adds a Machiavellian component which basically says "I can do whatever I want, no matter how abusive, to get my way." Then the Dark Tetrad adds cruelty, which is fundamental to all narcissists if they are pushed but the Dark Tetrad requires malignancy for narcissistic supply. The dark tetrad narcissistic father, like mine,  "gets high on" hurting people, especially his scapegoat child. My narcissistic mother NEEDS to destabilize me to make herself feel powerful and superior. 

There are two types of people: those who succeed on their own merits and those who climb on others to make themselves look taller. The dark tetrad is the latter. 

Bizarre Hypocrisy of Religious Narcissist Parent

All I've just described flies in the face of Christianity. And it perfectly describes my hypocritical, two sets of rules religious narcissist parents. Yes, that's a contradiction in terms. Christians are called to be 

• Humble: the Christian narcissist is arrogant, bragging, cocky, sarcastic and cynical.  
• Merciful: the Christian narcissist is ruthless, grudge-holding, petty, malicious and unempathetic. 
• Contrite of heart: The Christian narcissist feels and shows no remorse. He doesn't lack it, he ignores it. He plays DARVO (denies and deflects blame, attacks, and reverses victim and offender). Instead of sorrow, he points fingers away from himself in angry resentment. 
• Teachable: The narcissist browbeats his children with punitive discipline, yet takes narcissistic insult if he is corrected. 
• Loving: The narcissistic parents withhold love while expecting god-like adoration from their children. The only love the child knows is trauma bonding. 
• Honor God: The religious narcissist honors only herself. She coercively controls her child into mindless  obeisance too. 

  Existential Crisis: My parents didn't just think they were gods. They each acted like they were THE ONE TRUE God. And I believed them and disobeyed the real God, serving them. Who would you obey: an unseen entity or the malignant humans with total control of you? Yep, that's who I chose too. 

Narcissism gaslights the narcissist

There is a litany of gaslighting and that narcissism itself feeds the narcissist. It paints a false narcissistic fantasy in which the narcissist is the supreme cult leader. It uses self-serving lies which the gullible dark tetrad already wants to believe. 

• Arrogant self-righteousness tells the narcissists that she is always right even when she is doing dead wrong things. That she is above all normal human rules. 
• Entitlement beguiles the dark tetrad with delusions of grandeur,  that she is endlessly owed whatever she wants and that she owes no one anything. Even her child. 
• Parent enmeshment dazzles her with promises that child is a possession not a person. That mother should sabotage any boundaries and violate privacy with a hypervigilant monitoring. Not to keep the child safe, but to control. 
• Parentification lulls the parent into a false sense of security that she is not held to  normal parent expectations. That she must always be pampered by her child who is actually her parent. 
• Machiavellianism promises the narcissistic dad that he can should do whatever he wants to get his way. No holds barred. No low is too low. 
• Sadism tells the parent that it feels good to hurt the child, that the child had it coming and that this is for her own good. It says ( and this is heretical I can hardly write it) that God wants the parent to abuse the child. 

The Nightmare Web of Coercive Control

The parent uses an evil bag of tricks and mind games to force the child into a destabilized place so she will be desperate and compliant. The parent randomly aims fear arrows to trigger the child. Just when the child starts to feel a little safety or predictability, WHUMP, another arrow lands. And the child's trauma responses activate. Fawning from FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), freezing, fixing and what I call pretzeling. The child twists herself into painful contortions to try and be whatever the parent demands at that moment. I have spinal damage from this. The malignant parent 

• Abuses the child in odd, often hidden ways. My stepfather mocked my breast size as a child, and my mother looked on approvingly. 
• Neglects and withholds necessities or makes them transactional (I was told I stay with my dad and narcissistic stepmother only on conditions of doing any and all chores they set me to). 
• Trauma bonding: The parent wields an arsenal of weapons against the child to create an unnatural codependency. 
• Natural attachment is punished then exploited in a Cat and Mouse game. 
• Power differential becomes a stick to beat the child with. 
• Bread crumbing: The parent feeds the child just enough for survival, but not enough to satisfy. Because the child is dependent for needs, this strings her along. 
• Love-bombing: This mind eff makes the child think for once she has earned the love she desires. But it's just for show and to make her compliant. 
• Future faking: Lying. Making and breaking promises to boost trust and create betrayal blindness while doing exactly as the irresponsible parent wants. 
• Triangulation and smear campaigns. Lying to and about the child to pit people against her. Whether people actually believed my parents or not, I couldn't know. All I knew was no one was speaking or standing up for me. It was all just swept under the rug. 
• Child endangerment. When a parent purposely leaves or puts a child in gratuitously unsafe situations with unsafe people, it creates cognitive dissonance and terror-induced brain damage. 
• Child abandonment. Leaving the child alone, or with strangers, is one of the most disturbing things a parent can do. Mine gaslit me that they were "doing God's work" while I was playing alone downtown in a strange city at 5. 

Gestalt and Bespoke Abuse

The whole effect of all these experiences of abuse is greater than the sum of the parts. Which is already a hell of a lot and way too much for the child brain to come to terms with. This bespoke abuse is tailor-made to the individual child. All of my natural, healthy inclinations and abilities were destroyed as much as was possible for them. My empathy was utilized to make me loyal and silent. My self-esteem was sabotaged so that I was insecure, ashamed and self-loathing. Self-care was punished. Individuation was shamed and scorned. And they never admitted to any of it. Which weirdly is where my salvation comes. 

"You're lucky, we're good parents." 

The fact that these abusive parents actually told me that I was so fortunate to have them, is the red flag I needed to see. Good parents don't preen themselves and use their parenting as a way to shame the child. This shows the gaslighting loud and clear. The fact that they had to create a slippery slope, comparing themselves to people who actually did care for their kids, says they live in lies. And then there are the passive-aggressive digs that I wasn't properly grateful for all they'd done for me. This made me see that it was always ever about my obligation to them, with no reciprocity. They purposely didn't keep a roof over my head, let alone provide a proper bed, bedroom, consistent food on the table, shoes, clothing, medical care, etc. I was the silent homeless "latchkey kid" without a key, before there were words for it. And that doesn't start to cover all the heavy burdens of housework, childcare, lack of privacy put on me. 

The Ultimate Coercive Control Horror 

All this chaos, gaslighting and trauma has left me with permanent brain damage of that FOG I  mentioned. I still live in ungodly terror of my dad and stepmom and they've been gone for 6 years. I had to go no contact with my mom because of the physical, emotional and sexual abuse she and her ex put me through. And I still live in shame for that, even though I didn't go no contact as much as simply allow the doors they slammed on me to stay shut. You may ask, what are you afraid of? And I answer, damned if I know. It's is visceral, gut-level baffling but utterly real. Or real feeling. It is a sucker punch they keep landing on me. I trauma nightmare about it every night. 

The Pandora's Box Reveal. 

If you identify with this parent-caused trauma, I'm so sorry. I have a feeling that too many of you are vigorously nodding your heads in agreement and that sucks. But out of this Pandora's Box, there is one small fairy of hope and she can light our path. Her beacon shows that no matter how real their reign of terror felt, it was fake. They did NOT hold the power they seemed to. They were not gods. They were cowardly playground crybullies. That fear that we felt, was simply a survival trauma response. We never owed them our lunch money. It was just all a mirage. They were just, like Scooby-Doo says, "a man in a mask." They cannot hurt us now. And no, we didn't "let them hurt us" then. We never signed up for this. We just got shoved into it when we were too young and helpless to understand. Where we go from here is now up to us. I'm practicing pushing past the pain and discomfort. I'm doing hard new things that are helping. I'm faking courage till I make it. 

Love always, mar.