Healing CPTSD from narcissistic parent enmeshment of parentification and spousification

 Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) recovery, I'm digging deeper into child abuse from parentification, spousification and adultification. A narcissistic parent creates a toxic family system where children play roles to serve them rather than live authentic, individuated lives. And three very bizarrely contradictory child roles narcissists coerce the child into are that of adult, spouse and also parent. 

Narcissistic parents break every rule of parenting.

They flip-flop everything normal parents do. Everything is done for narcissistic supply rather than care of the child. They future fake to build trust then they break promises. They exploit the child's natural attachment to them into trauma bonding. They play cat and mouse with her, by bread crumbing (giving her just enough of what she needs to keep her compliant) and love-bombing (showering her with performative shows of affection to throw her off guard.)Then they play the discard and devalue game to make her desperate win them back. Narcissists weaponize the logical parent power differential into coercive control, not to keep the child safe but to destabilize her. They demand all good from her and deprive her of necessities to wear her down. They lie and distort everything so the child develops betrayal blindness. Then they DARVO spinning the story that the child is the problem and they are the victims. Do this enough and you have one very confused, beaten down, pliable child. 

Malignant narcissistic parents tenderize the child like a steak, wounding her and then rubbing salt in the wounds.

Narcissist parent gaslighting around child roles

Children are not people to dark tetrad parents. We were owned possessions and cat's paws. Narcissists create a false reality for their children regarding roles that the child expected to play. The child is just supporting cast in their main character narcissistic fantasy. They hypocritically use words like duty, family loyalty and responsibility which mean one thing for the irresponsible parent and the opposite for the hypervigilant over-responsible child. They set the child to inappropriate tasks. They demand that she do for them things that they should be doing for her. They place unfair expectations on her. They instill a pervasive FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to carry the mental load for them. Narcissistic parents expect children to act and think like adults while the grownups behave like immature, selfish brats. That is the adultification, as I call it. 

Parent enmeshment and role reversal

The enmeshed parent cares only about getting her way, having her needs met and wishes granted. She violates privacy and tramples on the child's boundaries. What she tells the child is that she loves him so and that's why she's so "devoted" to him. But what she shows him is that he does not exist outside her. I did not know where my parents ended and I began. Or if I even did. My narcissistic father indoctrinated me that I was to put everyone else ahead of myself. That self-care was selfish. What he meant was that he and my narcissistic stepmother should come first, last and always. My enmeshed mother punished any individuation on my part while she went no contact with me whenever she chose. I was owned and always owing them. They gaslit me that they owed me nothing. I was made to parent them like spoiled, whiny babies. Then I was made to parent all of their children. This is parentification. 

Spousification

This is what I call it when a parent expects the child to be a spouse and partner rather than a dependent. They groom the child to treat mommy like a girlfriend. They share inappropriate sexual things with the child. My mother forced me to listen to sex stories. They rely on the child to provide adult support. My parents made me do gratuitously heavy housework as a young child, even though I had a debilitating spinal problems. I had to co-sleep with their babies even in my mother's foster care home. I had to do chores that no one else had to or would have done if I wasn't there to do them. My mother dumped all her woes on me like a therapist. She even did this a few times to my best friend, age 11. 

Parent Enslavement

I think the root of all this crazy bass-ackwardness is that narcissists enslave their children, emotionally, physically, mentally, all of it. And mine enslaved me to anyone they decided to shove on me, no matter how dangerous that person was. They accomplished this by scapegoating, abuse and neglect, endangerment, abandonment, humiliation, invalidation, toxic shaming, triangulation and other destabilizing tactics. I did not think, eat, sleep breathe anything but them. I was their Broken Vending Machine Child dispensing all that was demanded of me with no remuneration or reciprocity. 

Narcissists do things to their children not for them. 

I just listened to a vlog by Dr. Ramani discussing how narcissists do things to people (hurt, abuse) while loving people do things for others, to help them. I would sum up my relationship with  my parents with this polarity. They did things TO me while I did things FOR them. I carried, nurtured, slaved for, supported, affirmed, loved them. And they antagonized, attacked, shamed, criticized, embarrassed, punished, harassed and hurt me. Is that a too broad generalization? I only wish it was.