Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery, I'm exploring how narcissistic parent abuse creates OCD and addiction in adult children of narcissists. This is a similar yet opposite addiction than the parents' addiction to narcissistic supply. Self-centered, arrogant control-obsessed parents engender an equal and opposite trauma reaction toward compulsive behavior in their children. Because everything is an ironic paradox with flip-flopped self-serving double standards in the narcissist parent-child dynamic.
Parent Enmeshment Paradox
To begin to understand the narcissistic parent, we have to understand parent enmeshment and all the entails for the adult child of narcissists. Some might disagree but in my experience the narcissistic parent is also the enmeshed parent who sees her children merely as extensions of herself. In her narcissistic fantasy, the child exists merely to get her what she wants, whatever narcissistic supply looks like for her. The parent doesn't just discourage individuation and boundary setting, she actively sabotages it. Because a separate autonomous child threatens the cult leader parent. Independence causes narcissistic insult (ego injury).
The Emptied child and the Black Hole Parent
The Black Hole Parent is one endless well of needs, wants, demands and expectation that the child will fulfill every one. Using role reversal and gaslighting, my narcissistic father adultified me, the child (coerces the child into filling adult roles). There is also spousification and parentification in which the endlessly demanding and irresponsible parent makes the child parent her while also playing the part of spouse and partner to the parent. The child is indoctrinated in eternal FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) toward the parent with the entire child being emptied into the Black Hole Parent. This manufactured obligation causes hypervigilance, trauma responses and cognitive dissonance in the child.
Out-of-Control Control Freak paradox
The malignant narcissist (and they're all malignant if they don't get their way) lives to dominate. The narcissistic mother is an emotional BDSM dominatrix, an energy vampire that feeds off her victims. She is an anarchist in her own behavior and a fascist issuing commands to others. She wantonly and recklessly refuses to exercise self-control and ruthlessly and coercively controls her child. In her god complex, she believes she writes the rules and can change like a tyrannical dictator anytime it suits. This caused constant anxiety and panic attacks in the ever fawning child who is struggling just to navigate the parent-dictated chaos and confusion.
Narcissistic supply addiction
Weaponizing the child's natural attachment and wielding the parent power differential like a whip, is how the dark tetrad parent obtains her narcissistic supply hit. She uses random ambushes of narcissistic rage to keep the child off balance. The narcissistic parent gets high on destabilizing the child. It makes her feel powerful, untouchable, golden, bulletproof. Each time the parent takes a hit, however, it satisfies less, like a drug. My narcissistic dad needed to go to greater lengths to get the same buzz. And to get high, he had to stoop lower each time. Which meant doing increasingly more damaging things to me, his scapegoat child. Both my narcissistic parents and their spouses enjoyed humiliating and watching others humiliate me. And that got more malicious with time till it was sociopathic.
Trauma Bonded Codependency
They were addicted to sadism, and I became addicted as it were to masochism. Not by choice, but necessity. I was groomed to let people hurt me. Self-care was punished. Needs were shamed while I was expected to dispense their wants like the Broken Vending Machine Child I was. I was made sick and debilitated by medical neglect and child endangerment. They played Cat and Mouse with me by future-faking and bread-crumbing with a dash of love-bombing tossed in to confuse me. But always followed by the Devalue and Discard mind f*ck. Being a child, I was naturally dependent on them and they exploited that by abandoning me for shits and giggles. I developed a codependency in that I had to pursue them just for basic needs while they played hard to get. All this gaslighting and gassing left scars of betrayal blindness on my eyes.
OCD and addiction in adult children of narcissists
The Adult Child of Narcissists grows up chasing the perfection demanded of him by his exploitative parents. But of course, perfection is a bitch of a taskmaster. My parents were never responsible, reliable, caring, ethical or even moral. Yet they demanded rigid militaristic devotion and exemplary behavior from me. Even when I achieved it, it was never enough because they moved the targets to keep me insecure and desperate to please them. I became obsessive and compulsive about doing everything just so. I became almost superstitious, having to count and recount, check and recheck. I set myself to impossible tasks. And my trauma nightmares reveal the futility of it all. All night long I dream about having to do impossible things without resources and obviously, failing because the expectations are unachievable. The nightmares themselves have become compulsive as I try and fail and try and fail.
Will the real obsession please stand up?
It's probably no surprise that I suffer from Imposter Syndrome. My parents stole my identity and sabotaged my sense of self. I don't know who I am because they gaslit me into thinking I was a problem instead of a person. I didn't occasionally, like any normal person, do wrong, I WAS wrong. And they being narcissists were always right and if they weren't it was my fault. The Narcissist's Prayer was their creed. What I realized is that all this obsessive, addicted chasing was not about perfection it was about love and respect, identity, personhood. I believed, wrongly, that if I could just get it right for once, I would be able to "earn their love." As if a child has to. Well now I see, I got it right a lot more often than I thought. And still it did no good.
💡💡Stepping away from, instead of over, the edge.
Because all the love, care, devotion and self I poured into them, would never be enough. Because THEY were never enough, not me. I tried to keep pouring even though my cup dried out ages ago. But you can't pour from an empty or fill a black hole. So I gave up. I had to. It was killing me. And not after irreparable scars and pain. I didn't go no contact. I let the door they slammed on me, stay shut. And now, childhood trauma recovery, not pointless people pleasing is my agenda. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment