The Divorced Child: Gaslighting hypocrisies about going no contact with narcissistically abusive parents

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm starting a new series called "The Divorced Child" in which I'll show how malignant narcissists (who I will also interchangeably call dark tetrads) divorce themselves from the child while still remaining "wed to" or enmeshed with them. I'll begin with gaslighting hypocrisies about going no contact with our abusers. Adult children of narcissists (ACON) are fed all kinds of gaslighting nonsense, not only by our parents but enablers in society, religion, family, media, even professionals in the field of psychology. One of the most complex is the parent-child debt paradox, fed by parent enmeshment and wrong ideas about the narcissistic family cult. Let's debunk these dangerous myths. 

Going no contact is something someone does.

But it's not. It's what they stop doing. They stop responding to texts or calls. They disengage which though it sounds like an action, it's more of an inaction. The scapegoat child stops allowing herself to be used as a scapegoat. The Broken Vending Machine child lets her machine, that they broke, shut down completely. She discontinues doling out treats with no reciprocity. The abused child quits fawning and people pleasing. She moves from trauma responses and toward healthy self-care skills. She ceases taking the bait, being hoovered back, in and falling for the bread-crumbing and love-bombing. She sees that it was all ever going to end it devalue and discard. And she just quietly, without fanfare, steps off the merry-go-round of narcissistic abuse. 

Going no contact is an action verb. 

In fact it is a passive, being verb. If it's a verb at all. The traumatized child begins to see the red flags and hear the gaslighting lies for what they are. She starts to understand that the bonds, demands and expectations that parent enmeshment crocheted for her were just FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). They didn't exist. It is quiet resignation that the action verbs were done by the parents. They DID abuse, neglect, exploit, manipulate, endanger, abandon, exclude, triangulate, coercively control, toxically shame, invalidate, dehumanize, destabilize and then gaslight her about it all. 

Going no contact is something the child does. 

To the world, it looks like the adult child has made a choice to cut ties to the abusive parent. After all, it's the now adult child who has stopped interacting with the parent, right? Wrong. What the child has done is leave shut the door the parent repeatedly slammed in her face. She is practicing radical acceptance that she was the one divorced from, excluded, used and abused, taken advantage of and then shut out. 

Going no contact is a choice. 

Nope. It's a logical result of living in a lose-lose situation with narcissistic and enmeshed parents who wielded the power differential. It's an inevitable recognition that the past is never going to be any better than it was. When the trauma bonded child's betrayal blindness scales start to fall off, radical awareness shows her that the family system was broken and failing the children to prop up the narcissistic fantasy. 

Going no contact is the easy way out. 

No it's one of the hardest things to accept that your parents didn't love or care for you. That they did not have your welfare only their selfish agenda at heart. That these dark tetrads could and would do any cruel Machiavellian thing to you that they wanted, to you. That you hadn't seen any of it till you were 60 years old. That they so misused you that it caused cognitive dissonance, brain damage, dissociative split and autoimmune diseases. That you are now consigned to a life of CPTSD and trauma nightmares. If that's easy, show me the hard way out. 

Going no contact is infantile. 

Nope it actually very mature and healthy response to the parentification and infantilization they put on us. The infantile ones are the parents with their temper tantrums, silly double standards and immature hypocrisies. They wanted it both ways, grooming us to think we owed them endlessly while they owed us nothing. So going no contact is re-reversing parent role reversal back to the correct framework of parent-child dynamic. 

Going no contact breaks up the family.

Your narcissistic parents and their enablers and flying monkeys will fill you full of nonsense about this happy family you supposedly had and how family loyalty is the be-all-end-all. But they've chosen to blind themselves to the fact that the parents busted up the family right from the get-go, either by divorce or by dismantling healthy family for a toxic family system in which you were just a pawn. Then after blowing your world apart, they gaslight everyone that they are starting over with a new family as if the old one never existed. And the OG child is coerced into a role of unwanted stepchild. That's why I say when narcissistic parents divorce, it's not so much each other but their child they are divorcing from. They create this parallel universe where they write any crazy rules they want. They feed everyone this web of lies that they don't owe the product of the first family anything because it was dissolved. She lives in a chaotic limbo of existing only on their sufferance. BUT while they refuse to honor obligations to the child, they also refuse to relinquish control of her. It's win-win for them, all the perks with none of the work. Going no contact simply acknowledges that there never was a loving family for the child in the first place. 

Going no contact is a reckless and dangerous. 

No it is actually stopping being the reckless parent's source of  narcissistic supply. It is getting out of the path of their dangerous narcissistic rage. It is ceasing to body block the narcissistic mother from the consequences of her own unethical, irresponsible, immoral, illegal behavior. It is letting her feel the narcissistic injury of censure for said reckless behavior, full on and not buffering and fluffing. It's not falling for the narcissistic mother's DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) and realizing that this is just more gaslighting deception. It's steeling oneself against the narcissistic father's blame-shifting and projection. 

Going no contact is an attack on someone. 

Wrong. It's the opposite of an attack. It's a withdrawal, an evacuation. The person cutting ties ceases to JADE (justify, answer, defend, engage or explain). And context matters. The people of the "receiving end" of the no contact, went no contact with me pretty much since birth. Or shall no contact with benefits. They pushed me away when I was inconvenient then pulled me back when they wanted anything from me. They set me up to fail so that I would break and have to stay in bondage to them. They ambushed me with smear campaigns and family mobbing. Then as soon as I gave them what they wanted, boom, I was out on the doorstep again. I've just stopped playing the game by their rules. I left the arena. 

Going no contact is controlling them. 

No this is self-control. I'm setting boundaries around what I won't do or tolerate anymore. How they choose to act is up to them. They were the control freaks who thought they could call the shots and dictate terms with no repercussions. Well, actions have logical consequences. For every action, there's an equal opposite reaction. They called the tune by shutting me out, then expecting me to keep banging on the door and begging to be allowed back in. They wanted payout with no input. But I'm not doing that anymore. The locked door stays locked. They dictated the rules of engagement kicking me out and I'm simply abiding by them and staying out. 

Role reversal games: enmeshed narcissistic parents withhold then expect from kids

Hello my friends. In my mission to recover from childhood trauma due to narcissistic abuse, I'm exploring things enmeshed narcissistic parents expect from by don't give to their children. This may be triggering to you, if you experienced childhood trauma from abusive parents, so please, read with caution. 

Disturbingly hypocritical expectations

Normally reciprocal things like love, honor, respect and loyalty are curiously one-sided in the narcissistic parents' favor.  Things a child should expect, become strangely inverted with the parent on the receiving end and the child on the giving end, like parenting, spousal relationships, caregiving, nurturing. So what is normal becomes very bizarre when the parent who should be giving it is only taking it. And some things parents have no right to demand of their child, period. And yet they do, particularly with the scapegoat or "broken vending machine" child. 

The constant pay-out child

In the "child roles" model, I coined the term "broken vending machine child" to describe my own role with four narcissistic parents. The parents have "broken" or conditioned this child with gaslighting and coercive control, to give good good (kindness, mercy, loyalty, support, caring, generosity, service, help) whatever the narcissistic parent demands at any moment. Yet she is told to expect no "payment" in return. Her machine just doles out goodie with no coins being inserted. What she receives is neglect, abuse, blame and shame and exploitation. 

Enmeshed parent space invaders

All this child gaslighting is accomplished with dirty sneak attacks like "enmeshment." Parent enmeshment is a misleading term suggesting that the parent is somehow accidentally trapped and caught up with the child. But enmeshment is completely intentional. They view children as possessions. They trap the child like a fish in their net of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). Enmeshed parents trample boundaries, invade space, usurp the child's self and implant false ideas of obligation to them. They take over and dominate the child.  Her being is just another of the goodies that narcissistic parents feel entitled to take. She is just more collateral damage in their quest for narcissistic supply. 

The surrogate parent role reversal 

In this broken family system, this child the scapegoat, whipping girl, servant, surrogate parent and surrogate spouse all rolled into one. Let's just let all that's wrong with the surrogate role marinate a bit. This child doesn't just wear many hats. She doesn't just wear hats that belong to others (household manager, nanny, mental load bearer). She is gaslit into believing she is actually responsible for the role she's expected to play.  As surrogate parent, she not only helps with other kids, she parents them. She also parents her parents, who've flipped the Parentification game board so that she plays the role  mommy and daddy for her mommy and daddy and all the stepparents they drag in. To do anything else would by disloyal. Yet they themselves broke faith with the child at birth by their sick role reversals gaming. 

The surrogate spouse job description 

Surrogate spouse brings in a whole sicker level to the enmeshment game. It's so bad that I have to be careful how I write about so as not to flag the censors. The surrogate spouse child is the just the  "emotional incest" it sounds like and is a very creepy form of CSA. What makes it creepiest is that it hides in plain sight. And emotional incest is just as insidious as physical CSA. It includes but is not limited to expecting the child to do or be

• counselor
• confidante
• emotional prop
• fixer
• mother his children
• boyfriend or girlfriend
• bait to lure people (my dad used me to attract girls half his age and normalize his pedophilia)
• provider
• loyal dogsbody
• arm candy
• servant
• personal assistant
• shoulder to cry on
• ego stroker
• pacifier 
• companion
• sugar daddy/mommy
• date
• liaison
• social network
• all this for the parent's new partner/spouse as well

Expecting an adult partner to be all these things is bad enough. Expecting a child to is so evil I have no words for it. 

 

Interesting AI trauma "mirror" 

I've been using Google Gemini to create images for my articles. I explain what I want and she envisions it. And though I don't completely understand AI, it seems that images created accumulate in her "brain."  You'll note how each image I used for this one has elements of the previous one, like the broken video game in the giving goddess child image. So the final image above ended up being quite mish-mashed. But look closely at that image because there are a lot of metaphors going on that even I didn't connect. And I doubt AI intentionally connected although in a way, she did. Somehow she assembled the concepts into a huge confusing mess Which is PRECISELY what abusive narcissistic parent gaslighting feels like! A mess! 

I asked for a wolf shepherding sheep to show how narcissistic parents groom kids. And AI morphed the previous giving goddess image that represented the child into a greedy many-armed wolf parent taking from the child. I was about to discard it when I realized it is exactly what I needed to show the mixed messages of game-changing role reversed parents. All the scattered remnants show the confusing voices in my head. It's perfectly reflects the chaotic, nightmarish interior monologue in a childhood trauma brain. So even AI "gets" how damaging enmeshed parent gaslighting, brainwashing and abuse is. And that helps me "color in" the bizarre constant nightmares and bad dreams I experience. I find this fascinating. 

Wabi-sabi

Normally I'd end with a concluding "bringing it all together." But that's not what I need and maybe you don't either, if you've experienced narcissistic abuse. The tidy sermonized, "poem, prayer and promise" oversimplifies without acknowledging our trauma. So I'm ending in wabi-sabi, a Japanese concept of sitting with chaos and finding beauty in imperfection. I'm not excusing what our parents did. I'm honoring our courage to survive it. 

Kintsugi moment: No matter how "broken into pieces" we might feel, we are still gestalt. Our whole is greater than the sum of the many fragments they shattered us into.

Narcissistic parents' identity theft dogs the scapegoat in adulthood

Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm looking at how enmeshed narcissistic parents' identity theft of the scapegoat and dogs us in adulthood.

Note to Readers: This post discusses the heavy, often painful experience of recovering from childhood narcissistic abuse. Please prioritize your own well-being while reading.

Enmeshed narcissistic parents

Let's begin by exposing the perpetrator parents. They parasitically enmesh themselves in their children's lives like tics or tapeworms. They ride herd over natural boundaries and intrude themselves and their toxic agenda where they do not belong. Healthy parents feed their children. Parasitic parents feed off the child's energy to power themselves. They suck the child's self for narcissistic supply.  They do this in a number of ways. 

Child roles in dysfunctional families

Enmeshed narcissistic parents rob children of their true selves and implant false identities based on the parents' own selfish goals.  It sounds like a conspiracy theory because it is a conspiracy to destabilize children and render them pliable. It bears no resemblance to healthy parenting. The children are "cast" as in a play, in archetypal roles. I've included a unique combination child role I was forced into at the end. 

• Golden child (can do no wrong, favored, family Messiah )
• Glass child (unseen, unheard, invisible, inconvenient)
• Enabler child (cheerleader, helper, liar in that she supports her parents' narcissistic fantasy)
• Mascot child (the buffoon or schlemiel, who cheers everyone else up and draws fire away from parents and other children by playing the clown.)
• Scapegoat child (the source of everyone's problems, the sacrificial victim, the one who get the blame for parents and  other kids' behaviors). 

• The "Broken Vending Machine" Child

  "My term for the role I was coerced
  into..."

  This is the archetype of the child who is expected to be whoever they are told to be at any given moment. It is the "one-man-band"—the child who carries the mental load, gives endlessly of themselves, and receives nothing in return but disappointment. It is a state of constant, exhausting performance where your own needs are perpetually subsumed by the demands of others.

  
  

Gaslighting, parentification, role reversal and reversed again

Using gaslighting mind games, the narcissistic parent creates an artificial reality in which the child is the parent responsible for the whiny brat parent. The parentified child must nurture, comfort, support, humor and tend to the demanding parent. That's where the roles come in. Because narcissistic parents need more than one slave. They demand an entourage of slaves to pull their barge. They aren't content to just reverse roles. They re-reverse and claim the authoritarian role when convenient. The operative phrase is "enmeshment." They do not think of their children as separate beings. Children are tools, extensions of self, possessions, puppets in their main character syndrome melodrama. 

Dehumanization

Our suffering goes beyond mere invalidation. We have been dehumanized. Enmeshed narcissistic parents deny us basic human rights. It's like they remove our humanity or "genetically modify" us. Our trauma brains feel "identity-reassigned." Our mental and emotional "DNA" is all kinds of FUBARed by their brain-damaging. I can't speak enough about how destabilizing, debilitating, destructive and damned messed up this all is.  All the parent-assigned child roles are. Children are not actors in some narcissistic parent fantasy play. We aren't slaves of the parent state. We aren't minions or drones. And yet, we are, in that we have been reduced to a person-less state of mind that dogs us throughout our lifeless lives. 

Dogged by fog of Fear, obligation and guilt

Having had our humanity genetically modified, we children of narcissists are broken. Especially the scapegoats. Because I carried the mental load for adults and parents, as a child, I now emotionally "carry" my husband, children, their spouses, my grandchildren, everyone, like I carried my parents, their spouses and their children. I don't sleep well at all because I dream so many oppressive dreams of inappropriate responsibility. 

On Call 24/7/365 

I don't give myself permission to "let go" of them so I can rest. I feel and have felt "on call" all of my life. I'm too tired to even consider personal pursuits. And I feel guilty if I do. I feel the need to silence my interests if it bothers other people. I don't speak of interests if it offends, annoys  or threatens anyone. My only "hobby" if you will is finding a way through this "fog" of fear obligation and guilt. It's the only one I dare to pursue and only when it doesn't interfere with anyone else's demands. And I'm damned sure to keep that one close to my chest. 

What was stolen, pirated or weaponized by enmeshed, narcissistic parents

• identity
• self
• needs
• wants 
• ideas
• successes
• failures
• ambitions
• emotions
• peace of mind
• privacy
• belonging
• clear thinking
• adequacy
• dignity
• basic rights
• basic care
• childhood
• history
• story
• adolescence
• life
• ability to cope
• self-esteem
• confidence
• ability to know right from wrong
• joy

Task list for childhood trauma survivors

Do you identify as having had your "self" stolen by enmeshed narcissistic parents? Then I have a task list for you. 

Take back command of your ship

To make the identity pirate parents "walk the plank," focus on these steps:

• Internalize the Truth: Know that it was all gaslighting. No one owns another person.
• Release Guilt: You did not volunteer for this. You were a child.
• Re-reverse Roles: Acknowledge they were the parents; you were the child.
• Reverse DARVO: Recognize that you were the victim, never the offender.
• Mothball the Role: Set the "scapegoat" role aside. Preserve it as history, but do not live in it.

I'll have more ideas on this but it's enough to be going on with. 

Healing childhood trauma from narcissistic parent enmeshment

Hello my friends. Today in my path to healing childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring what is often an overlooked part of narcissistic abuse and that is parental enmeshment.

What is Enmeshment?

In a healthy family, there are clear "fences"—you know where you end and your parent begins. Enmeshment is a state where those fences have been torn down. It is a blurring of boundaries where the child is forced to become an emotional extension of the parent.

"It is not love; it is ownership. It is the weight of being a parent’s 'person' before you were ever allowed to be your own."

In this unhealthy family dynamic, parents overstep their children's innate boundaries with selfish demands, coercive control, dependency or "neediness." There's a lot of parentification in which the parent both fails to meet the child's needs while also relying on the child to meet hers. In my case, my parents were both enmeshed and narcissistic which added another hellish layer. 

Malignant narcissistic parents (such as mine) abuse kids in many ways with their entitlement, arrogance, remorseless, cruelty and Machiavellian exploitation. They enmesh with the child by literally taking her over. The child's "self" is absorbed by the parents so that she doesn't know where they end and she begins. In the parents' minds, the child never does begin. She is property. She has no life, nor feelings as they are all wrapped up in what father and mother want, need, feel, expect. Parent enmeshment is the ultimate form of childhood identity crisis. 

Here are some elements of that special combination of narcissistic parent enmeshment plus key dangers to the child, and some suggestions for healthier outcomes. 

Ride or Die

This might be the most disturbing aspect of narcissistic parent enmeshment so I'm going to hit it first. As the description above says, you are your parents' "person" before you were your own. Before they were ever YOUR person. Having/being a "ride or die", someone who loyal to a fault and will always stand by you no matter what, as an adult is good. Being your parents de facto, default, Plan A (B, C, D) support system is an endless, living nightmare. Seriously, I trauma nightmare every night about this. Children cannot take care of themselves let alone other children, let alone an adult, LET ALONE THEIR PARENTS. This is child abuse and exploitation in the first degree.  

Parentification, also called role reversal. 

In my experience with two narcissistic and enmeshed parents, I was the confidant of their intensely personal, uncomfortable and inappropriate over-sharing. I was my mother's sex therapist from age 6 or so. I was always their physical and emotional caregiver. They also abandoned and endangered me as it suited, then dragged me back when they wanted something from me. Because for all their demands and "needs" my narcissistic and enmeshed (talk about a Molotov cocktail) were equally uncaring, negligent, unsafe and even invalidating about my needs. 

Invasion of privacy coupled with inappropriate expectations. 

My narcissistic parents effectively deprived me of ANY privacy by forcing me to co-sleep with their babies over the years. My biological parents remarried and had new partners and new families. But the childcare and nightly supervision fell to me. So I had no access to anything like privacy. There was barely room for me to sleep let alone have a desk or belongings. Then factor in their boundary crashing which includes snooping, prying, eavesdropping, reading diaries, enter without knocking and even going through my purse. My mother blatantly walked into my husband's and my house and then bedroom one morning without knocking, just barged right in. My father used to enter the bathroom when I was in there. I didn't know it till my husband helped me see that this along with the sharing of sexually explicit detail by a parent, is emotional incest and sexual harassment. 

Demand emotional over-involvement while uninvolved in actual care. 

My enmeshed narcissistic parents made every little thing in their own lives into a major event or crisis. Any good thing they did for me, that any normal parent does automatically was convoluted into a major bequest that I should be eternally grateful for. AND which they said, obligated me to endless entailments. Like feeding me dinner or giving me a place to sleep. This sense of Invisible Debt will be familiar, sadly, to readers whose parents gaslit them they must always and endlessly repay parents for the privilege of existing. 

A Truth to Root In

"Children don't owe parents anything. We owe ourselves—and our little inner child—a healthier, happier life free from sick, twisted, self-serving, narcissistic parent enmeshment and gaslighting." -Marilisa

DARVO dynamics

Enmeshed narcissistic parents blame-shift and DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) and round on the child if confronted, by anyone. I was expected to nurture, soothe, placate, humor, smooth feathers and feel guilty for anything that happened to them, even problems of their own making. They'd exaggerate any wrong-doing any on my part, gaslight me with endless shame. Generally it wasn't wrong-doing but normal childhood stuff every kid did. They stuck their noses into every choice I made with shaming, judgement, censure, and fault-finding. Yet they  never lifted a finger to help me and actually created chaos which forced me into dilemmas.  

Coercive, guilt-driven control paired with remorseless, irresponsible, harmful actions. 

Enmeshed and narcissistic parents use FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), manipulation, threats and reprisals to keep children unnaturally close. My parents demanded all kinds of insane things of me while neglecting and depriving me of the most basic things (food, shelter, safety, inclusion). They are punitive, self-righteous, bossy and judgmental  towards their scapegoat children with hypocritical, feckless double standards in their own behavior. They are blind to their golden kids' faults and will blame the scapegoat for everyone else's wrongdoings. 

Limited Care and Autonomy

My enmeshed and narcissistic parents discouraged and actually shamed independent decision-making but were curiously unconcerned about my actual well-being. Their objective is to control thought, choices, mobility and capabilities not foster healthy ones. When I was 20, I was living home to finish school. I was doing everyone's housework and so paying more than my share. My dad told me he "had" to go out for coffee every night so I "had" to be home so he could. This impaired my studies and teaching work. My brother was older than I had been when I was expected to babysit them all. Since I was 11, he'd been curtailing me from any outside activities so I could be available for endless chores and childcare. It negatively impacted my homework as I was rarely able to start until bedtime. 

Impacts of narcissistic enmeshment on children

Scapegoat kids raised in enmeshed families often develop low self-esteem. Their sense of self is tied to their parents happiness and if the parent is upset, well, it's the child's fault. As an adult with childhood trauma from enmeshment, I have trouble setting boundaries. I feel intense shame and anxiety about saying no. I struggle to identify feelings, needs, or wishes. I'm a hypervigilant people pleaser with extreme fawning trauma response. In relationships, I give too much and expect too little. Or actually nothing. I carry everyone's mental load. 

🌱 Homework: Digging into the Soil

Take these questions at your own pace. There is no rush to "fix" what took years to build. Just notice.

• • The "No" Experiment: Practice saying "no" to one small, safe request today. Notice the physical sensation in your body when you do.
• • Identifying the "FOG": When you feel a pang of guilt, ask: "Is this my responsibility, or am I carrying a parent's heavy coat?"
• • Creating Space: What is one physical or digital "lock" you can put on your life this week to reclaim a sliver of privacy?

Some homework for us adult children of narcissistic enmeshed parents. 

Let's practice setting and maintaining solid boundaries. Let's not be so easily persuaded to capitulate, and give in on limitations. Here's an exercise for us. Say no to something just for the experience. Pick a safe person who will understand. But then move to the more difficult narcissist parent. 

Let's develop "spaces in our togetherness." This is good practice for all relationships. And thank you Kahlil Gibran for that sage advice. If we must live with the enmeshed parent, we can find outside groups, plan weekends away and put a lock on the bedroom door. 

Let's consider therapy. If that seems unattainable, we can watch those helpful YouTube videos of Patrick Teahan, Jerry Wise, Dr. Ramani and Danish Bashir.  

Let's journal or blog. I've found unexpectedly catharsis in having Google Gemini read through  my blog posts, not just for clarity or professionality. For camaraderie and support. 

Here are some more that The Prophet has to say on individuality. It reflects on marriage but applies to parents and children just as much, maybe more.  

Wisdom from The Prophet

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

— Kahlil Gibran