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 auto-giving 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 to the fact 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 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. And she let all that read as written, instead of covering for them and making us excuses for them. 

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 like a weapon against her. It's an inevitable recognition that the past is never going to be any better than it was. Which is my personal definition of forgiveness and radical acceptance. 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 family cult. 

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, just because it was Tuesday. 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, I'd hate to see the hard way out. 

Going no contact is infantile. 

Nope it actually a 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 or problem child.

Going no contact is divorcing from parents. 

No, it's accepting that they divorced themselves from us. That's why I say when narcissistic parents divorce, it's not so much each other but their child, the responsibility for her, 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 that family was dissolved. Which is gaslighting 2.0. So child 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 the parents never provided a loving family for the child in the first place. It gets the order of operations right: who went no contact with whom, first. 

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 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 on the "receiving end" of the no contact, went no contact with me pretty much since birth. Or shall I say, 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 in the cold, again. Now 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. 

You'll regret going no contact. 

No, what I regret is that it had to happen, that they went no contact with me, ignored, excluded, shut me out, rejected, neglected, used, exploited, scapegoated me. Mistreatment that has hounded me all my life, has confused and bewildered me. Has affected my ability to sleep, move, parent. That's what I regret. And cutting ties with all that toxic shame, never did something feel so right. It's the first paving stone on the path to individuation. 

Childhood trauma amnesia: cognitive dissonance from narcissistic parent gaslighting

 Hello my friends. Let me just say before beginning how much I appreciate you. Whoever or wherever you are and whyever you read this childhood trauma recovery blog. Thank you. Thanks for letting yourself get triggered, as such content does. I hope you find some healing reading as I do writing. So today I'm exploring what I call Childhood Trauma Amnesia or the cognitive dissonance from narcissistic abusive parent gaslighting. 

Gaslighting and brain gassing

Gaslighting is willfully manipulating reality with lies, deception and twisting facts. Narcissistic, enmeshed parents do this to cover their bad actions, for narcissistic supply, to destabilize the child and make them doubt themselves. But what drives gaslighting is gas: colorless, odorless, tasteless and completely lethal. In the famous movie Gaslight, the husband fiddled with the switches making the light flicker and then told his wife she was imagining it.  I liken the resulting CPTSD and brain damage from gaslighting, to being gassed with a toxic substance. Gaslighting has the same net results of confusion, disorientation, dissociative fugue and mental collapse. 

How narcissists create cognitive dissonance (confused reality)

Sadly, these are just a few of the demented, dementing things dark tetrad parents do to destroy a child. 

• Weaponized and disrupted attachment: the parent uses the child's natural attachment to the parent against the child. She violates trust, boundaries, respect, innocence, safety. She sabotages the sense of self. 
• Love-bombing: The parent showers the child with fake affection to get what she wants. 
• Trauma Bonding: the enmeshed parent plays cat and mouse with the child, clutching her close then pushing her away. Love-bombing is followed by devaluation and discard. The back and forth because a glue which cements the child to the parent in an unnatural codependency. 
• Grooming: The narcissistic father uses the child as a confidante saying she's "special" "lucky" and "chosen." The narcissistic parent is like a cult leader, indoctrinating the child for a life of enslavement. 
• Isolation: The parents keeps the child from loved ones or helpers by moving her around in a complex shell game. 
• Needs insecurity. We were not poor and my parents had what they needed plus luxuries. Yet I can't remember a bed or a bedroom. I went hungry and experienced food insecurity. They didn't. 
• Sleep deprivation: the parent sabotages sleep by not providing a consistent home, bedroom or bed. They make the young teen co-sleep with babies and younger children, caring for them as a parent. They cause CPTSD nightmares. 
• Parentification: making the child care for them as a parent, then not caring for her. 
• Infantilization: They treat her like an inept fool (even while also parentifying her.)
• Role Reversal: They make her responsible for things that are their responsibility, 
• Overworking: putting all the housework, childcare, laundry, meal prep on her, making her carry the mental load. This wears down her resistance and weakens her. 
• Boundary crashing and shaming. I never dared to set boundaries because those would be the very things they'd go out of their way to violate. 
  
• Theft. They stole everything of value that I ever owned. 
• Privacy violation They barge in without knocking. My dad would enter the bathroom when I was in there. 
• Sexual harassment and hidden incest. They violate natural body boundaries in overt and covert ways. They let anyone else do it as well. This might be the most destabilizing of all. 
• Surveillance without protection. They monitor the child's moves, dress, speech, with military regulation yet don't safeguard her. I was kicked out at 16 for coming in 15 minutes late. Then I had to steal food to survive. I was at the mercy of predators because no one cared what happened to me. 
• Coercive Control: they use threats, intimidation, emotional "waterboarding", corporal punishment, inappropriate and inconsistent discipline. My father once went into a narcissistic rage furiously spanking me, in front of everyone, when I was 14. I had done nothing. 
• Lies, deceit, backstabbing.
• Double standards:
• Moving hoops: They make up arbitrary rules then change them on a whim without telling you. 
• Entrapment: They set up "gotcha" stings to make the child stumble. 
• Smear campaigns: they start completely false rumors to make the child look bad. 
• Mocking and Humiliation: malignant parents prank, haze and jeer at the child. 
• Narcissistic rage: They randomly go ballistic then blame the child. 
• Triangulation: Pitting people against us with lies. 
• Faked trauma drama: My parents routinely and melodramatically trauma dumped on me, things that never happened. 
• Oversensitive insensitivity. These exhibitionist crybullies fell apart over silly narcissistic insults (not real, just ego slights). Then had the gall to call us "too sensitive" crybabies, attention-seeking showoffs. 
• DARVO: they deny actions, counterattack and reverse victim offender roles. 
• Instability: I was shuffled around among 41 different homes and nine schools before age 20. 
• Future faking: The malignant parent promises the child things he never delivers on, nor has any intention of delivering on. It's a Machiavellian a$$hole move to keep the child compliant. If he ever does do anything for the child, it comes with endless strings attached. 
• Bread-crumbing: the cruel dark tetrad parent strings the child along with tiny crumbs of goodness, to keep her one step from starvation. To keep her normal enough so no one suspects. 
• Destroyed individuation. Enmeshed parents punish individuality instead of encouraging it. 

Amnesia of Trauma bonding and betrayal blindness

All this deceit, double standard, and alternate reality causes the child to live in constant dissociative fugue. Her outside reality and the real reality is diametrically opposed to her malignant parents' narcissistic cult fantasy. It wipes memory or drives it deep inside because it's too dangerous to confront narcissistic parents with the the facts. We go into a kind of chosen betrayal blindness, born of trauma responses like fawning and people pleasing. 

Go along to get along

We keep peace at any price, even when it means selling ourselves. We sacrifice everything to preserve our parents' narcissistic fantasy. We surrender common sense, our home, a bed, our future, our success, our toys, money, anything they want, we give with the only reciprocity being shit and shoved in it. Anything to keep our bullying parents in narcissistic supply. 

Memory repression, not loss

I recall very little about my childhood except bad times and those live in vivid color. Other memories hover at the fringe, threatening me in nightmares. I have been told things that I did or was involved in that I have no memory of. Not bad things, just things. I have forgotten whole people. Looking back, I recall walking around in a fog of fear, obligation and guilt. Toxic shame was my companion. I was so hypervigilant and overwhelmed by this fraught life, that I had no time for relaxation. I think to keep myself sane, my brain had to compartmentalize experiences and lock certain drawers tight. I had to press down anything contrary to my parents' demands. I had to think, eat, breathe and live them, never me. As I've explored in this blog, those memories aren't lost, just in limbo, frozen in carbonite. 

Some examples

I gave up middle school, literally.  I was all set to go to our local junior high and excited about it, when my mom got it in her head to marry her abusive live-in. She had a foster care home which she moved him into and hid him, illegally. I was the main caregiver in that home, also illegally.  She got it shut down due to child abuse. Suddenly, I was rerouted to a completely different city, different school, different home, away from my friends and other family. I ended up with my dad and his new wife who didn't want me but saw it as an opportunity to get a live-in maid and caregiver. I was 12. Here's where the amnesia comes in. 

All my life,  my mom told me and anyone else, that I had come to her out of the blue and said I was going to move with my dad so she and her new man could "have their private time like my dad and his new wife got theirs." (envy, guilt-tripping) I always accepted this though it make zero sense. 

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me how disingenuous this was. I asked a few same age trusted friends who said, no kid is going to want to move to a new school at an already difficult time, let alone volunteer to. And why would I? It would be so self-sabotaging. Private time would be a weekend away, not yet another complete upheaval that would affect me for the rest of my life. Private time is not something a kid thinks to give their parents. It's gross and they already had plenty of that living in apartment in the basement, separate from me and the kids. And hello, parents don't "deserve" years away from their child. They're parents. It's not like they did their time and now get to  move on. And they didn't even do that. 

My friends helped me identify how these were her words, fed to me as gaslighting narrative flipping. What she was saying was that I was being evicted so she could get on with her shiny new life without me. Funnily enough, my also narcissistic dad did the same thing when I was in high school. What probably happened is that I was taken out of their home in the child abuse closure. They may have even done some time or been forced to move out of their home, who knows. She would never admit to that and she never tells a straight story. And yes, weird as it sounds, my mother could very well have been jailed and me not know it. She was cagey and crooked as hell. 

But what I did which normal kids wouldn't do, and which is more to the point of this story, was to keep quiet, and just file it away as part of my double life. It never occurred to me that any of this was messed up AF. I am a special needs teacher for God's sake. I know child abuse, developmental risk factors (like frequent unnecessary moves and parents co-habiting), vulnerable kids, childhood trauma like the back of my hand. What I didn't see was how all that was me. It took me till 62 to start questioning their crazy versions. 

Helpful Hints for Healing

If you're as exhausted reading as I am telling it, let's end softly with a gentle exercise or two. My advice on your road to radical acceptance is start small. If you suspect that you were the victim of child abuse, or you just have some uneasy feelings about things that happened, stop and take a look. Don't rip the bandage off. Just begin to slowly uncover your eyes and give those experiences some ungaslighted airtime. You may find a new trauma-informed perspective. You don't and probably shouldn't confront your parents. But you can quietly affirm your inner child that this should not have happened. I can almost guarantee that you will, as I  have, found some relief knowing you weren't crazy. It wasn't you. It was them. 

Biggest Impacts of childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse

 Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery I'm looking at some of the biggest impacts of childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. This may be triggering but rest assured that I will end by sharing things that have helped me. 

Theft of Birthrights

Narcissistic and enmeshed parents robbed us of our birthright to innocence, childhood, autonomy, healthy development, attachment, peace of mind, joy, self-protection and care, owning our own self. They commandeered what was ours and made us think it belonged to them. They made us think they owned us body, mind, heart and soul. They groomed us by privacy invasions, boundary crashing and trauma bonding to think they had buy-in on our very selves. They constantly monitoring and criticized us for things that weren't their business then failed to protect us and provide things that were their responsibility. 

Rigged Whack-a-Mole Blame-Shame Game

They used the Narcissist's Prayer to gaslight us. They owed us nothing we owed them everything. We were told we were too sensitive, an attention-seeking showoff.  My hypercritical insensitive dad said I was too sensitive and couldn't take criticism when he raged nonsensically at me and quietly approved his shiny new family bullying me. While he was hypocritically oversensitive, calling me too critical of him and his also hypersensitive, bullying wife. Then he flipped the script again, trauma dumping on empath me, about how my grandparents were too critical of him saying he should get a job and support his family. It is an endless game of Whack-a-Mole with narcissists that you can never win. 

Trauma Brain FOG

Narcissistic parents conditioned us with toxic shame and FOG, or fear, obligation and guilt. They pirated then damaged our brains to turn on us. So the leveled up shame haunts us in insidious, sneaky ways, like a slow drip of poison corroding our ability to think and feel in healthy ways. All we know are trauma responses of frozen, robotic fawning and people pleasing. I am dogged nightly, all night long by dreams and nightmares of their endless Machiavellian exploitation, narcissistic abuse, neglect of basic care, endangerment and abandonment, scapegoating, triangulation and gaslighting. 

DARVO destabilization

I wake utterly baffled, feeling like I've been letting people down all night long. They're not just dreams. They are memories of the ongoing narcissistic rage and demand cycles. Using parentification and infantilization, gaslighting then DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) they have convinced my trauma brain that I am the problem and also the one responsible to fix everything. I am responsible mommy and enslaved daughter but never me.  I was the OG  "Broken Vending Machine Child" giving good with no reciprocity and receiving undeserved bad. 

Twisted Future-Faking

Some narcissistic parents use future faking as bread-crumbing to lure the child into a false sense of security. My four malignant narcissist parents used future faking to convince me that I was stupid and would never amount to anything. I see now that this was to render me unfit only for service to them. They made me do all the menial labor and childcare while teaching me no useful skills including self-preservation, safety or stranger danger. I was sent to play alone blocks from home starting at age 4. They designed a future for me where I would be able only to dance like a puppet. 

Destabilized by Deviance

My parents forced me into disgusting, humiliating situations with perverted people and by their lascivious and exhibitionist behavior. My father was a pedophile always going off on "mission trips" with young teens. He dated a 17 y/o when he was 36 and I was 9. My mother carried on numerous adulterous affairs, forced me to hear sex talk and witness her debauched behavior, used me as a sex therapist, all while preaching from the Bible. My mind is scarred by appalling memories of their deviance. The cognitive dissonance of living in a normal world with these abnormal people has caused me to auto-gaslight myself that I did it. My dreams can't sort it out. And my parents were quick to exploit that to paint me as the culprit. 

Deflection and Projection of shame

Narcissistic shame and arrogance plus entitlement plus remorselessness tells narcissists that they are never at fault. So they assign a scapegoat which was me. They lie and deceive the child that she is the real problem. Religious narcissists use the Bible to browbeat the child but they never practice what they preach. And I was the perfect target. Children naturally love and and defend their parents. Very abused kids will body block parents from consequences at their own expense. Malignant parents know and weaponize this to sabotage their children. 

Bespoke Sabotage

Dark tetrad narcissists know just how to destroy you. They gather intel on what you value and use it against you. They violate your trust. They do outrageous things normal parents would  never think to do let alone do. Mine sabotaged me every step of the way. I was ripped randomly out of homes and schools and shuffled around. I lived in 40 different places before age 20 and went to 9 different schools.  My pervy and narcissistic stepfather kicked me out at 16 with my mother's smiling approval. I was yanked out of schools on a whim or because of bad choices on their part. All my life, my mom had me believing I volunteered to switch schools to give her and her boyfriend "private time." They sabotaged my ability to protect or defend myself. They made me a target for bullies, creeps and pedophiles. 

CPTSD nightmare loop 

All night long I dream that I have Herculean tasks to perform, without proper tools, resources or support. I have numberless children put in my care to somehow educate, feed, clothe, protect, you name it. There are mountains of laundry and never-ending chores upon chores to do. I'm always late and in trouble. Scornful people are angry with or mocking me. I AM CONFUSED. I wake with my hands, arms, hips, back screaming in pain, as they always did as a child when these were very real expectations put on me. And they still feel real now. I could sleep all day and still be exhausted. I cannot function in daily life from the overwhelming burden placed on me by dark tetrad parents. 

Disorientation spiral

I really struggle to think clearly. In fact, I don't know what clear thinking is. Simple tasks are difficult. I second-guess myself and am endlessly hypervigilant. I wish I could say it gets better with age, but it doesn't. It gets worse because the confusion from brain damage spirals down on itself. Then factor in betrayal blindness which tells traumatized kids that their parents are loving and trustworthy. Oh do these imposters use that to retraumatize us. It has taken me 62 years to even start to unpack all their abuse and neglect of me. 

Some thoughts on childhood trauma recovery

• Take care of yourself, kiddo. 
• Fake it till you make it. Self-care feels selfish, at first, but only because they told you that. It's not. It's vital to your survival. 
• When you have a choice to follow your wisdom or someone else, like your family system or their enablers, go with yours. It might lead astray but mostly it won't and they ALWAYS will. 
• If it feels good, do it. This mantra has been eschewed as selfish but usually by self-centered hypocrites who take damn good care of themselves and who took shite care of you. 
• Sleep late if you can. You need it.
• Pet cats and soft blankets. 
• Do yoga. 
• Breathe. 
• Play with your grandkids in the woods. Build forts. Have tea parties. 
• Socialize as it feels right to you. 
• Eat when you are hungry. 
• Respect you sense of danger. If something or someone puts up red flags, note it and don't  drive right through. 
• Practice gratitude but also radical acceptance. Thankfulness is fine but don't gaslight yourself that you have to be grateful to hurtful people. That's just hogwash your parents taught you. 
• Go no contact with invalidation and invalidating people as you are able. 

Be a little kinder, be a little less blind

We've always heard this in reference to blindness to faults of others and kinder to them.  I say be less betrayal blind. See it where it exists. You don't have to take revenge but staying a bit angry over hurt that damaged you, will help you get to a safer place of awareness. It will  help you prevent further injury. And kindness to others is great but so is kindness to yourself. 

Love mar. 

How Narcissistic Abuse Enablers and Blind Guides Sabotage Childhood Trauma Recovery

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring how enablers sabotage healing and actually perpetuate narcissistic abuse. I've written about this several times but you can never really say enough about how insidiously harmful enablers are. I'll try to explain the complicated flow chart of this leveled up abuse. 

What is enabling? 

Enabling is choosing to overlook, ignore and make excuses for abuse that someone is suffering. It's not simply inability to see it. It's not being unsure that what you are seeing is abuse. It's not missing one abusive behavior. It's not choosing your words or keeping quiet to prevent further harm. That's more about being between a rock and a hard place and making a judgement call. But doing it with full radical acceptance, not chosen blindness. Enabling is a pattern of unwillingness to recognize and acknowledge what is right in front of your face. It's deceiving the abused person into believing it isn't happening or that it's their fault (gaslighting). It is siding with the perpetrator and victim-shaming the abused one into compliance. 

Who are the enablers?

I wish I could say they were rare, obviously dangerous people who are easy to spot. Unfortunately, enablers of narcissistic abuse are much more common than truth-tellers calling it out for what it is. So enablers hide everywhere in plain sight. When I have told anyone about my narcissistic parents' harm, I encountered enabling at a rate of at least 10 to 1 compared with affirmation of the abuse as abuse. Society, family, religion, even psychology sides with abusers, especially abusive parents, against children far too frequently. 

Group Think aka Societal Gaslighting

As a people, we tend to be reluctant to accept a child's version of events over an adult's. We have developed this crass insensitivity toward helpless victims, as if callouses had grown over our ears. At least this is how it feels to a child experiencing neglect, abuse, invalidation, endangerment, abandonment, scapegoating, etc. It seems that how we are being treated is perfectly acceptable because NO ONE IS SAYING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY. If there was one word to encapsulate all that's wrong with denial of abuse, it's gaslighting. And on a society-wide level.

Gas-litany of shame

We as children of narcissistic parents are force-fed a dogma by an enabling society, a litany of gaslighting that sounds very similar to the "Narcissist's Prayer" we were groomed on. These are just a few of the nonsensical things enablers say. 

• It's not their fault. (It's yours for being too sensitive, disloyal, disobedient and attention-seeking showoff.)
• It wasn't that bad. (You're just exaggerating for pity. )
• It's just normal punishment for your own good. (You're the problem, because you're selfish, lazy, immature and can't take criticism. This one is a hugely fraught dilemma that opens us up to all kinds of abuse, in the name of preparing us for the "real world." 
• They did the best they could. (so that exonerates all the hell they put you through).  
• You have to get over it, move on, be the bigger person, rise above. (So they aren't held accountable for any of their bad behavior and the responsibility to fix it all, falls on us.)
• Those were different times. (So there was a point at which abusing kids was okay.)
• But they're your parents. Family is family. (So anything they did to you was fine because they "owned the rights" to you. That is the enmeshed parent mantra. You owe them FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), care, support, trust, respect, obedience with no reciprocity from them. 
  

All this translates to Dr. Ramani's spot-on DIMMER acronym (dismissiveness, invalidation, minimization, manipulation, exploitation and narcissistic rage) which perpetuates the Dimmer-ing of the original abuse. Yes even the enablers exhibit a rage of sorts, in that they are angry at you for being the truth-teller and showing up their complicity. 

The Loudness of Silence

If they get wind of anything your parents did, these enablers treat you and speak to you as if you had divulged some big secret or betrayed your parents' trust. When usually all you did was to stay small and quiet. My dad used to make snide comments about how I'd better not write one of these tell-alls outing him when I grew up. Which was so bizarre because I was his biggest cheerleader and loyal servant. Childhood trauma responses kept me the silent, frozen, fawning, forever people pleaser. So he must have known that had I chosen to, I could tell quite a different version of him than his narcissistic fantasy cult leader. But I never told anything they did. I kept quiet on outrageous abuse, but shouldn't have. My silence must have spoken louder than any words. And all their reactive gaslighting was preemptive narrative revision, gotten in first to cast doubt on any truth I might tell. 

The Hypocritical Double Standards of Abuse Enabling 

None of the ridiculous things enablers say (and those I listed were just a few), are actually true or appropriate. It's all nonsensical hypocrisy. The lazy ones are the enablers who can't be bothered to be supportive and caring. So they throw shade forward to destabilize you while making themselves feel better. But it's all deceptive smoke and mirrors to distract you from the reality of abuse. Enablers (whom I call Blind Guides) are full of shit. They don't practice what they preach, have no understanding of, nor willingness to understand what really happened. They don't care. They just think they have buy-in on your pain. But they don't, because they weren't there for you then and still aren't. What they are, are a bunch jibbering flying monkeys. 

Blindsided by Blind Guides and Betrayal Blindness

The toll that enablers and blind guides wreak on abuse victims is horrific. As these are often people that you trust (counselors, clergy, teachers, doctors, family members) they blindside you with this toxic positivity crap. They add more layers to the FOG, DARVO dilemma, trauma bonding on top of the future faking plus bread-crumbing your parents put you through, to create an even more entrenched betrayal blindness. They feed the abusive parent's monstrous ego appetite with narcissistic supply by bolstering your narcissistic enmeshed parents' delusions of grandeur and entitlement. 

New Trauma + Retraumatizing

This 2.0 trauma is its own narcissistic abuse with retraumatizing besides. It creates new wounds and opens up old, unhealed ones. This lasagna of abuse, invalidation, devaluation and discard becomes a solid Lego brick wall that preserves the abuse deception and shields the abuser. Altogether, the original abusers plus their enablers sabotage any recovery from childhood trauma, if we let them. 

Where to go from here? 

In my relationships with my dark tetrad or malignant narcissistic mother, father, stepmother and stepfather, the only thing that has helped is going no contact. Even going low contact was too much for me because as narcissists age, they get better at tailoring their abuse to your trigger points and more convinced of their diplomatic immunity. They weaponize their age and their flying monkeys use this to guilt you further. "She's old, needs you, doesn't understand, you have to care for her, yada yada." I fall victim to "rosy reflective recall" where the actual abuse feels softened by the passage of time. I forget that they are just as capable of hurting me now as they were then. But once I started cutting the poisonous plants out of my life, I got better at identifying other toxins in my life garden. And the more you prune the easier it gets. 

Debunking myths on forgiveness in narcissistic abuse and childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse

 Hello my friends. Today in  my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm going to debunk some myths about forgiveness and what place it has in healing. Some of the things I'm going to say may seem to fly in the face of cultural, societal, religious and even psychological wisdom. Nevertheless, it may help you to explore these ideas, as it helped me. 

"You have to forgive." 

No you don't. That's just a gaslighting game narcissists play to keep you trauma bonded and betrayal blind. They twist everything to be your fault or your responsiblity. This is part of their hypocritical double standards and two sets of rules for me and thee. It's the last verse of the Narcissist's Prayer. The "Narcissist's Prayer" by Dayna Craig illustrates the progression of deflection, blame-shifting, DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) and manipulation used by narcissists when confronted with their harmful behavior. And I added the last line. 

That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that big a deal. And if it was, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it. And if you didn't, you have to forgive me. 

The Bible commands you to forgive. 

Ehh, yes and no. If the narcissistic abuse is frequent and continual, the narcissist clearly isn't sorry and has no intention of changing his behavior. (see my article on why narcissists don't change). And contrition and change are integral to reconciliation. You endlessly forgiving will actually make the narcissistic abuse worse. Because the hallmarks of the dark tetrad of narcissism are arrogance (feeling superior and above the rules) entitlement (feeling owed every good thing with no reciprocity), remorselessness and Machiavellianism (getting what they want at any cost, where the ends justify the means). Forgiveness is just another thing they weaponize to browbeat you. 

And if the Bible does command forgiveness, it goes both ways. They have to forgive you , too. And narcissists never forgive.

Forgiveness is carte blanche with no strings attached.

Nope, no, no. If forgiveness is just issued like a get out of jail free card, then where's the accountability? Where's the incentive to change? Why bother if you can do what you want and get away with it? Narcissistically abusive people rely on your forgiveness to further exploit you. My narcissistic and enmeshed parents used this against me all the time. They never apologized, were never wrong, blamed me for their bad choices AND still insisted I was "unforgiving." Talk about cognitive dissonance. I dispensed everything they demanded like the Broken Vending Machine Child I was. And still they demanded more. You can never give enough to fill a narcissist's bottomless pit of greed. It took me till I was almost 60 to even start to unpick all that was wrong with this. 

God's forgiveness is unconditional. 

No it's not. Forgiveness is transactional. Like trust and respect, it goes both ways and has to be earned. The penitent must meet certain conditions before God can forgive. God set down an if-then contract whereby "IF we confess our sins AND repent (change our ways), THEN he will forgive. He cannot forgive what has not been repented of. AND we are then bound to not only confess to God but to the people we hurt. AND we are called to extend mercy to others, which narcissistic parents never do. They are the most merciless debt collectors ever. I'm pretty sure Jesus had these kinds of people in mind in the parable of the servant who's forgiven a huge debt who then goes out and throttles someone over a few nickels. 

Forgiveness is for good and forever

No it's not. You can lose it. Look what happened to that wicked servant who refused to show mercy. His cancelled debt was then reinstated because he didn't follow through on his end of the deal. This is critical to understand in narcissistic abuse. These arrogant hypocrites EXPECT and demand exoneration. But they are ruthless in extracting every ounce of revenge against others who've done them a narcissistic injury. Not a real injury. Narcissists are the ones who inflict those. Just a blow to the ego. I'm dealing with an extended family situation like this right now. 

Forgiveness means you forget what they did. 

Noooo!! That is just rolling over for more harm. God may be able to forget, but human beings don't  have that luxury. If we forget the endless abuse they put us through, we will keep going back for more. Women in domestic violence MUST hold an image of the abuser's fist making contact with their bodies, so that they can get see exactly what life with this person is like. It's horribly destabilizing. And forgetting would be easier on the victim. But the moment they forget, is the moment they invite more abuse. It won't just possibly escalate it will definitely escalate because abusers see themselves as dominant. Malignant narcissists like to hurt people. 

The only definition of forgiveness that we need to consider is radical acceptance that the past will never be any different that it was. And that I won't slit their tires in vengeance. 

You can't define forgiveness however you want. 

Well, neither should enablers and abusers. Because their version means the victim's complete capitulation and that's not a good thing!! That's what got us into this mess was people pleasing, letting others call the shots, fawning, surrendering my common sense to their vanity and enabling. So yes, I will be defining forgiveness as I see fit. Because think about it, what does forgiveness actually mean? We all have different ideas on it. And letting hypocrites and blind guides define it means they will do what works for them. They will set rules they don't follow themselves. A definition that works for me is radical acceptance that what happened, in all its ugliness, happened just as I remembered it. Forgiveness for me also means that my personal code of ethics won't let me seek revenge. I won't wait in a dark alley and beat him senseless with a tire iron, in repayment for what he did. But that's about as good as it gets.  And I don't promise not to fantasize about it occasionally. 

The Irony of Abuse: The narcissistic abusers expects the victim to be the one to bend, change, take responsibility for HIS actions and wipe the slate clean. He doesn't want change. He sees no need to. It's working for him. He wants things to go back to the way they were because abusing people works for him.

Going no contact is being unforgiving.

I didn't go no contact with  my family. I just stopped holding the door open with my foot so they could slam it on me. I let the door they closed remain closed.  If anyone was unforgiving it was them and for things they'd lied and said I'd done which I hadn't. I don't wish them ill. I just don't want anything to do with them. By staying out of the path of dangerous people, I'm staying safe and obeying Lord's Prayer avoid what leads me to sin of self-abnegation and temptation to seek revenge. 

Forgiveness means no consequences. 

Nope. That was never even promised by God and a mere human could never stop consequences from happening. God doesn't even protect the victims of abuse from suffering consequences of the abuse. The eye still blackens and hurts like hell. If God was going to remove consequences, he'd start there. And we suffer consequences even when we just make mistakes. Even if you are abjectly and humbly sorry for your bad choices (which narcissists will never be), you cannot stop the outcomes your sins set in motion.  But that's a narcissist for you. Expect to have their cake, eat it too and to eat everyone else's cake. 

Feeling consequences are persecution

Narcissists are such snowflakes. They hold everyone accountable to all kinds of crazy self-set standards. They harass and persecute all over the place. But if they get held accountable for things they did to hurt others, they whine and cry like they are innocent victims being persecuted. Consequences aren't punishment and certainly not "harassment" "brutality" etc. They are logical results of bad choices. My dad said I was "too sensitive" when he would beat and rage at me. Then this insensitive (to others) oversensitive (about himself) man  used to moan about how his parents were "too critical" and harassed him  when they suggested he get a job and support his family. 

You OWE forgiveness to people even if they don't deserve it. 

No you don't. First of all, you don't HAVE to forgive anyone. You don't owe anyone anything especially children of narcissistic parents. However, they groomed us in FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to them. While they reneged on their duty of care to us. God may choose to issue forgiveness. But an abused child cannot forgive unrepentant parent persecutors without some change on their part. Then even if they do, it's okay to play it safe. But that won't happen because the nature of their arrogance means they will take advantage of any good thing given them. They believe they are entitled to everything with earning it or paying it back. 

Forgiveness is the main priority.  

Narcissistic abusers want you to think that. But it's not. It's actually pretty far down the priorities list. There are a ton of things that take precedence before forgiveness is even possible. Like safety, security, seeing past the betrayal blindness to the abuse that actually happened. Like seeing to it that others in your care are safe, seen, heard and healing from the abuse they witnessed or experienced.  And I'll take it further and say that forgiveness isn't even on the list. It's a triviality, a nice thought, that doesn't further the cause of healing. Because we so often get order of operations wrong. We put the cart before the horse. We try to run before we've even begun to crawl.  I've got so much work to do to heal from the abuse I experienced. I don't even understand the extent of the damage I experienced and yet the first thing out of the narcissist's and flying monkeys' mouths is about forgiveness they are owed, like the only thing that matters is the narcissist. And there it is.

Perpetrators "rights" matter more than victims. 

That's what the narcissist has conditioned us to believe and sadly, society, the legal system, religion even psychology all back this up. Everywhere you look, narcissists are howling about their rights while those they hurt are getting victim-shamed, blamed and endangered. It's disgusting how we turn a blind eye to or even affirm the "rights" of child molesters, rapists, wife beaters, child abusers, murderers and other perpetrators. Why? because narcissists care only about themselves, what they want. They will lie, deceive, cheat and steal to get it. Is it any wonder they never stop? That's what got everyone in this mess and which necessitated the conversation on forgiveness in the first place. THEIR EGREGIOUSLY BAD BEHAVIOR. 

Forgiveness helps victims. 

Nope. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true.

🚨 Warning: Forgiveness by forgetting and giving more chances, hurts victims more and enables perpetrators to continue abusing with immunity. 🚨

Bullies just take this as their due and also as a free pass to do as they wish. 

You can't heal without forgiveness. 

Said from the perspective of a person who lived for 60 years as a slave under the coercive control of narcissistic parents and betrayal blindness to that,  the opposite is true. It was only when I stopped being a Broken Vending Machine of forgiveness, exoneration, exemption, trust, respect, obedience, service, duty, care and excuses made for the bullies, that I began to heal. Once I saw that they were never sorry and were always going to blame-shift onto me, I could begin to put things in correct perspective and heal my childhood trauma. 

Truths about Bullies and Forgiveness. 

• It doesn't matter to them if you forgive or not, they aren't going to change. 
• They're never sorry. They don't want reconciliation, they want control. 
• For all your forgiveness, they will never forgive you. They will punish you for every good deed you do. 
• They sabotage and violate all good things especially self-care, reconciliation and your trust. 
• They crash boundaries, so setting boundaries with them is a moot point. 
• They are lying, cheating stealing future fakers who break promises like crackers. 
• You do not need to forgive them. You need to do what you need to do to stay safe and heal. 
• It's not about forgiveness. That's just smoke and mirrors. It's about change. And you need radical acceptance that change is not going to happen and they will hurt you again. And again. Because they have too much invested in keeping the status quo. Even if that means they randomly beat you up. THAT is their priority. Doing what they want when they want and woe to you if you try to stop them. 
• Some things, there's no coming back from. Adulterers, spouse or child abuses, should not get multiple chances. They will always go back to the behavior and punish those who reported them. They should get the book thrown at them but they don't. So you staying safe is the only alternative. 

Whether Narcissists can change is irrelevant for narcissistic abuse victims

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, let's delve into the commonly asked question: can a narcissist change to being less arrogant and entitled? To answer that, we have to reframe the question. It's not a matter of CAN but will and do narcissists ever change. (Answer: rarely to never.) But beyond that, whether they can or do change, is irrelevant for narcissistic abuse victims. 

Narcissists can change but don't

Narcissists probably can change their behavior if they wanted to. But they don't want to. It's like the Limu Emu "you can ask but he's not going to." So the translation is, don't count on it. There's nothing to be gained for them, and everything to lose, so no incentive. As it stands, a narcissist holds (or believes he holds) the power differential. His arrogance tells him he's above rules, responsibilities and consequences. That's what his victims are for.  He feels entitled to every good thing from others with no reciprocity. He holds others to his own ridiculous self-made double standards that he doesn't follow and changes on a whim. Why would he give all that up, just to get along with others whom he has so much contempt for? 

Arrogance cements narcissism 

Change would require the narcissist humbling himself, or as he sees it, "lowering" himself and living like a mere mortal. It would mean following not just the demands he's imposed on others, but also the real world demands. But he feels arrogantly entitled to special privileges. He believes that he has buy in and a say on everything, that everything anyone else does or says must be run past him as comptroller. He isn't just a god, he's THE god, in his narrow mind. He sets exacting, unreachable standards for others and none for himself. There's no low he's not entitled to go to. And conversely nothing anyone does for him is ever good enough. His bulletproof egotism is its own reward and keeps him welded to this delusional narcissistic fantasy. 

Zombie Narcissist

But that's nonsense, you're saying. No one else is going to fall for that. Well, yes, maybe if they saw it coming. But the narcissist is one thing above all else, a liar. He's a fake, a fraud, a charlatan, a conman. His M.O. is lie, cheat, steal, take advantage of, exploit, manipulate, twist, deceive, lather rinse repeat. Narcissists aren't real people. They are zombies feeding off other people. And they hide in plain sight behind crafted personas. His fake ID is part of his scam. The narcissistic and enmeshed parent lives off their child. They're jealous, covetous thieves who demand and steal every good thing from her. Using future faking and trauma bonding, they induce betrayal blindness. What they can't steal they destroy. 

Gaslighting FOG of menace

The dark tetrad or malignant narcissist (and they're all malignant if cornered) wields coercive control with gaslighting, intimidation, FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) and narcissistic abuse. His narcissistic rage is a force to be reckoned with and it keeps people in his preordained place for them. He threatens not just you but those you love. There is no evil like an enraged narcissist. So hell yes, people comply with his fantasy. If we're childhood trauma survivors we're already groomed to fawning and people pleasing. And the narcissist can smell CPTSD on you like a pheromone and weaponizes it to bully and exploit you. But he is also, always a craven coward. 

Narcissistic bullying coward-clown

Bullies know on some level that they are just windbags with all their silly posturing and bravado. But again, their pride tells them they float like a Macy's parade balloon above us all. This is why they're such shit-stirrers, to keep people destabilized, to prevent them seeing the ludicrous clown under the mask of superiority. But once you do see how laughably pathetically fragile they are, and the narcissist knows you see, watch out. Narcissistic injury (not real injury, butthurt wounded pride) and the resulting narcissistic rage, are unholy terrors to live with. And God help you if you call them out. That's when narcissistic abuse 2.0 begins. 

Narcissists love things and use people

Normal people do it the other way around. And narcissists know and exploit this. They know their victims love or once loved them and they play on this for narcissistic supply. And it's this paradigm shift that they exploit with love-bombing and breadcrumbing.  But don't be fooled by any seemingly loving gestures. Because there's a devalue and discard phase lurking right behind it. They know the right words to say to keep you hooked. And hooked is the operative word. Normal people want give and take relationships. Narcissists want loyal, obedient possessions caught, trapped and hanging on a string awaiting their pleasure. And they're master of the long con. I knew a husband who played his wife for 35 years. She believed him not because she was gullible but because she loved  him. And love might be the biggest thing they exploit. But they wouldn't know love if they fell in it. All they know is  performative virtue signaling bullshit to get their way. 

Promise to change is not change

It's future faking. Narcissists don't change because why should they? They're already perfect. And if they're not, why should they have to change? They're SPECIAL, remember?  Real people rules don't apply to them! But having said that, that doesn't mean a narcissist won't promise to change. They're tacticians and if they see it's in their self-interests to seem to want to change, they'll promise the moon. But they make you pay for it. This is future faking with vengeance. They want you in their clutches. If you share something with them, like children, they will play every dirty trick to keep you in bondage to them. While expecting you to thank them for the privilege. 

Vindictive passive-aggressive narcissistic rage

Narcissists may pretend to want to change to buy themselves time. Or because they got caught and now have some music to face. And correction is always taken as a narcissistic insult. They will shame spiral and blame you. Even though the reason you had to call them out was to stop them hurting you or those you love. Be very careful doing that because a cornered narcissist will wreak havoc in post-separation abuse, blame-shifting, DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender), smear campaigns, family mobbing, and violence. He will plot his revenge behind the veneer of charm, then exact it just when you are most vulnerable. He will enlist the aid of anyone he can to get even. And if parenting with a dark tetrad narcissist is bad, co-parenting is hell. 

Beware the changed narcissist 

A narcissist who's been called out, will change but not for the better. They will get more malicious, more devious, more ballistic, more batshit, more abusive. They will take revenge on you for trying to help them. No good deed goes unpunished. They will blame you for their faults, then flip and say you have to forgive them and then punish you if you do. It is a nasty vicious cycle of abuse that keeps on giving. They will do everything to make you end the relationship and then hold on like barnacles to keep you. 

What you must do is keep your eyes wide open. Don't listen, watch them. Now's the time for show, not tell. 

"But he wants to make this work..."

Sure he does, for himself! "This" has been working just fine for him. But "this" means different things to you and him. You want the relationship and both of you, to grow, mature and get closer. And his agenda is to keep you sacrificing while he just takes and gives nothing. Of course he still "wants you." You're indispensable to his narcissistic fantasy cult. Who else is going to do the heavy lifting? He wants SNAFU (situation normal, all fouled up). He wants to "go back to how things were." So he doesn't want to change himself or for anything to change. He wants you to keep pretzeling yourself till you're thoroughly used up. 

Regardless, to change or not is irrelevant

Narcissistic abuse victims have suffered too much for any hope of change to matter. It's too late. Fact. Oh the narcissist will shame you, saying word salad like "it's never too late." Or "it's only too late because you SAY it is." Or "you have to forgive me, you OWE it to me" Or "how can I prove I've changed if you don't give me a chance?" All that is gaslighting and blame-shifting. If he wanted to change he would have. You're not "preventing" anything. If he's the big bad boss man he says he is, what's stopping him? You've never been able to make him do anything, so how could you prevent him now? And no you don't have to forgive him, except in radical acceptance that the past will never be any different than it was. And that's why change is irrelevant. Some things you can't come back from and save your sanity and the same time. The damage is done. 

Oh, and it's perfectly okay for YOU to say when enough is enough. You get to call the shots in your own life, not him.  

Give him enough rope

If you still believe he can and wants to change for the better, well, tread carefully. And make him show and not just tell you how it's gonna be. Step back and watch what happens. And when he starts dictating terms as he eventually will, hear that he is doing it again.  If I was a gambler, I'd lay money on him only proving that you were right to step back, cut ties, report him, call the police, in the first place. Once the honeymoon wears off, the arrogant narcissist goes back to his old tricks with even more in his repertoire. Especially if he did jail time. Or spends any time in the toxic masculinity cray-cray of the incel universe or manosphere. Those dudes are absolutely demented. And when he does revert to his old ways (it won't take long), note that. See it for what it is. Fake. 

Childhood Trauma from Exhibitionist Narcissistic Parent Enmeshment: Censure or Pity?

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parental enmeshment and abuse, I'm exploring a very uncomfortable and fraught space: living with an exhibitionist parent. I'm looking at how society has dealt with these bizarre parent behaviors. Historically, folks like this were called histrionic, "hysterical" or melancholic. Now they may be called the attention-seeking "pick me." I'll touch on Munchausen's, Munchausen's by Proxy and Factitious disorder as they relate. I'll also share anecdotal experiences living with this exhausting and cringy parent behavior. 

Exhibitionism: what it is and isn't

So there are  several reasons why a person might behave in an exhibitionistic manner, depending on how you define exhibitionist. Strictly speaking, the DSM-5-TR definition refers to a person who exhibits their genitals to a non-consenting person. (My mother has done that,  often). The broader definition includes persons who routinely act in a dramatic (or melodramatic) provocative or exaggerated manner to attract attention, admiration, pity or public notice. This doesn't include people who for reasons of an illness or condition, draw attention to themselves inadvertently, by exaggerated gestures or tics such as Tourette's Syndrome. It isn't melancholia (depression) or anxiety (wrongly called hysteria). It's histrionic attention-seeking for its own sake and to make others uncomfortable. 

Exhibitionism is exploitative, intentional and purpose-driven

The type of behavior engaged in may be as normal as crying but the situation and intensity are what make it exhibitionist. The person crying may be doing it loudly in a place where everyone else is quiet and looking around to see who's watching. Or it may be situation appropriate, such as crying at a wedding. However the person is angry or "ugly crying." The day we got married, husband says my MIL "ugly cried" from the moment she got up throughout our wedding ceremony and reception. She wore a pouty, petulant "notice me" face and wouldn't speak to anyone. She did this just to "outshine the bride" (me) by making people ask and wonder if she was okay. There was no reason for it, except that she was an enmeshed mother who didn't want to share her son. So she made everyone miserable. Exhibitionist behavior is done strategically and specifically to garner attention by exploiting normal like concern, pity, modesty or privacy. 

Malignant narcissistic parent exhibitionism

Exhibitionists are often, if always, narcissists. They crave attention for narcissistic supply. If they are malignant narcissists, they prefer it to come at someone's expense, by upstaging them or making them look foolish. Their favorite tactics are humiliation, mockery and mean pranking (hazing). My narcissistic mother, out of the blue, threw a pie in my face and smashed my young son's face in his pie, at her company work party. She, her husband and her daughter laughed manically, literally jeering at us. No one else was laughing.  They just looked on disdainfully and I believe she was chastised by supervisors. This caused her narcissistic injury (that's not a real injury, it's ego injury or wounded vanity.) She got very angry and petulant. 

Bizarre Roots of Exhibitionism

Jealousy and a desire to humiliate are some of the deeper roots. It's not just covert or vulnerable narcissists who are pathologically jealous. Grandiose narcissists are too, even and especially of their children. Narcissistic parents resent the child's innocence, sweetness and lovability. My parents resented my being given gifts or cherished. They sabotaged nice things I'd received by stealing and selling them. I'd come home to things mysteriously missing. Narcissistic parents are liars, cheats and thieves. And they do weird things in exaggerated ways to undermine and destabilize the child. They get into huge rages over nothing. My parents have taken my things out of my hands and given them to someone else. My dad once went into a narcissistic rage at me at Christmas, for going to the bathroom to try on a sweater from my grandparents.  My narcissistic "pick me" stepmom preened herself seeing me get humiliated. I saw her narcissistic smirk through my tears and confused apologies. 

"Pick me" mothers

These women will do freakishly awkward things for attention. From shoving her face in every picture of the child, to purposely falling or limping and even blatantly walking out into oncoming traffic (my mom says she does this). My mother will shout "AMEN" in church at a funeral (where they don't do such things). She waves her arms and yells "hallelujah" when she visited our Catholic church. My mother tried to outshine her sister at her own wedding by wearing a very inappropriate dress. She flirts with anything in trousers and even in skirts. She encouraged one of my boyfriends to tell her about his testicles. She talks about her own genitals in front of my husband and asks to fondle his stomach. She wears nightgowns in public, figuring, I guess that  if she can't be the sexiest, she'll be the most pathetic. 

Exhibitionism isn't always sexual but often has notes of it

Flirting, cozying up to, making out with boyfriends publicly, "hitting on" younger people, telling dirty jokes in front of me, describing sexual things to a child, wearing situation inappropriate clothing, making suggestive or "lewd" comments, talking about genitalia or "privates" all these are forms of exhibitionism I've experienced with my parents. My mother dressed as a "hooker" (her words) to a church costume party. She tells everyone she sleeps naked. She was caught running around naked by her husband's friends, knowing full well they were coming over.  She walked out naked at my house near where my kids were watching TV. The hypocrisy was that these people were both self-proclaimed ministers who were always preaching "morality" to others. 

 

Exhibitionist Shame Spiral Vengeance

In the pie throwing incident, I think my mom actually thought people would join in and laugh at me. And it was definitely a planned ambush. She wanted to have a pie eating contest but no one at her workplace was on board. She sulked while everyone ignored her. I finally let my kids participate because no one else was, but wouldn't participate myself. She blindsided us with the pie-throwing. I recall gasping and nearly choking on the pie. My son started choking too. Now everyone really was judging her! She took this as narcissistic insult. Instead of backing down, she doubled down on me as the eternal scapegoat. She triangulated her husband against me so not only did he mock, he yelled at me for, what I have no idea. I suppose because they both felt as foolish as they looked. Even 25 years later when she "apologized" it was just gaslighting to DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender), blame-shifting responsibility onto me. 

Factitious disorder exhibitionism

Exhibitionist behavior is fake and performative. Factitious disorder or Munchausen's (or MBP) is exhibitionism for sympathy, pity, money, to get out of something or to steal attention from the person who is by rights in the limelight. I've watched a narcissist purposely fall in the street and lay there holding up traffic, just for pity. They will fake symptoms of "illnesses" that can't be verified. They will doctor hop when they get close to being caught. All my mother's mystery ailments involve sexuality or genitalia. She will describe herself and her body in great detail. She talks about her "big breasts" in a very suggestive and seductive manner. She looked on fondly when her boyfriend mocked me for having "small t8tties." It so gross and just one reason I finally went no contact. 

Exhibitionism humiliates and destabilizes children

I don't just share these things to expose my "good Christian" parents. I don't have to. Their behavior is so awkward it's obvious and it's driven a lot of people besides me away. But these are stories that need to be told, to heal the toxic shame inside me. Unfortunately, a parent's bad behavior doesn't just affect them. It taints their children by association. All these weird, icky things they did to and around me, now live in my trauma brain. I have CPTSD trauma nightmares in which I'm the one who has done them. Trauma bonding caused damaged attachment issues and betrayal blindness. And that's what narcissistic parent exhibitionism is, a betrayal of the parent-child relationship. It is grooming in the worst sense of the word. 

Emotional fracturing from exploitative enmeshed exhibitionists

Exhibitionism violates the parent-child bond by forcing the child to pick sides. Even in its non-sexual iteration, attention-seeking has an exploitative nature. It forces a child into unnatural adult drama. It's also boundary-crashing and privacy invasion which is a hallmark of parent enmeshment. And it polarizes needlessly. The child has to choose sides in a manufactured crisis. Either the child stands by the parent in her self-created humiliation hell or leaves her to face it alone. This is a dangerous lose-lose situation for the child. If the child follows her own innate propriety, she must also by default, disassociate from the parent. Which creates cognitive dissonance and a dissociative split. The child feels FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to side with the parent in her shameful behavior. How many dilemmas of this sort I've faced. And I always took their part. EVEN WHEN I WAS THE ONE THEY WERE HUMILIATING! 

Pity or censure? 

In college I did a play called "She's more to be censured than pitied." It was a melodrama. And it begs the question of these theatrical "extra" people. Should we just feel sorry for them? I mean what harm can they do? It's only themselves they  make look silly. They can't help loving attention, right? Here are my answers. 

No. That's what they want is pity but don't you dare make them feel pitied. Because you can't win. They want special exemptions but also privileges. They believe they are entitled and you'd better make darn sure you give them the fluffing they demand. You have to make exceptions for them without letting them know you are. Because then they take narcissistic insult and call you condescending. It's an exhausting merry-go-round. 

What harm can they do? If you have to ask that, you've never gotten on the wrong side of a narcissist. And yes, exhibitionism hurts the innocent too. We get tarred with their brush. It damages, humiliates, belittles, dehumanizes and destroys.  The best thing for them is to face the consequences of their actions. The best things we can practice are 

• calm detachment (let them suffer their narcissistic insult and feel the embarrassment their actions caused. Don't take on yourself the humiliation. That belongs to them. 
• radical acceptance (they won't change but you don't have to be hurt by it)
• realistic no-nonsense honesty (maybe not to them but to yourself. See it for what it is.)
• self-care (keep yourself safe from fallout of their actions)
• clarity (it is what it is, and you owe them nothing).