Malignant narcissistic parent gaslighting lights the way for childhood trauma recovery, seriously!

 Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal from dark tetrad, enmeshed parent abuse, I'm exploring how malignant narcissistic parent gaslighting lights the path to childhood trauma recovery, seriously! I know that sounds contradictory. So I'll show how their gaslit narrative flipping, and twisted, self-serving versions of reality, actually disprove themselves. They prove their own abusiveness by the very gaslighting lies they tell. Abusive parents catch themselves in the traps they set for their children. 

The Parent Trap

As parents, they hold the power differential. Society, religion, family backs this up. Even the child affirms this. We wanted our parents to parent us--keep us safe, take responsibility for us, make decisions for us we were too young to make. But they did none of that. What no one called out but should have was that narcissistic parents are parents in name only and only when it suits them. They gobble up the perks while doing none of the work. Playing a sneaky game called Role Reversal and Reverse Again, they parentify and infantilize us. They assign us the heavy lifting and mental load. When it comes to benefits time, they switch back to the performative parent. They wield authority, crash boundaries, blame-shift, harangue, bully, attack, in the name of "discipline" which they call their God-given right.

Betrayal Blindness Blindman's Bluff

None of their parenting of us is appropriate in any iteration. It's all self-serving, entitled, manipulative chaos, designed to get them their narcissistic supply hit. Life for the child is a tangled net of abuse, neglect, coercive control, exploitation, abandonment, triangulation, invalidation, dehumanization, destabilization, backstabbing, endangerment and abandonment. But because they call themselves our parents, and because we are children, we trust them. They have trauma bonded us to them and this causes betrayal blindness. So they can play their sick games of blindman's bluff, using us as little pawns. 

Abusive parent charades

Narcissistic parents play weird games of "bait and switch" "hide and seek" and "shell game." They run off and make the child chase them. They future fake that they'll actually show up for her, then bail. Then laugh at her when she cries. Then blame her for being too sensitive or too demanding (!)  They make basic care conditional on her hopping through their impossible, ever-moving hoops. Using strategic bread crumbing, they trauma bond the child to them. 

Illogical logical fallacies

Malignant narcissist talk in a strange double speak. It's a combo of virtue-signaling, gaslighting, DARVO and enforced FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) they use to coercively control the child. They say odd things that are obviously illogical fallacies but make them sound logical. No normal person talks this way, so they don't expect it. And the narcissistic parent knows this and plays on other people's normalness, especially an empath's. But it's not accidental. It's intentional and bespoke abuse, custom-built to create a cognitive dissonance that keeps the child enslaved to them. 

• They "Straw Man" her, misrepresenting what she says to make her look unreliable.   
• They "Slippery Slope" blowing small things the child did into catastrophes. They make her think the slightest deviation is willful disobedience that will lead to disaster. My father (who was an adulterer and pedophile) actually told me that he hoped I hadn't had premarital sex because that was the "unforgivable sin." This increased my self-harm, 10x. 
• They rely on "Appeal to Ignorance" making false claims that can't be proved. They project blame for their bad behavior onto the child, to pre-emptively deflect attention from their actions. This way, any accusations she makes will just look retaliative. 
• They use "False Dilemma" masterfully. They make it appear that there are only two options, theirs is the right and anything else is wrong. 

Gaslighting lights the way

But all these gaslighting logical fallacies are where it breaks down. They implode on themselves. Once you unpick one lie, you begin looking for more. And you start to see the pattern of deceit. And that shows you that the diversions and deceptions are just smoke and mirrors, not reality. But gaslighting is also insidiously brain damaging. My mother had to actually admit to lying to me before I began to start seeing clearly. I believed all her trickery, every bizarre story she told.  I trusted her version even over the evidence of my own experience. Until I didn't. Now I see that very little if anything was actually real. And that helped me see the light.  

Power differential double bind

I'm going to be 62 tomorrow and it took me that long to realize that the twisted tales my parents told TO me and ABOUT me, couldn't be true. I was always told that and treated like I was their possession whom they owed no responsibility to AND that I was also responsible to them. I was both their child and their parent. I had no power but all the accountability. They were mutually exclusive and impossible. Not even a logical fallacy. This is as ridiculous as it gets. If they had all the power and control, they also have all the responsibility. If I had no autonomy nor choice, I bear no culpability.

Be careful what you wish for

Their own lies came back to bite them. They also trapped themselves in snares they set for me. Once I began to hear, I couldn't unhear that all the terrible things they accused me of, were true of them. And maybe only of them, not me. And the FOG began to lift.  Unfortunately it took till my senior years to understand. By now two of my four narcissistic parents have passed. And you might think that their abuse dies with them. Nope, alas not. If anything their hurtful voices in my head have gotten louder. But so has my own voice. I'm talking back to them. I'm refusing to allow them free rent anymore. I'm evicting them. I'm realizing I'm not obligated to anyone that I didn't actually birth, least of all to parents who were never obligated to me. 

Next generation

What's next? Well, sadly childhood trauma is the legacy that keeps on giving, through the generations. We carry it with us in our cells. So now I have the task of not just digging myself out but all the people I've hurt or allowed to be hurt by, my malignant parents. I've got a lot of truth to tell. A lot of stories to set straight. So this is my legacy, the posts in this blog, to my progeny. And to you, it if helps. 

Love mar. 

Thrival skills for managing childhood trauma responses to narcissistic parent abuse

Hello my friends! Today in my childhood trauma recovery, I'm looking at not just survival skills but thrival skills for healing childhood trauma responses caused by narcissistic parent abuse. Some of these may surprise you. And ironically we're going to heal trauma responses by responding vs. reacting. 

Trauma response versus trauma reaction 

I believe that the term trauma response is wrongly used when applied to the self-defeating behaviors of fight, flight, freeze, fawn and one I have added called fix. Fixing problems is what the narcissistic enmeshed parents expect the child to do in situations the parent created. And like the others, these are knee-jerk reactions abused kids are conditioned to do by their antagonistic parents. These coping reactions are automatic, irrational and dangerous. But they are all we knew as kids. They were hardwired in us and they are intensely dysfunctional. I think they should be called trauma reactions. We were the narcissistic supply giving puppets, dancing attendance because abusive parents pulled our strings, not because we had any autonomy or agency. We were broken vending machine children, part scapegoat, part enabler, part glass child. Plus we had to do the work of the golden child without the perks. 

🚩 Being a broken vending machine child meant they pushed our buttons and we gave out whatever was demanded of us at our own expense. 🚩 We were the ones putting in the coins AND giving out the goodies. 🚩 While our parents took all our good without reciprocity.

Proactive responses vs. reactive panic

None of that was our fault. We didn't choose to be bullied, exploited, abused, neglected, parentified and invalidated. We didn't choose the stress of carrying the family mental load as children. Or the chaos of living with dysfunctional, selfish, erratic, entitled, Machiavellian parents. However we still carry the scars in those very trauma reactions they conditioned in us. We still fawn and freeze, people please, placate and kowtow to everyone in our lives. We have learned that it is dangerous not to. Our sympathetic nervous system is wired to panicked, hypervigilant overreaction, appeasing, anticipating needs and rushing to serve. But now we need to work on rational, healthy, proactive trauma responses. 

Thrival skills childhood trauma survivors need

• Pause. Trauma responses are like cruise control in a car. They allow us to seemingly function without the cognitive dissonance of having to stop and think, wait, why am I doing this? This can't be good, can it?  They're also a way to juxtapose the irrational gaslighting by narcissistic parents with the real world we have to interact in. But trauma responses don't transition well in adulthood. So we need to turn off auto-pilot fawning, freezing, fixing. We need see the red flags that betrayal blindness prevented us from seeing. So we don't keep crashing into walls.  To do this, we need to hit pause a lot. Something we were never allowed to do. 

• Don't just do something, sit there. Everything was always so urgent, drama fueled and frenetic with narcissistic parents. We went through our days with sirens on our heads, putting out fires our parents started, just for fun. There was no crisis except of their inept mismanagement. We set ourselves on fire to keep them warm when they didn't need it. This was no accident. Malignant parents do this strategically to destabilize, terrorize and confuse us. 

• Reflect: As painful and scary as it is, we need to take off the blinders and see how reckless and dangerous our abusive parents are. We need to allow healing memory let us recall and acknowledge how they damaged us, time and again. We need to sit with that and put responsibility on them, where it belongs. We need to defog FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). 

• Take care of yourself. Narcissistic parents don't just frown on a child's self-care, they punish it. they call her selfish, disobedient, ungrateful, disloyal, demanding just for having needs. And wants, goals, hopes oh heck no. The enmeshed parents see the child as a tool or extension of themselves, not a person in her own right. She is expected to care for "family first" meaning them only. So we need to learn to give ourselves permission to do the opposite and care for us. Whatever that may look like. 

• Do hard work. And this isn't what you think. I don't mean the heavy lifting alone or carrying the mental load. That we've done all our lives at our expense. That comes as natural as breathing to us. I mean we need to start doing the unfamiliar and NOT cater to narcissistic parents, or anyone. We need to do the unthinkable and begin putting ourselves first, not always last or never like we usually do. 

• Affirm and encourage yourself. We heard a lot of gaslighting nonsense about how worthless we were, how we failed and let people down. That was because we were expected to carry adult burdens as children. We were expected to do impossible tasks like buffer our parents from consequences, shield, serve, be surrogate spouses and parents. Of course you couldn't do that. YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO!! So now, we need to do what seems best and right for us. We need to ignore their nasty voices in our head, and talk back to them. You are worthwhile and loveable. 

Love always, mar. 

Note AI made the picture at the top, based on past conversations. It's a mash-up of others it has made.  It looks very chaotic because AI's "memory brain" often gets overwhelmed, overstimulated and muddled. AI spells things wrong, confuses ideas and jumbles up concepts. 

And THAT is a perfect reflection of the inner chaos a traumatized child feels. 

Surprising tips to deal with perpetually irritated, irritating people without getting triggered

Hello my friends. Today in the childhood trauma recovery path, I'm exploring some surprise ways to to deal with irritated, irritating people without getting triggered into childhood trauma responses. These are surprising because they go against preconceived notions and social conventions. 

Don't tell them how you feel.

People who are perpetually p-o'd don't care about your feelings. They care about their "right" to be p-o'd. These often arrogant, narcissistic people who don't care about your right to peace of mind. They minimize what they do, tell you you're overreacting, then overreact to anything you may do in response with, wait for it, irritation. There's no winning, only tolerating or not. They don't care how you feel or if it triggers you. In fact, they'll make fun of you for using words like "trigger" calling it "pop psychology" or other nonsense. Which is ironic because she's always triggered and flying off the handle. She just dishes it out without taking it. She'll weaponize your childhood trauma to traumatize you further. It's like the Limu Emu--you can ask him to stop but he's not going to. 

No, you aren't failing to "communicate." 

I just shake my head at the times when, even psychologists will ask you, "have you tried communicating your feelings?" Really, Sherlock? I've been communicating with them since before you were born. And they aren't listening because, see above. The more I say, the more pissy they get. As I said before, there's no winning. They only stop when THEY get sick of it. Or when they've gotten their hit of narcissistic supply or adrenaline rush of venting on you. The only way I  know of to avoid the toxic spray is to get out of its path. Read the signs and when they look ready to blow, find another place to be. 

No, they don't have doctor's slip

It's also crazy the amount of excuse-making these unpaid flying monkeys will do to defend the problem. Maybe he is stressed? Yep so am I, with my own stressors plus having to deal with his uncontrolled behavior. Maybe she has some kind of medical condition that makes her act that way. Maybe. But she also has choices. She doesn't have to lash out. She chooses to. He doesn't have to pout or rant or sulk. He could try being kind and decent, like I do when I'm stressed or struggling with the multitude of health issues that his anger has caused me. 

Beware of medicine or psychology. 

I don't have good experiences with either of these. All psychologists want to talk about is what I'm doing about it. Which makes sense except when it doesn't. If you've tried every way possible and it's not improving, it's not a you thing it's an angry person thing. And, if you try to diagnose, you'll be told even by professionals that you can't diagnose a medical problem because you aren't qualified. Well, if living with it for 62 years isn't qualified I don't know what is. 

Don't "rise above" 

When you talk about coping skills for others' anger or irritation, you'll hear how important it is to "rise above" whatever that means, I don't know and neither does the person saying it. Anger begets angers. What goes around, comes around, sooner or later. No matter how calm you stay, sooner or later, you'll crack if you have to be around toxic anger or chronic irritation. Fact. There's no place you could rise to escape it. What you can do is "float." Imagine yourself riding a calm river past the shitshow the perpetually p-o'd one is creating. You can "observe, but not absorb." If you haven't caused the anger, it's not your problem. Even if you have said something that set them off, how they react is their choice. They don't live in this bubble-wrapped world where they get to unload on others with  no repercussions. 

Don't "be the bigger person." 

That's toxic victim-shaming horse manure. You already are the bigger person just by not doing those things. You couldn't be mature, broad-shouldered or thick-skinned enough to weather another person's constant anger. And your being the bigger person just incenses them and drags them even deeper into the shame cycle. Plus it's kind of self-righteous, condescending energy. What you can do is grey rock. Stay small and quiet. Don't say anything. Don't engage. Don't JADE (justify, answer, defend or explain) yourself. But I do warn you, this isn't sustainable over the long haul. It's for emergencies only. If you have to do this on a regular basis, you're going to resent it after awhile, as well you should. If God had wanted us to be silent rocks he wouldn't have made us of flesh with voices. 

Don't take the BAITTTTT

BAIT stands for Bullying, Antagonizing, Isolating and Targeting/Trapping/ Threatening/Terrorizing/Triggering. It's what abusively angry people do to corner you and provoke you into a fight. They're a hot mess dysregulating all over the place and they know it. So they set traps to snare you into their user-generated mess. Don't fall for it. You're not the problem nor do you  have to be the solution. Sitting alone, feeling their own discomfort, is the only way for them to maybe get down off this arrogant high horse they go around on and get their shit together. 

Respect goes both ways. 

We're told, wrongly as it happens, that we must always respect the other person. But respect is not an entitlement. It's earned. I was hounded as a child to "honor your parents" when all I ever did was to honor them while they did NOT honor me. I obeyed disobedient people. I respected disrespectful people. And then we're not told what respect is supposed to look like. So those of us with the fawning childhood trauma response, think it means tolerating abuse. Be careful of people who demand respect without earning it. They are usually arrogant narcissists. Normal don't talk it, they show it. 

Don't fall for euphemisms 

I find myself doing this all the time, calling anger, rage, fury and verbal assault, "irritation." That's one mind trick angry people use. Also, calling them anger issues, can be a minimizing tactic. Angry people have no issue with their problem. They feel loudly and proudly entitled to venom-spray. They're only "sorry" when their spleen is spent. Then they wave the "forgiveness" card in your face, like it's something they are owed. They talk a lot about changing but most of it is future faking. They make excuses like that exonerates them. But it doesn't heal they harm they've done to their victims. 

Stand your ground. 

Don't let them rewrite the narrative or DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender). Be rubber, not glue. Let their anger bounce off you and back to them. Or better yet, don't be in the way of the ball. Please, use me as an example of what not to do. All my life, I've been the glue for everyone else's anger. I let them angrily accuse me of being the angry one. I felt so much shame and guilt for things I didn't do. But that's how gaslighting works--by confusing memory, conflicting stories, undermining confidence and destabilizing you. 

Shun and banish shame

My own childhood trauma at the hands of abusive, malignant narcissistic parents put a target on my back for more abuse. Being an empath and very conscientious, I took criticism very seriously, too seriously in fact. When my mom said I should be ashamed of myself (for what she didn't says) I was. All the time. When my dad shamed me for being too sensitive and a show off attention seeker, I made sure to not show any emotion or self-confidence. I let a bullying passive-aggressive stepmom browbeat me into abject servitude with my dad looking on approvingly. I let an aggressive, bullying stepfather terrorize me with my mom looking on approvingly. Now all that malignancy lives rent-free in my memory. So I am working to evict that shame for good. 

Keep your own counsel. 

I also made the mistake of sharing too much of this with emotionally unstable people. And it was weaponized against me. I did too much JADE. I let them tell me how it was. I let them define and limit me. I'm learning now to just quietly know what I know. And be who I am. And own my feelings, thoughts, needs and wants. And reach a hand back to be for your inner child what nobody was for you, a loving hand to hold. 

Defogging gaslighting of narcissistic abuse by thinking out loud

Hello my friends. Today in childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm defogging gaslighting by thinking out loud. I'm owning and validating my feelings, thoughts, anger and frustration.  I'm boosting self-confidence and banishing parent-induced shame and confusion. 

Unmask the betrayal

Narcissistic and enmeshed parents aren't just "difficult" or "demanding." They betray us, particularly the scapegoat or "broken vending machine child."  We give good and get bad and they take good and give bad. Our trauma bonding causes betrayal blindness. We never saw how they've been stabbing us in the back and pulling the rug out from under us. This is intentional, not accidental. They do it to destabilize us so we are vulnerable and desperate for any bread crumbing they throw at us. They use DARVO, gaslighting, catfishing and devious confusing double standards. So our job is to see the Decepticon behind the innocent parent mask. And to do this we need to...

Fumigate

So what powers gaslighting? It's gas--lethal, toxic hot air that has no boundaries and seeps into every crack. Gas is a good metaphor for boundary crashing parents who use coercive control to terrorize into complying with their sick, twisted demands. And gassing is a good metaphor for how narcissistic and enmeshed parents poison their child's mind. These hypocrites preach but don't practice all kinds of convoluted rules and commands. They engage in nasty, immoral, unethical, illegal behavior. They gas on and on with their self-serving word salad two sets of rules. So to heal our childhood trauma responses of fawning, people pleasing, appeasing and groveling, we need to air out our brains and breath fresh air of reality.  

Defog FOG

A primary tool arrogant, malignant narcissists use is FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) that we owe them things we don't. They confuse us that we are responsible to and for them ((parentification). Then they who really are our parents, groom us to think they owe us nothing. That anything they do for us comes with unaffordable price tags. They frighten us into betrayal blind obedience. Yet they are disobedient to everyone. They demand respect they don't earn and don't give to others. Defogging means seeing past all the evasions, lies and spun narratives to clear, cold hard facts. These people are imposters. They do not have the power they wield. They just spin a good web of deceit. 

Lean on my own understanding

My dad used to preach-bully this Bible verse at me about how wrong I was by "leaning on my own understanding." I would feel so ashamed and awful, though  he  never said how I was. He just accused. The implication was that I wasn't relying on God. But what he was really saying was that it was him, not God I should be listening to. That he, not God, was the omniscient, omnipotent one. And for me as a bullied child, he and my other three parents were all powerful. They called the shots and dictated my reality even into adulthood. Because early training sticks, good or bad. It directs the way your brain grows. Now I'm starting to correct some of those falsehoods. But good Lord, it's back-breaking all uphill work. 

Talk back to the voices in my head

I hear shaming voices of my toxic parents in every breath I take. I can't take a step without their shaming harassment dogging it. And not hearing them is about as easy as holding back the tide. So now, I'm trying a different approach. I'm talking back to them. This was another thing that was punished: "sassing" "lipping off" back-talking. And everything I said that wasn't "yes ma'am" constituted backtalk. Any answer I gave was me just "defending myself" or making excuses. I never stopped to ask why I would need to defend myself against the people who were supposed to defend me. I never wondered why I had do speak up for myself in the first place. But now I am. And you can bet I'm backtalking their nonsense. And the more I "sass" them, the wronger I realize they were and are. 

Hold their feel to the fire

For all the nasty things they said to and about me, I'm holding them accountable for, instead of myself. For every time I (in my own head) confront them with something they accused me of doing, I find it was them doing it. They weren't just blaming me for their bad choices. They were lying and saying I made them. I was their problem. But as a wise child of whom I'm very proud, just said "he ruined my life." I didn't ruin theirs. This wise child sees, what it took me six decades to, who was the victim and who was the offender. He didn't fall for the DARVO bullshit. He got the order of operations correct. He assigned blame where it belonged. The sad thing is that any child has to do this. 

Think out loud

There's are two contrasting Alanon sayings that help me. 

"Act your way into right thinking, vs. think your way into right acting." 

"Don't just do something, sit there." 

The first, is a a call to affirmative, proactive action as opposed to simply ruminating about childhood trauma. The second is a call to pause and reflect before leaping into reactive trauma responses. This is doing something just to be doing something, rather than constructive action. Which I think should be called "trauma reactions" to show that they are knee-jerk not thought out responses. 

And rumination is just as destructive. As opposed to carefully considering alternative actions and responses, it's endlessly "chewing on" what happened without any end game in mind. It's asking the answerless "why?" instead of productive questions like "what can I do about this now?" 

I'm doing a two-prong plan. I'm thinking out loud and clearly to reorient myself after baffling parent abuse. I'm telling myself the real versions of their weaponized false narratives. I'm explaining to younger self that what happened, happened. I'm not wrong, crazy, or an attention seeking show off. My parents were. And I'm also concurrently, making better choices for myself. Choices like self-care, self-affirmation and trusting myself, that I've known all along were right but which I let them derail me from doing. 

 

Childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse informs on other narcissistic abuse

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery journey, I'm walking through narcissistic abuse from another family source. I'm walking with a loved one in her abuse, the rest of the family and myself. I'm feeling the protective mother empath trauma viscerally. On top of my own childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse from which I've gone no contact, this is overwhelming. And I learned something from it. Childhood trauma bonding causes abuse and betrayal blindness that carries over into other abusive situations as well.  

Narcissistic abuse is "carbon monoxide mind gassing"

Narcissistic and enmeshed parent abuse is like carbon monoxide gassing of the mind. The narcissistic abuser drips poison into our ears, that causes actual brain damage. They insult, shame, dehumanize, vilify, DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender), crybully, mock, humiliate, belittle, batter, antagonize, manipulate, gaslight, launch smear campaigns, backstab and destabilize us. This "mustard gas" blinds us both to their abuse but other situations in which we are being harmed. 

Destabilization and sabotage

Make no mistake. That undermining sabotage you're feeling isn't accidental. It's not you overreacting, being too sensitive or imagining it.  They will tell you it's you attacking them. Because they take narcissistic injury everywhere. They do this to distract you from the very real injuries they are intentionally inflicting on you. It's not you. It's purpose built abuse designed to destroy us while maintaining their own sham "innocent victimhood." Malignant narcissist dark tetrads get high off from hurting people. They get narcissistic supply that feeds their entitlement, arrogance and remorseless Machiavellian cruelty. 

 They deprive you of resources and sabotage any efforts at self-care.   They like you weak and helpless so they can coercively control you with   their sick narcissistic fantasy. 

You can't win.  They will make sure of that. 

Malignant narcissists play by two sets of ever-shifting rules which they do not follow. They are two-faced, double-speaking liars who never practice what they preach. Ever. Just when you get it right, they turn on a dime, moving the hoops they expect you to hop through. It's one big twisted sociopathic game of "Whack-a-Mole." It wasn't till I stopped playing nice and left, that I saw how bad it really was. 

Gaslighting destroys everything. 

Remember what's fuels gaslighting: gas. Which has NO BOUNDARIES, no beginning nor end. That's a narcissist, an endless void of boundary crashing demands. They see themselves as everything and you as only new territory to invade. Which makes things doubly fraught for empath child trauma survivors who already don't know where others end and they begin. These "space invaders" know just how to push our trauma response buttons of fawning, groveling, humoring, people pleasing and appeasing. 

How antagonistic narcissists gain power over us

They demand it and we give it to them. We grant them entitled sinecure status. They didn't earn it nor do they deserve it. They're just really good at making us think they do. We let their gaslighting bullying live duty-free in our heads. We didn't mean to. They weaponized our childhood trauma responses and rode herd over our defenses. We believe and trust them. But we shouldn't because they are dangerously untrustworthy. You need to know that arrogant narcissists aren't entitled to anything, certainly not your loyalty, obedience and respect. You'd be better off trusting a cobra not to bite you. 

One simple trick to expose a narcissist

At least to yourself. Be wary of being the agent of exposing a narcissist to others. But just for your own peace of mind, here's a trick I just discovered by accident. When you're in the throes of narcissistic abuse, just stop a moment and hear the lunatic hypocrisy. As an empath, I'm always giving the benefit of the doubt at my own expense. I rationalize irrational behavior. I play fair with people who are playing foul. I excuse, exonerate and show mercy to merciless, haranguing liars. I take responsibility on myself for their abuse. So for once, I heard the insanity for what it is. Next, I contrasted what he said with what he does.  I listened to my own common sense speaking. I heard the narcissist raging at me for doing something that was utter fabrication and something he did hourly, himself. (This isn't my husband, btw.) He literally outed himself to me as the agent provocateur and I didn't have to say a word. All I  had to do was listen and stop playing by his rules. 

Get out of the sandbox and take loved ones with you.

Dark tetrads (malignant narcissists) will never play fair. They will use every dirty trick in the book because winning over others is all the matters to them. They care about getting their way and being "right" and they will kick anyone under the bus to achieve it. They will make the stupidest of decisions because their  unbridling arrogance deludes them. They will terrorize people you love. They will hurt their own children. They are immoral, self-righteous cowardly bullies. You can't fight fire with fire, playing as dirty as them  because you could never play that dirty. Your innate goodness won't let you. So the only way to survive is to stay away from them. They will only trigger, provoke, antagonize and attack till you get in the mud with them. Don't. 

No more JADE, in fact no more talk

Nothing works with a narcissist. Not even total surrender. It's unnatural, gross and counter-productive. The more you give the more they take. When you run out, they'll just walk over your dried out shell and on to the next victim. So no more J (justifying), A (answering), D (defending yourself) and E (explaining yourself) to the narcissist. But also no more excusing their bad behavior. This will only lead to you dysregulating and falling apart. No more keeping peace at your own expense. There is no peace with these people. They want total annihilation. Your efforts at peace will only increase their efforts at sabotage. Call their behavior what it is. Time to start grey-rocking, standing our ground and standing up for ourselves and going no contact when possible. 

Going no contact with narcissistic parents is the easy part

 Hello my friends. Today is my narcissistic mother's birthday. A day which in times past was a holy day of obligation for me.  While my birthday, a few weeks later, has always been a time to rub in my face how excluded I was. And she wasn't the only one: all four parent figures, two bio and two stepparents were narcissistically abusive. And that's just part of my childhood trauma, being given FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) for my birthday. And it's on of the 1001 reasons why, when I finally saw through the trauma bonding and betrayal blindness, I went no contact with the ones that were still alive. But going no contact is the easy part. 

 Closing the door is easy. Leaving it closed harder.

A survivor of narcissistic parent abuse gets really used to being the scapegoat wedge in the door. We body block their attempts to slam it in our faces. We keep holding the door open and they keep slamming it on our hands. We did this because they trashed our self-care skills and made us feel responsible for "keeping the peace." Which they were the ones violating. So we excuse, exonerate, exempt them from consequences at our expense. Then they gaslight us with this weird convoluted DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) about how we have to "forgive and forget" what they aren't sorry for and have no intention of changing. We're told we are the problem but also that we have to fix what they broke. So I did, until one day I stopped and cut ties. But leaving that door shut is harder because auto-gaslighting and self-blame-shaming nags me that leaving the door closed is disrespectful and disloyal. Let's just sit with the irony of that. 

But if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. 

Radical acceptance requires radically different behavior. And that means setting boundaries, detaching and not enabling them to abuse me by staying silent or remaining  in contact. I was was groomed to be the Broken Vending Machine Child who endlessly paid out goodies with no reciprocity. Childhood trauma responses made me into a fawning people pleaser who never expected anything but pain, humiliation, shame, parentification, invalidation and gaslighting in return. Child abandonment, endangerment, chaos, neglect and mistreatment were a Tuesday, for me. So not groveling, rolling over for abuse, providing narcissistic supply at my own expense is very unfamiliar and uncomfortable. But then, narcissistic abuse is more uncomfortable. So I have to...

Anticipate pitfalls in going no contact.

• Mark the fraught days on the calendar. Birthdays, holidays, Mother's Day, Father's Day. 
• Be prepared for sneak attacks from your estranged parents. They love to spin silly narratives and play victim. Stand your ground. Ignore calls and texts. 
• Be careful who you tell. Narcissistic parents have an incredible ability to recruit people, with their virtue signaling and gaslighting. 
• Be prepared for enabler and flying monkey ambushes. But also don't let them break you down. If they can't respect your boundaries, cut ties with them too. 
  
• Don't fall for the "two sides to every story" nonsense. Yep there's the right one and the wrong one, the facts and the lies. You didn't sign up for any of this and it's not your fault. 
• Beware of the "fight" trap. This is not a fair combat between two evenly matched contestants. It's crybullying, parent bullies ganging up on an innocent child.  
• See the mirage of control. The power differential gives parents control while the child has none. They don't exhibit self-control while coercively controlling the child. But since these control freaks had all the power, the responsibility and culpability lands squarely on them. But they don't have control of you now. 
• Hold onto your anger. What I mean is, remember what they did and why you had to cut ties. Don't be too quick to forgive and never forgive in the "wipe the slate clean" way.   Because they expect absolution with no contrition and take advantage of your forgiveness to hurt you more. These hypocritical grudge-holders play by two sets of rules, demanding carte blanche for themselves while being merciless with you.
• Beware of requests to talk about it. It will devolve into their
• pity parties
• blame and shame fests
• whine and dump sessions
• gaslighting
• future faking
• blindsiding
• entrapment
• projection
• Beware of fake offers of reconciliation. There's nothing to "reconcile" because abuse isn't a two-sided fair fight. It's a one-sided attack. There's only contrition and apologies. But those are usually fake too. Narcissists aren't sorry, they're setting you up. They expect you to cave. You'll end up apologizing for things you didn't do and which they did to you. If they want to apologize, they can write you a letter. Which you can read, or you don't have to. But watch out because these "confessions" are usually just more sneak attacks. 

They carved abuse on my heart and soul and it can never be erased, sadly for me.

Remember, that for self-protection against narcissistic abuse, there is no option but to keep yourself out of the abuser's path. I'm holding space for you as you do. 

Love, mar 

Where I'm at healing childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, if I'm honest

 

Hello my friends. Dr. Ramani asked us today where we are in our childhood trauma from narcissistic abuse path. And I'd have to say that I'm at my lowest point. I'm in the throes, the deep end the darkest part. Because I'm also at a place of no-holds-barred radical acceptance (also radical awareness and acknowledgment which have to come before acceptance). But one good thing about being at the bottom: there's nowhere to go but up. 

What I do I mean by lowest point?

I'm in both a deep valley but also in an exposed arid space, like a bug on a tabletop. There is no shred of hope for the these relationship with my parents or siblings. Two are deceased with no one effort made to extend love, only taking from me to the end. Every bridge was burned, not by me. Every door slammed. Now it's not so much that I've gone no contact as that I've left the door slammed shut and and not held it open only to get my hand slammed too. 

Stark realities I can't unsee

Once the trauma bonding was broken and the betrayal blindness wore off, I'm now seeing things as they were and are. I'm seeing the cruel, arrogant, remorseless, Machiavellian narcissist behind the parent masks. I recognize all they put me through with with blazing sharp white-hot clarity, like you do on a summer day in the middle of the dessert. 

• false "family" illusions
• gaslighting
• future faking
• narcissistic lies
• enmeshment
• FOG
• DARVO
• DIMMER  (Dismissiveness, Invalidation, Minimization, Manipulation, Exploitative and Entitlement, and Rage) 
• All my E's for them (excusing, exonerating, exempting from consequence, enabling, extending help)
• All their D's (diminishment, discarding, devaluing, depravity, debauchery, deplorable behavior, denials) 

Recovery takes all my energy

All this awareness and radical acceptance doesn't come cheap. It's exhausting and all my resources are depleted. Just like they always were, only then, I was just hanging on to survive. I thought it was normal for kids to have autoimmune diseases from parent chaos. I thought everyone had constant trauma nightmares. Turns out they don't.  Now, while I know it's not normal, I still have all the work of processing it. I have nothing left even to have fun because trauma dogs me everywhere. But a good thing about that is that it also leaves me no energy to keep giving, hoping, caring about  hopeless situations. 

Why I can't just "let it go." 

I would love nothing more than to just forget it and put it behind me. Trouble is, it won't let me go. It hounds me and follows me everywhere. When I go on vacation, childhood trauma packs itself in my suitcase. Even if I find a way to detach from it, even if I'm having a wonderful time, it's always there waiting to attack me when I'm vulnerable, like through dreams in sleep. And in sleep deprivation. Sometimes I can't get to sleep and when I can, I bounce in and out of dreams like a surfer. There's no rest for childhood trauma survivor. 

No, they didn't mean well. 

You hear this from enablers if you happen to mention it. That's why you don't tell anyone because most people make it worse. No, my parents didn't mean well. They were not mistreated as kids, like they did to me because they'd have trauma dumped that on me, if so. They knew what they were doing and saying. You don't accidentally mock, humiliate, rage at for no reason, make your kid witness your deviant adultery first hand. You don't leave her behind to fend alone on the daily, by accident. You don't neglect her care to have your whims. You don't lie and gaslight about everything by mistake. You don't make up fictional accounts of stuff that happened, inadvertently. That takes some extra special effort. 

The abuse was intentional, purpose-built and bulletproof 

All four of my narcissistic enmeshed parents used a combination of weapons to destabilize me. They didn't agree on anything except to make me their scapegoat. They created fraught spaces, with two sets of ever-changing double standards, cognitive dissonance and ultimately a dissociation and brain damage in me. It was purposeful, I see now. And that evil juju that they hexed me with survives the grave and lives in me. This is the only way I can frame it. And that is just one hard part. 

What I'd tell someone else, but struggle to tell me

Of course I believe you. Of course your exhausted, who wouldn't be? Of course just brushing your teeth takes Herculean effort. You're busy rewiring your brain! You're prostrate with grief over things you thought were real that weren't. Over being betrayed by all the people who were supposed to take care of you. Be easy with yourself. Lay around after you finish one of these therapy sessions. You've done a hard day's work. Eat what tastes good and eat enough. Maybe not a lot of sweets, chips or alcohol because they have a nasty reverse effect. If you don't want to go downtown, well, you can say so. Or you can give it a try and say if you're too tired. You can trust that people love you. But trust is another thing they destroyed. And another thing that take so much energy to rebuild.