Healing CPTSD by finally seeing parents' dark triad and dark tetrad personalities

Hello my friends. The first response I get when people hear my backstory of abuse from four narcissistic parents is, "what kind of parent does that??" or "What parents doesn't provide that for their child?" And those are excellent questions. How does a parent treat a child as I've been treated and call themselves a parent? But it took me a lifetime to realize what lay behind the intense pain I felt. 

Having just come to terms that it was abuse and not just their version of love, I'm still working to answer that. Narcissism, and other cluster B personality disorders seemed to fit the bill, sort of. What makes it more difficult is that I lived with not one or two but four self-centered, hurtful parents, or as I now call them authority figures (two bio and their two new partners). 

Each manifested a little differently, my father being more grandiose with some covert, his wife, covert, my mother grandiose, covert and malignant and her husband just a raging maniac. But narcissism didn't alone didn't cover the many levels of systematic abuse (physical, emotional, medical, financial, religious and sexual), neglect, endangerment, abandonment, shaming, invalidation, enmeshment, exploitation, manipulation, parentification, bullying, scapegoating, double standards for them and their "real" families, exclusion of yet dependence on me and gaslighting about it all. Which could in part been a result of abuse from all sides but still didn't quite fit.

I just recently learned two terms which do: dark triad and dark tetrad  personalities. Dark triad is narcissist (entitled and manipulative, Machiavellian (deceptive, exploitative, self-serving) and psychopathic (purposely harmful, aggressive). Dark tetrad adds sadism, or deriving pleasure from the suffering they cause. And when I look at my parents, especially my mother and father, through this lens, boy, do things become clear. My dad ticked most of the boxes for dark triad and my mother ticks all the boxes for dark tetrad. And then when they remarried, they chose new partners with similarly nasty personalities and they all fed off each other. 

I've been told that I can't "diagnose" these things. Well, I sure can tell you what I saw (all these behaviors manifested since my inception) I can say what it was like to live with (miserable), what they did (countless cruel things) and how they treated me (abominably) . How it made me feel (confused, ashamed, suicidal) and how I struggle now with CPTSD from all the suffering. So diagnosis or not, THAT is my story. and mine alone. I know from a life of experience what it's like to live with dark triad and dark tetrad parents. 

I'm just some college student latching on to psychology terms and twisting them to fit. Hell, I studied and have a degree in psychology and I never once considered how what they did fit to a T, these clinical patterns I was studying. I have a background in child abuse and neglect and I never saw myself in it even though the writing was clear on the wall. It took me 60 years to get to this realization. The lies, deceit, gaslighting and manipulation are very potent. But now that I do see, I will never be able to unsee. I'm a little late to the party but better late than never. 

What radical acceptance of CPTSD from dark tetrad parents means to me

 Hi friends. We're in the midst of a blizzard in Michigan and that reminds me how dark tetrad (narcissistic, psychopathic, exploitative, sadistic) parental abuse is like a blizzard of hurt and shame. Like the winter winds, it comes from all sides in their cult of pain. If they divorce and marry other narcissists or dark triads (which mine did), it is a vortex, a whiteout of abuse for their scapegoat. For more on my back story, you can read previous posts. Today I'm exploring more on how radical acceptance is the root of healing from the CPTSD this causes. 

I wrote recently that acceptance is not approval of. It's more honest recognition of. It is affirmation of my own version of events, not their deceitful ones. It also means finally hearing, embracing, comforting, supporting and nurturing the many damaged women in me. My lonely 4 y//o self, my terrified 6 y/o, sexually abused me at 8, parentified and overworked 12 y/o, abandoned 16 y/o, conned 21 y/o, scammed 36 y/o, manipulated 41 y/o to name a few. A group of ladies in need reside in me. And what they need and have always needed is recognition. 

I think the place we have to begin with accepting that what they gaslit us into believing was love and family was harm and danger, for us. We weren't loved, we were used. We were not disobedient, a burden, a nuisance. They were disobedient to God in not caring for us. What they said were our many duties and obligations were them exploiting and working us to death. So we all have to start over, to go back to the beginning and to rethink it all. 

A wise priest once said to me that anyone who doesn't have my best interests at heart doesn't love me. Well my (our ) parents and stepparents certainly had only their interests at heart and were perfectly happy to screw me over to get what they wanted (That's the Machiavellian component of their dark tetrad personalities). So let's begin our new radical acceptance there. 

They didn't love us. They made mercenary use of us.  We were expedient, convenient and easily misled by gaslighting. They made us believe we owed them for being allowed to be part of  their family. We didn't also weren't. But even if family is transactional (it isn't), we never got our part of the bargain, though we gave ours to overflowing. 

There was a constant double standard. We weren't family. We were staff, scapegoat, surrogate spouse, surrogate parents. They owned us (that's enmeshment). They broke up what was our family (which wasn't really ours either. It's always been all about them) I always say my parents divorced me not each other as they were never committed to it anyway. But they didn't delete us altogether. Oh no. That would deprive them of the benefits we brought them. It also would have actually been better for us. And the sadistic part of their dark tetrad hated anything that was good for us. They don't love you but by God no one else is going to either. 

Sounds pretty grim. And maybe a bit paranoid on my part. But that's dark tetrad for ya. It ain't pretty. It's selfish, greedy, conceited, condescending, hypocritical, disgusting. But it is what it is. And that's what radical acceptance is for me (us): acknowledging that the past happened, and it was as bad as we remember it. What I do recall. A lot, as in months and years are missing. What I've told you represents only a fraction. But I'm told by people I don't remember  meeting is that I looked miserable. So conclusion: it wasn't good what I've forgotten. I'm capable of remembering good things. So this repression is probably a safety valve of CPTSD. 

I also accept that nothing's going to change any of it. I (we) can't change the past. We can change the now and the future. To do that, we allow ourselves to accept (acknowledge, believe, confirm) that this is what I (we) have been dealing with all our lives. It's one of the healthiest things we've ever done. That and snipping ties with those that are left. Sadly, it's about all that's left to us of these past relationships. Honestly admitting they never were family relationships at all. They were scams. 

Healing CPTSD from dark tetrad parental abuse means radical acceptance

Hi friends. Today in my quest to heal CPTSD from narcissistic dark tetrad parental abuse, I'm exploring the crucial component which is radical acceptance. Acceptance that what I recall happening really did happen. And that helps me get who's responsible for what in perspective. This is crucial for de-programming their gaslighting and ceasing my own auto-gaslighting. Acceptance is how I'm saving myself from the mind, body and soul-killing pain of abuse. 

Am I saying it was okay for the four self-centered folks that called themselves my parents to hurt me? Not bloody likely. Am I giving my imprimatur to their consistent, strategic abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, dehumanizing, shaming, enmeshment, scapegoating and brainwashing about it all? No way. Radical acceptance isn't the good housekeeping seal of approval. It's more akin to Led Zepplin recognizing "what is and what should never be" or in the case of parental abuse what should never have been but what is. 

That word recognizing holds the key. It's about seeing their Dark Tetrad behaviors--narcissistic, Machiavellian (self-servingly exploitative) psychopathic (lack of empathy or remorse and sadistic (enjoying others' pain) for what they are. It's about breaking up with the 5 ex's--explaining away, excepting (ignoring), exempting (letting them get away with), excusing, and exonerating their cruelty. All of which enables their delusion of privilege and entitlement to continue abusing.  

Sadly, as a child growing up in this, my world was shaped and deformed by these lies. This was and still is my reality. It's automatic and autonomic. I never questioned it. Till I did. So for me, acceptance is recognizing that they are the problem not me. That they wronged me but that there's no way to change the past. It's about affirming my own version of events not the self-serving deceitful one. 

And so, with Reinhold Niebuhr, I ask God for the serenity to accept what I can't change, the courage to change what I can and the wisdom to know the difference. THAT is radical acceptance, to me. 

What going no contact after parental abuse means to me

 Hi friends! I wrote recently about how my path to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parental abuse has turned a corner. I've made the decision (drum roll, please) to go super low to no contact with those left of my family of origin. Which might sound overly grand but to me it is. It's been six decades in coming, so yes it's kind of a big deal. But what now? Where do I go from here with the healing? Well here's what going no contact means to me. 

It sounds like the old what I did on my summer vacation essay, doesn't it 😁? which in a way it is only in reverse. What am I going to do with the rest of my life, now that the abusive family is out of it? And I'll tell you  categorically, I don't know. Yet. I've lived so long with them messing with me, living in my head rent-free and nightmares every night, that this is new territory for me. 

So going forward, what will it look like? Well, I suspect it will hurt some. It hurts to see people caring for their parents and knowing I'll never be able to do that again because it's been so exploited. And then it has always hurt a lot so, less will be better. I have to come to terms with the fact that because rules of family life didn't apply to me, rules of adult interaction won't either. That normal expectations a kid can have for parents, didn't apply, their expectations on me (and my self-gaslit ones) don't either. Because they gave me no care and only exploited me, I owe them nothing. I think I never did. I certainly have no expectations on my children. 

However, abused and gaslit kids don't know that family relationships aren't transactional and that they should expect reciprocity. That parental care isn't an option but a right of childhood. That basic needs aren't met conditionally and then not at all when they future fake and change the conditions. That kids don't exist to please parents. So I didn't and so I don't. My "debt" to them, if there ever was one, was paid in full with interest decades ago. And I can feel free to close the door on that period of my life. I don't want to help and I don't care. Done. 

Yes, I realize that may be cold. And it would if they hadn't shut the door on me first. I've felt guilt about all the ways I've supposedly let them down all my life. But it didn't happen. They got more than enough from me, gave nothing and took what was mine. I gave till it not only hurt but destroyed large parts of me. They exploited and misused me. So I have nothing else for them. 

I can't do anything without hearing one of my four parents shaming voices in my head. Second-guessing, criticizing, undermining, attacking, bullying me. That's a hellish way to live. I feel afraid, stupid and foolish all the time. I don't even know right from wrong because everything I did was wrong. And I know that's not what God wants for me. 

So now I'm going to try something different. I'm going to do what I want and need (whatever those are, I don't know yet). I'm going make decisions the way I see fit and if it doesn't work, oh well. If I fail, I'll take it up with God. I'm taking back my own power. I'm going to find the confidence to try things I've never tried, crazy or not. 

I get to make mistakes and even do flat out wrong things on purpose once in awhile. Goodness know they were done to me often enough.  I'm basically a pretty kind person so it won't be anything too bad. Certainly not the earth-shattering deal my family made out of anything I did "wrong." Honestly, the way they blew things out of proportion and then minimized their own chaos is just laughable. 

But I realize that I don't have the power to make the world come screeching to a halt even if I wanted to. I don't run the show. I'll leave that delusion to the narcissists. I'm just lil 'ole me. I don't have to be the perfect one, the fixer, solver and smoother of feathers. I'm getting down off this damn pedestal of expected perfection. It's a tiny place to perch, no room to stand comfortably and fukkin easy to fall off from. I'm a perSON not a perFECT. 

So there's going to be a lot more honesty and a lot less fawning around here. Fewer yes sirs and no ma'ams and more just no I won't. " If it turns out I go overboard on the boundaries, or get more demanding myself, so? I'll figure that out for myself. Or they can so no to me. I don't need anyone bossing me around and scolding me. And I probably won't do that because I never have. 

And hear me now. If ANYONE ever screams at me, cusses me out or verbally abuses me again. Watch out. Because I will not tolerate it anymore. 

My recovery from CPTSD just turned a corner

Hello my friends. I just had an epiphany in my journey to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parental abuse. For more on all that you can read my back posts. I've turned a corner and am taking a new and, for me, unprecedented direction. I'm deciding to do a few things differently. And it's having a marked improvement in just a few days. What is this new direction, you ask?

Simply put, I've decided to cut contact with my two parents that are left. After a lifetime of them abusing, neglecting, shaming, invalidating, insulting, mocking, depriving, stealing from, parentifying, excluding me when it suits them, exploiting, enslaving, manipulating, raging at me, bullying, lying, dismissing, scapegoating, enmeshing, pirating my self, minimizing and gaslighting, I finally decided that it ends here. No more enabling, pity, help that hurts me, giving without reciprocity and getting kicked in the stomach for it. Done. 

And not a moment too soon. I've been struggling all my life with physical, mental, emotional, financial and spiritual suffering with CPTSD they created in me. And it's killing me at an escalated pace. I'm tense, anxious, frightened of shadows,  shell-shocked. I just a tiny noises. Everything worries me, especially things I've been made to think are my responsibilities, that aren't. 

So yes, it took me into my 7th decade to finally realize that I needed to sever ties with these dark triad people. Yes I wish I'd done it decades ago. If I'd cut contact when I was 16 and they kicked me out of the house, I'd have saved myself years of misery. As I said to my daughter today, ending narcissistic abuse is better done earlier rather than later. To which she said, "better late than never." So very true. 

And I didn't because I didn't know should not allow it or even that I could. I was raised in a cult of one, by four dark triad narcissists who saw to it that my brain was damaged by their exploitation. For children raised this way, coming out of the torture is exactly like coming out of prison. You have to break your way out because they will  never let you go. And the strongest bond and barriers are in your own mind, put there by people in whose best interests it is to keep you locked up, chained and walking the grindstone. And like Jean Valjean after Toulon, abuse survivors are scarred, scared and confused. 

But we are free. And I for one am never going back. I realized now I owe them nothing. And yes it sounds cold and heartless. Gaslit me definitely still feels more like a perp than a victim. But if you know my backstory, you know it's the only choice I have. Once you know it's being burnt you have to yank your hand out of the fire. 

I didn't ask for it to be this way. I did everything in my power to make them happy. And they liked that power they had over me. I kept my hands glued to my eyes to avoid seeing what as right in front of my face. They did not, do not and never loved me. They've used me. And I let them. I made excuses, defended and bent over for it. 

But no more. No more bullying. No more answering to shaming manipulative demands. I call the shots in my life. If I screw up, so be it. I'll deal with it if the time comes. I will let me common sense dictate what's best for me, not a conscience rubbed raw by inappropriate expectations and demands. 

And so it sounds like I don't care. Well, I don't. No more that the basic concern I have for everyone. They wanted to play it both ways, family when it suits them or there's something to be gotten out of it. And they bosses and business transactions when they give or do something. I always heard about how she had to "get back to her (real) family."  But then oh wait, I expect this or that because you're my child. Did she know how excluding that was? Of course she did. She went out of her way to remind me   of all the double standards I was expected to put up with. 

So yes, I was your child, to care for an nurture, not to boss and exploit. And you weren't my mother when it came to expectations you were supposed to be meeting. You reaped where you didn't sow. So now I don't care anymore.  I care about me. I care about those who are genuinely in my care. So she needs someone to care for her. (No not really. She just likes being waited on.) But say for argument she does need something. It's not my job to provide. And I don't want to anymore. 

It may be difficult for me at first to enforce these boundaries. But I'll get the hang of it. What has been going around for 60 years, is finally coming around. And who am it to stand it the way? 

Ridiculous and pitiful things CPTSD from narcissistic parental abuse makes me do

 Hello my friends. I've been writing a lot about my CPTSD from parental abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, shaming and invalidation, enmeshment, family scapegoating, identity pirating and gaslighting. Today I'm looking at how the acute stress responses of fight, flight, fawn, freeze and I'll add fix, have caused me to do ridiculous and pitiful things. 

For me, the four acute stress responses happened in a sort of order. I would be threatened in some way by one of my four selfish, sociopathic parents. It might be intense shaming, fury, rage, insulting, sexual harassment or covert incest, lying about something I'd done, manipulation, back-stabbing, chaotic changes made to serve themselves which hurt me, neglect, being put in dangerous situations, being left alone with no resources. It would come from nowhere. I never saw it coming. Which would make it more terrifying. Unbearably so. 

It would shock me and I'd freeze (panic). I would go into a sort of emergency, crisis mode fugue-state shutdown. My  hands shake and my stomach feels sick when I recall it. I couldn't think clearly. All common sense went bye-bye. Then I'd fawn (grovel, humor, placate) when it wasn't safe to run (flight). I'd literally present, like a wild animal. I was so frightened and confused that I'd cry, sometimes wet my pants. I'd beg to know what I could do to please them, so they wouldn't be so angry. And to make this god-awful misery stop. But hell hath no fury like a narcissist parent. 

Then later, in situations it was safe to, I'd fly. Sometimes. Mostly I just stuck around to be further hurt. I'd been groomed to be the whipping girl. So I thought that's what I was supposed to do in all situations. If I was shamed for running (getting the hell out of the situation, yanno, like self-care?), I'd back down in shame. And sometimes when cornered, I'd come out swinging. But it wasn't to hurt the other person. It was defensive, to make them stop hurting me. Little did I know that a lot of the windmills I was tilting at were from traumatic situations long past. 

But the one thing I always do, is the stress response I've added to the list.  ALWAYS rush to fix the problem. This is kind of like fawn but with a more active component. Even fighting was a response to make it stop. The other person was deregulating and I was feeling myself going the same way. So I tried in all ways I could to get out of the spiral, to break the cycle, and get us to safety before we both went completely down the drain. If that meant the shock slap across the face, well, needs must. 

Of course, you who don't experience this, can see how incredibly dysfunctional it all is. But you can't think clearly when in trauma or shock. It all feels so urgent. And it is meant to. My perpetrators forced me into feeling a state of perpetual emergency over their selfish demands. They created panic with their abuse, harm and gaslighting. I was conditioned to jump in fear and rush to help whenever any of them said to. 

Looking back with more clarity, I see it was all over such piddly things. Things I as a KID was dealing with from them daily. I would supposedly do something which ground the world to a halt. Like asking if a friend could have dinner over. Or coming home 15 minutes late. Things that I deal with as an adult on a moment by moment basis. I'd be told I was disobedient, selfish, arrogant, yada yada. Meanwhile THEY were routinely scornful, mocking, rude, neglectful or their children.   There was never a real crisis, except the one they were manufacturing.  

As you might imagine, all of these stress coping responses have gotten me in trouble in the real world, outside their cultish narc fantasies. What was supposed to keep me safe (an never really did) in the alternate reality they created for me, looked very sick in the light of day. I have scared off a lot of people with my over-reacting, shell shock responses. But then they don't live in the Armageddon in my head.  So what do I do that's so strange? 

1) Can't differentiate between mine and thine. It's all mine to worry about and fix. It's all thine if you need it from me. If you need something, even if it's something you should be doing for yourself, especially if you guilt me into believing it's my job to provide it, you'll get it. 

2) No is not a word in my vocab. Personal boundaries don't exist. I feel ashamed of needs and certainly wants. 

3) Don't know big from little problems and little from no problem. Everything was made out to be earth-shattering. So do I overreact? Hell yeah. 

4) Stupid myself down to humor others. I will keep quiet about things I know if others are saying it's different. I keep opinions to myself if others say it's wrong. I always think I'm wrong and others are right, no matter how wrong they patently are. I don't speak up when I should. I don't share different perspectives because that would be "contradicting" even though we're both grown adults. I still see myself as the "disobedient child" my parents painted me as, in my 60s. 

5) Too agreeable. I'm not exactly ashamed of my ideas, I'm just too afraid of displeasing people. I'm terrified of setting off belligerent, angry people even though they are perpetually set off. And my kowtowing just makes them worse. 

6) Let others kick me around. Being the butt of jokes, target of rage, scapegoated, insulted by kids I'm in charge of caring for, shamed and scorned by people I'm supposed to serve, it's all normal for me. 

5) On edge all the time. Waiting for the attack. 

Acknowledging narcissistic abuse isn't blaming, it's getting perspective

 Hello all. I've done a lot of processing of abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, manipulation, invalidation, exploitation, scapegoating and gaslighting I experienced from four narcissistic parents. I'm absolutely drained and second-guessing myself. And I want to make a few things clear (probably mostly to myself). When I share about the abuse, I'm not shaming and blaming anyone. I'm trying to get out from under the false shame and blame that was laid on me. 

Is that just blame and shame shifting (putting on others)? I don't know. I'm not intentionally placing it on them, just getting it off me. If blame, by association, lands on the perpetrators of the abuse, it's something I can't help. And is it really a bad thing to sort out who is responsible? If blame and shame is so bad, why was it okay for me to be subjected to it all my life? Why was I made wrongly responsible for their actions? It has ruined large parts of my brain. I've been miserable with it as long as I can remember. 

The voices in my head are saying, well if you know how it feels to experience shaming and blame, why would  you want to put someone else through it? And they would be right in asking if I was putting it on an innocent bystander. But my parents are not innocent. They're the ones who created this hell with their neglect, abuse, abandonment, endangerment, etc. 

I'm just saying what happened instead of believing the lies and distortions. I'm identifying what's mine and what's  not. I'm sorting people's issues into the right baskets instead taking them all into mine. All I'm trying to do is heal the CPTSD it caused me and undo the damage of gaslighting. Acknowledging abuse, neglect, etc, helps put it in perspective for me. It helps me understand how I was hurt by it, where I can correct unsafe beliefs, hopefully, and how, maybe, I can live a healthier life. 

If my getting some relief means they get held accountable for their bad treatment of me, well, maybe better choices should have been made.