Healing childhood trauma means dropping the mental load

Hello my friends. In my quest to heal childhood trauma responses from narcissistic parent abuse, I just had some forgotten memories surface recently. That has been happening much more frequently since I began unpacking childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. What I recalled is my kneejerk fawn, or people pleaser trauma response, to pick up the entire mental load and carry it alone. The fawn response if you're new to it, means the instinct to appease others to avoid conflict or stay safe. It means soothing sullen, fractious people, smoothing feathers we didn't ruffle, humoring chaotic and damaging behavior as if it were just peccadillos, catering to unreasonable demands, bowing down to people like gods, all at our own expense. 

The specific incidence which lead to my revelations, was remembering, how at weddings my husband would get drunk and become the life of the party. Which was fine. He was funny and never hurtful or nasty, per se. I laughed at his antics too, and even my uptight family cut him too much slack because he was so entertaining. But all his free-spirited frat boy shenanigans came at an enormous price to me. I had to carry the mental load. I got the gifts, pressed suits, cleaned up, was designated driver, and worst of all, the straight man, the schlimazel. An invidious role, which props up the charming drunk with her own shoulders. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. 

When we had children, it was so much worse. I'd drive home with him singing drunkenly the entire way. By the time we arrived he was sobering up and starting to get cranky. One time, he got out of the car, fell in our kiddie pool and screamed at me for putting it there. He went in, crashed for four hours, while I did all the parenting, cleanup, supper, bedtime ritual, etc. The designated drunk gets a free pass for sure, with us trauma first responders. 

And it wasn't just weddings where I had to drive home that were the problem. Some receptions were held at hotels. And that was so much worse. He'd leave me alone in hotels rooms to continue partying. I was always exhausted and in a lot of pain from back trouble. So I would head to bed at around midnight, and he'd promise to be "right up." I would be tired but unable to sleep in a strange place. He'd stagger in a 4 am and I'd be livid, mostly from weariness and grief at being ditched, AGAIN. 

This wasn't routine behavior in our lives. If it had I think I'd have divorced him. It was just a kind of letting his hair down at social functions. But he was in no fit condition to "adult" or parent. What alarms me now is that I just anticipated and accommodated it. So he expected that weddings would be his time to howl. And I ended up doing all the childcare, navigating, being the designated adult. What also alarmed and now angers me, is that I never once had the opportunity to let my hair down. AT MY OWN FAMILY functions! He was the designated wasted frat boy and I was bitch keeping everything going. 

I shouldered the adult mental load so he could act irresponsibly. One time, it was a wedding reception he had refused to attend and I took our four kids alone. The youngest was only four. It was an overnighter at a hotel in our town and he should have attended but wouldn't. I called and invited him again so we could have a nice overnight together. Not, interestingly so I could have the help I needed. I never asked for that but should have. Another boundary/need fallen to the fawn response. 

He arrived and immediately was the life of the party. It was all about him. Everyone loved how much fun he was. One person just sent him a Facebook friend request 25 years later, on the strength of that one time. Meanwhile I who could have really used a night off from being the designated adult, continued to carry that mental load alone. I made sure the kids ate, had their sleeping arrangements, toothbrushes etc. I tucked the little one in, snuggled up with her and cried myself to sleep taking care not to wake her. 

While he whooped it up downstairs. He even let our teen sons get drunk with him. And they had a great time, I can't deny that. Though I felt intense guilt for somehow allowing it. I can't really formulate now how I did. But the shame remains.  I think they also felt they had to stand by dad because he was incapable of adult behavior. It wasn't that he was precisely dangerous. But more risk-taking than he should have been. And let's be honest, when drunk, say what you will about it being an inclusive fun thing, it's all about the drunk maintaining that drunk experience. 

Again, he staggered up at God knows when, and I'd not in fact, cried myself to sleep. Only into a series of trauma nightmares. Just recently we talked about it for the first time in 25 years and his response was that he should not have "let me go" to that function. And I heard and saw what has been the problem here all along. Starting with the should not have let me. 

So first let me just say that I know my husband and as control freaky mansplain-y as that sounded, I don't think he meant it as bad as it sounded. At least he better not have. What he meant was that he should have been more encouraging to help me avoid toxic situations' which that particular wedding was. It was my stepmother's family and she, my dad and her lot have been very nasty, condescending, demanding, controlling and shaming of me. I went out of good old guilt. 

But that was not to problem, as I identified. When he said that, I pointed out, "no what you should have done was to take over the adulting and give me a much-needed break so that I could relax and enjoy an adult event. I didn't need another adult baby in my life to babysit. I needed to have some drinks and unwind. And if I had too much, well, we were all safely contained in a hotel. You should have entertained the kids at an adults-only event for once, instead of being the evening's Foster Brooks entertainment for everyone." 

I added, that it wasn't entirely his being selfish, though that was part. It was my faulty people pleaser trauma responses telling me to let everyone walk all over me, do what they wanted and leave me to pick up the pieces, AGAIN. And that was indoctrinated in me by my narcissistic parents. He wasn't responsible for that but he was responsible for knowingly triggering my people pleaser trauma response by acting so irresponsibly. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. 

His shame trauma response at first, tried to shush me. He knows and is very remorseful about his past indiscretions. And they are just that. He struggles to recall without shame so intense that he just wants to silence it. And me, sometimes. Which of course triggers my people pleaser trauma response into shamed silence. But I did something different this time. I didn't let it go. I wrote this post, for the first time in 44 years, delineating how his selfish, immature behavior felt to me. 

And I shared it with him. He said how he's felt so ashamed of these immature behaviors, and I said that what I needed was for him to tell me when he does. He says he confesses it in our Catholic sacrament of reconciliation. Which, if I'm honest, does me absolutely no good if it is not confessed to me who was the injured party. Even him confessing to me after I've brought it up, how, does me no good. Confessing after being confronted, is not true repentance. It's just getting caught and being unable to deny the accusation. If I am truly sorry, I acknowledge it immediately to the person I hurt, without waiting for them, someday to maybe bring it up. And if they don't, just keeping quiet. 

Him pre-emptively admitting the error of his ways helps me validate that the problem isn't me just being too sensitive, as my narcissistic parents always said. It helps me learn to acknowledge frustration and not bury it till it boils over. It is impossible, by the way, to bury, of absorb endless amounts of toxicity. It will burst at some point so the trick is to not let it build to the explosive level.  

This has been the case with toxic narcissistic parents, all my life. None of my four parents ever admitted a single thing they did wrong. They always found a way to blame me. I will blog more on this in another post. Suffice it to say, for now, that this blame-shifting kept me confused, frustrated and ashamed. So I don't even see problems like this, let alone express them, till decades later, if ever. I was glad to have gotten that flash of clarity in the situation. And it helped me see countless other situations where my fawning people pleaser trauma response to carry the entire mental load, has gotten me into great pain. 

Just a note before concluding. I was going to delete the entire post after discussing with my husband and coming to some resolution. He completely articulated what was wrong with it all and I could see real contrition. And I have seen real change toward more consistent mature adulting over the years. So I wanted to protect his privacy. But I chose to publish, at his insistence, I might add. Because we both agreed that you all, my dear friends, may need to hear our experiences to heal some issues in your life, family or origin or relationships. 

When I have shared my fawning and people pleaser trauma responses and the weird things they make me do, the reaction is resounding agreement. Heads nod so hard it sets off sonar waves! Because anyone with childhood trauma from narcissistic abuse, GETS IT. If you have dealt with anything like this in your life, feel free to comment about it below. What mental load are you carrying that isn't yours to carry? Your stories help us all. 

Healing childhood trauma by calling out euphemisms for narcissistic abuse

Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm calling out euphemisms for narcissistic abuse for what they are. They are not "kind" or "impartial" or "balanced" or "enlightened." These people who say them do not have special insight that the person experiencing abuse lacks (thought these people sure act like they do). 

They are gaslighting, devaluing, dismissive, diminishment of the narcissistically abused person's experiences. They are excuses people make for rotten behavior of narcissists. It's funny because as I was considering this topic, I listened to a podcast on YouTube by psychologist and narcissism expert Dr. Ramani. And we were saying exactly the same thing. Which affirms that these euphemisms are pretty universal. 

Sometimes, the people using these euphemisms are blind guides (ignorant, arrogant know-it-alls) or flying monkeys of the narcissist. Sometimes, they are used by people who are experiencing narcissistic abuse and are not able to call it what it is, so they downplay it. Invariably, however, those who "dumb down" narcissistic abuse with euphemisms, have not experienced the cruelty these folks are capable of. They just want to sound "nice" and understanding. (Often they are self-righteous and holier-than-thou hypocrites who would be furious if they had to endure what narcissist's victims endure). 

These blind guides aren't being "fair-minded" and "reasonable" as they would have you think. They are being incredibly unfair to the child suffering abuse by making her feel ashamed for "exaggerating it". They're being unreasonable in refusing to call abuse what it is. These blind guides are showing partiality toward the narcissistic parents by downplaying their actions. Their judgement is way out of balance against the victim by siding with the parent and justifying their behavior. 

I sound pretty P-O'd about this subject because I am. I've endured my narcissistic parents abuse, gaslighting, pooh-poohing, shaming, invalidating, twisting and deception all my life. And now when others make excuses for them, it just rubs salt in all those wounds. It reminds me how I made excuses for their mistreatment of me. It reminds me how alone I felt and how that was reiterated when other people in the family made excuses for my parents. 

So here are some of the euphemisms (defenses, watering down) people use for narcissists. Especially parents. 

You're just seeing their shadow self. What in the actual BS is that supposed to mean? So that's one I'd not heard often that Dr. Ramani mentioned. And it sounds about like the pseudo-psychobabble you hear so often. Frankly I think these folks who say this have played too many video games. What's hilarious is that if you've lived as long as me, you've heard many iterations on this bizarre theme. This is just another thing people say when they don't know what they are talking about but don't want to admit it. 

But for fun, let's deconcoct "shadow self" malarky. So let me get this straight. My narcissistic parents were not abusive, neglectful, manipulative, exploitative and cruel. They were just misunderstood? Oh, no, they WERE those things but only because their dark side was showing? Hmm, well problem is, that is pretty much all I saw. Soooo, it's moot point because their shadows selves were their real selves. And excuse me, but we all have a shadow side. We just don't give ourselves permission to torment other people with them. 

So one way and another, this is excusing bad behavior. WHICH people who say this would not be doing if they were suffering at the hands of the "shadow selves." Funny how the euphemisms only come out when it's someone else's experiences. That's one of my biggest problems with blind guides, flying monkeys, call them whatever. They only spread their judgmental toxic positivity about things THEY aren't dealing with. You might be surprised how "understanding" and "compassionate" toward my narcissistic parents people who didn't live with them, were. So I'm calling that out too, as hypocritical, self-righteous, double standard, smarmy-ass toxic shaming

Hurt people hurt people. This one goes along with my piece on gaslighting nonsense people say to excuse narcissistic parent child abuse. Yes, I said excuse. That's what all of this is. Enabling child abuse by defending the narcissist. Because NO NOT ALL HURT PEOPLE HURT OTHER PEOPLE!! If we did, the world would not be here anymore. Many truly wounded people with real emotional injuries, childhood trauma, abuse scars (not narcissistic injury) are more caring than they should be based on their past. They show fortitude, gentleness, peace, warmth, empathy. They do not repay evil with evil. They pay good forward. Which brings me to the next one...

She's just injured, wounded. Well cry me a friggin river. We have all been injured but we do not take it out on others. And I have to wonder how "wounded" she could be if she so callously and arrogantly inflicted pain. This wasn't because my parents didn't know better. They did because they were always preaching how I was supposed to live. They just didn't follow their own teachings. 

She's eccentric. That's just how she is. It may be how she is but it's not just how she is. She is also  abusive and cruel. I use "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" for parallels. When Caro tells Sidda about Vivi (Sidda's mother) "she's (mom is) hurtin' too, Bebe." I know they are just trying to bring awareness. But it sounds a lot like victim shaming. That's how I'd have heard it. Vivianne was wounded and Sidda says this. But she was also neglectful, self-centered and self-pitying. She abandoned her children multiple times. Google Gemini and Dr. Ramani a good point about how society not only excuses hurtful behavior based on unresolved trauma, it romanticizes it. My mother loved her role of martyr/savior/heroine. But she was a nightmare to live with. The tragic mother figure of pathos, who we all feel sooo sorry for, is often a real Medea behind closed doors. And this romanticizing just makes it worse for the children. 

He's a victim. Oh gag me. So now I'm supposed to feel even sorrier for my abusive, narcissistic father than he already expected me to, because he's suffered?? That is the human condition. He'd be the first to tell me I was just showing off for attention or having a pity party if I was hurt. I'm going to write another post specifically on the victimizing victim. And just what are these cruel people supposed to be victims of? Yeah, people never have an answer for that. Because they do not really know the person or his background. They're just sententious. I will also say that I knew my narcissistic parents pretty well, because they loved to talk about themselves. And if they had been abused by their parents, you can be sure I'd have been the first one they dumped it on. 

She's just difficult, challenging, problematic. Okay first, there's a flaw in saying she's "just" difficult.  Like it's "only" or "simply" a little quirk. Using "just" creates a false bar. As if on their contrived scale of abuse, being "just difficult" is low and the victim is over-reacting. It spins abuse like a difference of opinion or or a clash of personalities. Saying the narcissistic parent is "just difficult" denies the child's much more serious experiences of abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, scapegoating, parentification, invalidation, cruelty.  It gives a false impression that narcissistic parents are challenges the child must accept and master. Like a puzzle or math problem. This puts all the responsibility for "fixing" or "just dealing with" the difficult parent on the child, while not even acknowledging that the parent is actually a problem. 

All these buy into the narcissistic parent's DARVO narrative. If anyone is going to "dumb down" what happened, it should be the person who experienced it. Not just some sanctimonious bystander. And to any victims of narcissists reading, please, DO NOT minimize or euphemize what they did to you. THAT is YOUR truth and, my dears, no one has the right to soften it.  

How I lost 100 pounds by learning that "No" is a full sentence

Hello my friends :-) today my journey to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse and other forms of verbal harassment, I am exploring what it means to say that no is a full sentence. I'm also going to show how I lost 100 lb by learning that No is a full sentence. 

What do we mean when we say "no is a full sentence." Well, it has to do with setting boundaries around what I will and won't tolerate. It's about deciding for myself, without FOG (fear, obligation, guilt) what I will and won't do for people. It's about not complying with unrealistic demands, expectations or even requests unless I decide to. Actually, let me rephrase, it's about never complying with unreasonable demands or demands of any kind. And complying only with polite, reasonable requests if I choose to. 

Learning that "no is a full sentence" has to do with then policing those boundaries by setting consequences if they are violated. To take it back a step, it's about learning that I CAN say no and practicing that. It's about giving myself permission to set boundaries that I was never able to as a child, having boundary-crashing self-serving narcissistic parents. It's about unlearning old trauma responses of fawning, to develop healthier more self-advocating, self-confident, self-care responses. 

And then, after erecting healthier boundaries, learning that "no is a full sentence" means getting out of the trauma response habit of anxiously over-explaining and defending refusals. My tendency is to gaslight myself  that saying no is selfish.  Because my narcissistic parents gaslighted me that any refusal was unthinkably disobedient, disrespectful and dishonoring God. Even when it was an unsafe, unhealthy or immoral or illegal thing they demanded of  me. Which it always was. But I was so terrified of saying no that I complied with their very inappropriate demands. 

One way I'm learning that "no is a full sentence" is to allow myself to admit that other people say no all the time with no repercussions. My narcissistic parents and their golden children said no all the time. Often to things they should have said yes to. They refused to do things they should have done for me. Like stick around, not abandon me for weeks on end, get jobs, provide a house and a bedroom. Not make me do all the work. 

Those are extreme examples. But there are less extreme, normal examples all around. People say decline all the time: invitations, requests, tasks. It's perfectly acceptable to stand up for one's self. Some would say necessary and I would agree. AND, it is fine to say no without explaining why. It's essential if the person isn't asking but demanding and expecting you to go out of your way to do something that is in no one in your care's best interests. 

Example: mom demands her ex-husband's partner pick the mother's own child up from school. She does not ask. She doesn't check to see if it will work. She rudely TELLS the partner that she "has to" do this because the mother "can't." So picking a child up from school is one thing but it takes on a new dimension when it is expected. The partner in this case, may feel entirely comfortable to say, "no, I can't" offering no explanation or excuse. Just no. Even if the partner can actually do this, being bullied into doing it is good for no one. 

She may choose later to do the task because it is in the child's and the child's father's best interests. But it must be the partner's choice. She should not feel emotionally blackmailed into doing it. It is also not good for the mother because it sets up a dangerous precedent to let her think she can order others around and they will just comply. She has to learn that if you are not able to collect a child from school that you must make alternate arrangements which may be inconvenient, expensive or annoying. But that is life. It's what she chose when she had the child. Also, if she gets away with manipulating and exploiting everyone to do her bidding, she may manipulate, emotionally blackmail and guilt the child as he grows.

So what I'm advocating and trying to learn myself is that it is perfectly acceptable to say no and offer no justification. I got told a lot that when I would try to explain my side of things I was "just defending myself" (yeah, and? What you should asking is why I have to defend myself from loving parents?). It was also called "making excuses." Again, why do I have to give reasons why I do innocent, normal things, if my parents are so loving? But the result is that now whenever I legit have to say no, explanations feel to me like excuses. 

But what we need to learn is that excuses aren't necessarily bad things. They are reasons why you would exempt yourself from being held accountable TO OTHERS AND FOR THEIR CHOICES. It is not the partner's problem that the mother "can't" do something. She may choose to help but if the mother is weaponizing her "can't" to get people to cater to her, then that's  a different story. Even if she really is unable, it is HER problem to solve. And dumping it on someone else is not solving, it's playing DARVO. 

And generally people who demand, boss around, guilt, DARVO are arrogant, entitled narcissists to begin with. And that's why you're needing to set boundaries. You can say "I'm sorry I can't do it." But anything beyond that goes down the over-explaining path. And narcissists don't accept explanations. They just want their way, like my parents. All they wanted to hear from me when they said "jump" was "how high?" Well, that's where learning that no is a stand-alone sentence is helpful. All they want is yes, so all you give them is no. There's no argument for that. It is a done deal. 

And weirdly learning to say no relates to how I lost 100 pounds. I used to feel such overwhelming shame and guilt if I said no (because I was shamed and guilted by self-serving narcissistic parents) that I would give in and do it. Just today I had to do it when someone crossed a boundary being demanding with me. I just stopped what I was doing for them and said no. I won't finish this task because you were rude and bossy. And I will not allow myself to be treated this way. I received an apology but I decided that was not enough because talk is cheap and actions tell me that this happens all too frequently with this person. Furthermore "I'm sorry" "I'll do better" has been used to manipulate and future fake me into going back and finishing what I said no to. 

It did not feel genuine and so I did not go back and finish the tasks I'd begun for him. I didn't do this to shame him into ceasing the rude, bossy behavior. That is on him. And survey says he won't change because this has become ingrained pattern to snap, apologize, snap, apologize many times within a short time. He has gotten very complacent and even self-righteous about the nasty-nice, hypocrisy of his behavior. And that's in part down to me not policing boundaries in the 44 years we've been together. 

I have said no and then gone back on my word. And he knows how to trigger me into doing that  by pushing my FOG (fear, obligation, guilt), hypervigilant, people pleaser, fawn trauma response buttons. So that relates to how I lost 100 pounds because getting healthier in one area leads to better health overall. Being a pushover is exhausting and though standing up for yourself is too, it's less so that letting people walk on you. 

How I lost 100 pounds has a lot to do with taking charge of my own life. It's about saying what I mean and meaning what I say, without apology, explanation or backpedaling. 

How I lost 100 pounds by seeing my childhood trauma brain damage

 Hello my friends. I began this blog to chronical how I lost 100 pounds without GLP-1 drugs or weight loss surgery. And then I had a series of epiphanies about my own childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. And I started to see how weight loss, weight gain, obesity, anorexia were linked to childhood trauma brain damage. Today I'm sharing how I lost 100 pounds by realizing that I don't understand my childhood trauma brain. I'm beginning to see how accustomed to narcissistic parent abuse, toxic shaming, abandonment, neglect, endangerment, exploitation, parentification, bullying, dehumanizing, invalidation, scapegoating, blame-shifting, sabotaging and gaslighting I had become. 

Narcissistic parent abuse was more than normal. More than just my reality. It WAS reality that I had become so inured to that I could not see that it was crippling, deforming and killing me. And what got me seeing more clearly how deep in I was, is when someone asked me how I didn't see it then. How did I cope? Did I resent and fight it? Did I even know it abuse and not love my narcissistic parents were dishing out? And most important of all, how did it FEEL to be so badly mistreated. (by the way those are the terms questioners asked, not me). 

And the answer to all is, no, I didn't see, or know or understand. Because narcissistic parent abuse was hard-wired into my brain. I did not feel discomfort as a separate thing from routine comfort. Discomfort was all I knew. It was not comfortable but it was familiar. Like walking around with a stone in your shoe that hurts all the time, but I was used to it. This doesn't make it hurt less, if anything more with all the infection, concomitant injuries and extended damage. My trauma brain has adapted to pain as normal life. Like a blister that forms over the stone's constant abrading. I don't understand that there is life without the constant pain of the stone. 

And yet I do. Apologies for constant contradiction, but here's what I  mean. A traumatized child understands on some level that the hell her narcissistic parents are putting her through is not what other children experience. But her parents malignant weaponized gaslighting taught her that abuse is what she deserves. Because somehow she is not like other girls and not in the arrogant way we hear this phrase now. I was not like other girls because I wasn't worthy of the love and care other girls got. That's how I framed all the narcissistic parent abuse. Good enough for who it was for. 

This constant hurt created what I call an emotional leprosy in my childhood trauma brain. I've mentioned how a therapist said I have a "scary high pain tolerance." That is because pain is all I know so it has to be really bad for the stress and chaos cortisol damaged receptors in my brain to register it. What I had wasn't periodic or episodic experiences of pain. It was rare episodic experiences of joy, peace and feelings of acceptance. 

And wow does the religious gaslighting have a heyday with that. You don't feel joy?? Shame on you! Bad Christian, you're not praying, trusting, living for Jesus, etc. Which is really nasty to do to an adult, but to a developing child? My narcissistic parents used this on me all the time. Subjecting me to crazy abnormal, dehumanizing experiences and demanding that I respond not just with normal goodish responses but perfect, Christian responses. I had to do all the work without the resources. And, I might add, my narcissistic parents behaved with nothing like the Joy of the Lord, they preached about. They were petty, petulant, selfish, entitled, arrogant and cruel. 

I thought I was supposed to feel gross, ugly, fat, stupid, in the way, ashamed, exhausted from overwork, all the time. Not because children were supposed to. Because I wasn't a child but a three-horned monster like Caliban who had to be punished and beaten and enslaved. I thought that God had ordained that I be  miserable as a matter of course because I had in some way failed him and everyone. I was not just a second class citizen, I was an outcast. 

So what in the world does that have to do with how I lost 100 pounds? It  has to do with not realizing or not being able to articulate how much misery you are in. It has to do with being such an empath that I protected everyone else at my own cost. I body blocked and took on the sins of the family so no one had to feel any guilt or consequences. And I wasn't supposed to feel good about any of it. That would be attention-seeking pride. Like I said in an earlier post, they had a clapback for everything I did, despite me giving them nothing to clapback at.

I have been able to regain or actually just gain, some personal autonomy and power since going no contact with my narcissistic parents. I don't make childhood trauma response decisions as much as I did. Yes it feels strange. My dad  used to browbeat me about how wicked I was by "leaning on my own understanding" anytime I showed any independence. Just another of his misquoted, preached rather than lived, Bible verses. But again, I didn't know that because Jack made himself God to me so I thought that going against him, no matter how wrong his teaching, was going against God. 

The story of how I lost 100 pounds is still being written. But the more I unpack the more I find childhood trauma responses and a broken, childhood trauma brain damage from narcissistic parent abuse driving all my dysfunctional behavior. 

The Anatomy of a Parental Smear Campaign: Pre-emptively Discrediting the Scapegoat Child

Hello my friends. Today as I work to heal childhood trauma, I'm exposing narcissistic parents and their smear campaigns against scapegoat kids, for what they are. I lived with shameful dehumanizing character assassination, which I believed I deserved. I'm going unmask the gaslighting and systematic lies as the blame-shifting setups and betrayals they were. 

To begin, read my two articles 

Beware of red flag dehumanizing invalidating things narcissistic parents say

Dehumanizing smear campaigns narcissistic parents wage on scapegoat kids

Now, on to the unmasking of these smear campaigns. One thing to know about smear campaigns, no matter who is waging them, is that they are centered on DECEPTION and DESTRUCTION. They are PURPOSEFUL and PURPOSE-BUILT strictly to tear someone down. The smear campaigners use false accusations, fabricated lies, planted evidence, evasions, distortions, misquotations, gang-ups, ambushes, sneak attacks, bullying, gaslighting, catfishing and a host of other disgusting behaviors. I had Google Gemini read through this and want to add a great point she made. Smear campaigners "pre-emptively discredit" the victim so that any defense she offers seems to prove the lies. 

So that would be difficult enough for an adult to deal with. Now imagine A DEFENSELESS CHILD being the victim of a smear campaign LAUNCHED BY HER OWN PARENTS. And you will have some idea of the constant confusing, destabilizing chaos of my life. What kind of parent does that and why, you ask. A dark tetrad, malignant narcissist parent. This isn't just nasty comments made to the child. It's devastating, H-bomb, agent provocateur sabotage on a Third Reich level. 

And I'm going undercover to show you just how and why they do this. It isn't pretty. It will be triggering and upsetting. Welcome to my nightmares. And we press on...

The malignant narcissist parents launch smear campaigns against their scapegoat child SPECIFICALLY to DEHUMANIZE and CRIPPLE HER. Yes, there is an element of personal responsibility avoidance, of DARVO and blame-shifting. But the larger goal is to destroy the child. Sounds conspiracy theory-ish? Well, consider this. 

In my previous articles linked, I explained how now that I see the smear campaigns for what they are, I also see just how planned they were. I remember the confusion I felt because my narcissistic parents seemed to have a ready retort for everything I said. A retort, for their child, as if it was a planned attack to discredit me. (because it was).  And the ready retorts were scripted in advance. (because they were). And even things I didn't say, they had a prepared clapback for.  BECAUSE THEY DID. It was STRATEGIC and WEAPONIZED. They curated comebacks for anything I or anyone else might say in my defense. And the comebacks were ALL lies, evasions and distortions. 

My dad must have read the narcissist's handbook because he knew all the lines. He said I was both too sensitive and insensitive, too critical and too easily offended, that I was an attention-seeking show off, that I lied, exaggerated and made up stories to malign him and also that he punished me for my own good, and then he didn't punish at all, that I was making that up. He told me I only felt guilty because I was in the wrong, that I was crying to get pity. 

And then that he could see into my wicked heart and knew me better than I knew myself. And that I was disobedient, disloyal and disrespectful and that he owed me no loyalty or respect. And that he was disrespectful of his parents because they were too critical of him. He threatened me with his suicide then told me to lighten up because I was too heavy. Anything I said was labeled "self-defensive" or "making excuses." On and on and on. There was no winning because I was never meant to win. Just to trauma respond. And funnily enough, I'd never said anything. I just went along with everything. 

We never talked about why I had to defend myself in the first place. He just barged his way past my boundaries, common sense and logical defenses. He went out of his way to make me look and feel crazy, rebellious, sinful and selfish. It was as if he had an answer for everything, because he did. He'd prepared his rebuttal speech without even hearing the defense, And why do you prepare scripted clapback when there is nothing to clapback against? Because you are paranoid and anticipating every eventuality. 

You are creating the illusion that the child has done or said the things you are accusing her of. This is called reaction formation. You formulate a reaction to a thing that never happened and the intensity of the reaction makes it look like it had. You are dismantling the child's reality and implanting a false narrative in her mind. You are machinating a web of deceit to paint the child as unhinged, hysterical, dangerous, deceptive, cunning. So that anything she might say will just further that impression that she is the problem. 

But one thing that gives the narcissistic parent away is that they are never content. Their own greed and pomposity trips them up. They take it a smear campaign too far. Often, they contradict themselves in their zealous character assassination. They lie so much that they forget who they told what to. My mother told people she had to hit me because I was mouthy. Then she told others she never hit me. Then she said she only stopped hitting me because I hit her back. The three facts are that she DID hit me and it WAS unprovoked. And IF I raised my hand to her it was to protect myself from being hit. 

Do narcissistic parents, sooner or later, show their true colors so EVERYONE sees? I wish I could say yes. I wish I could promise that smear campaigners prove, by their own twisty underhanded scheming is that THEY are the devious connivers. That they are  hoisted on their own petards. OFTEN they do, by their own vanity.  Because on top of their scheming, they consider themselves very clever and able to outsmart everyone.  They think people are gullible and believe their lies. They think they've placed themselves above reproach. 

And for awhile, at least when they are young, it appears they are bulletproof. My narcissistic parents got away with shocking abuse, neglect, abandonment, exploitation, deviousness, I don't know how. I've been told recently that others were on to them. But none of that helped me, then or now. No one reached out to help me. So I believed they were right and I was the mess. They were so convincing in their arrogance, gaslighting and smear campaigns, that it didn't matter if anyone believed them or not. Because I BELEIVED THEM. 

This is why it's taken me till 61 years old to start reexamining evidence and piecing together their web of lies. Damn near a posthumous exoneration of myself. Too little too late. It took me till now to realize that I've been the victim of a smear campaign. But whether I'll ever be able to detox from the gaslighting lies, is another thing. 

I doubt I'll ever be able to come to terms with the level of contempt they held me in, to have treated me thus. It wasn't just them blaming me to shield themselves. It went to an evil I'll never comprehend. So people say that someone hating you doesn't mean you deserve it. Hmm, tell that to my trauma brain. They also say no smoke without fire. 

And the Tin Man says it doesn't matter how much we love only how much we are loved. Well, brother I am screwed then. It's hard to exist knowing you've generated so much animosity in someone. I  hear the Hakken-kraks howling every night. Okay so I probably didn't cause their hatred. Potato, potahtah. They sure as hell made me feel I did. 

Any bravado you hear from me is mostly whistling past the cemetery (thank you Jerry Wise for reminding me of this apt metaphor). I freely admit that getting this shame and toxin out of me is probably never going to completely happen. Is that me distrusting God? I don't know. Where was God when all this was happening? You can say He was right there with me. But as a scared little girl alone, I could neither see nor feel him. That I know of. 

Maybe He was there, in Lake Michigan, in Whitey's Woods, with grama and grampa. Maybe that's why the intense grief at their passing. But it wasn't enough to silence the gaslighting voices of my parents. Just saying. 

 

Dehumanizing smear campaigns malignant narcissist parents wage on scapegoat kids

 Hello my friends. Today in the "healing childhood trauma" sphere, I'm looking at more dehumanizing double standards malignant narcissistic parents blame shift onto their kids. These are strange, out of nowhere, unprovoked smear campaigns that leave the child confused and destabilized. What I'm learning about this nonsensical rhetoric they heaped on me was that it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with them. But being self-righteous hypocrites, they could never admit to wrong. So they played the gaslighting DARVO game and blame-shifted it onto me. 

I have believed their smear campaigns and lived with guilt and shame which I understood was mine because they said it was. I've also lived in utter confusion about it all. I never even thought about it until a few days ago. I just accepted that their shame was mine. With strategic distortions, omissions and deceptions, they walled me in, brick by brick, to a prison of gaslighting lies. It's so bewildering that even now it's hard to recall or explore. All I remember feeling was intense unbearable emotional pain and shame. 

Let me explain what some of these disturbing things were that they said. And maybe you can see the faulty, deceptive illogic it took me so long to. First, here's a list of some of malignant, twisted things my narcissistic parents said in my article Beware of these red flag dehumanizing, invalidating things malignant narcissist parents say They are dehumanizing because they undermine a child's core, natural self-defenses, reducing her to a drone slave. And it is important to note that they say these things in series, because they are SYSTEMATICALLY tearing down the child's resources and walling her up in a shame prison. So they have scripted "comebacks" or retorts for anything she might say to defend herself. Yes it's very dark tetrad. Here is the litany. 

--How dare you (do or say whatever it is they say you've said or done). There's no answer for that because it is a setup. Anything you say will sound like backpedaling. The sneaky, surprise ambush is the indefensible position. The thing to note is that the child very likely didn't do or say anything wrong. It's all gaslighting designed to destabilize the child. She was framed to take the rap for the PARENT's actions. But if the child should show some courage and ask what it is she supposedly did, they come back with...

--You know FULL WELL what you did. Said by the parent with such vitriol that the child feels physically sick. More gaslighting. The child obviously doesn't know or she wouldn't be asking. And the PARENT DOESN'T KNOW EITHER because THEY ARE MAKING IT UP AS THEY GO ALONG. For NARCISSISTIC SUPPLY  and to leverage an already shewed power differential. But all they have to do is accuse the child and tell her she knows and she believes them because she is conditioned to accept their fake gaslighting version of reality. The levels of soul confusion this one comment has caused me. As if it wasn't bad enough, they double down...

--You  have no excuse. There's no excuse (for whatever it is I did). You're  just making up excuses. I heard that so often yet for the life of me, I can't recall what I did or what excuse I was supposedly making. But again, there's no comeback save trauma responses. Anything will sound like more excuse-making. I was a biddable child and didn't defend myself or talk back. That's why this blog exists now! So why did I hear this so often? I see now that my malignant narcissistic parents said this to me but were telling on  themselves. THEY had no excuse for their irresponsible, feckless, chaotic behavior. But they wouldn't admit that because they were entitled, arrogant, remorseless, Machiavellian control freaks. Someone other than them must always suffer the consequences of their rotten choices. And again, it didn't need to be true. They just has to INSINUATE that I was doing it and I believed their lies. 

--You should be ashamed of yourself. Shame on you. I can still hear my mother's exaggerated, melodramatic pearl-clutching voice, dragging out the words in shocked horror. I can recall feeling very ashamed. But never why. Those details were always missing. I used to auto-gaslight myself that I knew what I had done to deserve such shame. But when I try to call it up, there's never anything but her scornful voice. I learned recently that "shame on you" is a tell-tale phrase narcissistic parents use on a child. And boy, do we feel it. It floats menacingly just below the surface of our cognizant memory. And the horror of it threatens to devour us on the daily. Yet we have no clear idea of what it is or why it is there. It was implanted there by cruel parents who would not take responsibility for their own actions. 

This Narcissistic parent quadfecta bombardment renders the scapegoat child helpless. It's effectively sucker punching, kicking her legs out, kicking her in the back and stomping on her when she tries to get up. It haunts us all our lives. It keeps us in dark places to deep to reach. Next I will blog about how, though I can't yet understand or feel it yet,  I know that it was all gaslighting self-serving cover ups. I'll expose their dirty little smear campaigns for the lies they are. 

People pleaser scapegoat kids make life too easy for everyone but themselves

Hello my friends. In my journey to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, I heard a simple phrase that made things much clearer. People pleaser scapegoat kids make life easier for everyone but themselves. Not just easier, too easy. I don't just mean we make family, parents, siblings, stepparents lives easier by being the toxic sponge, fixer, etc. I mean that EVERYONE in our sphere benefits from us being the subservient scapegoat: extended family, friends, school, workplace, in-laws, neighbors, people in social groups, churches, everyone benefits but us. We shoulder the mental load. They all owe us a huge debt of gratitude. You're welcome. 

Scapegoat kids of narcissistic parents are targets for toxic shame, blame shifting, invalidation, dehumanization, abuse and neglect, parentification, abandonment, isolation, enmeshment, enslavement, endangerment, manipulation, gaslighting, triangulation, exploitation, theft, etc. Arrogant, entitled, remorseless narcissistic parents heap all the undeserved responsibility for everyone's poor choices and bad behavior on the scapegoat. They go on their merry way feeling exonerated without feeling any guilt or experiencing  any consequences. They teach everyone in the family to use us like this. 

We scapegoat children, learn only people pleaser fawn trauma responses which make us prime targets for further abuse. We are conflict avoidant, hypervigilant soothers and smoothers anticipating everyone else's needs and wants and jumping to provide. We are too reliable, too accommodating. We are driven by parent indoctrinated FOG (fear, obligation, guilt). We are the emotional regulators of everyone's chaotic, dysregulated meltdowns. We humor, body block, excuse and cover for. We were expected to buffer with our own suffering, anything and everything thrown at us. 

So everyone wins when we do this, in our childhood and as adults. Our narcissistic parents are walking nightmares. But we keep them in a semblance of order by feeding them constant narcissistic supply and soothing their inflated egos, at our own expense. We learned as toddlers, to do this. I would almost argue that we learned in utero that what was waiting for us, was going to a bumpy ride. It was inbred in us to cater to our narcissistic mothers, by osmosis. We learned to expect no protection. 

We shield our narcissistic malignant parents' true natures and everyone from seeing them, by lying for them, pasting on a smile and faking normalcy. So everyone else can pretend all is happy normal. Or just thinks it is because we are so convincing. They don't have to deal with the awful, nastiness of our narcissistic parents. BECAUSE we are keeping narcissists supplied and masking their truly toxic selves. The real coup de grace is that we are so good at covering for them, that people actually believe they are nice people. And if we call out the narcissists, we get backlash because we've made them look so good. People don't believe us because we've so successfully hidden the bruises. Damned if you do or don't.  Crazy and crazy-making. 

My husband recalls how I would gaslight him that very disturbing, dangerous, illegal things my parents were doing were fine. Because I ALWAYS stood up for them. He remembers thinking, wait, what?? That's not normal. That's child abuse!! No parent as the right to do this to a child! Even his dad who barely knew me, would call out what they did as "bullshit" and inhuman. 

But I would just say, no it's all okay. I deserved it. I brought it on myself. I was just being normally punished. By being kicked out of the house at 16. He describes that feeling of knowing beyond a shadow of doubt how wrong they were. But I never could see it. Till now. I appreciate  more than I can say, having him for a truth teller all these years. 

My parents and stepparents were raging, off the charts narcissists. But they could semi-function in life because I was propping up everything behind the scenes. I was making their sham play-acting look plausible. But like with any artifice, it was all costumes, lighting and backdrops. None of it was genuine. Their lives were stage set with them as main characters. 

I made them look normalish when they were anything but. They could kick me to the curb and live their shiny new lives without guilt because I was absorbing and tolerating it all. I kept coming back for me. I kept letting them define reality by their gaslighting lies. And everyone was willing to buy this, even though they knew is was wrong, because I was there to make it all palatable. Because at the core of believing lies is a willingness to believe. To suspend doubt. And also ease and convenience. It's just easier to fake-believe all is fine that to confront a bat guano crazy narcissist. 

It meant everyone else could stay in their comfortable, complacent bubbles, because I wasn't making noise or shattering  their illusions by telling the truth. If I had just told one of the egregiously wrong things they did, the entire house of cards would have collapsed. Which they should have seen. They were blind or stupid or uncaring. I think, like I said, it was just simpler to play along themselves. They shouldn't have. Because it did unspeakable damage to me.  

Just one bad thing they did was bad enough. My dad could fake the put-together Christian preacher (he wasn't, it was just a narcissistic fantasy) because I was placating his insane anger. I was giving him a target for it. So everyone else could see the supplied Jack. If I had told how he abandoned me, multiple times, didn't provide basic for me, stole from me to give to his golden kids, how he stalked a 17 y/o (he was 35) others (including my beloved grandparents) would have been forced to accept he was an unreliable, irresponsible, negligent pedophile. These are just a few of the things he put me through. 

His wife was able to avoid looking like the passive-aggressive horror she was because I was doing everything for her. I was raising her kids, cleaning her house, cooking her meals, waiting on her, taking the brunt of her wrath. All she had to do was snap and I was told to come running. Which of course worked for my dad and her kids, too. They could just blithely live their lives because someone other than them was appeasing the monster. 

My mother narrowly avoided censure, ostracism, excommunication, prosecution many times because of my silence. She could play the good Christian lady because I was keeping mum on the physical and sexual abuse, adultery, neglect, the fact that her boyfriend was living with us in a state sponsored foster care home, scamming, kicking me out of the house at 16, etc. It made things so convenient for her and those around us. They didn't have to look too closely or get involved because I was, at great personal cost,  wallpapering over her heinous behavior. 

And people pleasers carry this poisonous behavior into adulthood. And that works for everyone besides us, too. We're the ones who'll take the jobs no one else will. We work overtime to others can go home early. We do too much so others can do to little. We make everything neat and tidy and nice, while eating crumbs off the floor. And they often exploit our over generosity. They take advantage of our too-willing self-sacrifice. They take for granted  we will always absorb all the bad and never speak out. We let them treat us in reprehensible ways and never confront them because  we were groomed to expect abuse. 

And these often aren't the malignant narcissists are parents are. They are just a bit high and mighty and self-deluded. And lazy. They don't look closer into why we are taking on so much and how damaging that is. They like the comfortable, complacency we provide. They like us in our scapegoat role, as our parents did. Our silent suffering works for them. And though I said they aren't malignant, those "nice" people can turn really nasty if we step out of line. We are protecting their false image, just like we protected our parents false image. 

But it only works if we make it happen. When we stop people pleasing and dispensing treats like a broken slot machine, very often the true colors show through. Then starts the gaslighting, browbeating, scolding, ambushes, threats and punishments. There are too many people profiting from keeping us in our place. They feel threatening by our self-advocacy. And anyone who feels that shows their selfish, entitled, arrogance. 

People pleasers literally keep the complacent world spinning because most of the world, sadly, is sad, distorted illusion. Life  isn't neat and tidy but we, by our scapegoated nature, make it appear so. We allow the apathy, self-congratulatory hypocrisy, ridiculous double standards, laziness, smug self-righteous nonsense to continue. We scapegoats keep keels even because we don't rock boats. We, in and of ourselves, over balance so others can irresponsibility rock away. We are always tense, anxious, racked with pain from standing guard. The seas are choppy. But no one feels it because we have anxiously absorbed all the turbulence into ourselves. 

So for all the peace-keeping, people pleaser, scapegoated taking on of everyone else's burdens, you're welcome. But do know that it ends here. It may work for others but it's deadly for me. I for one am going to stop over-regulating dysregulation. It's time to grey rock the selfish demands and go no contact with others-created chaos.