Hello friends. Today I'm going to discuss how healing CPTSD from dark tetrad parents is about learning to translate their gaslighting word salad correctly. If you're not familiar with the term word salad, it means nonsensical gibberish of brain injured patients. But narcissists use it too, only not because they can't think clearly. They purposely speak in disingenuous and confusing ways. They say crazy stuff to bewilder and gaslight the listener with evasions, blame-shifting, switching topics randomly, interruptions, contradictions, dismissing, undermining, denying, lying and rewriting self-serving narratives. They may feign dementia to gain sympathy and avoid responsibility but they know exactly what they are doing.
It's so awkward and childish that it's embarrassing to listen to them. They posture and pontificate about things they know nothing about. They make grand gestures, waving their arms and pounding their fists. They make outlandish statements, sweeping generalizations and exaggerated exhortations. Their lurid facial expressions are straight out of Marx Brothers with sneers, fake asides and googoo eyes. Except what they're saying isn't funny. It's alarming. If you've seen a televangelist or hellfire and brimstone preacher in action, you'll know what I mean. They are caricatures not people. You can tell they really fancy themselves the voice of truth. But there's nothing reasonable or intelligent about it. They're just whipped up into an imagined power trip frenzy. They literally look like asylum lunatics because they kind of are.
They will drum up artificial slippery slopes, dramatically point accusing fingers and cry victim when no one did or said anything to them. They talk behind their hands in stage whispers. They point and mock. They accuse people of looking down on them as they are acting ridiculously. They take stands when there's no question of an issue. They make shit up and rage at nothing. They will insult, heckle and pick fights and then play the innocent if someone responds. My mother once threw a pie in my face out of the blue and then got mad at me because no one else laughed.
It's so uncomfortable. My mother (who has abandoned me more often than not and never took care of me) once yelled loudly into a public bathroom "IS THERE ANYONE IN THERE?? MY KID IS COMING IN AND I CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL!" to the shock of people who were exiting. The kid was my golden child 40-y/o sister. Yet when I was five she sent me to play in a park alone three blocks away where locals were warned not to let their children go, because known pedophile to hung out there.
Dark tetrads are so exaggeratedly polarizing and binary in their thinking. They use such ignorant, immature phraseology. Good/bad, right/wrong. Christian, unchristian. What do those words even mean? I don't know and I doubt they do either. They just have very odd, uninformed, goofy ideas. Because they are that dangerous combo of ignorant and arrogant. They are too proud to actually admit they don't know things so they just make up nonsense as they go along. They generalize. They purposely misunderstand. They proclaim to be clairvoyant and say they can "read" people. And their minds and motives. When they don't even know a thing about the person. Because they are always looking to one up and take down someone else.
My mother says she loves to shock people. Which she imagines is one of her God-given tasks. She claims that proud people (and everyone is proud but her, supposedly) need her shock and shake them out of their sins. But nothing could be less true. What she really is, is an arrogant exhibitionist who adores making a spectacle of herself. She's not trying help others, she just wants to "out" wrongs she has decided (or invented) that other people have done, to throw suspicion away from genuine by any standards wrongs she has done And the shock is just her sadistic love of humiliating or people.
She has had multiple affairs at least once with an also married man. She lived with a man openly in our home. She took a girl in her care to have an abortion. She abandoned me several times and was a very neglectful, abusive mom. She forced me to hear her sex stories. She let her boyfriend sexually harass me. She put me out on the street when I was 16. She did them blatantly and was self-righteous about it , has never admitted how wrong they were and now lies and says she never did. AND feels arrogantly entitled to preach against all these things she did herself. And has the audacity to call my husband sinful for reading a book called "The Joy of Homebrewing." Or having a few beers
Because this narcissistic nonsense is so much worse when they have decided they are Christian. There's no dark tetrad like a religious one. They weaponize everything to suit their devious motives, especially God. They are hypocritically self-righteous without being the least bit righteous. They assume the worst in other people. He accuses them of things he is actually doing himself and excusing. She makes up a lot of foolish tales, all bad, about other people. My mom and her husband have lied, cheated, scammed and sinned their way through life. Yet they proudly "call out" other people on bad behavior which they have invented. They act like they are some kind goon squad for God. That He has issued them a license to ferret out sinners while completely exonerating them of all wrong-doing which they will never admit to. I can't tell you how many times I've caught them in lies and gaslighting. But I've rarely confronted them because they are violent and vicious when crossed.
Even as I write this, it sounds ridiculous. Because it is. It's painful to watch and humiliating to be around. It's embarrassing to admit. And I never did. I just somehow found a way to go along with it. I said nothing and endured the weird looks. Because they made life hellish enough without having to deal with the rages if I confronted them. And because the very ridiculousness of their behavior kept me silent. How can you explain to normal people your parents' VERY abnormal, dangerously psychotic behavior without looking like a psycho myself? And they knew that and used it against me. My parents were accomplished liars and gaslighters. They knew their behavior would earn censure if it was known. They have had trouble with the law on several issues. If the extent was known, they would be imprisoned and they know it. They also knew it was too incredibly awful to be believed. So they bullied me into silence with that knowledge.
And it's even worse for us their kids, because we sometimes end up acting like them because we grew up with their antics as our norm. We often pick up these frustrating habits like a cold. And we look and sound like idiots around normal people. It's even more embarrassing because it feels so juvenile to talk like this. I'm a "bad girl" or a "sinner" if I do thus and such and I'm 60 damn years old. So childish. I don't even really think this way, it's just their yammering in my head.
We are not ignorant. But we got so used to hearing them babble on in their native gibberish that we sometimes talk and think that way too, even if we are mature and educated. We have to fight against falling into their bizarre way of thinking. What I have to do is remind myself how irrelevant and baseless are the ridiculous things they say. That they spew as gospel truth what are just ill-formed, self-serving opinions.
Operative word: self-serving. They put about lies and deceptions as truth. And silly statements as essential knowledge. What I must remember is that their nonsense has no bearing on me. It only did as a kid because I had the misfortune to be born to these devious people. I got used to hearing nonsense like a first language spoken in my home. Which is so much more bewildering and exhausting when you compare it to the rest of the world. All around me I heard sane people speak in rational ways, yet my norm was irrational and insane.
So how do I navigate all this bullshit? By learning to translate their nonsense correctly. By understanding that it is just that, nonsense. It makes no sense because it isn't meant to. It's meant to baffle and befuddle, stress and worry us which is how gaslighting operates on the brain. It confuses right with wrong. It lies. It thwarts healthy relationships and turns them into master and slave. Boss and minion. It twists logical, forward moving into irrational backward regression. It makes sane insane and healthy dangerous. It manufacturers self-serving double standards.
And it is totally dark tetrad: arrogant, entitled, malicious, malignant, Machiavellian, remorseless and cruel. The only way to have conversations with them is not to have them. You will speak clearly and authentically from a place of collaboration while they will speak from dishonesty, coercion, distortion and manipulation.
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