Sociopathic narcissist parents gaslight and undermine their kids to destabilize them

 Hello my friends. Today I'm looking at ways sociopathic narcissist (dark tetrad) parents systematically destabilize and destroy their children. Yes, it's that dire. They don't just mess them around a bit. Sociopathic parents set about to undermine and sabotage every good thing for their kids: innocence, childhood, security, safety, needs, wants, goals, hopes, dreams, stability, trust, self-care, health and wellbeing, faith, family, friends, peace of mind, confidence, everything. The sociopathic narcissist parent damages the child brain with gaslighting, deception and deceit. 

The sociopathic narcissist parent puts the child in constant chaos and stress, causing adrenaline and cortisol bursts that erode the child's resistance. The sociopathic narcissist parent dismantles the child's reality into something dark and dangerous. The sociopathic narcissist parent renders the child unable to even think clearly, to understand danger signals or know what she needs. And because children are young and vulnerable, they are clay in the hands of the sociopathic narcissist parent. It's as if the universe handed the sociopathic narcissist parent a set of torture instruments and said "have at this kid." 

And when I say that the sociopathic narcissist parent systematically trashes the child, it's no conspiracy theory. The dark tetrad sociopathic narcissist campaigns against the child. She weaponizes the child's innate trust. She strategizes and plans her attacks with miliary precision. She's playing a long game of revenge against the child for daring to be. She is jealous of the child's light and joy and transparency, contrasted to her own very dark, angry, devious nature. It's no exaggeration to say that the sociopathic narcissist parent is bent on damaging, dismantling, destabilizing and disarming the child's resources. Because the child represents all the parent can never be: honest, genuine, creative, decent, generous and kind. 

The child creates beauty and harmony and the sociopathic narcissist parent destroys it, in overt and covert ways. What she can't steal, the sociopathic narcissist parent ruins, like a petulant child whose drawing didn't turn out so she scribbles on someone else's. The sociopathic narcissist turns happy events into awkward miserable nightmares. She does everything in her power to make sure all eyes are on her. If that means wearing a nightgown to her great grand-daughter's baptism or going dancing and drinking at a bar while pregnant. Or faking a fall to grab attention at a wedding or screeching with laughter at a funeral. Or waving her arms and yelling in church. Or throwing a pie in her adult daughter face at her work picnic. 

Other things she does clandestinely, like setting up and triangulating her daughter and son-in-law to buy her junk car for $990 and then lying and saying each told her separately that she could have their nice car for $100. Or things come up missing like her grandson's cool new shoes which suddenly her golden child is in possession of. The sociopathic narcissist steals and cashes in her daughter's college savings bonds. Her daughter at 9, has a Canadian money collection that mysteriously disappears and mother blames the daughter's friend who never had access to it.. And mom, who was broke and unemployed suddenly now has money to lavish on herself and her live-in boyfriend. I could go on and on and on...

And what does this do to the child/teen/adult of the sociopathic narcissist parent? All kinds of things, none of them good. A lot I'm still unpacking but five that leap to the mind are indoctrination, brainwashing (gaslighting), grooming, undermining and destabilization. The sociopathic narcissist parent lies, distorts and rewrites stories which she implants them in the child's mind like truth. And these fake realities become her daughter's truth. Everything nice or normal or positive is busted up and replaced with icky, dirty, nasty, gross, humiliating, disgusting crap. And the sociopathic narcissist parent then rubs this in her child's face. It's no accident. She wants her daughter to know that she is being humiliated.

My cousin whom I thought I just met in adulthood says we used to hang out at family picnics that my grandparents took me to. I have no memory of him or the picnics. Not one. And he says there were many. It's like the memories were erased. I know he is telling the truth because he is a loving person and these memories are happy for him. And they would have been for me too. He did say that I always looked so miserable that he and his brother thought I was a snob who didn't want to associate with them. That would not have been the case. If anything, I was a people pleaser and would have gone out of my way to be nice. 

I think what happened is that my sociopathic narcissistic mother and father and their new spouses had me so shell-shocked that I was frozen in fear. I was like that haunted WWI solder who can never go anywhere or do anything without his traumatized memories ruining it. They cloud and obliterate everything else. Memories of their hateful, hurtful shaming, mocking, attacking voices never go away. And I think there was no room in my memory for any good thing. Because as I recollect, the only really nice memories are with grandparents WITHOUT parents. I can't call up any really happy memories for most of childhood with parents. There are just some that are less bad. 

That's the destabilization. Everything is uncertain and chaotic. Everything good can be and often is taken away at a moment's notice for no reason and then the child is gaslit that she caused it to be taken by some awful thing she did that she can't remember. Alarmingly bad things happen randomly, without warning.  People are enraged at you, hurling horrible insults and terrifying threats and you have no idea why. Parents up and abandon you for shits and giggles. They leave you alone to fend when you're not even in school yet. They leave you to the mercy of scary people in scary places. And all this lives in your brain. 

I think the best I can do is to make new memories with my now people. My real family. Those that love me and want what's best for me. So my cousin, husband, kids and I have our own picnics. The trauma is still there. The Big Berthas still go off in my head and scare the shit out of me, from time to time. The Stukas still attack. But my now loved ones are patient and they sit with me and hold space till I can get to a better place. 

Shaming and Gaslighting tactics dark tetrad narcissists use on scapegoat kids

Hello my friends. I've been writing a lot about my life under the regimen of four dark tetrad sociopathic narcissistic parents. Are you wondering if maybe someone you live with is a narcissist? Well, here's a list of things they do to help you determine if you are. I got the general list from a podcast by Dr. Les Carter and I've added my own indicators and personal experiences with them. 

They question and make you question the "legitimacy of being you." Do you actually deserve to call yourself a person, an individual? They don't think you do and they make no bones about it. You exist for them. You are their shadow, their right hand man, a prop, part of their entourage. 

They future fake, making all kinds of unspecified promises they never keep. Then if you inquire about a promise they made they will sneer their smug narcissistic smirk and ask what you're talking about. They declare they never said that. Then they get this pouty, wounded, huffy and haughty (yes they manage all that in one)  expression and scold you for being so selfish ( to expect they'd actually keep their word).

They baffle you with gaslighting crap about how they couldn't possibly do what you're "demanding" and  how awful you are to even think it. Don't you realize they are "prostrate with exhaustion" (from all the work they don't do and put on you). They are sick and in pain. (they're not. It's factitious and weaponized for pity and to get out of responsibility but you feel guilty nonetheless because you are a caring person. These aren't big things. And they are things that the narcissist promised to you. Stuff like doing the dishes, cooking supper or take you to the park.  Stuff you do all the time for them, with no thanks or appreciation. But they make you feel that you just expected them to find a cure for cancer while holding the world in orbit. 

They are constantly tardy or absent but have a good excuse. Or an excuse that, the first few times, sounded plausible but starts to ring hollow on the 33rd time. Stuff like "I'm sick." (pity, pity) They fail to bring things they promised to bring, lie and say they never promised and are offended that you as "family" would expect them to. They leave early just at cleanup time, taking plates of leftovers for their golden child who was too lazy to attend but still wants dinner. 

They expect when they come over that you will throw the doors wide, roll out the red carpet and wait on them like palace flunkies. My mother has actually stood in the street yelling at the top of her lungs 'I'M HERE!! WHERE IS THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE?" (she wasn't joking. scared the shit out of my neighbor who thought she was a lunatic.) And THEN when you go to their house, LOL, they expect the same thing. My  mother always gets a tummyache when it's time to do dishes at my house, after stuffing her face on enormous spread I made myself.  She says things like "well, I'm the guest." Or "I'd offer to help but I know you wouldn't let me.( try me). And when I'm at her house, I clean her entire kitchen, mopping the floor, scrubbing down the stove (which is filthy), dusting and arranging cupboards. While she and her bunch sit and watch TV. 

They snap up offers of free things and then bail when they get all they came for. I used to do Christmas cookie baking, providing all the ingredients at no small expense to myself, often when I couldn't afford it. She comes, sits around, bends my ear with all her woes, uses me as a sex therapist (yes, gross) and takes home boxes of goodies. One year, I thought I'd make it a party with a few friends. I invited her and she gladly accepted and invited golden child along. . Day of, only one friend shows up (the other called with regrets she had to work) Radio silence from mother till I call her and she irritably says she "doesn't feel well." I was left with cupboards full of baking supplies I never got around to using. I never invited her again. 

They exclude you from things you would normally be included in, when they feel like it.  AND  let you know you weren't included. They make a point of bragging about it. So they don't just want you to know they did it, you need to know it was done without you. On purpose. So that you'll think not just they but other people were excluding you. The other people were probably lied to as well and told you didn't want to come. (triangulate) If you say you'd have liked to go, they smirk and lie and say they had no idea you'd have enjoyed it or that you'd want to be included.  

One year, I had to take my mom to the doctor on her birthday. I had to take time off work which cost me dearly. She was asked what she was doing for her birthday and she said "my family (her husband and other daughter) is taking me out to dinner." Knowing full well I had no idea about this and certainly wasn't invited. Let alone inviting my husband or her grandchildren who live right near and who have paid for her meals and done her car work pro bono. She wanted me to know they were leaving us out. Then she told me we could take her out for her birthday and give her her presents later as she had to get ready. (She always sends me a Dollar tree piece of junk for my birthday while expecting big gifts for herself. Once for Christmas she gave me a rag of a shirt from Goodwill she hadn't even washed. And told me she'd like me to buy her lingerie and a new vacuum.) 

So anyway, when she told me I could take her out, I called her bluff and said "oh are you inviting me to your party? She stuttered (it was hilarious) and said "oh, um, uh yes." So I dolled up, brought her a nice present, went out to eat with them. When the check came, she looked pointedly at me to pay but her husband refused saying it was his treat and I was a guest. She got pissed. She always expects I will because I'm generous. She's not happy unless it comes out of our pocket. I'm the peon who has to pay for the privilege of being in HRH's presence. She'll even invite other people and expect me to pay. Everyone was miserable and I knew it wasn't because of me. It was because she was mad that I came and they were embarrassed and sick of her. It was pathetic.  I smiled and charmed my way through the meal and cried myself all the way home. But I'd be damned if I let them know. The next year, I sent a happy birthday text and that was it. 

Everything they say about you is designed to make you feel uncomfortable. They make passive-aggressive, back-handed "compliments" designed to humiliate rather than make you feel good. Innocent but private details such as when you first begin to show pubic hair as a child are broadcasted at family gatherings. They announce your details about your body which you are embarrassed about. "Are you putting on weight again?" 

They insult you to your face in front of people. They make rude, personal body-shaming comments and then say you shouldn't take things so personally (?!). My mother said loudly (nothing from her is quiet or discreet) "What in the world did you do to your hair?" (in this snotty sarcastic voice). When her daughter called her out she sneered and smirked (yes, both) , knowing she'd got her dig in. If I were to call her out, she would get huffy angry and say "it was just a joke, my you're thin-skinned." This from the non-existent skinned woman who has never gotten over a single thing anyone has ever done to her. If I had asked her "why are you wearing that nightgown in public?" (yes she does that) I would have gotten a self-righteous chiding for embarrassing her.  

If you bring up something they did or said that was cruel and made you miserable (and boy is there a lot of that) that other people were there to witness, they respond with annoyed, perplexed and haughty denial. It's perfectly fine for them to do them to do the cruel, nasty thing and collect the narcissistic supply payout (it's disgusting the things that feed their supply). But you can't remind them that they did it because then you are holding a grudge. Which is ridiculous contradiction. Which is it: it didn't happen or it did and shame on you for remembering? And they never said they were sorry, so holding a grudge, as in not forgetting, is your only choice. Either that or sweep it under the rug. I've done that so much that I can't walk for all the crap under the rug. 

They ask loaded questions that undermine you. They aren't asking to get answers but to set you up. Then they do this "AHA! gotcha thing" which is supposed to make you think they caught you in some lie. They didn't catch you in anything. It's just gaslighting. But because they've changed the story and rewritten history so much, you're baffled. And too much chaotic confusions damages your brain so you can't think let alone remember clearly. Also, most of the shit they do is so painful that your brain tries to ameliorate it as best as possible. So you go into smooth over mode. And they know it. They know they've effed up  your brain. And they set about spinning yarns to reinvent what really happened. They  play their DARVO games, painting you as the bad guy and themselves the victim. My parents, all four, have twisted stories and said that I did things they actually did.  You just sort of believe them because your mind is too befuddled to think clearly.  

They do this by getting their skewed version in first before you have a chance to tell your side. And as you didn't know you'd be required to explain something, because it was completely innocent, you don't have one ready. But the narcissist has hers all cooked up and plated. She was laying for you and tells a tall tale painting you as the villain and herself, Sweet Polly Purebread. And as we know, defending your side, no matter how messed up theirs is, is much harder because theirs was the first story people heard.

And we tend to believe the first version and distrust the second as the fake. So no matter what you say in your defense, theirs is the one that sticks. That's how rumor works which is what a lot of their stories are: rumor mongering and smear campaigns.  No matter how ridiculous it is, folks somehow accept it and the victim of the smear campaign plays hell trying to reverse it. A lot of innocent people have been punished for crimes they didn't commit because someone pointed the finger of blame at them.  Narcissists know this and use it. 

Narcissists are masters at role reversal, bait and switch and jumping sides. My mother plays the victim, martyr and savior to shield the fact that she is always the perpetrator. It's the smoking gun principle. She'll fire the shot, exit stage left for a quick costume change, leaving someone else to pick up the smoking gun. Then she'll enter stage right aghast with righteous indignation and start accusing the poor dupe holding the pistol. Even if you've seen her pull the trigger, she'll have you convinced she's the innocent. If anyone accuses her, hey presto, another lightning quick change and she's the aggrieved martyr and you're the big mean bully. 

She has triangulated people right and left. She's pitted people against each other. She's sicced her rabid dog of husband on me so many times. She has made up garbage about me and egged him on to attack me. He would scream violent abuse at me, threats and spittle flying. Because all through the years, I was the schlemiel to her schlimazel. And he was her patsy and thug. He would cackle uproariously every time they set me up to play the fool. And then rage when she yanked his chain. And she could  just sit by demurely and say "I have to obey him. He's muh husband." Obey wah-hah-hah now is the time we throw our heads back and laugh. She was always the one pulling our strings. Well, as they say, why have a dog and bark yourself? 

Until one day, I guess the oaf finally got it that the dominatrix was in charge and he was just her minion. He didn't like that. And, further more, he realized that if she was backstabbing and manipulating and setting up other people, oh wait was she doing it to him too? Duh. Suddenly it wasn't so funny anymore. I would have paid money to see the look on his mug when he finally confronted her and realized that he'd been had. All those years of dogged service and she was mocking him too. 

She told me he flew into a rage and started accusing her. And she pulled out all her gaslighting tricks, lying, evasions, denying, reinventing. She told me how she just kept telling him calmly "I just don't remember. (lie) I don't know what you're talking about (lie) I would never have done that (gaslighting) I can just see her, eyes wide open, sotto voce, slowly, patiently, patronizing, denying every single thing he said. She even said, rubbing salt in the wounds, "I'll apologize if you want but I don't know what for. Oooh how that must have stung. And him frothing at the mouth because he, her loyal henchman, she'd played him too. 

I'm not his biggest paparazzi but I know one thing for sure. Every single thing he accused of  doing, she did. She called me to "verify" some of the milder ones. The ones she had misrepresented to me, and so thought I would back her up on. The bigger ones of which I'm sure infidelity, theft, child abuse, entanglements with the law,  figure larger I'd never be told about. See when you lie a lot, you have to keep track of who you told what lie to. Otherwise, your house of cards fall down. As my husband put it so well: she wasn't verifying the accuracy she was checking to see who remembered what to know what lies to tell whom. 

So she asked me about a few things, which in the grand scheme of what they did, were little, but true nevertheless. Some I'd forgotten until I heard them again. She purposely went out to a bar, dancing and drinking while pregnant with their son. She thought it would be "funny." (actually she's a highly impulsive raging attention seeking, sociopathic exhibitionist with zero empathy. She did it because she knew some guys find pregnant women hot and she wanted a piece of that. Sick but as I recall, true.) 

 She claims no recollection. Well of course she would. It doesn't quite fit the good church lady image she's plays. Even I'd forgotten till a family member they asked confirmed it. The little boy, my brother, died at 5 through their negligence. So I'm sure it's awkward to recall. She said "I'd never have done that to little BJ." Correction. You didn't want people to know you'd done that to little BJ. And if she'd known how it would end, maybe she might not have. But it didn't stop her at the time. She got what she wanted. Even a fetus takes a back seat when the narcissist decides to howl.  It's really quite heartbreaking to recall. I'm glad he never knew.  

So she got called on a few small things but she still keeps the upper hand. Because how can you argue with someone who doesn't remember? Even her "admissions" aren't genuine because she doesn't recall it. I almost feel a little sorry for her sadder-wiser-Tigger ex-husband. Guess he knows now what it felt like to be her cat's paw all these years. And the frustration of being gaslit. Well, he was never any match for her anyway. None of us can hold a candle to her level of gaming. Gaslighting is her métier. Humiliating others is her stock and trade. She was born for this, baby. But I still would have loved to watch the shitshow play out. Petty? Oh hell yes! I'm not nearly a big enough person not to take satisfaction from that.

So this ends part one. There's more so stay tuned. 

More gaslighting BS Christians put on kids of narcissistic dark tetrad parents

Hello my friends. This is another post in my series on gaslighting BS Christians (and probably folks of other religions) put on kids of narcissistic dark tetrad parents. Warning: this post is very direct and I don't mince words or apologize for it. This BS includes but is not limited to generalized Christian precepts shoved on the child with no attempt made to understand her very difficult situation, misconstrued Bible passages taken out of context, rules placed on the child that the child doesn't have the ability to follow and burdens bound to the child that no one is helping to carry. It's cruelty dressed up as godliness. A lot of it is fake made up and not even in the Bible. 

Most of  it has nothing to do with God at all. It's weaponization of the Bible and God for selfish purposes. It's systematic destruction of a child using religion. A lot of it is just plain wrong even for children not in abusive situations. For kids whose parents are traumatizing, exploiting, invalidating, manipulating, abusing, neglecting, abandoning, endangering, parentifying, scapegoating, triangulating and bullying on a regular basis, it's giving the kid carbolic acid and a cup to drink it with. 

This is not helpful or well-meaning. It's hurtful and shaming. It piggybacks on what the child's narcissistic parents are already doing. What Dr. Ramani calls it DIMMER: dismissive, invalidating, minimizing, marginalizing, manipulating, entitled and rageful. In makes an already vulnerable child into raw meat. Kids like me who were already too empathetic, too willing to let people hurt us if it made them feel good, too willing to roll over for any and all abuse that my parents and their partners and kids put on me. We were the ones who got the religious shaming because God forbid our narcissistic parents feel any qualms of guilt. We were (are) their scapegoats. 

And it's amazing to me how many people who call themselves Christians are willing to shield the narcissists and enable and perpetuate their cruelty to the child. Even when you flat out tell them what your parents did. In fairness, most of us don't, but these people have eyes and ears. They can see for themselves how we're being treated. And yet they just assume that the nasty things our nasty parents say about us is all true. Even when we don't show one iota of proof that it is. 

They just keep blathering on about what God expects of us and how no matter  how anyone is treating us, WE have to be the bigger person (when we are CHILDREN!!) We never hear about  how our immature parents need to grow up and be adults. Oh no, we just have to take care of them, make exceptions for them and play by all the rules which no one follows for us. 

I'm going to have to stop here because this is so painful to write about that I need a break. Will pick later. And on a positive note, which we are all probably more than ready for, I've found some things that have really helped. More later. 

Gaslighting nonsense Christians shame abused and traumatized kids with

Hello friends. Today's post will seem like it's going after Christians because it is. Throughout my life, I've been hurt by and kept quiet about so much religious abuse of all kinds, from sexual to emotional to physical, from the many, mostly protestant, churches I've had the misfortune to be in. Abuse that took me to dark self-harming places with no one to comfort me or talk me down from the edge. Some seemed to actually encourage me to end it because I was worthless beyond redemption. I wish I was exaggerating but I'm not. If anything, I'm downplaying because I'm not accustomed to being this open.

So I make no apology if this hurts anyone's feelings.  Today I'm calling out fake, narcissists in Christian guise, like my parents, and all the double standard, hypocritical, deceitful, devious nonsense they put on us. If you don't do this then it doesn't apply to you. But I would caution all of us who call ourselves Christians, not to dismiss this to quickly. These kinds of behaviors and people are terrifyingly common. 

These devil's in holy wear gaslight, ridicule, shame, humiliate, mock and torture in the NAME of GOD. They do it to everyone but they are most devious with traumatized kids. Kids whose parents have double dealt, twisted, manipulated, exploited, abused, neglected, scapegoated, invalidated, enmeshed, triangulated and gaslit them since birth. Kids whose parents consider themselves Christians doing the will of God in all this. Today I'm excavating the lifetime of gaslighting horse crap that I've been fed by my fellow Christians (all denominations) about God, me and how I (and only I, these rules never applied to anyone else, I was told) am supposed to act with Him. 

"Faith over Fear." If you've read my back posts, you'll know how this gaslighting BS sends me. To anyone who promulgates this nonsense, I'd ask, do you know the meaning of faith or fear? Who are we supposed to put faith in? I'll do you the credit of assuming you mean God. Well, to that I say, that if you do actually read your Bible, you'll note that we are called to fear God but also evil. We are commanded to beware the wiles of the devil. Fear God as in respect Him. And fear evil as in understand the power it has to overcome you, as you would the power of an ocean to drown you. And fear wolves in sheep's clothing as in be wary of them. Sounds like abusive, arrogant, malignant, selfish narcissists to me. 

And about faith, don't assume because you say "Lord, Lord" you'll be saved. God's words not mine. Also, it's not  your faith which saves you but Jesus. Honestly the way some people talk about their "faith" you'd think it was something they invented themselves. That good things happen because they make it happen with this thing they call faith. When in reality they use faith as as a tool to lord over people. A weapon to beat down the downtrodden. Do they actually have faith or do they  just want to sound good? Because I've seen people who thought that their faith would keep them from getting Covid, for example. They fell at the first hurdle when they got sick. 

They fully expected that God wouldn't let them get a contagious disease, when they did nothing to protect themselves and others, just because they were special? Kiddos, I pray and believe too and I got ragingly sick twice. Once post-vaccine. But then I didn't expect special dispensation. And these folks, again, didn't read their Bible or they'd know that faith isn't some magic amulet to prevent them from suffering. God sends rain on the just and the unjust. Good Godly people get sick and die. 

Now, add to that conundrum this idiotic aphorism poses, the extra difficulty a child who has been raised by dark tetrad (narcissistic, arrogant, selfish AF, malignant, cruel exploitative) parents.  Anyone who lived in the regime of dark tetrads, knows there's no fear like that which they instill in you. They WANT you afraid of them and God, by preaching to you all God supposedly expects ONLY of you. Stuff He  never said but which they gaslight and manipulate you into believing, trying and failing to achieve. They also demand that you put your faith (loyalty, devotion, trust) IN them. I'm not kidding.   Whatever they do is good and Godly and what God expects of you to accept. And as you can imagine, this gives them endless carte blanche for evil. 

They purposely do things to scare the shit out of you, like leave you behind with strangers in strange places 3k miles from home. They have you wetting your pants with  nightmares and emotional flashbacks. They make you bow down to terrifying people. They punish you if you're not fearful enough. AND they make themselves gods. You're to have "faith" in them only and their abusive crap. They do this in the  name of a god that they say you have to serve. But he wears their faces. And their version of him is hateful, spiteful, cunning, unmerciful, unloving, manipulative. This god abandons you in frightening situations. He blames you unfairly. He's nothing of the loving god of which you read about in the Bible. 

They tell you that god approves them abusing and neglecting you and is angry with you for your "disobedience" and "showing off." When you are doing all their work and raising their kids. And caring for them as if you were the parent and they were the child. So help me understand how me having faith in these evil people is not a frigging dangerous thing to do? And how this faith in them going to overcome fear??????? Like they would ever allow you to be courageous. Brave people leave abuse while terrified kids roll over for it. Tell an abused kid to have faith over fear and she'll say faith in what? That mom and dad and stepmom and stepdad god will keep on hurting me? Done. 

How can you shame me for not daring to hope in some mirage of a loving god? You say I'm supposed to click my heels together and trust in something I've never seen, in someone who has never been there for me? Oh it sounds so smugly holy to prat about blessed are they who have not seen and yet believed. I've seen the face of god my parents showed me and I believed in that, for sure. 

How can people be so cruel and so blind as to assume that I wanted any of this? Don't you know I'd give anything to have and to have had something to cling to in all the chaos?  Because dark narcissist parents are all I've ever known of love or god. And clinging to them was both not safe and also all there was for me. I am so confused. And you reiterating without listening, to just trust, only reinforces the crazy contradictions we live with as kids of dark tetrads. 

Maybe someday I'll be able to see that there was someone there in it all. I'll see the footprints that aren't mine that you say carried me. But as a child, teen, young adult, maybe even now, I never did. I have to be honest about that. It's the first time I ever have. God was nowhere to be found, except as an angry vengeful force that I was always failing. Not in a way that I could feel. I never felt carried, embraced, cherished, wanted, treasured. Theoretically maybe someone carried me but all I recall is carrying myself however clumsily through hell and high water. 

And I know all the good Christians out there will gasp and shame me for saying that. They'll say how "we" must never feel God has abandoned us. We must just know He's there, somehow, in the atmosphere. Even though  for all practical purposes, we're alone. And let me just point out two things. First, if you're so sure of this, clearly, your parents did not make themselves gods and then abandon you. Or you'd feel just like me. And if they did and you were still able to cling to some idea of a loving god, well, I'd say don't polish your halo just yet. 

Because I've thought all these years that I did believe that there was someone there. I was the best little Christian girl I could possibly be. Just ask anyone outside my family, who knew me. They'll tell you. I was known as the most incorruptible, straight-laced kid in school. The girl with the most closed legs and tightest, well, never mind. You get what I mean. And if that offends, well think of how I felt hearing it at 13. From good Christian boys who saw me as a target.  And whose mommies and daddies just turned sanctimonious blind eyes to their little perverts and kept on preaching and singing.  Yep, Christianity as Christians portray it,  has been pretty much ruined for me. 

I don't know how, but I managed to walk on that razor edge of trust in good while experiencing nothing but bad. I prayed and read my Bible sincerely. And I didn't dare admit that I felt nothing but shame and guilt from the heavens.  And it was not good for me because it just perpetuated their abuse. They thought they'd gotten away with well and truly destroying my mind. And they almost did. It was only when the rosy glasses accidentally slipped one day, and I started seeing how bass-ackwards, upside down and inside out my life was, that I could admit to my hellish reality and face it head on. 

And second thing I have to say is, if you can believe that God is there despite not seeing him, that means you've never experienced abandonment as a little child, by those who are supposed to love you. If you had, your faith, as you call it, might not be so strong. You have the luxury of trust because it's never been put to the test. I come by my fear and inability to trust, honestly. I was  indoctrinated in it like a cult. Which was pretty much what life as a child of dark tetrads is -a cult with them as the objects of worship. 

They shatter  your ability to trust and to feel loved. They curse you and make the simplest things nigh on impossible for you. They show you the face of evil and tell you it's God. I hope someday I'll be able to hear God's voice over their lies. Because for all this, I still believe that He is there. I hope someday little Marilisa will be able to hold her head up and see God smiling. Right now, she doesn't dare to because she believes all she'll see is anger and hatred. 

I don't care who you are: priest, minister, rabbit, Iman, youth group leader or just pew filler, please, stop the gaslighting. If you want to help an abused traumatized kid, for the love of God, don't dump anymore ignorant judgmental shame on them. Their little hearts are breaking and broken. They can't take any more. Acknowledge that their relationship with a loving God has been completely disintegrated by their dark tetrad parents. Tell them it is not their fault. They were used and abused by bad people. Put the blame where it belongs. Love these children. Hold space for them. And confront the evil in your midst. Don't let's let another day go by without reaching out to help. Be the voice they don't have. Don't close your eyes. Cuz if you do, plan on lots more of us ending up as statistics when the pain gets too great. 

CPTSD from Narcissistic dark tetrad parent abuse was and is so much worse than I thought

Hello my friends. Today in my journey to heal CPTSD from dark tetrad parent abuse, from four narcissists, two biological parents and their equally abusive partners, I'm trying to wrap my mind around some very sobering facts. Fact One: the abuse was and is so much worse than I thought. This is not me making up stories or digging around trying to drum up incidents I could spin as abuse. I have never needed to make stuff up. There was and is already enough abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, manipulation, triangulation, parentification, shaming, invalidation, enmeshment, scapegoating, exclusion and gaslighting to last several lifetimes. The problem was, I didn't see it for what it is, till I was in my late 50s. 

What got me started on the path to understanding was a desperate need for help with the crippling nightmares, trauma responses, suicidal anxiety, FOG (fear obligation and guilt), chronic people pleasing at my own expense, non-stop insecurity and brain damaged thinking. In a word, CPTSD. And that led me to explore on Youtube, the work of various professionals in the field of childhood trauma and CPTSD. Dr. Les Carter, Danish Bashir, Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise and Patrick Teahan are the most helpful. 

And, oh my goodness, once I started exploring, did I find that  not only was I not exaggerating or "showing off for attention" (the narcissists' words) it was soooooo much worse than I thought. It was made even worse by the fact that all four of the people who called themselves my parents (translation authority figures, not caregivers) were raging dark tetrad narcissists. Between my biological parents and their second spouses and their kids, there was a panoply of narcissism: grandiose, covert, vulnerable, malignant, sociopathic, psychotic, sadistic, Machiavellian, religious, violent, you name it, this hodge-podge of chaos and stress they called family had it.  They were the pantheon of demigods in my universe. 

There was no cohesive, mindful parenting of me either when my mom and dad were married or after they divorced. They moved to Alaska to be self-styled missionaries and started sleeping around and calling it missioning to their bed partners. And left me on my own. Through it all they maintained a guise of Christianity. I'm not kidding. My 36  y/o dad  had a 17 y/o girlfriend. My mom jumped in and out affairs while preaching the "good news." That was weirdly baffling for a 7 y/o, let me tell you). 

They they upended my world again, getting married to very broken dangerous people. They just started off like it was a clean slate having kids, building  their new "real" families as if I wasn't' there. Wait, let me rephrase that. As if I was ONLY there to await their pleasure. I was deprived of normal things like a bed, a bedroom, a normal sleep schedule, food, clothing, etc. It was like I was a dish to be discarded, passed back and forth as one or the other needed a live-in unpaid nanny,  housekeeper or source of funds. My mother and her boyfriend cum husband lived off my child support. 

And I was expected to do very abnormal things like co-sleep with and parent foster kids and babies, do hours of heavy housework and chores no one else did. I was sex therapist and counselor to my dad and mom. I was performing monkey for my parents' new spouses. I was everyone's  general dogsbody and whipping girl including various unmarried couples whom my mom moved into my room to cohabit. 

I did not have a regular anything. Between them, I lived, or should I say couch surfed in 32 different places before age 20.  I attended 8 schools. Several within the same school year. They moved around willy-nilly for selfish reasons, giving no effs on the effect on me. I was pushed around like a hockey puck. Each one taking me on when they needed me. Having zero say and zero consistency. When I lived at my dad's and stepmom's house (operative words their house, not mine) my mom was nowhere to be found. She was off God knows where living her life oblivious to me. And vice verse with my dad. 

No one asked about safety, health, friends, schoolwork or conditions I was living in. No one tended to my medical care until things were critical. Some medical conditions they put on me, such as damaged spine and hips, from not following up on my congenital hip dysplasia and forcing me to do back-breaking housework and chores as a child. 

And boy howdy was I expected to work, work, work. I would come home from school, begin the chores and still be at it while everyone else was parked in front of the telly. And then I'd start my homework at the table because my "bedroom" was the baby's tiny room where I'd  be sent when he went to bed. So I could care for him at night. Then back up at 5:30 am. This was pattern for both of them. Have kids, make oldest kid responsible. 

I have never slept well to this day, being on call in case all the babies in my memory needed me. No one even asked how we slept. Then when I became a nuisance (as in, I now see, my mom's husband started having lustful thoughts about me) I was kicked out. Not to shelter but to shame me. My mom found an elderly lady for me to live with, not paying her and spinning it that I could be a help to her. She'd bring me a little food but nothing like enough. I have to admit, I stole some food from the panty I was so hungry. Just a swig or two of milk. She caught me and I admitted it. She asked why doesn't your mom bring you enough to eat? Good question. There should be plenty, if my mother had used my child support for my care and not to fund her new family and allow her husband to lay around jobless all day. So I was a live-in caregiver there too. I will say this. It was the first time I had my own room. And this is only the merest top snowflakes of the iceberg. 

All these horrible memories float in my memory, getting more and more toxic. The gaslighting created a continual fog of fear, obligation and guilt. Their DARVO tactics kept me in perpetual confusions. They were the perpetual victims and I was the bad girl, the failure, the one who let them down. It was my fault they kicked me out, apparently. Yet I was an honor student with a spotless track record of behavior. Though I sacrificed everything for them: self, identity, childhood, adolescence, peace of mind, confidence, self-care, security. But, BUT once I began researching, OH WHAT revelations I found. 

All that  happened to me had a name: abuse. And my parents and their partners, it appears, were not the self-righteous preachers and good  parents they said they were. They now had names too: dark tetrads, self-serving arrogant narcissists, cruel abusers, saboteurs, agents provocateur. They weren't, it turns out, servants of God but of evil. What they were doing was illegal. And all I was now hearing affirmed what I'd known but was too afraid to admit, all along.

I also discovered, though I've yet to be able to believe it, that they were wrong about me. I wasn't a liar, cheat or showoff. I wasn't "the problem" with all my "anger." I wasn't too sensitive and too critical (yeah my dad played that illogical fallacy all the time). I wasn't disobedient to God or to them. I wasn't having nightmares because God was punishing me for all my sins. It's called CPTSD and it comes from being forced into unnatural, terrifying situations. 

And maybe, even more, I wasn't the dark agent but a child of the light. This is hard for me to accept. It feels like, I don't  know, bragging. My old trauma responses tell me I'm bragging. But I'm not. And, excuse me trauma responses, but who would brag about being abused? It's shameful and humiliating. . And the reason I never fit it is that I wasn't supposed to. That's as per God. They were living evil, immoral, degenerate, prideful, hypocritical lifestyles. And God didn't want me to be part of that. He wanted and wants me to serve the real God, Him. Not their fake versions. I didn't know that then but I do now. 

Sick, twisted, abusive crap my dark tetrad mom has said and done to me (part 2 of many)

This is part two of weird nasty, gaslighting garbage my dark tetrad mom has said and done to me. Things I just ignored and never really thought about until I did. I ignored it because I always did the seven Es with my parents: explain away, excuse, exempt them from consequences, exonerate and take the fall for, make exceptions for, expunge and erase from memory. Except that these poisonous words and deeds do not stay quiet no matter how tightly you push them down. Their stains bleed through and they rear their ugly heads at the most inopportune times, in nightmares, trauma responses and emotional flashbacks. 

Some of these things may seem trivial or not. Maybe I've gaslit myself because they gaslit me that they were trivial or non existent and that I was just making it up or showing off for attention. And anyway, no one would believe me.  So many gaslighting, hypocritical contradictions. If I always excused them whatever they did, how could I also be making up stories to smear them? If they may it so effing dangerous to cross them, why would I risk it? What would there be to show off about? If it was trivial, what would there be to tell people? If no one would believe me, why would it need to be secret? And if it was all okay, what's all the big deal? 

I don't know. The few people I've told have been shocked and horrified. I've literally seen them recoil, their eyes pop open, mouths agape with revulsion. They say they have no words to express these atrocities. They use the word atrocity. So maybe the things my dark tetrad parents did are worse than I thought. This is incredibly disgusting and painful to remember or write about. Again, these are in no particular order. 

I talked in part one some of the things they've stolen from me. And it wasn't just houses, toys, shoes and cars, it was money. I caught her rifling through my wallet one time. As you do. Yes, literally nose deep in my purse, checkbook open. When I asked what she was doing, she pulled her narcissistic smirk (you know that one where they downplay what they've done and shame you for overreacting all in one frigging irritating facial expression). Then she played the DARVO act saying, fake sweet, "don't you trust me?" I actually fell for that and felt ashamed. She never did offer an explanation which shows me she was checking my bank account balance and/or looking to pocket any cash. And really what other explanation would there be? None. Now I wonder how many times she'd done it before and I didn't catch her. 

Oh, and you know how most parents are excited about their kids going to college? How they scrimp and save to send them? How they encourage kids to save for college? Not mine. My mother stole my savings bonds that my grandparents gave me, to fund her new family and enable her jobless boyfriend to lay around abusing everyone. I didn't know this until I had enrolled and asked for the money to pay tuition. She laughed scornfully and said "Oh those...I had to cash them in for your upkeep." Upkeep, my ass. He kicked  me out of the house when I was 16 and she let him. My crime was to come in  15 minutes late. And she kept pocketing my dad's child support payments to fund their little schemes. Then lied and said he never paid it. I realized later that pretty much all my possessions had disappeared when she was around. 

And she stole my self and my identity. I wasn't a person, to her, I was a possession. And the possession was expected to read minds. Whatever mom wanted, needed, felt at any moment was the priority. I was expected to know and provide it, at my own expense. Dark tetrads don't just want things from people, they want that person to suffer loss in providing it. 

"Sometimes I need your mom to be my mom" (she said this to my little daughter when I was trying to do for my child and listen to my mom's dumping tirades about her husband, often about their sex life. Sex has been a big problem for me thanks to the sexual abuse and emotional incest of which a kid playing her mom's sex therapist is an example, so I've learned.)

"Your husband's been drinkin." She weirdly converts all -ing words to -in. She says this with self-righteous, finger-pointing smugness because she believes it's her job to point out other peoples' faults. As if drinking beer (and not her own abusive behavior toward me) is the greater sin. She says it with gleam of schadenfreude, narcissistic smirk and biting sarcasm. She fails to recall that he works 12 hour nights and sometimes, beer is the only way to sleep. But of course that doesn't fit in her hypocritical narrative. 

"I could have had an important role in the Salvation Army if it weren't for you." When I was 6, they moved us to Alaska so they could be missionaries to the Indians. Their words. There was no mission work and they only went to be catered to. My mother did nothing all day and expected to be fed, clothed and housed. My dad lit out for some kind of street preaching gig in his head as was only randomly around. She told everyone she was a preacher, then youth group leader. What she was, was a serial cheater who left her daughter to wander alone in insanely dangerous situations. 

When she was invited to participate in event at Dutch Village with great-grandkids. She invited her other daughter without asking, expecting both entrance fees to be paid for them, even though she was told upfront. she would have to pay their own way. (She expects everything to be provided for her.) She "forgot" her purse, let us pay with promises of repayment. Then 15 minutes after arriving she proclaimed she was hungry. She expected us to leave immediately to take her out to eat and waste over $100 on park fees when the children whom it was for, were still playing. She never repaid ticket price. 

"Where's my supper?" When she'd left her husband for the umpteenth time, she and her daughter came to stay with us so they could go to some hokey job interview one of their fellow scammer friends had supposedly set up. Of course we didn't charge rent because, "family." Well, this "family" expected to be given daughter's room, took it over like a damn hotel and trashed our home. After finding that the mythological job interview, surprise, didn't exist, they took themselves out to eat and came back bragging about it. They brought nothing back for me or my family and then demanded I stop working to cook for them. 

When I started my Shipt job, I was a few days into it and I invited them to supper. Now you would think that they would offer to bring supper because I was the one starting the new job. But no. It's all about Nancy being served. On a delivery in the dunes, I literally drove over the edge of the customer's stupidly dangerous platform driveway. I was hanging over a 30ft drop with  my foot on the brake, car teetering. I had to wait for tow truck. I would have died if car and I plummeted. But who was I worried about? Nancy's dinner. I called multiple times but she doesn't answer if she doesn't feel like it, just for shits and giggles. When I finally got a hold of them, she irritated said they'd driven all that way for their supper and waited and finally went home hungry. As I was fighting for my life. When I posted the story on Facebook and it went viral, THEN she chimed about how sorry and scared for me, she was. Bullshitter. 

She would come over for free things, free meals, pro bono counseling from me, sex therapist services (I'm serious) or whatever shit she was after at the moment. She would feign help with kids but never really do anything. After she got all free things she came for, she'd say in an aggrieved voice, as if we'd held her up, "I've really got to get home to my family." That family consisted of a husband she hated and an adult daughter. 

When my  husband had to rush me to ER to have emergency surgery on a ruptured, infected boil on my neck they watched the kids. I say watched but when we got home, they were waiting in their car, engine running, young kids alone in the house. They shamed me for "being late" and almost making them miss a meet up with a friend. And yet when one of them has a hangnail, we must all drop what we're doing to rescue. She always leaves early from parties (after she's been fed) saying she has a tummy ache because we "let her eat onions." Funny it starts the same time as the clean up. When my son got married, she came for the free rehearsal dinner meal, then called everyone in a panic because her foot slipped off a chair she was propping it on and she had to be rushed to ER. I'm not kidding. 

She lied and said a gift of money she gave me was a loan. After she'd conned me into accepting help she should have been giving me anyway. I believed her and figured I'd misunderstood. I paid her back with the interest she demanded. Now I realize I didn't misunderstand. She knew I might not accept it  if I knew it was a loan because I could get that from grandparents. And she would have no way of collecting interest on it. What I'd do now if  I was in contact is to demand repayment of that, my child support, college fund and multiple other bad debts plus 40 years of interest. 

"Bill says you're kicked out (16). You came home 15 minutes late." It's his house and I have to obey him. Bullshit. When have you ever obeyed him? You ganged up on me with him. And it's not your house or his. It's paid for with my savings, job and child support. And 15 minutes late? You left me alone so many times throughout my life. And kicking me out is illegal. 

"Your sister could be such a help to you and family doesn't charge family for babysitting. Sister was not help. She was lazy. And I was not reimbursed for all the stuff I bought for her over that summer of supposed help. And family did charge me for all kinds of things. So I could do for her but I couldn't correct her because they would rain down on me like fire. They lied and made up all sorts of shit I supposedly did. Though sister remembers that I took better care of her than they ever did. 

"Bill is very angry with you. (when wasn't he?) He says you lied about him writing you an I'm sorry note." A note in which he apologized for yet another of his vicious attacks on me ( I had the note to prove it). When I told her in confidence that I actually treasured it. Never divulge anything to a dark tetrad. Oh, then it was "Bill is ready." (to make peace after months of angry, arrogant cold shoulder, over his OWN blow up at me complete with screaming character assassination in public and threats of violence while I was holding my baby. Translation: we need you to babysit free again.  

"Yeah so I threw a pie in your face. (!) Grow up and don't be so childish. (!)." see previous post for that story. 

"I never left you behind in Alaska to go have surgery." When in fact, she left me with strangers on a remote island for a week, telling me she had a bladder infection and had to go to Seattle 1800 miles away (we  had no money). I wouldn't have known at 6 what a bladder infection was or that such a place as Seattle existed. We think now it might have been to get an abortion. She had quite a reputation for sleeping around and we had no money for plane tickets. So, yeah. 

I never left you at 11, with my boyfriend that abused you and the four special needs foster kids under age 5 for a week. I would have lost my foster care license. 

"The food you made was spoiled. We had to make more" (hand out for repayment. Food was not spoiled. They ate it all.) "I'm just going to add a bunch of stuff to your cart and I'll pay you back (never does)" 

(comes out of daughter's room where she insisted on sleeping, naked and wakes me up) "My spirit is restless after you let me watch LOTR. Do you have a Bible?" (Jibe at us being Catholic, assuming we don't read the Bible. Lets husband keep me up all night as a kid watching horror movies and letting their 5 year old watch them)

Okay so we're making gifts this year to save money but I expect a negligee from you.

That's of the devil. (to husband on his Joy of Homebrewing book)

Freely discusses her vagina, "large" breasts, sexual history with my husband. 

Tells me facts of life illustrating with her own sexual conquests. Weaponizes sexual assault telling me about boyfriend who "assaulted" her. Boyfriend is father of kid who actually did harass me with dirty letters. She told me to ignore it then took up with father. 

Invited herself to Christmas, got on Pro-Trump MAGA rant and then snapped "so you don't approve of speaking the truth because it's Christmas?" when I asked her to stop. 

I might have to take custody of you children. (after pretending to care, lying and making up child abuse accusations which were actually things she had done to me)

Bizarre mannerisms, facial expressions and speech patterns of dark tetrad parents

 Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD healing journey, I'm processing memories of my dark tetrad (narcissistic, exploitative, arrogant, self-centered,  cruel) mother. I'm looking at some of her bizarre, attention-seeking mannerisms, facial expressions and speech patterns. I will show how these were part of the disguise she wears for her role of good, Christian lady while in reality being dark, cold, calculating and haughty. Some of these may seem innocent and for a long time her gaslighting worked and I believed they were too. But when the mask began to slip, I saw how incredibly disturbing and disturbed they are. And I can never unsee it again. 

For background, my mother loves to play an assortment of parts in her one-woman show. It's like the Audie Murphy Show, written by, directed by and starring herself. She's the archetypal judgy preacher, heroine, vamp, good-time girl, pretty baby, martyr, victim, ingenue, goddess, little girl lost all in one performance and she adopts different characters with dizzying speed. Within an hour she's flip-flopped between wise moral judge, street preacher, seductive showgirl, pathetic needy child and back again. It's exhausting to watch let alone try to keep up and figure out what my role is supposed to be in response to her lightning costume changes. And each and every one is faker than funny money. 

So, weird speech patterns. My mother converts all -ing words into -in. She pronounces my like muh (as in muh husband).  She knows correct pronunciation but chooses to pronounce words in silly ways. 

She uses odd phrases that she thinks sound like a teenager. Sue and Bob becomes Sue 'n' Bob. I haven't used that since 1976.  

She condescending puts down people from southern regions, then fakes their dialects and colloquialisms which sound exactly like what it is, posing. 

Her language is exaggerated and garish. Every tiny ache is "excruciatingly painful." I mean tiny like hangnails. Literally. 

She'll fake cheer super loudly for things she knows nothing and cares even less about. Just to draw attention to herself. 

She repeats a lot of cliches but uses them wrongly. To any ailment you may have, it's always "been there, done that." Which she has not in fact been or done. And which demonstrates that not only is she dismissive of any ailment but her own, she isn't even listening or she'd realize we all know she's not had shoulder surgery. 

The ones she coins herself are the worst. She loves her little pet phrase "rude, crude and lewd." Said in this exaggerated way. She once said that about Simon Cowell not because he is but because she thinks she sounds so witty when she says it. She gets a lot of strange looks.

She mimics her golden child, who also uses corny expressions when she's around my mom. Alone she talks like a normal person. 

She'll do this giddy teenager thing, randomly. Suddenly, she'll put an idiot prank and screech with laughter like a maniac. She threw a pie in my face and in my young son's face at her work picnic. 

She let my sister stage a food fight for her graduation party. Then later when we saw some kids food fighting, she pontificated with righteous indignation how sinful it is to waste food and how ridiculous they looked. Seems she forgot about the pie thing. 

She literally lays around all the time, too exhausted and feeble to get the mail. She'll dodder around and feign dementia but then when you take her out to eat, boy does she find her energy. She runs up to the buffet. 

She jumps up, in the middle of conversations and proclaim she's bored with the adults. She did this at another of her company picnics. Suddenly she's rallying kids, who haven't even finished their lunches, to go outside and go sledding. I don't think my mother has ever sledded in her life. No one else was ready and we warned her to wait for us. My poor young son (the same one who got the pie in the face) went with her and she took them both down the bloody luge run. They both got hurt when they hit the end. But guess who had to rushed to the hospital, all eyes on her for treatment. I'm still mad at myself for going along to help with her self-induced emergency and not taking my son to the hospital. 

She calls private body parts by creepy street terms than swoops down on anyone with pearl-clutching self-righteousness  if they use slang. She's outraged and "calls them out" (a favorite pastime of hers) when she herself uses even worse ones. 

She'll use overly jocular Sarah Palin-ish slang. And she will claim she's rebelling against the supposedly strict upbringing. Which was no different than most kids of the 1950s. What she actually does is to act as weird as possible to stand out and thereby get attention. She says she never grew up, thinking she's cute and clever. She  just sounds ridiculous and immature. 

She'll do this "gotcha" things where she will engage in conversations, feigning sympathy and saying things to entrap people into trusting her with confidences. Terrible idea. She will then publicly turn on them and "expose" them. 

She has shared intimate details of her own sex life with me since I was 8. 

She has announced at family gatherings, things about me that were very private. Like when I got my period and started growing pubic hair.  

She shouts at the top of her lungs "AMEN!!!" in churches she visits that do not do things like this.. She's not affirming, she's drawing all eyes to her and also attempting to shame them for not "loudly praising God." She's not praising God either. It's just a performance. 

She goes places with a set expectation of how others are to treat her. But she doesn't tell them. She sets them up, waits for them to let her down, pouts and theatrically huffs off. She thinks she being grand, but she's just grandiose. She "tests peoples' sincerity" as she puts it, by walking up to complete strangers sticks her hand out and stands there waiting (as you do). Then says the person "refused" to shake her  hand if they fail her little test. 

She believes she's God's little KGB comrade and it's her job to ferret out liars, generally by some kind of entrapment. She'll twist situations and conversations to "catch people" in what she calls untruths.  Imitating her husband (well, now ex) she'll pause for effect, waiting the drumroll, and say dramatically "I knew it! The man was lying!" It takes one to know one. 

She's very above-it-all and cynical. She'll give her scornful, narcissistic smirk and start in sarcastically undermining and invalidating everyone. That's no generalization. She can't stand competition. Even from children. 

When she comes to visit, she stands in the yard yelling "I'M HERE!!!" like she expects some kind of red carpet to be rolled out. Which is exactly what she does expect. 

She stage whispers behind her hand, snarky rude things about people. She body shames openly. She's  loud enough to be heard and she knows it. 

She arrogantly sneers about people she says are "showing off" and "flyin high." She does this when someone else is receiving attention and/or accolades. You can tell by the gleam in her eye and the exaggerated voice that she's the one showing off.

She calls her going on 50 y/o daughter "my kid." She's embarrassingly "overprotective" yet I was sent out alone to play, blocks from home, starting at age 4. 

She talks about her golden child, nonstop. She sings her praises and scoffs at others' (my) enormous accomplishments. Everything is about Joanie. Joanie can do no wrong. Every ache is magnified while everyone else is kicked to the curb when they have major surgery. She's classic Munchausen's by Proxy. People act very uncomfortable when she does these awkward things. I feel sorry for Joanie. 

She tries to outshine people at their special days, including the deceased at their own funerals. No one, dead or alive must receive notice when mom is in the room. 

When she meets someone as bombastic as herself (which isn't often), she has an interesting deflection move. She suddenly gets self-righteously, superior and haughty, sneering, muttering and poking fun at how loud they are. And then immediately reverts to loud when they're gone. 

Did other people besides me not see through her shenanigans? I don't know. She gets a lot of weird looks, that's for sure. I fell for it because, as my husband says, I was groomed to. I knew no other version of mother. 

Sick, abusive gaslighting crap my dark tetrad mother has said and done, part 1 of many

My mother has done a ton of abusive crap over the years and cloaked in all manner of gaslighting lies. She strikes a pose as the good Christian woman and sort of pulls it off because she SAYS she is. No one questions. Until she burns them, which doesn't take long. It's hard to wear a mask 24-7-365. We have a bad habit of taking people at their word despite seeing much evidence to the contrast. You can wear a white coat but it doesn't make you a doctor. 

All of my life and hers, she's covered up her horrendous actions with DARVO (defend, attack reverse victim offender) or lies and blaming or faking dementia and can't remember or claiming it didn't happen.  Which are all contradictions: which is it: you didn't do it or you can't remember or it was someone else's fault? Here are some of the sick, twisted abusive crap my dark tetrad mom and her boyfriend/husband did and said to me. This is not an exhaustive list and is in no particular order. I'm just writing it stream of conscience. There's a lot more. 

They constantly bought new cars, motorcycles and all kinds of stuff for themselves, and which they stole my child support and college fund to buy. Then kicked me out of the house at 16 and left me with so little money that I ended up buying a dangerous decrepit car. They were fine with this. My husband and I were very frugal and only had one car. When we got a very beat up new-to-us car, my mother said, "You should give your car to your (grown ass golden child) sister Joanie (name changed)" 

When they bought that adult sister an older car, she didn't like it. Supposedly it was "too big" and an "old person's car." My mother conned us into buying this piece of junk by offering to buy our nicer, newer, just as big, car for $100 while selling (flipping) the junk one to us for the full price they paid for it, $900. We fell for it because she triangulated and lied and told both of us individually that the other had already agreed. Neither of us wanted it but didn't want to go against what our partner had said. 

She jumped the title and I don't think we ever got the $100. It broke down immediately after purchase. I was left pregnant, stranded with three children and in another city. I tried calling her because my husband was working but she was "too busy" out to lunch with my sister. We never did get the car up and running. And she showed not one iota of concern or remorse. And they just  let our nice newer car rot in the yard because my sister didn't want that one either. It never occurred to me to demand our money and our car back and make them refund us the title fees she promised to pay and didn't. And the bloody towing fees. 

When I, at 55 years old, finally got my first new car in 2019, it happened to be a Yaris (cheapest they make). My sister had a 2008 Yaris. My mother's only comment was, "must be nice to have a new car. Did you get a credit for your sister (?!). When I asked why I would do that, she said, well, you got the idea for the Yaris from Joanie. (no we didn't) Don't you think she deserves some reward (?). When I asked how she thought the Toyota dealership was going to give my sister a credit, she just said fake sweetly well, you could pay her a little something if they won't. Dark tetrads do not want you to have nice things.

Bear in mind these are the same people who gave me money for my first apartment, telling me it was a gift and I could take over rent payments when I got on my feet. And I did just that as soon as I got a job. Then they started renting at the same place, using me as a reference. No mention of finders' fee owed to me then. Oh and a few months later, she gaslit me saying that money she paid never was a gift but a loan, with interest and I could start payments to her now. Meanwhile, she never paid back a dime of my college fund from gram and gramp, which they stole. She cashed in my savings bonds without telling me, AFTER they had kicked me out of the house AND were still collecting child support from my dad. 

Come to think of it, there were many promises of payment we never got. We were too polite to ask because "family does for family." Except that only worked one way, I see now. Because we were only family when she wanted something from us. We weren't family when it came to doing for us. We were buyers and she was the seller. She would come to our house, make a pretense of babysitting but really just looking for free stuff which she got (including hours of free counseling services from me). Then she'd say in an aggrieved way, that she had to get home to her (real) family. Usually when it was time to do the dishes after the meal she'd enjoyed. And she made sure to scoop up loads of leftovers for "her family." 

Which, actually she never did much for us. When our kids went to visit, she conned them into doing her housework with promises of payment they never got because wait for it, "family does for family." She would offer to take me out to lunch then "forget" her purse, let me foot the bill, and order extra to take home to "her family."  Then she'd scoff at the large tip I left, saying it was too much. She tried to take it off the table and we had to have this embarrassing exchange where I told her to put it back. Or she'd say "I'd offer to pay but I know you wouldn't let me." She has deprived me all my life and I have parented her, then in adulthood, she decided to play the doddering elderly parent rigamarole starting when she was only 50. And said the Bible said I was  responsible for her. And she was grama when it came to ordering my kids around but not if they got something nice. Then she was playground bully number one, shaking them down for it. 

She stole, yes literally stole my 12-y/o son's cool new shoes because my adult sister wanted them. Then fobbed him off with an old used pair. He didn't want to trade either but her gaslighting is well crafted. She just told him he did and he believed her because he'd seen his parents do it so often. When I told her (more nicely than I should have) to hand 'em back, she angrily complied. But then when we moved, she was around, not doing anything, but I see now, looking for stuff to scrounge. Those shoes came up missing. I kept hunting and she chided me to "just let it go. They're only shoes (!)"

Lots of my stuff disappeared when she was around. Even my toys as a kid developed legs and left. I had a Canadian money collection worth about $50 in 1973 rates. It went missing and she blamed my friend. A ring and necklace from grama disappeared too. Actually quite often I'd come back from somewhere to find things just gone. I never really thought about it. I think that's part of how they funded their lifestyle both when she was married to my dad and with her new hook up. Cuz neither of them was much good at holding down jobs. I was in such a perpetual fog of gaslighting that I never connected the dots. 

And it wasn't just toys, cars and shoes she coveted. We lived in apartments and a small mobile home and finally got a house 12 years into marriage. It was so damaged that it would have been condemned if we hadn't bought it. But our church gaslit us into buying it off them. At full price and with no help on repairs. And then the former tenant trashed it further after we'd agreed to buy it. We never  made them pay for that damage either. We sure were suckers for gaslighting. Both husband and I were working 24/7 to get it livable. My mother's only comment was "must be nice to have a house. You should let Joanie and her boyfriend live in the basement." She didn't say rent free with we all know what she meant.

They moved back and forth and all over. Then finally came back to Michigan because she said "we want to be close to family." Translation nearer to my bank account. They'd been siphoning off tribal funds and living on a reservation. They claimed this right because she was supposedly working for the native domestic abuse council. So she was literally living off funds ear-marked for abused women and children. The council caught up with them and took them to court. She said it was her foster daughter's son who was found guilty but I finally woke up and realized this is why they high-tailed it back up north. Yet another place they made too hot to handle them. You can't make this up. 

She would mock me to my face and behind my back. One of my children told me that when we all went to a store to get her some clothes, she stage whispered sneeringly to my sister about me "look how she shakes her butt. Such a show off." This is the woman who dressed as a "hooker" (her words) to a church costume party. And who made sure to parade naked when she knew men would be around to see. What I did was to walk crookedly because of the spinal and hip damage they did shit all about to fix when I was young. She didn't get me glasses till I was 12 and nearly blind. She herself had several pairs of fashion glasses. 

And it wasn't just medical abuse, it was sexual. From the time I was 7, she was telling me the "facts of life." Not only was I too young and did I not want to hear, she told me her anecdotal experiences of sex with quite a few different men other than my dad. Several while they were still married. She would make out with men at our kitchen table. While she smugly preached God's commands, she was committing adultery in front of her daughter. And telling me she was right to do so because she was "leading him to Jesus." 

One guy's wife didn't see it that way. She came over, belted my mom across the face and knocked her down the stairs. I was so scared for my mom but she said just go to school. We never discussed this again. In fact, I  have a lifetime of experiences that she's redacted and sealed. If anything should be brought up, she turns up the gaslighting, saying she doesn't remember and it never happened. 

Yes, this is sexual harassment and emotional incest. She told me that when she and my dad were dating he would "c-m in his pants." She spared no gory details. She quietly approved her live-in boyfriend calling me "blisters" starting when I was 11. Referencing my pre-adolescent breasts. They would tell filthy jokes and use crude terms like "jacking off" around me. 

I've been her sex therapist all my life. She has cried on my shoulder about how men "molested" her. The guy was the father of a 13 y/o kid who actually did sexually harass me sending me dirty letters about how he would "jerk off" to the image of me in the bathtub and what he'd do to me if ever we were alone I had a full blown panic attack and my mother just laughed it off saying "just ignore it." Then proceeded to hook up with his dad forcing me to be around this perv who had basically promised to rape me. 

She has told me intimate details of she and her boyfriend now husband now divorced husband all my life. She talked to her doctor, in front of me, when I'd taken her to an appointment about ways to perform for her husband when they couldn't have sex. She pretended ignorance when both the doc and I said, hand and mouth, trying to be tactful. Finally I blurted out "blow job." She smirked because she gotten me to say it. Then teeheed like an ingenue. It took me till I was 60 to realize she gets off on this shit. She loves being promiscuous, provocative, dirty minded and mouthed as hell around me but all while feigning the good Christian lady act in public. 

When I was 11, she had a foster care home. And a live in boyfriend she flew under the state radar. She made a little apartment for them in the basement. Then moved me out of my room and into the room with all four special needs kids ages 6 months to 4 two floors up. She moved her brother and  his pregnant girlfriend into my room. She let him keep dirty magazines under the bed. She let a 15 year old foster kid and her 26 y/o boyfriend sleep together on the main floor. A girl she had taken to have an abortion all while playing the organ at church and preaching on the evils of immorality. All while running the equivalent of a whorehouse. 

Then she took on a 15 y/o kid with a history of  creepy perv behavior for a trial weekend. She took us to the beach telling me to "include him" while she laid on the shore in her bikini. That ended up with us all getting kicked out because he was feeling up girls and trying to drown us. When I told her she got mad, took us home and told me to take him to the neighbor's pool which I had just managed to secure an invitation to. That ended after he kept up with the pervy antics and got us kicked out of the pool too. 

 I think I was back in my own room by then, I can't recall. What I do remember is him coming in bold as brass and plopping down on my bed and trying to rape me. I managed to get out, went to tell my  mom (even though I somehow knew I shouldn't). I should have listened to that inner voice. Instead of helping me, she got angry that HE now had to go back to Child Haven. I was told to keep quiet and you can be damned sure I did. She never addressed it or got me any help. Then she loudly announced it at dinner table and praised her boyfriend for how he handled it. That summer was shot to shit. 

My cousin who I thought I'd only met as an adult, told me that we used to hang out at family get-togethers frequently around this time. I have no memory of any of it. He says that he and his brother thought I was a snob because I was so withdrawn. He said I always looked miserable. Small wonder. 

She also approved her husband screaming, threatening, intimidating, bullying and attacking me, throughout the years, randomly, for no reason. He accused me shaking a baby in her foster cares when he was still her shack job and she'd left me, him and the four little kids to care for a week. He was unemployed, sleeping on the couch and the baby woke him with crying. My mother took his part over mine. And punished me. When I brought it up years later (one of the few things I did ever confront) she lied and said she never left me with the kids because she'd have "lost her license if she did." 

She didn't need my help for that. She and her abusive bf were found guilty of beating the kids. And possibly for how they treated me, too. She never told me. I was just summarily sent to live with my dad. She says I volunteered to because I wanted to give them "time alone." (gross). I don't remember ever saying that. It was no better at my dad's. But she never cared. Actually she let her boyfriend now husband do and say all kinds of crap to and about me.

When I was married and pregnant, I was babysitting, for free his daughter, all summer long. He raged at me and threatened bodily harm because I had corrected her. Kindly. Lovingly. I noticed he wasn't so worried because he still allowed me to babysit her for free.  He even attacked me with my new baby daughter in my arms because I woke him up.  I was so terrified I fled.  And mommy dearest took his part again. 

Funny how normal parents worry that kids will learn those kinds of things on the street.  I learned sexual deviance at mother's knee. Normal moms try to protect their kids from predators. Mine capitalized on it. She ran around in mini skirts and go-go boots. Then as a senior, she wore nightgowns to special events. She tells everyone she had to because her "hooha" (sp?) is itchy. She shamed me for repeating what someone had said about the c-word. But all her crude reference to her genitals are fine to use because my sister says them. She kept up the sex talk, telling my teen sons how she slept naked. She did sleep naked when she stayed out our house and came out naked in front of us. 

And the abuse wasn't just medical, emotional, sexual and religious, it was physical. She hit me quite a lot, saying I was "mouthy." I never said boo to a goose.  When I finally hit rock bottom around age 40, after losing two babies, I checked myself into a mental hospital. My mom accused me behind my back of child abuse to my kids. She said she and her abusive husband (who had lost their foster care home due to abuse and their son due to negligence and let their other daughter get worms and fleas and made me sleep on an unheated porch before kicking me out) might  have to take my children. 

Over my dead body, lady. Oh wait, was that your end game all along...?  

Why I didn't see the narcissist smirk in dark tetrad parent abuse

 Hello my friends. Listening to podcasts on narcissistic parent abuse, I came across a term I'm embarrassed to say I just heard for the first time at almost 61: the "narcissist smirk." Why am I embarrassed? I don't know. Good question. But welcome to the world of childhood trauma. Everything I did felt awkward, embarrassing, and stupid. I didn't know it or should I say accept it, but they were making me feel this way to shield them from the consequences of their own actions. What was actually embarrassing me was their oddly arrogant, self-righteously polarizing behavior. Or my uncontrollable trauma responding to that. 

So getting back to the narcissist smirk. When I heard that described, I had to look up what the smirk looked like. I had an idea but it was worse than I thought, this smug, conceited, self-satisfied smile. So then, the devil on one shoulder said "your parents never did that so you must be making it up again." But the angel on the other said, "hold up. If you'll recall they did smirk just like that and in the circumstances described. You just didn't see it."

And I realize that the angel was right. The narcissist smirk was and is always there. I can even hear it in their voices and the memory of  their voices in my head. If you know what I  mean, you'll know that yes, you can hear as well as see it. Their voices ooze sardonic, contemptuous sarcasm. Their words are passive-aggressive, aggressive, nasty, spiteful, bitter and cutting.  

That dark tetrad condescending, holier-than-thou sneer that takes pleasure in seeing someone humiliated and attacked. They'd gag on their own tongues if they actually said a genuinely kind thing that wasn't prompted by theatrics or hidden agenda. They undermine and second-guess everything you do. They assume you are always guilty. Or they want you to think you are so they can feel better about their own shitty behavior. I was their handmaiden who just sopped up their shame and mopped up after them. 

Oh yes, I am very familiar with smirking talk. And self-righteous accusations and punishment. But what about the looks? So why didn't I see the smirk? Because as I look back, I never made eye contact. I didn't want to see their faces while they were mocking, shaming, belittling, hitting, raging at, ambushing and attacking me. I didn't want to see the hatred from people who supposedly loved me. I didn't want my fears confirmed that this hell was actually God's plan for me like they said. They were damn lucky because if I had, I might have seen the evil inside. 

But I was conditioned not to look. I was told to humble myself (lower myself, bend the knee and hold up my ass to be kicked). And you can be damn sure I didn't. Putting your head above the parapet got it shot. Just standing up straight was being proud and arrogant. While they strutted like showmen in a circus. I can't imagine what would have happened if I stood up for myself. It wouldn't have been good. Ironically, I've been letting myself imagine what would have happened. It's part of my self-styled therapy. 

At the time, all I knew was that ugly naked rage was terrifying enough. It sprayed out all over me like battery acid. It burned and corroded me. What's weird is that I was also harassed for NOT making eye contact. I was told I must be guilty and ashamed if I couldn't look them in the eye. Fucking terrorists. But I believed them, dutiful slave that I was. I just absorbed all that into my ocean of shame. 

So I didn't see it because if I'd looked I think my head would have exploded. I see now that this was my body protecting my mind from the knowledge that the many people (two parents and their partners and their kids) who called themselves my family were just venomous snakes. Yes even their kids to some extend. They weaponized family to get what they wanted. I was their daughter and sister when they expected something of me. Which was all the time. BUT I was also oddly not allowed think of them as family. I didn't even have a blasted home. I just lived in theirs. I was to have no expectations, even normal stuff kids need. They could do as they pleased and I had to just like it. I succeeded in doing that shockingly well. But never good enough to earn respect or love. 

And that's where the smirk comes in. I saw it especially in my mother, her husband and my dad's wife. My dad was just flat out sociopathic. The harder I tried, the more they mocked. They thought they were so coy pulling a fast one. Look that idiot. She doesn't even get it that we have nothing but contempt for her. She just keeps dancing like a clown with a pasted on smile. Now I understand that they accomplished this at their souls' peril. They made themselves god and puppet masters. They used people and loved things. They burned through relationships like kindling. They all either are miserable or died in it. Alone. I guess that's saying something against the devil's assertion that I was making it up. 

Now that I've started looking, I see how they gloated over other people's suffering. They got high on seeing people fall. They had no empathy and always pratted about how people had it coming. They actually laughed in this sickening way behind people's backs. The same people, like me, who had done so much for them. They still preach what they call God's will while living in constant unconfessed mortal sin. God must be so frustrated. My prayer is that nobody believes them and that they them for what they are. 

Do I pray for the dark tetrads? Eh, sure in a general way.  Should I worry more? Nah. Narcissists spend too much time worrying about themselves. The only thing more attention on them will do is hurt me. And I only have so much bandwidth and I need it for helping myself, my loved ones and all those who have been burned as I have. Yeah, I just realized it. You guys who are reading this, you're my concern. I want you to have lovely, joy-filled lives free of the suffering you've been buffering. 

Love mar

Odd trauma response triggers that make sense when you see the emotional flashbacks behind them

Hi friends. I did something really strange and dysfunctional yesterday. And since I'm learning new healthier behaviors, I did what I've never done and looked deeper instead of just assuming it was failure on my part. The microscope revealed that my emotional pool was a cesspit, teeming with all kinds of trauma pond scum. Decades of dark tetrad narcissist parent abuse has created a legion of weird trauma responses in me. They are triggered by things that seem odd or unrelated but  make sense when you see the emotional flashback behind them. So I've made a kind of working flow chart of triggers, trauma responses and emotional flashbacks. 

Trigger one: husband forgetting phone. I was out in the yard and I called him only to hear it ringing in the house. This set off a chain of trauma responses: panic (freezing) fear of abandonment, ridicule, humiliation, flight (immediately taking off in car so without leaving note so he would feel the fear, panic and insecurity I was feeling). Rage at both him and myself, him for "kicking me to the curb" and me for reacting. For letting it get to me and not being stronger. 

And when I dug deeper I found that I was frustrated with him for carelessness but I was also angry at my parents and their spouses and children, for consistently doing shit that left me alone, humiliated, afraid and vulnerable. And that is the emotional flashback. It's also the healthiest, most justifiable anger I could feel. 

I was able to regain my composure before I talked to him. And that's thanks in part to giving myself permission to use my best judgement and not immediately return his calls and texts. The old trauma responses told me that I had to fawn and jump to answer, that "two wrongs don't make a right" and that it was petty retaliation to ignore his calls and texts. I have been gaslit into believing that it doesn't matter what anyone else does to me, how they provoke, bully, manipulate or harm me, I must always respond with what the bully deems the "right" response. Ergo, people pleasing, absorbing the shame, fawning, groveling, bending over for punishment.

And I will admit that on some level I did want to show him how it felt to wonder where someone was and why they weren't answering. But that's healthy too. It's the only way to get the point across that being unavailable when you need to be is disconcerting and very risky. Sure, now that we're older, it's not such a big deal. But there were too many times when our kids were young that he left me stranded. He would say he'd be back in 15 minutes, taking our only vehicle and leaving me with the kids. Two hours later, no Albert. 

He always had a perfectly logical answer. And I believed him. Yes, I know that sounds really sketchy but it was also true. He did have a good reason. But not good enough for leaving us stranded. Countless times I had to remind him, what if one of the children got hurt? He'd give the classic response--they didn't. Yes, but not by any intelligent design on your part, I'd say. You didn't follow through on promises. You put whatever agenda you had in your head before your concern or responsibility to us. You took chances and just expected that I'd work out whatever came along. Most frustrating of all, you didn't even think about how I'd work it out. You felt no concern just diddled around, oblivious to your family. Hurt, fear and anger made me lash out or sometimes just explain why it was a  problem. 

But either way, he would get defensive because he knew he was in the wrong. And either way, I'd feel in the wrong because there is no right way to deal with  someone else's hurtful choices. You can't make them stop. You can only take care of yourself. And I was taught that self-care is selfish. So there's that. Plus, I've yet to find the manual that explains how to navigate in a relationship with a very self-absorbed, stubborn person who refuses to cooperate. That's why so many end. I knew he was responding to his own trauma but that only made things worse for me. I already took on too much responsibility and that triggered even more caregiving at my own expense. 

And it also triggered endless emotional flashbacks to a mom and dad who from the time I was 3 or 4, were randomly there and randomly nowhere to be found. And who put no care into seeing to it that someone was responsible for this little child. Or they dumped me with strangers and dangerous people. They purposely left me exposed and confused to groom me. I don't know what they did but they were sure as hell gone. I have been left to fend in shocking situations that I normalized and internalized. I think they did this to achieve exactly what they have achieved. That I'm anxious, confused, awkward and scared and don't have proper self-care skills. The point was to render me helpless, starved for love and desperate for bread crumbs of care which they would withhold until I was so conditioned that I thought it was a banquet. 

So, stranded and desperate are not good places to be. It makes you do weird things. Like panic. Especially when you're caring for other people besides yourself. I have trauma nightmares that not just I but a bunch of children I'm responsible for, have been left in dirty, dangerous and unfamiliar situations to fend. It's terrifying and mind-blowing. Terror makes you react in unglued ways. Yesterday's situation was not at all the same. My husband understands now how his past irresponsible behavior has caused so much trouble even now, in emotional flashbacks.  And he is very careful and responsible now. Forgetting the phone was an accident. 

However, my trauma didn't understand that. All she remembered was the sick dread of it happening again. So I did new things. First, by not responding immediately it gave him some uncomfortable moments he needed to feel. More importantly it gave me time to process and work through what I was feeling and how I could get to a better place. I explained to him how him forgetting the phone made me feel. 

I felt humiliated, like someone had set me up to look foolish and was jeering at me. It is yet another pie in the face (my mom once threw a pie in my face at her company picnic). I felt let down and worried. I felt mocked. I felt betrayed. I felt anxious and like fighting, fawning, freezing and fleeing all at one. This will make sense to you if this type of thing is a trigger for you. It doesn't' really matter if it does or not. Because it does to my brain. It senses threat and is firing on all neurons to protect itself. 

It's amazing how therapeutic it is to talk it over with someone who cares. Who doesn't weaponize or punish. Who wants to work for harmony. Who gets it. My brain was able to comprehend that though it looked the same, it was not a threat. It's going to take time, however, because old traumas and gaslighting about them cast long  shadows.