Hi friends. Dr. Les Carter recently described the most dangerous kind of narcissist and that description lines up with the dark tetrad personality. These people are sociopathic, narcissistic, exploitative and sadistic. They show no empathy, are entitled, viciously angry, vindictive and cruel. This describes to a T, the four people I grew up calling parents: my two biological parents and their new partners/spouses. Some of them were more passive-aggressive but each was dangerous to be around.
Today I'm exploring deeper into weird things that sociopathic narcissist parents make us feel and do. Using gaslighting, invalidation, betrayal, manipulation, exploitation, scapegoating and intimidation, these dark tetrads created a terrifying, false reality for us that kept us in bondage. Youtube therapist Jerry Wise identified these disturbed and disturbing things we kids of sociopathic narcissist parents do and I'm giving my experiences with them. These aren't just occasional behaviors. They are my everyday life.
You know how you feel good when things are going well? I don't. I feel anxious when things are going well because I learned to expect problems to come out of nowhere. Instability and chaos were my norms. I was groomed to be my narcissistic parents' scapegoat and savior. I was expected to fix every mess they made and they made a lot. I was trained to fawn but I was also taught to expect that I would get it wrong all the time. I was a letdown, a failure.
They kept me in this perpetual double bind as an excuse to blatantly, arrogantly screw up while facing none of the consequences. Whatever THEY did was always Mary's fault and Mary believed they were right. Mommy and Daddy are always right and I'm always wrong. Their new people must always be right too. Even though I saw them behave in egregiously dysfunctional, unloving and toxic ways. Because what kind of parent would blame their faults on their child? What kind of parent would foist nasty, selfish, bullying people on their child, let alone allow them within 5 miles of them? Sociopathic narcissist parents, that's who.
So I would, in confusion (because I never really understood any of what I'd supposedly done and what the hell was going on) would apologize and beg to be told what I could do to fix it. And then they had a list a mile long, now that I asked. BUT, here's another double bind. I would complete all the tasks given. I'd hop and smile and grovel. But then they'd move the hoops. And I'd fall over them and they'd shake their heads, such a screw up. And they could continue to wreak havoc because their savior kid had let them down. And still I kept hopping...
I know, seven levels of crazy there. And I ask myself now, if I am the scapegoat, I can't also be your savior, guys. The scapegoat takes the sins out of the community, on herself and presumably dies somewhere. I cannot also be present to be fixing all your shit. And no one with a brain would believe that a child is responsible for her parents. But that's the gaslighting of sociopathic narcissist parents' cruelty. We traumatized kids have to do it ALL. And we have to know what's expected without being told. And we must be on guard because we have multiple bosses expecting many kinds of things that change randomly.
Ergo our constant sense of urgency and hypervigilance. Which creates strange trauma responses that don't fit real well with normal people. That is one way we know how really messed up our lives were in comparison to most everyone else. Including our narcissistic parents believe it or not. They don't act with all the insane trauma responses we do because they didn't have to growing up. Mine at least, had normal childhoods. And we know this because when I'd go into my freeze, fawn, fly or fix mode, they'd look disdainfully and mockingly at me.
I have a permanent flinch-cringe response. I screw up my eyes waiting for punishment. I pretzel myself to stay small. I bite my mouth and clench my teeth to keep from doing or saying anything that might set them off. I always expected the worst because it always happened. No good deed went unpunished. My mother bragged about how she slapped my face but then ( to get a little pity) she said she had to stop because I hit her back. I believed that until my wise truth teller husband said, what I probably did was to put my hands up to protect myself and bumped her in the process of hitting me.
I have scoured my brain to come up with a memory of what I did wrong. But all I can come up with is a bunch of vague gaslighting crap she SAID I did. I was "sassy." (no explanation of what that meant.) Both my mom's husband and my dad would attack me for no reason. They'd rage, with saliva spraying at me. But again, no reason given. And then my dad would say I was angry. They repeated that nonsense to me all my life and made me believe I had an "anger problem." When actually I was far calmer than I had any right to be given the mean, nasty things they all did to me. I should have been a vicious dog with all the kicking I got.
What I had was intense confusion which led to frustration because I never knew what they wanted. And they never told me. Just said I should know. Because I'm clairvoyant, evidently. But they sure knew when I got it wrong. Or when they needed me to be the bad guy to shield them from consequences or guilt. And then I'd cry or stutter. I'd hit myself in secret but never in front of them. I didn't want them to worry about how fucked up I was. Or shall I say to feel guilty about how they had effed me up. I was befuddled because everything went one way for others and completely the opposite for me.
And then they'd accuse me of showing off for attention. Seriously. They'd tell people I was just a show off. What I did looked weird because they made me weird. Because they needed me to act weird so they would have someone to point their fingers at and shake their heads over. Jerry Wise says that we traumatized kids were only allowed a voice if it served the family. My "voice" was to play the fool. When they'd laugh at me, I'd laugh at myself. When anyone of them humiliated me, I just stood there shame-facedly. My dad thought it was so funny when his sons kicked me to the curb. Me, who was their primary caregiver, live-in nanny and housekeeper. Me who slept with them at night so their lazy mother didn't have to. I wish I'd used my voice then and told them all where to get off and that I was moving out and taking my services with me. Oh and I'd be submitting my bills.
We have a lot of kneejerk reactions, like laughing at other people's dumb jokes so we don't hurt their feelings. We smile and smooth and soothe. We placate at our own expense. We body block people from feeling the consequences of their behavior. Because our narcissistic parents hijacked our bodies, minds and hearts and press-ganged them into their service. They pirate our successes as their own. And what they can't steal, they trash. When I earned a BA, the first in either family, my dad sniffed and said "humpf, well, college isn't for everyone." They did not have a party for me but did have a lavish do for a friend's kid when he joined the army. I'm serious.
They don't let us feel good about anything. My dad mocked my singing voice when I was singing in the bathroom. He told me I was "fishing for compliments." I'd never even said anything. Now I wonder why the hell he was even in the bathroom with me. Meanwhile he proudly played his violin. He'd take it with him and look around waiting to be asked to play. It makes me sad that we couldn't have one of those family duos you see people having. But there's only room for one in the conceited narcissist's band.
When I was in high school, living with my mom, I started a singing group. He muscled in which was fine because he plays well. But even then, he never acknowledged my part in starting the group. I left soon after. He never came to my plays saying they were boring and actors were just showing off. He never once told me that anything I did pleased him. It hurts most because I have always believed him and let it hold me back from pursuing any arts.
I act tongue-tied a lot because I'm confused a lot. I find it difficult to think clearly or remember. That's the gaslighting effect. Huge portions of my memory are blank, except for the pain. That's because I was indoctrinated in this cult of theirs where rules were very different than anywhere else I had to interact. So I was always living this double life. And the rules for me in the cult were different than for anyone else. I was the only child of my parents marriage and when they divorced, being narcissists, believed they could just start over, clean slate like I as their child never existed. I was now their tool with no thoughts or feelings of my own. I was what they told me I was, a possession, a surrogate parent and spouse, a servant and scapegoat. A sex therapist. A vestal virgin, acolyte and entourage to golden children.
But never just me. So I don't know who I am outside of someone's something or other. I very often apologize for being. At family events, I was nobody unless someone said I was. Grandparents loved me but they turned blind eyes to the chaos my parents put me in. Very immoral and often illegal, by any standards. My parents were never not neglectful, abusive, endangering of me. They abandoned me for several significant periods of time. They marginalized, exploited, manipulated, parentified, triangulated and invalidated me as a matter of course. I think this is because I had the audacity to be a reminder that they were not perfect. That they couldn't make up family as they went along. You'd think they'd have adopted me out. But then they would have faced backlash and who would they have to care for their second families? Narcissists aren't giving people. They take. And if they weren't giving in their first marriages, they certainly weren't going to be in their second ones. Unfortunately, they met their matches for selfishness in their new spouses. So they kept me around to wait on them.
We act uncomfortable at gatherings because we were always invisible except if the narcissist parents needed a little narc supply. My dad has exploded and screamed at me for no reason during holiday celebrations. Which he proclaims to love. Apparently, I ruin things for people. My mother tells private details about me to people. Their birthdays are holy days of obligation to me. I must attend and not come empty-handed. They give me worthless cast off junk or nothing at all. My dad gave me a race car set when I was 15. The only ones who wanted to play with it were my brothers, so he and his wife got free babysitting too. I think they spent all their money on their other kids, forgot to get me anything and then wrapped up one of the kids' gifts for me. I'm told I attended many family gatherings with my grandparents. I wasn't invisible to them but I may as well have been as I don't remember them. The only times I remember going with my parents, they ignored me. I had to ask my aunt for food and then my mother cozied up to all the other kids. She always took other kids' part over mine. I just kind of hovered on the fringes.
I don't sleep well ever. I trauma dream all night long. I'm always tired and in pain. People have scoffed at why I sleep late in the morning. It's because I can't get up. I'm utterly exhausted. As Jerry says, were are tethered to their expectations of us. For me, this includes dreams in which I'm having to do all kinds of work and care for countless children. I have no resources. I'm cold and tired and hungry. The environment is wet and dirty. Yet I kneejerk response to jump to comply to all these expectations in my head. It never ends. They tangled up my sense of self in themselves. In short, they stole me and replaced my self with a bottomless pit of fear, obligation to them and guilt.
Cutting ties with them has been as invasive as a lobotomy. Which is actually a metaphor for their gaslighting indoctrination of me. It's as if they cut out large chunks of my brain and transplanted their selfish selves in me. I'm like Frankenstein's monster. I can't think for myself. I can only dance to what tune they play. I respond like a puppet doing and saying what the one pulling the strings makes me do and say.
Because this is going core deep in me. Every good thing I believed about them has proved to be false and lies. That they were loving parents and I was part of a family, all illusion. So where do I go from here? Attempting to undo this damaged thinking is very dangerous and could be deadly. Can I reanimate myself? I don't know if a brain transplant has ever been un-transplanted successfully. Can I disinter the bits they implanted without destroying the healthy parts? I don't know if I even can replant the parts that were stolen. Because I don't know where they are. I think they were just discarded as useless. I'm not even sure it would be safe.
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