Hi friends. It's me again back with more contradictory and possibly counterintuitive ways to heal from narcissistic parent rage. I don't mean to always fly in the face of traditional wisdom but it ends up happening a lot. Because I think therapists teach kids (and adult children) wrong responses to narcissistic parent rage. Or at least they get the timeline wrong, expecting people to be able to do things before they are ready to. Before they have even begun to unpack their trauma experiences. Some are just flat out wrong, IMO. So without further ado, here's where I think psychology fails kids who lived with narcissistic parent rage.
Psychology puts the cart before the horse. It expects healthy responses from the victim of rage before the victim has even had time to process the terrible effects of the rage. Ever notice how often, the first response is to scold a narcissist's victim for "reacting" to rage? What I mean is that psychology, religion, society, family, friends, everyone gets it backwards. They're is so worried about how we the victims should behave in response to narcissistic abuse. Don't get mad, don't react, don't retaliate, respond in healthy ways, stay calm.
That's just gaslighting crap, if there is no understanding or empathy shown us. We already didn't and did do those things and that's a big part of our trauma. We stayed too calm. We absorbed their horrifying anger in ourselves. We took it personally, felt ashamed like they told us to. We shut down and didn't react. We flinched and fawned and bent over for more abuse if it made them feel good. And we NEVER EVER ONCE stopped to let ourselves feel all the things their disgusting, manipulative anger made us feel.
And further, a lot of psychologists assume too much and verify too little. Even some of my favorite Youtubers. I get that the end goal is to learn to act in healthy ways. But sometimes they get wrong just what those healthy ways are. If we've underreacted to anger and just let them spray venom, the important thing is to help us recognize that this is abuse and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. All too often they approach it like we should know all this. And that we should be ready to make healthy choices. And know what they are. Umm, why the hell would I be talking to you if I knew all that.
The problem is that therapists see a chronological adult sitting in the chair but realize it's the scared, hurt inner child they are talking to. And that shows they've not been listening too well. Or they've only heard what the child said when they should have also heard what the child was omitting. And then, sometimes, weirdly, the therapist will talk to the client like a child, in patronizing ways instead of affirming, encouraging ways. They oddly juxtapose shaming with dismissing. Judge-shame on you, you're an adult now so act like one. But then pooh-pooh, you do know that other kids have been treated badly by their parents, right? (Yes, a therapist said this to me.).
Lady, save your gaslighting. I don't need another person telling me that it doesn't matter what someone else does only how I act in response. Had that done to me by people better at it than you and that's why I'm paying you $140 an hour. Because it DOES matter what they did. And that's the counselor's job to sit with me and hold space while I muddle around in it. I need to actually look at what they did and how awful it was. I need to stop believing their gaslighting minimizing blame-shifting lies.
And there it is. Therapists often perpetuate the narcissistic parents' blame-shifting. They put all the responsibility for fixing ourselves on us who where damaged by these people. They make it seem, as our parents did, that getting angry with them, in response to their vicious putrid rage, was a mortal sin. That self-care or cutting ties was retaliating. That blowing our tops, standing up for ourselves and telling them exactly how we felt was "stooping to their level." Well, for what it's worth, all those things work better than rolling over and internalizing it. That way leads to suicide.
I wish that instead of victim shaming us, with all the expectations on how we should rise above and be the bigger person etc. just one would say "Do what you need to do. Rage at them. You're safe. Be furious. React till you don't need to. Trust that you'll get to a better place but for now, let's focus on what they did and how you felt. So you can get to that healthy place." What we need is to trust ourselves to do what we need and stop letting hateful, hurtful, selfish, exploitative, backstabbing narcissist define what we need.
I get what they're going for. That reacting to rage is not healthy for us. Supposedly it lowers us or makes us feel icky. Eh, the rage is for sure not healthy for us. And it's sometimes ambiguous what react vs. respond looks like. I'm guessing what they mean is that we should stay calm, placate, use a quiet voice, diffuse. Which as someone whos' been in the crosshairs of a raging narc in attack mode, I gotta say, it doesn't work. I've been downwind of a spitting, foaming at the mouth narc in full swing. They are fucking terrifying.
They shriek abuse till their voice cracks. They say the most foul, evil things to and about you that you could imagine. Then they invent some you couldn't. You see the devil looking out of their eyes. The venomous hatred they feel for you is palpable. They don't care if you are holding your baby. In fact, now I think of it, these cowards do it purposely WHEN you are vulnerable or protecting someone vulnerable so you can't fight back. They tell you exactly who they are and what they will do to you and you should believe them.
No matter what you do, they won't come down till they're ready and you will only get hurt more. The malignant ones just get more abusive. React or respond, it's just semantics at this point. You need to get you and your babies out of their path pronto. Then ASAP, from a safe place, call the police. I did not know to do this. The many times my mother's bat shit crazy husband attacked me, I let him. I drank the Kool-Aid about trying to deescalating, staying calm, yada yada. Bad idea. That just encouraged him. My mother just proved herself the horrible person she is and took his part. Every. Single. Time. I tried the apologizing, peacemaking later and that blew up in my face too.
When my mom used to slap me randomly for no reason, crying, apologizing or just sitting there for it, did no good. She just kept doing it. The only thing that stopped it was when I (so she tells the story, I have no memory of it) hit her back. What I probably did was to put my arm up to shield myself and she connected with it. But of course, she would DARVO and blame me and being so gaslit and confused, I can't recall. But the net result is that the hitting ended. So call me crazy but maybe retaliation, even inadvertently, isn't the worst idea?
Same with my dad's wife when she attacked me, in an email as you do, passive-aggressive to the last. She accused me of ruining her relationship with her son because when he asked, I told the truth about her having a drug addiction and about using my family computer (that my children used) to "lure pedophiles" (her words) in some fancied sting operation. What she did was to chat all night when I let her stay the night posing as a 15 y/o girl called "lil red." And left the chat window open. And they didn't need my help trashing their relationship. They were doing fine on their own. I didn't mention all the things she did to me over the years. I just didn't back down for once. And she admitted she was wrong about that.
And then, when my dad would explode on me out of nowhere and start beating or screaming abuse, I went into all the trauma responses except fight which I should have. Which, let me just posit, some responding looks curiously similar to trauma responses, especially fawn. And staying calm just a makes a malignant narcissist more malignant. Their arrogant entitlement goes nuclear when you fawn. What did work, ironically, was me, just one time, not groveling but reacting with equal rage. I yelled at him and told him off on a few things. I scolded him for a change. And while he never really apologized and blame-shifted, at least it shocked him into silence and he actually sort of listened to me for once.
So I get that the ultimate goal of therapy is to make healthy choices for ourselves. I get that we have to heal ourselves. I have been trying to do that for 61 years. What I will never again accept is the idea that we put behind us all that was done to us and just move on. I unilaterally disagree because we have to keep the memory alive. If we just compartmentalize it, forgive and forget or worst of all don't even fully unpack what they did, we will go right into it again, same abuse, different abusers. Contrary to what religion, society and therapy often teaches, for us children of malignant narcissist parents, it IS about what they did, not just our response to it. Because they caused us to have to react or respond in the first place. They incited, provoked, drew first blood. They traumatized us and left us to try figure out how to cope. Our trauma responses, or react/respond whatever you want to call it, developed because of their ill treatment of us.
What therapy needs to do is get order of operations straight. Before worrying about whether we forgive, don't respond etc, we need to come to grips with all they did to us. We don't need more shame, blame, invalidation, instruction, scolding or gaslighting. We need to acknowledge it, sit with it and feel our feelings about it all. We need non-judgmental people to hold space. We need the compassion and empathy we never got from our parents. With them it was always about them, what they wanted and needed, what we owed them, how they were blameless victims, etc. And we made it about them. But now it needs to be about us for a change. What do we need, want, feel?
If you need someone to give you permission to make it about you, pick me.
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