Hello my friends. Today I'm writing what might for me be my most embarrassing post. I'm looking (possibly for the first time ever) at ways that narcissist parent abuse has crippled my development and made behave oddly immature. Here's how that happened. And a BIG thanks to Youtube psychologist and trauma expert Danish Bashir for identifying this as a by-product of narcissist parent abuse.
Narcissist parent abuse takes many forms: sexual, medical, physical, social, emotional, financial, plus neglect, deprivation, exploitation, manipulation, child abandonment, child endangerment, scapegoating and triangulation (pitting people against us), bullying, invalidation, humiliation, gaslighting, double standards, inappropriate demands, infantilizing AND parentifying, expecting adult behavior of us while acting childishly themselves, enmeshing with us and making us their slaves, overburdening us with too much work, the list goes on.
And it is all backwards and upside down from the way kids around us live. Our very self-centered, entitled, self-serving parents teach us different rules for interaction. All we know is trauma responding, in my case freezing, fawning and fixing everything they break. And what what's expected of us is not how they live. They are self-righteous, hypocritical tyrants who demand service and loyalty from us but give us none. We are taught no self-care skills and in fact, are told that self care is selfish. We're also groomed to keep their secrets. And we do.
Even people who should be seeing and caring how awful our lives are, don't. My living situations were so bizarrely and obviously different that someone should have noticed. CPS was called in at least on my mom, but that's only because she had a foster care home and she and her boyfriend were hitting the kids. No one thought to check on me as the primary caregiver, co-sleeping with four special needs little ones. While mom and her unvetted, unemployed, abusive volatile boyfriend slept two floors down.
That is one tiny scrap of abuse in the crazy quilt of my life. Both my parents before their divorce were insanely neglectful leaving unsupervised from around age 4. They didn't provide even minimal care and both disappeared for weeks at a time to go on mission trips, abandoning me to strangers thousands of miles from family. They were cheating on each other in blatant ways. Then when they found new people, the abuse escalated to 4x the amount from their narcissistic new spouses. I was forced to work like a skivvy for my dad and step mom. I was kicked out of the house at 16 by my bullying mom and jobless stepdad who were living off welfare and my child support.
How did no one see how weird that was?? Why was it all okay? This happened in late 1960s thru early 1980s middle America, for God's sake! My extended family were normal, law-abiding, loving, church going people who supposedly didn't approve of any of this. And yet they did by their keeping quiet.
At least that's how I read their silence. As consent. Awful for anyone else but fine and dandy for me. I remember reading or hearing of kids in terribly abusive situations and grieving for them. I never realized that my own life was just as bad. Worse in some ways. I never grieved for me because I assumed because I was indoctrinated by narcissist parents that this was God's plan for me. It was his will that I was abused. That was the version of God I got. A cruel, hateful, vicious, unfairly demanding, spoiled brat that wore my parents' faces.
Needless to say this was confusing. That most healthy things kids got and learned, I didn't. What I saw was kids being cared for and loved and what I lived was chaos and abuse. I'm not saying I'm the only one who lived in difficult circumstances, as my former therapist suggested I was (in a rather condescending, judgey way) Which is why she is no longer my therapist. I don't need more invalidation and patronizing thanks.
What I'm saying is that what I saw other kids having, I didn't. Even if abuse was going on, they at least had enough food, a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in. They did normal things and were involved in stuff. I had no time being too busy with housework. I had no ride because no one would provide it. I had to get a job to pay for my own Kotex, a ride anywhere, a bike, a car, shelter. My college fund from grandparents and child support was stolen to fund my mom's new family.
No kid that I knew (or anyone else I've spoken to knows) had to care for her mom's foster kids while her mom and boyfriend absented themselves. Or had to do all their dad's and stepmom's work because they demanded she slave for them. And then didn't feed or house her right. None of us knew of anyone whose parents were divorced let alone who had boyfriends, one-night-stands, girlfriends, step-parents, new families etc. Not to mention foster care homes where they didn't provide care and made me.
A friend recently validated just how extreme it was. She recalls her mother being worried about me because my mother had left me with a violent, unemployed layabout boyfriend and four special needs foster kids to care for. While she went to some pyramid marketing scheme workshop for a week. My friend's mom said they had to step in because caring for one special needs child was too much for an 11 y/o, let alone four overnight. My friend said they were both shocked at just how difficult the child was to care for. The agency said he had been battered so badly that he was blind, deaf, retarded (the word used then) or all three. And this is just one of the children my mom left me to care for. And not just for that week. I had to sleep (or not sleep) with him and he cried all night.
I'm not saying other kids didn't have it rough. Obviously. I'm saying none of them experienced nor understood just how oddly rough my life was. It was only when the friend had to walk in my shoes that it made sense. Not her fault. My life was so weird that it made no sense to anyone. In fact, I was ostracized because of my parents' bizarre, immoral, reckless lifestyles. Even family sometimes questioned me why they did what they did. Like I was supposed to know. And I always defended them so no one looked deeper.
And because no one did, I assumed that this private hell was for me alone. I was smart enough to see how different it was for those around me but also damaged enough to think we each got what we deserved. They got good because they were good kids and I got shit because, well, good enough for who it was for. But being a conscientious kid, I didn't hold myself to lower standards, even though I didn't have the resources or capability to meet the higher ones. I expected that I could make bricks without straw (or proper nourishment, a bed, home, adequate living conditions) because my narcissist parents always expected me too.
So where does that leave me? With no ability to distinguish love from harm and a lot of weird coping skills. I somehow managed to keep up surprisingly good grades, despite not having time to do my homework until bedtime, being so busy with their housework. For a kid who had to get up at night with siblings so their mother could sleep, I was able to get up and function. Sort of. I fell asleep a lot and in dangerous situations. I ended up having to rely on a lot of scary unsafe people for things like rides. I ended up in bad situations because my parents neither protected me nor taught me I should protect myself. If I'm honest, they threw me at wolves and made me feel unChristian if I didn't let them take advantage of me. My loving now-family wonders how I survived. So do I come to think of it.
This has been a long, but necessary, explanation or maybe apology for my weirdness. And a plea for understanding and holding space till I can get better. If you see someone cringe in terror over minor things, don't judge. They probably lived in fear of constant retribution for no reason. If you see someone crumble and cry over an innocent correction, don't assume she cant' take criticism. She may have been beaten down by constant unfair attacks and character assassination since childhood. She may have been trained to cower by bullies who scapegoated her for everyone else's offenses.
Because what narcissist parent abuse does is to destroy their child's ability to grow and develop normally. I have a permanently damaged spine from doing needlessly back-breaking chores too young. I've struggled with arthritis since I was in my teens from all the deprivations I suffered with. I can't do the simplest things like put gas in the car because I'm plagued by intrusive thoughts of disaster. Because I lived from one narcissist parent induced disaster to another. I'm always looking over my shoulder from all the times I was stabbed in the back, betrayed, targeted and ambushed by the people who called themselves my family.
I'm perpetually confused. Because I was told to do one thing and shown another. I lived in my narcissist parent's parallel universe where right was wrong for me and wrong was right for them. They said they were doing God's will and serving him by violently and unpredictably punishing me. For things they did themselves. My mother's husband raged at me for "disobeying him" by not preventing a creepy stalker from stalking me. When none of them had ever protected and put me in the path of dangerous people, including themselves. They kicked me out of the house for coming in 15 minutes late. This man who wouldn't even hold down a job and who sexually harassed me as my mom laughed. They were so concerned for my safety that they put me out on the street. Hmmm.
I can't make decisions because I was faulted for every single thing I did. And then told I was too sensitive and too critical and manipulative and and lazy and attention-seeking and too angry and too needy and too demanding and too selfish, the family problem, immoral and a show off and a liar. By deceitful, oversensitive, overcritical, twisted, cunning, scamming, rageful, self-centered, self-righteous, hypocritical, exploitative, exhibitionist, morally degenerate, indolent, vengeful, bullying trouble-making slavers.
So if you see a nervous, jumpy or people-pleasing woman, don't assume she's a weakling. She's probably been too strong for too long under too much pressure and stress in constant narcissist parent created chaos. If she's terrified of guns, don't brand her an idiot because she wants to control them and keep people safe. She's seen too much violence in her life. She's been the target of unbridled narcissist parent rage. She's shell-shocked. She's not trying to control you. She's wants you to be safer than she's ever been. You're welcome. Is this a plug for gun control. Damn right it is. And it's a plug for protecting kids from arrogant, violent, AGRO narcissist bullies.
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