Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal CPTSD from narcissist parents' abuse, I'm exploring how these abusive parents undermine confidence and plant self-doubt in their children. I'll also show how they foster chronic low self-esteem and insecurity, which renders the adult child unable to make decisions without paralyzing fear, anxiety and guilt. I know they do this because I lived under a reign of terror from four malignant narcissist parents.
Parentification AND infantilization. Yep, both. Like Cinderella, who might be the OG scapegoat kid, the narcissist wicked stepmother and ugly sisters make her both wait on and care for (parentify) and play subservient idiot child. And like our heroine, both are wrong-sized slippers to fill.
Cruel double standards. I don't even know where to begin describing this. Suffice it to say that any wrong thing they do to the child is right. For them to do. Any good thing the child does is wrong. And any good or right thing the child needs or should have, is wrong. For her. If she sings in the shower, she's fishing for compliments. If mom's boyfriends attacks the child, it's all fine.
Exaggerating the child's normal childhood behaviors into horrific crimes. The child moves, looks, says, does THINKS (yes they read minds) something, anything, NOTHING, that sets the narc off. My dad once beat me for je ne sais quoi. Literally, I don't know what. I've raked myself over the coals for years because I've never dared say dad was the problem. But he was. But then, when confronted, they...
Minimize, dismiss and lie away their own truly horrific behavior. They blame the CHILD because THEY threw a hissy fit and made a fool of themselves.
Constant questioning. Not to find answers or because they want to learn. Oh no, these aren't humble people. They know it all. Including your mind and motives. They question your choices and poke holes in your ideas to run you into the ground. To make you feel bad or stupid. They interrogate to break you down, like you have some kind of guilty secret to hide. Which after awhile of this inquisition, you start to think you do.
Fake clairvoyant. They feign the ability to read your mind to undermine your confidence. To make you auto-gaslight and second guess yourself. They hint at being able to "read" the dark reasons for your actions, such as how you "said yes but didn't mean it even though you did it because you didn't do with a true servant's heart even though you did do it you still got it wrong because your heart is is in the wrong place" Wha-what-WWhattheactual??? It's like voodoo-y seance--y ESP-y with the googly hypnotic eyes. None of which they really can do, just so you know. It's just smoke, mirrors, bells and whistles. But sadly, because you are a child, you believe them. Because charlatans don't need to be proficient at it, with children. They just need to be sick SOBs.
Expect mind reading. So having said that, though they can't read minds, they expect you to. You must divine by some prescience, what they need, want, expect of you. They should not have to tell you. Because you should just KNOW. And because they're always moving the target and rearranging the hoops, you don't. And you fall. My child, this is done on purpose just so you WILL fall.
God's little Gestapo. I've called this God's KGB before too. Now, the fake clairvoyant is bad enough. But at least they know they're frauds on some level. But the batshittier ones, like my parents, believe, or try to make you believe they have a higher calling, a divinely-led insider knowledge. They are initiates of some secret society. That the almighty has given them dispensation to ferret out dirt on people. As God's little Gestapo agents, they machinate and speak in strange mumbo jumbo, they say you can't understand because you're not Chosen. (thank God for that!). They're not trying to make you repent. Narcissist Christians don't want that. Because then you'd be in their little club and they wouldn't be special anymore. No, they do this for good old garden variety public execution. Smacks very much of witchfinder general.
Assigning sinister motives to innocent things. And like the witchfinder, if they can't find dirt on you, they make it up. They plant evidence. They concoct the most bizarre Gestapo explanations for perfectly rationale things. It's absolutely demented. But if no one tells you that, you think you're the demented one.
DARVO. Which sounds like a 1970s drug and which in a way, is. DARVO is (when confronted) Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. And the purpose, like a drug is to mask. It is laughable how lightning fast the offending narcissist can switch costumes to attacker then victim. Just like they were expecting and prepared for it. Dayum, Lady Macbeth, slow clap off the stage!
Shell game with facts. And this is the real reason for all their covert ops. It's a big blame-shame-game they play to divert suspicion and censure off themselves by throwing it on someone else. Yanno, skunk smells it's own smell first kind of thing?
Inappropriate and impossible expectations. Continually shifting demands. Pity parties. Vicious backstabbing. Nasty, surprise attacks. Dangerous set-ups. I just lumped all this ewww into one bullet point. I don't have the oomph to elaborate on each. They can speak for themselves. And you very savvy people don't need elaboration. You get it, sadly. Except just one word on the..,
Surprise attacks. Just, wow. You hear of people in Britain preparing for dawn raids, going down into tube stations. But who expects their parents to launch a TET Offensive against their kids, huh??? And yet, they do. If I wanted to, I couldn't begin to detail all the sneaky nasty offensives they launched. And why? Why take out your kid? What good did it do you? You still died alone and afraid??
Maybe we need a key change here? Nawh, it's still very minor.
Cutting out the legs from under the child. Narcissistic parents can't handle competition even from their kids. We didn't even know we were competing. We were just happy and thinking mom was too. But oh no, if mom's pissed everyone will suffer. And mom's pissed a lot. They have to "cut you down to size" so you won't get conceited. So they amputate the child's supports so she can't stand unsupported. And then they laugh at her.
Sabotaging good things. Narcissist parents are masterful at making shitshows of normal things. They drum up drama like a majorette. Unprovoked, they'll make vicious comments at a family dinner. They start fights at an Easter egg hunt. They humiliate the child at her school performance. My dad screamed at me at Christmas for going to the bathroom to try on my new sweater. After asking permission. And then told me to quit crying. He insulted me at graduation because "it's only a piece of paper." When all the other dads were hugging their daughters and almost bloody crying with pride. He said my solo was
showing off. They leave everyone mouth gaped at their crazy behavior. But no one says anything.
Warped, self-serving lies presented as reality. You might think I'm a little dense and maybe I am. But it took me till I was 60 to learn that narcissists are proverbial liars. And that my parents, especially my mom, lied every time she opened her mouth, pretty much. Or near as damn all, because if a person lies most of the time, you should assume it's all the time. They don't lie to protect their child but their own trashy ways.
Draconian punishment. Narcissist parents love the upper hand, literally. My mother enjoyed smacking me in the face for no particular reason. Oh she said I was mouthy or whatever, but if that's the case, how come this constantly fawning, self-loathing kid has no memory of it? If I'd done something wrong, you can be sure I would.
FOG: The narcissist parents' modus operandi is to maintain a continual gaslighting fog Fear Obligation and Guilt in her family. Everything is about her. If mother is upset everyone must flock to her aid. They OWE her, supposedly.
Petty, immature, passive aggressive posturing. There is no low a malignant narcissist parent won't stoop to to get his way. He pouts, whines, tantrums, sulks, gets on his imaginary high horse, Lord's it over. Nobody actually did anything to him except give in. He sees to it that his children, especially the scapegoat, toes the mark, humors his vanity, plays the game and let's him win.
False sense of power. Because everyone gives in, the narcissist thinks he's won. The great and powerful Oz fancies he has us all in our place. But we don't play along because he outsmarts us. He's just makes such an exhausting pain in the ass nuisance of himself that we give him his way so he'll shut up an go lay down. The only one who can't see what a fucking travesty he is, is him.
Confusing and unsettling. Narcissist parents do and say bafflingly weird, disturbing icky things just to disturb their child. It's not accidental, it's intentional. They know it will upset their child and they get off on that power.
Chaotic out of nowhere behavior. Narcissistic parents rule by chaos and confusion. My mother changed boyfriends more than most people change sheets. She would spring some crackheaded thing, like surprise, we're moving, on me with no preparation. I've had the rug pulled out so often that the floor under me is polished. She always managed to do this just when I was feeling okay to put the other foot down. She once threw a pie in my face at her company picnic. Come to think of it, she's thrown a lot of figurative pies, too. Just to see me gasp for breath. I think she found it funny to traumatize me.
Manufactured stress put on the child and ONLY on the child. They deprive her of resources so she's tired and more malleable. They put waaaay too much work on the child leaving her barely enough time even for homework. They set impossible deadlines only she has to meet. They do time motion studies and set ridiculous standards for her that no one else has to let alone could, complete.
Abrupt, arbitrary, extreme changes in the child's life with no warning or involvement of the child
Rumor-mongering. The parents spread lies that the child is too sensitive to their harsh criticism and too critical of their very wrong behavior. (Both are nonsense and couldn't coexist). The child is so browbeaten she wouldn't say boo to a goose. And she wouldn't know where to being finding fault with them because everything they do is selfish, manipulative and irresponsible.
Terrorizing, threatening. Life for a child of narcissistically abusive parents is dark and foreboding. Nothing is just happy. Peaceful. Not even the damn ice cream truck. When you live with your sleep-around preacher mom, her deadbeat boyfriend, her 15 y/o pregnant just had abortion about to have another psycho foster kid, her 26 y/o Vietnam drug addict boyfriend, a porno addict uncle and his pregnant girlfriend (living in your bedroom), plus assorted foster children YOU at 11 are supposed to parent, well, life ain't nothing like the neighbor's. It's a bloody paranormal. And that was just one little scrap in my crazy quilt life.
Make the child look cuckoo. Please, my friends, help me here. Leave me a comment if anything I've shared sounds off or weird to you. Because all this, THIS that I share, I can't begin to describe. I feel like a nutcase. I couldn't make it up if I wanted to. And yet it sounds, I don't know, not fake but surreal. I see all these images of life back then, so Mountain Dew, Hostess, Jif happy normal. But all I remember is hell and shoved in it. Seeing but not seeing, only feeling.
Random rage fests.
Pretending their abuse is normal (gaslighting)
Betrayal
Sneaky insidious digs made publicly
"Calling out" the child on things the parent actually did. I'll take to my grave things my kids did, not because they were terrible things. They're just kid stuff. But they might get misread. And they're no one's business. And mostly because they're my precious bebe. You do that for them. It would have been nice if someone had felt this way about me. But no, they called me out, like it was some fucking gotcha moment. Mufu, that is seriously nasty shit. To call her out in general is messed up, but on things you did yourself? Wow. Hell holds a special place.
Force the child to ask permission for everything. To think, need, feel, want, decide. Then demand endless dogged service from her. I did not know till my husband told me that normal kids do not need to ask permission for shit. And not from a damn step-parent whatever the hell that means.
Making conditional what were my basic rights as a kid. I'll just let that marinate in its own juices a bit.
Brain damaging her so she thinks she's unable to cope without them. She must take all her cues from them because she's too stupid to decide for herself. Jesus Christ, they parentifed you, which is a fancy way of saying make the child parent them. Answer to and for them. Cover for them. Change their diapers. Wipe their faces. But yet somehow, they also make you think you need them for the simplest of tasks. How, HOW?? (We need a revolution!)
Painting the child like some kind of monster. Malignant narcissistic parents make up stories about their kids to portray them as evil and themselves the long-suffering parents just trying their best. Nothing could be more bullshitty. The parents are the ones doing all the nasty shit they say about their child while she just tries to keep her head above water.
Controlling everything even and especially things they have no business controlling or actual control of. They just make her think they have power they don't. Good God, there are not enough bottles of wine in this world to make it make sense.
Seizing assets. Literally stealing, usurping and then wasting or ruining them. Narcissistic parents don't just waste their money. They insist on controlling then "speculating with" their kids as if it is their own. They feed the kid a line of BS that she's unable to manage so they'll have to manage for her. And they screw everything up. Because they're not able to organize a cheese roll let alone their own lives let alone anyone else's. They are inept.
Bullying and coercive control. Everything about these people is bossy, pushy, autocratic, harsh. They say they have to be this way because it's the only way the child will cooperate. Cooperate, hell, there's no cooperating with them. There's just rigid, militaristic obedience.
Playing the hero. Narcissistic parents treat the child even in adulthood, like she's feeble. They don't look after her, mind. They never have. If she's feeble it's from harassment, exhaustion and depletion. They mess her up and then stand back tutting oh what a mess she is. Then they swoop in, not to help or rescue but to take charge and then gloat.
Force her to live in awful situations. Life with my parents was very much like a POW camp. No rights, basic needs and rights (privacy, time to do homework, rest and sleep) spun as privileges. Everything had to be earned. And no matter how hard I tried I never earned it. They were completely transactional when it came to expectations for me. Things no child should be expected to do. The family dog ate better. Yet they reneged on their responsibilities. They withheld things that they owed as just basic parental duties. All I ever heard about were my duties to everyone else. Never anyone's duties to me. I was family when convenient and unpaid staff most of the time.
So what all this accomplishes is to create a pre-emptive fear of failure. As the child grows, she is increasingly more anxious about making the simplest of decisions or performing the easiest of tasks. She feels obligated to obey parents long after she is no longer under their control. Yet she feels responsible to them to cover all their bad choices. She fears displeasing parents even when she is well into adulthood. There's a nagging confusing vague sense of impending doom. That somehow, no matter how sure she is of the rightness, of having her facts straight, of having done it all just so, it will fall apart.
Her narcissistic parents have steadily and surely broken her down, weaponized her resilience to heap even more pressure on her, drained her resources, deprived her of necessities. They, who are well rested and well nourished have loads of energy to keep up the barrage against her which she hasn't the strength to resist. They have orchestrated such toxic and frightening scenarios that every day feels like a fight for survival. A struggle to avoid drowning in despair but also to keep up appearances. Because God forbid anyone actually see and acknowledge and try to do something to help her out of the hell they're keeping her in.
The malignant narcissists' goal is to steal all the child's light and power and what they can't steal, they damage. This renders her useless, or makes her feel she's useless for anything but service to them. Boom. There it is. Their endgame. Pathetic. Because spoiler alert. They don't ever acknowledge or apologize. They die and take your pain and shame to their damn ( I wish we had more swear words, more rocks) graves. If you get an apology be wary, be VERY wary. I got one once. It ain't worth the paper to blow your nose on. It was a lame joke that made it all so much worse. Because now I know she knew what she was doing and she didn't care.
Addendum: I know, each of these is becoming its own self-contained Sheol. Sometimes these articles get away from me as awful memory collides with awful memory. Over and over again. Each gets longer and longer till sometimes I wonder if can ever stop. I wish I could stop the nightmares, the dry socket ache, the soul cancer sick pain. Please believe I'm not trying to trauma dump or scare you. For the first time, ever, I've been saying what happened. What has been buried under, cleared away, paved over, built on, for going on 60 years.
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