Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parental enmeshment and abuse, I'm exploring a very uncomfortable and fraught space: living with an exhibitionist parent. I'm looking at how society has dealt with these bizarre parent behaviors. Historically, folks like this were called histrionic, "hysterical" or melancholic. Now they may be called the attention-seeking "pick me." I'll touch on Munchausen's, Munchausen's by Proxy and Factitious disorder as they relate. I'll also share anecdotal experiences living with this exhausting and cringy parent behavior.
Exhibitionism: what it is and isn't
So there are several reasons why a person might behave in an exhibitionistic manner, depending on how you define exhibitionist. Strictly speaking, the DSM-5-TR refers to a person who exhibits their genitals to a non-consenting person. The broader definition includes persons who routinely act in a dramatic (or melodramatic) provocative or exaggerated manner to attract attention, admiration, pity or public notice. This doesn't include people who for reasons of an illness or condition, draw attention to themselves inadvertently, by exaggerated gestures or tics such as Tourette's Syndrome. It isn't melancholia (depression) or anxiety (wrongly called hysteria). It's histrionic attention-seeking for its own sake.
Exhibitionism is exploitative, intentional and purpose-driven
The type of behavior engaged in may be as normal as crying but the situation and intensity are what make it exhibitionist. The person crying may be doing it loudly in a place where everyone else is quiet, looking around to see who's watching. Or it may be situation appropriate, such as crying at a wedding. However the person is angry or "ugly crying." The day we got married, husband says my MIL "ugly cried" from the moment she got up throughout our wedding ceremony and reception. She wore a pouty, petulant "notice me" face and wouldn't speak to anyone. She did this just to "outshine the bride" (me) by making people ask and wonder if she was okay. There was no reason for it, except that she was an enmeshed mother who didn't want to share her son. So she made everyone miserable. Exhibitionist behavior is done strategically and specifically to garner attention by exploiting others normal feelings.
Malignant narcissistic parent exhibitionism
Exhibitionists are often, if always, narcissists. They crave attention for narcissistic supply. If they are malignant narcissists, they prefer it to come at someone's expense, by upstaging them or making them look foolish. Their favorite tactics are humiliation, mockery and mean pranking (hazing). My narcissistic mother, out of the blue, threw a pie in my face and smashed my young son's face in his pie, at her company work party. She, her husband and her daughter laughed manically, literally jeering at us. No one else was laughing. They just looked on disdainfully and I believe she was chastised by supervisors. This caused her narcissistic injury (that's not a real injury, it's ego injury or wounded vanity.) She got very angry and petulant.
Bizarre Roots of Exhibitionism
It's not just covert or vulnerable narcissists who are pathologically jealous. Grandiose narcissists are too, even and especially of their children. Narcissistic parents resent the child's innocence, sweetness and lovability. My parents resented my being given gifts or cherished. They sabotaged nice things I'd received by stealing and selling them. I'd come home to things mysteriously missing. Narcissistic parents are liars, cheats and thieves. And they do weird things in exaggerated ways to undermine and destabilize the child. They get into huge rages over nothing. My parents have taken my things out of my hands and given them to someone else. My dad once went into a narcissistic rage at me at Christmas, for going to the bathroom to try on a sweater from my grandparents. My narcissistic "pick me" stepmom preened herself seeing me get humiliated. I saw her narcissistic smirk through my tears and apologies.
"Pick me" mothers
These women will do freakishly awkward things for attention. From shoving her face in every picture of the child, to purposely falling or limping and even blatantly walking out into oncoming traffic. My mother will shout "AMEN" in church at a funeral (where they don't do such things). She waves her arms and yells "hallelujah" when she visited our Catholic church. My mother tried to outshine her sister at her own wedding by wearing a very inappropriate dress. She flirts with anything in trousers and even in skirts. She encouraged one of my boyfriends to tell her about his testicles. She talks about her own genitals in front of my husband and asks to fondle his stomach. She wears nightgowns in public, figuring, I guess that if she can't be the sexiest, she'll be the most pathetic.
Exhibitionism isn't always sexual but often has notes of it
Flirting, cozying up to, making out with boyfriends publicly, "hitting on" younger people, telling dirty jokes in front of me, describing sexual things to a child, wearing situation inappropriate clothing, making suggestive or "lewd" comments, talking about genitalia or "privates" all these are forms of exhibitionism I've experienced with my parents. My mother dressed as a "hooker" (her words) to a church costume party. She tells everyone she sleeps naked. She was caught naked by her husband's friends. She walked out naked at my house near where my kids were watching TV. The hypocrisy was that these people were both self-proclaimed ministers who were always preaching "morality" to others.
Exhibitionist Shame Spiral Vengeance
In the pie throwing incident, I think my mom actually thought people would join in and laugh at me. And it was definitely a planned ambush. She wanted to have a pie eating contest but no one at her workplace was on board. She sulked while everyone ignored her. I finally let my kids participate because no one else was, but wouldn't participate myself. She blindsided us with the pie-throwing. I recall gasping and nearly choking on the pie. My son started choking too. Now everyone really was judging her! She took this as narcissistic insult. Instead of backing down, she doubled down on me as the eternal scapegoat. She triangulated her husband against me so not only did he mock, he yelled at me for, what I have no idea. I suppose because they both felt as foolish as they looked. Even 25 years later when she "apologized" it was just gaslighting to DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender), blame-shifting responsibility onto me.
Factitious disorder exhibitionism
Exhibitionist behavior is fake and performative. Factitious disorder or Munchausen's (or MBP) is exhibitionism for sympathy, pity, money, to get out of something or to steal attention from the person who is by rights in the limelight. They will fake symptoms of "illnesses" that can't be verified. They will doctor hop when they get close to being caught. All my mother's mystery ailments involve sexuality or genitalia. She will describe herself and her body in great detail. She talks about her "big breasts" in a very suggestive and seductive manner. She looked on fondly when her boyfriend mocked me for having "small t8tties." It so gross and just one reason I finally went no contact.
Exhibitionism humiliates and destabilizes children
I don't just share these things to expose my "good Christian" parents. I don't have to. Their behavior is so awkward it's obvious and it's driven a lot of people besides me away. But these are stories that need to be told, to heal the toxic shame inside me. Unfortunately, a parent's bad behavior doesn't just affect them. It taints their children by association. All these weird, icky things they did to and around me, now live in my trauma brain. I have CPTSD trauma nightmares in which I'm the one who has done them. Trauma bonding and damaged attachment issues, have caused betrayal blindness. And that's what narcissistic parent exhibitionism is, a betrayal of the parent-child relationship. It is grooming in the worst sense of the word.
Emotional fracturing from exploitative enmeshed exhibitionists
Exhibitionism violates the parent-child bond by forcing the child to pick sides. Even in its non-sexual iteration, attention-seeking has an exploitative nature. It forces a child into unnatural adult drama. It's also boundary-crashing privacy invasion which is a hallmark of parent enmeshment. And it polarizes needlessly. The child has to choose sides in a manufactured crisis. Either the child stands by the parent in this self-created humiliation hell or leaves her to face it alone. This is a dangerous lose-lose situation for the child. If the child follows her own innate propriety, she must also by default, disassociate from the parent. Which creates cognitive dissonance and a dissociative split. The child feels FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to side with the parent in her shameful behavior. How many dilemmas of this sort I've faced. And I always took their part. EVEN WHEN I WAS THE ONE THEY WERE HUMILIATING!
Pity or censure?
In college I did a play called "She's more to be censured than pitied." It was a melodrama. And it begs the question of these theatrical "extra" people. Should we just feel sorry for them? I mean what harm can they do? It's only themselves they make look silly. They can't help loving attention, right? Here are my answers.
No. That's what they want is pity but don't you dare make them feel pitied. Because you can't win. They want special exemptions but also privileges. They believe they are entitled and you'd better make darn sure you give them the fluffing they demand. You have to make exceptions for them without letting them know you are. Because then they take narcissistic insult and call you condescending. It's an exhausting merry-go-round.
What harm can they do? If you have to ask that, you've never gotten on the wrong side of a narcissist. And yes, exhibitionism hurts the innocent too. We get tarred with their brush. It damages, humiliates, belittles, dehumanizes and destroys. The best thing for them is to face the consequences of their actions. The best things we can practice are
- calm detachment (let them suffer their narcissistic pain and stay out of the way)
- radical acceptance (they won't change but you don't have to be hurt by it)
- realistic no-nonsense honesty (maybe not to them but to yourself. See it for what it is.)
- self-care (keep yourself safe from fallout of their actions)
- clarity (it is what it is, and you owe them nothing).
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