Parental narcissitic abuse at birthdays and holidays: so much hypocrisy, toxic shame and gaslighting

 

Hello friends, lots going on around here, as I source the toxic shame and CPTSD from bio parents and two stepparents and their new families. Yesterday was Mother's Day and it was  hellish for me. Not because of my husband or children. They're the joy of my life. The pain came from the fact that I didn't have a mother or father.  Only demanding, parentifying, exploiting, abusing, shaming, neglectful, manipulative, gaslighting authority figures. It brought up very unpleasant memories and realizations that their combined narcissistic abuse was particularly bad around holidays and birthdays and celebrations. 

The disparity between how I was celebrated (not at all, really) and how I was expected to celebrate others, particularly their golden kids, is appalling. I don't remember my birthdays being made much of a deal except by grandparents. There is one picture of me at two with my cake. My mom has weirdly inserted herself in front of the camera, posing while my dad is holding my arms behind my back in a death grip. 

Then I recall for my 11th birthday, a party at the beach (no dad or his other family). It was fun but I don't remember any friends except my mom's friends. And again, she's trying to steal the show, bouncing around in her bikini. At 11, I was, like most kids, pretty uncomfortable in my body. It was extra uncomfortable that my mom would choose that moment to flaunt her developed adult body. 

If you think from this that we just didn't do  much with birthdays, you'd be wrong.  I was planning and hosting parties for my parents by age 10. I recall my dad saying he wasn't going to make a deal over me because he wanted me to stay humble. Yet he and his wife had lavish birthday parties every year for their boys.

My mother has actually told me that she spends tons more on my sister than me. She wants me to know, I guess, how little I'm valued. For Christmas a few years ago, she gave me a shirt from a free table from one of her food pantry visits. Yes, they live off food pantries. It was too big, wrinkled and still smelled like a thrift store. I was informed that sis got a new laptop. I'd given her flowers, expensive chocolates, and a new phone. Which she promptly lost. 

For one of her birthdays, I'd taken her to the doc and she was asked what she was doing for her birthday. In front of me, she said "my family is taking me out to dinner." I was not invited and as that's apparently a ritual of theirs, I never have been. I was told that I could take her out to lunch in a day or two,  for her birthday, as she knew I had to get to work. For my birthday that year, I got a text with smiley emojis. 

To my dad's sons' parties, I was not invited, as in a guest. I was expected to attend and bring big, pricy gifts which I could not afford. I don't recall my "brothers" ever getting me anything. I recall them getting annoyed when I brought a homemade gift. And another time I was unable to be present due to time constraints of work and college, and my dad was pissed. So in guilt I rearranged and made it work. Both he and his wife were very chilly with me. My grandma, (God love her) said snarkily to me, "you'd think it was a holy day of obligation." It was. 

Christmas was really rough. I recall my dad screaming at me one year, in front of everyone, because I went to try on my new sweater from gram and gramp after dutifully asking his wife. Mind you the other kids were off playing their toys. Grama chimed in and told him to chill but I was already in tears. No apology ever from him. 

I thought maybe I was misremembering but my husband whom I was dating recalls them making enormous deals over their other kids birthdays and nothing over mine. They even did it to my eldest daughter who had the temerity to be born a day after their kids St. "Mike". We celebrated their birthdays together ( he was 10 and she was 2) and his nibs pouted and sulked the whole day because Molly got some attention that he felt he was due. 

My father scolded me for having a group party because Mikey was left out. He wasn't. And the party wasn't just my idea. I  guess I was supposed to feel guilty because people wanted to celebrate my sweet little girl. My husband was so angry that he vowed to boycott all future parties involving their kids. I was so proud. Wish I'd had the courage to do that. 

The weirdest time was one I just remembered and had never considered. When I was 14, my dad and stepmom gave me a slot car set. I hadn't asked for it. It was okay but certainly  not what I wanted and not an appropriate gift for my age or gender. Of course their boys were always pestering me to play with it. And I had to set it up for them and play with them. I just realized that they got me that because they had spent all the money they had for their boys gifts but still wanted to get them this race car set. So they just gave to me, expecting me to "share" it. And they got bonus added free babysitting too. I gave it to them after a year or so. Which is probably what their parents expected anyway. 

I was gaslit about that for years and gaslit myself. My dad was pretty misogynistic and not one to get boys gifts for girls. In fact, he had an awesome Lionel train from when he was a kid that I would have loved to play with. I've always loved trains. He never let me play with or even encouraged me to take part. It was just him and grampa, in my grandparents basement. Grampa was the one who let me use it when dad wasn't around. 

But I got the last word. Brother Mikey, who had been entitled and catered to so much, grew up to be an adult baby who doesn't take care of his kids, lives off welfare, doesn't work and spends all his time and money on his hobbies. I say his  money but actually it is his SSI, wife's earnings and Dad's money. Dad sold off most of his stuff to fund Mike's hobbies and gave him $13 every day for cigars. (He didn't even know my grandchildren's names). 

When Dad passed I asked for the train set. Mike had taken pretty much everything  (family silver, coins, guns) but didn't want  me to have even the train. There was only the engine, coal car and a few pieces of track. Dad had sold off the rest so Mike could buy his axe heads. Yes he had an axe head collection. Don't ask my why. Kind of like Bert from Sesame Street and his paper clip collection. Only more expensive.

Well, I got the train and it was with great delight that I passed it on to my grandson, who adores steam trains more than life itself. And I enjoy playing trains with him. Is it enough to make up for being left out all those years.  Yes and no. The past will never be any different than it was. But I can change the now. I do things differently than was done to me. Not perfectly, but to the best of my ability. 

And my real family, my husband, children and grandchildren, make up for it every moment of every day, as Mister Rodgers says, "by just their being themselves." 

 

How I'm overcoming toxic shame by looking it in the face

 Hello my friends of this blog on how I lost 100 pounds! I know I promised you some fun diet tips for our March Madness weight loss challenge, and we will return you to that regularly scheduled program. But this blog is also about getting emotionally healthier too. Cuz it's all part of the same, thing, this mind-body-emotions connection. 

Today I need to examine how chronic toxic shame has controlled me and how much I'd like to heal from it. And one way to do that is to look it in the face, literally. My computer's camera has been freezing, as I was taking selfies for this blog. This Candid Camera catches me when I'm not posed. And the result was pretty disturbing. 

I have this pinched, grim look on my face. It looks like I'm constipated or something. Awful. And if I look like this most of the time, I feel sorry for you who have to see me. But I got to thinking that this is not the RBF of anger or irritation as it appears, but of toxic shame. Constant chronic guilt and shame have etched "scars" into my face. They've distorted my demeanor and behavior and twisted my facial features. Like an emotional acid-throwing. 

You could tell WW1 soldiers who were gassed by the scars around their eyes. Many were blinded by it.  I realize that I was "blinded" by emotional gassing from gaslighting. I couldn't see what had happened. And  these are part of the "scars" you can see around my eyes. 

My face is a tense mask because I'm never relaxed. I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't feel comfortable in my own skin because I was taught not to be. I learned early on that if there was fault or blame in a situation they were mine. That no matter what I gave it wasn't enough. I learned to be prepared for passive-aggressive anger, aggressive anger, punishment, mocking and shaming. 

I was exploited, neglected, abused, parentified and manipulated. But I was expected to just take this as part of being a "family member." Situations were convoluted and made to appear to me as normal. That everyone else was treated the same. I wasn't being singled out or bullied. That is the gaslighting. And I was continually breathing those poisonous gas fumes of till I was thoroughly poisoned and didn't question it any more. 

I just mopped up the toxic shame and guilt and internalized it. But I couldn't quite hide the fear. It seeped out in my expressions and gestures. My anxious, eager-to-please-yet-knowing-I-won't hyper vigilance showed and still shows when I'm not consciously covering it. My moves are defensive, sitting crumpled in on myself, trying to stay small and make no sudden moves. Like a terrified animal. 

But I am beginning to pry my hands off my eyes and look these terrible experiences in the face. In my face. I'm beginning to, instead, admit that I was gaslit and that I learned to auto-shame myself. No one else was being treated as I was. I wasn't a family member. I was a scapegoat, surrogate parent, surrogate spouse and servant. 

It's only been within the last month or so that I've even dared to call their behavior gaslighting. And that's because I've seen the gas "scars" on my face. For the last 58 years, 7 months, I've been hiding from horrific things that were done and said. I've blotted out the voices, the shaming, the systematic abuse, the nauseating fear. I've cushioned my memories of their appalling behavior with excuses. I've lied and assured myself that they didn't mean it. They were joking. I was exaggerating. I was too sensitive. I was too critical. yada. 

But now I'm beginning to see that as the man who become my father-in-law (God rest his soul) said when he was told about how I was treated. "That's bullshit!!" I am re-experiencing what happened without the toxic cloud of gas to obscure. I am going to write through each experience, to put them in perspective. Every time I do, I find (and am affirmed by those I share with) that I was NOT exaggerating. Neither was I at fault or to blame. Of if I was, it was a mistake or just a kid thing. It did NOT warrant the atrocious consequences I experienced. 

And that brings me to what will need to be another blog post. Nothing a person, especially a child, can do, warrants abuse, neglect, manipulation, exploitation, vicious punishment or shaming. That is just plain toxic behavior. 

Neglect, abuse, endangerment, parentification and the toxic shame trifecta

Hi friends! Today's post is going to be raw and will probably seem to have little to do with how I lost 100 pounds or weight loss at all. But it's part of how I got to such a low place emotionally. And it's how I learned that constant criticism leads to fear of reprisal leads to paranoia leads to defensiveness leads to toxic shame leads AND how reversing that pattern can lead not only to weight loss but improved mental health. 

I never wanted to admit this but I was raised by very narcissistic people. I know it seems wrong, especially in my generation, to fault our parents. But I have to be honest if I'm going to find any kind of peace of mind. They were both very paranoid, super sensitive to criticism and in denial over personal fault and also hyper critical of me, as their only child. I remember being told faulted for things I had no control over and being told "you're too sensitive" when I cried or got upset. 

Prior to my parents' divorce, life was chaotic at best. We moved all the time. There often wasn't a steady parent present. I was let to walk to school alone at 4, play unsupervised in a downtown area at 5, wander the town marina. I left behind on an island in Alaska. I was dumped at a camp with no suitcase and no understanding of what was going on or where I was at 6. Beyond the wonderful times with my grandparents, and a few good ones, I have very few memories other than scary ones. 

After my parents divorce, there was a lot of expectation and parentification placed on me as they remarried and had kids. I was co-parent to my half siblings and foster children, to please step parents and obey their unfair and ridiculous demands, to be a "good girl" to be "modest" in a home where several unmarried couples were living together. I was evicted from my bedroom so my uncle and his girlfriend could sleep there. 

I had be on my best behavior at all times, to give up and sacrifice for the family (sacrifices no one else was making), to do most all the housework, cooking and cleaning, to be a good Christian (when adults in my home were openly "living in sin"--their words back then). At 11, I had to babysit 4 special needs children 4 and under, including an infant, toddler and two physically abuse children for a week. 

What surprises me is not that I was unable to live up to these expectations but how good I got at it. My reward however was not praise or appreciation but even more parentification of siblings and expectation. Anytime a new baby entered the family, I was assigned to sleep with the baby, get up with him/her in the night and care for him/her. I basically raised my siblings. And when I became inconvenient or when the other parent wanted a share of my "help" I was shuttled to them. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

I was held under a microscope and when I "failed" retribution was swift and draconian. At 16, I was evicted from my current home for coming in an hour late. One time. I didn't drink, smoke, use drugs, fight my parents or stepparents and was very (too) biddable. I got excellent grades and kept up an after school job. I walked a mile to school rain or shine to arrive an hour early so I could work before school started. I did all my homework. I cared for siblings and family and did much more than my share of the chores. What money my grandparents had set aside for me was used by parents "for the family" (their new families). 

But that one transgression lost me my not so happy home. I had to go an live with a stranger in town. My other parent did not step up to help out. In a time where it was common for kids to drink, do drugs drop out of school, get in trouble with the law and give their parents a lot of grief, I, who played by all the rules, was the one kicked out of the house. All this would be illegal today and was then too. You can't kick a minor out of the house. But they did. This wasn't the first or last incidence of abuse, neglect or endangerment. 

Sharing this makes me feel very vulnerable. Even at 58, as a parent and grandparent myself, I question whether I exaggerated. I fear that I may not be believed. I fear reprisal and scorn. I never have confronted the issues. I feel intense toxic shame. 

But also, because I am a parent and a grandparent, I can now look at these experiences with a caring adult eye. If these experiences had happened to anyone else, I would be horrified. With objectivity, I see that I learned not only to be too obedient but to downplay a lot and defend way too much. This has distilled into toxic shame over supposed wrongs, fear of reprisal, constant paranoia that I'm failing, pathological people pleasing and PTSD dreams that torment me all night long. 

But I'm also  learning how to work through these issues, thanks to my higher power whom I call God.