My Diet Digest

Surprising Ways to Heal CPTSD from Narcissistic Parent Abuse

2026-11-05T17:48:27.290-08:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm going to share to ways to heal CPTSD that might surprise you. We will take on narcissistic parent gaslighting, parent enmeshment, trauma bonding, childhood trauma responses and other hurtful impacts of child abuse, in ways that may seem odd or even counterintuitive. But from my experience living with four narcissistic parents, I can say that they work.

Turn off the gaslighting gas.

Probably one of the worst things that narcissistic entitled, cruel, selfish parents do to kids is to gaslight them. This isn't just lying, it's deceiving and rewriting reality on an epic novel scale. Narcissists distort everything to fit their main character syndrome and to get narcissistic supply. They lie as easily as breathing. So we Adult Children of Narcissists (ACON, if you need a support group) kids grew up in a bewildering and bespoke wilderness of false FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) where our parents' hypocrisy, double standards, scapegoating, backstabbing, smear campaigns, role reversal, exploitation, future-faking, triangulation and DARVO, ruled the roost. What we as child abuse survivors need to do is to start seeing through the fog of gaslighting to the true, clean fresh air of real reality. It wasn't our fault. We were kids. It was their arrogant narcissistic fantasy. And what do we know about fantasies? They are fake.

Cut the ties that bind

Parent enmeshment weaponizes the child's natural attachment and the parent power differential to coercively control and dominate her. The enmeshed parent who is almost always also narcissistic and Machiavellian (determined to get her way whatever the cost) absorbs the helpless child into her enormous greedy egomania. The child must have no needs, wants or voice. All must funnel into this energy vampire parent. The narcissistic mother or father (in my case, both) with the hypervigilance of KGB agents, monitor and control the child over things that aren't their business then blatantly, abusively neglect basic care. They sabotage any individuation which they take as narcissistic injury. If the child so much as looks crosswise or seems to show any independence the narcissistic rage venom sprays. My malignant parents crocheted a blanket of demands and expectations to trap me, not to protect me. All this creates insane cognitive dissonance. We have to sever those ties by going no contact with enslavement and coercive control. We owe this to our little inner child who couldn't break free because it wasn't safe.

🚩 Breaking Free from Enmeshment 🚩

To get out of the enmeshment web, we first have to see it. So breaking free means seeing past betrayal blindness to the parents actively sabotaging our growth and development. Once we see it, we can begin to understand that this net isn't real. It's woven of FOG and gaslighting.

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Dissolve the Trauma Bonding glue

One of the biggest aha moments I had in my narcissistic abuse recovery was to see clearly how trauma bonding had caused my betrayal blindness. The enmeshed parents cement the child to them in a one-sided trauma bond. Using their famous gaslighting, they convince the child that they own her and owe her nothing while she is merely a possession who she owes them everything. It's the ultimate power play with parentification and infantilization plus coercive control and DIMMER They use love-bombing with manufactured FOG and hoovering followed by Devaluation and Discard. And then they repeat these insidious cruelties until the child is Ferberized, desperate for love and compliant.

💡 ☀️ Breaking Through the Toxicity ☀️ 💡

Narcissistic parents use toxicity and cruelty to dominate and control their kids. We as adults have to dissolve that toxicity. Happily we don't need more chemicals. Simple radical acceptance and awareness are the "wire cutters" that destroy our prison.

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Deny DARVO its power

Here's where we break free, or stay stuck, where the radical acceptance and awareness either lose or gain their power. Because narcissistic parents do not like autonomy in their children. They consider them possessions and how dare a spoon talk back to the cook?? If you grey rock or go no contact or just stop being so compliant and people pleasing, be prepared. If you start using your words where before you were trauma responding with fawning, groveling and soothing, plan on them taking major narcissistic insult over it. Despite bullying me all my life and me taking it with a smile, my narcissistic father and his vulnerable narcissist wife, were quick to start the crybullying and DARVO if ever I even hinted at any independence from his cloying control freak iron grip. I made the mistake of not being that prepared Boy Scout and expecting his narcissistic rage. I won't make that mistake again if ever I have to encounter my narcissistic stepfather and mother. I will stand my ground and engage only on my terms instead of letting bullies call the shots.

🛡️ ⚔️ Always Prepared & Protected 🛡️ 🪖

Dealing with narcissistic parent vengeance requires Eagle Scout levels of "always prepared." You must gird your loins for the ambushes and rages that are sure to come. But you can do it. You've done harder things than this all your life, just by surviving their abuse.

🛡️ 🪖 ⚔️

Don't JADE but also don't "forgive and forget."

There's a reason for bygones and why we shouldn't just let them be. What happened, happened. All the gaslighting in the world can't erase the scars that narcissistic parent abuse left on us. So when I finally decided to let the doors they slammed on me stay shut, I did so quietly. I won't be confronting them, having heart to hearts or forgiving them. Any "apology" I've ever gotten and they are scant, were just backhanded and not admissions of guilt. They were blame-shifting guilt traps to trick me into confessing to things I'd never done, to taking the blame and the brunt for my parents bad actions, as I'd always done. So now, I will not justify, argue or answer questions, defend or explain why I've gone no contact (or accepted that they went no contact with me). And the only regrets I have is that I was deprived of a healthy childhood and that didn't cut ties sooner.

Why you feel joy in narcissistic abuse and it's not what you think

2026-11-03T14:40:54.016-08:00

Hello my friends. Today on my childhood trauma recovery journey, I'm unpacking a bizarre phenomenon that occurs with people experiencing narcissistic abuse. And that is the positive glow they report feeling occasionally, with the narcissist, despite the ill treatment. Here's a breakdown of why you feel joy in narcissistic abuse. And it's NOT what you think.

No you're not a masochist.

Dr. Ramani just made a vlog which you really must watch, discussing these feelings of joy at being with narcissistic persecutors. She said that so many people reported periods of joy (they used that word) in narcissistic relationships. I can relate to this experience from having lived with four narcissistic parents who were frequently malignantly cruel. And yet, I often (FAR too often) felt only self-blame with none the anger a normal kid feels, let alone one who is being unfairly targeted. I felt happy and lucky to have them because they told me I should. Even when I didn't have them, even when they abandoned, endangered, severely neglected, exploited, humiliated and coercively controlled me. Does that mean I was a masochist, and a glutton for punishment? No. This was betrayal blindness, a trauma response to survive their sadistic treatment.

The Joy Dilemma

But why joy? Why do so many childhood trauma sufferers use that specific word to describe relationships with their parents? Because this is all we know of joy with sociopathic or narcissistic parents. We don't know love from pain, suffering and abuse. Fear and hurt are our normal. We have deep betrayal blindness, what I also call emotional leprosy, which makes it impossible for us to differentiate pleasure from pain. Hypervigilance, fearful fawning, chronic anxiety, looping panic attacks, sick dread and terror are our daily life. We are never relaxed and comfortable (our malignant parents make sure of that) and certainly never anything like truly joyful. We have heard others describe joy and so we think that occasionally not feeling quite so awful must be what they are referring to.

It's not reciprocity or generosity, it's bread-crumbing.

Narcissistic enmeshed parents take and steal all our selves. These self-absorbed people absorb us into them. I call them Black Hole Parents always consuming and never satisfied. And conversely, (because everything is flip-flopped) they only parse out bare minimum to string us along. This is bread-crumbing and that is not generosity or parental nurturing. It's a rationed scraps occasionally thrown to us, just to keep us alive. But we are so used to deprivation and pouring into them from our own empty cups, that it feels like a banquet. And this is not reciprocity either. My narcissistic stepmother and father demanded that I as their Broken Vending Machine Child, pay out whatever they wanted at my own expense. Yet failed to provide a basic bedroom, bed, pillow or enough to eat.

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The Broken Vending Machine Child experiences food insecurity and deprivation, while the toxic family has plenty. And yet is expected to dispense any goodies they demand of her, at her own expense.

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Why you are confused

Because narcissistic parents purposely confuse you. They lie, deceive and con, by nature. Gaslighting and DARVO (deny responsibility, attack, reverse victim offender) are their trademarks. My narcissistic mother and father wove a blanket of lies which they wound around me. This is one manifestation of parent enmeshment in which the abusive parent entraps the scapegoat child in their narcissistic fantasy cult of servitude to them. They create a parallel universe of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) in which the parentified child is made responsible for the parent. This caused me intense cognitive dissonance, emotional and even physical pain. That fact that none of this is real and that my narcissistic father and mother do not have this power, doesn't matter. My trauma brain thinks they do.

It's not joy you're feeling.

You know how when you're in great pain, having it hurt a little less feels like relief? Sometimes you may even cry. These are trauma reactions to shock which raised cortisol and adrenaline. As they subside, you are left shaky and crying tears of relief. You may even feel "high" or euphoric. That's your brain's neurotransmitter releasing an enkephalin and endorphin rush. These mood boosters are natural opioid peptides your brain sends to help you cope with intense pain. Your brain perceives narcissistic abuse with the same high alert threat level as extreme pain. This precise process happened to my husband recently when he dislocated his shoulder. The shock and pain caused this chain of events, including the "tears of relief." But it wasn't joy. It was feeling level 7 instead of level 11 pain!

It's not "Happy Families", it's trauma bonding

Narcissistic parents not only sabotage your ability to feel, they weaponize the child's natural attachment to them and exploit her love of and respect for, them. They play the fake love-bombing with Devalue and Discard Game. Then there's the hoovering you back in. They make you responsible for them when you are a dependent child and then needs-shame your natural dependence on them. They lie to and about you. It's a constant lose-lose game of hypocritical double standards and moving hoops. By setting you up to impossible standards, they assure that you will fail. And then they punish you for "failing" their impossible standards, all while legitimately failing you in the simplest and most basic necessities. This fear of failure keeps the child forever hopping through their hoops hoping to one day be good enough. This endless tug-of-war cements the child with super glue strength trauma bonding. But it's not love. It's coercive control.

And it's NOT a sign that you are wrong

This "joy" you feel isn't real. It's not lasting. It isn't the narcissistic parent suddenly turning over a new leaf. It's not that love you've so longed for. Narcissists only stop abusing when THEY get sick of it or if it's not getting them narcissistic supply. Often it's just a temporary ceasefire to keep you baited and hooked. They have to be nice sometimes or you'll see through them. Well, I say, read the red flags they are waving, now. Narcissists don't change unless it suits them and then it's only to change tactics. This is not a reason to distrust yourself or let your guard down. Going no contact was when I first began feeling anything like joy. Because now, I can begin to manage my own pain. And I know what pain and love and joy are and are not.

Bizarre CPTSD Trauma Responses from Narcissistic Parent Abuse

2026-10-30T10:29:24.196-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring bizarre trauma responses that malignant narcissists condition in their children. Using destabilization, abuse and neglect, trauma bonding and gaslighting, our coercively controlling parents brain damaged us into acting in humiliating, dysregulated knee-jerk patterns. These odd behaviors dog us adult children of narcissists all our lives.

Hijacked and Hacked Childhood

We traumatized children had our lives hijacked by parent enmeshment and coercive control. The malignant or dark tetrad parent hacks into the child's brain HTML and implants what I call "command prompt Trauma Triggers." Malignant parents passive-aggressively "wind us up" using command prompts only we recognize. We unconsciously and robotically react from our trauma brain, then they scold us for trauma reactions they bred in us. They say and do things they know will make us anxious and hypervigilant because they are the ones who trained us to. They punish us for not dancing to their tune, and mock us if we do.

Disturbing Childhood Trauma "Mind Effs"

Psychology defines trauma responses as freezing, fawning, fight and flight. From my own experience living und the regimens of four narcissistic and enmeshed parents, I've added a few more "mind effs."

Fright. Narcissists are truly terrifying to live with because they are deceitful, back-stabbing and violent over the most inconsequential things. They take narcissistic injury over non-issues and suddenly they are in a towering spiteful, vindictive narcissistic rage and you have no idea where it came from. We walk on eggshells and still they go ballistic over nothing. I have spinal and foot damage from "pretzeling" into contorted shapes to somehow appease them. This ungodly terror they instilled looks pretty weird in normal society.

Floundering. I am clumsy and stumble over nothing because I am out of balance. I could never walk confidently because my narcissistic mother and father were always springing some random chaos on me. They set up "gotcha" stings just to humiliate me. They jerked the rug out from under me on the daily. Betrayal blindness kept me from seeing that this was intentional. What parent sets their child up to fail?

Brain FOG. All this narcissistic abuse is utterly baffling. We were terrified into disturbing reflexive behaviors we didn't even realize we were doing. The narcissist gaslights the scapegoat child into obsessive compulsive preoccupation with fear of, obligation to and guilt over the self-absorbed parent. A few years ago, I was scolded for not being able to deal cards correctly. The scolder asked how I was unable to do so simple a task. Welcome to childhood trauma brain damage, buddy. It impairs everything.

Fugue state. Nothing makes sense in this narcissistic fantasy cult they created for us. There are two sets of ever changing self-serving rules. The authoritarian parents demands total control. And this looks nothing like the real world around us. No one addresses our upended reality. We experience cognitive dissonance with every step.

Flip-flopping. Insecurity has taught us never to make a decision until we get approval from high command (our Machiavellian parents). And they withhold and deprive us of basic things we need to live. And individuation is punished. And just when we do land, they move the target and scold us for not reading their minds. In the adult world, this translates to "waffling." You better believe that abused kids are indecisive. It was too dangerous not to be.

Frenetic and frenzied. Traumatized kids run on nervous, hypervigilant energy. Life moves in an unnatural fast-motion. It's a constant game of Twister trying to navigate their hoops. But no matter how fast we move it's never enough to outrun their rage.

Trauma Frowning. Our parents get narcissistic supply from confusing us. We have to take their every whim seriously yet we're scolded for being "too sensitive" "too serious" and not smiling more. Our frowns are from having to concentrate too hard on people pleasing and figuring out what they want.

Fear of Failure. This is terror like no other. I have a sick dread of my narcissistic father that borders on manic. And he's been dead for 6 years. That's how shockingly horrific emotional abuse is.

Fragility. I hurt all over, all the time from many autoimmune issues. I am exhausted and do not know how to ask for help or that it is okay to. I'm very vulnerable to toxic shaming and toxic positivity from "blind guides." I am codependent on gaslighting to narrate my reality.

Freak out. I have had full-on breaks with reality not because I am broken but because reality was broken for me by narcissistic parent gaslighting. I have fallen apart. I am fallen apart on the inside and sometimes it shows on the outside. But not as often as it should given the chaos I lived in.

Fraught. Everything narcissistic parents demand of the child, is a desperate high stakes, do or die emergency. Serving them, in the most mundane tasks, takes an insanely high precedence over all else. Just carving out time to do homework requires the strategic planning of a major engagement. Every expectation is marked urgent. While the child deprived of basics.

Fracturing. Trauma bonding with all the ick that goes with it, caused cognitive split personality. Their bread-crumbing (being strung along) and future-faking (being lied to, made promises to that were always broken) destroyed any sense of reality. The love-bombing followed by Devalue and Discard ruined us. But no matter how we resiliently rose above, stayed silent and managed, we were told we were "overreacting" and "exaggerating." When we said nothing.

The Final F

You might think my "great amen" will come in forgiveness. But I have been doing that all my life and it has just made them more arrogant and entitled. And you know what the definition of insanity is: doing the same thing and expecting different results. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. So I'm going to practice a little Alanon wisdom. I think recovery might lie in doing something different than all this insanity. I am trying to practice mindfulness and "free floating." Not rising above in some vain attempt to "be the bigger person." Not endlessly forgiving. Just letting it happen. Let them be as off as they want, and watching them burn bridges without rushing to put out the fire. That's includes letting slammed doors stay shut. I didn't go no contact with my parents that are left. I just didn't hold the door open. What they closed, stays closed. End of.

CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent coercive control

2026-10-28T10:49:06.873-07:00

Hello my friends. I'm working on childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse. Today I'm responding to a YouTube vlog by narcissism expert Dr. Ramani on the coercive control of narcissistic abuse. My entire backstory is peopled with narcissists (four parents, two bio, two step plus their children). I'm unpacking the CPTSD from this awful enslavement on this blog because it's such a huge, fraught issue that I couldn't address is fully in her channel comments.

Memo: Please, if you're dealing with childhood trauma from malignant parent abuse or narcissists in any relationship, run don't walk to Dr. Ramani's channel. She is the Shell Answer Lady on things narcissism. You will find comfort.

Dark Tetrad Parent Abuse

Narcissism is characterized by arrogance, entitlement (above-it-all-ness), selfishness, low to zero empathy and remorse and pathological lying (gaslighting). The Dark Triad adds a Machiavellian component which basically says "I can do whatever I want, no matter how abusive, to get my way." Then the Dark Tetrad adds cruelty, which is fundamental to all narcissists if they are pushed but the Dark Tetrad requires malignancy for narcissistic supply. The dark tetrad narcissistic father, like mine, "gets high on" hurting people, especially his scapegoat child. My narcissistic mother NEEDS to destabilize me to make herself feel powerful and superior.

There are two types of people: those who succeed on their own merits and those who climb on others to make themselves look taller. The dark tetrad is the latter.

Bizarre Hypocrisy of Religious Narcissist Parent

All I've just described flies in the face of Christianity. And it perfectly describes my hypocritical, two sets of rules religious narcissist parents. Yes, that's a contradiction in terms. Christians are called to be

Humble: the Christian narcissist is arrogant, bragging, cocky, sarcastic and cynical.
Merciful: the Christian narcissist is ruthless, grudge-holding, petty, malicious and unempathetic.
Contrite of heart: The Christian narcissist feels and shows no remorse. He doesn't lack it, he ignores it. He plays DARVO (denies and deflects blame, attacks, and reverses victim and offender). Instead of sorrow, he points fingers away from himself in angry resentment.
Teachable: The narcissist browbeats his children with punitive discipline, yet takes narcissistic insult if he is corrected.
Loving: The narcissistic parents withhold love while expecting god-like adoration from their children. The only love the child knows is trauma bonding.
Honor God: The religious narcissist honors only herself. She coercively controls her child into mindless obeisance too.

Existential Crisis: My parents didn't just think they were gods. They each acted like they were THE ONE TRUE God. And I believed them and disobeyed the real God, serving them. Who would you obey: an unseen entity or the malignant humans with total control of you? Yep, that's who I chose too.

Narcissism gaslights the narcissist

There is a litany of gaslighting and that narcissism itself feeds the narcissist. It paints a false narcissistic fantasy in which the narcissist is the supreme cult leader. It uses self-serving lies which the gullible dark tetrad already wants to believe.

Arrogant self-righteousness tells the narcissists that she is always right even when she is doing dead wrong things. That she is above all normal human rules.
Entitlement beguiles the dark tetrad with delusions of grandeur, that she is endlessly owed whatever she wants and that she owes no one anything. Even her child.
Parent enmeshment dazzles her with promises that child is a possession not a person. That mother should sabotage any boundaries and violate privacy with a hypervigilant monitoring. Not to keep the child safe, but to control.
Parentification lulls the parent into a false sense of security that she is not held to normal parent expectations. That she must always be pampered by her child who is actually her parent.
Machiavellianism promises the narcissistic dad that he can should do whatever he wants to get his way. No holds barred. No low is too low.
Sadism tells the parent that it feels good to hurt the child, that the child had it coming and that this is for her own good. It says ( and this is heretical I can hardly write it) that God wants the parent to abuse the child.

The Nightmare Web of Coercive Control

The parent uses an evil bag of tricks and mind games to force the child into a destabilized place so she will be desperate and compliant. The parent randomly aims fear arrows to trigger the child. Just when the child starts to feel a little safety or predictability, WHUMP, another arrow lands. And the child's trauma responses activate. Fawning from FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), freezing, fixing and what I call pretzeling. The child twists herself into painful contortions to try and be whatever the parent demands at that moment. I have spinal damage from this. The malignant parent

Abuses the child in odd, often hidden ways. My stepfather mocked my breast size as a child, and my mother looked on approvingly.
Neglects and withholds necessities or makes them transactional (I was told I stay with my dad and narcissistic stepmother only on conditions of doing any and all chores they set me to).
Trauma bonding: The parent wields an arsenal of weapons against the child to create an unnatural codependency.

Natural attachment is punished then exploited in a Cat and Mouse game.
Power differential becomes a stick to beat the child with.
Bread crumbing: The parent feeds the child just enough for survival, but not enough to satisfy. Because the child is dependent for needs, this strings her along.
Love-bombing: This mind eff makes the child think for once she has earned the love she desires. But it's just for show and to make her compliant.
Future faking: Lying. Making and breaking promises to boost trust and create betrayal blindness while doing exactly as the irresponsible parent wants.

Triangulation and smear campaigns. Lying to and about the child to pit people against her. Whether people actually believed my parents or not, I couldn't know. All I knew was no one was speaking or standing up for me. It was all just swept under the rug.
Child endangerment. When a parent purposely leaves or puts a child in gratuitously unsafe situations with unsafe people, it creates cognitive dissonance and terror-induced brain damage.
Child abandonment. Leaving the child alone, or with strangers, is one of the most disturbing things a parent can do. Mine gaslit me that they were "doing God's work" while I was playing alone downtown in a strange city at 5.

Gestalt and Bespoke Abuse

The whole effect of all these experiences of abuse is greater than the sum of the parts. Which is already a hell of a lot and way too much for the child brain to come to terms with. This bespoke abuse is tailor-made to the individual child. All of my natural, healthy inclinations and abilities were destroyed as much as was possible for them. My empathy was utilized to make me loyal and silent. My self-esteem was sabotaged so that I was insecure, ashamed and self-loathing. Self-care was punished. Individuation was shamed and scorned. And they never admitted to any of it. Which weirdly is where my salvation comes.

"You're lucky, we're good parents."

The fact that these abusive parents actually told me that I was so fortunate to have them, is the red flag I needed to see. Good parents don't preen themselves and use their parenting as a way to shame the child. This shows the gaslighting loud and clear. The fact that they had to create a slippery slope, comparing themselves to people who actually did care for their kids, says they live in lies. And then there are the passive-aggressive digs that I wasn't properly grateful for all they'd done for me. This made me see that it was always ever about my obligation to them, with no reciprocity. They purposely didn't keep a roof over my head, let alone provide a proper bed, bedroom, consistent food on the table, shoes, clothing, medical care, etc. I was the silent homeless "latchkey kid" without a key, before there were words for it. And that doesn't start to cover all the heavy burdens of housework, childcare, lack of privacy put on me.

The Ultimate Coercive Control Horror

All this chaos, gaslighting and trauma has left me with permanent brain damage of that FOG I mentioned. I still live in ungodly terror of my dad and stepmom and they've been gone for 6 years. I had to go no contact with my mom because of the physical, emotional and sexual abuse she and her ex put me through. And I still live in shame for that, even though I didn't go no contact as much as simply allow the doors they slammed on me to stay shut. You may ask, what are you afraid of? And I answer, damned if I know. It's is visceral, gut-level baffling but utterly real. Or real feeling. It is a sucker punch they keep landing on me. I trauma nightmare about it every night.

The Pandora's Box Reveal.

If you identify with this parent-caused trauma, I'm so sorry. I have a feeling that too many of you are vigorously nodding your heads in agreement and that sucks. But out of this Pandora's Box, there is one small fairy of hope and she can light our path. Her beacon shows that no matter how real their reign of terror felt, it was fake. They did NOT hold the power they seemed to. They were not gods. They were cowardly playground crybullies. That fear that we felt, was simply a survival trauma response. We never owed them our lunch money. It was just all a mirage. They were just, like Scooby-Doo says, "a man in a mask." They cannot hurt us now. And no, we didn't "let them hurt us" then. We never signed up for this. We just got shoved into it when we were too young and helpless to understand. Where we go from here is now up to us. I'm practicing pushing past the pain and discomfort. I'm doing hard new things that are helping. I'm faking courage till I make it.

Love always, mar.

CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse requires new behaviors that are not trauma responses

2026-10-27T08:55:13.768-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I am exploring healthy new behaviors that are not trauma responses. Also called trauma reactions, these unhealthy behaviors include fawning, freezing, fighting, fleeing and another one that I add, fixing (people pleasing, absorbing consequences of and making excuses for others' hurtful actions). And for me, change begins with radical acceptance that the gaslighting of narcissistic abuse was really potent by not real.

Childhood Trauma Bonding Begets Trauma Responses

Every time I unpack a new concept related to narcissistic parent abuse, I begin by explaining the trauma bonding sequence. This is to remind us both how these dangerous trauma reactions came into play. The parent plays a treacherous Cat and Mouse game of love-bombing (fake shows of affection), bread crumbing (stringing the traumatized child along), future faking (systematically making and breaking promises) followed by random Devalue and Discard for no reason. The malignant parent does this to break the child and make her anxious, hypervigilant and codependent, always chasing the parent for love. The child learns that love is conditional and must be earned WHILE ALSO being expected to give love and respect unconditionally to people who have not earned it and do not give it.

New behavior to practice. Respond with love and respect only as merited. To anyone else, just maintain cool aloofness or go no contact. I'm learning to match energy, to stop indulging selfish arrogance and start investing it only in relationships where it is reciprocal.

The False Reality of Parent Enmeshment

I use the terms enmeshed parent and narcissistic parent somewhat interchangeably because selfish, arrogant parents are also enmeshed in their children's lives. Not with safety nets that protect us. They strangle us with the distorted narcissistic fantasy they indoctrinated us with. My narcissistic mother and father literally taught me that I didn't matter, that self-care was selfish. Needs were shamed. And being the Broken Vending Machine Child I was parentified to tend to and provide for my parents as if they were my children, with no reciprocity of basic things normal parents are supposed to provide. Individuation was punished and I was force fed gaslighting that my one job was to serve my narcissistic father and mother and any new people they chose to force on me, after they divorced.

New Behavior to Practice: I need to stop following my Machiavellian parents' self-serving agenda. I need to cut those unsafe ties that bind. I need to see that this FOG never existed and was as insubstantial as vapor. I need to go no contact with fawning and people pleasing.

The Divorced Child and the Black Hole Parent

The natural attachment in the parent-child dynamic only tie one way. Malignant narcissist parents (and they are all malignant if they don't get their way) cut ties and go no contact with their children at birth, as regards anything they owe the child. However the same parent who have shut her out, also trauma bond this "divorced child" to them with distortions, lies, deceptions and FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). They paint a bizarre gaslit reality of double standards, two sets of rules and god complex entitlement. The trauma bonded child is owned, ever-owing and obligated to the demanding never-satisfied Black Hole Parents while also being owed nothing by them.

New behavior to practice: I have to stop dysfunctional trauma responding by endlessly trying to please unpleasable people. I need to please myself and those with whom respect and giving is a two-way street. Without reciprocity in relationships, one person will always give too much good and accept too much bad, while the other gives too little good and too much bad.

The End Game of Destabilization

My narcissistic parents withheld, stole or sabotaged everything for me. That included security, shelter, a bed, food and clothing. I (and only I) experienced homelessness, child abandonment, food insecurity, medical neglect, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, among other things. I was sick and tired all the time, too tired to enjoy simple things other kids had. I was told that "we" were poor and yet I saw everyone else, including my parents, their new spouses and kids, with more than enough. Childhood poverty was for me and me alone. The ultimate end game was destabilization through invalidation, narcissistic abuse and coercive control. Because a stable child threatens the dark tetrad parent's reign of terror.

New Behavior to practice: I need to get out and stay out of the path of destabilizers. I need to use radical acceptance that they will never be anything other than dangerous. I need to practice confidence to walk firmly steer clear of dangers by heeding the red flags.

Narcissistic parents abuse creates OCD and addiction in children of narcissists

2026-10-24T11:58:16.436-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery, I'm exploring how narcissistic parent abuse creates OCD and addiction plus an unnatural codependency in adult children of narcissists. This is a similar yet opposite addiction to the parents' addiction to narcissistic supply. Self-centered, arrogant control-obsessed parents engender an equal and opposite trauma reaction toward compulsive behavior in their children. Because everything is an ironic paradox with flip-flopped self-serving double standards in the narcissist parent-child dynamic.

Parent Enmeshment Paradox

To begin to understand the narcissistic parent, we have to understand parent enmeshment and all the entails for the adult child of narcissists. Some might disagree but in my experience the narcissistic parent is also the enmeshed parent who sees her children merely as extensions of herself. In her narcissistic fantasy, the child exists merely to get her what she wants, whatever narcissistic supply looks like for her. The parent doesn't just discourage individuation and boundary setting, she actively sabotages it. Because a separate autonomous child threatens the cult leader parent. Independence causes narcissistic insult (ego injury).

The Emptied Child and the Black Hole Parent

The Black Hole Parent is one endless well of needs, wants, demands with expectation that the child will fulfill every one. Using role reversal and gaslighting, my narcissistic father adultified me, the child (this is coerces the child into filling adult roles). This immature baby-man co-opted my birthright to childhood. There is also spousification and parentification in which the endlessly demanding and irresponsible parent makes the child parent her while also playing the part of spouse and partner to the parent. The child is indoctrinated in eternal FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) toward the parent with the entire child being emptied into the Black Hole Parent. This manufactured obligation causes hypervigilance, trauma responses and cognitive dissonance in the child.

Out-of-Control Control Freak paradox

The malignant narcissist (and all narcissists can be malignant if they don't get their way) lives to dominate. The narcissistic mother is an emotional BDSM dominatrix, an energy vampire that feeds off her victims. She is an anarchist in her own behavior and a fascist issuing commands to others. She wantonly and recklessly refuses to exercise self-control and ruthlessly and coercively controls her child. In her god complex, she believes she writes the rules and can change like a tyrannical dictator anytime it suits. This causes constant anxiety and panic attacks in the ever fawning child who is struggling just to navigate the parent-dictated chaos and confusion.

Narcissistic supply addiction

Weaponizing the child's natural attachment and wielding the parent power differential like a whip, is how the dark tetrad parent obtains her narcissistic supply hit. She uses random ambushes of narcissistic rage to keep the child off balance. The narcissistic parent gets high on destabilizing the child. It makes her feel powerful, untouchable, golden, bulletproof. Each time the parent takes a hit, however, it satisfies less, like a drug. My narcissistic dad needed to go to greater lengths to get the same buzz. And to get high, he had to stoop lower each time. Which meant doing increasingly more damaging things to me, his scapegoat child. Both my narcissistic parents and their spouses enjoyed humiliating and watching others humiliate me. And that got more malicious with time till it was sociopathic.

Trauma Bonded Codependency

They were addicted to sadism, and I became addicted as it were to masochism. Not by choice, but necessity. I was groomed to let people hurt me. Self-care was punished. Needs were shamed while I was expected to dispense their wants like the Broken Vending Machine Child I was. I was made sick and debilitated by medical neglect and child endangerment. They played Cat and Mouse with me by future-faking and bread-crumbing with a dash of love-bombing tossed in to confuse me. But always followed by the Devalue and Discard mind f*ck. Being a child, I was naturally dependent on them and they exploited that by abandoning me for just because it was Tuesday. I developed a codependency in that I had to pursue them just for basic needs while they played hard to get. All this gaslighting and gassing left scars of betrayal blindness on my eyes.

OCD and addiction in adult children of narcissists

The Adult Child of Narcissists grows up chasing the perfection demanded of him by his exploitative parents. But of course, perfection is a bitch of a taskmaster. My parents were never responsible, reliable, caring, ethical or even moral. Yet they demanded rigid militaristic devotion and exemplary behavior from me. All my fawning and people pleasing just made them more entitled. Even when I achieved it, it was never enough because they moved the targets to keep me insecure and desperate to please them. I became obsessive compulsive about doing everything just so. I became almost superstitious, having to count and recount, check and recheck. They set me to impossible tasks and so did I. And my trauma nightmares reveal the futility of it all. All night long I dream about having to do impossible things without resources and obviously, failing because the expectations are unachievable. The nightmares themselves have become compulsive as I try and fail and try and fail.

Will the real obsession please stand up?

It's probably no surprise that I suffer from Imposter Syndrome. My parents stole my identity and sabotaged my sense of self. I don't know who I am because they gaslit me into thinking I was a problem instead of a person. They taught me that I didn't occasionally, like any normal person, do wrong, I WAS wrong. And they being narcissists were always right and if they weren't it was my fault. The Narcissist's Prayer was their creed. What I realized is that all this obsessive, addicted chasing was not about perfection it was about love and respect, identity, personhood. I believed, wrongly, that if I could just get it right for once, I would be able to "earn their love." As if a child has to. Well now I see, I got it right a lot more often than I thought. Much more often than such a brain damaged child should. And still it did no good.

But you can't pour from an empty or fill a black hole.

💡💡Stepping away from, instead of over, the edge.

Because all the love, care, devotion and self I poured into them, would never be enough. Because THEY were never enough, not me. I tried to keep pouring even though my cup dried out ages ago. So I gave up. I had to. It was killing me. And not after irreparable scars and pain. I didn't go no contact. I let the door they slammed on me, stay shut. And now, childhood trauma recovery, not pointless people pleasing is my agenda. Amen.

CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse: Ending gaslighting by turning off the gas

2026-10-23T12:28:54.558-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'll share some "aha moments" about parent gaslighting, I had after I turned off the gas of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). That's when I was able to see not loving parents but fat, malignant spiders spinning webs of lies. These dangerous hypocrisies forced me to go no contact with the two of my four dark tetrad parents that are left: my narcissistic mother and her ex-husband.

💡You can't be wrong all the time.

Part of the gaslighting my narcissistic father, mother, stepmother and stepfather indoctrinated me with is that I was always in the wrong. It was the only thing they agreed on, that Marilisa was the cause of all their problems. I don't know who beside them actually believed this DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) nonsense, but I certainly did. And when people don't speak up for you against your abusive parents' neglect, child abandonment, endangerment, parentification, scapegoating, exploitation and constant toxic shaming, you think they believe it too. Silence implies consent. Some become flying monkeys with their haranguing toxic positivity and victim-shaming. But here's the lightbulb that just went on in my head:

Mutually exclusive contradictions light the path.

It was the paradoxical nature of these mutually exclusive contradictions that made me see. Each of these malignant narcissists scapegoated me. These toxic authority figures (note I don't say parents because they didn't care for me in any normal sense of the word) had a retort for everything I did or said. My dad said I was "too sensitive" and "couldn't take criticism" but also "too critical" of them. I was expected to take their demands very seriously always but was also told to "lighten up" and smile more often. I kept quiet on my own achievements and applauded my mom's grandiosity, I covered for her exhibitionist histrionics yet she said I was an attention-seeking showoff. If anything bad happened or anyone was mad, it was ALWAYS my fault. Right was wrong for me and wrong was right for them. There was no winning. But they took that blame-shame bucket to the scapegoat well one too many times. And that's how I finally figured it out.

The Devil is in the double standards

In the very excessiveness of their behavior, the generalizations, the always-never double standards, I saw the parents for who they really were, arrogant, entitled, remorseless, self-serving control freak hypocrites living in one big narcissistic fantasy who would do anything to protect it. They had to always kick me under the bus to cover the deception. I was just narcissistic supply for them. My narcissistic stepfather and mother, got off on humiliating vulnerable people. My dad and narcissistic stepmother were terribly neglectful, abusive and exploitative toward me. They targeted me over the most ridiculous things because they could never admit to being wrong, so someone had to be. But that stopped working for them when their scapegoat child caught on.

Impossible illogical fallacies

My enmeshed parents (who used me as a prop as well as a target) would make excuses for themselves all the time. They took narcissistic insult at any suggestion they were wrong. When they were caught in big ticket items like child abuse, procuring abortions (as pro-lifers) adultery, scamming, pedophilia, they had justifications a mile long. They'd blow it off, saying "no one is perfect" or my Bible beater dad's favorite "it's covered by the blood." Ironically, they would also entrap me in situations and then mercilessly attack. They would set me up to watch me fall. And trauma bonded me, fell for it. My betrayal blindness hid the fact that they were Machiavellian ruthless agent provocateurs. Then anything I did or said (and trauma response fawning made sure I kept quiet) was spun as defending myself. Even though I never did or said boo. I was too scared. They recklessly lied, twisted, gaslit and deceived and made sure I took the consequences of their actions on myself.

Freaking mental Game of Cat and Mouse Trauma Bonding

Parent enmeshment is contradictory and purpose-built. They hate being so dependent on the child for narcissistic supply and punish her. Everything they do is underhanded and self-serving. The parent wields the power differential like a knife that cuts one way, not to guide but to control the child. They weaponize her natural attachment to them, against her. They use bread-crumbing, future-faking and love-bombing to tenderize her. Then they randomly but strategically Devalue and Discard to groom her to think she did something wrong. This trauma bonding makes her desperate to get back in their good graces. They purposely violate her privacy and crash her boundaries to make her nervous and hypervigilant. Life is endless fraught spaces with two sets of ever-shifting rules I could never succeed at. Because just when I got it right, they changed the rules. They bound me up to burdens they didn't carry. They put a millstone around my neck and pushed me over the edge.

Destabilized to sabotage

I see now why in the narcissistic cult family they had to be so chaotic, hypocritical and unpredictable. My arrogant parents had to stay one jump ahead to retain this imagined moral high ground. They had to gaslight me with bullshit to preserve the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) I felt toward them. They had to undermine me to make sure I stayed blindly subservient. Those comebacks they had for me, felt rehearsed because they were. They had a litany, much like the Narcissist's Prayer. And that narcissistic abuse was bespoke specifically to destabilize me and sabotage any hope of escape or individuation.

Childhood Trauma Recovery Means Going Back to Square One

Once you uncover one parent lie, no matter how innocently you discover it, the entire fabric is compromised. Especially if it is a lie that hurt or framed you unfairly. Narcissistic parents deceive to protect their false image at your expense. So it's like ants: where there's one, there will be more. They lie to cover past lies they told. Here's a breakdown of the many ways narcissists lie and the reasons they do lie. And that's how gaslighting works. It creates a web of deceit. And like a web, it traps you so the spider can suck the life out of you. Healing begins when you recognize that what you believed, trusted, put your hope in, worked for, was a tangle of lies. Then healing continues when you start over, rewriting your truth correctly, reparenting yourself as you should have been parented. I wish you well and will hold space for you as you do.

Healing CPTSD from narcissistic parent enmeshment of parentification and spousification

2026-10-20T12:53:35.877-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) recovery, I'm digging deeper into child abuse from parentification, spousification and adultification. A narcissistic parent creates a toxic family system where children play roles to serve the parents rather than live authentic, individuated lives. And three very bizarrely contradictory child roles narcissists coerce the child into are that of adult, spouse and also parent.

Narcissistic parents break every rule of parenting.

They flip-flop everything normal parents do. Everything is done for narcissistic supply rather than care of the child. They future fake to build trust then they break promises. They exploit the child's natural attachment to them into trauma bonding. They play cat and mouse with her, by bread crumbing (giving her just enough of what she needs to keep her compliant) and love-bombing (showering her with performative shows of affection to throw her off guard.)Then they play the discard and devalue game to make her desperate win them back. Narcissists weaponize the logical parent power differential into coercive control, not to keep the child safe but to destabilize her. They demand all good from her and deprive her of necessities to wear her down. They lie and distort everything so the child develops betrayal blindness. Then they DARVO spinning the story that the child is the problem and they are the victims. Do this enough and you have one very confused, beaten down, pliable child.

Malignant narcissistic parents tenderize the child like a steak, wounding her and then rubbing salt in the wounds.

Narcissist parent gaslighting around child roles

Children are not people to dark tetrad parents. We were owned possessions and cat's paws. Narcissists create a false reality for their children regarding roles that the child expected to play. The child is just supporting cast in their main character narcissistic fantasy. They hypocritically use words like duty, family loyalty and responsibility which mean one thing for the irresponsible parent and the opposite for the hypervigilant over-responsible child. They set the child to inappropriate tasks. They demand that she do for them things that they should be doing for her. They place unfair expectations on her. They instill a pervasive FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to carry the mental load for them. Narcissistic parents expect children to act and think like adults while the grownups behave like immature, selfish brats. That is the adultification, as I call it.

Parent enmeshment and role reversal

The enmeshed parent cares only about getting her way, having her needs met and wishes granted. She violates privacy and tramples on the child's boundaries. What she tells the child is that she loves him so and that's why she's so "devoted" to him. But what she shows him is that he does not exist outside her. I did not know where my parents ended and I began. Or if I even did. My narcissistic father indoctrinated me that I was to put everyone else ahead of myself. That self-care was selfish. What he meant was that he and my narcissistic stepmother should come first, last and always. Then my enmeshed mother punished any individuation on my part while she went no contact with me whenever she chose. I was owned and always owing them. She and my narcissistic stepfather used, abused and gaslit me that they owed me nothing. I was made to parent them like spoiled, whiny babies. Then I was made to parent all of their children. This is parentification.

Spousification

This is what I call it when a parent expects the child to be a spouse and partner rather than a dependent. They groom the child to treat mommy like a girlfriend. They share inappropriate sexual things with the child. My mother forced me to listen to sex stories. They rely on the child to provide adult support. My parents made me do gratuitously heavy housework as a young child, even though I had a debilitating spinal problems like congenital hip dysplasia and scoliosis. I had to co-sleep with their babies even the four special needs kids under 5, in my mother's foster care home. I had to work unpaid doing caregiving and cleaning tasks in my dad's adult foster care home that I just learned were illegal for me as a 14 y/o to do. I did chores that no one else had to or would not have done if I wasn't there to do them. My mother dumped all her woes on me like a therapist. She even did this a few times to my best friend, age 11.

Parent Enslavement

I think the root of all this crazy bass-ackwardness is that narcissists enslave their children, emotionally, physically, mentally, all of it. And mine enslaved me to anyone they decided to shove on me, no matter how dangerous that person was. They accomplished this by scapegoating, abuse and neglect, endangerment, child abandonment, humiliation, invalidation, toxic shaming, triangulation and other destabilizing tactics. I did not think, eat, sleep breathe anything but them. I was their Broken Vending Machine Child dispensing all that was demanded of me with no remuneration or reciprocity.

Narcissists do things to their children not for them.

I just listened to a vlog by Dr. Ramani discussing how narcissists do things to people (hurt, abuse) while loving people do things for others, to help them. I would sum up my relationship with my parents with this polarity. They did things TO me while I did things FOR them. I carried, nurtured, slaved for, supported, affirmed, loved them. And they antagonized, attacked, shamed, criticized, embarrassed, punished, harassed and hurt me. Is that a too broad generalization? I only wish it was.

Healing CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse requires breaking rules

2026-10-17T18:03:37.317-07:00

Hello my friends. Childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse is a long, complicated and often rocky road. Today I'm exploring how healing CPTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) means breaking rules our toxic family system laid down for us. And this can be very frightening because adult children of narcissists (ACON) were indoctrinated in FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). Our one job was to keep them topped up on narcissistic supply, no matter how much it hurt us. We perfected the art of people pleasing and dancing attendance on our enmeshed parents. Even as adults, the thought of violating their rules, no matter how harmful and hypocritical they were, fills us with dread.

I would rather stay in the misery of narcissistic abuse than do something to displease them. Yet displeasing the narcissistic parent is exactly what I have to do, to get well.

Not all Rules are Good

So we know that the world operates better when there are restrictions and protocol to follow. This includes family systems where parameters keep people safe and secure. However in families governed by narcissism and parent enmeshment, the rules are biased in favor of the narcissistic father or mother. (I had four narcissistic parents.) The only thing that matters to the parent is getting their way no matter how dangerous what they want is or who they harm in the process. These parents set unsafe rules that damage rather than guide their children.

I did not know where my parents stopped and I began or if I even did. I was a human doing for them, not a human being. I was owned by them and also owed them all. I had nothing. No self. No individuality. Nothing.

Sociopathy and Narcissism Violate the Natural Order

Narcissism is characterized by arrogance, entitlement, ruthlessness, deceit and greed or selfishness. Narcissists believe only they matter. They are the main character in their own narcissistic fantasy. Everyone else exists as props and support crew. So when they become parents, narcissists expect the child will do, be, provide for them. They do not see themselves as having a duty of care to the child. Sociopathic or malignant narcissists or dark tetrads add the elements of cruelty and Machiavellianism. (doing whatever it takes to get what you want). They use very harmful methods of obtaining it: coercive control, gaslighting, intimidation, parentification, humiliation, narcissistic rage and child exploitation.

Narcissistic and enmeshed parents are the real rule breakers

Parent Enmeshment is the result of unbridled arrogant entitlement. Enmeshed parents see themselves as the center of the universe. Everyone else exists to serve them. They blur lines between them and their children. The child is a thing to be used. The scapegoat child or what I call the Broken Vending Machine Child is expected to dispense anything the parent wants with no reciprocity. These parents violate boundaries, punish individuation and disrespect privacy. They exercise no self-control and behave in reckless, irresponsible ways YET they maintain rigid Draconian control over their children. They exploit the parent power differential not to teach but to manipulate the child. They micromanage the most inconsequential things BUT at same time, provide no safety or security. It's all and only about power and control.

Narcissists all about BDSM

Emotional bondage, domination and sadomasochism are hallmarks of malignant narcissism. They control for the sake of feeling powerful. They get narcissistic supply off domination. And it is a form of sexual power too. Narcissists have a bent toward exhibitionism and histrionic personality. They crave attention. All four of my narcissistic parents loved humiliating me in front of people. My narcissistic father would make passive-aggressive snide comments and my narcissistic mother once threw a pie in my face for laughs. These are not nice people. They are sick, twisted deviants who abuse children. This violates every rule of the parent-child relationship in unspeakably disastrous ways. It is a direct cause of CPTSD.

Narcissist parents are anarchists and fascists

The sociopathic narcissist is an anarchist regarding their own behavior. Anything goes for them, because they believe they are above the rules. My narcissistic mother behaved in shockingly immoral, unethical and illegal behaviors. She preaches against abortion but took a girl to have one and I believe had an abortion herself. She sees nothing wrong with that. She had frequent adulterous affairs. But she also calls herself a Christian minister (she is not ordained but she thinks she is). She believes she is entitled to lay down rules for others which she has no intention of following herself. She was a fascist dictator as a parent to me. I was kicked out of their home at 16 for coming in 15 minutes late. I was routinely smacked across the face for "sassing" but I have no memory of saying anything. Childhood trauma responses had taught me only fawning and people pleasing.

Breaking Unhealthy Rules is Healthy

You know the old saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend?" It works the same with immoral, unsafe, unhealthy rules. Violating them reverses the double negative and puts priorities back in logical order. And hypocritical double standards nullify themselves and render them worthless. If you're in a situation like this, think back to the two sets of rules your parents set. Were they there to keep you safe or keep you compliant? Were there reasonable and logical consequences or harsh punishment? Did they practice what they preached? If not, those "rules" may be just more chains to keep you under their thumb.

Some dangerous rules narcissists set

Here are some examples of spoken and unspoken rules mine set for me. And regarding the unspoken ones, very often what that meant was that rules changed on a whim, to suit them. Then I wasn't told until I "violated" one. An example is that I was loaded down with unfair, discriminatory and as history would prove, illegal chores. Being made to work unpaid in my dad's adult foster care home at 14, was illegal. I was forced as a young teen to co-sleep with babies and young children. Then my dad and narcissistic stepmom would add even more work, not tell me and then get mad if I didn't do them. It was a constant "guess what I'm thinking" game. Another was children must neither be seen nor heard. So any positive attention I got, sent them into narcissistic injury and retaliation mode. Oh and I was 19 when they set that one. Parentified and made to raise their kids and work like a skivvy for them but infantilized and treated like an idiot.

How to know which rules are unsafe

Dangerous rules include things like keeping secrets about child abuse and neglect. The self-absorbed parent uses a lot of toxic shaming language like "you're too sensitive" or "showing off for attention." So their rules will feel like ways to keep you quiet because they are. The rules also will make no sense or seem to have a hidden agenda. My dad moved me out of my room to sleep in a tiny room with my infant brother because my stepmother didn't want to deal with him. He then got into a rage and began hitting me because he said I wasn't showing proper humility about being moved out randomly. I had no idea what he was talking about as I had just quietly complied as always. I think he knew this was a stupid idea and he was mad at his wife. So the "rules" will have a surprise sting in the tail. My unemployed lazy abusive stepfather set a ridiculous curfew for me, then when I was 15 minutes late because I didn't have a ride, I was kicked out of the house. Which wasn't suitable anyway, having only two bedrooms and five people. I think he was looking for an excuse to evict me. They are always unfair and apply only to you. I had mountains of chores while my dad's sons had none. I had to be respectful and obedient to the other children while they were disrespectful of me.

Breaking Rules is Breaking Free

These aren't legitimate rules we are breaking so much as bonds that kept us tied to them. Trauma bonding caused betrayal blindness and also bondage blindness. Using coercive control, gaslighting, DARVO (deny attack reverse victim offender) along with bread-crumbing and future-faking and devalue and discard my parents created a terrifyingly fraught world where fear and subservience were my only options. But that world did not exist. And they did not actually have the power they wielded over me. It was all part of their narcissistic fantasy cult. It certainly felt real though.

The only way out is out

I have decided to let doors they slammed on me, stay closed. Which in common parlance is going no contact. I think of it as issuing a metaphorical restraining order in which I set boundaries around what I will and won't do anymore. They can do whatever they want, think what they want. I don't care. They can send their flying monkeys and play their family mobbing games. And I can go no contact with them too. I'm done being their Broken Vending Machine Child. Broken works both ways, no payout and no refund.

Surprising tips on Childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse

2026-10-16T16:49:46.000-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery journey I'm going to share some tips to heal from narcissistic parent abuse, that may surprise you. I've experienced narcissistic abuse, neglect, toxic shaming, invalidation, exploitation, scapegoating, abandonment, endangerment and gaslighting about it all, by four parent authority figures with various forms of sociopathy and malignant narcissism.

Healing CPTSD with poetry

I've got another blog called The Writer's Garden (you can click that link to be taken to it). Writing poetry helps me process the grief, anger, confusion and pain of childhood trauma in a creative format. Offering it online, to be read by others gives my inner child a voice she never had living with narcissistic and enmeshed parents. Narcissistic abuse tells a child that her needs and wants don't matter, only those of the entitled, arrogant, self-centered parents. They use coercive control, intimidation, humiliation and FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to shame her into silence. Writing my story in narrative form on this blog helps me understand it in technical terms. Writing it in poetry gives it a three-dimensional visualization. I can't explain exactly what I mean but suffice it to say both forms of writing are therapeutic.

Art therapy for Adult Children of Narcissists

ACON (Adult Children of Narcissists) have struggled not only to be heard but also seen as anything but a prop in our narcissistic parent's main character fantasy play. Our one purpose was to be narcissistic supply without any autonomy or individuation. And too often, enablers and flying monkeys seemed to approve and support our parent perpetrators by victim shaming us. They all created false images of reality with DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) in which we were problem. Creating graphic art repaints their gaslit version correctly. Art can be a vehicle to show not only us but the abuse we suffered clearly.

You can't gaslight art. It shows and tells truths that all the trauma bonding and betrayal blindness can't hide.

Singing in the pain

You probably see where I'm going with these childhood trauma healing tips, and that is how art, whether written, graphic or performing, can be a recovery tool. Singing, playing a musical instrument, dancing and even acting in theatre are helpful in many ways. Performing arts provide a channel for the pent-up energy from trauma responding especially freezing and fawning. It gives our tendency toward hypervigilance a healthier focus. And it puts positive attention on us, instead of always on our attention-seeking parents.

Be Aware and Beware

Having said that about attention being given to us, know that narcissistic parents do not like being outshone. They're great performers but a poor audience. They soloists, not choir members. Not that you are trying to compete with or steal their limelight. They're jealous, competitive and take others' success as a narcissistic insult (or ego injury). My narcissistic father loved playing his violin, expected to be asked to play everywhere he went and got pouty if he wasn't. Yet when I was singing privately, in the bathroom he told me to quit showing off. He couldn't be bothered to come to performances of a music group I started. Then when I invited him to join, he took over and kicked me out saying I had no talent, yet still expected me to attend and applaud his performances with that group. He has never once said a kind thing about any success I've had and has found a way to attack, belittle or insult me. I don't recall him ever complimenting me. He said he was afraid I'd get a big head. Then he said I was too sensitive and couldn't take constructive criticism (which was always destructive shaming). Meanwhile this arrogant, insensitive man was incredibly oversensitive to the faintest hint of reproof. But knowledge is power. Now that you know your parent is jealous of you, don't feed him any data to use against you. Grey rock. Keep your own secrets. Don't go looking to him for advice or affirmation. He will always undermine you. And for heaven's sake, keep singing.

Protect yourself

What narcissists can't steal they sabotage, including your innocence, personhood, childhood and joy if you let them. Children of sociopathic narcissists learn very young, to be neither seen nor heard. There's no room for anyone else in the narcissistic fantasy spotlight. The child is merely a tool to get them what they want at no personal cost. If you do get paid positive attention, they will ruin it with mocking, humiliation, exhibitionism, dirty tricks and cheap theatrics. They will get the attention on them no matter what they have to do. My narcissistic mother wore nightgowns to family celebrations and lied that she didn't get enough to eat, just to get pity and keep eyes on her. She yells AMEN and PRAISE THE LORD loudly when visiting other people's churches where they don't do that. She even upstaged her deceased brother at his own funeral. You can't have nice things, like sanity or a new car, around envious narcissists because they will destroy them if you let them. Don't let them. Don't invite them to things they'll just ruin. Go no contact if you have to. Don't support their habit. If they have run-ins (which narcissist frequently do) don't hurry to take their side. Set boundaries around what you will do and not do if they act up. They can be idiots all they want but you don't have to be their fall guy. Don't JADE (justify, argue, defend or explain). Just do you.

Turn off the gas.

Four gaslighting tactics a narcissistic parent uses against the child are parent enmeshment (blurring boundaries between you and them, teaching you that they own you and you owe them), parentification (making children responsible for them) infantilization (overcontrolling and treating the child like she is inept. My parents did both, parentifying and while also rigidly controlling me) need shaming and triangulation (targeting and pitting people against the child). All of these form an inaccurate sense of self. And the first step to see the inaccuracies and correct them. Children are individuals not parent extensions. They don't have a debt of obligation to parents. Parents are obligated to care for their children. The child is always the child. But not childish. Needs are not wrong and self-care is not selfish. If you feel targeted or set up to fail, you probably are. Limit their access to you. They don't have buy-in on your life.

Leave the Egg on and Pie in the Face

But making themselves the center of attention sometimes backfires. Once, I was having a nice time with my children at my mother's work party we were invited to. And out of the blue, in front of everyone, she threw a pie in my face and laughed hysterically. My narcissistic stepfather joined in because he loves embarrassing people. No one else laughed. And it was her turn to have egg on her face. Then when she was chastised by her boss, she and her husband threw a narcissistic rage fest and blamed me. They ambushed me, saying I made them look bad (yes, I am serious.) And this points out a key flaw in the sociopath's plan: by trying to make people look foolish, they make fools of themselves. And that starts a shame spiral which the narcissist can't tolerate. They have to have a target which is usually the scapegoat child. Which even as an adult I let them do. I took the brunt and placated them instead of letting them experience the consequences of their bad choices. So one way to practice recovery from this narcissistic abuse, is to let the pie stay on your face and the egg on theirs Don't rush to wipe it away or make excuses for them. Let people see what they have done. Some people will only believe your abuse story if they see evidence of it with their own eyes. Let your parents sit with their shame, alone. Stop warming them by setting yourself on fire. Hold space for yourself.

So this is a long, rambling list of trauma recovery tips but they are interconnected. Not like a set of steps, more of a safety network. I wish you peace and healing in this fraught journey.

"Good Christian" parents like the Duggars trigger childhood trauma responses from narcissistic parent abuse

2026-10-10T16:16:37.555-07:00

Hello my friends. I just read something about the Obedience Game the Duggars of "19 Kids and Counting" play with their kids, and it triggered childhood trauma responses of shame spiraling. The good thing is that I noticed the shame spiral starting, so while it's still pinging, I'm going to unpick the stinking thinking before it does any more damage.

The "good Christian" parent trauma trigger

I have always felt inferior and ashamed around people who proclaimed or who I perceived to be "good parents", especially the "good Christians." We tried to teach our children Godly principles. I did my best raising my kids and made a lot of mistakes and even bad choices. I feel guilty about the wrong I did and I have apologized and received their forgiveness. My children have told me they admire and try to emulate how I parented them. And yet, I default to auto-shame and feeling wrong, whenever a parenting style conflicts with my own. And even when it doesn't. I feel ashamed of myself for having a core flaw.

The fact that is was the Duggars...

It's interesting that it's not just Christians that I share ideology with, that trigger this sense of self-loathing. I defer to people I don't even agree with, who have been caught in many hypocrisies, the pedophilia of their son Josh Duggar and their very problematic IBLP Bill Gothard brand of quasi, cultish Christianity. However, if I hear something they did no matter how diametrically opposed to my own professional training in child development, it triggers feelings of self-doubt. I know what's wrong with blanket training and blind compliance. I see how it endangers a child. But no matter how wrong and dangerous I know it to be, I believe I'm wrong and they're right just because they are them and I am me. Which ironically is what these obedience games teach a child, to ignore their own common sense and good judgement and let people control them like puppets. Now think how vulnerable that makes me to people I have great respect for who turn out to be unsafe.

Toxic shame or guilty conscience?

This comes up in politics, too. I'm a pretty far left progressive because as I read scripture, that's what God calls me to. I can see the hatred in MAGA and don't support it. I can hear the heresy when Christian acquaintances tell me I can't be a Catholic and not support Donald Trump. But still I have that sense of being wrong, again. Some would argue that what I'm feeling is a guilty conscience or promptings of the Holy Spirit to examine my conscience. Fair enough, we all need to do that. But we are also called to be careful not to follow warmongers, pharisaical blind guides or wolves in sheep's clothing. Not to serve two master. Which some sectarian fundamentalists, like my parents, have proved to be. So is it more toxic shame from narcissistic parent abuse driving this?

Childhood Trauma Responses from parent gaslighting

Based on what I know about God, who is love, I think the "guilt" is shame. It doesn't feel like being held accountable for a reasonable error. It feels like sick, nauseating shell shock. Like someone sucker punched me. It dread and disgust and terror. And I cannot figure out what I have done wrong. If I had done wrong, God would not leave me in this confused limbo, but would show me clearly. God does not backstab us. He deals in mercy. So if I'm feeling this utter revulsion, it must be coming from a malignant source.

Childhood Trauma Nightmares

This nameless, faceless evil is the same oppressive horror that stalks my nightmares. Every night. I cannot begin to explain how brain damaging they are. I'm also the adult child of narcissists who experienced lifelong narcissistic abuse by four malignant parents. So this sense of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) was inbred in me by hypocrites with a God complex, playing by their own made-up rules. They made themselves gods to me and kept me from the real God by their deception and exploitation. Gaslighting, trauma bonded betrayal blindness and self-abnegation are just nursery tea for me.

Self-care was called selfish

I struggle with Imposter Syndrome which tells me that anyone who compliments just doesn't know me very well. I have called myself the divorced child who was cut off from care while being expected to care for parents. I'm the Broken Vending Machine Child, endlessly giving with no reciprocity or even basic care. I was groomed to believe that other people were always right and I was always wrong. If I protected or defended or spoke up for myself, I was severely chastised. So I learned not to. I learned fawning, kowtowing, deferring to anyone else, no matter how dangerous they were. I was taught that it was sinful to see red flags and avoid them. Which put a target on my back for predators and child molesters. It conditioned me to expect abuse as my due.

The take-away

I'm grateful to have seen this shame spiral coming on and so be able to head it off at the pass. It makes sad to think how often these panic attacks happened. I'd be in fullblown dissociative split with all the dysregulation and destabilization that goes with it before I even knew what hit me. My advice to you who like me are working on childhood trauma recovery, is to start seeing those red flags for what they are. I need to see that the childhood trauma responses that were supposed to keep me safe, are hurting me now.

Childhood Trauma Recovery from narcissistic abuse means understanding the Divorced Child Dilemma

2026-10-10T14:44:56.111-07:00

Hello my friends. Welcome to part two of the Divorced Child Dilemma series. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring how healing requires radical acceptance of this uniquely fraught space.

Two conflicting and invalid documents

What is a "divorced child?" It's a term I coined to reflect the hypocritical double standards that the malignant narcissist parent places on the Broken Vending Machine Child (what I call the parentified child who is made to carry the adult mental load while also being devalued and discarded.) The malignant parent divorces himself from responsibility to the child while also trauma bonding them to endless obligations. He issues the child a decree of divorce along with a contract of debt into perpetuity. The child grows up believing these are valid and binding but they aren't because the child didn't sign or agree to either. So how does a parent achieve this bizarre setup?

Parent enmeshment

Enmeshed parents believe they are infinite, god-like, omniscient and supreme. The child is just and extension of themselves. She has no more rights than the plunger used to clean the toilet. Individuation and autonomy are punished. Self-care is selfish. The enmeshed parents violate the child's boundaries and invade her privacy with no more thought than they would to entering their own bedroom. They walk in without knocking and eavesdrop on conversations. They feel entitled to criticize things that are none of their business. They read the child's diary not to help or understand but to gather data they use to shame her with. The child gets used to being caught in their gotcha traps.

False responsibility ratio

In the narcissistic family cult, the parents create a parallel universe where there are two sets of janky rules, one for them and one for each child according to the role they have cast them in. The narcissistic parents make it up as they go along, with lying, gaslighting, script-flipping and narrative-shifting, role reversal and creating an artificial parent-child debt burden (the contract of obligation) in which the child owes all to the parent, yet nothing is owed to her. The parents implant a false sense of responsibility to and for them in the child. Then they deny all responsibility to and for her. It's win-win for the parents and lose-lose for the child.

The Parentified Child

Part of that invalid contract is the parentification clause. The parentified child is groomed in a FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to the parents with no reciprocity. The Broken Vending Machine Child (who is elements of all of the family system roles, especially scapegoat child) dispenses everything demanded of her, with nothing good coming back to her. The coin slot is broken and the family takes whatever they want, free. Caring, nurturing, mental load, housework, support, chores, loyalty, obedience, respect, compliance, duty, being a punching bag, listening ear, all that and more, the child pays out in endless debt to the parent, yet receives only bread-crumbing at most. She is expected to parent the parent like a child, yet infantilized and treated like an incapable idiot when it suits their narcissistic supply addiction to paint her as such. There is never a real, healthy parent child dynamic.

Coercive control

But still, you're asking, how do they manage this? By weaponizing the power differential. Parents naturally hold the power differential to protect, defend, nurture and guide the child. And the child naturally loves and trusts the parent. The dark tetrad parent exploits their authority and the child's attachment to them, to break the child down. They enslave the child in their narcissistic cult of FOG using intimidating coercive control.

Surveillance without safety

Malignant parents monitor ridiculous things with micrometer-like precision yet don't provide even basic care or necessities. They engage in surveillance to entrap rather than protect the child. They set the child up with disturbing sting operations. They keep tabs on things they have no business monitoring. All four of my "parents" were hypervigilant over my every move or facial expression, not because they were anticipating my needs or fawning. They were looking for something to ambush me with. They got narcissistic supply off humiliating, baffling and terrifying me. That's no conspiracy theory. Though I wish it was just me exaggerating or too sensitive.

My lazy, jobless, abusive stepfather, with my narcissistic mother's smiling approval kicked me out of the house at 16. His house, he called it. Though he never contributed a thing. The curfew which was supposedly to protect me, endangered me by making me homeless. These parents hide malevolent fascism behind a guise of concern which shows itself in the illegally abusive ends to which they will go to wield power.

Owned by not owed

"My wife is married, I'm not." I once heard a serial cheater say this laughingly about his relationship. And this illogical fallacy perfectly demonstrates the bespoke gaslighting hypocrisy that the traumatized child is subjected to. The parent effectively says "You are my child, my possession, with all the rights of ownership that go along with it. You are indentured to me forever. I own you. I am your parent authority figure, but I am not responsible to or for you. I owe you nothing. You are accountable to and for me, and I'm accountable to no one, least of all you." Yes it really is this ludicrous and insane.

Divorced yet still married

Malignant parents sabotage the child's natural attachment to them, to confuse and destabilize her. The enmeshed parent divorces themselves from responsibility to the child while also, hypocritically, keeping the child "married to" them in terms of what she is groomed to believe she owes. These control freaks leverage essentials like food, shelter, safety against her. They create a false burden of debt that they bind her to. They steal all good things like personhood (identity theft), sense of self, independence, autonomy. They sew her up into a tight net of obligation from which there seems to be no escape. The "wedding ring" that only the child wears, is actually manacles and shackles. She is handcuffed to them for life.

Trauma bonded betrayal blind bondage

The enmeshed parent plays a double dealing hand of "blanket training" and senseless carrot dangling which she snatches back for no reason. The narcissistic mother makes necessities into rewards that must be earned and which can be removed at a moment's notice. The narcissistic father uses love bombing and future faking and bread crumbing to trap the child in endless tail-chasing. The more the child purses the parent the more the parent plays hard to get. Till the child is twisted into a pretzel and stuck in a cycle of lawless, anarchic punishment and deprivation. And this is so normal and everyday for the child that she develops betrayal blindness. She believes them that she is the problem and caused this chaos. But she's not allowed to call it chaos. She must be ever grateful to them for the abuse. Even though no one around her lives anything like this.

Gaslighting and grooming by deprivation

Normal people have no concept of this unique hellish reality that kids with CPTSD live in. They are given essentials as rights, not rewards or contingencies. They don't have to earn a roof over their head with constant hoop-hopping only to have it randomly taken away. They are not told they lost the privilege of a home or a bed by some trumped up charge levied against them. And the parents know this. My narcissistic mother and father used the very craziness of what they put me through, to keep me quiet. Who would believe you, they say. The child gets worn down and worn out. The neglect and abuse deplete her basic resources. Through a kind of Munchausen's' by Proxy they keep her sick and tired and hungry so that she is biddable.

The transactional one-sided contract

Malignant parents make everything transactional. The child has to earn basic unalienable rights. They wrote a contract of obligation before she was even born. They bound her to duties, expectations and demands before she could speak or walk. The child never signed nor even read the contract. They just told her she had to guess what they, and anyone else they bound her to, wanted. Then they punished her failing mind reading. Then they changed this imaginary contract again. And then they violated this contract that they coerced the child into. They didn't keep up their end of the bargain because they are entitled, arrogant, ruthless, believing no rules or contract binds them.

The Divorced Child is Forever Thwarted

Adult Children of Narcissists grow but we don't develop. I don't mean we're immature. Most of us have had to be far too mature too young. While the grownups in our lives acted like irresponsible, immoral, feckless, reckless failure to launch-ers. What we lack is not adulthood but childhood. We weren't allowed to differentiate. Individuation was punished. This gaslighted power they wielded over us dogs us. We struggle to see anything clearly. They did not have the power or the right to do these things. It was illegal and immoral. But tell that to our trauma brain. Tell that to our inner child who forever lives twisted up in the net of burden they crocheted for us.

The way out is walled up

I would like to promise you and my inner child that there is hope, a way out. But that was sealed off for us strategically to keep us enslaved to them. So maybe what we have to do is tunnel another way out. Going no contact is one exit for me. I'm also seeing the prison has a glass ceiling that is breakable. Enablers and flying monkeys have smugly told me it's me that is trapping myself. Aka, I'm imagining it. Well, they would say that. They always took the narcissists' side over the wounded child. So maybe I need to go no contact with anyone and everyone who holds me back from healing, from getting unstuck from family of origin. Including the flying monkeys.

Breaking contracts I never signed

Actually, what I have to do first is to find a way to realize that this contract they claimed I was bound by, never existed. It was never notarized nor signed by me. It's as worthless as the nonexistent paper it was printed on. These were just made-up unethical, illegal, immoral demands placed on me by unethical, law-breaking, immoral people. Then I have to emotionally tear up this invalid contract. The tricky part will be to help my poor inner child understand that this was a fake.

The Divorced Child: Gaslighting hypocrisies about going no contact with narcissistically abusive parents

2026-10-08T10:28:35.632-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm starting a new series called "The Divorced Child" in which I'll show how malignant narcissists (who I will also interchangeably call dark tetrads) divorce themselves from the child while still remaining "wed to" or enmeshed with them. I'll begin with gaslighting hypocrisies about going no contact with our abusers. Adult children of narcissists (ACON) are fed all kinds of gaslighting nonsense, not only by our parents but enablers in society, religion, family, media, even professionals in the field of psychology. One of the most complex is the parent-child debt paradox, fed by parent enmeshment and wrong ideas about the narcissistic family cult. Let's debunk these dangerous myths.

Going no contact is something someone does.

But it's not. It's what they stop doing. They stop responding to texts or calls. They disengage which though it sounds like an action, it's more of an inaction. The scapegoat child stops allowing herself to be used as a scapegoat. The Broken Vending Machine child lets her auto-giving machine, that they broke, shut down completely. She discontinues doling out treats with no reciprocity. The abused child quits fawning and people pleasing. She moves from trauma responses and toward healthy self-care skills. She ceases taking the bait, being hoovered back, in and falling for the bread-crumbing and love-bombing. She sees that it was all ever going to end it devalue and discard. And she just quietly, without fanfare, steps off the merry-go-round of narcissistic abuse.

Going no contact is an action verb.

In fact it is a passive, being verb. If it's a verb at all. The traumatized child begins to see the red flags and hear the gaslighting lies for what they are. She starts to understand that the bonds, demands and expectations that parent enmeshment crocheted for her were just FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). They didn't exist. It is quiet resignation to the fact that the action verbs were done by the parents. They DID abuse, neglect, exploit, manipulate, endanger, abandon, exclude, triangulate, coercively control, toxically shame, invalidate, dehumanize, destabilize and then gaslight her about it all.

Going no contact is something the child does.

To the world, it looks like the child has made a choice to cut ties to the abusive parent. After all, it's the now adult child who has stopped interacting with the parent, right? Wrong. What the child has done is leave shut the door the parent repeatedly slammed in her face. She is practicing radical acceptance that she was the one divorced from, excluded, used and abused, taken advantage of and then shut out. And she let all that read as written, instead of covering for them and making us excuses for them.

Going no contact is a choice.

Nope. It's a logical result of living in a lose-lose situation with narcissistic and enmeshed parents who wielded the power differential like a weapon against her. It's an inevitable recognition that the past is never going to be any better than it was. Which is my personal definition of forgiveness and radical acceptance. When the trauma bonded child's betrayal blindness scales start to fall off, radical awareness shows her that the family system was broken and failing the children to prop up the narcissistic family cult.

Going no contact is the easy way out.

No it's one of the hardest things to accept that your parents didn't love or care for you. That they did not have your welfare only their selfish agenda at heart. That these dark tetrads could and would do any cruel Machiavellian thing to you that they wanted, just because it was Tuesday. That you hadn't seen any of it till you were 60 years old. That they so misused you that it caused cognitive dissonance, brain damage, dissociative split and autoimmune diseases. That you are now consigned to a life of CPTSD and trauma nightmares. If that's easy, I'd hate to see the hard way out.

Going no contact is infantile.

Nope it actually a very mature and healthy response to the parentification and infantilization they put on us. The infantile ones are the parents with their temper tantrums, silly double standards and immature hypocrisies. They wanted it both ways, grooming us to think we owed them endlessly while they owed us nothing. So going no contact is re-reversing parent role reversal back to the correct framework of parent-child dynamic.

Going no contact breaks up the family.

Your narcissistic parents and their enablers and flying monkeys will fill you full of nonsense about this happy family you supposedly had and how family loyalty is the be-all-end-all. But they've chosen to blind themselves to the fact that the parents busted up the family right from the get-go, either by divorce or by dismantling healthy family for a toxic family system in which you were just a pawn. Then after blowing your world apart, they gaslight everyone that they are starting over with a new family as if the old one never existed. And the OG child is coerced into a role of unwanted stepchild or problem child.

Going no contact is divorcing from parents.

No, it's accepting that they divorced themselves from us. That's why I say when narcissistic parents divorce, it's not so much each other but their child, the responsibility for her, they are divorcing from. They create this parallel universe where they write any crazy rules they want. They feed everyone this web of lies that they don't owe the product of the first family anything because that family was dissolved. Which is gaslighting 2.0. So child lives in a chaotic limbo of existing only on their sufferance. BUT while they refuse to honor obligations to the child, they also refuse to relinquish control of her. It's win-win for them, all the perks with none of the work.

Going no contact simply acknowledges that the parents never provided a loving family for the child in the first place. It gets the order of operations right: who went no contact with whom, first.

Going no contact is a reckless and dangerous.

No it is actually stopping being the reckless parent's source of narcissistic supply. It is getting out of the path of their dangerous narcissistic rage. It is ceasing to body block the narcissistic mother from the consequences of her own unethical, irresponsible, immoral, illegal behavior. It is letting her feel the narcissistic injury of censure for said reckless behavior, full on and not buffering and fluffing. It's not falling for the DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) and realizing that this is just more gaslighting deception. It's steeling oneself against the narcissistic father's blame-shifting and projection.

Going no contact is an attack on someone.

Wrong. It's the opposite of an attack. It's a withdrawal, an evacuation. The person cutting ties ceases to JADE (justify, answer, defend, engage or explain). And context matters. The people on the "receiving end" of the no contact, went no contact with me pretty much since birth. Or shall I say, no contact with benefits. They pushed me away when I was inconvenient then pulled me back when they wanted anything from me. They set me up to fail so that I would break and have to stay in bondage to them. They ambushed me with smear campaigns and family mobbing. Then as soon as I gave them what they wanted, boom, I was out in the cold, again. Now I've just stopped playing the game by their rules. I left the arena.

Going no contact is controlling them.

No this is self-control. I'm setting boundaries around what I won't do or tolerate anymore. How they choose to act is up to them. They were the control freaks who thought they could call the shots and dictate terms with no repercussions. Well, actions have logical consequences. For every action, there's an equal opposite reaction. They called the tune by shutting me out, then expecting me to keep banging on the door and begging to be allowed back in. They wanted payout with no input. But I'm not doing that anymore. The locked door stays locked. They dictated the rules of engagement kicking me out and I'm simply abiding by them and staying out.

You'll regret going no contact.

No, what I regret is that it had to happen, that they went no contact with me, ignored, excluded, shut me out, rejected, neglected, used, exploited, scapegoated me. Mistreatment that has hounded me all my life, has confused and bewildered me. Has affected my ability to sleep, move, parent. That's what I regret. And cutting ties with all that toxic shame, never did something feel so right. It's the first paving stone on the path to individuation.

Childhood trauma amnesia: cognitive dissonance from narcissistic parent gaslighting

2026-09-30T11:28:57.240-07:00

Hello my friends. Let me just say before beginning how much I appreciate you. Whoever or wherever you are and whyever you read this childhood trauma recovery blog. Thank you. Thanks for letting yourself get triggered, as such content does. I hope you find some healing reading as I do writing. So today I'm exploring what I call Childhood Trauma Amnesia or the cognitive dissonance from narcissistic abusive parent gaslighting.

Gaslighting and brain gassing

Gaslighting is willfully manipulating reality with lies, deception and twisting facts. Narcissistic, enmeshed parents do this to cover their bad actions, for narcissistic supply, to destabilize the child and to make her doubt herself. But what drives gaslighting is gas: colorless, odorless, tasteless and completely lethal. In the famous movie Gaslight, the husband fiddled with the switches making the light flicker and then told his wife she was imagining it. I liken the resulting CPTSD and brain damage from gaslighting, to being gassed with a toxic substance. Gaslighting has the same net results of confusion, disorientation, dissociative fugue and mental collapse.

How narcissists create cognitive dissonance (confused reality)

Sadly, these are just a few of the demented, dementing things dark tetrad parents do to destroy a child.

Weaponized and disrupted attachment: the parent uses the child's natural attachment to the parent against the child. My narcissistic mother and father violated trust, boundaries, respect, innocence, safety. They sabotaged my sense of self.
Love-bombing: The parent showers the child with fake affection to get what she wants.
Trauma Bonding: the enmeshed parent plays cat and mouse with the child, clutching her close then pushing her away. Love-bombing is followed by devaluation and discard. The back and forth becomes a glue which cements the child to the parent in an unnatural codependency.
Grooming: The narcissistic father uses the child as a confidante saying she's "special" "lucky" and "chosen." The narcissistic parent is like a cult leader, indoctrinating the child for a life of enslavement.
Isolation: The parents keeps the child from loved ones or helpers by moving her around in a complex shell game.
Needs insecurity. We were not poor and my parents had what they needed plus luxuries. Yet I can't remember a bed or a bedroom. I went hungry and experienced food insecurity. They didn't.
Sleep deprivation: the parent sabotages sleep by not providing a consistent home, bedroom or bed. They make the young teen co-sleep with babies and younger children, caring for them as a parent. They cause CPTSD nightmares.
Parentification: making the child care for them as a parent, then not caring for her.
Infantilization: They treat her like an inept fool (even while also parentifying her.)
Role Reversal: They make her responsible for things that are their responsibility,
Overworking: putting all the housework, childcare, laundry, meal prep on her, making her carry the mental load. This wears down her resistance and weakens her.
Boundary crashing and shaming. I never dared to set boundaries because those would be the very things they'd go out of their way to violate.
Theft. They stole everything of value that I ever owned.
Privacy violation They barge in without knocking. My dad would enter the bathroom when I was in there.
Sexual harassment and hidden incest. They violate natural body boundaries in overt and covert ways. They let anyone else do it as well. This might be the most destabilizing of all.
Surveillance without protection. They monitor the child's moves, dress, speech, with military regulation yet don't safeguard her. I was kicked out at 16 for coming in 15 minutes late. Then I had to steal food to survive. I was at the mercy of predators because no one cared what happened to me.
Coercive Control: they use threats, intimidation, emotional "waterboarding", corporal punishment, inappropriate and inconsistent discipline. My father once went into a narcissistic rage furiously spanking me, in front of everyone, when I was 14. I had done nothing.
Lies, deceit, backstabbing.
Double standards:
Moving hoops: They make up arbitrary rules then change them on a whim without telling you.
Entrapment: They set up "gotcha" stings to make the child stumble.
Smear campaigns: they start completely false rumors to make the child look bad.
Mocking and Humiliation: malignant parents prank, haze and jeer at the child.
Narcissistic rage: They randomly go ballistic then blame the child.
Triangulation: Pitting people against us with lies.
Faked trauma drama: My parents routinely and melodramatically trauma dumped on me, things that never happened.
Oversensitive insensitivity. These exhibitionist crybullies fell apart over silly narcissistic insults (not real, just ego slights). Then had the gall to call us "too sensitive" crybabies, attention-seeking showoffs.
DARVO: they deny actions, counterattack and reverse victim offender roles.
Instability: I was shuffled around among 41 different homes and nine schools before age 20.
Future faking: The malignant parent promises the child things he never delivers on, nor has any intention of delivering on. It's a Machiavellian a$$hole move to keep the child compliant. If he ever does do anything for the child, it comes with endless strings attached.
Bread-crumbing: the cruel dark tetrad parent strings the child along with tiny crumbs of goodness, to keep her one step from starvation. To keep her normal enough so no one suspects.
Destroyed individuation. Enmeshed parents punish individuality instead of encouraging it.

Amnesia of Trauma bonding and betrayal blindness

All this deceit, double standard, and alternate reality causes the child to live in constant dissociative fugue. Her outside reality and the real reality is diametrically opposed to her malignant parents' narcissistic cult fantasy. It wipes memory or drives it deep inside because it's too dangerous to confront narcissistic parents with the the facts. We go into a kind of chosen betrayal blindness, born of trauma responses like fawning and people pleasing.

Go along to get along

We keep peace at any price, even when it means selling ourselves. We sacrifice everything to preserve our parents' narcissistic fantasy. We surrender common sense, our home, a bed, our future, our success, our toys, money, anything they want, we give with the only reciprocity being shit and shoved in it. Anything to keep our bullying parents in narcissistic supply. One day, we realize there will never be peace because our parents are passive-aggressive and antagonistic trouble-makers.

Memory repression, not loss

I recall very little about my childhood except bad times and those live in vivid color. Other memories hover at the fringe, threatening me in trauma nightmares. I have been told things that I did or was involved in that I have no memory of. Not bad things, just things. I have forgotten whole people. Looking back, I recall walking around in a fog of fear, obligation and guilt. Toxic shame was my companion. I was so hypervigilant and overwhelmed by this fraught life, that I had no time for relaxation. I think to keep myself sane, my brain had to compartmentalize experiences and lock certain drawers tight. I had to press down anything contrary to my parents' demands. I had to think, eat, breathe and live them, never me. As I've explored in this blog, those memories aren't lost, just in limbo, frozen in carbonite.

Some examples

I gave up middle school, literally.

I was all set to go to the local junior high. I'd only lived there a few years but made friends. It was by far the longest I'd lived in any of the 41 places I would live in before age 20. I was excited about middle school, when my mom got it in her head to marry her abusive live-in. She had a foster care home which she moved him into and hid him, illegally. I was the main caregiver in that home, also illegally. She got it shut down due to child abuse. Suddenly, I was rerouted to a completely different city, different school, different home, away from my friends and other family. I ended up with my dad and his new wife who didn't want me but saw it as an opportunity to get a live-in maid and caregiver. I was 12.

Parent Gaslighting Becomes the real story

Here's where the amnesia comes in. All my life, my mom told me and anyone else, that I had come to her out of the blue and said I was going to move with my dad so she and her new man could "have their private time like my dad and his new wife got theirs." I can hear now, what I couldn't then, her envy and guilt-tripping. And DARVO (denying reality, attacking me for daring to be in her shiny new life, reversing herself as victim and me as some kind of offender or outsider). I always accepted this inane story, though it make zero sense.

The wake-up when the gas clears

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me how disingenuous her cockamamie story was. I asked a few same age trusted friends who said, no kid is going to want to move to a new school at an already difficult time, let alone volunteer to. And why would I? It would be so self-sabotaging school success. And offering her private time? Gross! I would never think that term let alone use it. Private time would be a weekend away, not yet another complete upheaval that would affect me for the rest of my life. Plus, they already had plenty of privacy, more than I ever had, living in an apartment in the basement, separated from me and the kids by three floors. And hello, parents don't "deserve" years away from their child. They're parents. It's not like they did their time and now get to move on. And they didn't even do that.

The probably true story behind the fake one

My friends helped me identify how these were her words, fed to me as gaslighting narrative flipping. What she was saying was that I was being evicted so she could get on with her shiny new life without me. Funnily enough, my also narcissistic dad did the same thing when I was in high school. What probably happened is that I was taken out of their home in the child abuse disclosure. They may have even done some time or been forced to move out of their home, who knows. She would never admit to that and she never tells a straight story. And yes, weird as it sounds, my mother could very well have been jailed and me not know it. She was cagey and crooked as hell.

Betrayal Blindness from Trauma Bonding

But what I did which normal kids wouldn't do, and which is more to the point of this story, was to keep quiet, and just file it away as part of my double life. It never occurred to me that any of this was messed up AF. I am a special needs teacher for God's sake. I know child abuse, developmental risk factors (like frequent unnecessary moves and parents co-habiting, opening foster care homes while having kids already), vulnerable kids, childhood trauma like the back of my hand. What I didn't see was how all that was me. It took me till 62 to start questioning their crazy versions.

Helpful Hints for Healing

If you're as exhausted reading as I am telling it, let's end softly with a gentle exercise or two. My advice on your road to radical acceptance is start small. If you suspect that you were the victim of child abuse, or you just have some uneasy feelings about things that happened, stop and take a look. Don't rip the bandage off. Just begin to slowly uncover your eyes and give those experiences some ungaslighted airtime. You may find a new trauma-informed perspective. You don't and probably shouldn't confront your parents. But you can quietly affirm your inner child that this should not have happened. I can almost guarantee that you will, as I have, found some relief knowing you weren't crazy. It wasn't you. It was them.

Biggest Impacts of childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse

2026-09-29T12:07:34.288-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery I'm looking at some of the biggest impacts of childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. This may be triggering but rest assured that I will end by sharing things that have helped me.

Theft of Birthrights

Narcissistic and enmeshed parents robbed us of our birthright to innocence, childhood, autonomy, healthy development, attachment, peace of mind, joy, self-protection and care, owning our own self. They commandeered what was ours and made us think it belonged to them. They made us think they owned us body, mind, heart and soul. They groomed us by privacy invasions, boundary crashing and trauma bonding to think they had buy-in on our very selves. They constantly monitoring and criticized us for things that weren't their business then failed to protect us and provide things that were their responsibility.

Rigged Whack-a-Mole Blame-Shame Game

They used the Narcissist's Prayer to gaslight us. They owed us nothing we owed them everything. We were told we were too sensitive, an attention-seeking showoff. My hypercritical insensitive dad said I was too sensitive and couldn't take criticism when he raged nonsensically at me and quietly approved his shiny new family bullying me. While he was hypocritically oversensitive, calling me too critical of him and his also hypersensitive, bullying wife. Then he flipped the script again, trauma dumping on empath me, about how my grandparents were too critical of him saying he should get a job and support his family. It is an endless game of Whack-a-Mole with narcissists that you can never win.

Trauma Brain FOG

Narcissistic parents conditioned us with toxic shame and FOG, or fear, obligation and guilt. They pirated then damaged our brains to turn on us. So the leveled up shame haunts us in insidious, sneaky ways, like a slow drip of poison corroding our ability to think and feel in healthy ways. All we know are trauma responses of frozen, robotic fawning and people pleasing. I am dogged nightly, all night long by dreams and nightmares of their endless Machiavellian exploitation, narcissistic abuse, neglect of basic care, endangerment and abandonment, scapegoating, triangulation and gaslighting.

DARVO destabilization

I wake utterly baffled, feeling like I've been letting people down all night long. They're not just dreams. They are memories of the ongoing narcissistic rage and demand cycles. Using parentification and infantilization, gaslighting then DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) they have convinced my trauma brain that I am the problem and also the one responsible to fix everything. I am responsible mommy and enslaved daughter but never me. I was the OG "Broken Vending Machine Child" giving good with no reciprocity and receiving undeserved bad.

Twisted Future-Faking

Some narcissistic parents use future faking as bread-crumbing to lure the child into a false sense of security. My four malignant narcissist parents used future faking to convince me that I was stupid and would never amount to anything. I see now that this was to render me unfit only for service to them. They made me do all the menial labor and childcare while teaching me no useful skills including self-preservation, safety or stranger danger. I was sent to play alone blocks from home starting at age 4. They designed a future for me where I would be able only to dance like a puppet.

Destabilized by Deviance

My parents forced me into disgusting, humiliating situations with perverted people and by their lascivious and exhibitionist behavior. My father was a pedophile always going off on "mission trips" with young teens. He dated a 17 y/o when he was 36 and I was 9. My mother carried on numerous adulterous affairs, forced me to hear sex talk and witness her debauched behavior, used me as a sex therapist, all while preaching from the Bible. My mind is scarred by appalling memories of their deviance. The cognitive dissonance of living in a normal world with these abnormal people has caused me to auto-gaslight myself that I did it. My dreams can't sort it out. And my parents were quick to exploit that to paint me as the culprit.

Deflection and Projection of shame

Narcissistic shame and arrogance plus entitlement plus remorselessness tells narcissists that they are never at fault. So they assign a scapegoat which was me. They lie and deceive the child that she is the real problem. Religious narcissists use the Bible to browbeat the child but they never practice what they preach. And I was the perfect target. Children naturally love and and defend their parents. Very abused kids will body block parents from consequences at their own expense. Malignant parents know and weaponize this to sabotage their children.

Bespoke Sabotage

Dark tetrad narcissists know just how to destroy you. They gather intel on what you value and use it against you. They violate your trust. They do outrageous things normal parents would never think to do let alone do. Mine sabotaged me every step of the way. I was ripped randomly out of homes and schools and shuffled around. I lived in 40 different places before age 20 and went to 9 different schools. My pervy and narcissistic stepfather kicked me out at 16 with my mother's smiling approval. I was yanked out of schools on a whim or because of bad choices on their part. All my life, my mom had me believing I volunteered to switch schools to give her and her boyfriend "private time." They sabotaged my ability to protect or defend myself. They made me a target for bullies, creeps and pedophiles.

CPTSD nightmare loop

All night long I dream that I have Herculean tasks to perform, without proper tools, resources or support. I have numberless children put in my care to somehow educate, feed, clothe, protect, you name it. There are mountains of laundry and never-ending chores upon chores to do. I'm always late and in trouble. Scornful people are angry with or mocking me. I AM CONFUSED. I wake with my hands, arms, hips, back screaming in pain, as they always did as a child when these were very real expectations put on me. And they still feel real now. I could sleep all day and still be exhausted. I cannot function in daily life from the overwhelming burden placed on me by dark tetrad parents.

Disorientation spiral

I really struggle to think clearly. In fact, I don't know what clear thinking is. Simple tasks are difficult. I second-guess myself and am endlessly hypervigilant. I wish I could say it gets better with age, but it doesn't. It gets worse because the confusion from brain damage spirals down on itself. Then factor in betrayal blindness which tells traumatized kids that their parents are loving and trustworthy. Oh do these imposters use that to retraumatize us. It has taken me 62 years to even start to unpack all their abuse and neglect of me.

Some thoughts on childhood trauma recovery

Take care of yourself, kiddo.
Fake it till you make it. Self-care feels selfish, at first, but only because they told you that. It's not. It's vital to your survival.
When you have a choice to follow your wisdom or someone else, like your family system or their enablers, go with yours. It might lead astray but mostly it won't and they ALWAYS will.
If it feels good, do it. This mantra has been eschewed as selfish but usually by self-centered hypocrites who take damn good care of themselves and who took shite care of you.

Sleep late if you can. You need it.
Pet cats and soft blankets.
Do yoga.
Breathe.
Play with your grandkids in the woods. Build forts. Have tea parties.
Socialize as it feels right to you.
Eat when you are hungry.
Respect you sense of danger. If something or someone puts up red flags, note it and don't drive right through.
Practice gratitude but also radical acceptance. Thankfulness is fine but don't gaslight yourself that you have to be grateful to hurtful people. That's just hogwash your parents taught you.
Go no contact with invalidation and invalidating people as you are able.

Be a little kinder, be a little less blind

We've always heard this in reference to blindness to faults of others and kinder to them. I say be less betrayal blind. See it where it exists. You don't have to take revenge but staying a bit angry over hurt that damaged you, will help you get to a safer place of awareness. It will help you prevent further injury. And kindness to others is great but so is kindness to yourself.

Love mar.

How Narcissistic Abuse Enablers and Blind Guides Sabotage Childhood Trauma Recovery

2026-09-28T11:54:01.313-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring how enablers sabotage healing and actually perpetuate narcissistic abuse. I've written about this several times but you can never really say enough about how insidiously harmful enablers are. I'll try to explain the complicated flow chart of this leveled up abuse.

What is enabling?

Enabling is choosing to overlook, ignore and make excuses for abuse that someone is suffering. It's not simply inability to see it. It's not being unsure that what you are seeing is abuse. It's not missing one abusive behavior. It's not choosing your words or keeping quiet to prevent further harm. That's more about being between a rock and a hard place and making a judgement call. But doing it with full radical acceptance, not chosen blindness. Enabling is a pattern of unwillingness to recognize and acknowledge what is right in front of your face. It's deceiving the abused person into believing it isn't happening or that it's their fault (gaslighting). It is siding with the perpetrator and victim-shaming the abused one into compliance.

Who are the enablers?

I wish I could say they were rare, obviously dangerous people who are easy to spot. Unfortunately, enablers of narcissistic abuse are much more common than truth-tellers calling it out for what it is. So enablers hide everywhere in plain sight. When I have told anyone about my narcissistic parents' harm, I encountered enabling at a rate of at least 10 to 1 compared with affirmation of the abuse as abuse. Society, family, religion, even psychology sides with abusers, especially abusive parents, against children far too frequently.

Group Think aka Societal Gaslighting

As a people, we tend to be reluctant to accept a child's version of events over an adult's. We have developed this crass insensitivity toward helpless victims, as if callouses had grown over our ears. At least this is how it feels to a child experiencing neglect, abuse, invalidation, endangerment, abandonment, scapegoating, etc. It seems that how we are being treated is perfectly acceptable because NO ONE IS SAYING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY. If there was one word to encapsulate all that's wrong with denial of abuse, it's gaslighting. And on a society-wide level.

Gas-litany of shame

We as children of narcissistic parents are force-fed a dogma by an enabling society, a litany of gaslighting that sounds very similar to the "Narcissist's Prayer" we were groomed on. These are just a few of the nonsensical things enablers say.

It's not their fault. (It's yours for being too sensitive, disloyal, disobedient and attention-seeking showoff.)
It wasn't that bad. (You're just exaggerating for pity. )
It's just normal punishment for your own good. (You're the problem, because you're selfish, lazy, immature and can't take criticism. This one is a hugely fraught dilemma that opens us up to all kinds of abuse, in the name of preparing us for the "real world."
They did the best they could. (so that exonerates all the hell they put you through).
You have to get over it, move on, be the bigger person, rise above. (So they aren't held accountable for any of their bad behavior and the responsibility to fix it all, falls on us.)
Those were different times. (So there was a point at which abusing kids was okay.)
But they're your parents. Family is family. (So anything they did to you was fine because they "owned the rights" to you. That is the enmeshed parent mantra. You owe them FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), care, support, trust, respect, obedience with no reciprocity from them.

All this translates to Dr. Ramani's spot-on DIMMER acronym (dismissiveness, invalidation, minimization, manipulation, exploitation and narcissistic rage) which perpetuates the Dimmer-ing of the original abuse. Yes even the enablers exhibit a rage of sorts, in that they are angry at you for being the truth-teller and showing up their complicity.

The Loudness of Silence

If they get wind of anything your parents did, these enablers treat you and speak to you as if you had divulged some big secret or betrayed your parents' trust. When usually all you did was to stay small and quiet. My dad used to make snide comments about how I'd better not write one of these tell-alls outing him when I grew up. Which was so bizarre because I was his biggest cheerleader and loyal servant. Childhood trauma responses kept me the silent, frozen, fawning, forever people pleaser. So he must have known that had I chosen to, I could tell quite a different version of him than his narcissistic fantasy cult leader. But I never told anything they did. I kept quiet on outrageous abuse, but shouldn't have. My silence must have spoken louder than any words. And all their reactive gaslighting was preemptive narrative revision, gotten in first to cast doubt on any truth I might tell.

The Hypocritical Double Standards of Abuse Enabling

None of the ridiculous things enablers say (and those I listed were just a few), are actually true or appropriate. It's all nonsensical hypocrisy. The lazy ones are the enablers who can't be bothered to be supportive and caring. So they throw shade forward to destabilize you while making themselves feel better. But it's all deceptive smoke and mirrors to distract you from the reality of abuse. Enablers (whom I call Blind Guides) are full of shit. They don't practice what they preach, have no understanding of, nor willingness to understand what really happened. They don't care. They just think they have buy-in on your pain. But they don't, because they weren't there for you then and still aren't. What they are, are a bunch jibbering flying monkeys.

Blindsided by Blind Guides and Betrayal Blindness

The toll that enablers and blind guides wreak on abuse victims is horrific. As these are often people that you trust (counselors, clergy, teachers, doctors, family members) they blindside you with this toxic positivity crap. They add more layers to the FOG, DARVO dilemma, trauma bonding on top of the future faking plus bread-crumbing your parents put you through, to create an even more entrenched betrayal blindness. They feed the abusive parent's monstrous ego appetite with narcissistic supply by bolstering your narcissistic enmeshed parents' delusions of grandeur and entitlement.

New Trauma + Retraumatizing

This 2.0 trauma is its own narcissistic abuse with retraumatizing besides. It creates new wounds and opens up old, unhealed ones. This lasagna of abuse, invalidation, devaluation and discard becomes a solid Lego brick wall that preserves the abuse deception and shields the abuser. Altogether, the original abusers plus their enablers sabotage any recovery from childhood trauma, if we let them.

Where to go from here?

In my relationships with my dark tetrad or malignant narcissistic mother, father, stepmother and stepfather, the only thing that has helped is going no contact. Even going low contact was too much for me because as narcissists age, they get better at tailoring their abuse to your trigger points and more convinced of their diplomatic immunity. They weaponize their age and their flying monkeys use this to guilt you further. "She's old, needs you, doesn't understand, you have to care for her, yada yada." I fall victim to "rosy reflective recall" where the actual abuse feels softened by the passage of time. I forget that they are just as capable of hurting me now as they were then. But once I started cutting the poisonous plants out of my life, I got better at identifying other toxins in my life garden. And the more you prune the easier it gets.

Debunking myths on forgiveness in narcissistic abuse and childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse

2026-09-24T16:43:40.903-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm going to debunk some myths about forgiveness and what place it has in healing. Some of the things I'm going to say may seem to fly in the face of cultural, societal, religious and even psychological wisdom. Nevertheless, it may help you to explore these ideas, as it helped me.

"You have to forgive."

No you don't. That's just a gaslighting game narcissists play to keep you trauma bonded and betrayal blind. They twist everything to be your fault or your responsiblity. This is part of their hypocritical double standards and two sets of rules for me and thee. It's the last verse of the Narcissist's Prayer. The "Narcissist's Prayer" by Dayna Craig illustrates the progression of deflection, blame-shifting, DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender) and manipulation used by narcissists when confronted with their harmful behavior. And I added the last line.

That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that big a deal. And if it was, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it. And if you didn't, you have to forgive me.

The Bible commands you to forgive.

Ehh, yes and no. If the narcissistic abuse is frequent and continual, the narcissist clearly isn't sorry and has no intention of changing his behavior. (see my article on why narcissists don't change). And contrition and change are integral to reconciliation. You endlessly forgiving will actually make the narcissistic abuse worse. Because the hallmarks of the dark tetrad of narcissism are arrogance (feeling superior and above the rules) entitlement (feeling owed every good thing with no reciprocity), remorselessness and Machiavellianism (getting what they want at any cost, where the ends justify the means). Forgiveness is just another thing they weaponize to browbeat you.

And if the Bible does command forgiveness, it goes both ways. They have to forgive you , too. And narcissists never forgive.

Forgiveness is carte blanche with no strings attached.

Nope, no, no. If forgiveness is just issued like a get out of jail free card, then where's the accountability? Where's the incentive to change? Why bother if you can do what you want and get away with it? Narcissistically abusive people rely on your forgiveness to further exploit you. My narcissistic and enmeshed parents used this against me all the time. They never apologized, were never wrong, blamed me for their bad choices AND still insisted I was "unforgiving." Talk about cognitive dissonance. I dispensed everything they demanded like the Broken Vending Machine Child I was. And still they demanded more. You can never give enough to fill a narcissist's bottomless pit of greed. It took me till I was almost 60 to even start to unpick all that was wrong with this.

God's forgiveness is unconditional.

No it's not. Forgiveness is transactional. Like trust and respect, it goes both ways and has to be earned. The penitent must meet certain conditions before God can forgive. God set down an if-then contract whereby "IF we confess our sins AND repent (change our ways), THEN he will forgive. He cannot forgive what has not been repented of. AND we are then bound to not only confess to God but to the people we hurt. AND we are called to extend mercy to others, which narcissistic parents never do. They are the most merciless debt collectors ever. I'm pretty sure Jesus had these kinds of people in mind in the parable of the servant who's forgiven a huge debt who then goes out and throttles someone over a few nickels.

Forgiveness is for good and forever

No it's not. You can lose it. Look what happened to that wicked servant who refused to show mercy. His cancelled debt was then reinstated because he didn't follow through on his end of the deal. This is critical to understand in narcissistic abuse. These arrogant hypocrites EXPECT and demand exoneration. But they are ruthless in extracting every ounce of revenge against others who've done them a narcissistic injury. Not a real injury. Narcissists are the ones who inflict those. Just a blow to the ego. I'm dealing with an extended family situation like this right now.

Forgiveness means you forget what they did.

Noooo!! That is just rolling over for more harm. God may be able to forget, but human beings don't have that luxury. If we forget the endless abuse they put us through, we will keep going back for more. Women in domestic violence MUST hold an image of the abuser's fist making contact with their bodies, so that they can get see exactly what life with this person is like. It's horribly destabilizing. And forgetting would be easier on the victim. But the moment they forget, is the moment they invite more abuse. It won't just possibly escalate it will definitely escalate because abusers see themselves as dominant. Malignant narcissists like to hurt people.

The only definition of forgiveness that we need to consider is radical acceptance that the past will never be any different that it was. And that I won't slit their tires in vengeance.

You can't define forgiveness however you want.

Well, neither should enablers and abusers. Because their version means the victim's complete capitulation and that's not a good thing!! That's what got us into this mess was people pleasing, letting others call the shots, fawning, surrendering my common sense to their vanity and enabling. So yes, I will be defining forgiveness as I see fit. Because think about it, what does forgiveness actually mean? We all have different ideas on it. And letting hypocrites and blind guides define it means they will do what works for them. They will set rules they don't follow themselves. A definition that works for me is radical acceptance that what happened, in all its ugliness, happened just as I remembered it. Forgiveness for me also means that my personal code of ethics won't let me seek revenge. I won't wait in a dark alley and beat him senseless with a tire iron, in repayment for what he did. But that's about as good as it gets. And I don't promise not to fantasize about it occasionally.

The Irony of Abuse: The narcissistic abusers expects the victim to be the one to bend, change, take responsibility for HIS actions and wipe the slate clean. He doesn't want change. He sees no need to. It's working for him. He wants things to go back to the way they were because abusing people works for him.

Going no contact is being unforgiving.

I didn't go no contact with my family. I just stopped holding the door open with my foot so they could slam it on me. I let the door they closed remain closed. If anyone was unforgiving it was them and for things they'd lied and said I'd done which I hadn't. I don't wish them ill. I just don't want anything to do with them. By staying out of the path of dangerous people, I'm staying safe and obeying Lord's Prayer avoid what leads me to sin of self-abnegation and temptation to seek revenge.

Forgiveness means no consequences.

Nope. That was never even promised by God and a mere human could never stop consequences from happening. God doesn't even protect the victims of abuse from suffering consequences of the abuse. The eye still blackens and hurts like hell. If God was going to remove consequences, he'd start there. And we suffer consequences even when we just make mistakes. Even if you are abjectly and humbly sorry for your bad choices (which narcissists will never be), you cannot stop the outcomes your sins set in motion. But that's a narcissist for you. Expect to have their cake, eat it too and to eat everyone else's cake.

Feeling consequences are persecution

Narcissists are such snowflakes. They hold everyone accountable to all kinds of crazy self-set standards. They harass and persecute all over the place. But if they get held accountable for things they did to hurt others, they whine and cry like they are innocent victims being persecuted. Consequences aren't punishment and certainly not "harassment" "brutality" etc. They are logical results of bad choices. My dad said I was "too sensitive" when he would beat and rage at me. Then this insensitive (to others) oversensitive (about himself) man used to moan about how his parents were "too critical" and harassed him when they suggested he get a job and support his family.

You OWE forgiveness to people even if they don't deserve it.

No you don't. First of all, you don't HAVE to forgive anyone. You don't owe anyone anything especially children of narcissistic parents. However, they groomed us in FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to them. While they reneged on their duty of care to us. God may choose to issue forgiveness. But an abused child cannot forgive unrepentant parent persecutors without some change on their part. Then even if they do, it's okay to play it safe. But that won't happen because the nature of their arrogance means they will take advantage of any good thing given them. They believe they are entitled to everything with earning it or paying it back.

Forgiveness is the main priority.

Narcissistic abusers want you to think that. But it's not. It's actually pretty far down the priorities list. There are a ton of things that take precedence before forgiveness is even possible. Like safety, security, seeing past the betrayal blindness to the abuse that actually happened. Like seeing to it that others in your care are safe, seen, heard and healing from the abuse they witnessed or experienced. And I'll take it further and say that forgiveness isn't even on the list. It's a triviality, a nice thought, that doesn't further the cause of healing. Because we so often get order of operations wrong. We put the cart before the horse. We try to run before we've even begun to crawl. I've got so much work to do to heal from the abuse I experienced. I don't even understand the extent of the damage I experienced and yet the first thing out of the narcissist's and flying monkeys' mouths is about forgiveness they are owed, like the only thing that matters is the narcissist. And there it is.

Perpetrators "rights" matter more than victims.

That's what the narcissist has conditioned us to believe and sadly, society, the legal system, religion even psychology all back this up. Everywhere you look, narcissists are howling about their rights while those they hurt are getting victim-shamed, blamed and endangered. It's disgusting how we turn a blind eye to or even affirm the "rights" of child molesters, rapists, wife beaters, child abusers, murderers and other perpetrators. Why? because narcissists care only about themselves, what they want. They will lie, deceive, cheat and steal to get it. Is it any wonder they never stop? That's what got everyone in this mess and which necessitated the conversation on forgiveness in the first place. THEIR EGREGIOUSLY BAD BEHAVIOR.

Forgiveness helps victims.

Nope. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true.

🚨 Warning: Forgiveness by forgetting and giving more chances, hurts victims more and enables perpetrators to continue abusing with immunity. 🚨

Bullies just take this as their due and also as a free pass to do as they wish.

You can't heal without forgiveness.

Said from the perspective of a person who lived for 60 years as a slave under the coercive control of narcissistic parents and betrayal blindness to that, the opposite is true. It was only when I stopped being a Broken Vending Machine of forgiveness, exoneration, exemption, trust, respect, obedience, service, duty, care and excuses made for the bullies, that I began to heal. Once I saw that they were never sorry and were always going to blame-shift onto me, I could begin to put things in correct perspective and heal my childhood trauma.

Truths about Bullies and Forgiveness.

It doesn't matter to them if you forgive or not, they aren't going to change.
They're never sorry. They don't want reconciliation, they want control.
For all your forgiveness, they will never forgive you. They will punish you for every good deed you do.
They sabotage and violate all good things especially self-care, reconciliation and your trust.
They crash boundaries, so setting boundaries with them is a moot point.
They are lying, cheating stealing future fakers who break promises like crackers.
You do not need to forgive them. You need to do what you need to do to stay safe and heal.
It's not about forgiveness. That's just smoke and mirrors. It's about change. And you need radical acceptance that change is not going to happen and they will hurt you again. And again. Because they have too much invested in keeping the status quo. Even if that means they randomly beat you up. THAT is their priority. Doing what they want when they want and woe to you if you try to stop them.
Some things, there's no coming back from. Adulterers, spouse or child abuses, should not get multiple chances. They will always go back to the behavior and punish those who reported them. They should get the book thrown at them but they don't. So you staying safe is the only alternative.

Whether Narcissists can change is irrelevant for narcissistic abuse victims

2026-09-16T10:19:34.919-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, let's delve into the commonly asked question: can a narcissist change to being less arrogant and entitled? To answer that, we have to reframe the question. It's not a matter of CAN but will and do narcissists ever change. (Answer: rarely to never.) But beyond that, whether they can or do change, is irrelevant for narcissistic abuse victims.

Narcissists can change but don't

Narcissists probably can change their behavior if they wanted to. But they don't want to. It's like the Limu Emu "you can ask but he's not going to." So the translation is, don't count on it. There's nothing to be gained for them, and everything to lose, so no incentive. As it stands, a narcissist holds (or believes he holds) the power differential. His arrogance tells him he's above rules, responsibilities and consequences. That's what his victims are for. He feels entitled to every good thing from others with no reciprocity. He holds others to his own ridiculous self-made double standards that he doesn't follow and changes on a whim. Why would he give all that up, just to get along with others whom he has so much contempt for?

Arrogance cements narcissism

Change would require the narcissist humbling himself, or as he sees it, "lowering" himself and living like a mere mortal. It would mean following not just the demands he's imposed on others, but also the real world demands. But he feels arrogantly entitled to special privileges. He believes that he has buy in and a say on everything, that everything anyone else does or says must be run past him as comptroller. He isn't just a god, he's THE god, in his narrow mind. He sets exacting, unreachable standards for others and none for himself. There's no low he's not entitled to go to. And conversely nothing anyone does for him is ever good enough. His bulletproof egotism is its own reward and keeps him welded to this delusional narcissistic fantasy.

Zombie Narcissist

But that's nonsense, you're saying. No one else is going to fall for that. Well, yes, maybe if they saw it coming. But the narcissist is one thing above all else, a liar. He's a fake, a fraud, a charlatan, a conman. His M.O. is lie, cheat, steal, take advantage of, exploit, manipulate, twist, deceive, lather rinse repeat. Narcissists aren't real people. They are zombies feeding off other people. And they hide in plain sight behind crafted personas. His fake ID is part of his scam. The narcissistic and enmeshed parent lives off their child. They're jealous, covetous thieves who demand and steal every good thing from her. Using future faking and trauma bonding, they induce betrayal blindness. What they can't steal they destroy.

Gaslighting FOG of menace

The dark tetrad or malignant narcissist (and they're all malignant if cornered) wields coercive control with gaslighting, intimidation, FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) and narcissistic abuse. His narcissistic rage is a force to be reckoned with and it keeps people in his preordained place for them. He threatens not just you but those you love. There is no evil like an enraged narcissist. So hell yes, people comply with his fantasy. If we're childhood trauma survivors we're already groomed to fawning and people pleasing. And the narcissist can smell CPTSD on you like a pheromone and weaponizes it to bully and exploit you. But he is also, always a craven coward.

Narcissistic bullying coward-clown

Bullies know on some level that they are just windbags with all their silly posturing and bravado. But again, their pride tells them they float like a Macy's parade balloon above us all. This is why they're such shit-stirrers, to keep people destabilized, to prevent them seeing the ludicrous clown under the mask of superiority. But once you do see how laughably pathetically fragile they are, and the narcissist knows you see, watch out. Narcissistic injury (not real injury, butthurt wounded pride) and the resulting narcissistic rage, are unholy terrors to live with. And God help you if you call them out. That's when narcissistic abuse 2.0 begins.

Narcissists love things and use people

Normal people do it the other way around. And narcissists know and exploit this. They know their victims love or once loved them and they play on this for narcissistic supply. And it's this paradigm shift that they exploit with love-bombing and breadcrumbing. But don't be fooled by any seemingly loving gestures. Because there's a devalue and discard phase lurking right behind it. They know the right words to say to keep you hooked. And hooked is the operative word. Normal people want give and take relationships. Narcissists want loyal, obedient possessions caught, trapped and hanging on a string awaiting their pleasure. And they're master of the long con. I knew a husband who played his wife for 35 years. She believed him not because she was gullible but because she loved him. And love might be the biggest thing they exploit. But they wouldn't know love if they fell in it. All they know is performative virtue signaling bullshit to get their way.

Promise to change is not change

It's future faking. Narcissists don't change because why should they? They're already perfect. And if they're not, why should they have to change? They're SPECIAL, remember? Real people rules don't apply to them! But having said that, that doesn't mean a narcissist won't promise to change. They're tacticians and if they see it's in their self-interests to seem to want to change, they'll promise the moon. But they make you pay for it. This is future faking with vengeance. They want you in their clutches. If you share something with them, like children, they will play every dirty trick to keep you in bondage to them. While expecting you to thank them for the privilege.

Vindictive passive-aggressive narcissistic rage

Narcissists may pretend to want to change to buy themselves time. Or because they got caught and now have some music to face. And correction is always taken as a narcissistic insult. They will shame spiral and blame you. Even though the reason you had to call them out was to stop them hurting you or those you love. Be very careful doing that because a cornered narcissist will wreak havoc in post-separation abuse, blame-shifting, DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim offender), smear campaigns, family mobbing, and violence. He will plot his revenge behind the veneer of charm, then exact it just when you are most vulnerable. He will enlist the aid of anyone he can to get even. And if parenting with a dark tetrad narcissist is bad, co-parenting is hell.

Beware the changed narcissist

A narcissist who's been called out, will change but not for the better. They will get more malicious, more devious, more ballistic, more batshit, more abusive. They will take revenge on you for trying to help them. No good deed goes unpunished. They will blame you for their faults, then flip and say you have to forgive them and then punish you if you do. It is a nasty vicious cycle of abuse that keeps on giving. They will do everything to make you end the relationship and then hold on like barnacles to keep you.

What you must do is keep your eyes wide open. Don't listen, watch them. Now's the time for show, not tell.

"But he wants to make this work..."

Sure he does, for himself! "This" has been working just fine for him. But "this" means different things to you and him. You want the relationship and both of you, to grow, mature and get closer. And his agenda is to keep you sacrificing while he just takes and gives nothing. Of course he still "wants you." You're indispensable to his narcissistic fantasy cult. Who else is going to do the heavy lifting? He wants SNAFU (situation normal, all fouled up). He wants to "go back to how things were." So he doesn't want to change himself or for anything to change. He wants you to keep pretzeling yourself till you're thoroughly used up.

Regardless, to change or not is irrelevant

Narcissistic abuse victims have suffered too much for any hope of change to matter. It's too late. Fact. Oh the narcissist will shame you, saying word salad like "it's never too late." Or "it's only too late because you SAY it is." Or "you have to forgive me, you OWE it to me" Or "how can I prove I've changed if you don't give me a chance?" All that is gaslighting and blame-shifting. If he wanted to change he would have. You're not "preventing" anything. If he's the big bad boss man he says he is, what's stopping him? You've never been able to make him do anything, so how could you prevent him now? And no you don't have to forgive him, except in radical acceptance that the past will never be any different than it was. And that's why change is irrelevant. Some things you can't come back from and save your sanity and the same time. The damage is done.

Oh, and it's perfectly okay for YOU to say when enough is enough. You get to call the shots in your own life, not him.

Give him enough rope

If you still believe he can and wants to change for the better, well, tread carefully. And make him show and not just tell you how it's gonna be. Step back and watch what happens. And when he starts dictating terms as he eventually will, hear that he is doing it again. If I was a gambler, I'd lay money on him only proving that you were right to step back, cut ties, report him, call the police, in the first place. Once the honeymoon wears off, the arrogant narcissist goes back to his old tricks with even more in his repertoire. Especially if he did jail time. Or spends any time in the toxic masculinity cray-cray of the incel universe or manosphere. Those dudes are absolutely demented. And when he does revert to his old ways (it won't take long), note that. See it for what it is. Fake.

Childhood Trauma from Exhibitionist Narcissistic Parent Enmeshment: Censure or Pity?

2026-09-15T17:27:48.607-07:00

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 definition refers to a person who exhibits their genitals to a non-consenting person. (My mother has done that, often). 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 and to make others uncomfortable.

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 and 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 normal like concern, pity, modesty or privacy.

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

Jealousy and a desire to humiliate are some of the deeper roots. 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 confused 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 mom says she does this). 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 running around naked by her husband's friends, knowing full well they were coming over. 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. I've watched a narcissist purposely fall in the street and lay there holding up traffic, just for pity. 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 caused damaged attachment issues and 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 and 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 her 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 insult and feel the embarrassment their actions caused. Don't take on yourself the humiliation. That belongs to them.
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).

How enmeshed narcissistic parents destroy and sabotage their scapegoat child

2026-09-10T11:56:09.017-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery journey, I'm looking at how narcissistic parents destroy and sabotage their scapegoat child. Enmeshed parents not only abuse us but also our healthy attachment to them AND their parent role in general. This isn't accidental. It's intentionally done to cripple and entrap us in forever servitude to them.

Enmeshed parents abuse their power.

Parent enmeshment is a relational dynamic where the boundary between a parent and child becomes blurred or nonexistent. Instead of supporting the child's developing independence, the parent shames and punishes autonomy. The enmeshed parent, who is also narcissistic by nature, demands that the child meet their own emotional, psychological, or social needs. While the parent denies the child healthy development. The child only exists to provide narcissistic supply.

Key Characteristics

Lack of Emotional Boundaries: The child is expected to feel what the parent feels. If the parent is anxious, angry, or sad, the child must mirror or fix those emotions to keep the peace. My MIL emotionally coerced her son into cutting ties with a beloved grandparent because mother was took narcissistic injury over innocent things said.
Attachment exploitation: Enmeshed parents take advantage of the child's need for and reliance on them. They give or withhold basic needs based on the child hopping through their complicated hoops.
Role Reversal (Parentification): The child is cast into the role of emotional confidant, mediator, partner, or caregiver, taking on adult concerns that are developmentally inappropriate.
Discouraged Independence: Autonomy, personal choices, or forming outside relationships are viewed as betrayal or abandonment by the parent.
Fear, Obligation and Guilt: Guilt is frequently used as a primary lever of control. Expressing separate opinions, setting boundaries, or pursuing individual goals is framed as selfish or hurtful.
Conditional Approval: Love and validation are tied to compliance, performance, and keeping the parent centered, rather than accepted unconditionally.
Neglected skill development: Since everything revolves around the narcissistic parent, they teach the child only the skills that serve them. Self-care is punished and needs are shamed. We'll talk more on that later.

Common Signs in Adulthood

Adults who grew up in enmeshed family dynamics often experience:

Difficulty Setting Boundaries: Struggling to say "no" or feeling intense guilt when establishing personal limits with parents, partners, or friends.
Identity Confusion: Unsure of personal preferences, values, or life goals independent of family approval.
Chronic Over-responsibility: Feeling responsible for other adults' feelings, mood regulation, and well-being.
Fear of Conflict: Avoiding disagreement at all costs because conflict in childhood threatened safety or connection.
Entangled Decision-making: Feeling compelled to seek parental approval or consultation for routine adult decisions.
Hypervigilance and chronic anxiety. Life is never peaceful and predictable, it's a chaotic battle zone, fraught with very real threat and danger and managed with coercive control.
Exhaustion and burnout way too young. We are always tired from too much pressure and responsibility.
Failure to launch. Because we were groomed only to serve, we're often unable to do basic tasks that would help us. Our success at anything that only met our needs was sabotaged. We were artificially crippled by their coercive control.

Impact on Development

In healthy families, boundaries provide a safe framework for a child to differentiate—discovering who they are as a distinct individual. Enmeshment interrupts differentiation, forcing the child to remain fused with the parent's emotional system. This can undermine self-esteem, make emotional self-regulation difficult, and hinder the development of healthy interdependent relationships in adulthood.

Healthy parents serve their children. Children of narcissists serve their parents.

The parent power differential trap

The fact that the parent IS the parent and adult is used to protect kids in normal families but exploited by narcissistic parents. Healthy parents maintain control of themselves and only control the child to guide, support and nurture. The rules they set are for the benefit of all. However toxic parents weaponize the natural power differential. They practice no self-control while overcontrolling the child (parent enmeshment). They set double standard self-serving, flip-flopping Draconian rules to harm the child and help themselves.

Social gaslighting

You might be asking how in the heck these messed up people get away with such cruelty. First, they use social gaslighting to set the stage for child abuse under the guise of "normal parenting." Normal parents wouldn't dream of doing the things enmeshed narcissists do. So they don't expect other parents to either. In fact, if a childhood trauma survivor tells them what they experienced, most people are dumbfounded or even, sadly, don't believe it. And the malignant narcissist relies on this betrayal blindness to shield their audacious behavior.

Curated reality

Narcissist parents curate a distorted version of reality that outwardly sort of resembles real reality. But behind closed doors, it's utter chaos and rampant abuse. They say and do things that could ostensibly be plausible but which break down under scrutiny. They spout trite cliches that mean one thing to others and something very different to the child. Say "spare the rod, spoil the child" and most people will nod their heads, yes, correction is good. But parent bullies don't mean gentle reproof. They mean smacking the child around for invented offenses, just because it makes them feel powerful.

And the trauma bonded child absorbs this abuse as normal, never realizing that it isn't.

Hidden hypocritical double standard agenda

Dark tetrad narcissists believe that they are above rules but also entitled not only to enforce but also write rules that everyone but they must follow. They believe they're the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government all it one. And again this Parent Warrant Card gives them license to do so, supposedly. But this slippery slope of arrogance sometimes is where it falls apart. They get caught in their own web of deceptive double standards. My mother actually said that adultery was wrong for everyone but her. Loudly and proudly. She told me that her cheating with a married man was good because it was "leading him to Jesus." 😶 His wife didn't see it that way and beat my mom up good. Which never stopped her but it did devastate me. Parent enmeshment is really insidious. We kids end up taking all the blame and the punishment for things they did to us.

Infantilized and Parentified and Adultified

Narcissistically abused kids aren't infantilized by being spoiled or bubble-wrapped. We are under-protected and overworked. They treat us like idiots who can't tie our own shoes. But then they parentify us with all kinds of adult mental load demands. It's not role reversal as much as having to play all roles. Adulting, caring parent, obedient child, scapegoat, surrogate spouse and parent, servant, slave, the demands are endless. And yet with all the work expected of us, they neglect to teach us basic skills. And there's a reason for that.

Narcissists sabotage our success at anything that serves us but not them. And there's a very direct agenda in that: to enfeeble us so we don't have the life skills to leave them while still being utile enough to cater to them.

Dependent Drudge Dilemma

On my childhood trauma recovery journey, a lot of issues come up that I've never really thought about before but now that I do, I see the inherent, tailor-made narcissistic abuse. I just realized around my 62nd birthday what my husband has been telling me all along. That for all the the heavy drudge housework expected of me, I was not taught basic life skills. In fact, they prevented me FROM developing skills I could actually use, by keeping me tired and overburdened.

They created nonsensical "chores" that were only for me. Like folding baskets of everyone else's laundry that they could and should have folded themselves. Like ironing mountains of clothes that didn't need ironing. Or mopping the floor and scrubbing toilets on hands and knees because they were too cheap to provide a mop or a toilet brush. While buying themselves all kinds of luxuries. And lugging around an insanely heavy vacuum because my dad thought it worked better, though they themselves never used the thing. And having to scale snowbanks to take frozen diapers off the line in winter. Nobody cared that I slipped and twisted my ankle performing this stupid task. Plus the dishes. Plus co-sleeping with whoever was the baby at the time.

Because my dad's wife "had a bad back" it was expected that I would do all these chores which neither of them would do that way if they had to. Nobody worried about my back issues which included spina bifida, scoliosis and residual effects of congenital hip dysplasia. I was made to sleep on a junk mattress in the corner of the baby's room while they had a waterbed, AC and a suite of a room. The disparity was Cinderellian.

Cinderella Syndrome

Oh and I also just learned that being employed unpaid around age 14, in their adult foster care home, was illegal. My mom had a foster care home too, that I was made to "foster parent" in, at age 11. Not only does it violate child labor laws, it constitutes child abuse if it is your child AND even if you bypass all this, you still have to pay the child. I was worked as housekeeper, live-in nanny, cook, bottlewasher, entertainment and server for all their residents. In a closet of an unheated room with the baby.

Useless and utile

That would be bad enough, but they also failed to teach me any useful skills that would translate outside their narcissistic cult. Like safety, self-care, cooking, how to drive, sports, arts, hobbies, a trade. They even sabotaged my schooling by keeping me so busy that I was too tired to do homework. We also lived so far out (off the radar) that I had to get the bus at 5:45 am. After I helped with the AFC resident care and childcare. I was allowed one after school activity, the church choir, but only to make my life look more normal. And I had to pay for my own rides out of what babysitting money they let me earn, when I was finished with all those chores. Sound like any put-upon princess we know?

My aha moment

My birthday present realization was that all this was a scheme to render me unfit for anything but loyal servitude to them. No one taught me to drive so I wouldn't drive away. No one helped me buy a car, after stealing my savings account. No one supported me through college and insulted my career choice and told me I'd be no good at it. So I would remain the uneducated drone. They sabotaged my self-confidence so I'd be too broken to actually attempt something else. They also, all four of my narcissistic parents, systematically deprived me to keep me pliable.

Planned Deprivation

My mom kicked me out of the house at 16, after stealing my child support to fund her lazy, unemployed husband. After getting her foster care home shut down for abuse and letting her live-in boyfriend abuse me sexually. Then she stole my savings bonds. Both sets of parents claimed me on their taxes when I was living with neither of them nor being cared for by them. They almost lost me my college grant money and got themselves in trouble with the IRS which they both claimed was my fault.

They undermined me in my job, by starting trouble with my supervising teacher. They claimed they'd gotten me the job and I should "show my gratitude." My mom stole my car. Then she gave me money to get a cheap apartment, as a gift then claimed it was a loan with interest, after I literally caught her going through my purse. She steals anything she thinks she can get away with. Like my son's new shoes. All this theft and deprivation wore down my resilience and resistance. That's why it took me 62 years to see it.

How it hurts and helps me now

So all this enmeshment and abuse did a number on my life skills development. I don't take care of myself, not because I choose not to. I just often don't know how or that I should. I get taken advantage of because I was taken advantage of by people who were supposed to care for me. I'm a target for bullies, crybullies and narcissistic abuse.

BUT having once seen the abuse for what it is, makes me very aware and cued in to it now. Not in my life, so much, but in others. There's the empath. It gives me a distinct discernment that makes me almost gaslighting-proof. I hear the sirens and see the red flags. I think I always did? But again, when you are a child of narcissists, it's not safe to do anything but your ingrained trauma responses of fawning and people pleasing.

But I don't have to do that anymore. Thanks be to God.

Healing CPTSD by deposing the tyrannical enmeshed narcissistic parent

2026-09-07T08:16:14.952-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery journey, I'll show how healing CPTSD starts with deposing the tyrannical enmeshed narcissistic parents from their imaginary thrones. Enmeshed parents abuse power they never earned, to coercively control us. These arrogant entitled hypocrites used all the dirty tricks of double standards, deceit, manipulation, neglect, abuse, narcissistic rage, parentification, triangulation, scapegoating and gaslighting. And that gaslighting was the most insidious and "sticky."

The parent power differential trap

The fact that the parent IS the parent and adult is used to protect kids in normal families but exploited by narcissistic parents. Healthy parents maintain control of themselves first and only control the child to guide, support and nurture. The rules they set are for the benefit of all. However dysfunctional parents weaponize the natural power differential. They practice no self-control while overcontrolling the child (parent enmeshment). They set double standard self-serving, flip-flopping Draconian rules to harm the child and help themselves. And they get away with this, by virtue of their role as parent. They use social gaslighting to set the stage for abuse under the guise of "normal parenting." Normal parents wouldn't dream of doing the things narcissists do. So they don't expect other parents to either.

Narcissistic Parents' Delusions of Grandeur

Narcissistic parents don't just have delusions of grandeur (being above it all, entitled, arrogant, beyond consequences, etc.) They groom their child to believe this about them, using a complex
"smoke and mirrors" gaslighting con game. Gaslighting isn't just lying. It's orchestrating a false reality which is obviously easier to accomplish with children who are codependent upon their parents. And the fake reality that enmeshed parents indoctrinate children into is a narcissistic fantasy cult in which they are gods to be worshipped and the scapegoat child is just a loyal, devoted pawn in their narcissistic cult.

Narcissistic Parents' Delusions of Persecution

All narcissists, especially the vulnerable narcissists, feel put upon all the time. Even grandiose narcissists with their main character energy, have a sense the world owes them a mammoth debt that it's failing to pay. They go around with wearing "victim of injustice" mantles. Their perpetual wounded pride sees insult everywhere. Healthy people know this isn't real injustice but ego insult or narcissistic injury. But the child, being a child and their child, doesn't know her parents are just "butthurt" and thinks someone really has harmed their parent. They believe mother's malicious lies. And do they exploit that, especially the malignant narcissists. For them, it's cake and eating it too. Dark tetrad parents get to crybully plus get the sick pleasure of traumatizing their child. Yes, bullying parents get off on terrorizing kids. Yes it's disgusting.

Who's the real victim?

If the child is already an empath, like I am, this idea that our parents have been hurt, causes us existential crisis and core cognitive dissonance. Our common sense child mind can't see that any harm was done to them but it's not safe to say so. And our compassionate nature wouldn't let us anyway. Because our all-powerful, influencer parent is pouting and we assume they must be right and we must be wrong, or worse insensitive. And narcissistic parents are very good at playing the victim. They exploit our compassion and deceive us about slights they've supposed suffered. Ironically all while causing us insane, intense, intentional suffering both in their hurtful actions and by making us feel sorry for them. It goes beyond DARVO blame-shifting to werewolf-ish shape-shifting.

Trauma Bonding Causes Betrayal Blindness

What's most upsetting isn't that the narcissist parent believes they're bulletproof and special but that their child believes it. Traumatized children carry this bizarrely distorted image of their arrogant, entitled parents as deities, into adulthood. Even if we go no contact with our abusive parents, that false notion of their invincibility and center-of-the-universe-ness remains, embedded in our trauma brain. We cannot fathom, that they weren't always right and superior. That is some heavy duty gaslighting accomplished with bread crumbing, future faking, DARVO, FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) and terrorizing us. We're trauma bonded to them and that causes betrayal blindness. We couldn't see how they destabilized and sabotaged us no matter how hard we try.

We can't see the abuse forest for the all the trees of harm.

The Childhood Codependency Conundrum

Codependency is a term used to describe a relationship where two persons have an unhealthy drug-like dependence on each other. It's not one of symbiotic reciprocity and mutuality. It's one-sided demand and take and the other, fawn, humor, placate and people please. Which weirdly does describe the narcissistic parent-child dynamic but not normal parent-child relationships. Children are logically dependent on parents for survival. But enmeshed parents weaponize and manipulate healthy attachment by making love conditional, parentifying us (parent-child role reversal) exploiting us for personal gain and need-shaming. They force us into unnatural roles of confidant, protector and caregiver.

Deposing the dictator

I will probably never shake the false narrative that my four narcissistic parents were rulers to be blindly obeyed. But I can begin to stop letting them rule me.

I can talk back to their malicious disingenuous voices in my head.
I can poke holes in their irrational delusions.
I can stop worshipping at my narcissistic parents' altar.
I can push past the discomfort of doing something new.
I can work to defog and de-gas the noxious fumes of gaslighting.
I can pry my hands off my eyes and see their deception that was staring me in the face all along.
I can admit now that it's safe, that they weren't powerful leaders, just weak, cowardly usurpers.
I can leave and go no contact with toxic people.

Childhood trauma recovery: family estrangement and going no contact with narcissistically abusive parents

2026-09-01T17:59:49.323-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm sharing a heart-breaking fact. There are no prizes for going no contact with abusers OR for continuing to endure narcissistic abuse. There are no winners and most of the trauma our abusive parents implanted will never be healed. And that's pretty bleak. But there is a kind of winning which I'll get to later.

The deserted desert island of isolation

Nobody gets childhood trauma like a victim of it. Family, religion, friends, psychology, society at large, has pretty much nothing but victim-shaming and gaslighting invalidation for us. Bullying parents abandoned us to the pain and damage they caused. They isolated us and cut us off from help. We were alone on a deserted desert island then and we still are. Just remember that if you choose to go no contact. They cut ties with you first by hurting you and then leaving you defenseless. My parents left me behind, didn't keep me safe and then illegally kicked me out at 16. Estrangement from them now is just accepting that they slammed the door on me and not keeping my foot in to get it slammed again. Sadly trauma bonding and betrayal blindness kept me from seeing clearly till 61.

Nobody gets buy-in on your recovery choices

As if narcissistic parent abuse wasn't bad enough when it was happening, the repercussions in adulthood magnify the problems in trauma responses like hypervigilance, people pleasing and fawning. And our abusive parents are quick to jump in with their DARVO gaslighting about how we're too sensitive and over-reacting. Then to add insult to injury, our suffering is minimized and toxic-splained by blind guides who didn't go through it. And the cherry on top is when these enablers and flying monkeys take our abuser's part against us. Victim-shaming is so frustratingly common it's no wonder we keep quiet so long! But anyone who wasn't there for us then, doesn't get a say now. No one gets an opinion on your experiences unless they've consistently shown up and supported you. And even then, holding space is much more effective than shooting your mouth off.

Time to redress the imbalance

Another sucky part of childhood trauma recovery is that all the work of it falls to the injured party. It's like we're constantly being blindsided and we're the only ones hurt and paying all damages. Our narcissistic parents waltz off scot-free. Because again, society, religion, psychology, family and friends insist that we have to "fix ourselves" and not worry about them. They tell us to:

Rise above.
Be the bigger person.
It doesn't matter who caused it.
Forgive and forget.
Let it go. Move on and get over it.
Stay calm. Love them.
Try to see their side of things.
Make peace with them.

These are all very unsafe things to do with narcissists.

Rising above will only get you cut down.
Being the bigger person eggs on narcissistic rage. Because they make it their mission to demean people who show them up as the petty little bullies they are.
And context matters! They started the problems by being arrogant, hurtful and cruel to us. Fixing what they broke will only entitle them to damage more.
Same with forgiveness. The persecutor isn't sorry and has every intention of continuing the abuse. So you forgiving is the definition of insanity, doing what you've always done and expecting a different result.
And I'd love to let it go, move on and get over it. Problem is, it won't let me go! I trauma nightmare every night. And this isn't just in the past. So long as we stay connected, narcissists find new ways to hurt us.
They will take narcissistic injury if you stay calm because it shows up their dysregulation. They'll do everything their power to dysregulate you so no one will see they're the unhinged ones.
You can never make or even keep peace with antagonistic people, especially passive-aggressive and covert narcissists. They undermine and sabotage every attempt at peace.

So it's time we re-center the imbalanced care ratio that enmeshed parents threw out of whack. They made it all about them, with FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). They said they owed us nothing and we owed them everything. We scapegoats were servants, surrogate parents and spouses and parentified possessions. Self-care was selfish, they said. Well now it's time to whack that false narrative back into perspective. It's time to do whatever we need to do to get healthier and if that means cutting ties with toxic people, so be it.

Should I stay or Should I go?

So we come to the question, to go or not to go no contact with abusers. If and when the scales fall from your eyes and you see their abuse for what it is, you then have a big decision to make. I know, again, it sucks that the work always falls to the victim. But since we can't trust them to have our best interests, we have to go it alone (I don't recommend family therapy with narcissists as they are so good at twisting the narrative.) So there are three options along with questions to ask yourself.

Ignore the abuse and try to make it work.

Has ignoring, forgiving, being the bigger person worked before?
Or was it a "do what you've always done, get what you've always gotten?"
Have they taken advantage of you?
Do you feel seen or like a tool they use the get their way?
Have you just soothed them at your own expense?
Has the narcissist gotten better or worse with time?
Have they tried to apologize or just made excuses and denied responsibility?
Has their abuse escalated?
Do you feel better or taken advantage of? (don't just trauma respond, really ask yourself)

Stay but at arm's length. Use grey rock and detachment and set boundaries.

Can you actually do this or will it just turn into more humoring and placating them?
Is grey-rocking sustainable? (People who've tried it generally say it's not with chronically narcissistic parents.)
Will they respect or push any boundaries you set? (which is why you had to set them in the first place).
Can you maintain this "emotional distance" relationship?
Is it really a relationship if you have to walk on eggshells? (which is what this amounts to).
Is this relationship worth it?

Go no contact.

What will be the consequences? (Post-separation abuse, losing other relationships by default)
Will there be collateral damage? (kids, grandkids, loss of inheritance)
Will others suffer or actually be helped by you cutting ties? In my case, going no contact with my narcissistic stepparents and parents when they kicked me out, would have been so much better for everyone, including my husband and kids.

Whatever you decide, don't make a big announcement. They'll just weaponize it to humiliate and shame you. Just quietly do it.

More enabler nonsense to ignore

You can't cut them out. They're your parents. I actually can. They never cared for me. I was just useful, like a broom. So this broom is going to fly away.
That's too extreme, just set boundaries with them. *shakes head* You mean like the ones set previously which they just ignored and trampled? I wouldn't need to set boundaries if they respected me in the first place. But since they don't, it will just be an invitation for more hurt. And anyone who would say this clearly knows nothing of your situation or they'd know this.
You'll miss them. You can't miss what you never had. And you for sure won't miss the pain they caused. What you probably will feel is some grief and anger that they didn't love you as they should. That's reasonable. And it gets easier in time.
You should just forgive. If by that you mean accept that the past will never be any different, been there, and doing that. If you mean roll over for more abuse, no thank you.
You'll regret it. If parents' behavior was bad enough to warrant the child cutting ties with them, I doubt it. What I feel is a huge burden lifted.
Have you tried telling them how you feel? Why would I need to tell a parent that abusing, neglecting, exploiting, abandoning, endangering, humiliating, letting your boyfriend or girlfriend do these things too, is wrong? They know how I feel and that's why they do it, to make me feel bad, duh.
There are two sides to every story. Yep, the right one and the wrong one.
What if they say they are sorry? They never have. They've only blame-shifted, lied, twisted facts and gaslit me. If ever they did, it would only be to make themselves feel better not me. And it would still be lies, distortions and evasions and I don't have that much fabulous to navigate it all.
What if they die? You'll miss them. They will die anyway, it's inevitable. What I will miss is the fact that I never had parents to love me.

Don't expect empathy but be glad when you find it.

We know that child abuse of all kinds is much more common than it should be. And yet if an adult child of narcissists cut ties, everyone clutches their pearls in horror. Because as a whole, society is hard on victims while making excuses for perpetrators. Empathy is thin on the ground. And then there are the judgmental, self-righteous hypocrites who love to make up rules for others that they don't follow themselves. You'll be able to spot them because they're the ones saying the nonsense I listed above. There are no loving cups awarded for ditching your family like they ditched you. You'll be called petty, immature, vindictive, yada, yada. But who cares? Because there are no trophies given to victims who stay harnessed to enmeshed parents either. Society is messed up when it comes to helping children of abusers.

About that winning I spoke of...

There's a lot that sucks about childhood trauma, having to estrange from parents and do all the recovery work alone. But there is one little Hope Candle and that is that once you see, hear and know, you'll never be able to unsee, unhear, unknow again. Every step forward you make is a win. Every time you banish the shame they put on you, the narcissistic fantasy cult takes a hit. Your estrangement may not feel great. And your parents will hate it. But they can also thank you for exposing their evil behavior. I'm serious. Narcissism is deadly. It's selfish, self-serving, immoral, unethical, deceitful, exploitative and debauched. Narcissists are liars, cheats and thieves who blow through relationships like sand blasters. You revealing them to themselves might just be the lifeline to save them if anything can. But that would just be a bonus. It is finally all about you and your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!

May you find lasting joy, peace, love and fulfillment. And may all your by and by's be sweet.

38 Devastating D's of malignant narcissistic enmeshed parent abuse and CPTSD

2026-08-31T16:32:43.941-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery I'm looking at the 25 devasting D's of malignant narcissistic parent abuse and how they create our CPTSD. There are more but these are the main ones. Sadly each time I revise this, I discover more. Each is in itself a unique bespoke form of child abuse.

The 38 Ds of malignant narcissist parental abuse

Deceit: The entire premise of narcissistic parent abuse (neglect, exploitation, manipulation, endangerment, scapegoating) rests on lies. It's a house of cards they construct that looks real but is just a hollow travesty. But this narcissistic cult is all you know.

Double standards. Double speak, hypocrisy, two sets of ever-shifting rules: everything is one-sided demand with no reciprocity. They take your good and give you bad. They future fake, renege on promises, then gaslight you, saying you made it up and are too demanding (!) and selfish.

Disingenuousness. These people are fakers, scammers and cheats. My narcissistic mother actually prefers a con to an honest day's work. She loves scoring off people. But she's the first to tell you she's a Christian. I call these Pyramid Scheme Christians.

Deviousness. My narcissistic mother once conned me and my husband into buying her piece of junk car for $900 AND selling her my very good car for $100. She flipped the title and offered no help when that car stranded me and my kids. She trashed my once-good car and let it go to pot. I think I knew I was being stung. But I still thought she loved me and that I must have missed something. Because whose mother would scam them? Mine.

Devaluation. They don't prioritize their children and value us only for our usefulness, not our individuality. They belittle, mock and humiliate us. They nit pick over non-issues while ignoring enormous wrongs they've done to us.

Demeaning. Narcissistic parents dress us in silly clothes. They cut our hair in ridiculous styles so they can outshine us. They are jealous of our childhood charm and competitive with us. They will do anything to make us look foolish. They do and say humiliating things to us and then lead the jeers. My mother threw a pie in my face and shoved my son's face in a pie at her company picnic.

Disregard not only for feelings but rules. Narcissist parents live by their own bizarre set of user-created rules that apply only to them. They believe they are beyond consequences. They use children as cat's paws and shields from accountability. They blame-shift. The immoral, illegal, unethical and outrageous things my parents subjected me to, boggles under the cold light of reality.

Defeat. You can't win for losing with malignant narcissists. They see you as a challenge to overcome. In fact the more you succeed, the more you rise above, the more they drag you down. When I graduated college was my narcissistic father proud? No. He sniffed his haughty nose and "humpf, college isn't for everyone."

Disdain. They don't just downgrade what you do but WHO you are. They say the most disgustingly uncalled-for insults. They let their kids walk on you and then laugh. When I breastfed my babies he said sneeringly "not all women are cows." I don't remember he or my narcissistic stepmother or mother ever saying a kind thing to or about me, that didn't have a sting in the tail.

Discard + Demand. Narcissistic parents ditch responsibilities to you. BUT they also demand buy-in on you. It's ludicrous how they're able to con everyone including you into thinking you owe them, after they dumped you.

Discrediting. They take credit for our good actions. Then they find fault with innocent things to vilify us. They make up nonsense about us to make us look bad. They discount our good intentions, always looking for a way to make us appear as failures.

Denouncement. They arrogantly "call you out" feeling entitled to weigh in and run their mouths against you. They don't do it to teach or help. They're nowhere to be found when you need them. But if they can get narcissistic supply scoring off you, they'll jump in twist your words just to humiliate you.

Disparagement. You don't need to have done anything to earn their vicious scorn. They lie all the time and they will happily lie to character assassinate you. And they do it in such a backstabbing way you never see it coming. And these are your family who are supposed to love you. Why would you think they were out to destroy you? Very often, you don't see their gaslighting and catfishing because trauma bonding has given you betrayal blindness.

Diminishment. They are always looking to cut you down. Narcissistic parents get ahead by kicking you to the curb. They use people like ladders to make themselves taller. No one is every as smart, special or entitled as them.

Dismissal. They dismiss your feelings and invent tales about how you're too sensitive if you contradict them. They minimize you and brag themselves up. They act like totalitarian dictators who control you with the snap of their fingers. (this one really makes my blood boil.)

Disrespect Trap. Narcissists are always squawking about respect they are "owed." They aren't. No one is. Respect is earned. But the child who deserves their respect just for being their child, is treated with abysmal lack of respect. They are crybullies.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Narcissistic parents manufacture endless dilemmas to trap you in. There's no winning, no low to which they'll stoop, no crazy enough hoop configuration they'll set for you to hop through. Narcissists want their scapegoat to fail.

Dream trauma. They stole our healthy dreams and aspirations and replaced them with CPTSD and trauma nightmares. They ruined our rest and made everything exhausting and frightening. But the dreams are never as bad as the reality.

Deception and illusion. Nothing is real except the harm and danger they put us in. Family is for us to serve not to be a loved part of. Home is a facade. It only poses as a shelter, like the witch's candy house. Inside it's scary and fraught. The monsters don't lurk outside. They live with us.

Denial. They denied us basic necessities and rights, then denied abusing us. It's just more of their lies.

Derailment. Their crazy-making behavior can drive us off the rails and into insanity. They do this intentionally to undermine us. They purposely break plans, sabotage events and keep everyone confused.

Discord. These people invent problems where none existed. They could set off a Quaker meeting with their pot-stirring machinations.

Dysregulation. Narcissists are the unstable ones but they use every underhanded trick to dysregulate the child who could no more survive their onslaught than she could hold back the ocean.

Dismantlement. The child is born an extant individual but the enmeshed parent begins early on to dismantle natural boundaries. She invades the child's space and takes over. She violates modesty and privacy. She pirates the child's brain to serve her own selfish ends.

Disruption. Abusive parents do everything in their power to keep their child anxious, nervous and hypervigilant. They flood the child's life with gratuitous chaos, moving her around, switching schools randomly, making and breaking promises. Dragging all kinds of dangerous, unhinged people into her life and making her subservient to them. If she says anything, they claims she's the problem or she remembered it wrong.

Deprivation. We were not just neglected. We were systematically deprived of sleep, comfort, peace of mind, nourishment and care, to make us weak, tired, vulnerable and pliable.

Debauchery. They were debauched, dirty-minded dark tetrads. We were just kids caught up in the crosshairs of their sick narcissistic fantasy cult. But they drilled their shame into us by doing things normal kids and even adults had no framework for. How could we tell them? Why would I as an empath, put that on them? So all their ick made a home in our hearts.

Degraded. We were physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually molested. They made us do bizarre, disturbing things that poisoned our minds and destroyed our childhood and selves. We were innocent but being forced into it made us feel ashamed by association. Guilt by proxy.

Debasement. This shit made us feel dirty. Shit we couldn't tell anyone because they'd think we were the freaks. Their shit we were blamed for. We weren't allowed to set healthy boundaries. We were punished for defending ourselves. Who'd believe us, they said. But it seeped into our relationships like carbon monoxide. I let people hurt me because I didn't know that I should protect myself. Sometimes I acted inappropriately because I was taught to. It made me look weird and there was no one to support or comfort. Shame loves company.

Deformation. Dark Tetrad parents deformed us with abuse, neglect and chaos. I have several disabilities that are directly attributable to autoimmune deficiencies and child abuse.

Defamation. They lie to and about us to damage our understanding of self. They twist and destroy our character. They spin false narratives and launch smear campaigns.

Destruction. These malignant narcissists don't construct they destruct everything they touch. They tear down your boundaries, reserves, strength till you're just a fragile, broken egg shell. They thwart success and joy. They feed off your good. They make Zombies look like Girl Scouts.

DARVO. They deny, attack, reverse victim offender. They're like human twist ties, twisting round and round, flipping scripts to make themselves look like victims and their victims, persecutors. I just shake my head and the number of times I fell for this and felt so much FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) that it almost suffocated me.

Destabilization. All this rotted the foundations our selves were built on. Nothing was secure. Every moment was a terrifying game Stay Alive with each step threatening a fall into a bottomless pit.

Disabling. I'm trying to put these in order of severity but they're all just terrible. Our abilities were stripped from us. We were infantilized and parentified. Our capabilities were not only not fostered they were crippled, by ruthless demands, bullying, coercive control and violence.

Debilitation. We became helpless and hopeless because help was denied and hope was stolen. The only thing we could do was robotically trauma respond with fawning, groveling, people pleasing and self-abasement.

Dehumanization. At the core of it was a complete obliteration of our own humanity. We were told self-care and being ourselves was selfish. So we became selfless little shadow ghosts hovering in the fringes, awaiting the next command. No life, thoughts, wants, feelings, needs, boundaries. We were possessions not people.

Prescription for healing

I won't patronize you with a cutesy little wrap-up promising quick fixes for this sufferings. It's real and deep and visceral and historic. They do these things over a few weeks. It was lifelong devastation. But I can offer you one little Hope Candle and that is that knowledge is power. Once you begin to see the past for what it was, you're on the radical acceptance path.

They may or may not change (chances are they won't.) But you have been changed forever by your new understanding what love is and isn't. You may choose to stay or go no contact. You may stumble or get side-tracked. But whatever you choose, once seen never forgotten. You know that you know what you know. And you can never unknow it again.

Trauma recovery is the yellow brick road AWAY from home

2026-08-28T09:59:04.934-07:00

Hello my friends, today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm creating metaphors for the suffering that I'm trying to get out of me. All my life I've walked a yellow brick road that was supposed to lead to Kansas and safety but lead only to danger and pain.

Along the way, I've experienced flying monkeys (blind guides) and Wicked Witches of Narcissism. I've been burned by toxic shaming fumes from her cauldron of abuse, neglect, invalidation, parentification, endangerment and abandonment. The Good Witch that was supposed to give me ruby slippers, only tripped me up, by DARVO and refusal to see my trauma.

I've been lead astray by the Wizard of Gaslighting and trauma bonding. I've been blinded and blindsided in the dangerous woods of Betrayal Blindness. I've been trapped in the quicksand of parent enmeshment. I've had little rotten apples of self-doubt, toxic shaming and narcissistic abuse lobbed at me by the menacing trees of family chaos and scapegoating.

I've been deceived by four narcissistic parents who posed as helpful companions but who led me into, not away from pitfalls of parentification. Everything that is supposed to be good, safe, sweet and light was flip-flopped to bad, fraught, sour and dark. So now, even the brightest days are haunted by ominous clouds of FOG (fear, obligation and guilt). It doesn't matter that none of this actually exists now. It lives in the reality of my memory. My then is now my now.

Where I go from here is not a one-size, once and for all, answer. It's a daily rescue swim out of the rip tide. Some days the water is choppier and harder to navigate. Sometimes I just tread water. Sometimes I drown a little. I don't think to call out for help because not only was the life ring pulled away, my head was pushed under water. So I try to keep my head low so as not to attract attention. It is a double bind.

I see threatening portents in the most innocuous of things. Everything seems to trigger trauma responses because fawning and people pleasing was the only thing I knew. It was as integral as cellular respiration. Childhood trauma responses WERE my life ring. Sort of. They were also the things that dragged me under and handicapped me.

One thing that helps is asking AI to create metaphorical images to "show me" myself. You can see a gallery of them in past posts. Sorry I've nothing more helpful to say today. One day at a time.

Situational spectrum narcissistic behavior vs. pervasive narcissism vs. NPD: does it matter?

2026-08-28T09:22:46.254-07:00

Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring the difference between situational narcissistic behavior and pervasive narcissism and full-blown NPD. Situational narcissism is a term I coined to describe self-centered behavior patterns that occur in temporal situations and are not integral to the overall personality. But which nevertheless can cause a lot of problems. I'll show how this differs from rigid, "hard-wired" narcissism and NPD (narcissistic personality disorder). I'll also explain why these difference do and don't matter.

The "Two Faces" Metaphor
Situational narcissism reflects a temporal shift: warmth, compassion, and open arms when energy reserves are intact versus withdrawal, irritability, and self-preservation when chronically depleted, burned out, or navigating shift work sleep disorder (SWSD).

First a note on NPD: I'm not a clinician and never make any attempt to diagnose NPD. I only share observations and experiences with narcissistic behaviors, specifically as a child of narcissistic parents. However, there is a polemics trap that those hearing our stories will often set to undermine us. And we need to be aware of this so we don't get side-tracked in our trauma recovery. Ironically, these traps are a form of gaslighting that is so prevalent in narcissism.

The uniquely bespoke victim-shaming of the narcissistic parent

Childhood trauma is usually a product of narcissistic (selfish, entitled, arrogant, remorseless) parent behavior. And childhood trauma responses (fawning, freezing, people pleasing) from narcissistic abuse, are generally not understood by people, not in family, society, religion, school, even psychology. And the common response of those who don't understand is to question and second-guess, unfortunately. I call these underminers, "blind guides" who enable abuse by victim-shaming. It's no exaggeration to say that the world gaslights us that it didn't happen, we're making it up or are too sensitive or critical of our parents. We carry this shame and keep silent until one day, maybe, we don't. And then they level up the gaslighting.

The Diagnosis Trap & Blind Guides
You do not need a clinical diagnosis to validate your experience of harmful behavior. External critics ("blind guides") may attempt to shift focus onto credentials or definitions, but the impact of trauma remains real regardless of the label applied to the abuser.

The double blind guide blindside

When you call out the narcissistic parent abuse, neglect, exploitation, child endangerment, abandonment, invalidation, hypocrisy, parentification, humiliation, triangulation, scapegoating and cruelty for what it is, the blind guides set more traps. They pooh-pooh the abuse without even hearing us out. Or they completely overlook the fact that we just told them our parents left us in a strange city with strangers for a week. They make all kinds of excuses for what happened. And God forbid we call our parents narcissists. Blind guides (also called flying monkeys and enablers) jump down our throats with accusations of "diagnosing" saying we aren't qualified to identify our parents as such. And because we've been demeaned all our lives, we believe that we are wrong to call out the abuse and our parents as abusers. So we remain silent and that puts us in a double blind guide bind. It tightens the trauma bonded, betrayal blindness blindfold.

Enablers ask "is she diagnosed with narcissism? And if not, how dare you call it that?" Which is the double blind guide blindside: they know narcissists never seek therapy let alone admit their own seflishness. So we, their kids, are stuck, damned if we do or don't.

Red rags and red flags

If a child who's grown up with abuse isn't qualified to call it what it is, no one is. But don't expect society to affirm you. They're more likely to victim blame and shame. And using the word narcissism is like a red rag to a bull with a lot of folks. It just triggers all their most judgmental, least empathetic disrespectfulness. But let this very unkindness be the red flag you need to see their hypocrisy and judgementalism. See that this was always how your parents manipulated you, with DARVO shame, blame and scorn. Be careful who you tell. Guard your dignity and sanity against this further "leveled up" abuse.

Seeing through the gaslight

So who do we call out their abuse to? The calling it out is something I do within myself and with a very short list of trusted people. It's more of a quiet seeing, hearing and acknowledging. It's the recognition that all the smoke and mirrors they terrorized us with, were just illusions. It's radical acceptance of the fact that it happened and what they did was wrong, no matter how anyone tries to minimize it or gaslight us. All the excuses in the world can't reduce the impact of childhood trauma.

Situational vs. Ingrained Narcissism
Situational self-absorption is temporary and driven by crisis, exhaustion, or overwhelm—not an intentional desire to exploit. Ingrained narcissism or NPD, by contrast, relies on a persistent pattern of entitlement, grandiosity, and seeking narcissistic supply regardless of circumstances.

NPD or not to be, isn't the question

But back to the question of NPD or not. It doesn't matter whether you are qualified to diagnose someone with NPD, because it doesn't matter whether they have the full-blown disorder or just act very narcissistically. The narcissistic abuse is the same. They get narcissistic supply from shaming you. Nothing changes with the diagnosis. Expect possibly that if they truly have NPD, you might be tempted to make even more excuses for them than you've already made. I've said it before, the last thing my self-centered mother, stepmother, stepfather and father needed is a doctor slip giving them permission to be so.

Situational spectrum or ingrained narcissism matters (but also doesn't)

So situational narcissists are my way of referring to people who are not full-blown permanent narcissists. So we're all selfish sometimes. "Spectrum narcissists" are extra selfish but not to the point of fully self-serving. Their "extra" only occurs occasionally, such as when they are in crisis or fully depleted (exhausted, hangry, very ill). People with SWSD (shift work disorder) often show what looks like narcissism because they are chronically tired and always on an off schedule. Actually some of the situational narcissists I know are better in crisis mode. So are they actually narcissists? No. It's a spectrum, like autism. And the biggest difference is that they aren't intentionally cruel, just less careful than they should be. I think self-absorbed might be a better term. However...

The key difference in situational selfishness and narcissistic selfishness is that narcissists EXPLOIT and MANIPULATE then GASLIGHT you. The narcissistic abuse is specific to you. Situational selfishness occurs across the board.

It's not you, but it is about you

Regardless whether someone is situationally or always self-absorbed, regardless of why a person behaves is a consistently selfish, self-serving way, is not your fault. You're never the reason they act haughty, rude, spiteful, malicious, aggressive, antagonistic, thoughtless, disrespectful, malignant, petulant, cruel, self-righteous, hypocritical, entitled, self-centered, Machiavellian or any of the many nasty personality traits associated with narcissism. It doesn't matter if they ever get better. And research shows narcissists won't anyway. But healing IS about you. Setting boundaries on what you'll tolerate, grey rocking or going no contact, healing trauma responses, getting stronger are tasks you can do.

Make it all about you.
Focus on Your Healing
Regardless of why someone acts in a consistently self-serving way, their behavior is not your fault. Healing shifts the focus back to your own boundaries, protective measures (like grey rocking), and personal recovery.