Tag: parentification

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Self Gaslighting

Self Gaslighting

Buckle up, this is going to be rough….trigger warning for emotional abuse and narcissistic abuse. Possibly also triggers around minimising and micro aggressions to self.

Okay, there’s the triggers out the way. If I’ve left anything out please let me know and I’ll add them in.

This is something I want you to really listen to if you’ve grown up in a narcissistic household.

When you say to me: ‘I don’t want to cause a fuss’, or ‘I’m really over emotional’, or maybe ‘she only wanted the best for me’; I hear you repeating the internalized messages from the years of gaslighting you have suffered.

You are literally doing their gaslighting for them. You are SELF GASLIGHTING.

Let’s take the first example I’ve used. ‘I don’t want to cause a fuss’.

Over the years, every time you have asked for a need of ANY kind to be met, if it hasn’t aligned with the need of the narcissistic parent, it will have been made very clear how much of a gross inconvenience that is. Every time you expressed an autonomous need, you will have been told something along the lines of ‘don’t make a fuss’. You may even have been physically assaulted for requesting it, possibly even sexually assaulted.

You will have internalized that every time you ask anyone for any kind of need to be met (a drink, a tissue, for them to stop kicking your seat on a plane, your food order is wrong etc etc) you are creating an ungodly fuss and EVERYONE hates you for it.

Let me say right now, they don’t.

And if they do, the chances are that it’s very much firmly in the camp of THEIR issue. Not yours. Remember what I say about boundaries? If we can honestly (key word right there!) look at the situation and without justification realise there isn’t anything we would change, then we have nothing to apologise for, and can go peacefully on with our day.

(Side note, if we are justifying, it may be that we are trying to convince ourselves as much as the other person, it might also be a sign that we’ve been emotionally abused and have to explain at length why we need to have our needs met – not healthy, not ok, not your fault. I’ll blog about it soon)

So how do we combat it? We have to adjust our boundaries and our language. One way we might do this is put ourselves in the shoes of the person we are asking to meet our need.

If you were a waitress in a restaurant and you got an order wrong, would you be angry/irritated with a customer who politely and quietly says ‘My order is wrong, could you correct it please?’

I really hope I’m right when I say ‘no, of course you wouldn’t!!’ You might feel a bit embarrassed you had got it wrong, you might even get seriously triggered, but that would be about you and your unresolved issues (probably around perfectionism/being good enough; thanks narcissistic parents!!!) not the customer.

Self gaslighting, does the work of the narcissist even when they’re nowhere to be seen. You are subconsciously continuing their abuse for them. By challenging this behaviour, you will start to establish some healthy boundaries around your self-worth and self-value, and you will break the cycle.

Be kind to yourself, this is hard, and it hurts to realise the perpetual insidiousness of their vile abuse, but awareness = healing, and I KNOW you can heal this. I know you can. Because you would have scrolled past this post and not even dared to read the rest of it. I’ve attached a table of examples of the taught message, the internalised messaged and the message we need to change it to. Read it, save it, and learn it. And heal. Stand up, you’re not an inconvenience you’re astounding.

All the love <3

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Narcissistic parents and the complementary moral defence.

I love the words in this image, because we repeat what we know even if that means ending up in abusive situations.

The biggest problem with this is that when there is parental narcissistic abuse, sometimes those who have suffered don’t realise until they’re a LOT older and have already experienced abusive relationships.

Narcissistic parents create a world view, and as such will repeatedly tell their children that the childhood they had was amazing. And of course the children believe them.

Whenever someone tells me their childhood was perfect, I’m always wary. My spidey senses flare. And so far they’ve been right.

The problem is that you don’t know any different. You’ve been taught that everything the narcissistic parent has said and done, or the way they treat you or expect you to behave is completely normal. And because a lot of narcissistic abuse doesn’t involve physical abuse in the ‘traditional’ sense, a child doesn’t know the way they are being treated is wrong. We don’t get taught about emotional abuse in schools.

As a child you have no other point of reference, so whilst you might not have liked it very much, and maybe even rebelled against it now and again (or a lot!) you will have been taught that YOU are the problem. Nobody else, just you.

And so children of narcissists come to view themselves as fundamentally flawed and that they are lucky if anyone loves them at all, even if that love is abusive.

It’s called ‘the complementary moral defence’, and means the child of the narcissist has to absorb all the wrong in the relationship so as to maintain the attachment, because if challenged the narcissist will withdraw their ‘love’ as a punishment. To a child that isolation is catastrophic.

That complementary moral defence plays out over and over again in other relationships as the child grows, ultimately establishing itself in the adult love relationship.

It leaves children of narcissists vulnerable to abusive relationships and it’s why it’s SO important to understand all the ways in which you’ve been affected and educate yourself around all the different behaviours.

And that’s where hope lies. Because on the other side of that understanding and education are healthy relationships, self respect, self worth, self LOVE, self esteem, boundaries and so many other positive affects.

Going through and weeding out every unhealthy behaviour attributed to you is the only way to be free of the pattern but oh my goodness it’s worth it.

I watch clients go through this process and blossom into their true selves and it’s magical to see.

Be kind in the process, but process ❤️

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Narcissistic Parentification

So, here I am, the last in the instalments about parentification. Today’s offering is on Narcissistic Parentification. Grab a drink, a snack, and get comfy, because not only could this be long, but I suspect for some of you this might be painful, and I really want to ask you to keep yourselves safe in reading this.

Before you start reading, please make sure that you have some grounding techniques to hand for any anxiety it might trigger, or PTSD responses. This is a very concerned trigger warning.

Okay. Ready? Let’s go.

What is Narcissistic Parentification?

Well, if you’ve read the other blogs about instrumental and emotional parentification, it’s all those together and more. What makes Narcissistic Parentification unique is the ‘projection’ of the parent’s ideals onto the child.

This means the child lives out all the things the narcissistic parent idealises about themselves OR all the things the narcissistic parent loathes about themselves. It’s one huge ego trip, and results in defined family roles, that positions the child in either ‘golden child’, or ‘scapegoat’.

For the golden child, it sounds as though they get an easy ride, and in some ways that might be true, they certainly escape the worst of the abuse. But from where I sit, as a therapist, I sometimes think that as the scapegoats are more likely to escape the narcissistic abuse, in some ways they’re the lucky ones. Because at some point, they’re going to start questioning why it is they are always blamed for everything, or punished more severely, or excluded, or criticised more than their sibling. Because one day, they’re going to wake up and realise that they deserve more than being the vessel of their narcissistic parent’s self hatred, they will fight against the narrative they’ve been given, and they will figure out who they are, not who they’ve been TOLD they are.

My experience shows that the golden child is unlikely ever to do that. I’ve come across it once. Someone who knew they were the golden child, and were able to protect their sibling in adulthood. It stands so freshly in my memory because it is something I have never heard of before, and never come across since. I’m sure I will again, I’m sure it has happened, it’s just excruciatingly rare (in my experience).

As a result, the impact of narcissistic parentification for the golden child is just as big. The golden child will adopt the role of idolizing and defending their parent against all and any criticism (because as the projective object, they’re also defending themselves). They will likely become co dependent, possibly narcissistic themselves, and as a result be unable to self-actualise. This in turn will possibly cause depression and anxiety, unhealthy relationships, and an inability to break away from the image projected onto them by the parent.

The golden child will be moulded to hold everything good about the parent (as the parent sees it in themselves) the parent will likely ignore any wrongdoing or behaviour, and when the golden child offends, hurts, inflicts or does anything wrong towards the scapegoat, it will somehow become the scapegoat’s fault. The golden child will be exonerated from all responsibility and the scapegoat will be made to hold it all. So the golden child may never be able to form any kind of healthy relationship. It may seem like they have the blessed life in many ways, but they will be miserable, unable to sustain relationships, and unlikely to find their way to a place of health because the cost of recognising that they or the parental system are the problem is too high.

That’s why I feel sad for the golden child. And that’s why I think the scapegoat is the most likely to win in the horror that is a narcissistic family system.

So what about the scapegoat?

The scapegoat may also develop significant mental health issues, as a result of a crippling insecure attachment due to the barrage of abuse and criticism, the scapegoat may attempt to hold themselves to a level of perfection in order to gain any scraps of love or affection, but they will never be good enough. They may have difficulty forming healthy relationships before therapeutic intervention, and may repeat the relational pattern of abuse. They are more likely to get involved with a narcissistic partner due to the relational pattern. They will likely be isolated and excluded if and when they start to fight back against the negative projection from family.

The scapegoat is the escape artist. The scapegoat has most chance of breaking the cycle.

So what else happens in narcissistic parentification?

Well, the narcissistic parent will rely on triangulation to divide and conquer their children (where there is more than one child). They will use Idealisation and Devaluing behaviours to do this. They will give with one hand and take away with another. The idealisation behaviours may extend as far as comparing one child to the other e.g. ‘why can’t you be clever/funny/pretty/lovely etc. like your sibling?’. They will use shame, blame, criticism and fear as a way to control both golden children and scapegoats. They will gaslight everyone around them especially the children. ‘I didn’t mean it like that’, ‘you’re being oversensitive’, ‘that’s not what happened’, ‘it’s your own fault because you did xyz’.

Basically, in a narcissistic family system, no one escapes unscathed. It is too easy to resent the golden child for the elevated position they inhabit, but their elevation is also their isolation. They know somewhere in their psyche that their position comes at a cost, that they must toe the line so as to remain in favour. The risk of the attachment rupture is too great to step away from their role.

The scapegoat faces such hideous emotional abuse; they are at real risk of developing significant attachment disorders, including Borderline Personality Disorder. Should they attempt to break free from the abuse they are subjected to smear campaigns, and even in their absence will hold the position as the vessel that carries all the family dysfunction.

They can enforce boundaries, heal, build new healthy relationships, but they will never have what they need; a healthy parent.

The impact of narcissistic parentification is so high that it’s impossible for me to capture it all in one blog. But if I can ask you to remember something, it would be this:

Whatever happens in the narcissistic family, no one escapes the horror. Not even the golden child.IMG_3119.JPG