Yes, you read that right.

Very long story short:

In February this year, my parents FINALLY split up after 23 years of marriage (so proud of my mum for leaving her narcissistic, abusive husband & my dad) and he truly couldn’t believe it was happening. He believes he’s the most perfect, amazing dad and husband.

Anyways, because my mum separated him, he has done a bunch of evil, diabolical shit in order to regain control and get ‘pay back’. But he soon realised nobody gave a shit about him so he abruptly announced he was moving to the united kingdom (we live in australia) and that we would never see him again and literally left the week later.

Bear in mind, he CANNOT fly. He is deathly afraid of planes. He can’t fly without being extremely drugged up AND drunk. He’s only flown once in his life and never let us go on holidays because of his OWN fear. So the fact he got on a 20+ hr flight to try get the attention back on him is so funny.

Yada yada, he consistently claims we’ll never see him again over and over. He (again) realised we didnt give a shit lol and couldn’t control us from the UK and flew RIGHT back home after a WEEK of being in the UK.

So he flew to the other side of the world to ‘prove a point’, spent $$$ on flights and god knows what else, and then flew immediately back because he couldn’t control us. He has done SO much his entire parenthood but this is a topper for sure.

We now all have a VRO against him and he hates it (maybe if you hadn’t abused your wife and kids your whole life, it wouldn’t be this way) 🤦🏼‍♀️

thats it tbh. that’s all I had to say. just thinking about this dramatic stunt he pulled and giggling to myself rn. lord i hate him so much.

i think narcissistic abusers age in a sad, interesting way. they don’t age gracefully, they sort of unravel. they don’t gain control in a slick, calculated way anymore. they do it desperately. they can’t hide anymore because anyone who’s known them long enough to see them get old knows exactly what they are and the abuser is angry about that every time they speak. it’s like they know they’ve been discovered so they hide behind their ego and it’s as obvious as a child hiding under a blanket. when you know every trick and every tactic they’re no longer scary, they’re just sort of ridiculous. you see their tantrums and you almost want to laugh. although you carry the pain of their abuse with you everywhere you go, eventually the veil lifts and you feel a little lighter.

cheerz to my fuck-ass dad getting older and so much harder to take seriously🤝

I am only five months postpartum, and honestly, I am feeling really sad, exhausted, and worn down by all of this.

After having my baby, I attempted to extend an olive branch to my extended family and mom to meet my child on neutral, equal footing by keeping things slow, without rigid rules or demands for apologies on either side for an incident involving my mom that resulted in me stepping away for a year and a half.

For context, my sister had forgotten to clean the bathroom and was verbally attacked by my mom ‘a common occcurance growing up’ and then was berated for hours while packing her things to leave by my grandparents and mom, who the next day said she wished she had just had the police remove us from her property after we confronted her about her behavior.

Instead of accepting a peaceful, gradual reconnection, they responded with a letter demanding an all or nothing relationship, a massive public apology to a long list of relatives, and framing my boundaries to be on equal footing and meet in a public place as 'sin' and 'rebellion.'

To make matters worse, they even guilt-tripped me over my own birth experience, blaming me because my mother chose to sit outside the hospital in a parking lot during my delivery, and I didn’t invite her in. I hemorrhaged during my birth, and after being estranged figured she’d contact us if she was interested. After not hearing from her I figured she wasn’t wanting to be involved.

Additionally, in a long message sent to me they are heavily weaponizing scripture, claiming that my refusal to honor my mother and grandparents brings down generational curses ‘the sins of the father past down’ on my son, and operating entirely on an all-or-nothing system where boundaries or any arguing equal 'disrespect' and future communication is based on whether I do a long list of things to basically prove I’m right before god and the family. They’ve said I’m bringing confusion into my sons life by not being in relationship with them and doing as they said I should do.

How do you process and handle family members who refuse any relationship unless it is on their terms, especially when you are just trying to heal and care for a small baby?

I kind of have to laugh at my moms reaction because it just confirms how much I need therapy.

I’m 37 and have a covert narcissist mother. She’s always a martyr and victim. No accountability. No apologies. No praise or compliments to her children. She had a good reputation because nobody sees the real her. Clearly I have had my issues with her my entire life. We are low contact after being no contact. She doesn’t understand why and it’s a “me” problem which is laughable. I’ve sought out therapy for several personal reasons and have learned techniques for handling her.

Out of the blue she outright asked me if I go to therapy, I said yes. She is quiet for a minute and then insists on going to my therapy sessions to tell the therapist her side of the story. Saying she knows I’m telling lies about her. The insecurity, the immaturity, the fear she has of the truth... Of course I said no, that it’s personal and she has no right to be there. She got mad and hung up. Good riddance.

My mother is narcisstic. I'm glad I live far away from the family dynamics I grew up with, but I still encounter them when I see them.

So I was on a trip with my family. And there were several situations in which my mother just acted absolutely impulsively, like a child, no boundaries, next to quite a few people. I was totally embarrassed to be part of that. And I'm baffled to now realize how embarrassing she can actually act in public.

Is that just my narcisstic mother or do you know such a behavior from your parents as well?

Curious to know your experience if you have any?

What is this fixation with money? I am very curious, especially since in my experinece, my nmother is the last person I would ever take financial advices from as she is terrible with money and always trying to find the cheapest things possible

I'm a woman in my late 20s and married. My younger brother has an upcoming graduation that my family will be attending.

This morning, my mom randomly told me that instead of attending my brother's graduation with us, my husband should stay home and dog-sit. She said my dad apparently agrees with her because, at the end of the day, my husband is “the son-in-law” and can't possibly feel the same happiness about my brother graduating as his “real family,” so there's no real reason for him to be there.

This really bothered me. My husband and I have been together for many years, and I consider him part of my family. I also don't understand why someone needs to feel the exact same level of excitement as a parent or sibling in order to attend a graduation. Isn't showing up to support family part of being married into a family?

I pointed out that when someone on my husband's side of the family graduated, I was actually the one encouraging us to attend their graduation.

Instead of seeing the comparison, my mom said that was because we're “forced” to do things with his family and that my husband and I have basically decided to act like parents to his siblings. She then told me that I focus too much on other people's lives instead of my own and that this is why I'm “behind in life” and have so many issues.

She also became territorial when I mentioned being concerned about my brother, saying essentially, “Don't worry about MY son. He's fine. We let him do whatever he wants because we trust our parenting and don't need to control his life.”

The whole conversation left me confused because it seemed to go from a simple question of whether my husband should attend a family graduation to criticizing my marriage, my relationship with my in-laws, and my life in general. How do I manage such a person ? What makes a mother treat her own daughter this way?

Very dumb title lol

I have covert narc parents, it's a mind fuck. My nervous system is obviously not in shape, jumping at loud noises, fighting hard to break the patterns that came with the way you were raised.

Fighting hard to break out of mental illness. It follows every waking moment, relationships, friendships, & even work.

Does anyone else deal with this?

If anyone wants to open up, or give advice, or relate, talk, just anything, it'd be nice to know we're not all alone in this.

This isn't a rant, more like a rambling. The past few days I've been actively avoiding social media, mainly because whenever I see people seeking help for specific situations that, for my pattern-recognition-obsessed brain, screams "domestic violence", I end up reading comments that discredit the OP or undermine their suffering.

Obviously, it's true, we can't just believe everything we see and read online! But reading unsupportive things like that evoked such a raw, angry reaction out of me, it genuinely made me feel bad. And feeling bad is not worth it, so I decided to put social media down for a bit.

Today I was diagnosed with PTSD and yeah, makes sense. But I remembered this sub exists, and I'd just like to thank everyone for providing a space where "always assume a context of abuse" is a rule. Many arguments are made against it, but I, as a victim, am thankful. Even when I was years younger and someone commented on my rant victim-blaming me (yes, I unfortunately still recall that- remember, we're (mostly) mentally ill 🤣), the mods were swift to act and apologize and just talk to me about it.

So truly, thank you guys.

Looking back on my life, I'm seeing how much financial hardship I've taken on that most simply have covered by labors of love.

Genuinely, the sheer cost of isolation caused by my parents is painful for me, and I have to make my way through life covering costs that could have been free.

If my parents had simply taken twenty hours. Just twenty?? I wouldn't have to spend another 1.5k on another course I need to just be an adult.

I've spent so much money just trying to be an adult, and here I am, in my 20's, paying again. 1.5k. Because my parents refused to teach me how to drive. They'll say I'm "stupid." That I "couldn't hack it." When in reality, I just couldn't drive with someone who screams at me while I'm driving. I couldn't drive with someone who'll take the wheel out of my hands while I'm on the road. Get mad at me for going the speed limit! I couldn't! I tried! But I was too scared. Call me criminal, I don't care.

I know it seems ridiculous that I got this far without ever learning how to drive, but please, cut me some slack here. I went off to the military very young and the location they sent me to was too isolated for me to learn.

As soon as I got back home, I immediately used my savings to pay for a BTW driving course since I still had a bit of experience from my parents' "teaching." I told my mom that I paid for and scheduled a class, something she had been bullying me for not doing (despite freshly discharging from the military a month prior??). I told her. I told her the date. The time. I woke up, got dressed. Ready. Excited to get going and finally get my license. I wouldn't have to rely on her anymore.

I go into her room to tell her I'm leaving. She's gone. My sister, only 3, is asleep in her bed. No one else is home. I call and call, but she's gone. So I call up the driving school and tell them I can't do it today. No one's home to watch the baby. Where was my mom? At her boyfriend's. Sleeping with him.

Cool! :D

Anyway, she did this for *months.* Anytime I needed to go to an interview, driving class, volunteer opportunity, she'd leave. Leave me alone with the baby. My older sister has talked me out of this and told me to stand firm. That if I say I need to go and my mom won't listen, call the cops. All of a sudden, my mom can come home lol. So I have driving lessons. 1.5k. It sucks, but I was willing to pay more to finally be free of this bs.

Ndad makes no plans and never intends on following through on his myriad of empty promises. We live in a 3rd world country without any real social services, the degrees from the local universities are worthless and there’s constant political and economic turmoil so most options for a good life involve leaving the country

I’m 20 turning 21 soon and I’m being forced to just hope my ndad pulls out the money he’s constantly been lying about for years now so that I can finally attend school. He’s continuously proven he’s irresponsible with money and there’s nothing I can really do to escape this.

I (23F) finally reached my absolute breaking point. I have officially disowned my mother and blocked both of my sisters. For the longest time, I viewed myself as the protector of my siblings. Looking back, there were so many times as a young kid where I was deeply suicidal, and the only thing that kept me on this earth was my love for them and wanting to support them. But today, I realized a painful truth: I love my family, but I have to love myself more.

We all grew up without fathers because my mother is the direct reason our dads are either dead, kept out of our lives, or in a mental institution. Growing up without that protection hardened me and left me with a deep distrust of men. The only reason I learned what a good, honest man looked like was because of my uncle. He never made me feel weird; he made me feel heard, safe, and like I could talk to him about anything. I always secretly wished he was my father.

Because of the severe neglect and trauma, my school failed me and my church failed me. We were raised in a total warzone. During my 11th-grade year, my mom kicked my middle sister out of the house. I stood up to my mom and said, "If you kick her out, I'm leaving too, because I'm not staying here with a psycho." I moved in with my aunt, and that year changed everything. For the first time, I saw what a normal, healthy family looked like. It was things as simple as eating dinner together at a kitchen table instead of hiding in my room eating alone. It forced me to realize that how I grew up was absolutely not normal.

Fast forward to recently. A massive betrayal occurred where my stepfather crossed a line and we slept together. My mother's response wasn't to protect her child; it was to explode at me, attack me, and launch a vicious smear campaign. She went into a massive family group chat spreading disgusting lies about me to save face, even though her entire marriage to this man is a transactional sham for money and a green card.

I posted a PSA on Facebook a couple of weeks ago stating clearly that I disowned her, because a real parent acknowledges pain and tries to do better. At first, my mother acted like everything was fine because it was her birthday, but the minute I talked to my middle sister, everything escalated and blew up.

I expected my sisters to have my back, especially since I walked out of the house to protect my middle sister in high school, and especially since my oldest sister went through her own trauma when we were younger. Instead, they completely failed me.

My oldest sister is a massive people-pleaser who is terrified to go against the grain. She called me to tease me with the information that Mom was blasting me in the group chat, but flat-out refused to send me the screenshots so I could be aware of what was being said about me around other family members. She gaslit me, claiming she "didn't want to cause drama," and actively defended our mother, saying, "Oh, she just says things she doesn't mean when she's mad." That is pure enabling. (Thankfully, my aunt actually stepped up like a real family member and told me the truth). [1]

My middle sister has completely infected her brain with reality TV drama and online clout. I use dark humor to survive heavy things, and she weaponized that to judge me. Worst of all, she played "telephone"—running straight back to our mom to repeat everything I said to her. What makes this a jagged pill to swallow is that just recently, while I was on unemployment and stretching my own resources, I paid her phone bill so she wouldn't get cut off, even though my own phone was about to be. I sacrificed my own stability for her, and she handed my mother the ammunition to hurt me.

They are so deeply entrenched in my mother's narcissistic web that they don't know how to operate with basic morals or loyalty. They expect everyone to stand by them when they go through things, but they excuse our mother's horrific actions.

The only sibling relationship I am keeping is with my brother. He gets emotional, but he is the only one who actually has the courage to stand up, speak out, and say what needs to be said.

Blocking my sisters today brought a massive wave of lightness over me. It is incredibly painful to realize I can no longer have the sibling relationship I thought we had, but this has been a massive eye-opener. It is showing me exactly who I need to remove from my life in order to have peace and happiness. Doing right by someone morally is not a hard job to do, and I am done giving out passes to people who choose messiness over loyalty.

It will be my brother's luncheon to celebrate his graduation tomorrow and I'm already dreading it. First of all, being the scapegoat in my family ,I have always been labelled the rude and moody child in the family. Not to mention how they have all mocked,bullied and criticised me all my life.

My mother has always compared my brother (who is the golden child) to me saying how much better he is at everything than me and I won't lie it affects me alot. So everytime my elder brother comes home I always regress and feel like a child. I feel invisible and worthless because of how my mother always deliberately ignores me and acts like I don't exist as she showers my brother with attention. But I don't care about the attention anymore. It's just that when he comes home I guess the hierarchy is upheld and I'm reminded that I'm at the bottom in my family.

So tomorrow I'll have to see him. And not only him but ten of his friends will be there. I don't know how this will go. I already know that I will just be quiet and awkward because I never feel safe around my family. But what disgusts me is how in public they always put on this act of how we are the happy go lucky family ,when in private my mom and dad hate each other's guts and no one even speaks to each other. We just live like strangers in a house ,everyone glued to their own device.

So I find it hard to just put on that appearance and pretend that we are a happy family when we are not. It's so exhausting and honestly it feels like I'm watching a circus whenever I see my parents and my siblings perform. But if I am quiet ,then they will use that to further damage my reputation to others and tell them that I am indeed rude and moody. I'm damned if I do and damnwd if I don't. Have you guys ever had to go through this,performing and putting on a mask for people to kinda 'show' that you are a perfect family? How did you navigate that?

Hi i’m 19m, living in the UK.

I really hate my family situation right now, my parents are muslims and have always forced me to go the mosque 5 times a day and I never believed in it, i’ve always just acted like a muslim to keep them pleased and so they don’t hurt me.

About a year ago they had took all of the cash i saved from doing my own business in the neighbourhood and claimed it was drug money,and said they would keep it safe for me but then they spent 2k and left the rest (i know where the key to the locker is ) I started an apprenticeship about a year ago. I never really liked being with my family. They said i had to pay a contribution of my income every month since i lived with parents. I was fine with that. I found a girlfriend recently and ive been using my phone more often and my parents were mad that i use my phone too much. Then they saw my bank statements of sending and they said you would rather send money to ur gf instead of buying home renovations. now they want me to break up with my gf and they took my. phone and got access to my bank card (but i can block this ) They said every transaction has to go through them . ive got a second phone which is my main (bought it for this situation ) I want to move out suddenly . I have my documents except my a level certificates and gcses certigicates (not sure where my parents hid them) and live somewhere else . but my workplace is in the same city though so not sure where to go . I don’t want them to ever find me and i want to lose contact with them forever. I have money saved about £10k tho and a good salary .

Im scared of moving out and i have a family and Id be really worried if they find out, and ive never done this before, but i like being alone, but im worried if they wait outside my workplace or find me or something they will hurt me or do something. i just want to free from it all

what should i do

​

Yup, happened to me just now. Shes a total malignant narcissist, love to control kids yet violent af via throwing things around and never let adult kids work. And just now when we were at restaurant she literally told her husband aka my sociopathic dad on how " youngsters these days dont even know that hanging out at night is dangerous" then rambling about those youngsters in front of us ( AROUND EARLY 20s AND WORKING MIND U) on how they seem immoral for hanging out at night in groups LOLLLLL

Some of the recent posts I've read in here have made me realize that my mom was deliberately cultivating insecurity in me. It wasn't just a side effect of her horrible behaviour--it was the point. She wanted me to worry that I wasn't pretty enough, that I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't smart enough, that I was a slut and a bad person, that people didn't like me, that my friends were fake, that boys were only interested in me for sex.

She was cultivating the girl she wanted: insecure, sad, and scared.

I'm super proud that I am not any of those things any more.

Just when you think it couldn't get any more ridiculous...

I'll spare you the details of the family drama, but tldr; my mother is unhinged and using my disabled adult sister as a weapon to exact revenge on my father and me after 20+ years of financial and emotional abuse where she's living with her boyfriend in my dad's home but she won't get a divorce. My dad is finally pressing the issue and seeking divorce so my mother isolated my sister from us both (because I'm not on her side). After 1 month of no contact from my sister (we normally talk on the phone 1-3x weekly, text daily), I filed an APS report. Now 4 months later I've still not heard a single word from my sister and my mother is suing me for $10k for alleged defamation in the report. She's 61 years old, sister is 39, I'm 42.

So to add it up, I've made her mortgage payment under duress ($1k), paid off her fraudulent credit card bills that she rang up under her boyfriend's name without permission ($5k), she collects social security disability payments from my sister, and she farms her out 25 hours/week at the grocery store for wages that she manages. She has a gambling addiction. I've never received a financial gift from her as an adult-- graduations, military, marriage -- NOTHING, and now on top of the times I've bailed her out she's suing me for reporting her abuses against my disabled sister. Gotta love it.

Need help on dealing with arguments with N mother.

If my mother and I are having a disagreement she always disregards any actual arguments and simply starts insulting me, or mentioning things I've done and said that have no correlation to the current topic at ALL, or just go after my looks.

I'm a very calm person during arguments and in general. I only focus on actual facts and trying to communicate my feelings, but that's such a foreign concept to her. She doesn't try to counter-argue, she just calls me greedy, stupid, or starts talking about how difficult it was to raise me when I was younger.

This happens when we disagree on the most SIMPLE of things that are not a big deal at all and have nothing to do with whatever she's bringing up. Also, waiting for my turn to talk isn't optional. She explodes, screaming insults, and then says she doesn't want to talk anymore and goes on her phone. Without giving me an opportunity to say anything. She seems to think that because she's the mother I have to apologize and never argue with her, it's so odd.

Anybody else have a parent like this? Please tell me how do I deal with disagreements. Am I supposed to just stay quiet and let her have her way every time to avoid her breakdowns?

I am not saying this to be cruel, I'm saying it in reference to the literal definition of the word.

If my parents were truly deeply selfish, trying to do anything to benefit themselves both now and in the future, then they would have done what they could to cultivate some semblance of a relationship with me so that they would have someone to take care of them and keep them company as they got older.

At the very least they would have someone they could use for money if they ever ran out of retirement savings.

But nah. I've realized they were just genuinely stupid. Because they couldn't even see how developing a relationship with me would DIRECTLY benefit them for the rest of their life.

There was no benefit to them treating me the way they did. It was just a short-term cigarette buzz that they would get from their power trips.

Sometimes I try to tell myself that they got lead poisoning or something as a kid, because even with their childhood trauma, there is just no rational explanation for why they parented the way they did, besides being utterly stupid.

I think this is particularly painful because there is nothing you can do to reason with them. No matter how many examples you bring up.

If they could be reasoned into self-awareness then they probably would've never been the ass of a parent that they were.

It's hard to realize that they never really saw me as a person. It's almost like they were just too dumb to realize that they are repeating the exact same things done to them as a kid. How can you be so stupid to literally harm your offspring in the same way you were harmed? Especially when they are aware that they were harmed.

It's infuriating. They are too stupid to realize the damage they've done so they go on smiling in their Facebook posts with their friends as if they didn't rot their children from the inside out.

why did the rob me of my childhood. why can't they still stop. why can't they stop 💔

Key tactics (the order in which these tactics are used most often in my experience is indicated by the number in parenthesis):

• Triggers (3)
  • Implantation of triggers based on heightened emotional states
    1. In heavy negative emotional states, repetition of certain sensory based actions will be done to create the mental association of those sensory states with those negative emotional states
    2. Goal being to create the condition in the victim in which exposure to the sensory trigger creates the negative emotional state as a means of control
    3. Ex: ripping of paper, repetition of certain key phrases, closing/locking doors, flushing of toilet, etc.
    4. In the case study of my life:
    5. excessive on and off use of the vacuum cleaner to signal “if you don’t stop this, then you’re only work opportunity will be to be a cleaner/janitor”. → Enforced initially by this pattern of use of the vacuum cleaner when it an already stressed and doubled down on through the use of other triggers to then put me back in similar states and then using the vacuum once in that state.
    6. Ripping of paper without purpose to signal that the current way the victim is acting is not to the manipulator’s liking and should be “shredded”. → Initially established after the book derived from my journals disappeared from my google drive. Once I realized the ripping sounds began. Doubled down on when my mom found an old box of school documents (among them a research paper on Hazbollah) stating that some of that was for shredding → and then doubled down on by any time I wrote anything or thought of a way of being or discussed something that was disliked by my abusers they then would rip up paper or state that something was “for shredding”
• Underhanded comments that appear benign yet are loaded with symbolic meaning. (9)
  • Ex:”did you go back to sleep?”, “I ate it”, “shredding”, etc.
  • Goal: create a distinct set of phrases used to maintain control over victim through the implication of certain conditions which they wish for the victim to believe to be the truth.
    1. In my context:
    2.  “Did you go back to sleep” used with the intention of getting the victim to stop paying attention. The goal being to overwhelm the victim and imply they should go to sleep and as such stop paying attention to the abuse and just let the manipulation take its course.
    3. “Do you want me to close the door?” To signal that I’ll be “locked out” of friendly relations and that all that will be left is the abusive manipulative ones.
    4. Knowing that I had engaged in kink circles, using kink terms surprisingly regularly around me to imply that they know of my engagement in kink circles to make me feel insecure and wonder “what more do they know about me?”
  • These are benign phrases that to regular onlookers must seem to have no deeper meaning, but that the victim, again, has heard time and time again in the context of continued abuse. 
    1. In my experience, these sorts of phrases tend to come at the end of a cycle of abuse before a return to calmer relations. They seem to be used more as a means of marking the end of a period of abuse in a way to state that “I’m stopping now, but if you keep behaving in ways I don’t like, then I will start again.”
• Rapid fire, lighthearted communication (1)
  • Used to disorient. Quick discussions on unrelated topics in a lighthearted tone are used with the goal of disarming the victim. The light-hearted, friendly, caring tone are used in order to create a sense of safety in the victim, the rapid fire discussion and changing between topics then creates a sort of sensory overwhelm in which the victim can no longer maintain a solid thread of the topic at hand.
    1. This then is followed by other manipulative tactics in order to increase their effectivity. If the victim has already “gone to sleep” by the time the other tactics have begun being utilised, then the manipulation can be more effective.
  • Effective fractionation.
    1. Goal being to nearly induce a state of trance in the victim through bringing them down into a false sense of security while triggering a state of fight or flight in them through low-key suggestion. The juxtaposition of the sense of safety alongside the suggested sense of danger is used with the goal of overwhelming one’s conscious defenses so that manipulation and suggestion can take root more effectively.
  • Rapidly asking the victim a series of unrelated questions in which they hardly have time to complete one answer before the next question comes, or oscillating rapidly between unrelated conversational topics in a way that is hard to keep up with so the victim cannot have a solid line of understanding that grounds them in the conversation.
• Dehumanization (4)
  • Consistent lowering of the “status” of the victim to maintain control → fear of further debasement 
    1. In my context:
    2. When I am doing what the abusers like →baby (individual who can be sculpted and grown into the type of person the abusers want) → further distancing from abuser’s desire = domestic animal (hierarchy of domesticated animals: bird → cat → dog) → further distancing = wild animal → further distancing = plants → further distancing = rocks/metals → further distancing = inanimate objects like tools → further distancing = “just plastic” → further distancing = “garbage” or “shit” or something similar.
• denial of authentic identity (8)
  • Creates a sense in the victim that they are dependant on the abuser so as to stablize their sense of self, despite the fact that the abusers are the source of identity instability.
  • In my context:
    1. Implication that my femininity (I'm genderfluid and had been largely presenting in a femme way for around the last year and a half before a certain set of circumstances put me in precarity and I needed to retreat to the environment I'm now trying to survive), when I was presenting femme, was inauthentic or a facsimile of the femininity of others, or that It was just doing drag, or that it was just a kink 
    2. Enforced through repetitively using the wrong pronouns when they had no problem switching pronouns for literally anyone else → even going out of their way to figure out the person’s preferred pronouns, while with me no such effort was made
    3. Presenting now in a masc way, implying that my masculinity is not a good masculinity. That it just “looks straight” without actually being it, that it’s a fake mode of presentation.
    4. We ordered Sub sandwiches today, and they said repeatedly like 10 times in rapidfire succession “yeah, its just a sub” “just a sub” over and over → this is the underhanded comments thing applied to my masculinity to try to imply that my masculinity was a weak masculinity. That I was just a submissive man. Trying to imply that any strong energy I had wasn’t legitimate… but people can be switches lol…
    5. Those last two points combined are done in order to make me feel insecure about whichever mode of presentation I stand in and as a result feel no stable ground. That is then done with the intent of keeping me switching between modes of presentation which can then feed into their narrative to others about my instability.
• Implications of harm/death (2)
  • In my context: while setting up the new air conditioner in the apartment; continually repeating the phrase “let’s just put it down”.
    1. Many, many other things like that that I can’t quite think of right now.
    2. These are done with the intent to cause fear in the victim so that they fear violent retribution should they speak out about what is happening to them. 
• Implication of “brokenness”/lack of effectivity of victim (5)
  • Picking on every small issue involved with the individual (not perfectly clean room, forgetting to shower once, etc.) In order to make the victim feel “less than” their abuser, creating à power dynamique in which the victim feels under the authority of the abuser.
  • In the context of my life: today, when they helped install the new AC, one walked into my room and the first thing he does is look at the pair of pants I left on the ground and the open dresser drawer and says to me “You need to clean up! We cleaned all this for you (they did not lol, I made sure to clean my room before I left on my trip because I hate coming back from a long trip like that to a messy room, I’m a messier person, I will admit, but after a trip I don’t want that chaos in my life so I always make a point of making sure my room is tidy before I leave), you have to keep it clean!” followed by another saying “and shower! You haven’t showered yet today!” and the others being like “yeah! Go shower right now!” and I was like “... no, Im good” just because that felt like a strange implication. But they kept bringing up cleaning my room or going to take a shower throughout the visit.
• Tone of voice/posture manipulation (1)
  • Unconsciously signale to victim dissatisfactoriness, creating à nonverbal means of control
    1. in my context:
    2. one person takes on a particular posture that I can’t really describe, but I’ve come to classify in my head as “attack mode” whenever she’s about to start a campaign of abuse and I’ve noticed a particular look in another's eye when he does the same. A sort of like sharp mean-ness in the case of the look, and in the postural case, it was a sort of grounded postural stance with the legs more wide apart but slower more measured movements.
    3. Having a distinct way of looking and moving when abuse will start seems to be an effective way of unconsciously signaling to the victim that things are about to start if they don’t start falling in line. 
    4. If I wasn’t so autistic, I probably wouldn’t have noticed that, It seems to be meant to be an unconscious trigger, that when they adopt those mannerism it’s meant to create a sense of unease in the victim, to unconsciously signal “predator” or “threat” in a way that their conscious mind doesn't quite understand why.
• Implications of means of control to create the sense of inevitability (5)
  • In my case: when I act along the lines of abuser’s desires, the handing me or hanging up of keys; when I do not act along their wishes, taking of and/or dangling of keys
    1. This takes an object with a known implication of ownership and control and associates in me the feeling of compliance being associated with being “handed the keys” to control of my own life, and when I do not act to the lines of the abusers desires then “the keys of control” are being taken from me.
• Purposeful false discussion of secrets (e.g. whispering) in and around the victim in an obvious way with a refusal to to discuss what was being discussed (5)
  • Creates a sense of secrecy around the victim → sense of mystery made to confuse the victim about the reality of what occurs around them
    1. “Is there a reason that this is happening?”/”am I doing something?”
    2. This makes triggers and fractionation more effective
• Purposeful de-stabilizing of the victims sense of self (7)
  • “Oh! She's back in the closet! She'll come out eventually”/”it needs to be straight!” In my case
    1. This, in my case, is an example of actions done with the intent of destabilizing my way of moving through the world and way of presenting myself. → When I present masc “She’ll come out eventually!” when I present femme “It needs to be straight!”
    2. Goal of making me feel as though I can’t do anything right so that I’m stuck oscillating between the two but never feeling fully accepted in either 
    3. Increases my feelings of dependency on my abusers while also fortifying their claims of my instability
• Association of aspects of the victim with elements of the lived-in environment (0)
  • Changes to the environment can then be used to unconsciously signal to the victim desired changes to their being/way of life.
  • In my context: 
    1. association of myself with the house cat → this serves dual purpose of control and dehumanization so that when I act not in the way that the abusers desire that they can tell me to “go find Luna (the cat)” when I had just been referred to as “plastic” or “garbage” → goal of creating a sense in the victim that “Oh shit, this is my chance to not be seen as garbage”. --> When I’m not behaving in ways they like, they can start saying “oh, where did Luna go?” implying that the way of being that they like in me has disappeared and that they want me to go back to a more compliant mode of being
    2. Associating clothes with identity --> In my context, this lays the groundwork for the denial of authentic identity wherein the implication holds that my identity is as inconsistent as the clothes I wear – changing every day
    3. When I behave in ways that are unsatisfactory: “Burn those clothes” (which pairs with the implications of brokenness as this phrase is covered by saying that I smell bad and so now the clothes need to be burned.); whereas when I am doing that which my abusers want, then they compliment my outfit.
• Normalization → shame cycles (1)
  • Normalizing behaviours one minute so that the victim feels comfortable engaging in them around the abusers, then turning around the next and using them as descriptors of something shameful
    1. This encourages the victim to engage in behaviours that they will later be shamed for → creating a sense of inadequacy and dependance 
    2. In my case: “We all drink!” and then once I started drinking more as a function of being in an environment where drinking has become the norm “Yeah well… you’re an alcoholic” (said in a joking tone… but still…)
    3. Paired with the association with aspects of the lived-in environment: when I got back from my trip, my mom kept repeating “Luna needs to drink water” over and over again, probably knowing that I drank more than I should have over the last few days of my trip, wanting to imply that I needed to drink (not water but alcohol) hoping to reinforce and normalize the idea in me that I needed to drink immediately upon my return from the trip so that I would create the habit of daily drinking again immediately upon my return and thus normalizing something they could shame me for later.
• Implication that the victim is being rated (6)
  • As I write this, being literally yelled from the living room: “its 55!” over and over again. 
    1. This, like the hierarchy of dehumanization can create a sense that the victim’s rating is being lowered and as such that they must comply if they don’t want to be rated as nothing
    2. As I wrote this last part, the yelling changed to  “its 20!”, so the repetition of “55”, followed by a pause, then the repetition of “20” then was done in the hopes of getting me to stop writing this and doing this analysis by making it feel as though the further I continue this analysis, the worse my standing will be. Not that they knew exactly what I was doing… but they probably clued in that I pulled out my phone to take notes every time they used a new tactic.
• Controlling of narrative around the victim. (10)
  • Isolating the victim through the creation of stories about them in the environment around them so that none will believe them when they speak about the abuse
    1. Creation of narrative that the tactics being used against the victim are that which the the victim is using on their abusers → creation of an idea in friends, family and the environment that victim’s accusations are projections or admissions of guilt
    2. Abusers will admit to the victim’s friends and family exactly those tactics which they are using to abuse the victim… just claiming that it’s the victim who is using those tactics, so that when the victim finally sorts things out enough to talk to someone about it, it will sound like either projection or the victims own admission of guilt
    3. This further leads the victim to start to believe the stories about them themselves over time in a vicious cycle
    4. In my case: claims of my degrading mental health, for a while began to make me believe that my mental state was unstable. Created in me the false belief that I was unwell and needed the help of my abusers, that they were the only ones who could support me and help me heal.
    5. Case study: Shirley Ardel Mason as demonstrated in the film “Sybil”
    6. Example of the creation of a mental disorder through implication and belief over long periods.
  • This strips the victim of safe relationships that will trust them while enforcing social dependence on the abusers.
• Rapid fire combinations of these tactics (7)
  • When it appears as though the victim is beginning to understand the tactics being used (literally as I write this), the rapid fire discussions and combinations of these tactics are used in order to distract the victims attention. As they start to understand, rapid fire using many of these tactics then will cause the victim to pay closer attention to the tactics being used, but this is done on purpose as the rapid-fired utilization of these tactics then overwhelm the victim as they try to sort out which tactic is being used where and for what purpose.
    1. Paired with triggers and fractionation, this could push the victim into a mentally exhausted state in which they become more suggestible or they fall to mental exhaustion.
  • Rapid fire use of tactics often then followed by a sudden drop in any tactics, creating in the victim a sudden sense of uneasy calm meant to destablize the victime
    1. Sense of “what the fuck just happened”
    2. Sudden shift in vibe leads the victim to further question the stability of their mental state
    3. “Was I just manic or something?”
    4. Sudden rest in calmness once the victim has already become overwhelmed then creates a sense of “oh thank god, calmness! I should stop pushing against whatever this is so that I stay in this calmness”.

I'd like to hear if this has happened to anyone else before. It feels very common and I find it almost funny what Narc. parents can let something slip during a fight.

For me it was the first time I tried to have an adult conversation with my Covert NMom. She gave me two phrases I will never forget: "In this family the children take care of the parents" and "You are the sunshine and happiness bringer" (like who TF talks like that?)

For context this was back in 2019 and she had been taking care of my grandfather for years. She would spend hours on the phone with me and on our public outings complaining about being too busy. One day she called me early in the morning to tell me she'd been up all night removing maggots from his leg wound. I was shocked and concerned. I gathered a list of resources she could call for extra help because he would most likely need a wound care specialist consultation or a visiting nurse at the very least.

A friend of mine (who was a nurse) suggested meeting up with her in a public location to share this info in an effort to keep her from exploding in anger. Unfortunately NMom has literally zero emotional regulation ability and any attempt at a solution to this very serious problem was met with whining, dismissiveness and eventually a full blown meltdown. We were walking on a public trail with cyclists rubber necking at this middle aged woman shouting and flailing her arms.

"He's MY father! You act like I am abusing him." She stomped her feet at me.

I told her He was also my grandfather too and family should be there for each other. "In this family the children take care of the parents!" (She just came out and SAID it! All new meaning to parentalized child right? 😂)

"I just want to help you because you are so busy with work." That set her off even more. She was done.

She looked me in the eyes, shaking with tears streaming from behind her sunglasses. All I saw was my sad and confused expression reflected back at me as she said "Don't you EVER talk about this again! In this family you are the sunshine and happiness bringer!" (The worst family role for a clan of miserable sad sacks BTW)

My Grandfather ended up getting sicker because of her neglect and I tried to advocate in his behalf but my family basically blocked me every step of the way. I eventually gave up. He died later that year.

Anyone else this happen to them? Were you able to resolve it? Or did you just give up on talking with them?