Wow, reading your response felt like reading my exact experience growing up and now, except for me the abuser was my mother. I am sorry that you too went through a childhood that left you with so much mistrust, so much pain, and so much resistance and now feel yourself under the thumb again of an all too familiar oppressor (except on a much larger scale). I feel it too, internet stranger. You didn’t deserve that and still don’t, and that also goes for myself and anyone else.
Your comment gave words to feelings I’ve attempted to express but in a much more articulate manner, and I appreciate you for that.
The gaslighting and manipulation we experienced growing up, while horrible and unfair, are the very things that gave us the capacity to recognize the mass psychosis that is a direct result of the oppression and systematic violence that we and our fellow countrymen are experiencing. Under this type of abuse it is hard to understand what is real, what is true, and even what we see and hear. This is by design. We must always hold our truth, and trust it above all else.
I wish you the very best, wonderingwanderer. Thank you for sharing your story.
Thanks for letting me know. At first I was worried that I was just ranting/trauma-dumping, so I’m glad to hear it resonated with someone. It sucks that anyone goes through this, but it’s nice to know someone understands.
So many people tell me “just get over it”/“move on” or “you’re an adult now, stop blaming your childhood” without any understanding of trauma or the long-term impacts of psychological abuse in the formative years of cognitive and social development.
Here’s another pattern, maybe you’re familiar with it too: everything has to be all smiles and compliments all the time (except for when they’re angry, of course), until smiles and compliments themselves become meaningless. To this day, I don’t trust anyone whenever they say nice things to/about me.
My dad does it. Everything is “perfect,” no matter how mediocre. In effect, nothing is perfect because the word became meaningless. tRump does the same shit, at least for the stuff he approves of or that his minions do. When you hear him complimenting anything, it’s always so insincere. Like, it’s so clearly a calculated PR move because he knows his fans are gonna eat it up and parrot whatever opinion he expresses, no matter how contrived and robotic.
Sooo many of his mannerisms are things I recognize from my childhood. It’s uncanny.
Those that tell you to just ‘get over it/move on’ clearly don’t understand that if it were that easy, you would have done that already. Who wants to live with this kind of pain? Especially when it comes from someone who raised you and was an integral and fundamental part of who you are regardless of whether or not the experience was positive? Idk if you are still in contact with your dad; I cut off contact with my mother ~6 years ago and it was a years long process that included multiple attempts at lowering contact and would always result in me being pulled back into her abusive cycle just to repeat the whole thing over again. It was an incredibly slow burn and it took my partner telling me that I’d never be free of her abuse until I cut the cord permanently. My life has continued to improve ever since.
Your example of everything being ‘perfect’ until it isn’t…absolutely resonates. While my mother never used that word exactly, she too cycled between being excessively complimentary (esp when she was in front of someone she wanted to impress, bc a compliment to me was actually her congratulations to herself) and downright insulting and hateful of whatever I said/did to tap her ire. Anytime I did something that made her look good (in her eyes), of course it was a trait we shared. If it was something she disliked or disagreed with, she would say ‘how are you even my child’ at best and call me nasty names at worst. Because of the whiplash I felt due to this dichotomy, I too felt that her compliments and praise rang hollow and felt completely insincere. In fact, she would actually use praise and compliments against me when she was angry or disappointed in me, because obviously it was an offense to her that I fell short of her expectations of me and demonstrated potential to make her ‘look bad’.
With narcissistic personalities, it is all about perception and control. How they perceive themselves and how they want to be perceived drives most of their control tactics, and it is a game that is set up for them to win always at the expense of anyone else that doesn’t fall in line and ‘get with the program’ to borrow a phrase from my wonderful mother. It is a terminal diagnosis; a narcissist can never be wrong.
Wow, reading your response felt like reading my exact experience growing up and now, except for me the abuser was my mother. I am sorry that you too went through a childhood that left you with so much mistrust, so much pain, and so much resistance and now feel yourself under the thumb again of an all too familiar oppressor (except on a much larger scale). I feel it too, internet stranger. You didn’t deserve that and still don’t, and that also goes for myself and anyone else.
Your comment gave words to feelings I’ve attempted to express but in a much more articulate manner, and I appreciate you for that.
The gaslighting and manipulation we experienced growing up, while horrible and unfair, are the very things that gave us the capacity to recognize the mass psychosis that is a direct result of the oppression and systematic violence that we and our fellow countrymen are experiencing. Under this type of abuse it is hard to understand what is real, what is true, and even what we see and hear. This is by design. We must always hold our truth, and trust it above all else.
I wish you the very best, wonderingwanderer. Thank you for sharing your story.
Thanks for letting me know. At first I was worried that I was just ranting/trauma-dumping, so I’m glad to hear it resonated with someone. It sucks that anyone goes through this, but it’s nice to know someone understands.
So many people tell me “just get over it”/“move on” or “you’re an adult now, stop blaming your childhood” without any understanding of trauma or the long-term impacts of psychological abuse in the formative years of cognitive and social development.
Here’s another pattern, maybe you’re familiar with it too: everything has to be all smiles and compliments all the time (except for when they’re angry, of course), until smiles and compliments themselves become meaningless. To this day, I don’t trust anyone whenever they say nice things to/about me.
My dad does it. Everything is “perfect,” no matter how mediocre. In effect, nothing is perfect because the word became meaningless. tRump does the same shit, at least for the stuff he approves of or that his minions do. When you hear him complimenting anything, it’s always so insincere. Like, it’s so clearly a calculated PR move because he knows his fans are gonna eat it up and parrot whatever opinion he expresses, no matter how contrived and robotic.
Sooo many of his mannerisms are things I recognize from my childhood. It’s uncanny.
Those that tell you to just ‘get over it/move on’ clearly don’t understand that if it were that easy, you would have done that already. Who wants to live with this kind of pain? Especially when it comes from someone who raised you and was an integral and fundamental part of who you are regardless of whether or not the experience was positive? Idk if you are still in contact with your dad; I cut off contact with my mother ~6 years ago and it was a years long process that included multiple attempts at lowering contact and would always result in me being pulled back into her abusive cycle just to repeat the whole thing over again. It was an incredibly slow burn and it took my partner telling me that I’d never be free of her abuse until I cut the cord permanently. My life has continued to improve ever since.
Your example of everything being ‘perfect’ until it isn’t…absolutely resonates. While my mother never used that word exactly, she too cycled between being excessively complimentary (esp when she was in front of someone she wanted to impress, bc a compliment to me was actually her congratulations to herself) and downright insulting and hateful of whatever I said/did to tap her ire. Anytime I did something that made her look good (in her eyes), of course it was a trait we shared. If it was something she disliked or disagreed with, she would say ‘how are you even my child’ at best and call me nasty names at worst. Because of the whiplash I felt due to this dichotomy, I too felt that her compliments and praise rang hollow and felt completely insincere. In fact, she would actually use praise and compliments against me when she was angry or disappointed in me, because obviously it was an offense to her that I fell short of her expectations of me and demonstrated potential to make her ‘look bad’.
With narcissistic personalities, it is all about perception and control. How they perceive themselves and how they want to be perceived drives most of their control tactics, and it is a game that is set up for them to win always at the expense of anyone else that doesn’t fall in line and ‘get with the program’ to borrow a phrase from my wonderful mother. It is a terminal diagnosis; a narcissist can never be wrong.