#raised by narcissists

[quitblamingnarcissism]

Your parents are not "narcissists". They're typical authoritarian assholes who treat you like their property because society allows them to.

Your ex boyfriend is not a "narcissist". He's a typical misogynistic douchebag who treats women like shit because society allows him to.

Your boss is not a "narcissist". They're a typical classist dipshit who thinks workers' entire purpose in life is to generate profit because society allows them to.

And even if they happen to be a "narcissist", that's not what gave them the power to get away with abuse.

So stop blaming mental illness and start blaming society's normalization of abuse. Stop acting like someone has to have a mental illness in order to do something cruel when ordinary people have been doing atrocious things since forever.

[nothing0fnothing]

Most parents decide they're going to use their child's innate naivety and trusting nature to instill a sense of wonder. Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, mermaids are real, Disneyland. All that.

My parents used it to create an invisible panopticon that only existed in my mind so they could easily deny its existence if I reported it to anybody.

Basically, was told at a very young age, that there were tiny hidden cameras I couldn't see everywhere in my home, and in my clothes, and in my school. They gave my stepdad 24/7 round the clock acsess to view me whenever he wanted to. He said these cameras could not only record my face, voice and actions, but that they had special technology that could read and translate my very thoughts.

I was at the "mermaids and unicorns are real" age, so not only did all of this seem totally plausible, it terrified me. I was changing under the covers of my bed, worried he could see me on the toilet or in the shower, and worst of all I started monitoring and censoring my own thoughts, convinced he could hear every one of them.

My mum noticed I had started taking longer to get dressed and ready than I used to, and asked why I was wasting time trying to get dressed in bed. When I told her about the cameras she tried to convince me they weren't there, and even did a sweep of my room to prove it to me, but I didn't believe her. I thought my step dad had so much power he could even hide these mind reading micro cameras from other adults. She just kind of brushed it off, assuming this was some silly thing I'd be over in a week.

I wasn't.

He kept reminding me of them, so I continued to be scared of them.

The second time my mother heard of these invisible cameras were when another parent, concerned, told her about it.

See I'd been playing at her daughters house, and I was asking her to call my step dad to ask permission for every minor thing I did.

"Can you call my dad and ask if I'm allowed to play in the garden?" "Can you call my dad and ask if I'm allowed to watch TV?" "Can you call my dad and ask if I'm allowed ketchup on my chips?"

She would assure me she'd asked my mum and my mum said it was fine, but I was adamant it be my step father she call. Eventually, she asked me why I was so concerned about his permission to do these things I'd been doing fine every other time I'd been at her house.

"Because he's the one with the cameras."

I said it so naturally. Like every family had a parent who had the cameras and another who was under surveillance by them. I was worried that if I conveyed the frozen still fear I felt over these hidden cameras, it would seem that I had something to hide.

"There's no cameras in our house so you don't have to worry about it." She tried to convince me.

"Oh no, they're in my clothes" I said. "They're so tiny they could be in a zip or a button or on my shoe laces and nobody would know."

She was, understandably, freaked out by this.

I'm not sure if she beleived my step dad had just sent me bugged into her home like a pervert or something, but I think when I started talking about how it can hear my thoughts like a regular camera can record voices, she realised that this was something else.

My mum pretended that I'd made it up and was lying for attention, even though she knew I wasn't. She knew that her husband had been terrorising me with these fake omnipotent cameras for weeks to the point I was losing sleep and dreaming about them. It was just easier for her to paint me as some kind of freakishly and manipulative child. It was really messed up, this woman's daughter was my only friend, I'd be friendless and alone if she decided she didn't want her daughter learning this behaviour from me.

The last time it was brought up to her was by my aunt. I'd had a bonding day out with her that ended in me crying on her couch after dinner. I vented about the cameras and how much pressure they were putting on me. I said I felt scared to be out with anyone, because if my daddy was watching and he heard their thoughts and he didn't like them, he could stop them from ever seeing me again. I knew she didn't like him, and he didn't like her. All he needed was video proof that she thought bad things about him and he'd have the perfect excuse to cut her out of my life. I didn't want that, I loved my aunt dearly.

My mum tried to pull the same "oh she's just making it up for attention" bit, but my aunt knew my step dad, and she knew he was exactly crazy and twisted enough to torture me like that. She believed me over my mother, and after that I never heard about the cameras again.

Over the weeks I wasn't threatened with them, I slowly started to think about them less and less. And by the time I stopped thinking about them entirely, I'd stopped believing in tooth fairies and unicorns and high tech invisible cameras that could hear my thoughts.

I never forgot about them though.

[dailydiarynquotes]

[confused-canid]

Oh my GOD your mom wasn't a narcissist she was an abusive piece of shit oh my god. Even if she WAS a narcissist, she abused you because she was a piece of shit and we live in a world where you're your parents property until you're 18 then they have the ability to throw you out with no where to go.

My mom's autistic (from what she's told me), doesn't mean it was "Autistic abuse"it was abuse.

Get over yourselves holy shit.

[audreyrose7]

Nobody tells you how WEIRD and WRONG and OFF it feels when you actually tell your parents the truth, when all you do is lie and pretend because that's what you have to do to survive, occasionally the opportunity arises where the safest thing for you is to actually tell the TRUTH, I feel like nobody talks about how incredibly wrong that feels

[scary-friend]

My mom has NPD, and I have NPD.

When my mom was a kid her mother was incredibly distant and didn’t want her to get attached to her.

Why?

Because she had breast cancer, any day she could be gone and she never got close to my mom as a result.

She insisted my mom always had to look perfect, never allowed to leave without makeup, she never comforted my mom when she was sick/very hurt, and you wanna know something? None of this was told to me by my mom. This is all coming from things my dad has told me.

When my mom brings up stories of her mother she’s always smiling and reminiscing about the women who raised her. She laughs about times she was hurt and her mom brushes it off because it’s just how it was. It made her tough and she loved her mom so much.

Her mom passed when she was 21. And after that she had a rather complicated life with relationships.

I don’t believe anything my dad told me about my grandma I never met. He never met her. And frankly, I don’t think he has the best intentions when he tells me those things.

Often when people talk about being raised by narcissists, they always talk about their trauma with abusive parents. But often it’s unlikely that the parents are even narcissist to begin with. They just use it as a label for bad people.

My mom’s not perfect, growing up she ignored me a lot because she’s just following with her mom would do. She just focused on herself. And it did hurt because I wanted my mom to love me as much as I loved her. Growing up now, I think my mom just doesn’t know how to take care of kids. Her household wasn’t perfect either growing up. It was very messy. Over time as I grew older It’s like she finally learned to let me in. As though before she was afraid that I would get too attached and then she wouldn’t be here anymore.

I love my Mom so much, she has problems managing her anger, but she always lets go. She apologizes without words. She buys me my favorite snacks or gets me trinkets I love. And for the first time in years, she started saying “I love you” back when I would say it.

Stuff like that is just hard for her because it’s not something she grew up with. My mom is the way she is because of how her parents raised her. she was distant when I was young because that’s what was normal. But now that I’m an adult, my mom hugs me, she checks on me to make sure I’m okay, she wants me to be comfortable in my skin, she makes it clear that she just wants me to be happy.

I’m just so tired of people using NPD as a scapegoat to call people terrible. Because my mom has made mistakes, but those mistakes don’t make her a bad person.

There’s a reason I chose my mom over my dad, and that’s because my mom loves me, would choose my happiness in a heartbeat.

My dad made it clear who he cares about more, but he still acts like my mom is the problem. She’s not manipulating me, she just knows how I am and that I can’t handle being alone. My mom knew for a long time that I probably wouldn’t be able to be independent, and that I’d need to be with her for most of my life. And she didn’t care. She’s made her life the way it is to care for me.

My dad just wants me to be a copy of my sister, and gets frustrated when I’m not.

My mom isn’t some monster manipulating me into being helpless dad.

I have chronic fatigue and pain that makes it so I can’t function well without help. Mom is taking care of me because she wants what’s best for me.

Stop saying she’s “broken.”

Because if her NPD makes her “broken,” then so am I.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go give my mom a hug.

[camomileapplesyrup]

my father never really behaved like one. he was violent. he beat me and my mother. he cheated on her with hookers every night, and got off on the idea of assaulting them behind my mother's back. after my 4th birthday, he up and left. from then, my childhood with him was meeting a string of women from russia, all claiming to be engaged to him. no one stayed long enough but one woman. who became my stepmother.

we didn't like each other. as a small little girl, who watched her big professor father dancing around in suits all day and then slapping my mom before storming away, i didn't have much faith in my safety with this woman. i saw an evil lady, who was corrupting my father with her evil lady ways, turning him against me to prioritise her son who she brought with her. this illusion dropped one night during an argument that lasted hours.

after hurling an array of expensive china at each other, and slamming all the doors in their big house, my stepmother sat crying in our red armchair, repeatedly murmuring things in russian i wish i would have understood. my father saw me approaching and snarled at me. something along the lines of "don't entertain the attention seeking goose. she is playing the victim." as a young 13 year old girl, the only thing i could conjure up was "well, you hit her, dad. don't you think that's why she's crying?"

whatever happened after that was a blur. he went on a tirade at me, clearly bothered by the correction. he looked like a big, puffed up toad, in my memory. croaking unintelligibly with anger and offence. but, im his daughter after all. i didn't understand a thing, i yelled back at my father, attempting to mimic his emotionless-debate-arguing.

that night i saw my real mother in her.

my real mother, in the same house, who never cowered. never ran away, or cried without a glare. my mother who made sure i saw her slap back. slap back so hard it made my father stagger against the very same doorframe i stood.

amidst my heated conversation with my father, the woman whom i hated so much, called out my name. she looked at me and choked out a sentence i'll never forget. in her thick, russian accent, she said "you are a strong young woman. never cower in front of your dad, or any man who hurts you. thank you."

it was the first and last time she ever complimented me. for the first time, we saw each other for what we truly were. two women victimised by an abusive men, who shrunk into the very thing he wanted to avoid most. two women who respected each other enough, to stand up to him. no matter how far apart our worlds were, in that moment, we became the very core of our beings and forgot everything else.

i'll never forget her defeated voice, and tear stained face. i'll never forget what she gave me that day.

[theconcealedweapon]

Abusive parents literally look at any problem in society and believe that it's caused by children not being physically abused enough.

Police officers literally believe that it's their right to kill people for disobeying them.

And these people find supporters very easily.

It's very clear that abuse isn't caused by personality disorders. If an abuser has a personality disorder, it's a completely irrelevant trait, just like their height or hair color.

[roomwithavoid]

the haters aren’t gonna like this one but i’m right!

[quitblamingnarcissism]

Slaves who tried to escape were considered mentally ill. Slave owners were not.

Witches were considered mentally ill. People who burned them were not.

People who can't handle the stress of working a full time job are considered mentally ill. People who profit from overworking them, underpaying them, and replacing them in cold blood when they drop dead are not.

Mental illness has never been even close to an accurate determination of evil.

[nothing0fnothing]

A lot of people don't understand that likeability is a massive decider in how we acsess the world, and how that disproportionately affects survivors of childhood abuse.

If we're likeable we get perks. We might get upgraded on our flight. We could get a little freebie here and there. Humans are social creatures. People like us, and in turn want to do nice things in hopes we will like them back. That's super cool. Win for humanity. Nice people deserve nice things. Everyone deserves a free latte or a slightly nicer hotel room as a treat.

But we don't just deal with this kind of social exchange for flights and lattes. Buying a car is a social interaction. Job interviews are social interactions. Doctors appointments are social interactions. Stop and searches or traffic stops are social interactions. If you're likeable, you will probably get a car for a fair price or a job you're qualified for. You will find it easier to get your doctor to listen to you or you might be able to charm your way out of a ticket. If you're not likeable, those things become harder for you.

So.. what? Karma. Good vibes. What goes around comes around. Be nice to people and they'll be nice to you, duh.

But likeability has very little to do with being nice. For most people, being likeable isn't in their control. If you're ugly or fat, if you're not white, if you're lower class, if you're disabled or neurodivergent, suddenly whether you're liked or not has very little to do with how you treat other people, it's about how they perceive you. It's painful when you just want people to like you, it's dangerous when you need them to.

This is why abusers attack their victims likeability.

Gaslighting. Smear campaigning. Public shaming. Isolating the victim till all their friends and family wonder why she suddenly thinks she's too good for them. It all puts a victim in a place where they fear they won't be believed not because they're not credible, but because they're no longer likeable. They're both social currencies, but when you need help and support, likeability always spends better.

Remember Depp v Heard? What was all that revenge porn and outright lying all about? It was about making Amber Heard; the young and beautiful, self educated multilingual, long time human rights champion and loving mother, unlikeable. It was all utter bullshit, but it worked. People were making memes out of her rape testimony. They swarmed her with hate outside the courthouse. They followed her home and posted feces through her letter box. His attorney joked publicly about all the ways she intentionally triggered Amber's PTSD moments before she was to face the world in the most public domestic abuse trial in history, and the public laughed with her. Depp, with the help of his high profile colleagues and incredibly expensive spin doc- I mean lawyers, made Amber unlikeable, and when people decided she was unlikeable they decided she must also be uncredible.

Abusive parents also have the power to make their victims unlikeable. They do this by consistently traumatising them into socially disparaged behaviour, while projecting to the world a picture of the perfect family dealing with a "problem child".

We have a picture in our heads of battered children as withdrawn, quiet little angels, sadly suffering in silence just waiting for someone to notice the pain in their eyes and save them. In real life, this is rarely the case. Most children who have experienced early life abuse are reactive and disruptive. They are defensive and quick to anger. They are loud or sarcastic and they don't respect authority. In short, they are mirrors of the environment that they deal with at home. Due to this, behavioural interventions outside of the home does very little to help, the root of the issue isn't being fixed. So they get reputations as difficult little shits.

These kids go out and interact with the world like the hurt and traumatised people that they are, and the people that are supposed to be their safety net by reporting any suspicions of abuse to CPS, simply don't. Why? Because we find the child less likable than their parents. So when the child says "help me, my home life is horrible", we compare our impression of them to our impression of their parents, and usually without even realising why, we don't take them seriously.

Paris Hilton is an adult survivor of childhood abuse and torture at the troubled teen wilderness programme. Now an adult she uses her platform to speak up, but on that platform she's also told some harrowing stories of how her reputation as a vapid, self serving mean girl/wild child once kept her silent. She wouldn't be believed and her pain would only be mocked or shamed if she spoke out sooner. It's only after years of rebuilding that reputation into one that better reflects who she is as an adult, people are ready to believe her now. Why? Because she wasn't likable then, but she is now.

The thing is, most of us don't grow up into beautiful, wealthy superstars who age like fine wine and are universally loved by every sane person on the planet. Some of us are traumatised as children, who grow into traumatised teens who grow into traumatised adults. Being a traumatised adult is better than being a traumatised teen in a lot of ways. Having the power to simply not speak to the people who abused us for all our formative years is a big one. Not needing the signature of those abusers to acsess things like shelter, sustenance, support and medical care is another. It's not all bad being an adult survivor. It's not easy either though.

Like, I'm only half joking when I say having a stable family you can rely on into your adulthood is a privilege. Most of us don't have that because the smear campaigns didn't just Thanos snap out of existence the moment we turned 18. Out extended families often still see us as the bratty, entitled, violent little shits our abusive parents have been telling them we are since we were walking. On top of that all those authority issues and behavioural issues and PTSD symptoms we had as kids are still there, because nobody believed us when we asked for help so we just never got it.

It has nothing to do with who we are as people, but we just give off "bad vibes." It makes us susceptible to revictimisation and it means when people see the resting bitch face or the anxious fidgeting or the deadpan tone of speaking, their natural human judgement meter decides they don't like us. So we don't get upgraded on the plane and we don't get free lattes and yeah we pay more for things like cars and services because the natural drive people have to give each other favors doesn't really work for us. So some of us don't get perks but that's okay, they're perks because not everyone gets them. It's not a big deal.

Accessing the world shouldn't be a perk of being untraumatised. But when we lose out on job opportunities because our interviewer finds a non traumatised person more likeable than us, it feels like it is. When we don't have a saftey net of familial support so it takes us longer to recover when we're down on our luck or just down in the dumps, it feels like it is. And when we are less likely to be believed when we are reporting either current or historic abuse, it feels like it is. And when we struggle to acsess medical care because our doctors associate typical behaviour of traumatised people with attention or drug seeking, it feels like it is.

[cyrusclouds]

happy narc abuse awareness day!!

friendly reminder that narc/narcissistic abuse isn't a real thing. narcissistic personality disorder is a real disorder that real people have, and a vast majority of those people are not abusers and never will be. to imply that narc abuse is real is to imply that the person abused you because they have npd, which is an untrue and ableist statement. a person does not abuse because they have a disorder, they do not abuse because they have trauma, they do not abuse because they are in a bad place mentally. a person abuses because they are an abusive person who needs to work on themselves.

people with npd are not abusers.

-fellow cluster b personality disorder haver

[surviving-narcissistic-abuse]

What a coincidence that the same people who say "you can't say narcissism is bad, that stigmatizes us poor babies with NPD" are also the same ones who say "you can't say abusive behavior is bad, people with NPD have that and we can't help it, you're discriminating against us."

It's almost like this "narc abuse isn't real" movement is propaganda made by abusers to take away all the frameworks that exist to call out abuse. I wonder why?

[audreyrose7]

Parents who just want perfection, who want their kids to just little faceless avatars, who treat their kids more like pets or servants, who want their kids to just follow in their footsteps, SHOULD NOT FUCKIN HAVE KIDS

[walkwithursus]

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but a child cannot ‘abandon’ a parent. There’s no such thing as parent abandonment. Either you cultivate a relationship with your child that encourages them to maintain contact with you as an adult, or they can leave. Full stop.

[narcitism]

seeing things like "how to TORTURE and KILL a NARCISSIST" isn't very fun, imagine if we made things called "HOW TO SLAUGHTER AND MAKE AN EMPATH BLEED OUT!!!!!" i think we would get shot