Will Assist You In Sleeping With Your Loved Ones?

I am currently pushing 60 years old and I’ve only recently realized what I went thru as a child. Not only have I been grieving terribly for that little child, but I’m also seeing why my whole life has been so problematic. I’ve been in complete denial my whole life. That barrier to healing has finally been broken. Thank you so much for your heartfelt informative articles.

I was 6 years old – I had made an art project and the teacher had thought it good enough to be hung on the classroom wall. When my dad came to pick me up from school that day, I was so excited that I dragged him to the classroom to see my art project. I remember vividly how excited I was and how he grumbled about how his time was being wasted all the way to the classroom. My teacher was still in the room grading some papers. My dad didn’t even glance at the art project i so happily showed him – but walked up to my teacher and told her horrible things about me… all made up… how i was dirty and undisciplined. This was my punishment for daring to ask him to take the slightest interest in me, his 6 year old daughter. It was a lifelone pattern of invalidating and/or insulting me for anything i was “proud of”…. good grades, a new dress, anything at all. It meant ignoring me when there was no audience. Or if there was an audience (teachers, relatives) – insulting and mocking my achievement and calling me demeaning names. Or physical beatings when he felt like it. It could be something as simple as a 6 year old’s art project that would set him off. His fragile ego couldn’t even handle that. He is dead now. The world is a slightly better place.

A sad realization about these amazing articles is that if you feel a level of emotional labor just to watch it, you may already have trauma due to narcissistic abuse. Every time I see one, I think “Oh this is going to be useful… but it’s going to be so difficult to watch.” And sometimes I have to just save it for later.

Thank you for this. I am a survivor of 2 narcissistic parents. At the age of 7, I knew something was wrong with them, especially my mother, I just didn’t know what it was. It’s too long for me to go into, but I endured a lot from these people. I set boundaries, and they disrespected it. My mother would show up at my house unannounced, birthday parties for my kids just to tell me off because I didn’t invite her….I can go on forever. My siblings and extended family enable her and hardly speak to me, and I know it’s due to her smearing my name because she takes no accountability and is always the victim. I even wound up dating a narcissist in my teens’ early twenties because I thought this behavior was normal!. Flash forward 40 years… I know who I am, and I know what they are. I sharpened my scissors, and I cut these cancers out of my life. It wasn’t easy, and I mourned it like a death. I felt like a switch went off in my head, and I just said,”I’m done.” I was done feeling bad and dealing with rude, childish behaviors. I’m grateful to have a supportive husband and 3 amazing kids who witnessed firsthand how badly my parents treat/speak to me. I told my kids that as awful as it was growing up with them, they taught me what I never wanted to be… so I guess something good came out of that experience. With the narcissists and their flying monkeys out of my life, I feel healthy, clean, and whole. Took me 40 years to get here, but better late than never. Thank you again for your words of wisdom, Dr.

My Mom was severely neglected as a child. I believe her parenting style of me, always had an underlying objective to prove to her parents that she was good at it. That she knew what she was doing. She lacked the insight to realize she was still trying to get her parents approval and attention. Although she read books before having me, to try and do better than her parents had, her lack of self worth would always hinder her abilities. When I did good, I was great. When I made mistakes, it was unacceptable. I was her reflection, the symbol of perfection she could never attain herself. And her lack of emotional control, was and still is, a terrible example of how to handle lifes obstacles.

As an adult, I am only now discovering how much damage my narcissistic single mother had on my own development and lack of boundaries. Publicly, I was seen as an extension of her, a product of her ‘successful’ parenting. For years she would take credit for my education and career choices, but secretly be jealous, envious and resentful. I was constantly compared to my ‘golden child’ sibling and criticised privately at any opportunity. I have finally gone no contact last year and although I sometimes grieve not having a loving mother, I don’t miss the relationship I had.

Thank you so much for this one, Dr Ramani!! Yes!!! I remember feeling EXTREMELY CONFUSED my entire childhood. Feeling “older” than my narc mother. Why is she looking to me for answers? She’s the adult. I don’t understand. Etc…. I will forever be grateful for you and this website. So much love❤❤❤❤

I was raised in a mental and physical abuse riddled home. As a young child I knew it was wrong, and through the years I spoke out. I was 6. From that point on I was considered the bad child. My siblings were raised thinking all the stresses of family and life were all caused by me. I know this is untruth, but they still try to hold that storyline. I finally walked away after 48 years of feeling I owed loyalty to family. My words of strength right now in my life.. “watch me go, from here I grow” to anyone else dealing with narcissistic family or loved ones.. you won’t fix it.. you do not owe them anything. You do owe yourself kindness❤

I am finding it difficult to even listen to this because I clearly haven’t processed the trauma. I’m in my 30s and my mother is still so over-involved. However, I am so thankful for everything you do because it truly validates the sheer horror of growing up with this abuse day in and day out. To think that a mother could inflict this on their own daughter. Reading through this comments section makes me feel less alone

Wow this is mind blowing. My mom used to tell me this stories when I was a child of how men were so crazy for her, that she would always be the attention of the party, how even doctors and lawyers were all over her, how men were so infatuated for her that they would be willing to cheat on their wives, and my reaction as a child was always “oh okay…” and she would get angry at me. I just realized, she wanted my admiration…. how pathetic my god…

I didn t know my parents and brother are narcissists, until I was 38 years old. I was diagnosed with PTSD and I didn t understand where that came from. Even though I had severe anxiety and severe insomnia for most of my life. I couldn t hold myself together anymore after a narcissistic ex and my narc mother discarded me. I finally found out about narcissism and a life long of abuse that I ve been through. Not from my therapist, but by doing self study. I finally got it….their constant temper tantrums and rage, my mom who used me as her friend and psychologist from age 12, all of their fights, their contempt for me, their neglect of me, their paranoia, their discards…it all started to make sense. I would definitely call this abuse! And I still carry the consequences from it…severe cptsd. But back then, I didn t even know this was abuse!

I just came back from an emotional flashback to exactly this. I’m an accomplished 40 yr old and I felt like my 7 yr old self being punished for being happy or sad, as long as it is the opposite emotion of my parents, it didn’t matter. As long as I was who I was, I was punished because I didn’t fit the role of a simple pawn. The worst of my flashback today was the slow acceptance that my older siblings whom I really loved, used me to get ahead in the game, without any remorse for how it would affect my 7yr old self. I am an unwanted child of my siblings, and used as a punishing tool to my siblings through jealousy, favouritism and illogical comparison to deemed “non-performing siblings” whom were just as abused. I haven’t cried so much like that in years and I literally felt like a child. I have so much more compassion for the young me than before, including the adult me now that becomes triggered into the young-me-state due to untethered Pavlovian reactions. The emotional flashback today was really tough, and I am thankful for it that it further strengthens my resolve to go through this challenging healing process and to go no contact.

I was told I wasn’t abused even as I was regularly slapped on the face so hard my head would snap to the side and sometimes I would fall down and be concussed afterwards. But that wasn’t abuse because what her mother did to her had been so much worse. Or because other people hit their children harder or more often. And I bet so many parents are still that way today.

Thank you for this article. Let’s call a spade a spade, this is abuse but many people fail to get what you went through and how it has affected all aspects of your life. i had to wait until the age of 57 to understand I had been abused by a narc mother, I was just her tool, an ear, a mirror, an extension of herself. I have been working on this for 6 years now and I have a message of hope for childhood trauma survivors, you can heal! Bonjour from France.

Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, today cptsd, at age 34 when I first had the courage to seek help. Almost 20 years later not much has changed except that I seem to have have grown out of the debilitating anxiety I endured most of my life: no trust, no feeling like I belong, etc. My ex husband used to say ‘stop feeling sorry for yourself’. These clips are super helpful, thank you Dr Ramani

I remember when I told her about my sexual abuse she would watch movies and TV series (abuse content) everyday in front of me and I would scream, cry and shout at her…telling her to watch something else… She always had this evil grin on her face… Malignant narcissist (I don’t feel like calling her a mother) It’s been a couple of months since I cut ties… These flashbacks keep me busy… Haa😅 I’m glad it’s over

4:00 It took me 23 years to even consider that I had been abused (physically, emotionally, verbally, spiritually (religious abuse), and sexually). Out of my parents, my mother is the narcissist. My dad stood by and did nothing and also contributed to the abuse. Fast forward 9 years later, and I still cringe at the thought of using the word “abuse” because I was so brainwashed to believe I wasn’t being abused; however, I’m able to call it for what it was and am thankful I can see it now so I can continue to get healthier and protecting myself by establishing boundaries. Two years ago, I got diagnosed with PTSD with dissociative symptoms, an eating disorder, and DID yet my parents scratch their heads over how it happened. The narcissist will not admit they have a problem. And the other parent who will do anything to keep the peace and avoid the wrath of the narcissist won’t take action.

Survived two narcissistic parents. Mom was a vulnerable narcissist, ever the victim and dad was a grandiose communal narcissist. If I wasn’t being flat out ignored, I was criticized, called ugly and affection was just a reward if I jumped through impossible hoops to please them, regulate their egos. I so lived in fear, full of anxiety and even by age 5 I knew this couldn’t be normal. He cheated, they’d fight, he’d threaten to leave and say we could starve. She retreated to hypochondriac behavior, sleeping and depression. We kids were a burden, a prop to be paraded about when social norms dictated. They both made it clear that we had no right to have any needs other than clothing, food and housing and we were to be damned grateful for that. The world can be cruel and home should be a refuge but my childhood, my “home” was the source of emotional trauma. They’re both dead now and I honestly don’t miss them. I tell myself they can’t hurt me anymore.

A therapist I saw told me that we do not keep track of abuse or trauma. I’d felt “bad” because I was battling depression and felt I had no right to be depressed. I hadn’t been “abused badly as some kids suffered”. Abuse is just that, just as trauma is. Take care of yourself folks. Self care is necessary and important.

Something that helped break the ice for me in using the word “abuse” was recognizing myself in lists of abuse symptoms. “If you feel X, it’s from Y and is a reaction to abuse. Example: limerence is a result of severe childhood emotional neglect.” I never would have thought that from descriptions of said neglect.

You said that narcissistic parents may become completely detached and disinterested once their child hit adulthood, but for my narcissistic parent the threshold was when I was 14 and my sibling was 11. I remember them outright saying to me that now that we’d “grown up” we have to be responsible adults. I was so confused at that time because I still wanted to be their child, and I feel like I didn’t get enough love in my childhood when I most needed it as a teenager.

I developed chronic anxiety disorder due to my narc mom & being alone with no one to believe or turn to. I always prayed to be far from her and I am now healing, married and living in a different country. My mental health is getting better and i am seeing how wonderful life could be. I maintained contact by a few messages or phone call each year to avoid being labeled bad things but i know being in a different country altogether makes it much easier to just keep contact to a bare minimum. Distance from her is my only way to heal and be happy. And now i am hearing that she’s trying to create chaos in my brothers’ relationships. Thank god i am free from all of it.

Both my parents were misusing me as a child. As an adult I tend to feel the need to be the one regulating people around me. As if that’s my only value. I got severely sick, and my mom got mad at me for not being able to take responsibility for her feelings. That’s when I started putting up boundaries for her. My father is more malignant so I cut him off and went no contact. My goal is to grow my own maturity and working on my relationship with my adult kids.

I started to experience this type of thing, when I was 19 and my mother remarried, after years of being single, after her last 2 marriages. As I was just coming into adulthood, I thought we had a good relationship, I was the closest sounding board she had and I’d also become accustomed to talking at length with my grandmother over the phone. All 3 of us were sounding boards for each other. But I was the main problem repository. Over the course of time, was when my mother’s dependency on me, personally and professionally, began to become malignant, with it finally being one of my livelihood obviously being competition that she’d wanted to destroy. That is when I began to learn about narcissism and oh boy was it a match. That the parent I and everyone had long thought to be the perfect parent, that everyone wanted and that I should be grateful for, was actually a sick monster. I still know and believe she had a great many wonderful qualities and that the struggles and disappointment of life caused her to spiral into a very dark spirit though. I also knew that I owed it to myself, to save myself from her.

I am 76 and have never heard much about narcissism until recently and it’s everywhere now. Mine was probably that with my parents but it was mostly abuse and even then, I blamed myself for being a failure as my parents perceived me. It was a constant battle to stay out of the way when they fought or it would be taken out on me. To be perceived as in the way or unimportant, to be made to feel like nothing and lucky to just be taken care of was a way of life. The worst part was their disposing of my pets at a whim and for me to be too afraid to protest or even grieve was the worst part. They were my only friends( my dogs and cats) and I felt it was my fault for not protecting them. I still wake up in the night and think about it after all these years. I never got over it.

Thank you so much. At the moment when I made up my mind to use the term “abuse”, chronic justification of their behaviors finally came to an end. It was real that I felt painful and fatigue. It was reasonable that I had amnesia. My hormone diseases appeared for a reason. The validation helps so much, it saves my life.

This is very helpful. It helped me recall what I did to “fix” my relationship with my mom as an older teenager (convinced, as I always was, that it was my fault for her awful behavior toward me). I learned to constantly show admiration for her, no matter how atrociously she had treated me. I fed her ego so much and was so loving – which is genuine, I am a very loving person – but that’s what triggered the overall shift in her behavior toward me. I became “the golden child” (to some degree) after being the scapegoat for the majority of my life. I became very obsequious and constantly showered her with gifts and attention, so she “liked” me. If I ever showed “less” attention or had other things I was doing (going out with my boyfriend, pursuing my goals, etc.), she would quickly turn on me. I moved out early and was very removed from her, giving less attention, noticing her bad behavior more and more – and the tantrums and attacks increased and became unbearable again, just like I had experienced for most of my life save for a few years of groveling… because I wasn’t busy spending all my time feeding her ego. So I became the scapegoat again, like I had been in childhood, always blamed for problems and targeted by everyone in the family.

Narcissistic parents are a tough, unecessary challenge in life. But if you understand those issues and survive it, you grow out really strong out of it. You learn to know what you really want, who you really are, and by that, you know your bondaries….and you also know to separate between people that are “on the same wave” as you and understand you….and people that are not “on the same wave” as you and don’t understand you. Between people that show respect towards you and people that utterly disrespect you.

I’m understanding more and more about my childhood. Often it was okay-ish. I just had to do everything the way my mother wanted it. If I didn’t I was lazy even if the result was better if I did it my own way. I was not allowed to learn about boundaries, as there were none for her “because she is my mother” . If I was doing well, things were okay. When I was struggling or messing up, I would be disappointing her and she would start to call me stupid and lazy. I was undiagnosed autistic and really struggled with some stuff but all I heard was that I was lazy. I also got bullied a lot and when I wanted to talk about it, I would be told to stop being so sensitive and that I was exaggerating every and more of that kind of gaslighting. She would also not remember all the nasty things she said to me and tell me everything was because of my psychological problems. She even advised me one time that it would be better if I were committed. Mind you, this was just after having gone through some therapy. Dealing with her is very exhausting and I just don’t want to anymore.

I know hardly anyone else who appeared to suffer from this abuse and it was a lot less for my brother as well. I wonder if these people just haven’t realised yet or if this kind of abuse is rare. Obviously when there’s proper physical abuse kids are removed from abusers but when it’s not physical it could continue indefinitely. Thank you Dr Ramani

I wasn’t aware it was abuse (45 years old) until my sister became a mother herself and had to go to therapy because of my narc mom’s treatment, and then she told me and we began to talk about all this. We have always thought that’s normal behavior for a family and even now I can’t talk about it with all my siblings because when you have experienced this all your life it’s not easy to see it. These articles have been so great for me, I have learned so much. To understand what my life has been, to choose the correct therapist, to know what to expect from her, to assume that there’s never going to be a change… Thank you, Doctor Ramani. Thank you so much. You have saved my life, and I really mean it.

watching this article and reading some of these comments is incredibly heartbreaking. It has taken me years, decades to recognize the damage and the unnecessary suffering my mother has made me and my sister go through. We both had it differently and it has affected us in different ways, but for the first time I’m having the courage to come out and admit to myself and to anyone willing to listen, what a crippling experience it has been. At the end, the most difficult part is to wrestle with the truth, accepting the fact that my mother will NEVER change, or EVER acknowledge her damaging behavior. He narcissism has cost me relationships, I became addicted to substances like pain killers, just to cope with the never ending abuse. The insane part of all this is that most people who know her have absolutely no idea, none at all. They think she’s charming, beautiful, successful, kind, generous – it’s mind blowing. My father, bless his heart, has been a prisoner to her abuse as well, but because he pretty much grew up without a father or a healthy present mother, he is the perfect provider and the perfect co-dependent. My mission in life now is to find a way to heal and to connect with people who can understand this issue from a personal experience. I am in the need of desperate help !!!

I moved to Portugal 3 years ago, my mum helped me buy a house, and I been here alone filling it with furniture, buying a boiler, finding a tennant. She came here after 3 years and basically told me im a useless human cos it wasn’t tidy enough for her and just turned the house upside down. She destroyed my self esteem several times over the years. She made dirty winter clothes stored in plastic bags for summer sound like a health and safety issue and started obsesively handwashing things Im not going to use for months.

This is definitely another puzzle piece I was looking for. My narcissist mom would always find something to start a fight with me every few days, even invent issues or stretch things way out of proportion as an excuse, it was always something where she could stack the deck against me defending myself, and if that wasnt enough I was disrespectful and whatever else she could make me shut up and take it with. I always figured that she was using me as a way to vent her frustrations on, so she looked for things she could be mad about, and with enough dedication either found some obscure thing or made them up. Just something about the pattern what she picked, always being one of the usual suspects, and how often she did that, just made it seem that way, that she was angry about something I had nothing to do with, and needed to find an excuse to yell to make it better. Its understandable to sometimes blow a fuze at someone who is just unlucky enough to be in the line of fire at that particular moment, or vent to a person who has nothing to do with your frustrations. But there has to be something particular going on if instead of venting about the thing thats actually frustrating you just make something up so you can be mad at the person in front of you. Thats not a spur-of-the-moment emotional outburst, thats a systematic approach of a person that gets something out of it, and will do it as much as possible, testing the limits of just how much abuse they can put on that child before something happens, and is willing to exhaust that limit regardless of whether there actually is anything tangible to be frustrated about.

This spoke to me on so many levels. In my case it is more complicated as autism, adhd and cptsd in the family. If ppl with autism never getting the tools to self-regulate and the generations of parents using their kids in this way and then the cycle continues. I am breaking the cycle and can see how much my parents broke me because they were broken themselves. Would love a article on co-regulation and where the lines are. Constantly falling into onesided friendships and relationships where im their for their hard times but when it’s “my turn” I’m ditched. Humans are a social species but always seems i need to self isolate as i can never get a balance between meeting others needs and them meeting mine. The constant selective empathy experienced is exhausting. I don’t want to emotions misuse anyone by mistake but i do want the care and support i see others freely given. The dichotomy of reaction i have always seen when i cry vs and other person, they are “allowed” because the ppl around them give care not contempt. It hurts my head and heart so much.

I’m trying to find a article about a physically abusive, rage filled father. I didn’t realize until recently that one or both of my parents have NPD. I was afraid I was a narcissist, until I understood from CBT and DBT and a therapist, that C-PTSD is a consequence of my upbringing. My parents blame me for needing to take certain medications, 2-15-2015 I attempted to self exit, and I was released from the voluntary hold to them. I begged not to have to go, but they put on the act of their lives and I was released to them. I was devastated. I had group therapy 3 days a week, and by the 3rd day I had bruises all over me. They were supposed to abstain from alcoholic beverages for me to be released to them… My mother is an alcoholic and my dad drinks nightly as well. they always yelled at me for what I did to them, how scared they were, how terrible it was to get that call. I was never asked why, never asked how I felt now, if I regreted it, if I was thinking about trying again… All I asked was not to share with the extended family.. we all aren’t that close and I didn’t want to be explaining myself so many times. They told everyone. They ruined Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was finally in private therapy outside of the group, I was thrilled to finally get the chance.. my 4th session they snuck into my therapists office before my appointment, met with her, and treated it like a freeforall from something that I did at 11, and how my S attempt made my mother need anxiety meds and they were knocking her out cold for days, she was constantly trembling.

It’s always felt like abuse, but it felt so wrong to use that word because, yes, it’s typically associated with some form of physical and sexual abuse. Also, the fact that no one else witnesses it and believes the parents to be angelic is further isolating. I internalized the shame and blame a long time ago and it’s my immediate emotional response to anything. I’m 51. And I just don’t know how to end this emotional habit.

All of the above. I’m the 10th of 11 siblings. Dad was a narcissist and abusive emotionally, physically, and sexually. My parents claimed all of my successes as their own. He refused to let me accept a full scholarship to college because he saw it as charity that reflected poorly on him. He told me that I would never be anything more than he was. I was the peacekeeper and diplomat from a young age. Constant chaos in my home. I don’t know how I survived.

Narcissist: Gives you a gift then abuses you right after. You: Hey you just abused me. Narcissist: What are you talking about I just gave you a gift. You: Thanks for the gift but you hurt me right after. Narcissist: Wow. How selfish can you be? I’m trying to help you, I’m try to be mice, and you’re choosing to ruin everything by focusing on the negative. It’s no wonder you have so many problems. Try focusing on the positives for once and see if your life gets better. You should be grateful I got you anything at all.

I don’t recognise my childhood as much in this article as I was never parentified but the opposite. My mother made sure to keep me as small and dependent as possible. She didn’t teach me any skills (e.g. cooking, cleaning), but expected me to clean up my room according to her perfectionist standards with no help. She decided everything for me such as what clothes to wear (every day!), what my hobbies are (I had to learn guitar but the classic flamenco style 🤦 and some day “I” started collecting teddy bears), what my choice subjects in school are, but expected me to excell in school. She commented on my body in mean ways all the time. She would say “your belly is so fat” (I was wearing size xs back then) and half an hour later she would walk into my room bringing me cake to eat. My brother and I used to play in the family room when we were little but one day she decided we are too loud and we should from now on only play in our own rooms (preferably seperate) and the family room is forbidden. My parents also were super “worried” about safety. So my favorite climbing tree was cut down after I fell down one time out of the hundreds of times I climbed up. I was heart broken. But when I fell with my bike, my mother was super worried if the bike was broken. My dad was mainly kind but absent as he hid from home life by working ridiculously long hours in a corporate job. One time he came home at midnight. He had to break out of the office cause everything was already locked. He got home bleeding cause he was hurt climbing the fence.

I would like to add another, very confusing version of narcissistic abuse of parents that I have heard in my coachings: in order to force the emotional adaption to the mood of the parent, they use metalevel projection. Something in their lives is wrong / feels bad / is scary, they will start searching for something that‘s „wrong” with the skapegoat child, starting with appearances in all variations and then – when this critizism is not answered enthusiastically – it goes on to the behaviors, life choices, choices of friends, what the child feels, thinks, says does or plans will be critized, minimized, devalued, mocked etc. So, either the child is totally submissive at the beginning, which gives the parent the sense of total boundryless control they were missing before (and will keep claiming to be entitled to anytime in the future) and which might soothe them somewhat or the child is being hurt to the degree of unhappiness the parent/s are feeling, making that way sure that the child is to blame and is clearly the source of their unhappiness. Which then again, makes them feel better, because they are trying soooo hard and in so many ways to straighten that difficult, misbegotten child out. Talk about moving goal posts in any scenario …. What self-defense / self-protective moves do you know, when you can‘t get out of the second and want to stay sane?

Thank you for this article. I have dealt with extreme extreme abuse from n parents. They are over obsessed in money live in a giant 7000 sq ft house, vacation always nice cars, living the high life . Anything us “children” get or gain they feel it’s owed to them and we basically owe them for giving us life. It’s broken me to the point of contemplating suicide more than a few times. It’s extremely depressing and I ended up using drugs specifically methamp, stemming from the euphoria effect I once felt in the days building up to where I am at now using ecstasy. Life is in shambles currently and the master puppeteers run my life in every way you can imagine

Even though I’ve been healing for years and in therapy, it’s still sometimes hard to convince and remind myself that I was emotionally abused by my narcissistic parents. Even though now I know the language, there’s still some weird part of me that tries to unconsciously downplay it. “Oh it wasn’t that bad”, “Please that’s not “real” abuse”, or “Other survivors survived through worse parental abuse, what’s your deal?” I internalized for years that emotional abuse wasn’t “real” or “valid” abuse, mainly because the culture and society I grew up in, if there’s nothing physical left on you it “wasn’t” abuse. It was “tough love”, “strict parent”, or “didn’t know any better because I didn’t understand my parents and their sacrifices”. It was messed up. Doubly more, when looking back, and seeing in hindsight that my friends and peers who said these to me, were also probably dealing with narcissistic (or at the least toxic) parents. Idk why it is that I noticed this more with my friends and I all saying and thinking this stuff when we’re all poc. I’m Filipino and grew up in a Hispanic majority. My friends were Puerto Rican. And we would explain away and excuse our parents’ narcissistic or toxic behaviors. It wasn’t until I move out of this area and into a new state entirely when I found other poc friends who would admit “yeah our parents are toxic or narcissistic, and that’s not right”. They were Vietnamese and Latinx. It’s kinda wild when I would visit my old friends in my old area and still see them spout their old internalized views excusing their narcissistic and toxic parents.

From getting beaten as a child I never learned “Right from Wrong” from that experience. What I did learn is that people will attack if they did not like what I was doing. I even learned that it was okay to hurt somebody else from they upset you. Then that really comes to mind is my mother and I were driving home in the station wagon, and we know is that my dad was coincidentally in his pickup truck following us. What I did was stupid, but from what I can tell I had my mother’s tacit approval of doing so. As a joke we drove past the house and I was leaning out of the tailgate of the car. Firstly I did not fall out in the back of the car due to an abrupt breaking or the latch failing or something like that. This is not long before my parents going to divorce, so I feel that my dad was having some abandonment issues at the time. Anyway when we got home, my dad corned me my room and beat the crap out of me, theoretically out if he was concern for me Although I appreciated the concern of possibly getting dumped on the pavement, I did not appreciate the getting the crap beaten out of me. My parents should have worked out their own issue separate from my existence. What I think my dad was really angry about it was his perceived abandonment. My dad being of large build and 6 ft 5 in tall and that’s encouraged by his mother to use his physical prowess over others was definitely a threat when you were under 4 feet tall and a kid of about 7. I think they were playing situations it’s already had explained to me what I was doing was wrong or why it annoyed somebody that would have made the whole situation much less traumatic.