I see it all the time: “Why would my mother do this?” “Why
does my father say such things?” “Why would my sister think this way?” “Why did
I get chosen to be the scapegoat?” Everybody wants to know the reasons behind
the behaviour of their Ns, but has anyone stopped to question that desire?
If you are one of those “Why?” people, have you asked
yourself how an answer to your question will help you? Think about that for a
minute…would that knowledge improve your life in any way? Does constantly
asking it, does the torture of wanting an answer, improve your life? And what
are you avoiding while you focus on “why? why? why?”
Our culture likes the idea of “closure.” What does “closure”
mean to you? The dictionary defines it as “A feeling of finality
or resolution, especially after a traumatic experience…”
Do you really think you would have closure if you knew why you were
chosen to be the scapegoat? Or do you think the knowledge would just bring you
more pain and then elicit even more questions?
The first question, then, that has to be answered is “Why do
you want to know?”
You want to know because you want to know if you deserved it
or not. Why? Because, most likely unbeknownst to you, you have a hidden agenda
at work, a hidden agenda based on never having accepted that your NParent is
toxic and that there is no real hope that s/he will ever change.
So how does this work? Well, when you accept that something
just is, when you truly accept it, you stop having feelings of angst about it.
For example, how you ever wondered why something painted red fades to pink and
then to almost nothing when exposed to the sun, but other colours hold up well?
Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t…but does not knowing the answer to that
question cause you any sense of anxiety? Of course not—because even if you have
wondered about this in the past, you have no emotional investment either in
having the answer or not having the answer. It is okay with you not to know.
So, if you truly accepted that narcissists are so
ego-centric, so self-centred, that the feelings of others—including their own
children—are of no concern to them, if you truly accepted that your NParent
will treat you, the scapegoat, like crap no matter what you do, that you can’t
fix it because it can’t be fixed, that your NParent will never change…if you
truly accepted all of that, you wouldn’t be asking “why” because you would no
longer have any emotional investment in their behaviour. You would understand,
in the deepest, most profound manner, that their treatment of you is a manifestation
of their disorder and is no reflection on you and that understanding would
bring you both acceptance and peace.
But you are
affected, you do have angst, you have emotional pain surrounding this,
which indicates that, as much as you may have intellectually accepted that
narcissists behave this way no matter what you do, you have not accepted this
on an emotional level.
Why not? Because on some level you still have hope that
somehow you can do something to
change your N into a real, loving, nurturing, emotionally available parent.
Your desire for that parent is so precious to you that you will deny reality
and even take on guilt…perceive yourself as the responsible party, believe that
you somehow caused her condition…in order to preserve the hope that this person
can become the competent parent you
were denied.
Because if you caused it, you can fix it. It is as simple as
that. If your actions in some way created your parent to be rejecting or
enmeshing or manifest whatever hurtful behaviour s/he engages in, then if you
can figure out what you did and then you can UNdo it—or at least make amends
for it—and then have the parent of your dreams. In the meantime, you can only
feel guilty about your failures, failures your NParent will happily point out
to you—and anyone else who will listen—at any available opportunity.
You have taken responsibility, in your subconscious mind,
for your NParent’s behaviour and obvious negative feelings for you. Normal
people do not develop negative feelings for others without a reason, so somewhere
along the line you have assumed that you provided your NParent with a
legitimate reason to feel negative about you. And now you feel guilt for that
unknown (and, in truth, fictional) sin and seek ways to gain absolution for it
from a person who has a vested interest in keeping you feeling guilty and
perpetually penitent. All this from your belief that not only your NParent is
normal and therefore has a legitimate reason for treating you like a criminal,
but from your further belief that if you could just name the crime you
committed, you have the power to fix it and thereby turn your NParent into the
perfect, loving parent you have yearned for—and deserved—all this time.
So why do you want to know why? Because some part of you
believes that this knowledge is the magic key. In knowing why, you will be able
to “fix” it and then have what you want. If you just knew what you did wrong,
you could undo it or fix it or make amends or apologize or do something to make it right so that the
loving parent you pine for would emerge from the narcissistic shell.
If you could know for certain that it was not your fault,
that you didn’t do anything wrong, then you can fix it by making your NParent
realize how unjust s/he is being and how much you have been hurt by their
treatment. This little part of you believes that once they understand they are
being unfair and they are hurting you, their natural sense of justice and
parental love will kick in and they will be sorry and soothe your hurts and
change their behaviour and become that loving parent you so deserve.
It makes a lovely fairy tale, but you and I both know it ain’t
gonna happen. That niggling little voice of hope is actually part of your
Narcissist’s voice in your head, the promise that is never kept, the
expectation never realized, the hope that can never be fulfilled. Narcissism is
forever. Narcissists cannot be successfully treated because they don’t believe
there is anything wrong with them, so they won’t cooperate with therapy…and
there is no medication that targets the manifestations of narcissism. They are profoundly,
deeply selfish and have no sense of empathy for the feelings of others. Appealing
to a narcissist’s empathy or sense of fairness is like appealing to the sense
of fairness and empathy of a granite wall: there is nothing there to appeal to,
nothing to resonate with you or your feelings.
And there is nothing you could have ever done wrong that
justifies the treatment they mete out. Nothing. Nada. Nix. You didn’t do
anything to make them this way, they were this way before you were born and
will be this way—or worse—until they draw their last breath. Your only mistake
was to buy into the fiction that you are somehow responsible for their
behaviour—that they are reacting to something you did—and therefore you have a
chance to fix the problem: you aren’t and you can’t because it isn’t fixable.
By the same token, their apparent obliviousness to your pain
and their lack of fairness, isn’t something that can be remedied because it is
as much a part of them as their eye colour. It seems like they don’t care if
they hurt you because they don’t…not because there is something wrong with you but
because there is something wrong with them…and it is something they do not want
to fix.
None of us has the power to change the fundamental nature of
another human being. Even if we did, we don’t have the right to do so. Each one
of us, narcissists included, has an inherent right to self-determination and to
think we have the right to change another person to suit our needs is to think
like a narcissist. Narcissists are the people who believe they are exempt from the
need to respect the rights of others and have the right to demand others
reshape themselves to serve their idea of what they should be.
So what is the point of asking “Why?”? It is the
manifestation of a flea, a flea in which you harbour a subconscious belief that
you have the right to change your N to suit your desires and needs, just as
s/he has been trying to shape and mould you to fit theirs. You believe that the
answer to the question is your best clue, your key, to creating an effective
campaign to bring that N to heel so that you can get your needs fulfilled,
regardless of what s/he wants.
The real answer isn’t what you want to hear, it isn’t what
you want it to be because it won’t give you the clues you need to “fix” your Ns
and turn them into the people you want them to be. The answer is simply “Because
they are narcissists and that is what narcissists do.”
Nothing more profound, nothing more personal, nothing more
insightful…no clues, no keys, just the simple fact that narcissists care only
for themselves and that everyone around them—including their GCs—are mere pawns
in their selfish games of self-gratification.