From the NPD Glossary: As long as you feel you are obligated to JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain) or you do it to forestall a narcissistic blow up, you are succumbing to emotional blackmail and passively allowing your N to dictate your choices for you.
This can be a difficult concept to wrap your head around.
Conditioned since early childhood to be obedient and answerable to our NParents
and never allowed to individuate in adolescence, many of us enter adulthood believing
that we are still answerable to those parents, and will be for as long as they
live.
This, in case you didn’t know, is not normal. The teen years
is the time that children are supposed to be learning how to be independent
adults. A normally developing teen who has normal parents will have the
stability and security of the parental home but, in increasing amounts over
time, be allowed to make more and more personal, life-influencing decisions.
They begin learning to take care of themselves, they begin trying on adult
responsibilities, and their parents begin relinquishing control.
In a household dominated by a narcissistic parent, however,
the exact opposite is the case. The Scapegoat Child is not allowed to
individuate because that way lies independence, something the NP does not want
because it threatens the NP’s control over the child, control that is necessary
for the security of the NP’s NSupply.
What is insidious here is that our NParents have taken
something that was initially something that benefitted and protected and taught
us and they have twisted it into something to benefit themselves, not their
children. In a household with normal parents, children learn necessary
life-skills through learning to persuade others (justify), to win others to
their point of view logically (argue), to stick up for themselves and others
(defend) and to make their positions or decisions clear to others (explain).
These are all valuable abilities in the larger world where you job—even your
safety—may depend on these skills. Unfortunately, for the children of
narcissists, these skills are not learned in an atmosphere in which they can
develop into useful talents.
For their own safety, it is important for children to be
answerable to their parents. If a child does something disobedient or
dangerous, a rational, loving parent will require an explanation or
justification of the deed before deciding if a punishment is required and what
kind of punishment will be invoked. A rational, loving parent will allow a
child to discuss (argue) issues with him, even if he doesn’t give in:
argumentation is a valuable life skill and adults are often called upon to make
rational arguments to support their positions. A rational, loving parent will
call upon a child to defend his or her ideas or notions, an essential part of
learning critical thinking. A narcissist parent, on the other hand, will
require a child to defend him/herself. Unlike the rational, loving parent who
elicits their child’s opinions and who guides their thinking, the narcissistic
parent will demand that the child agree with the parent, forcing the child to
justify, argue, defend and explain himself, perhaps his very existence.
Rational, loving parents allow—even help—their children to
individuate and gain independence. As their children grow and mature into young
adults, the reins of parental power are loosened and the child grows from a
subordinate to a peer in which his/her opinions, while perhaps not agreed with,
are respected. The narcissistic parent, however, is unwilling to make that
transition from superior to peer and seeks to keep their children subordinate
forever.
In a normal household, children will grow into adults whose
parents love them no less than when they were dependent babies, but who respect
their autonomy as independent adults. In a narcissistic household, however, no
matter what the children accomplish in their lives, they are forever expected
to be subordinate to the authority and wishes of their NParent.
Growing up with an NParent, learning to justify, argue,
defend and explain are not stepping stones to independent and critical
thinking, they are the life preservers of the embattled subordinate. They are
the means by which a person might be
able to talk his way out of an Nrage. They are a means to placate the beast, to
save one’s own skin. They are not useful, positive life skills that can be used
to advance oneself, they are the result of having been put on the defensive by
a narcissistic onslaught.
Enough years of this and JADE become habituated. First we
anticipate the NRage and we offer up our justifications in advance, hoping to
forestall the rage. Eventually we simply adopt these behaviours, putting
ourselves on the defensive before anyone else even has a chance to, and then
reacting to that defensive posture with JADE. We may even perceive attacks from
others where there are none, becoming defensive when there is nothing to defend
against. And when we habituate this behaviour, we don’t even see it anymore.
This all came about because your N refused to relinquish
his/her emotional control of you as you grew up. The appropriate role of
demanding that you be able to explain yourself and your actions ended when you
became an adult, but they refused to give it up. And you, habituated to being
on the defensive and believing that you were still answerable to your N, did
nothing to end it.
But the truth is, you aren’t really answerable to anyone but
yourself and duly constituted authority. You are not answerable to your Ns and, believe it or not, they are way,
waaay out of line to pretend that you are. They have absolutely no right
because once you become an adult you are no longer accountable to them. You can
stop justifying yourself and your choices, you do not have to argue with them,
they have no right to try to put you on the defensive and you owe them no
explanations, no matter what they try to tell you!
This may be hard to grasp and it may even sound like
victim-blaming, but past the age of your majority, you have a choice in the
matter and if you are over 18 years of age and your N are abusing you or
attempting to hold you accountable to them, you
are permitting them to abuse you. Yes,
there are consequences for standing up to their abuse—and that is exactly why
it is a choice: you are choosing to
submit to the abuse rather than stand up to them and take the consequences.
Is this okay? Actually it is, as long as you are doing it
consciously and for a reason. When it is by conscious choice, that is a very
different situation. When you have considered your situation and weighed the
trade offs, when you know you are choosing to put up with their shit because it
is worth it for the benefits you are deriving, then it is ok because you are in control of it. You know you
can leave if it gets too much, you know the reason you tolerate it, you know
the benefits you are getting outweigh the crap you are dealing with. You have control of your life and you
have chosen this, it is not being forced upon you. It is a battle you have
chosen and you can un-choose at any time.
If you don’t owe them JADE, do you owe them anything? What
about respect? It has long been my opinion that you owe everybody respect, right up to the moment they earn your
disrespect. Many people seem to think others should earn their respect, but if
you really think about that, it quickly emerges as a very narcissistic frame of
mind. Who, after all, believes the entire world needs to earn their respect
except a narcissist? But if you give respect to everyone, you can selectively
cease to respect those who have earned your disrespect through their own
actions.
So what do you owe your NPs? A better question would be “What
do you owe yourself?” Because that is where everything has to start. Nobody
lives your life but you and that means nobody but you has the right to make
choices about how it will be lived. Do you like
being in a situation in which others think they have the right to demand you
justify your every choice, option, decision? Suppose your mean-spirited Aunt
Maude calls and wants you to come to tea on Saturday and, based on experience,
you know it is going to be weak tea, stale biscuits, and nasty, rude gossip
about everybody she knows. Do you want to go? When you respond do you say “No,
I can’t, I don’t have transportation that day…” thereby justifying your refusal? And if she offers to pay an Uber driver to
pick you up and bring you back home, do you argue with her, perhaps give another excuse? And when that doesn’t
work, do you feel backed into a corner, defensive,
fighting to find a way to get out of it without just saying “No, thanks for the
invitation but I must decline.” Can you even say that without feeling like you
must explain why you must decline?
You have been trained to JADE by your Ns but that training was for their benefit, not yours, so you can
stop now. You owe yourself honest, authentic communication with others,
explanations only when you feel they
are appropriate…like when my friend called me to join her for dinner at a
restaurant and I had already eaten. “I’d love to come, but I’ve already eaten.”
We ended up meeting for dessert.
What you owe yourself comes first. In a conflict between
what you owe someone else and what you owe yourself, you must come first.
Nobody has the right to demand that you justify, argue, defend or explain
yourself, no matter what they may believe. Only you have the right to decide if any of those things are appropriate
to the situation and if you decide it is, then it nobody’s decision but yours
to decide what and how much you say.