It’s not personal…and it never was…

Do you have trouble trusting people? Even trusting yourself? This is a common issue with the scapegoat children of narcissists. Have you ever wondered why that is? Well, for one thing, it is almost impossible to have an NParent and not be the victim of gaslighting…and one of the consequences of being gaslighted throughout your formative years is that “…gaslighting, when effective, will actually damage your trust in yourself and your experience of reality.”

When we acknowledge that we have been gaslighted, triangulated, hoovered, and otherwise manipulated by our Ns, when we look at the aftermath, like our difficulty in choosing emotionally healthy partners and friends, our inability to trust people…including ourselves…our constant state of feeling anxiety and/or guilt, it is difficult to believe we were not deliberately targeted and attacked. And yet, for most of us, this is actually the case: there was nothing truly personal in it.

Hard to accept? How many times have you asked yourself “why does she hate me?” or “Why me?” or “What did I do to deserve this?” How often have you searched your memory for something you might have said or done…or assumed something you said or did…that provoked her to dislike you, to not love you, to punish you. Because you assume it is your fault, you take on guilt, you feel like you are a bad person, even if you can’t figure out why. All of this is based on your assumption that her negative actions and/or attitudes against you are somehow justified and for them to be justified, you would have had to do or say something wrong, even if you don’t remember what that was.

Maybe, like many ACoNs, you have holes in your memory, periods of time that you cannot remember. When your N gaslights and accuses you of being mean to her or of having said or done something that upset her and you can’t recall ever having said or done it, it is natural to think you may have done it but can’t remember. “Losing spots in your memory makes it very plausible when someone tells you that they cannot trust your memory. It makes it very plausible when they tell you that you are abusive.” This is a common way be begin to think we are crazy, because our memory of our experiences and reality do not match with what our NParents report.

When they call in the flying monkeys, it can get even worse. Flying monkeys accept the N’s version of things uncritically, so the next thing you know, your N has an army of supporters and you are but a lonely voice crying in the wilderness. “It’s hard to stand firm when one person is trying to replace your experience, but when they have a chorus of supporters, it is nearly impossible. There is a reason why cult abuse can lead to a complete breakdown of someone’s personality…Group manipulation and abuse is devastatingly effective.”

So how can this not be personal?

The first thing you have to realize is that Ns do not see other people the way we see them. We have a habit of ascribing to others our own feelings, beliefs, motivations and, in general, we will be roughly accurate as long as we are dealing with people of the same general culture and background. If we come from a culture in which mothers are expected to love their children and put them first, to take an interest in each of them individually and treat them as individuals, with love and respect, we will expect that of all mothers in our culture, including our own. We have expectations.

But narcissists are outliers. We base our expectations on our societal norms and our narcissistic parents do not meet those norms, even though some of them may attempt to appear to meet them. We expect our parents to care for us and put our needs ahead of their wants because that is what our society expects as well. And if they don’t, because the society assumes that they are fulfilling their ordained roles as parents, it is we who are suspected of causing the problem. We even suspect ourselves, wondering what we did, what we didn’t do, what is wrong with us, that our mothers and/or fathers do not love us in the way we expect. It is we who think it is personal.

For narcissists, I don’t think it is that complex. We are not people to narcissists in the way that we are people to others. We are objects. That can be difficult to wrap your head around. Think of it this way: if you have three empty trash receptacles in your kitchen, a pink one, a yellow one, and a silver one, which one do you throw the empty soup can into? It doesn’t matter, does it? What if they are different shapes? Say round, square, and rectangular openings. Still doesn’t matter, does it? Suppose they are different sizes: medium, large, and huge. You only have one can to throw away and all of the receptacles are empty…

So, what DOES matter? What criteria do you consider when you choose which one to throw the can into? The specific characteristics of each bin…its personality, if you will…is immaterial. All that matters is your need, and you are going to choose the nearest one to where you are standing with that empty can in your hand. It is all about you and your needs, and the looks, size, and shape of the bins are immaterial.

Over time, things may evolve. You may find yourself unconsciously sorting your refuse: tins into the pink one, plastic into the yellow one, paper into the silver one. You habituate this such that even if the position of the bins is swapped, you now will take three extra steps to put the tin in the pink bin because that is where the tins belong. Over time, the pink bin becomes the one for tins, not because of anything inherent in the bin or its position that makes it more suitable or deserving of the tins but because, in the beginning, it was the closest to you when you were throwing tins away and you habituated it. If the pink bin has a rubber liner, so that the goo from inside the tins doesn’t ooze out into the metal of the tin, or out through the mesh of the silver tin that you use for paper, and it has a lid that closes to keep the flies out, then you have even more reason to use it for the tins, don’t you?

I suspect the scapegoat child is chosen in much the same way. It is nothing personal against you, it is simply that 1) you are there at the time your N feels a need to lay blame on someone other than herself and 2) you are vulnerable to accepting this blame. If there was another child present at the same time who was more vulnerable than you, it is possible that child would be chosen. If you were not there at all, definitely another child would be chosen. It wasn’t you…the essential personhood of yourself, s/he who resides inside the body…who was chosen, it was the person nearest and most vulnerable to being responsive to the narcissist’s manipulations.

Over time I have noticed that first children, especially first girls, seem to be disproportionately singled out for scapegoat status. We are someone upon whom our NMs can dump their responsibilities. Culturally, girls are still the caretakers and the people who do the bulk of the domestic chores, so it is natural that narcissistic parents will task the first available person (the oldest child), and in particular the oldest girl, to take over responsibility. You are there…and you were there first. Sometimes, however, that first child is not malleable enough but a subsequent child is more easily manipulated or frightened into the role. The narcissist does not choose you based on who you are and what you might have said or done, the narcissist simply chooses the most available and most vulnerable, regardless of other factors like personality or actions.

Once you are identified as the scapegoat person, the choice needs to be rationalize or justified. In a normal environment, your actions are the justification for how you are treated: break curfew, get grounded, for example. With the narcissistic parent, the choice is made first, then the justifications for the choice are found. These can range from actual events (you did run out into the street after the ball and nearly get hit by a car), to real events twisted to have new meanings (you were trying to give the cat a bath, not drown him), to outright lies (you didn’t call your mother a bitch, even though you might have been thinking it). The reasons you are the one who gets dumped on can sound rational, like you didn’t finish your chores so you can’t go skating with your friends (even though your chores consist of doing her housework) and they can absolutely absurd (you ruined her life by being born, so now she is blaming you for her ruined figure and poor job prospects). But what they all have in common is this: it has nothing to do with you, personally. It has to do with her agenda, her perceptions, her refusal to take responsibility for herself and her life.

If you had not been born, if you had born at a different point in her life, if you had been born to another mother, this person would still have a scapegoat. It had nothing to do with YOU.

Sources:

10 Things I’ve Learned About Gaslighting As An Abuse Tactic http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/things-wish-known-gaslighting/

She projects: Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers Pt 19

The black text is a shortened version of an original work by Chris, The Harpy’s Child. Original at https://sites.google.com/site/harpyschild/ Copyright 2007, all rights reserved

[There are two basic types of narcissistic mothers, the ignoring type and the engulfing type. These may—and often do—overlap but most NMs have a basic style and will be primarily one or the other. Some of the following points may not apply to your NM simply because they describe an engulfing characteristic when your NM is an ignoring type—or vice versa. But our mothers are not the only narcissists we will encounter in our lives. In fact, being raised by a narcissistic parent actually sets us up to be prey for more of the self-centred emotional vampires as we go out into the world, from girlfriends who are anything but friends to lovers who love themselves best to husbands who are the mirror image of dear old mom. So, whether something looks like it applies to your NM or not, read and consider it carefully—it may give you the awareness necessary to avoid the predator lurking around the next bend. As ever, my comments are shown in violet. -V]

It's about secret things. The Destructive Narcissistic Parent creates a child that only exists to be an extension of her self. It's about body language. It's about disapproving glances. It's about vocal tone. It's very intimate. And it's very powerful. It's part of who the child is. ~ Chris

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part 19. She projects.

She projects. This sounds a little like psycho-babble, but it is something that narcissists all do.

In projection “... a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings.”

Projection means that she will put her own bad behavior, character and traits on you so she can deny them in herself and punish you.

“My MNM was a master at projection. When I learned to set a proper table in my Home Ec class and tried to replicate it at home, my mother’s immediate reaction was to assume I wanted something from her. When I later asked for a ride to my Girl Scout meeting, she assumed that I was “buttering her up” so she would be inclined to give me that ride, the fact that I needed a ride every week somehow forgotten. When I did something unexpected, her response was often to think I was “buttering her up” or the contrary—“are you trying to make me mad?” There was some kind of calculating motive behind virtually everything she did and, in true projection mode, she believed others operated just as calculatedly as she did…and often she ascribed to others the feelings or reasons that would have been her own motivations.”

When I was older and spending more time out of the house, NM began accusing me of behaviours that, in all truth, had never occurred to me. Years later she resurrected some of those accusations by telling me that she never could trust me, that she knew I was “running around with men,” and other only slightly veiled accusations. I didn’t understand it when it was happening…I mean, where on earth did she get those ideas??...but thanks to my father I understood it the second time around. It was my father who explained “projection” to me and told me that the things she was accusing me of were the very things she had actually done when she was my age. Decades later, one of her brothers confirmed that her behaviour during her teens was anything but circumspect, so I ended up getting punished for things she did as a teenager, because she was projecting her behaviour onto me.

This can be very difficult to see if you have traits that she can project on to. An eating-disordered woman who obsesses over her daughter's weight is projecting. The daughter may not realize it because she has probably internalized an absurdly thin vision of women's weight and so accepts her mother's projection. When the narcissist tells the daughter that she eats too much, needs to exercise more, or has to wear extra-large size clothes, the daughter believes it, even if it isn't true.

I am really not sure if this applies to my NM or not—I didn’t see many similarities between us although I suppose her obsession with my romantic life could apply. She was quite convinced I was trying to attract the attention of her boyfriends and later, her husband. She gave me a bad time about “modesty”—sorry, but this was beachside Southern California during the height of the surfing craze—we girls lived in bikinis and shorts and tube tops. Also, my bedroom was actually one end of the kitchen—no door, no curtain, no nothing to separate it from the rest of the apartment. And, to top it off, I was not allowed to lock the bathroom door so Frank could (and did) walk in on me whenever he felt like it. But her eyes saw seduction on my part probably because that is what she would have been doing in my place.

However, she will sometimes project even though it makes no sense at all. This happens when she feels shamed and needs to put it on her scapegoat child and the projection therefore comes across as being an attack out of the blue. For example: She makes an outrageous request, and you casually refuse to let her have her way. She's enraged by your refusal and snarls at you that you'll talk about it when you've calmed down and are no longer hysterical.

It is important to realize that our NParents are not the only Ns in our lives. Having been raised by Ns, we are conditioned to respond to them in a way that attracts them. We end up with narcissistic romantic partners, narcissistic spouses, and even narcissists we call friends. And they can hurt us just as badly as our NParents—sometimes worse, since we don’t expect the kind of treatment from them that we come to expect from our NParents. As our eyes are opened to narcissism, we begin to see it everywhere, which can make us doubt the validity of our perceptions: all of these people can’t narcissists, can they? It is most of my friends and a large part of my family! Sadly, yes they can: once trained and primed by our NParents to provide NSupply on demand, we attract them like bees to honey. Over time we begin to realize some of our friends and family members are also Ns and start dropping them from our social calendars. But sometimes we have difficulty, not willing to dump someone simply because we think they might be narcissists. And then they do something, like my friend Mandy* experienced, that removes all doubt.

Mandy was going through a divorce and decided to skip her 20th reunion in favour of some decompression time with her kids and her family. A long-time friend, Allison*, was angry with Mandy for skipping the reunion and “punished” her by refusing to communicate with her for a month. When Mandy sent her a message about her lack of communication, Allison ignored the message. When she was finally over her snit Allison tried to ease her way back into communication with Mandy by “liking” some of her FaceBook posts, but Mandy confronted her about not replying to her message. Allison claimed never to have received the message, which Mandy knew was not true. Allison became very angry and told Mandy she would talk with her about it later, after she (Mandy) had “calmed down.” Since Mandy had been perfectly calm up to this point, Allison’s projecting, gaslighting and lack of empathy suddenly struck her that it was like trying to communicate with her NM. The light went off in Mandy’s head and her friendship with Allison bit the dust.

You aren't hysterical at all; she is, but your refusal has made her feel the shame that should have stopped her from making shameless demands in the first place. That's intolerable. She can transfer that shame to you and rationalize away your response: you only refused her because you're so unreasonable.

Allison was essentially demanding that Mandy put her and her wants above what Mandy and her kids needed. When Mandy refused and Allison made an issue of it, surely some part of her knew that Mandy and her children needed some time away , some restorative time with family, but she continued to put herself first…a shameless demand in anyone’s book.

Having done that she can reassert her shamelessness and indulge her childish willfulness by turning an unequivocal refusal into a subject for further discussion. You'll talk about it again “later” - probably when she's worn you down with histrionics, pouting and the silent treatment so you're more inclined to do what she wants.

While Allison actually told Mandy that she would discuss the matter with her later, completely ignoring and invalidating Mandy, some Ns take a different tactic: my ex would table a discussion as soon as it got close to resolution and the resolution might involve him accepting responsibility for something or changing a behaviour pattern or attitude. I would make a clear demand: no racist remarks in front of the children—you can be a racist if you want, but don’t teach it to my kids—and he would simply say “I don’t want to talk about this now.” When pressed for a time when we could discuss his racism and unashamed displays of it, it was always some vague future time. If I brought up again, before he made another blatant racist remark that would re-open the discussion, I was nagging him and if I didn’t shut up, he would say he would never discuss it with me. He knew that harbouring and expressing racist sentiments wrong and that he should be shamed by them, but by projecting incorrect behaviour (nagging, telling him what to do, expecting him to change) onto me, he could reassert his shamelessness and continue on with his behaviour, unabated.

Projection is actually a form of denial. The narcissist denies or minimizes her unseemly behaviour or beliefs or desires or feelings by projecting them onto you, then takes you to task for it, leaving her blameless as a newborn babe. It’s just one more of their ways of keeping their fantasy worlds intact and the rest of us off balance and compliant.

*Not their real names

Next: Part 20. She is never wrong about anything.

Gaslighting—the narcissist's crazy making tool

The term “gaslighting” is defined by Wikipedia as “...a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.” It is a stock-in-trade of narcissists and used intentionally by the malignant narcissist to keep her victim off balance and, often, to provide the narcissist with amusement.
That sounds harsh, doesn’t it? If you haven’t had the dubious pleasure of being in a close relationship with a malignant narcissist, it may even seem far fetched. But, sadly, it is the truth: garden variety narcissists gaslight just as malignant narcissists do, but their motives may be quite different.

The “ordinary” narcissist gaslights primarily to restructure history to favour her. (Yes, men are narcissists too and do the same things, but I don’t want to play with multiple personal pronouns so, for simplicity’s sake, I’m sticking to the female gender here.) Let’s say you and your narcissistic cousin are out shopping and you suddenly remember that Trendy Bootery is having a massive sale. You mention this to your cousin and after a little bit of convincing, she agrees to go to the sale. There, she finds some really cute boots but waffles on buying them and you convince her to do so. Later, you and cousin are with some friends having a drink and someone compliments cousin on her boots. The story she tells, however, is that she remembered the sale, you had to be talked into going and you tried to talk her out of the boots. Later, when you two are alone, you ask why she twisted the tale and she looks at you like you have two heads—“but that is what happened!” she insists. You have just been gaslighted.

Because your cousin is not a malignant narcissist, she has altered the reality of the experience simply to make herself the bright, decisive one. She remembered the sale and you were reluctant to go. She was bravely unwavering while you didn’t want her to have the adorable boots. It is all about making her look good—but not about making you feel bad. If you do, it is simply fallout, but not her intent.

The malignant narcissist, however, may use gaslighting for far more nefarious purposes: in the play and movie, “Gaslight,” the abuser intentionally “…uses a variety of tricks to convince his spouse that she is crazy, so that she won't be believed when she reports strange things that are genuinely occurring, including the dimming of the gas lamps in the house (which happens when her husband turns on the normally unused gas lamps in the attic to conduct clandestine activities there). Since then, it has become a colloquial expression that is now also used in clinical and research literature.” Oh, the malignant narcissist may also gaslight to reflect well upon herself and poorly on you, but she will also gaslight with malicious intent, anything from setting you up (like in the play and movie) to simply as a source of amusement for herself. The malignant narcissist, remember, has no conscience so using your feelings as a play-toy for her amusement is perfectly acceptable to her.

My mother used the technique not only to make me crazy but to distance family members from me. Victims of narcissists must not have allies, people who believe in them, if the narcissist is to succeed in using that victim. You cannot either scapegoat or gaslight someone if others are aware of the truth. Like all abusers, the narcissist will seek to distance her victim from all possible sources of support, thereby making the victim dependent on her abuser.

One of my NM's favourite techniques was to impute motives for my behaviour that, in truth, had nothing to do with my real motives. While taking a Home Ec course in school, we were taught how to set a proper table. When I got home from school I painstakingly scrounged up the necessary items to set a proper table, hoping to get praise from my mother when she got home. Instead, I got nothing except a suspicious eye and raised eyebrow. Later, when dinner was over and I asked my mother for a ride to that evening’s Girl Scout meeting, she leaped up from her chair triumphantly, shouting “Aha! I knew there was something you were buttering me up for!” and refused to drive me. Over a course of years of this sort of thing, I began questioning my own motives, even when on another level, I knew better.

My ex-husband was the kind of malignant narcissist who derived great amusement from gaslighting me—rather like a little boy who enjoyed pulling the wings off of flies. On one occasion in which I was insisting something happened one way and he was implacably insisting it happened another, I found myself twisting in the wind, torn between my own memory and his very certainty that I was remembering incorrectly. “Why are you doing this?” I remember crying to him. “Don’t you know this is crazy-making?” He merely smiled slowly and nodded his head. He knew—and he was doing it on purpose!

In a short sentence, gaslighting is a technique used to manipulate or even destroy someone’s perception of reality. Hilde Lindemann, philosophy professor and well known bioethicist, believes that with regard to women, the “...ability to resist depends on her ability to trust her own judgements.” I disagree, primarily because this smacks of blaming the victim. I think that women who have long trusted their own judgments but are intelligent enough to recognize that they are fallible and therefore may misremember something, fall prey to gaslighting as well as their less self-assured sisters. The thing about a person who gaslights another is that they portray a degree of absolute certainty that they are right, and that very certainty can cause anyone not as narcissistic as they are to buy into it.

Lindemann believes that “Establishing ‘counterstories’ to that of the gaslighter may help the victim re-acquire or even for the first time ‘acquire ordinary levels of free agency.’” I dispute this as well, for it implies that the victim must create her own tales that run contrary to those set out by the abuser. This is digging deeper into an alternate reality. The victim must stick firmly to the truth, write the truth down if necessary so she can remind herself of it through regular reading and re-reading. If there are witnesses, asking them for clarification helps. But the primary weapon against gaslighting is awareness not only that it exists but that one’s parent/partner/employer/co-worker may employ it. One must also develop the ability to recognize it.

One error “normies” (normal people or those who were not raised in a narcissistic household) frequently make when dealing with narcissists is to base their opinions on their own selves. “Why would anyone want to do that?” they might ask. Unable to relate to gaslighting or why someone would gaslight another, too often the uninitiated are unable to grasp the motivations of the narcissist and turn it around to blame the victim: “what did you do to cause her to do that?” or even outright disbelief, which is tantamount to calling the victim a liar. The idea that someone would—or even could—offer…and pull off…a wholly distorted version of reality as the truth is pretty much discounted by normal people. You and I, of course, wouldn’t do it not only because it is dishonest, but also because we would be humiliated when the truth came out and we were revealed as liars. Narcissists do not suffer the pangs of conscience for dishonesty, and they bend reality to fit their needs, fully believing themselves justified and somehow avoiding cognitive dissonance in their own brains when they reassemble reality to fit their objectives. They gaslight because there is something in it for them, and they have no fear that others will have the temerity to call them on their lies—in fact, they count on the fact that their very self-assuredness will cause others to question their own recollections of a circumstance or event, and they can be very successful at it.

In the article “Gaslighting: An Abuser’s Favourite Tactic,” the following forum quotes have been assembled. Anything seem familiar?

For those who don’t know what gaslighting is, it’s something our abusers do or say to make US think WE’RE the ones who are going insane. They say and do things to make us question our sanity, our memory of events, our boundaries, our values, and our beliefs. It’s when they says things like:


• “I never said that.” (when you KNOW they did and have a clear memory of it)
• “You’re imagining things.” (when you KNOW you’re not)
• “You’re always overreacting.” (when you’re reacting EXACTLY as any normal, well-adjusted person would react.
• “You’re such a drama queen.” (when HE is the one creating drama)
• “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” (when you know EXACTLY what you’re talking about)
• “You’re always accusing me of things.” (when, the reason you accuse him of things is because you KNOW he has lied or cheated)
• “You’re always so suspicious.” (when he has given you AMPLE reason to be)
• “What about all the sh*t you’ve done to ME?” (when you haven’t done a THING to him other than love him, appease him, cater to his every want and whim)


These are examples of gaslighting, and we’re all familiar with it, because it’s this stealth form of psychological abuse that makes us start asking or telling ourselves:


• “Hmm, maybe he’s right. I need to lighten up a bit.”
• “I guess I shouldn’t be so jealous or suspicious. After all, he’s right: he did only cheat on me that ONE time. I should let it go.”
• “Perhaps I AM a lot more stressed out about work, and I really am taking it out on him.”
• “Yeah, he’s right, I’ve done bad things to HIM as well. Like the time I accidentally bought soap with lavender, which I know he’s allergic to.”

Narcissists gaslight—it’s what they do. It keeps them blameless, allows them to look like heroes or victims…or both…whichever will give them the best Nsupply at the moment in question. Some, the malignant narcissists, will gaslight people for no other reason than to sadistically enjoy the psychological torment of their victims. Their behaviour cannot be explained in rational terms because it is not rational. And the best thing you can do it you discover that you are in a relationship with a narcissist and you are being gaslighted is to leave.

But sometimes we can’t leave. We may be financially dependent on the narcissist or we may still be too young to escape a narcissistic household. What then?

Fighting with a narcissist is a losing battle. Even if you manage to win a battle—even if you win all of the battles, you are going to lose the war because narcissists don’t “get better,” they get even. And they use dirty, underhanded tactics to get even because life for them is a war and they don’t give a damn about fair, they only care about winning, whatever the cost. So, you don’t fight with the narcissist because it only makes things worse. But you don’t buy into the bullshit, either…and you make your escape plans, quietly and under the narcissist’s radar. Because the only way to win the war with a narcissist is to remove yourself from the field.

Learn what the narcissist’s tools are and how they use them. Be on the lookout for having those tools used on you and don’t let your belief in yourself waver. Agree superficially with the narcissist if necessary in order to buy yourself time, but never buy into the narcissist’s altered reality. Remember the truth—write it down in detail so you can refer to it if you must—and don’t let the narcissist persuade or intimidate or confuse you into buying her version of events, not even if the narcissist offers “witnesses” to bolster her version: narcissists often have “flying monkeys,” dupes or conscienceless little sycophants, who will echo whatever the narcissist has to say. Stick to truth and reality and get out as soon as you can.

Next: Triangulation: another narcissist’s tool