Did you grow up wondering what you did that was so awful that your narcissistic parent preferred another child over you? Or did you grow up believing you knew why…and you thought it was because that sibling had somehow “earned” the favour of your parents but you had not?
Perhaps you grew up angry, knowing that the other child did
not warrant the special treatment s/he received and that you did not deserve
the negative treatment you were given. Or you were held to a higher standard
than other children in the family or just other children in general.
If any of these fit your experience of growing up, know
right now, that the party at fault was not you, it was your dysfunctional
parent and everyone who let that behaviour go by unremarked. Every adult in
your life who didn’t have the compassion to recognize your abuse or who saw but
didn’t have the guts to speak up and take action on your behalf, is as guilty
as the person who abused you.
So, why were you chosen and one of the other ones weren’t?
The answer is as divergent and disparate as all of our Ns: each N choses his or
her victims for his or her own reasons. But there are several reasons in
common:
Expectations: For
me, it was a case of disappointed expectations. My mother, who was 17 and stuck
out on a hard scrabble farm on a gravel road, miles from town and without a car
or even knowing how to drive, was expecting a smiling, rosy-cheeked cherub,
like the ones who graced the covers of magazines. Deprived of her own adoring
audience due to her marriage and isolation, I was to be the cute little angel
who drew all of the attention back to her. It didn’t work.
Instead, I failed to meet her expectations. I demanded
attention when she wasn’t in the mood to give it to me. I had the audacity to
not want to eat on her schedule, but on my own. I didn’t have any hair to brush
into ringlets and garnish with a bow, I had colic and I had eczema. I didn’t
tolerate the cow’s milk formula that was common at the time and she hated the
smell of the goat’s milk that was the only thing I could tolerate. She had
expected this compliant, agreeable, picture-perfect child and that was not what she got.
I was further a disappointment as I grew older because she
set impossible standards for me and I, predictably, failed, which upset her
(and gave her an excuse to have a rage tantrum). I could not mind my younger
brother because he was bigger than I was and I had no way to compel his
obedience. In fact, she regularly set impossible goals for me, and then blamed
me and/or was upset with me when I failed. It was even worse when I didn’t
share her visions (like when she wanted me to be a movie star and make her
millions and I just wanted to play dolls with the little girl across the
street) and worse still when I articulated that fact. Having been taught to not
lie, she would get angry with me when I told an embarrassing or inconvenient
truth. All the way around, I was a disappointment: I couldn’t read her mind,
anticipate her wishes, or perform perfectly the first time every time.
Availability:
Availability enters into it. I was the first born and I was the only child
available to blame everything on…she didn’t get the breakfast dishes washed
before her husband got home from work because of the demanding baby…she got fat
and her figure was ruined because of the baby…she didn’t have any money,
couldn’t go anywhere, didn’t get the chores done because of the baby. Sometimes
a younger child is more available because the older ones are outside playing or
at school…the younger child, whether demanding or not, provides a convenient
excuse for why nothing was done. Because the child is small and lacking in
comprehension, s/he can be perceived as
recalcitrant, rebellious, or defiant when, in fact, the child is simply not yet
capable…a fact that is not taken into account by the narcissist because that
would thwart the narcissists goals of being blameless and entitled to some
Nsupply. How does Nsupply figure into this? She gets sympathy for having to put
up with this difficult child, she has a justification for throwing a rage
tantrum, she is admired for her continued bravery in dealing with the difficult
child. And, of course, she comes away blameless for something that was entirely
her own doing.
Think of old cartoons where one character does something
wrong and, to avoid blame, surreptitiously scoots the evidence of the misdeed
in front of his partner… That is what your availability provided to your NM: you
were there for her to shift the blame onto, and too young, too unaware, or too
intimidated to speak up and set the record straight.
Emotional intelligence:
the emotionally sensitive, those inclined towards compassion and empathy,
represent a great danger to narcissists. And narcissists understand this. With
our empathy, we can see right through them and only through manipulating or
intimidating us can they ensure that we will remain silent and keep the secrets
of who and what they really are. By hurting us in ways that guarantee that we
will continue to seek their love and approval, they further ensure that we will
never “out” them for the monsters they are, never do anything that we fear
could cause them to withdraw the illusion of love we have been making do with
for our entire lives.
They lock down our loyalty with their abuse: as long as they
hold the carrot out there for us, as long as we continue to believe the carrot
still dangles there, we keep trying to take a big bite out of it and enjoy the
warmth and love and approbation we see our NMs handing out to her Golden
Children. Because Ns appear to give love and approval to at least one other
child, we believe that she is not the
problem. We do not recognize that the GCs are also being abused, but
differently from the way we are. And because we believe we are the problem, not our narcissists, we further believe that only
by striving to measure up do we have a chance of grabbing the golden ring. Alerting
the world to what our Ns are really like, “airing our dirty laundry,”
committing anything that even looks like a disloyal act, will sabotage our
chances of getting approval we need and want from the narcissistic parent.
We become complicit in our own abuse as we attempt to keep
the peace and win approval from our Ns. We are chosen to forever strive for the
approbation we so desperately want and need so that we will not reveal what our
insights realize…often we even hide those insights from ourselves because to
acknowledge them sets up a cognitive dissonance that we must resolve or risk
feeling crazy. The acknowledgement of truth is the price of having a chance at
being loved: you can have or the other, but never both...your acknowledgement
and revelation of the truth is a danger the narcissist must prevent at all
costs, lest others believe you and her house of cards and illusion come
tumbling down around her.
This happened to my mother. When her perfidy was revealed in
such a way that most of her flying monkeys were slapped in the face—and slapped
hard—with the truth, many of them recoiled. One uncle was so ashamed of his
part, he drove 12 hours to my house, despite his poor health, to personally
apologize and give me the truth of exactly how she managed to spirit my
children away. The other uncle she duped went NC with her. By the time my
grandmother (N’s mother) died, the only people who were left speaking to her
were the ones who hoped to gain…a cousin who was given some of my grandmother’s
original Art Deco furniture (and promptly allowed her dogs to destroy it), and
my GC brother, and my GGC daughter who found nothing amiss in receiving half of
NM’s estate at the exclusion of me and all of the other grandchildren.
Ultimately, except for a few hangers-on who stood to benefit from their
continued association with her, my NM’s world collapsed and those who had been
duped into being flying monkeys abandoned her…all because the truth finally
came out.
Narcissists are not genuine people. For whatever reason,
they feel compelled to create a persona rather than be their authentic selves.
And then they must protect that persona at all costs. They will do anything
they think they can get away with in order to protect that persona so that the
person behind the mask will not be revealed. Think “Wizard of Oz” and the weak
little person hiding behind the curtain…that story is nothing but the story of
a narcissist and how he joyfully manipulates other who come into his sphere and
the lengths to which he will go to maintain his self-serving fiction.
So, why you? Because the narcissist perceived you as a
threat. Because you were available and unable to fight back or articulate the
truth. Because you disappointed her expectations, very likely through no fault
of your own because her expectations were unrealistic, even irrational. It wasn’t
your fault then, it isn’t your fault now.
And that is my gift to you, this holiday season: the
knowledge that it is not your fault and it never has been. You did not create
this, no matter how the truth has been massaged and twisted upon itself to look
like you did. All those feelings of guilt and inadequacy emanate from the
fundamental lie that underpins the narcissist’s entire existence, the lie that
s/he is ok and you are not.
So you may let it go whenever you are ready. The guilt and
the feelings of inadequacy belong to your narcissist(s) and have been projected
onto you. You have become the receptacle of their self-loathing: it has been
projected onto you and you have accepted it. But you can let it go…they have no
authority over what you believe, only you have that power and you can use it to
keep on believing their lies or you can use it to repudiate them.
Knowledge is power and today you have gained the knowledge
that you were chosen by the narcissist because you were the one they most
feared because you were the one they could tell would be able to see past the
mask into the truth about them. With that knowledge you have gained the power
you need to open your eyes to the reality of your innocence and their
culpability. Use it to your best advantage.
