Injustice, Victim Shaming and Blaming, and the Narcissist, with Other Types of Abusers Briefly Mentioned

VICTIM SHAMING AND BLAMING

Typical Ways People Victim Shame and Victim Blame

I want to make it clear that anyone can victim blame and shame out of ignorance, but narcissists and sociopaths tend to do it in such a way that is downright abusive and traumatizing. 

But before I get to that, here are common kinds of victim-blaming and victim-shaming, as well as pressures people use (taken from a number of sources, most of them listed at the end of this page):

* "You need to see yourself in a better light! You are not a victim!": This negates that they are, in fact, a victim and actually makes them feel worse that they can't just snap out of it and be happy again. 

* "You should forgive your abuser in order to heal." - this puts pressure on a victim to forgive someone who has egregiously hurt them. And forgiveness doesn't equate to healing. Justice and separation does more to heal victims than forgiveness by a long shot. The way it is victim-shaming is that it attributes fault to the victim for not forgiving.

* "Abusers just need more understanding, good will and love." - This misses the fact that most abusers and predators have personality disorders (Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder are the most common) and take understanding and empathy as a weakness, and most of all as a vulnerability to exploit. It also misses the fact that they tend to get worse when you do these things. So it is very bad advice as well as a victim-shaming tactic. It's like saying that something is wrong with you, that your ability to love and understand your abuser is flawed. 

* "Your abuser had such a bad childhood! You need to show more compassion!" - This is victim shaming because it puts the onerous on you to be understanding rather than for the abuser to be culpable. While a bad childhood is certainly terrible and of concern, it is no excuse to be abusive to others. Going to therapy over their childhood, and getting over the bad directives and lessons they learned as a child is not a victim's responsibility. If you do try to take the responsibility on to make your abuser less abusive, the tendency is for your abuser to get worse. 

* "If you were just more positive and sent out good vibes to your abuser, then the good vibes would come back to you ten-fold" - This message is about bypassing the trauma that you are really feeling and getting to a spiritual antidote in the creation of good will for all. While spiritual practices often produce more peace in your life, they don't necessarily translate to others with a different philosophy, so sending out good vibes to your abuser won't make matters better between you and your abuser. In fact it's just another soft boundary that your abuser can exploit to abuse you again. If you are not sending out good vibes to your abuser, it is also a guilt trip about not being more spiritually evolved, and therefore just another victim-blaming tactic. 

Some others (more calloused ones):

* "You led him on."
* "He was going through a rough time. Give him a break."
* "How come you didn't fight back?" - this says that the abuse was your fault for not fighting back.
* "What do you expect when you dress that way?"
* "We believe (your abuser). He would never do that."
* "Why didn't you scream?"
* "You're exaggerating!"
* "You should take a good hard look at yourself. Maybe there is a reason he beat you up so badly!"
* "Boys will be boys."
* "He didn't hurt you. He would never do that."
* "Just get over it already!"
* "Who would want to rape you anyway?"
* "You just need to forgive and forget."
* "If you don't think about trying to do good for others at all times, expect them to treat you badly."
* "Virginia Wolfe endured sibling incest and she went on to write great novels! What is wrong with you!?" - Yes, but she also committed suicide (typical for the amount of abuse she suffered) and there have been studies on her mental health to suggest that she had Dissociative Identity Disorder, which influenced her style of writing.

Typical Ways Narcissists and Sociopaths Victim Shame and Victim Blame

Perpetrators of abuse tend to say the same things as in the above section about your relationship with other abusers, but there is usually a whole lot more pressure, and there can be threats that if you don't do these things, there will be consequences.

They tend to add these demands and phrases:

* "Apologize to (your abuser) now if you know what is good for you!"
* "I don't want to hear about this! Shut up!"
* "If you can't apologize to (your abuser), I don't want to have anything to do with you!"
* "You're being too sensitive! It's just the way he is! He insults everyone! I've been insulted and I don't fall apart for days on end!" - The allegation that you are too sensitive to take verbal abuse is very common for narcissists to say. Therapists categorize this tactic as gaslighting. But it is victim shaming too. The issue here is that it is less about your sensitivity than about being triggered, especially if you have had a lot of abuse in your life. I talk about what being triggered is below.
   If someone has been abused a lot, and now they are receiving verbal abuse, their sympathetic nervous systems are on fire. The panic, the fight or flight responses get activated, the symptoms get reactivated. Plus, just because a narcissist claims they are not sensitive to verbal abuse (which most narcissists are - they tend to rage and reject if they feel at all criticized) it doesn't mean that it is good to be that way, or that it is healthy. Other factors include: the perpetrator may be much kinder to the narcissist than they are to you; the narcissist has a different constitution than you do; the narcissist may have a different kind of relationship to the perpetrator than you do. It is extremely common narcissistic victim shaming, and it is one of the worst. They are basically saying: "You're flawed! You're too sensitive for abuse! You should be less sensitive to abuse!" - terrible! 
* "You're not only exaggerating, you're causing way too much drama!" (drama is one of their favorite phrases)
* "Get over it now! You're acting like the world revolves around you and this situation!"
* "I choose (your abuser) over you!"
* "If you can't apologize to (your abuser), I'll -" - and the threats come out. 
* "Come now! It's just sibling rivalry! (or "a marital spat!") There are times when all people slug it out!" - they downplay what you went through.
* "If you hadn't looked at him that way, he wouldn't have beat you up!" 
* "If you had just done what was expected of you, this wouldn't have happened to you!" 
* "Surely you could have stayed in the marriage for the money! You give up all of that for what!? You could have put up with the situation, but you are a weakling! So stupid!"
* "You egged him on, surely!"
* "You're making me miserable with all of your trauma! Boohoo! Suck it up!"
* "Most women get hit by their men at some point in their lives! You think you are special!?"
* "A lot of women get raped! Get over it!"
* "Hmmm, that's interesting. I get along with (the abuser) just fine."

The ultimate victim shaming tactic after you have endured a traumatic abusive experience is when they call you useless or worthless, and end the relationship with you.   

It's not uncommon for them to rip your self esteem apart too. 

Examples of Narcissistic and Sociopathic Victim Shaming and Victim Blaming

Narcissists are often terrible at dealing with the victimization of others. They are insensitive and most often make matters worse by giving "behavior lectures". 

So, what is a "behavior lecture"? 

Let us say that you were raped. Recovery from rape is a terrible inconvenience for narcissists because they want "performances" and therefor certain "behaviors" from you that make you useful to them. "Be nicer, do this, do that." Narcissists view others as wind-up toys and marionettes that they can control. And they also lack empathy, and anything that requires empathy means that their attention will NOT be on healing you. Instead it will be on the power and control agenda that they have to gain domination over you. 

Obtaining evermore power, control and domination over every person in their personal life is their main goal, and putting up with your hurts and disability after a rape (or any form of abuse) is going to be too hard for them to handle. Because they are too immature to deal with other people's traumas, they often abandon trauma victims instead, including those who have been raped. It usually doesn't take them very long either: it tends to be swift, over something erroneous or at least hypocritical, and without a backward glance.

A note here: rapists tend to be narcissists too. Often they are malignant narcissists, or sociopaths, or psychopaths (all of them are part of the Cluster B personality disorders). They use their victims for domination and sexual gratification. Some of them can be sadistic too. 

So if the person that you are around during your healing process is another narcissist (whose specialty is not rape, but some other form of domination and/or abuse), they are still going to have more in common with your rapist than they will with you. That can not only delay your healing process, but re-traumatize you over and over and over again. Their words, and indeed their very presence can be triggering and add to triggers (triggers are words and situations which bring about symptoms of generalized anxiety and PTSD and they can be quite disabling).

They are not going to help you in your healing process because they are notoriously abusive themselves, and most have normalized abuse and abusive tactics since childhood. Most of them aren't going to try to keep you safe from your attacker because they don't care that you were attacked in the first place (where their lack of empathy comes in). It is all inconvenient drama for them. For instance, most of them aren't going to be sensitive to you and what you went through enough to provide you with an environment of peace, safety, patience, protection and compassion - unless there is something they can gain from the situation for themselves. 

Their primary agenda is to be served more domination and control, and they will often abuse others to get what they want in this department. It doesn't matter to them if you are going through a trauma. You will, like others they are having a close personal relationship with, be toyed with. They especially love to toy with people who are down on their luck and may need something from them in terms of empathy and understanding.

This agenda does not bode well for you in getting over the initial trauma. In fact, the way most of them see it, your suffering, your sadness and depression, your sleeplessness, your crying spells, your jumpiness, your anxiety, your physical and psychological symptoms from PTSD are keeping their agenda of gaining power and control over you from happening. 

But more often they are heartless and abandon you instead. Narcissists aren't good at having a heart, including patience, empathy, and understanding over what you are living through. They aren't good at providing safety and security. They want you to heal after one day, or at least by the end of a week, and they are getting tired and bored that you are taking so much time trying to recover from your ordeal. You are supposed to be ordered around instead. They want you to get back to that, putting your attention on them, and what they want and need from you, including behavioral demands, life decision demands, what to say to whom, and it just isn't happening. Thus, in their impatience, they find some reason to get rid of you, even if it has to be some kind of erroneous reason or punishment that they drum up. They feel criticized and taken for granted that you can't just snap out of it after they have given you sympathy for a day. 

This means they are not likely to understand anything about PTSD and the time-line for recovery, or want to understand it. They just want power and control over you, period, and if they can't have that, you are "useless" to them. "Useless" is one of their favorite phrases, by the way.

And even though it's better not to be around narcissists when you are trying to heal from anything, and especially from trauma, unfortunately abandonment comes with trauma too: called abandonment trauma. So then you are forced to deal with two or three kinds of traumas.  

Note: I am using rape as a "for instance". Anything can cause relational trauma just as much as rape can: sibling abuse, child abuse (which tends to carry triggers for PTSD for life), partner domestic violence, elder abuse, abuse from step families, abuse in the workplace, gang violence, war, and so on. The only difference in severity of symptoms is if rape or other forms of sexual abuse happen to children. The reason for this is that children don't have a developed sexuality, physically, emotionally or psychologically, so the symptoms and damage can be profound. In addition, they have not developed the capacity to self soothe yet, to understand PTSD or its symptoms, to know how to keep themselves safe (i.e. to have boundaries which keep them from being violated again). They must look to a caretaker for all of it, and if the caretaker is abusive, neglectful and narcissistic themselves, it is a disaster for the child. It is a wonder that any child survives sexual abuse, and many are plagued with suicidal thoughts, life-long PTSD and prefer to live a life alone or only with people who are sensitive to their PTSD disabilities. At the very least, they will require very peaceful homes, where disagreements are handled with calm responses, understanding, empathy and above all, compromise. Abuse of any kind will make trusting others, especially adults (or elders), very, very difficult, especially if a number of traumas compound.  

So, before I go any further, here is what rape victims go through, however other kinds of abuses can cause trauma too (from HelpGuide.org, Recovering from Rape and Sexual Trauma):

Sexual violence is shockingly common in our society. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 1 in 5 women in the U.S. are raped or sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, often by someone they know and trust. In some Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries, that figure is even higher. And sexual assault isn’t limited to women; many men and boys suffer rape and sexual trauma each year.

I am going to interrupt each part of this article to give you some perspective of what is happening, so you can gain some further understanding than the article goes into. 

So in terms of sexual abusers, most of them have Cluster B personality disorders as I have discussed above.

In simplistic terms, narcissists and sociopaths are made, and psychopaths are born. 

Psychopaths can end up as sexual predators because they are reward-driven and have no remorse for abuses and crimes they commit. It is less of a societal issue or how they grew up to view women; it is more of a brain issue of going after what they want despite the consequences. The consequences are "for later". They shelve consequences and are arrogant enough to think they will get out of them. 
   It doesn't help matters if they also grow up in cultures that degrade and abuse women, where there are no, or few, consequences for doing so, or in cultures that put women secondary to men in importance. They can be quite sadistic if they don't get their way (if the rape they intend to commit is being held up with a resistance).  

Sociopaths are also reward-driven, and often have no remorse for abuses or crimes they commit just like the psychopath, but their sympathetic nervous systems are such that they often become paranoid  when they feel they might be held accountable. Paranoia does not happen with the primary type of psychopath I discussed in the paragraph above. 
   Sociopaths usually go to great lengths to try to convince law enforcement and other officials that their victims brought the sexual abuse upon themselves or that the sexual assault is someone else's fault in some way. Or they say it was consensual or they use drunkenness as an excuse. Or they say they are for women's rights as a way out. They will twist stories and outright lie in order to appear innocent of all charges and allegations. Some play the victim. 
   Sociopaths tend to be sadistic and want revenge on their victims for making them feel accountable. Most of them are arrogant and think they are too awesome for accountability, and too entitled to anything except rewards, especially if they have gotten away with a lot of abuse of women.
   Sociopaths usually grow up in environments where abuse or neglect of women and girls is being modeled for them. Some parent or caretaker is "looking the other way". Or the society is male-dominated.
   Societies that stone women to death for being raped would produce a lot of victims of rape because the consequences fall on the women, not on the male perpetrators. It keeps women quiet, or only talking among themselves, and is a detriment to recovery from trauma. This is victim shaming on a societal level, and anything tolerated in society will be tolerated in the home, and conversely anything that is tolerated in the home will be tolerated in society too. The society and its attitudes are a homogenized view of homes across a nation or region.
   Narcissistic nations tend to produce a lot of victimization, a lot of perpetrators, tend to have unrest or even civil war. They also are vulnerable to attack by other nations.

Narcissists behave similarly to sociopaths when it comes to rape and sexual abuse. Again, something was being modeled in the early home that made it possible to sexually victimize women without consequence. Or they started out to be slightly sexually deviant, and with gaining power, control, domination, autonomy and wealth, became more sexually deviant. They, perhaps, were able to pursue ever more narcissistic supply kinds of sexual victims (i.e. victims who do not have much power, or protective backing from their family, and are economically disadvantaged). In other words, there is a huge power imbalance. Rape, brutality against women, and even teenage sexual abuse seems to come more easily to them as they gain more wealth, more power and more prestige (Jeffrey Epstein comes to mind). 
   They do it to make themselves feel that they can procure any kind of sexual experience or any kind of partner for their own sexual gratification. If they go far into the dark side of this, they will feel entitled to sexual slavery as well. 
   Sexually abusive male narcissists tend to have pornography and sex addictions, meaning they usually  have sexual gratification on the brain at most times, even if they are in board meetings. The point is to get through the board meetings just to pursue more and "better" victims. "Better victims" is narc-speak for victims who will put up with greater amounts of victimization, or help procure other victims, or partake in the victimization of others (an enforcer or enabling role, in other words). Enforcers and enablers tend to have spent some part of childhood or teenage years seeing abuse being done to themselves or others, and normalize abuse too, even if it wasn't sexual abuse. Being modeled coercive control, threats and blackmail is sometimes enough to start a "normalizing process". 
   Sexually abusive female narcissists either help with procuring victims for male narcissists and sociopaths (and sometimes partake in the abuse). The ones who sexually abuse directly usually pick children or teenagers as their victims, whether male or female. 
   Narcissists tend not to be sadistic towards their victims unless they are malignant narcissists (narcissists who have some antisocial personality disorder traits or dark triad traits). 

Note: not all psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists sexually abuse, but almost all sexual abusers are either narcissists, sociopaths or psychopaths. 

Now we get to the "caretakers" of victims. Suppose the caretaker is a narcissist or sociopath, then what? ... I have covered that above to some degree, but there is actually more to it. But first, when I say "caretaker", I will hereafter mean someone who is in a close personal relationship with the victim. This can be a parent, a partner, a spouse, a best friend, a sibling, or a guardian: someone who is entrusted to care about the victim, the victimization, and in helping with the healing. 

So, besides being calloused and often abandoning in the above examples, what typically happens in terms of some statements in our article, that nearly 1 in 5 women in the U.S. are raped or sexually assaulted at some point in their lives.

What happens is if you are with a narcissist or sociopath, and you have been raped, they will tend to downplay what you went through and even minimize the trauma symptoms. Again, they want to get back to their addiction to power and control, just as the sexual abuser wants to get back to his sexual addiction. 

The downplaying will sound like these statements:

- "What's the matter with you? One in five American women are raped or sexually assaulted and aren't acting as disabled as you are! You're making me crazy with this! It's been five days of this: no sex, barely able to cook a dinner, crying all the time! Cut it out now! You're making a mountain out of a molehill! Snap out of it, will you!?"

-  "Oh, poor you! I was raped a couple of times in college! I got over it! I live a normal life! I don't let it effect my life! You were a kid and kids snap out of everything! But not you, God forbid, piece of sh$t! What the Hell is wrong with you!? You're crazy, you know that? Totally nuts!"
-  "Toughen up! It was just a sexual assault like one in five American women go through! So it was your turn! 'Wahhhhh!' But you can't handle it because you're a baby! Crying all the time, for God sakes! Why don't you just say, 'I'm too sensitive! I need therapy!' Well, guess what!? You aren't going to get therapy because I'm not paying for it! Not every victim of sexual assault goes to therapy and you're one of the ones who isn't going! Got that?! I expect you to clean up your act NOW and get back to the way you used to be, and clean the damn house!"

-  "You brought this upon yourself! I told you not to grocery shop at night! But, you thought you were special and thought you could be safe regardless of what I said to you! So now you got raped! I hope you learned your lesson! From now on, do as I tell you to do, and maybe you can keep from being raped next time! And since this is your fault, I still expect sex from you whether you like it or not!"

- "If you hadn't resisted so fiercely, you wouldn't have gotten so bruised up and traumatized! What's the matter with you? You're usually so nice!"
- "If you had fought back and acted more ferociously, you wouldn't have gotten so brutally raped and beaten! You can fight when it is warranted! What happened that you couldn't fight off a bonafide attacker!?" - which is the opposite of the sentence before, obviously.  

These are behavior lectures that narcissists are famous for. They don't work at diminishing PTSD symptoms and they tend to make the symptoms much worse, thus their abandonment of you. Like I said, it is the rare narcissist and sociopath who takes the time to understand PTSD symptoms, or what abuse does to victims, and how to handle PTSD, so blaming the victim becomes their mode of operandi.  

So suppose this is a parent lecturing their child or teenager in these kinds of ways. This is teaching girls that they are responsible for the sexual abuse done to them. It's a shaming kind of lecture. And if the parent is a true narcissist or sociopath, they won't be listening to the victim; they will be focusing on what is wrong with you instead that made you vulnerable to a rape. This is teaching boys to normalize sexual abuse, and that their aggression towards women, even to the point of rape, will be blamed on their victims instead. It will also teach boys to shame their victims and to downgrade the effects of rape: "One in five women are raped after all. It's accepted to this extent and it's no big deal."

Parents can especially guide the attitudes about sexual abuse, not only because they are looked to for proper guidance by their children, but because it sets a standard in how to treat women. A mother, especially, telling her daughter that she did not "do this or that enough" or "right" to prevent sexual abuse is especially culpable about the attitudes society has about women. If one woman thinks it's okay to shame a victim, then boys will absolutely take it to heart. It's an "okay" signal for them to do the same. And we wonder why sexual assault rates are at one in five women ...

There are plenty of forums to prove that mothers throw away daughters over sexual assault, especially if the mother wants an image to uphold, or it is the mother's dear husband, or dear son who is the perpetrator, but victim abandonment certainly happens over stranger rape too.

So suppose a girl of 13 was raped and the rape was either ignored, or the perpetrators were not held accountable, the victim was shamed about it, or taught to deal with it by herself, or was on the edge of being abandoned over it. 

Then let's say the mother gets raped herself. The daughter might not know enough to call the police. Her mother never called the police when the she, herself, was raped. So the daughter reacts the way her mother reacted, thinking that the normal way to react to rape is to expect her mother to deal with it on her own, to shame her, or abandon her, or lecture her. 

Parents set the goals. If you want compassion if you are raped, you have to model it to the younger generation of women. If you make power and control more of your agenda than the PTSD symptoms your child is living with, then expect a rape culture where rape is normalized and expected even, and where perpetrators get off the hook.

Here is another paragraph from the article:    

Regardless of age or gender, the impact of sexual violence goes far beyond any physical injuries. The trauma of being raped or sexually assaulted can be shattering, leaving you feeling scared, ashamed, and alone or plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, and other unpleasant memories. The world doesn’t feel like a safe place anymore. You no longer trust others. You don’t even trust yourself. You may question your judgment, your self-worth, and even your sanity. You may blame yourself for what happened or believe that you’re “dirty” or “damaged goods.” Relationships feel dangerous, intimacy impossible. And on top of that, like many rape survivors, you may struggle with PTSD, anxiety, and depression.

As I've said before, any kind of abuse can result in the same outcome. 

Sexually abused children can live with this kind of life long suffering and become triggered easily, especially if the abuse was continual. 

I have discussed scapegoating in families headed by a narcissist or sociopath parent in other posts. Basically the family is expected to emotionally regulate the narcissistic parent (or the sociopathic parent). You are taught to walk on eggshells so that the parent won't go into a rage and do destruction to you or to anyone else in the family. Victims are sometimes taught to look at what they said or did to make the narcissist angry, go off the rails with rage and start abusing you or abandoning you or some other family member. Again, walking on eggshells plays it's part in victim shaming. 

The narcissist is happy with this set up too: it takes the culpability for their own actions and puts the culpability on the victims' shoulders instead. Narcissists and sociopaths come to expect this special treatment, and then feel absolutely entitled to receive it. If it is one thing that narcissists and sociopaths can't stand the most, it is being culpable for anything. And I mean anything. 

What walking on eggshells sounds like in a family (just a few instances):

- "Remember how Mom threw away all of the cookies, and said it was because such-and-such-a-sibling looked down at the floor when Mom talked? Don't look down at the floor or Mom will throw away the cookies again! Got that?"

- "Do you remember when your mother threw all of the furniture around the room and broke that chair on your back because you wouldn't eat her turnips? Well, please eat her turnips. Please do it for me! You don't want her in a rage like that again!"

- "Please keep quiet about how your brother is treating you. I know he punched you in the gut, but just take it as sibling rivalry. Your mother is very sensitive about such matters because it's her baby boy, just like your dolls are sacred little things you take of. You understand that, right? You wouldn't let anyone say anything bad about your dolls, right? Either way, she will just go off the rails when you complain about how your brother treats you! She's not listening to any of it and she's getting worse towards you! Can you do that for me?" It is another instance of victim shaming done the "walking on eggshells" way. And it's another dire behavior lesson, even if it isn't one coming directly from the narcissist or sociopath. And it actually doesn't work at mitigating the rages. There are only temporary fixes when it comes to narcissistic rage. 

There are so many instances where you are taught to be quiet so that you don't upset the narcissist or sociopath. Family patterns tend to end up like this unless the people in them know better: one parent is the narcissist and one parent is the enabler (or worse: the enforcer). The practice of tiptoeing around important subjects just to keep a narcissist from becoming so emotionally dysregulated and unhinged is very common so that they don't destroy someone's self esteem, or reject them, or abuse them. And in the meantime, the narcissist or sociopath becomes worse because they come to expect it, and therefor become sensitive to any little quirk or non-event.

The problem here is that childhood trauma can manifest as emotional dysregulation too, though it is more of a "brain issue" than a "walking on eggshells" issue. The brain is already on hyper-alert to attacks (called amygdala hijacking), and when a trigger presents (a phrase, a smell, a vision, a remembrance, a nightmare), then the child becomes emotional. If they don't become emotional, they go into a freeze response instead. Either way, they become disabled, the freeze response is a sign the disability is actually worse (though narcissists prefer it, and feel it means the child is getting better).

We think of PTSD episodes as violent behaviors. But unless the child was expected to be violent and had dire consequences for being violent (abused in incredible ways for being violent), it usually doesn't manifest as violence. PTSD episodes with violence can be experienced by soldiers because the memory becomes so strong at the point where they become triggered, it is like they are still in the battle fighting for their life, and their comrades lives. It is like a waking dream of being in the war still. With children, PTSD manifests more as these kinds of disabilities: very little sleep, learning disabilities, inability to focus, inability to find phrases and words to express oneself, forgetfulness in terms of menial tasks (organizing and finding things), reoccurring nightmares, exaggerated startle response, feeling like you are in a dangerous situation, feelings that you can't trust anyone, wanting to be alone a lot, saying things like "Who would care?", crying a lot, suicide ideation, screaming in terror (when no one is there: it is part of how the memory works during PTSD episodes), inability to sleep (and sometimes hallucinations happen when sleep is especially deprived), disabling stomach aches, painful headaches, racing heart (heart palpitations, even for children), restricted breathing episodes, onset of autoimmune diseases - all because the brain is hijacked into fight or flight mode.  

   

When you are a trauma survivor and expected to keep a parent's emotions regulated, you won't be able to do it very well. Some emotional discharge is bound to happen, even if words are held back to keep the parent from getting completely unhinged and into dark modes of attack. 

But, attack they will, most often to the point of scapegoating. They have to be the one people are paying attention to and attempting to regulate the emotions of, not their child. They can't stand it that they might have to create a peaceful, non-triggering environment for a child who has PTSD instead. They want all of the attention to go to their flights of rage.

PTSD episodes are involuntary, by the way, especially the symptoms I outlined above: the inability to focus, lack of sleep, pounding headaches, the inability to learn new subjects, etc. When victims go silent, or the symptoms become overwhelming, they can become like emotionless robot-rons who, because their emotions are creating so much disability and derision in their lives (narcissists will punish children who are feeling emotions because other people's emotions other than their own are irritating to them), may eventually prefer the intellectual side of their brains. It is similar to a person who can't feel sensations in a leg: they tend to focus their attention on the other leg instead.

So, many children who go through too much trauma will be just the opposite of what they started out to be. What they started out to be was a person with healthy emotions, someone who deals with trauma by expressing emotions that fit the trauma they went through. If narcissists and sociopaths had empathy, they'd understand that it is a part of the healing process of trauma to emote. But they can't stand anyone having emotions other than themselves and their unmitigated rage, so they take out their rage on the child who is emoting. It becomes a competition for them in who is getting the attention, and rage by an authoritarian figure in a toxic family environment will get a lot more attention than trauma responses of a non-authoritarian. 

We know that narcissists have arrested emotional development. They are immature. When schoolyard bullies choose someone to bully, they tend to choose victims with a disability. Grown narcissists and sociopaths do the same thing, even to a child with a disability. They will tend to excuse their bullying of that trauma victim by focusing on how the trauma victim is crazy (called gaslighting) and enlist other bullies to re-traumatize. It all adds up to scapegoating which creates unbearable PTSD symptoms (it becomes an addition to other forms of trauma they experienced). 

So, instead of the parent creating an environment of peace, consistency, calm and sensitivity to promote healing in their child so that the PTSD symptoms become more manageable, they inflict so much more trauma to make the PTSD that much worse. 

Narcissists and trauma victims with PTSD should not be together. They are like oil and water; they must separate or the trauma survivor will perish.

So let's take some of the sentences from the article in this section:

Regardless of age or gender, the impact of sexual violence goes far beyond any physical injuries. The trauma of being raped or sexually assaulted can be shattering, leaving you feeling scared, ashamed, and alone or plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, and other unpleasant memories. - one can see that a rageful narcissist with a proclivity to abandonment, threats and blackmail, and an addiction to power, control and dominating other people to the point where it takes over any shred of empathy they might have, will make all of this so much worse for the trauma survivor. 

The world doesn’t feel like a safe place anymore. You no longer trust others. - Narcissists and sociopaths aren't going to make you feel safer. They will add to the unsafe environment. They will want to give you ultimatums to make trust in others worse.

You don’t even trust yourself. You may question your judgment, your self-worth, and even your sanity. - They like it that you are in this state. It becomes their perfect opportunity to gaslight you, play with your self esteem, and try to make you appear even more crazy than you actually are. Typical ways they will respond to having these feelings after a rape: "Yes, your judgement is flawed", "Yes, your self worth should always be re-examined. You're pretty flawed!", "I think you may be insane too. You need to let me take control, and you better be grateful that I'm sacrificing this time for you" - when control is what they want anyway. Anyone can see why this is evil.

You may blame yourself for what happened or believe that you’re “dirty” or “damaged goods.” - by playing with your self esteem, they will make you feel like damaged goods too ("After all, you're crazy, super flawed, your self esteem should be in the gutter and be like how I view you, and you aren't anything special to me unless I can dominate you and scapegoat you, so all of that adds up to 'damaged goods', don't you think? So, you're damaged goods, a damaged person who needs to be controlled and can't act right."). They will use this to their advantage too. 

Relationships feel dangerous, intimacy impossible. - they like this too. ("Maybe she will be so isolated and alone that we will be the only ones left! And she'll come running back to us even though we feel that, yes, she should feel relationships are dangerous, that intimacy is impossible, and that control and domination of her is the only thing she deserves.")  - in other words, they exploit here too. 

And on top of that, like many rape survivors, you may struggle with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. - this will be ignored, and they will make it much, much worse. Most narcissists and sociopaths will want to make you feel that the PTSD, the anxiety, the depression is all your fault, especially if you can't snap out of it in short order. ("If you weren't so flawed, then the rape, PTSD, anxiety, and depression would never have happened in the first place. After all, every one in five women are raped or sexually assaulted in this country, and they aren't all PTSD'd and going through their lives with anxiety and depression!") - they will try to downplay it, to make you feel guilty and flawed for feeling the way you do, and for still having trauma symptoms. They can use your inability to snap out of it to boost themselves and their "I-wasn't-raped-so-I-must-be-better-than-you" selves to appear superior. Any true narcissist and sociopath will typically make you appear way more flawed than others for having PTSD, anxiety and depression, even if they have to lie about it. They will also be trying to make the case that it is only their threats, their "behavior lectures" (especially those lectures that tell you to be nice to abusers), their telling you what to do at every minute that will heal you ... and instead, it all makes the PTSD, anxiety and depression so much worse.

People without prior trauma find being around narcissists extremely anxiety-making. So, it is just totally un-do-able if you are a trauma survivor. They are incapable of providing a healing environment or even saying anything that is at all helpful. I hope I have illustrated why: their lack of empathy, their attempts at feeling superior, their abandonment tendencies when they don't get their way or when they get sick of how you are feeling, and their lust for power and control makes it impossible. Let them get their narcissistic supplies somewhere else; not on your suffering. 

More of the article follows:

Myths and facts about rape and sexual assault
Dispelling the toxic, victim-blaming myths about sexual violence can help you start the healing process.

Myth: You can spot a rapist by the way he looks or acts.
Fact: There’s no surefire way to identify a rapist. Many appear completely normal, friendly, charming, and non-threatening.

Myth: If you didn’t fight back, you must not have thought it was that bad.
Fact: During a sexual assault, it’s extremely common to freeze. Your brain and body shuts down in shock, making it difficult to move, speak, or think.

Myth: People who are raped “ask for it” by the way they dress or act.
Fact: Rape is a crime of opportunity. Studies show that rapists choose victims based on their vulnerability, not on how sexy they appear or how flirtatious they are.

Myth: Date rape is often a misunderstanding.
Fact: Date rapists often defend themselves by claiming the assault was a drunken mistake or miscommunication. But research shows that the vast majority of date rapists are repeat offenders. These men target vulnerable people and often ply them with alcohol in order to rape them.

Myth: It’s not rape if you’ve had sex with the person before.
Fact: Just because you’ve previously consented to sex with someone doesn’t give them perpetual rights to your body. If your spouse, boyfriend, or lover forces sex against your will, it’s rape.

Most narcissists believe in these myths. And if you've been told what the myths and facts are by professionals, they will try to counter it (narcissists believe they know more than most professionals because arrogance is one of the hallmarks of narcissism, though obviously they don't know more). They have to believe victimization is at least partly the victim's fault. That is because they need an "out" when they are abusive themselves. 

Recovering from rape or sexual trauma step 1: Open up about what happened to you

It can be extraordinarily difficult to admit that you were raped or sexually assaulted. There’s a stigma attached. It can make you feel dirty and weak. You may also be afraid of how others will react. Will they judge you? Look at you differently? It seems easier to downplay what happened or keep it a secret. But when you stay silent, you deny yourself help and reinforce your victimhood.

- Narcissists and sociopaths do not like it when anyone they know exposes a crime or abuse. They wonder if they will be exposed. So they will usually be encouraging you to do the opposite: to keep it a secret. 

Reach out to someone you trust. It’s common to think that if you don’t talk about your rape, it didn’t really happen. But you can’t heal when you’re avoiding the truth. And hiding only adds to feelings of shame. As scary as it is to open up, it will set you free. However, it’s important to be selective about who you tell, especially at first. Your best bet is someone who will be supportive, empathetic, and calm. If you don’t have someone you trust, talk to a therapist or call a rape crisis hotline.

- They won't want you reaching out to anyone but them, certainly not to anyone empathetic, and it can incite their rage and pathological envy if you trust someone else instead of them. So, again, getting into a struggle with them about who you trust, and don't trust, who you will listen to and who you won't listen to, becomes part of their narcissistic supply and narcissistic injury issues, and they will make it the discussion between you instead of your healing. They won't be concerned about you getting the best care and help. So they can thwart the process of you getting proper care and medical attention.

Challenge your sense of helplessness and isolation. Trauma leaves you feeling powerless and vulnerable. It’s important to remind yourself that you have strengths and coping skills that can get you through tough times ...

Typical narcissists like it that trauma survivors turned-into-their-scapegoats feel helpless and isolated. They like to isolate people and "divide and conquer" because they believe it is the road to evermore power, control and domination for them (in other words, they think it will mean that they can tell people what to do if they can rage about what relationships you are having and how to treat people in those relationships. If they are out to abuse you, they will insist that you need to be nice to your abuser). They also like it that you feel powerless and vulnerable. That goes without saying. And instead of reminding you that you have coping skills and strengths, they will be putting any coping skills and strengths you want to use down. "You're never going to make it with that kind of coping skill!" - again, they will most likely be acting in such a way that it thwarts you from having the inner power and strength to overcome the obstacles of trauma. 

Also, I haven't met any narcissist or sociopath who like their victims becoming highly successful, not one. So it's just another way to keep you down and from healing.

... Feelings of guilt and shame often stem from misconceptions such as:

You didn’t stop the assault from happening. After the fact, it’s easy to second guess what you did or didn’t do. But when you’re in the midst of an assault, your brain and body are in shock. You can’t think clearly. Many people say they feel “frozen.” Don’t judge yourself for this natural reaction to trauma. You did the best you could under extreme circumstances. If you could have stopped the assault, you would have.

Again, narcissists aren't going to be sensitive to any of this, and if anything, will get pleasure out of the fact that you are in this state especially if they have a propensity to sadism.

You trusted someone you “shouldn’t” have. One of the most difficult things to deal with following an assault by someone you know is the violation of trust. It’s natural to start questioning yourself and wondering if you missed warning signs. Just remember that your attacker is the only one to blame. Don’t beat yourself up for assuming that your attacker was a decent human being. Your attacker is the one who should feel guilty and ashamed, not you.

You were drunk or not cautious enough. Regardless of the circumstances, the only one who is responsible for the assault is the perpetrator. You did not ask for it or deserve what happened to you. Assign responsibility where it belongs: on the rapist ... 

Again, most narcissists and sociopaths don't like putting the fault of abuse squarely on the shoulders of a perpetrator. Always expect some victim shaming. 

...

Step 3: Prepare for flashbacks and upsetting memories

When you go through something stressful, your body temporarily goes into “fight-or-flight” mode. When the threat has passed, your body calms down. But traumatic experiences such as rape can cause your nervous system to become stuck in a state of high alert. You’re hypersensitive to the smallest of stimuli. This is the case for many rape survivors.

Again, this is "inconvenient drama" for most narcissists and sociopaths.

Flashbacks, nightmares, and intrusive memories are extremely common, especially in the first few months following the assault. If your nervous system remains “stuck” in the long-term and you develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), they can last much longer.

Again, that's way too long for most narcissists and sociopaths. They will create some sort of manufactured chaos due to impatience.

To reduce the stress of flashbacks and upsetting memories:

Try to anticipate and prepare for triggers. Common triggers include anniversary dates; people or places associated with the rape; and certain sights, sounds, or smells. If you are aware of what triggers may cause an upsetting reaction, you’ll be in a better position to understand what’s happening and take steps to calm down.

They don't like this either and can't handle it in a healthy way.

Pay attention to your body’s danger signals. Your body and emotions give you clues when you’re starting to feel stressed and unsafe. These clues include feeling tense, holding your breath, racing thoughts, shortness of breath, hot flashes, dizziness, and nausea.

They don't like this either, and they most often show they don't care. They want their needs met, and when you're acting this way, their needs aren't being met. In the meantime, they will attempt to make you feel stressed, tense and unsafe, and trigger you more, though they may not know it because they are not in touch with the feelings of others. 

Take immediate steps to self-soothe. When you notice any of the above symptoms, it’s important to quickly act to calm yourself down before they spiral out of control. One of the quickest and most effective ways to calm anxiety and panic is to slow down your breathing ...

Something you aren't going to be able to do effectively when your parent or partner is a narcissist or sociopath.

...

Tips for dealing with flashbacks

It’s not always possible to prevent flashbacks. But if you find yourself losing touch with the present and feeling like the sexual assault is happening all over again, there are actions you can take.

Accept and reassure yourself that this is a flashback, not reality. The traumatic event is over and you survived. Here’s a simple script that can help: “I am feeling [panicked, frightened, overwhelmed, etc.] because I am remembering the rape/sexual assault, but as I look around I can see that the assault isn’t happening right now and I’m not actually in danger.”

Hallucinations! They tend to think it is proof that you are crazy. They will also use it to their advantage in gaslighting agendas.

Ground yourself in the present. Grounding techniques can help you direct your attention away from the flashback and back to your present environment. For example, try tapping or touching your arms or describing your actual environment and what you see when you look around—name the place where you are, the current date, and three things you see when you look around.

Not easy to do when they are around either. Sometimes the panic will be off the charts being in their company that you can't focus on anything. They will want the focus on them any way, not on grounding techniques.

Anyway, that's a bit of how they victim-shame. You can replace rape with sibling abuse, or incest from a stepfather, or abuse from a parent. Again, it presents most of the same trauma responses and symptoms as rape, especially if it is bad enough (with the exception of child abuse and child sexual abuse - these are situations where PTSD can be life-long, where some recovery is only possible in steady calm environments where your life is free of narcissists and sociopaths and the games they play with your head and emotions, and where victim-shaming is regarded in the new environment as toxic and ignorant). 

The Authoritarian Family and Victim Shaming

Most abusers grow up in authoritarian families. Not always, but mostly. Especially the ones who scheme at how to hurt other people. 

The typical authoritarian family attitude is that "children should be seen but not heard". I would bet that this translates to grown children too. 

So when a child of any age complains about abuse in the family, they aren't going to be heard. 

Can You Confront a Narcissistic or Sociopathic Parent About Their
Victim Shaming and Blaming?

The problem with discussing anything of importance with either type is that they either want to argue their points about why victim shaming is a good idea or they will take it as an affront, a self esteem hit, to their super fragile egos (which makes most narcissists and sociopaths rage). They have their egos wrapped up in everything they say. And if you are not looking at them as an authority figure on every topic, especially emotional topics, they will invariably revert to lectures, then arguing (where they insist on winning the argument even if it means fighting dirty by insulting, or by hurting you), then gaslighting, then rage, usually in that order, and then for the sadistic brand of narcissist or sociopath, punishment. 

If you are already traumatized by being abused, and then in the aftermath dealing with a blame-shifting victim-shaming narcissist who thinks they are in the right to behave in this manner over your trauma (i.e. adding more trauma to your situation), is it really worth it? Wouldn't it be better just to walk away?

Also, many narcissists and sociopaths use this as a time to try to get more power, control and domination for themselves. They see you in a weakened state and exploit it for their own agendas. Some of the things that happen when you are in a weakened state like this is to withdraw money or help in emergency situations or health situations, withdraw from celebrating important events in your life like holidays or your birthday, withdraw from compromise (they make a stand that you have to capitulate to their power and control fantasies), withdraw from talking to you, and so much else that is destructive. 

The other piece to this is that if you are exposed to yet another narcissist or sociopath after your original trauma, it can work on your mind in these ways: that you can't trust anyone, that you can't talk to anyone without it feeling so much worse, and that you are alone with your situation. And we wonder why victims have trouble speaking out! 

It's because you are not heard, and if you are receiving victim blaming, it makes you feel hopeless about being heard. But you should be heard, otherwise the pain and all of the other symptoms I have mentioned will fester. So, instead of taking traumatic situations to family (some members who may be narcissists or sociopaths), it may be better to take it to professionals from the get-go. If I had to do some of my own situations over again, I would have made myself very scarce and gone to professionals right away, so I speak from experience about some of this.

Of course, they may rage about the fact that you didn't trust in them enough to confide about what you were going through, but you save yourself, and protect yourself from being vulnerable in any major way to the usual narcissistic attacks. The only attack they can make is that you don't trust them, and that's a lot better than giving them loads of information about how you were abused, where the abuse happened, what you did to try to stop it, who said what, and so on. 

INJUSTICE

Many survivors have to live with a lot of injustice, and the first injustice is often that their perpetrator got off the hook. As I described above, I see a lot of men get off the hook ... and yet I realize some women do too, but probably not nearly as many because it is still a largely male dominated society with misogynist underpinnings, where if a choice has to be made of who is at fault, women are usually chosen for blame, and it is largely a "belief" issue - Jonathan Katz's book does a good job of explaining why women are used for blame and the resultant abuses they experience after blame has been assigned (it's the modern day version of witch hunts), and why men think they are entitled to treat women so badly. 

In other words, I doubt very much that there are forums devoted to "before and after picture shots" of men where their whole faces are bruised and bloodied and their eyes are swollen shut from their wives beating them up like there are for women. It is great to see women get out of relationships like these, and to see their faces healed up, but it seems like there are too many victims, and it is overwhelming and heartbreaking when you are in groups like this, just to see how many women there are who are treated this way. While my own husband is very sweet, and my father too, I wonder sometimes if most of the world of men are like being in a minefield for a woman: you never know whether you'll have to deal with one of the monster types? 

I have to catch myself at such times when I see too many of these photos: that would be misogynistic-type thinking against men.

But some of the perpetrators I have seen in pictures and videos by survivors get away with such an egregious amount of life-threatening abuse over little nothings as I like to call them, and I really do mean nothing (just some sort of look or phrase that does not have a shred of hostility in it, or a reasonable need is expressed, but which the perpetrator takes as an egregious provocation), that it is often hard to believe that they could get off. How did the courts, juries and law enforcement fail some of these women, or fail to acknowledge there was a crime committed when there is evidence? 

If a stranger came up to you and bashed you in the face, and it was caught on a cell phone, law enforcement and lawyers would be all over it, but in some parts of the country a husband beating up his wife is still being tolerated. Why?

It may have to do with society's attitudes about the "inferiority of women" (an attitude from the dark ages where women were thought of as a man's property in the case of marriage?). So diminishment of abuse exists simply because they were married.

Take how narcissists diminish abuse:

While there are extremely dark levels of injustice, victim-shaming by narcissists sounds about the same, and is predictable, even down to how they will respond ("If you were just a little nicer" is the more typical narcissistic phrase of how you should have treated your abuser, and absolutely terrible advice and a terrible attitude about victimization - but narcissists apparently love this phrase and use it with abandon!). In some ways, it sets up a societal attitude about victims.

The other problem that happens with diminishment are phrases like this: "Women are two-faced liars. One in every five women get raped! What b&llsh$t! I'll bet four out of five of them lied about being raped! Women are spiteful and just love to play the victim!"

Is there anything to this? Perhaps mostly not, but I haven't seen any proper studies. I hate to say it, but in my past I knew at least three women who played the victim, and who continue to lie about how they were victimized, and it does NOT help the cause of women who are truly bludgeoned, or violated, or beat up, or abandoned in terrible straits over a non-provoking issue. It perhaps creates cases where too many perpetrators are getting off the hook. It's like the "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" story. A narcissistic female accuses, out of vengeance for the fact that her ex walked out on her because he would not tolerate being controlled, dominated and cheated on, that his wife accused him of being a wife batterer. There was no truth in the accusations: the allegations were totally made up out of spite. 

With enough "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" stories, and just purely spiteful legal allegations within one jurisdiction, the attitude that women lie over being victimized will become the standard for dealing with most of the cases flowing through the court systems and instead of "a preponderance of the evidence" the way it is supposed to work, instead it becomes "there is very little evidence you could show us where we would convict." It creates injustice for other women. And if the women who pursued spiteful frivolous lawsuits ever tried to bring a real case of victimization to court, she would be remembered for her spiteful law cases first.

Those are the dangers of growing rates of narcissism in a society. It is also why integrity matters. 

As Dr. Ramani Durvasula is witnessing, narcissism (and cruelty) is becoming way too prevalent. So it means that injustice and victimization are likely to become more common too.  

I would like to say that it would appear that sociopaths definitely like inflicting injustice (especially as punishment for someone not doing what they want) and that narcissists like doing it to get attention on themselves (i.e. "playing the victim", something all narcissists indulge in, according to psychologist, Dr. Les Carter, and also quite evil to the point where, when it happens directly to you, it has the effect of immediate repulsion). 

I put together "injustice" and "victim-shaming" in the same post because these two things usually go hand in hand. For instance, diminishing the sexual abuse and the trauma a victim endured is a type of injustice because the victim is being shamed, while the perpetrator is not even discussed. It's the old "The victim caused the abuse to happen" line of bull-crap.

So, how does injustice start when it comes to narcissists and sociopaths?

One of the first times that victims see it is just after the narcissist's idealize, devalue, discard of you (or alternatively, love bomb, devalue, destroy). Very often they practice this to scare their victims with abandonment. In short it often ends up to mean: "I'll terrorize you if you don't allow me to dominate and control your words and actions. And by the way, you're not important to me because I always have other people on the side ready to do what I want and to take your place." They don't come out and say it, but they show you, and they order you around and whine when their commands aren't being addressed. Basically they are having a tantrum about how much power and control they have over you (and they want more), or they feel it is slipping away, or their rage is failing to incite you to do as they say, so they put you through an abandonment (usually with stonewalling added to it). 

Now, if this is their child, an abandonment won't look good to outsiders, so they lie: "Oh, I was sacrificed by my own child! My child doesn't care about me any more! They are trying to punish me for something!" After this happens, the child tries to separate or compartmentalize his life because of the idealize, devalue and discard trauma they were put through, and don't want any more of, and because the parent lied about who was really culpable of the abandonment. It is an intolerable injustice. 

If the narcissist is sadistic, they will revel in the fact that they caused you this injustice. It is their way of saying: "I got away with it, and I don't care how it makes you feel." However, the narcissist is denied even more power and control by their victim (it doesn't incite the victim to go back to them, or put much trust in them), which triggers shame and causes the narcissist to rage and seek even more revenge. In fact, it is a revenge cycle that keeps getting darker and darker in terms of their agenda towards the victim.

All the victim wants is for the lies to stop and the power and control to stop, but narcissists feel entitled to all of it, so the narcissist punishes their victims more and more. They are used to getting their way when they rage, and in narc-world, as I've said before, their rage comes first before anyone else's emotions, and certainly before your trauma. Addressing your trauma would mean them giving up these power agendas and lies, and because they are so self centered, unempathetic and expect everything to come easily to them, they don't give it up, but seek evermore revenge for having this entitlement denied them.

To make matters worse, they try to enlist the other parent to bully their child in a team effort to make the child capitulate under the pain of being bullied. They think that pain will make things go their way. 

I suppose it can sometimes go their way, but just like people who kidnap and hold a victim in a cage, the victim is going to head for freedom when they are let out of the cage (unless of course they have given up so much hope that they have gone into the mode of learned helplessness). 

If the other parent goes along with it, it is like a fast train to debilitating trauma symptoms for the child. The abuse usually becomes severe because no one is putting the breaks on or second-guessing the victimization. Victimization while ignoring the trauma becomes the primary agenda. If Child Protective Services gets wind of it, the child will most likely be put in foster care (especially these days, and depending on certain jurisdictions). And since coercive control is being considered as a crime in state legislatures (because power and control is at the root of all domestic violence, and if you want to stop domestic violence in your nation or state, you have to address power and control), there are even more chances child victims might have their traumas addressed by getting into a new home where they can heal and thrive, where their main relationships aren't trauma bonded ones. Even today, these children will be told that the way their parents are treating them is not their fault.

If the other parent does not capitulate to victimizing the child under the narcissist's pressure, expect the narcissist to give threats of divorce, threats to take the children away, withdrawal of helping you to do anything, extra-marital affairs, comparing you to other suitors, lots of gaslighting, lots of nasty comments directed at your self esteem, lots of on-going rage whether overtly or covertly (covert rage is giving you the cold shoulder or the silent treatment) and a whole lot of revenge in general. It is good to know this so that you can get ahead of the game and prepare yourself.

This "parent", if you can call them that, then goes on the dating circuit either before the divorce or after the divorce to find someone who will totally back them. Stepparents who want to bully and have a proclivity to bullying others are going to be a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath. These kinds of stepparents usually do not want stepchildren around, so they bully for themselves as much as for their spouse. It makes estrangement extremely likely. A stepparent and stepchild relationship is not a strong bond to begin with, not as strong as with a parent, or even a sibling relationship. I would even venture to guess that friendship bonds are much stronger than most step-family bonds. And the abuse by both the parent and stepparent is an even faster train to trauma, a bullet train. There also tends to be much more egregious forms of attack, coercion, control and dominance. Most often there is mob bullying,  financial bullying and threats of total abandonment. 

In the end, the stepparent gets what they want: the stepchild out of their life, while actually helping their spouse play the victim of a pretend abandonment. They are not stupid: they know that playing the victim will drive an even bigger wedge between parent and child. And then some stepparents tell their spouse that they are not to contact their own child at all if they know what is good for them.   

The other person narcissistic parents often try to enlist in bullying is another one of their children (a sibling to the scapegoat child they are trying to hurt). Usually it is a child that is enlisted to bully and enforce for the parent. They are also usually a male child (for both male and female narcissistic parents). The bully child is given preferential treatment and a lot of rewards for his bullying. Also, if the narcissistic parent becomes exposed, they will put the fault of bullying-gone-wrong on this child instead of on themselves.

Almost all bully golden children become much more egregious bullies than their parent. Sibling abusers are often much more violent than other types of abusers. 

When the victim complains about being hurt by the sibling, the parent ignores them, or they are told to "shut up", or they are told to apologize to their abuser. It's that "You should have been nicer so that he wouldn't have hurt you" victim shaming tactic. Really sick. Again, the main agenda for the parent is not the trauma the child is experiencing, but dominating and telling the victim what to do, even when the scapegoat/victim is an adult, even when the scapegoat/victim is 60 years old, even when the scapegoat/victim is receiving life threatening bullying, and not kidding. 

Just as narcissists have to have a scapegoat (usually a child of theirs is put in the role), they have to have enablers and enforcers too in order to get as much power, control and domination over the scapegoat as they possibly can. And the way they get these enforcers is by triangulating (i.e. divide and conquer strategies), threats, rewards and lies, the main lie, as I've illustrated before, being that they are the victim so that their bully child will feel sorry for them and go out and bully his sibling some more. 

For more on the bully child (who also overwhelmingly tends to become a narcissist or sociopath), go to my post about that topic. 

If this kind of parent were actually a victim, they would have trauma symptoms, and they would not be acting in these aggressive styles. They wouldn't be giving all kinds of unsolicited advice, lecturing family members, threatening children with abandonment, threatening a spouse with taking away children, scheming, love bombing some children while ignoring others, putting people on guilt trips, trying to brainwash other people to see their own child as a villian, enlisting bullies, trying to hurt someone else, expecting gossipy private information while never divulging private information of their own, out for revenge because they didn't get more power and control, giving "behavior lessons" to every grown up in the family, trying to isolate people, determined to make sure people pay for not putting the narcissist first or agreeing to be enmeshed with the narcissist, determined to make sure people are serving their needs over anyone else's needs, telling lies about other people, vilifying other people with an incredible number of made up stories, having no empathy for the suffering of others, saying sadistic things like "They brought it upon themselves" (i.e. their victims are suffering because they didn't do what the narcissist commanded), trying to smear the reputation of others, telling one person what to say to another person, telling people who to avoid and who to befriend, telling people that their victim is crazy, who to invite to an event and who to leave off the list, spoiling some family members and abusing and giving the silent treatment to other members, and in general, creating havoc by micro-managing the responses and relationships of other people. People who manipulate to this degree are not even close to being victims, and they are certainly not trauma survivors either, so if you see this, don't be fooled. And also they wouldn't be abandoning children or running smear campaigns on their exes (all narcissists describe their exes and their ex-children as crazy, just so you know the signs). And they certainly wouldn't be arrogant and haughty, and going into a rage when they don't get their way, or when they feel their dictating, dominance, power and control are slipping. 

God forbid that they lose dominance and actually genuinely care about how they are effecting other people instead!

If you want to be in a relationship with them, you have to give up your soul to them. When you have been through a couple of cycles of discards, and smear campaigns, and bogus victim stories, you don't want to give up your soul to them. You want them to leave you alone. It becomes a mutual abandonment at that point, but there is no way that they are a victim.

Narcissistic revenge cycles eventually deepen. They seek to turn as many people as they can against you. They do this because when you are really distraught and grieving over the lost relationship (following the discard), you tend to tell people what you have been through. The narcissist often makes it very clear that they want you to be silent, really silent, and so they take it as a provocation that you are defying them again when you talk to others, and that you are trying to turn other people against them, so they "up the game" in a tit-for-tat manner, and manufacture even more lies about you to get people you've confessed your sorrow to be suspicious of you and discard you too. It's called the smear campaign and most narcissists can't help but use it in their revenge schemes and fantasies, which further drives the victim away from wanting any kind of contact with the narcissist.  

Smear campaigns, gaslighting, lies, trying to create division so that you are deprived of family relationships, expecting you to apologize to abusers, putting all responsibility for your suffering on to you, adds up to an incredible amount of injustices. 

The reason they pursue injustices is because injustice has within it at least some amount of power and control over you still. It's a pretty desperate and evil kind of power and control, but any kind of power and control will do in their world, and any amount of hurt that they can inflict from afar gives them that junkie boost of grandiosity that maybe they are still effecting you in some way, which is why they are so addicted to power and control in the first place: it is a drug-like high for them. 

Now with spouses and partners, it tends to go more in the direction of "destroy" rather than discard. Extramarital affairs, trying to take the kids away from you, lawsuits to impoverish you, playing around with your perceptions (gaslighting) are typical. Abusive men can physically abuse. Abusive women tend to target you by stealing your heirlooms and other property, and throw things out that you care about. It is where the revenge cycle ends up. Their smear campaigns are told to your common children (i.e. trying to get your children to be suspicious of you and discard you) and trying to get your common friends to take their side. With the support of their enablers and enforcers, they feel empowered to enact evermore revenge upon you, so the revenge cycles keep going, and the injustices keep piling up. 

If you can move on to relationships that the narcissist has no influence over, and keep your doors locked, put police on notice, arm yourself with security and surveillance, there isn't much they can do to you ... except if they are the stalker type. I'll be getting into darker forms of abuse like stalking in the future, but if they are leaving you alone and just trying to rattle your world from afar with smear campaigns accompanied by lies, you just back away from the people who are being brainwashed by them. There are plenty of other people in the world that aren't being brainwashed by your abuser, and if you live in the same town they are in, there is always moving. In fact, most victims do move, even if they aren't being smeared yet. It's a way to get a fresh new start.

The one thing that would stop the trajectory of all of this madness, was for them to deal with your trauma like any normal caring adult would do. And that's the issue: they are too immature to care about anything other than their own feelings and agendas. And they can't believe that other people tell the truth because narcissists are notorious liars and they think that everyone else is like them: that everyone else lies too. So they lie with abandon after awhile, especially about their victims. Sociopaths, in particular, lie quite a bit more than they tell the truth. One of the signs of the sociopath is that they say, "I would never lie to you." Normal folks are not trying to convince others that they don't lie: it is taken for granted that they don't lie. So when you hear this phrase, watch for the other signs of Antisocial Personality Disorder, and avoid, avoid, avoid if you start noticing other traits.

After awhile most people can't stand being around narcissists and sociopaths except newbies who haven't caught on to who they are yet, and other narcissists and sociopaths. Narcissists can have people in their life who are trauma bonded people who feel stuck with the narcissist, but these people aren't exactly "attached" to them in any meaningful way.

While you have injustices and traumas to heal, which is a monumental task of its own even with narcissists and sociopaths out of the picture, they will be stuck in their narcissism and their wondering what to do with their pile of victims (scheme some more depraved types of revenge upon them?). They will be stuck in their crap: their lies, their cycles of sadism and vengeance, their cycles of discards, their cycles of ego lows and highs, their cycles of shame/rage/shame/rage, their paranoias, and their addictions forever. People who like to hurt other people, and dream revenge fantasies are not happy people. They complain about others endlessly, have tantrums, rage about the behaviors of other people while their behaviors are downright sick. That's not a life of happiness. They manipulate, expect the world from others, make arrogant pronouncements that can disgust people, and are the ultimate hypocrites. They think they are happy, but it's the most depraved form of happiness they or anyone else could dream up for them, but it is also likely it is all they know. They certainly sort of survive like this by blowing their egos up to gargantuan proportions with fantasies that they are something they are not, but that is about it. They aren't enjoying true intimacy, work, purpose, inspirations, having healthy on-going relationships, enjoying commitments, helping others (as opposed to transactional relationships), real empathy (as opposed to fake empathy), seeking the real truth (instead of making it up), and keeping promises which helps others trust them and thereby opens relationships up to new dimensions. If anything, they want to kill the trust you originally had in them. It is only in appearing dangerous and threatening, they feel, that they can tell you what to do, how to behave for them, and tell you what to say to others.  They are stuck in the darkness of their own narcissism, lashing out at people. They are pitiful people who healthy people will ultimately abandon, especially when they've been abandoned by the narcissist in one of the narcissist's rage cycles. The people they attract will be other abusers, fooled newbies, users, and trauma bonded people with horrific trauma symptoms as well as crushed self esteems. Sad life and sad cast of characters. 

Hopefully the latter trauma bonded characters will find a way to get out of the trauma bond (domestic violence centers in your area are always an option ... even if you are underage, you can still contact them).   

In future posts, I will be discussing trauma symptoms and how they develop. I hope to wrap up the segment on abusers' tactics soon because healing from, and moving beyond concerns about the abuser's depraved lifestyle of rages and attacks is what healing is about after all. 

This video was made after I published this post

but I'm including it because I think it is necessary to the discussion:

"How Narcissists Sidestep Responsibility With Victim Blaming"
by Psychologist, Les Carter:

FURTHER READING

RECOMENDED: 5 Victim-Shaming Myths That Harm Abuse and Trauma Survivors and Encourage Spiritual Bypassing - by Shahida Arabi for Psych Central

How Society Gaslights Survivors of Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Psychopaths - by Shahida Arabi for Psych Central

Rape Culture, Victim Blaming, And The Facts - adapted from the Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services (CONNSACS)

Victim Shaming Myths About Healing From Narcissistic Abuse - by the administrators of Abuse Warrior

Victim Blaming - from Wikipedia

an anti-victim blaming poster - from WAVAW Rape Crisis Center

another powerful anti-victim blaming artwork - for breezejmu.org 

How a Person with Narcissism Responds to a Perceived Offense - by Sharie Stines, PsyD for Good Therapy

Injustice - from Wikipedia

Why Survivors Of Malignant Narcissists Don’t Get The Justice They Deserve - by Shahida Arabi for Huffington Post

Humiliation and Injustice: Most Frequent and Most Hurting Stressors in Psychosomatic Patients - by Michael Linden, Research Group Psychosomatic Rehabilitation, Charité University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Narcissistic Abuse and Family Court Injustice: Breaking Point - by Rachel Watson, author of "How to Annihilate a Narcissist in the Family Court (a detailed guide on how to expose a cruel narcissist's true character)"

The Neuroscience of Fairness and Injustice (How Our Brains Are Wired to Resist Unfair Treatment) - by Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Your Brain on Injustice - by the administrators of Association for Psychological Science

Perceived injustice moderates the relationship between pain and depressive symptoms among individuals with persistent musculoskeletal pain - by Whitney Scott, BA and Michael Sullivan, PhD for US Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

A Short Treatise on Narcissism: From Normal to Risk for Violence - by Stephen White, Ph.D. for Work Trauma Services, Inc.

How do you deal with the injustice that the narcissist gets away with the horrible things they do to you? - Quora forum