THIS POST IS PART OF SERIES ON SHAMING
the first post is: shaming from abusers, narcissists
the second post is: How Shame is the Core Struggle of Most Narcissists. How it Gets Dumped Onto You, and How They Try to Harvest Regrets and Shame From You. Does It Work For Them?
the third post is this one
a fourth post will show how an environment of shaming, blaming, perspecticide and fawning can produce narcissism
a fifth post will follow on the connection between shame and rage in narcissism
and probably a sixth post too, which will focus more on the trauma aspects
Shaming is a type of abuse that narcissists and sociopaths use to get you to do what they want or demand, and when used in a close personal relationship, it is to get you trauma-bonded to them.
Shaming will cause trauma in children, whether it is used directly against the child, or whether it is observed (a caretaker or parental figure using it on one child in front of another child).
Most of what narcissists do is to serve their power and control needs through manipulating others and events. They especially do this to spouse, children, and their adult children, putting them in roles which serve their needs. When their desires aren't met in these manipulations, they generally take the road of hurting the spouse or children.
Children experience shaming as painful, and if used throughout their childhood, they will develop trauma symptoms. People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder have many other traits and tactics which cause trauma to just about everyone, except primary psychopaths who are trauma-resistant, so with the combination of these other traits, it is highly, highly likely that most people will come out scathed if they are in any kind of close personal relationship with a narcissist.
You may not notice the trauma symptoms right away, but they will start to appear little by little until your system is totally disabled by the symptoms. It is the reason why domestic violence counselors, psychologists who specialize in Cluster B Personality Disorders, and psychiatrists urge patients who are dealing with narcissists to either go "no contact" or "gray rock". Note that the gray rock method is not effective for scapegoat children of narcissists; however, it can be effective if your parent puts you into any other role aside from that one (the scapegoat role means that your parent is out to hurt you and blame you for things that are not your fault - most scapegoats end up without their family of origin, and no, there isn't anything you can do about it yourself ... I explain why later in the post).
The reason why shaming is so damaging to children has been written about extensively. For one, enough shaming can "wipe out" their budding personalities, their budding interests, drives and ambitions, as well as their self esteem (self esteem is necessary in order to grow into a full functioning adult). It tends to delay emotional and psychological growth as well, and in some cases it can cause brain damage. The child is being pressured to put their attention on the parent first and foremost, and definitely in terms of what the parent wants from you (and the minefields that the parent sets up to hurt or reward a child again and again, often with no other choices than those two choices, however remember that whether you are hurt or rewarded is not your choice; it is in the parent's hands totally). This upbringing causes child neglect at the very least, as it puts more emphasis on denying the needs of the child in favor of the parent's, but most often it is not effective discipline at all. Children get the sense that they aren't liked, loved, cared about, that their existence isn't appreciated, and that they are being forced to supply all of this by other means, so they develop coping strategies that narcissists do not like, and do not care to understand.
Here are some posts out of many as to why shaming children is not effective (note, my own writing continues after):
Why Shaming Your Kids Isn't Effective Discipline - by Jennifer Wolf and medically reviewed by Carly Snyder, MD for Very Well Family
This article goes into what shaming does to children, and how it leads to the destruction of the relationship between parent and child. Here is an excerpt:
... Not only do you lose considerable relational equity, but shaming kids in public or online also tears down trust and self-esteem. At the same time, it zaps your child's motivation to engage in the very behaviors you're trying to encourage.
... What If You've Already Publicly Shamed Your Kids?
Let's get real. You might be reading this and thinking, "Oh no! I've already done this." Now's your opportunity to apologize. Your kids need to see that you're human and willing to own your mistakes. So even if you're experiencing a degree of remorse that makes it extremely difficult to initiate that conversation, make it happen.
My note: I agree that apologies go a long way, but if you have apologized for it before, and you keep doing it, your apology will only go so far in mending your relationship. Apologies are difficult for narcissists since they prefer to stick the person they have a conflict with, with "all of the fault". It is more likely to compound the rift.
The article also goes into words parents should avoid, how to address your child's behavior without shaming, phrases you should avoid (the following are taken from the article, although the article has explanations for each one of them: "You're such a bad girl", "You're just like your mother (or father)", "I don't know why I even bother with you", "I should ship you off to live with dad (or mom)", "I'm so tired of dealing with you"), how to influence your kids' behavior without shaming (and using these phrases instead: "I'd like you to tell me what happened", "What did that feel like for you?", "What could you have done differently?", "What will you do next time?", and "How can I help?")
The article is worth reading and studying, especially if you've been shaming your kids, and you see absolutely no improvement from it (it is doubtful you will).
Some other articles I found along these lines:
excerpt:
“Do you really want to go out looking like that?”
“You let your teammates down during that game.”
“Why can’t you get good grades like your sister?”
“Why do you hang out at home all the time instead of going out like other kids?”
“Why are you crying? It’s not that bad.”
As we blurt out such things, we usually don’t think of them as shaming. We think of them as something that might help our child recognize a problem — and perhaps motivate them to change. We think of them as constructive criticism.
excerpt:
... Research has shown that common problems linked to the shame experience include proneness to anxiety and depression. In particular, studies have shown a link between shame and social anxiety disorder as well as generalized anxiety disorder.
Another way in which shame has been shown to harm the self is apparent in the association between shame and addiction. For some individuals who are susceptible to addictive behaviors, the addictive substance is used to numb the intense and painful negative feelings, including shame.
According to Internal Family Systems theory, the use of the substance may be the mind’s way of trying to protect itself from intensely painful emotions that might otherwise lead to suicide (Schwartz, 2020). This also may become a self-defeating cycle when the abuse of substances is in itself experienced as shameful behavior, possibly leading to more self-numbing through substance abuse.
For narcissistic individuals, shaming them goes this way (from the article):
... For some individuals, the immediate sense of being flawed or of being unlovable is so painful that it cannot be acknowledged and corrected through rational self-statements. The defensive response is to put the blame on someone else. “It can’t be my fault; it must be your fault.” This pattern was explained in the recent post by Carol Lambert. Clearly, this type of reaction, if habitual, can be very destructive in relationships. ...
Violence and shame (from the article):
... Possibly the least well-known consequence of shame is its connection to violence. While most of us occasionally react to feelings of shame with either self-directed criticism or other-directed criticism (blaming), the most unstable and emotionally vulnerable among us react to feelings of shame with violence. A violent reaction may be self-directed or outwardly directed. Both are primitive and potentially deadly responses. According to research by Brene Brown, shame is highly correlated with both bullying and suicide, in addition to the consequences noted above.
When shame leads to violence directed at others, those harmed may be close family members. They may also be complete strangers, as in the case of mass shootings that have tragically become so common in daily news. This is not to suggest that shame is the only motivating factor in mass shooting incidents; rather that it can be one of the factors. ...
A note here of my own: studies have shown that many mass shooters have significant narcissistic traits, and narcissism has been associated with feelings of deep shame (my post about narcissistic shame is HERE, the one on mass shootings will be published soon, I hope - or check back HERE for when it is published).
In the meantime, here is a clue as to why narcissists can become violent if they think you might be unhappy with them or critical of their behavior:
This aggressive behavior in response to shame was studied by Donald Nathanson (2008) and labeled the “attack-other response.” Feelings of shame, including low self-esteem and a self-perception of being defective, are so intense that the person feels themself to be in danger. In effect, anger is used as a weapon to hurt the person(s) who triggered the feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness.
Another note of mine on this part of the article:
However, the triggers may be real and may not be real. "Triggers" are a PTSD word and concept. A soldier, for instance, can be triggered by a certain look on someone else's face, because the look was one that someone else used when they were being held at gunpoint. PTSD works in such a way as to bring back the memory when they see someone else with that expression. The memory can be so vivid that the PTSD'd individual may feel that they are back in the war again, and react the way he would in war: by hurting, damaging, injuring or killing, and not kidding. If the soldier was trained to kill the enemy so as not to be killed himself, this may be the reaction to the flashback, though exceptionally rare, even if his life is not in danger in any way during the moment. Hurting or killing someone in a PTSD flashback is something most of us have heard. The proliferation of guns without a lot of mental health background checks can create this sort of horrific ending too. So we would say that a soldier who is back home and having an emotional flashback based on how someone looked at him would be an unreal situation: the soldier is not in danger, even if his brain is telling him that he is.
What contributes to it is that PTSD keeps you in a hypervigilant state, so you have sleep disturbances: light sleep where any noise or dream can create a startle response where you wake up with your heart beating wildly, plus nightmares through the night. It can be so bad that you only get 2 -3 hours of "disturbed sleep" maximum, or you are up for three days with no sleep, and then crash on the fourth day, then up again for another three days, and so on.
Lack of sleep has been known to create hallucinations. So the "facial expression" of someone else can be interpreted by the soldier as "the enemy soldier is about to shoot me! I have to shoot him first!" It would be like having a "waking dream", where the PTSD'd person is going around half asleep and half awake, and in a heightened state of defense and hypervigilance against attacks to take his life.
This is not to say that people with PTSD have violent or aggressive reactions when they get triggered, but narcissists do, especially the covert brand of narcissist and malignant narcissist. They are fighting a war all of the time against being shamed as a child, something I will be discussing further in the post.
For most child abuse survivors, they adopted one of the trauma responses: fawn, fight, flight, freeze, or avoid (and a lot of times it is all 5 of them in varying degrees, and depending on the situations they are in). Abusive parents want, and try to mold the child to give the fawn response at all times during bullying and shaming sessions, but it is very dangerous for the child, and creates situations where the child will fawn in just about every situation with any perpetrator and with any predator (until they have a sense of their own power and that they have choices - situations where they can decide not to put up with it). Their very lives are at stake, and if we look at what fawning does to the brain, to the emotions, and how it gives them PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder, it destroys the child little by little emotionally, mentally and physically, especially if they have gotten to the point of suicidal thoughts (suicidal thoughts are extremely common for abused children who have both PTSD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder).
Besides shaming being bad for children physically, mentally, and emotionally, it's not the ethical thing to do to a child by their caretaker by a long shot. Trying to mold them to accept shaming, wipes out their ability to defend themselves adequately in any situation.
It's kind of like they need to be re-wired when they are fawners. Many seek therapy after going through a couple of disastrous or abusive relationships where they are expected to fawn in those situations too. Counselors in the domestic violence field, and trauma counseling are the most sought. The re-wiring is necessary to stop the fawning. In the end, it means not having abusers in your life, being able to tell who is likely to be abusive and who is not, which is one reason why, when parents are shaming, humiliating, being abusive or being unethical (like lying about you), it will end the relationship between the parent and child.
You can't be going to trauma therapy, spending thousands of dollars on it, and getting pressured or threatened by parents to always be fawning, or endure a punishment ... You might as well flush your money down the toilet.
In counseling with a domestic violence counselor, you are being trained against fawning when people are disrespectful and aggressive towards you on any level. You learn the channels of self defense, including what laws, and law protection can do for you.
It's the process of saving your life from any more predation and the continued degrading of your emotional, mental and physical health, or of being attracted to substances like alcohol or cocaine to keep from dealing with the horrible reality of the situation. It means you aren't spending your life being a reactor to abuse any more.
But first, the reactions of narcissists to shaming:
NARCISSISTS REACTIONS TO SHAMING
When we look at narcissists, they grew up in a situation or situations where there was usually a lot of shaming going on, and usually a lot of "trash talking" about other people too. Possibly there was bullying too. And possibly there were perfection standards that were not reachable, or were weird or unattainable, or they were bullied and taught to treat the bully as a "superior being", or in ways that were hurtful, shameful or humiliating to the child.
Growing up in an environment with a lot of shaming and trash-talking going on, even if it is not directed towards you, is traumatic for any child. For all intents and purposes, shaming is the emotional equivalent to bombs, arrows, bullets, landmines and invasions. There is rarely a good outcome to it where children either repeat what was modeled to them (i.e. where they can become another narcissist), or they become so overly fawning that they are used by other narcissists, psychopaths and human predators.
Growing up in an environment with a lot of shaming and trash-talking going on, even if it is not directed towards you, is traumatic for any child. For all intents and purposes, shaming is the emotional equivalent to bombs, arrows, bullets, landmines and invasions. There is rarely a good outcome to it where children either repeat what was modeled to them (i.e. where they can become another narcissist), or they become so overly fawning that they are used by other narcissists, psychopaths and human predators.
Covert vulnerable narcissists react very similarly to being blamed and shamed as a soldier with PTSD would react, however they tend to "get rid of" (via a discard) of anyone they feel shamed by, again whether it's really happening or whether they are dealing with a PTSD trigger.
Overt grandiose narcissists react to shame as if they are only entitled to praise. Grandiose narcissists tend to grow up more on a pedestal than being bullied, where they are praised constantly, even when it isn't justified, or when they are being cruel or selfish, and where someone else in the family is constantly being disparaged. People who do this - whiten one child's motives, and blacken another child's motives - is called splitting in psychological terms. One child gets the nice Dr. Jekyll part of the parent; the other gets the mean, cruel Mr. Hyde part of the parent.
Splitting is usually the result of a personality disorder: Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Antisocial Personality Disorder (the cluster B personality disorders). The latter two also put their children into roles most often for life (one golden child and one scapegoat, which exacerbates the splitting in the parent, makes it a stubborn trait of the disorder that is about impossible to dis-lodge by anyone, even by the most trained therapists, even when faced with many tragedies because of it). They just cannot let go of the feeling they have one child who is all good and the another that is all bad, even when presented with a lot of other views.
It's part of the disorder.
They could even be shamed about splitting by their own parents, and they might act out the part that they love both of their children, but when they are behind closed doors, they go right back to their "all good/all bad" views of their own children. And it presents a real challenge to social workers. There aren't enough foster parents around to re-parent the narcissists' "abused, all bad children".
And what makes a child look "all bad" to them aside from the dictates of the disorder?
A lot of reasons why scapegoat children are chosen by narcissistic parents is because one child makes them feel ashamed of something, and it can be just because the child exists, and I'm not kidding.
Narcissists are exceptionally jealous, and if the scapegoat is naturally beautiful (which narcissistic Moms and narcissistic Dads have trouble with, for different reasons), has a lot of empathy (something narcissists lack), a lot of talents (something that narcissists can lack because they are a lot more focused on narcissistic supply, negative workplace gossip, triangulating workers against each other, and competition baiting, money and power grabs, than work, or talent), has a lot of authentic friendships (something else narcissists lack too - their friendships tend to be shams with a lot of lies and arm-twistings such as you might expect from politicians to get "group think" policies going), then it's the jealousy of the parent which keeps the child in a scapegoat role.
Narcissists are always in competition, even with their own children.
Both kinds of narcissists go through a shame-rage spiral when they feel criticized (i.e. shamed). But if you notice, covert vulnerable narcissists are "hypersensitive to criticism", whereas grandiose narcissists are just "sensitive to criticism". The rage they experience when feeling criticized or shamed is still off-the-charts for both, and rage, in general, over feeling shamed is part of the disorder.
The shame-rage spiral is a post I'll be publishing soon, but I thought this post was necessary to understand that post.
Anyway, narcissists don't deal with shame in healthy ways, and they either rage at, or rage about, or punish people who they think are trying to shame them. But first, they try to give what ever they feel ashamed about to you so that they can feel free of accountability and responsibility. If you refuse to take the blame or the shame, they rage again, and then feel shame again. The shame and rage spiral down together, one feeding off of the other, and their ethics tend to spiral down with it all too. It is why they tend to get more abusive (escalating), not less so, and more desperate with trying to shame you by proxy once you have let them know that you can't deal with their escalations of abuse: smear campaigns and co-bullies (flying monkeys) are the most common.
The more unethical they are, the less people want to relate to them. There is nothing to say to them any more at a certain point, which causes them more shame, and more aggression, until they are even further down in the moral dumpster. Then they play the victim once they are in a sorry enough state, which is even more immoral. Then they become ashamed of that. So this gives you a pretty good idea of how the spiral starts and where it goes.
It has been proposed in psychology circles that covert narcissists may very well have PTSD, which would explain their incredible reactions to being criticized or of feeling shamed by others. The way they deal with their PTSD is to be aggressive unlike most of us (i.e. they develop the "fight" response as the result of feeling ashamed). But for them, they go to war against you. The more aggressive or punishing they are as a result of feeling shame, the more they are on the darker end of narcissism (more Antisocial Personality Disorder traits). And they can be dangerous because they are not in control of their emotions; they are very over-reactive, not just ultra sensitive to criticism, which explains why they rage so much, often discard relationships over it, blackmail over it, insist they dominate over it, and abuse others over it. It is referred to as "the mask falling", i.e. their false self starts disintegrating before your eyes and you are left with Hyde-like reactions and often an evil type of personality as well.
They do make it very clear that they don't want to be criticized, ever, which makes relating to narcissists tough because they ask you to lie to them by omission if you have an issue with them. Actually, there is no winning this because they will most likely give you a double bind: "Don't lie to me or omit things you want to say to me, but don't bring up any issues you have about me either." Double binds are "no-win" situations and it is a sure recipe for more of their raging.
So what started out to be one minor criticism of them (activation of shame), or may have only been interpreted as a criticism, they can retaliate by shaming you x 1,000. Getting as many flying monkeys as they can to shame you is one tack they take. Ostracizing or abandoning you is another and is also primarily about shaming you. Comparing you to others (in a negative way) is an extremely common add-on for narcissists too, which is supposed to seize your brain with humiliation and shame also. Then of course, they must criticize you themselves, and weigh you down with guilt for every single issue between you, even if they reframe those issues with false narratives and lies. Gaslighting is also a form of shaming: "You are SO crazy and you are so incapable because of it! In fact you should feel humiliated for being crazy and not seeing reality the way I see it!" - gaslighting is absolutely about shaming every time it is used.
And of course, there is so much more than this that they add, and keep adding. So maybe it isn't retaliation by shaming x 1,000. Maybe it is a lifetime of shaming you in whatever ways they think will work to their benefit in trouncing you with more shame.
It can get to the point where every interaction with the parent is about that parent humiliating the child in some way. The parent insisting they are superior and the authority over a grown adult child is shaming in and of itself (which is to say that continual infantilizing via lectures are just more shaming).
In art renditions, the scapegoat is weighed down with a heavy pack on his back (all of the things on his back are representative of the sins of the tribe), and of course, the scapegoat is sent out to the desert to die without food, water, and weighed down with all of the things the tribe finds shameful within themselves. Not being able to take shame, but dishing it out in spades would be one of the sins loaded onto the back of the scapegoat.
And are we surprised that children walk away from this, that mental health professionals tell these patients not to take the narcissist's shaming tactics seriously (because it means that the narcissist can't take any shame themselves and they have to give it to you instead), that your symptoms are never going to be met with empathy and compassion because all that the narcissist cares about is retaliation and shaming, and that to heal you, you should go "no contact"?
So what they can't take (criticism or activating their shame in any manner whatsoever, even a tiny amount of it), they do constantly to others and about others, without fail.
Hypocrisy and abuse always go together, fist in a glove with spiked knuckles. And hypocrisy is also the first sign you get that they are unethical. How hypocritical and unethical they go tells the tale of how disordered they are in their narcissism, especially if they go as far as sadism (which shows they probably have the malignant brand of narcissism, and have no remorse in hurting other people - these people can shame and hurt people all day long and sleep well at night).
Now when they shame, they expect their children to absorb it like a sponge, and even insist on it, and to not act like them (use the trauma response of "fight" at all, and not to be in the least rebellious about being shamed like the way the narcissist acts). They insist that their children be docile, polite little sycophants to the narcissistic parent's out-of-control rages with a lot of impoliteness and abuse. Some narcissistic parents will even insist that their children act like sponges for other abusers too.
Most abused children do end up as fawners or as freezers. That is why they end up with crippling symptoms eventually. And what do narcissistic parents do when their child has crippling symptoms? They pile on more abuse, retaliations for not acting like a perfect sycophant (which children with PTSD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder cannot do anyway - both disorders keep them from doing so).
You need to do what you can do to keep from being attacked again, and police have the best advice for that.
Remember that narcissists do everything they can not to be shamed even one more time by you, and so you have the right to protect yourself from the myriad and continued onslaught of attacks and deep betrayals they keep giving you (retaliations x 1,000). They usually want separation from you for not fawning. You can have separation from them, including stringent boundaries to keep safe from attacks on all the tactics and people they use for these ends (and I bet you'll get attacks coming from all kinds of directions - and some of them break the law to attack you, especially the not-too-brilliant people with criminal mindsets).
PTSD, hypervigilance, a rapid heartbeat, and all of the symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder are normal responses and normal symptoms when you are enduring people attacking you from all the angles narcissists and sociopaths love to use.
However, if you have all of your protections in place and your home and life is peaceful (at last!), and you still feel a lot of symptoms (PTSD and/or Generalized Anxiety Disorder), and you haven't experienced any danger from attackers for several years, if this was me, and I could afford it, I would also go to a trauma therapist.
In trauma therapy, you learn that your trauma symptoms are explainable by the events you lived, and how the brain functions in keeping those trauma experiences alive and practically branded into your brain (like a never-ending, if somewhat healed, wound, or nightmare) in your psyche. Vagus Nerve exercises and EMDR are usually highly effective, especially if your PTSD and/or your Generalized Anxiety Disorder are through the roof. How effective they are has to do with how traumatized you are, how bad your PTSD or Generalized Anxiety Disorder is, whether you have disassociation experiences, whether you have substance addictions (common for trauma patients), or whether you have other kinds of addictions not related to substances, and your usual coping mechanisms for dealing with trauma. And I bet anything that hypervigilance, sleep disturbances and nightmares are still part of the picture and the hardest to resolve.
A lot of the approach of trauma therapy is not focused on what you did (not "Why did you stay in an abusive relationship so long and even go back? Don't you know that abusive relationships escalate? Why would you do something so hair-brained?", but the opposite). The approach is: "What did you live through?" This is even the approach to alcoholism. They aren't going to say, "How could you go to rehab 38 times, spend your parent's money to do so, and not come out with good results?" In fact, all kinds of therapists, not just trauma therapists, have learned that this doesn't work. It increases the shaming. Even alcoholism is treated as: "What kind of environment did you grow up in?" And studies have shown that most alcoholics grow up in environments that are traumatic. There is a direct correlation between alcoholism and trauma, and alcoholism and child abuse environments (another link and another link), even if they weren't the ones who were bullied.
And I'm pretty sure a number of you will be asking if narcissism is one of those "What have you lived through?" conditions too? Yes. But you cannot treat your attackers. Even showing them empathy opens up a lot of lines for you to be attacked by them again (yes, they even exploit your empathy for continued attacks). The people that they should be going to are therapists - someone who specializes in treating Cluster B Personality Disorders, or who specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, anger management classes, and possibly Schema Therapy (it sometimes helps them), plus a host of other therapies if needed including Dialectic Behavior Therapy and Trauma Therapy.
But it is not for you to suggest or to be at all involved unless you can do a family-wide intervention (a hard thing to pull off with narcissists especially - they are more likely to walk out and say they never liked any of you anyway). Be aware that most of them don't go to therapy because they are happy blaming and dumping all of their problems on to whoever they have adopted as their scapegoats (usually one of their children, an ex, a sibling, and one of the workers in their place of employment).
If they think it is easier for them to always believe someone else is at fault for everything they do that causes them to be angry, rageful, discarding, bullying, envious, depressed and attacking, they reason they don't need any therapy.
If they believe they can talk you into their anger, rages, discards, bullying, competitiveness, depression, broken promises, instability, inability to feel empathy, and attacking fests are always your fault, which they really do believe they can talk you into, then they feel they don't need therapy either.
They do find out eventually that this won't work, but in the meantime, they live in a fantasy world about this.
Either way, this is not of your concern. Your concern is to get healthy, to address all of the debilitating symptoms, to figure out who you are and discover all of your talents outside of the narcissists shadow, and to find a peaceful way forward. PTSD does and can get worse, so it is critical to re-wire and get on a healing path.
For a lot of survivors of narcissistic manipulations, therapy is a god-send.
As far as a new social group after you go no-contact or the narcissistic parent has discarded you, which many survivors find they want and need, fellow survivors and obvious no-B.S. empaths are also a god-send. For me personally, this is when my life felt like it was being put back together, and put back together in a way that was better than before. I noticed that a lot of my new relationships were with people who were a lot like me, in dress, in hair, in what they lived through, what their interests were (and the arts tended to dominate). A lot of survivors of narcissistic abuse are artists: what a great find and revelation!
I noticed, most of all, that my sleep improved, and it was always disturbed, even as far back as when I was a three year old child living in my first home, an apartment building. I had constant nightmares about being picked at and slowly eaten alive by crows more than once. I remember the nightmares more than I remember specific events, though I do remember how the apartment was laid out, that the stairs were in the center of the building, that there were four apartments in our unit, that our bathroom was long and skinny with the sink closest to the door, that clothes were hung out on a line outside my bedroom window, and that my parents' friends with a girl near my age lived downstairs on the opposite side of the building (kitty corner, via length, not width).
My nightmares increased afterwards in our new home, to the point where it was often impossible to sleep except in the beginning hours.
It finally told me what I needed to know: "what I lived through".
Every symptom that I had could be attributed to what I lived through, which didn't diminish the symptoms right away, but at least I knew where they came from and I could name them, and categorize them, and file them away, and not be confused or think about them as much, which, in and of itself, helped in diminishing them (except when they were needed - which I explain in the next chapter).
For instance, I found that when I was around narcissists who weren't criminals, I always experienced headaches, and sometimes mini flashes of dizziness. Narcissists can be fun, and they can have an acerbic wit, and I did have fun sometimes when I was with them on a jaunt, but I would always come home with a headache, exhaustion, feeling unheard or silenced in one way or another, and those flashes of dizziness. It wasn't a good feeling, no matter how much I laughed, no matter how light-hearted I was, no matter how much I believed I had a good time.
Around the criminal types of narcissists, I experienced high anxiety and a feeling that my head was buzzing (as if nerves could "buzz" in your head like bees).
I tend to stay away from people now who give me headaches or where I get that "buzz" anxiety feeling. And usually those symptoms are dead-on accurate in terms of who I find they eventually are. I will not be pushed into relating to people I don't want to relate to either. Because my own experiences and system are way better detectors than anyone else. Most of us are not good detectors of toxicity and toxic people, especially people who are enchanted with any narcissist, and I have been led astray too by all kinds of do-gooders as well as people who liked seeing me being in traumatic situations, but now I have to rely on symptoms to clue me in. I have also tested some flying monkeys of narcissists' I know (ones who I have some respect for) just to see where their detection abilities are: not so good. It convinces me even more that I need to do this on my own terms.
So symptoms are not always a bad thing: they are our warning systems not to get too close, to keep our guard up, and definitely not to fawn.
There are other things I have done to heal, and to be on a healing journey in general, and I may share some of those anecdotes in the future. But the ones I have listed here are the major ones.
I would say that finding out who you are without narcissists' constant comments and shaming is one of the first steps to living a better life. I'd bet you'd find you are a kinder person than you ever thought (narcissists have an agenda to always paint you as unkind, selfish and unhinged which you can't find out is untrue unless you separate from them completely, even when you have other people in your life constantly countering what the narcissist says, which, in my case, I did have - my father, my spouse, and other people who knew me well ... yup, I still wondered whether narcissists were telling the truth about me, and now I don't). You can find you are way more sane and able than the narcissist painted you as too (again, most narcissists will paint you as insane so that you put your decision-making in their hands and so that they can continue their power, control and isolating agendas). And you can find that you are way more talented and ambitious than you thought you were too (narcissists keep trying to make you feel too inept mentally, emotionally and physically to reach career and lifestyle goals). - As so many psychologists say, "Don't take what they have to say personally; take it as their disorder speaking through them."
Finding out who you are and what you are capable of is one of the joys in life, and if that is being strung up and hobbled, break the chains of the trauma bond to experience what life truly has to offer.
Most of all, realize what shaming does to children, and don't pass it down to the next generation.
Overt grandiose narcissists react to shame as if they are only entitled to praise. Grandiose narcissists tend to grow up more on a pedestal than being bullied, where they are praised constantly, even when it isn't justified, or when they are being cruel or selfish, and where someone else in the family is constantly being disparaged. People who do this - whiten one child's motives, and blacken another child's motives - is called splitting in psychological terms. One child gets the nice Dr. Jekyll part of the parent; the other gets the mean, cruel Mr. Hyde part of the parent.
Splitting is usually the result of a personality disorder: Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Antisocial Personality Disorder (the cluster B personality disorders). The latter two also put their children into roles most often for life (one golden child and one scapegoat, which exacerbates the splitting in the parent, makes it a stubborn trait of the disorder that is about impossible to dis-lodge by anyone, even by the most trained therapists, even when faced with many tragedies because of it). They just cannot let go of the feeling they have one child who is all good and the another that is all bad, even when presented with a lot of other views.
It's part of the disorder.
They could even be shamed about splitting by their own parents, and they might act out the part that they love both of their children, but when they are behind closed doors, they go right back to their "all good/all bad" views of their own children. And it presents a real challenge to social workers. There aren't enough foster parents around to re-parent the narcissists' "abused, all bad children".
And what makes a child look "all bad" to them aside from the dictates of the disorder?
A lot of reasons why scapegoat children are chosen by narcissistic parents is because one child makes them feel ashamed of something, and it can be just because the child exists, and I'm not kidding.
Narcissists are exceptionally jealous, and if the scapegoat is naturally beautiful (which narcissistic Moms and narcissistic Dads have trouble with, for different reasons), has a lot of empathy (something narcissists lack), a lot of talents (something that narcissists can lack because they are a lot more focused on narcissistic supply, negative workplace gossip, triangulating workers against each other, and competition baiting, money and power grabs, than work, or talent), has a lot of authentic friendships (something else narcissists lack too - their friendships tend to be shams with a lot of lies and arm-twistings such as you might expect from politicians to get "group think" policies going), then it's the jealousy of the parent which keeps the child in a scapegoat role.
Narcissists are always in competition, even with their own children.
Both kinds of narcissists go through a shame-rage spiral when they feel criticized (i.e. shamed). But if you notice, covert vulnerable narcissists are "hypersensitive to criticism", whereas grandiose narcissists are just "sensitive to criticism". The rage they experience when feeling criticized or shamed is still off-the-charts for both, and rage, in general, over feeling shamed is part of the disorder.
The shame-rage spiral is a post I'll be publishing soon, but I thought this post was necessary to understand that post.
Anyway, narcissists don't deal with shame in healthy ways, and they either rage at, or rage about, or punish people who they think are trying to shame them. But first, they try to give what ever they feel ashamed about to you so that they can feel free of accountability and responsibility. If you refuse to take the blame or the shame, they rage again, and then feel shame again. The shame and rage spiral down together, one feeding off of the other, and their ethics tend to spiral down with it all too. It is why they tend to get more abusive (escalating), not less so, and more desperate with trying to shame you by proxy once you have let them know that you can't deal with their escalations of abuse: smear campaigns and co-bullies (flying monkeys) are the most common.
The more unethical they are, the less people want to relate to them. There is nothing to say to them any more at a certain point, which causes them more shame, and more aggression, until they are even further down in the moral dumpster. Then they play the victim once they are in a sorry enough state, which is even more immoral. Then they become ashamed of that. So this gives you a pretty good idea of how the spiral starts and where it goes.
It has been proposed in psychology circles that covert narcissists may very well have PTSD, which would explain their incredible reactions to being criticized or of feeling shamed by others. The way they deal with their PTSD is to be aggressive unlike most of us (i.e. they develop the "fight" response as the result of feeling ashamed). But for them, they go to war against you. The more aggressive or punishing they are as a result of feeling shame, the more they are on the darker end of narcissism (more Antisocial Personality Disorder traits). And they can be dangerous because they are not in control of their emotions; they are very over-reactive, not just ultra sensitive to criticism, which explains why they rage so much, often discard relationships over it, blackmail over it, insist they dominate over it, and abuse others over it. It is referred to as "the mask falling", i.e. their false self starts disintegrating before your eyes and you are left with Hyde-like reactions and often an evil type of personality as well.
They do make it very clear that they don't want to be criticized, ever, which makes relating to narcissists tough because they ask you to lie to them by omission if you have an issue with them. Actually, there is no winning this because they will most likely give you a double bind: "Don't lie to me or omit things you want to say to me, but don't bring up any issues you have about me either." Double binds are "no-win" situations and it is a sure recipe for more of their raging.
So what started out to be one minor criticism of them (activation of shame), or may have only been interpreted as a criticism, they can retaliate by shaming you x 1,000. Getting as many flying monkeys as they can to shame you is one tack they take. Ostracizing or abandoning you is another and is also primarily about shaming you. Comparing you to others (in a negative way) is an extremely common add-on for narcissists too, which is supposed to seize your brain with humiliation and shame also. Then of course, they must criticize you themselves, and weigh you down with guilt for every single issue between you, even if they reframe those issues with false narratives and lies. Gaslighting is also a form of shaming: "You are SO crazy and you are so incapable because of it! In fact you should feel humiliated for being crazy and not seeing reality the way I see it!" - gaslighting is absolutely about shaming every time it is used.
And of course, there is so much more than this that they add, and keep adding. So maybe it isn't retaliation by shaming x 1,000. Maybe it is a lifetime of shaming you in whatever ways they think will work to their benefit in trouncing you with more shame.
It can get to the point where every interaction with the parent is about that parent humiliating the child in some way. The parent insisting they are superior and the authority over a grown adult child is shaming in and of itself (which is to say that continual infantilizing via lectures are just more shaming).
In art renditions, the scapegoat is weighed down with a heavy pack on his back (all of the things on his back are representative of the sins of the tribe), and of course, the scapegoat is sent out to the desert to die without food, water, and weighed down with all of the things the tribe finds shameful within themselves. Not being able to take shame, but dishing it out in spades would be one of the sins loaded onto the back of the scapegoat.
And are we surprised that children walk away from this, that mental health professionals tell these patients not to take the narcissist's shaming tactics seriously (because it means that the narcissist can't take any shame themselves and they have to give it to you instead), that your symptoms are never going to be met with empathy and compassion because all that the narcissist cares about is retaliation and shaming, and that to heal you, you should go "no contact"?
So what they can't take (criticism or activating their shame in any manner whatsoever, even a tiny amount of it), they do constantly to others and about others, without fail.
Hypocrisy and abuse always go together, fist in a glove with spiked knuckles. And hypocrisy is also the first sign you get that they are unethical. How hypocritical and unethical they go tells the tale of how disordered they are in their narcissism, especially if they go as far as sadism (which shows they probably have the malignant brand of narcissism, and have no remorse in hurting other people - these people can shame and hurt people all day long and sleep well at night).
Now when they shame, they expect their children to absorb it like a sponge, and even insist on it, and to not act like them (use the trauma response of "fight" at all, and not to be in the least rebellious about being shamed like the way the narcissist acts). They insist that their children be docile, polite little sycophants to the narcissistic parent's out-of-control rages with a lot of impoliteness and abuse. Some narcissistic parents will even insist that their children act like sponges for other abusers too.
Most abused children do end up as fawners or as freezers. That is why they end up with crippling symptoms eventually. And what do narcissistic parents do when their child has crippling symptoms? They pile on more abuse, retaliations for not acting like a perfect sycophant (which children with PTSD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder cannot do anyway - both disorders keep them from doing so).
THE IMPLICATIONS FOR CHILDREN
LIVING THROUGH THIS
LIVING THROUGH THIS
Fawning, more than any other response, will get you terrible symptoms faster and be harder to treat the more you are absorbing shaming and abuse.
The trauma response of freezing is what happens when you get to the point where you either feel totally powerless in the situation, and/or when PTSD symptoms start to manifest.
Now why would any parent want their child to freeze and get symptoms over them raging at them or shaming them?
Normal healthy parents don't even get to this stage, and they don't need scapegoats or even want them the way narcissistic and alcoholic parents need and want them.
The fact that narcissists have no empathy for their children, whether those children are fawning or freezing, is one reason why narcissists who gain ever more power can be so dangerous. Their ways of dealing with people in the world around them is to be aggressive, and to aggress upon, and to be so threatening as to get ever more fawning and freezing out of others, even though they would never do that themselves, even when they are on the world stage, such as a leader of a country.
Most narcissists on the world stage and in politics are invaders, the ultimates in aggression, as well as being triangulators and spouting false narratives.
And that should tell you what narcissists are about in their ultimate form.
A parent who has invaded their children and put shame and lots of unfounded unjust blame into them, that child will always manifest with trauma responses, and have trauma symptoms. In order to get those arrows out of the child, the child needs to be placed most often on a diet of "no contact" or "very low contact" with that parent, so that the arrows can be removed, and so that the slow process of healing can begin, and so that no more arrows will be shot into the child.
Yes, it is a win-lose war for narcissists about who can come out on top in terms of who shoots the most arrows of shame. And therefor a game too, with game plans on how they are going to trash your self esteem even if you are on the sidelines or gone, trying your best to live your life in peace. They don't want you in peace; they want a war based on their terms and even knowing that they have the overwhelming advantage over you. It's the elephant fighting the ant in many of these situations, and most ants will go underground or skittle away.
Which is to say that fawning is really unnatural, mostly only something human beings do in the animal world. Fawning is the response to kings and queens, to being a slave, to being deemed unimportant unless you are serving.
Parenting is supposed to be about entrusting the parent to take care of children, their physical needs, intellectual needs via school, but also doing the best by them emotionally and mentally. Getting them to be fawning during times of out-of-control rages, during abuse, during being insulted a lot, during gaslighting, is not good emotional care by a long shot. It is the opposite of good care, and the fact that many fawning abused children get horrific symptoms is proof of it.
And the other problem is that trying to get you into fawning positions takes place even when you are an adult too, even when you are 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 years of age. It never ends. And to keep you from being independent of their coercive controlling tactic of trying to force you to be submissive and fawning, they will withdraw love, make every attempt to withdraw others' love and attention too, withdraw family belonging, withdraw money and keep you out of the Will, to make every attempt to make it plain that your independence from fawning has no place in their life or the lives of other people you both know.
Yes this tactic is coercive control, and is likely to be illegal in most, if not all, states in the U.S.A. soon. It is now being reviewed in the states of New York and California. It is illegal in almost all of Western Europe. It means that narcissists will have a much more difficult time being who they are and using coercive control than they do now on the most vulnerable members of our society.
Anyway, good parenting never means becoming a king and queen of your children where you can tell them how to serve you and your entitlements and rages, and how to be good little servants at all times to your needs for narcissistic supply.
Parentifying roles are bad for your relationship with your children as well. The way children become capable full adults able to support themselves is by pursuing their own interests. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be teaching them some practical lessons and assigning chores, but if they are balking a lot, it will not do any good to force them or threaten them, and particularly shame them (for having interests? - trying to make them take on yours? Not a good idea).
In terms of healing, I think I've made it clear why having rageful abusive parents who can't live by their own standards in terms of shaming is pointless to try to fix or deal with any more, and why your healing should be done without their influence, comments, threats, and voice of disapproval in your head (of course they are going to disapprove of your healing - remember always that their agenda is to have you fawning always and forever, and in more refined ways, to get you to be the "fawniest of fawners" as Richard Grannon likes to say, so getting their voice out of your head any time it appears is necessary for a lot of survivors: telling the voice: "Go away!" - it does work after enough times).
Also the hypocrisy should create some disgust in you if you have ethics yourself, and if it doesn't, then consider that you have normalized hypocrisy being okay for parents, but not for children. Also consider whether you want to change it to not being normal at all (most parents, as I've said before, do not act this way).
The problem with fawning as a child to a parent's or caretaker's abuse, hypocrisies, shaming, rage-full-of-projection, and dangers is that a lot of fawners take fawning into other relationships with abusers too.
There are children who do fawning like narcissists do it, who only fawn to people with more money, more status, more power than they have, but talk about them with derision behind their back, and reveal little about themselves to these higher-on-the-hierarchy people that they want to pretend they are the "fawniest of fawners" to.
That's what seems to happen: the pretend fawners who are much more likely to become narcissists, and the real fawners who are likely to become victims of narcissistic partners and receive more abuse in marriage as well as in business. If you refuse to be more and more fawning, you will meet the same end as you did in childhood with your narcissistic parent.
The best way to avoid narcissists is to stay away from people who are overly charming (especially those who charm people to their faces but deride them behind their backs, any Jekyll/Hyde behavior), people who are hypocrites, people who are arrogant and constantly interrupting, and anyone who displays a lack of empathy. Some good people with PTSD get to a point where they don't feel anything, not joy, not sorry, not even empathy, so as with all things, it's important not to be absolute about it, and to keep enough of a distance for up to two years. Most narcissists show their true colors before a year, with the exception of the "I-plan-attacks" kinds of narcissists who can wait for two years to show their true colors.
However, the lack of empathy is the strongest indicator. To tell if the empathy is real or fake, you can go to THIS POST. But even there, there are no absolutes as you will read, which is why time and not rushing into anything is on your side.
Also beware of the pro-social narcissist, which Richard Grannon explains nicely in his video, The Nice Guy Narcissist | 14 Traits. I have been around this kind of narcissist myself, and it is extremely, extremely challenging and traumatizing, to say the least. He was a nice guy narcissist with all of the traits that Richard Grannon lays out, plus all of the traits of Malignant Narcissism, plus a significant drinking problem indicative of the middle stage of alcoholism. Awful. If anyone traumatized me the most in my life, it was this individual, and it only took 4 months to happen. If I could put up the biggest warning sign for anyone, it would be this type of individual that Richard Grannon describes. As far as I can see, it means boundaries set by police. I talk further about this at the end of my post.
Also, if this was me, I would go to domestic violence counseling with a certified domestic violence counselor, one who has experience with perpetrators and victims. Marriage/relationship counseling and mediation counseling is a disaster to go to with anyone who is highly manipulative and abusive behind closed doors, and many survivors end up in worse shape than they did before. Consider that abusive relationships are not really relationships; they are about one person trying to coercively control and hurt another person. It's never been a two-way street, and it never will be, which is why it is not really a relationship. It's one person giving into another, and it's about fawning, or being expected to fawn, to all of the shaming the narcissist does over, and over again without relief and without end.
If it is a relationship, it is deadly, with way more dangers and symptoms than most people can handle. I do believe, over time, that it can degrade your morals and ethics too (who hasn't lied to a narcissist or a dangerous person just to keep safe, for instance? ... Who hasn't gotten really angry at them after being raged 100 times by them, and being baited?). So it's no good.
If this was me, I would listen as much as I could to the counselor as I could, and stop listening to the perpetrator as much as I could too. Abusers are extremely manipulative during this period, and you don't want to get talked into things by them any more. In healthy relationships, luring and persuasion is not necessary; relationships feel a lot better without that. Abusive relationships mostly feel bad, and you get symptoms around them. Listen to what therapists say about cognitive dissonance in particular (which is how we put ourselves in danger over and over again), and about triangulation and gaslighting. Know that most abusers will promise things like "I will never do this again" - but they either don't mean it when they say it, or they are incapable of keeping promises (usually both). Again, they can't deal with shame in a healthy way, and most narcissists do not go to therapy to get more healthy, so breaking the promise and raging is likely to come up again if they feel at all shamed again in their life.
A list of domestic violence counselors in your area can usually be found at your local domestic violence center or domestic violence shelter. You can also get, in some instances, some limited free therapy and legal advice at either one.
Not allowing yourself to be abused and saying no to abuse is only part of the picture because the brain has a way of storing traumatic events that make you feel that you are in continual danger, just like you were when you were with your perpetrator. And some of it is based on reality: stalking, stealing, home invasion, getting other people to attack you is part of the way that offenders keep trying to make you feel you are in danger, and keep adding to it to put you in constant turmoil. Abuse escalates always.
And for all of that, you need police investigations, recording what has happened with police, and police protection, plus a good home security system with cameras, preferably cameras from different kinds of manufacturers (even police will tell you that you should do this).
The trauma response of freezing is what happens when you get to the point where you either feel totally powerless in the situation, and/or when PTSD symptoms start to manifest.
Now why would any parent want their child to freeze and get symptoms over them raging at them or shaming them?
Normal healthy parents don't even get to this stage, and they don't need scapegoats or even want them the way narcissistic and alcoholic parents need and want them.
The fact that narcissists have no empathy for their children, whether those children are fawning or freezing, is one reason why narcissists who gain ever more power can be so dangerous. Their ways of dealing with people in the world around them is to be aggressive, and to aggress upon, and to be so threatening as to get ever more fawning and freezing out of others, even though they would never do that themselves, even when they are on the world stage, such as a leader of a country.
Most narcissists on the world stage and in politics are invaders, the ultimates in aggression, as well as being triangulators and spouting false narratives.
And that should tell you what narcissists are about in their ultimate form.
A parent who has invaded their children and put shame and lots of unfounded unjust blame into them, that child will always manifest with trauma responses, and have trauma symptoms. In order to get those arrows out of the child, the child needs to be placed most often on a diet of "no contact" or "very low contact" with that parent, so that the arrows can be removed, and so that the slow process of healing can begin, and so that no more arrows will be shot into the child.
Yes, it is a win-lose war for narcissists about who can come out on top in terms of who shoots the most arrows of shame. And therefor a game too, with game plans on how they are going to trash your self esteem even if you are on the sidelines or gone, trying your best to live your life in peace. They don't want you in peace; they want a war based on their terms and even knowing that they have the overwhelming advantage over you. It's the elephant fighting the ant in many of these situations, and most ants will go underground or skittle away.
Which is to say that fawning is really unnatural, mostly only something human beings do in the animal world. Fawning is the response to kings and queens, to being a slave, to being deemed unimportant unless you are serving.
Parenting is supposed to be about entrusting the parent to take care of children, their physical needs, intellectual needs via school, but also doing the best by them emotionally and mentally. Getting them to be fawning during times of out-of-control rages, during abuse, during being insulted a lot, during gaslighting, is not good emotional care by a long shot. It is the opposite of good care, and the fact that many fawning abused children get horrific symptoms is proof of it.
And the other problem is that trying to get you into fawning positions takes place even when you are an adult too, even when you are 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 years of age. It never ends. And to keep you from being independent of their coercive controlling tactic of trying to force you to be submissive and fawning, they will withdraw love, make every attempt to withdraw others' love and attention too, withdraw family belonging, withdraw money and keep you out of the Will, to make every attempt to make it plain that your independence from fawning has no place in their life or the lives of other people you both know.
Yes this tactic is coercive control, and is likely to be illegal in most, if not all, states in the U.S.A. soon. It is now being reviewed in the states of New York and California. It is illegal in almost all of Western Europe. It means that narcissists will have a much more difficult time being who they are and using coercive control than they do now on the most vulnerable members of our society.
Anyway, good parenting never means becoming a king and queen of your children where you can tell them how to serve you and your entitlements and rages, and how to be good little servants at all times to your needs for narcissistic supply.
Parentifying roles are bad for your relationship with your children as well. The way children become capable full adults able to support themselves is by pursuing their own interests. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be teaching them some practical lessons and assigning chores, but if they are balking a lot, it will not do any good to force them or threaten them, and particularly shame them (for having interests? - trying to make them take on yours? Not a good idea).
In terms of healing, I think I've made it clear why having rageful abusive parents who can't live by their own standards in terms of shaming is pointless to try to fix or deal with any more, and why your healing should be done without their influence, comments, threats, and voice of disapproval in your head (of course they are going to disapprove of your healing - remember always that their agenda is to have you fawning always and forever, and in more refined ways, to get you to be the "fawniest of fawners" as Richard Grannon likes to say, so getting their voice out of your head any time it appears is necessary for a lot of survivors: telling the voice: "Go away!" - it does work after enough times).
Also the hypocrisy should create some disgust in you if you have ethics yourself, and if it doesn't, then consider that you have normalized hypocrisy being okay for parents, but not for children. Also consider whether you want to change it to not being normal at all (most parents, as I've said before, do not act this way).
The problem with fawning as a child to a parent's or caretaker's abuse, hypocrisies, shaming, rage-full-of-projection, and dangers is that a lot of fawners take fawning into other relationships with abusers too.
There are children who do fawning like narcissists do it, who only fawn to people with more money, more status, more power than they have, but talk about them with derision behind their back, and reveal little about themselves to these higher-on-the-hierarchy people that they want to pretend they are the "fawniest of fawners" to.
That's what seems to happen: the pretend fawners who are much more likely to become narcissists, and the real fawners who are likely to become victims of narcissistic partners and receive more abuse in marriage as well as in business. If you refuse to be more and more fawning, you will meet the same end as you did in childhood with your narcissistic parent.
The best way to avoid narcissists is to stay away from people who are overly charming (especially those who charm people to their faces but deride them behind their backs, any Jekyll/Hyde behavior), people who are hypocrites, people who are arrogant and constantly interrupting, and anyone who displays a lack of empathy. Some good people with PTSD get to a point where they don't feel anything, not joy, not sorry, not even empathy, so as with all things, it's important not to be absolute about it, and to keep enough of a distance for up to two years. Most narcissists show their true colors before a year, with the exception of the "I-plan-attacks" kinds of narcissists who can wait for two years to show their true colors.
However, the lack of empathy is the strongest indicator. To tell if the empathy is real or fake, you can go to THIS POST. But even there, there are no absolutes as you will read, which is why time and not rushing into anything is on your side.
Also beware of the pro-social narcissist, which Richard Grannon explains nicely in his video, The Nice Guy Narcissist | 14 Traits. I have been around this kind of narcissist myself, and it is extremely, extremely challenging and traumatizing, to say the least. He was a nice guy narcissist with all of the traits that Richard Grannon lays out, plus all of the traits of Malignant Narcissism, plus a significant drinking problem indicative of the middle stage of alcoholism. Awful. If anyone traumatized me the most in my life, it was this individual, and it only took 4 months to happen. If I could put up the biggest warning sign for anyone, it would be this type of individual that Richard Grannon describes. As far as I can see, it means boundaries set by police. I talk further about this at the end of my post.
Also, if this was me, I would go to domestic violence counseling with a certified domestic violence counselor, one who has experience with perpetrators and victims. Marriage/relationship counseling and mediation counseling is a disaster to go to with anyone who is highly manipulative and abusive behind closed doors, and many survivors end up in worse shape than they did before. Consider that abusive relationships are not really relationships; they are about one person trying to coercively control and hurt another person. It's never been a two-way street, and it never will be, which is why it is not really a relationship. It's one person giving into another, and it's about fawning, or being expected to fawn, to all of the shaming the narcissist does over, and over again without relief and without end.
If it is a relationship, it is deadly, with way more dangers and symptoms than most people can handle. I do believe, over time, that it can degrade your morals and ethics too (who hasn't lied to a narcissist or a dangerous person just to keep safe, for instance? ... Who hasn't gotten really angry at them after being raged 100 times by them, and being baited?). So it's no good.
If this was me, I would listen as much as I could to the counselor as I could, and stop listening to the perpetrator as much as I could too. Abusers are extremely manipulative during this period, and you don't want to get talked into things by them any more. In healthy relationships, luring and persuasion is not necessary; relationships feel a lot better without that. Abusive relationships mostly feel bad, and you get symptoms around them. Listen to what therapists say about cognitive dissonance in particular (which is how we put ourselves in danger over and over again), and about triangulation and gaslighting. Know that most abusers will promise things like "I will never do this again" - but they either don't mean it when they say it, or they are incapable of keeping promises (usually both). Again, they can't deal with shame in a healthy way, and most narcissists do not go to therapy to get more healthy, so breaking the promise and raging is likely to come up again if they feel at all shamed again in their life.
A list of domestic violence counselors in your area can usually be found at your local domestic violence center or domestic violence shelter. You can also get, in some instances, some limited free therapy and legal advice at either one.
Not allowing yourself to be abused and saying no to abuse is only part of the picture because the brain has a way of storing traumatic events that make you feel that you are in continual danger, just like you were when you were with your perpetrator. And some of it is based on reality: stalking, stealing, home invasion, getting other people to attack you is part of the way that offenders keep trying to make you feel you are in danger, and keep adding to it to put you in constant turmoil. Abuse escalates always.
And for all of that, you need police investigations, recording what has happened with police, and police protection, plus a good home security system with cameras, preferably cameras from different kinds of manufacturers (even police will tell you that you should do this).
You need to do what you can do to keep from being attacked again, and police have the best advice for that.
Remember that narcissists do everything they can not to be shamed even one more time by you, and so you have the right to protect yourself from the myriad and continued onslaught of attacks and deep betrayals they keep giving you (retaliations x 1,000). They usually want separation from you for not fawning. You can have separation from them, including stringent boundaries to keep safe from attacks on all the tactics and people they use for these ends (and I bet you'll get attacks coming from all kinds of directions - and some of them break the law to attack you, especially the not-too-brilliant people with criminal mindsets).
PTSD, hypervigilance, a rapid heartbeat, and all of the symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder are normal responses and normal symptoms when you are enduring people attacking you from all the angles narcissists and sociopaths love to use.
However, if you have all of your protections in place and your home and life is peaceful (at last!), and you still feel a lot of symptoms (PTSD and/or Generalized Anxiety Disorder), and you haven't experienced any danger from attackers for several years, if this was me, and I could afford it, I would also go to a trauma therapist.
In trauma therapy, you learn that your trauma symptoms are explainable by the events you lived, and how the brain functions in keeping those trauma experiences alive and practically branded into your brain (like a never-ending, if somewhat healed, wound, or nightmare) in your psyche. Vagus Nerve exercises and EMDR are usually highly effective, especially if your PTSD and/or your Generalized Anxiety Disorder are through the roof. How effective they are has to do with how traumatized you are, how bad your PTSD or Generalized Anxiety Disorder is, whether you have disassociation experiences, whether you have substance addictions (common for trauma patients), or whether you have other kinds of addictions not related to substances, and your usual coping mechanisms for dealing with trauma. And I bet anything that hypervigilance, sleep disturbances and nightmares are still part of the picture and the hardest to resolve.
A lot of the approach of trauma therapy is not focused on what you did (not "Why did you stay in an abusive relationship so long and even go back? Don't you know that abusive relationships escalate? Why would you do something so hair-brained?", but the opposite). The approach is: "What did you live through?" This is even the approach to alcoholism. They aren't going to say, "How could you go to rehab 38 times, spend your parent's money to do so, and not come out with good results?" In fact, all kinds of therapists, not just trauma therapists, have learned that this doesn't work. It increases the shaming. Even alcoholism is treated as: "What kind of environment did you grow up in?" And studies have shown that most alcoholics grow up in environments that are traumatic. There is a direct correlation between alcoholism and trauma, and alcoholism and child abuse environments (another link and another link), even if they weren't the ones who were bullied.
And I'm pretty sure a number of you will be asking if narcissism is one of those "What have you lived through?" conditions too? Yes. But you cannot treat your attackers. Even showing them empathy opens up a lot of lines for you to be attacked by them again (yes, they even exploit your empathy for continued attacks). The people that they should be going to are therapists - someone who specializes in treating Cluster B Personality Disorders, or who specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, anger management classes, and possibly Schema Therapy (it sometimes helps them), plus a host of other therapies if needed including Dialectic Behavior Therapy and Trauma Therapy.
But it is not for you to suggest or to be at all involved unless you can do a family-wide intervention (a hard thing to pull off with narcissists especially - they are more likely to walk out and say they never liked any of you anyway). Be aware that most of them don't go to therapy because they are happy blaming and dumping all of their problems on to whoever they have adopted as their scapegoats (usually one of their children, an ex, a sibling, and one of the workers in their place of employment).
If they think it is easier for them to always believe someone else is at fault for everything they do that causes them to be angry, rageful, discarding, bullying, envious, depressed and attacking, they reason they don't need any therapy.
If they believe they can talk you into their anger, rages, discards, bullying, competitiveness, depression, broken promises, instability, inability to feel empathy, and attacking fests are always your fault, which they really do believe they can talk you into, then they feel they don't need therapy either.
They do find out eventually that this won't work, but in the meantime, they live in a fantasy world about this.
Either way, this is not of your concern. Your concern is to get healthy, to address all of the debilitating symptoms, to figure out who you are and discover all of your talents outside of the narcissists shadow, and to find a peaceful way forward. PTSD does and can get worse, so it is critical to re-wire and get on a healing path.
For a lot of survivors of narcissistic manipulations, therapy is a god-send.
As far as a new social group after you go no-contact or the narcissistic parent has discarded you, which many survivors find they want and need, fellow survivors and obvious no-B.S. empaths are also a god-send. For me personally, this is when my life felt like it was being put back together, and put back together in a way that was better than before. I noticed that a lot of my new relationships were with people who were a lot like me, in dress, in hair, in what they lived through, what their interests were (and the arts tended to dominate). A lot of survivors of narcissistic abuse are artists: what a great find and revelation!
I noticed, most of all, that my sleep improved, and it was always disturbed, even as far back as when I was a three year old child living in my first home, an apartment building. I had constant nightmares about being picked at and slowly eaten alive by crows more than once. I remember the nightmares more than I remember specific events, though I do remember how the apartment was laid out, that the stairs were in the center of the building, that there were four apartments in our unit, that our bathroom was long and skinny with the sink closest to the door, that clothes were hung out on a line outside my bedroom window, and that my parents' friends with a girl near my age lived downstairs on the opposite side of the building (kitty corner, via length, not width).
My nightmares increased afterwards in our new home, to the point where it was often impossible to sleep except in the beginning hours.
It finally told me what I needed to know: "what I lived through".
Every symptom that I had could be attributed to what I lived through, which didn't diminish the symptoms right away, but at least I knew where they came from and I could name them, and categorize them, and file them away, and not be confused or think about them as much, which, in and of itself, helped in diminishing them (except when they were needed - which I explain in the next chapter).
For instance, I found that when I was around narcissists who weren't criminals, I always experienced headaches, and sometimes mini flashes of dizziness. Narcissists can be fun, and they can have an acerbic wit, and I did have fun sometimes when I was with them on a jaunt, but I would always come home with a headache, exhaustion, feeling unheard or silenced in one way or another, and those flashes of dizziness. It wasn't a good feeling, no matter how much I laughed, no matter how light-hearted I was, no matter how much I believed I had a good time.
Around the criminal types of narcissists, I experienced high anxiety and a feeling that my head was buzzing (as if nerves could "buzz" in your head like bees).
I tend to stay away from people now who give me headaches or where I get that "buzz" anxiety feeling. And usually those symptoms are dead-on accurate in terms of who I find they eventually are. I will not be pushed into relating to people I don't want to relate to either. Because my own experiences and system are way better detectors than anyone else. Most of us are not good detectors of toxicity and toxic people, especially people who are enchanted with any narcissist, and I have been led astray too by all kinds of do-gooders as well as people who liked seeing me being in traumatic situations, but now I have to rely on symptoms to clue me in. I have also tested some flying monkeys of narcissists' I know (ones who I have some respect for) just to see where their detection abilities are: not so good. It convinces me even more that I need to do this on my own terms.
So symptoms are not always a bad thing: they are our warning systems not to get too close, to keep our guard up, and definitely not to fawn.
There are other things I have done to heal, and to be on a healing journey in general, and I may share some of those anecdotes in the future. But the ones I have listed here are the major ones.
I would say that finding out who you are without narcissists' constant comments and shaming is one of the first steps to living a better life. I'd bet you'd find you are a kinder person than you ever thought (narcissists have an agenda to always paint you as unkind, selfish and unhinged which you can't find out is untrue unless you separate from them completely, even when you have other people in your life constantly countering what the narcissist says, which, in my case, I did have - my father, my spouse, and other people who knew me well ... yup, I still wondered whether narcissists were telling the truth about me, and now I don't). You can find you are way more sane and able than the narcissist painted you as too (again, most narcissists will paint you as insane so that you put your decision-making in their hands and so that they can continue their power, control and isolating agendas). And you can find that you are way more talented and ambitious than you thought you were too (narcissists keep trying to make you feel too inept mentally, emotionally and physically to reach career and lifestyle goals). - As so many psychologists say, "Don't take what they have to say personally; take it as their disorder speaking through them."
Finding out who you are and what you are capable of is one of the joys in life, and if that is being strung up and hobbled, break the chains of the trauma bond to experience what life truly has to offer.
Most of all, realize what shaming does to children, and don't pass it down to the next generation.
Shaming Children Is Emotionally Abusive (Children respect those who respect them.) - by Karyl McBride Ph.D. for Psychology Today
Hidden Damage: Understanding the Toxicity of Shaming Children - from the administrators of Empathetic Parenting Counseling
Parental Shaming vs. Encouragement (What feels better, works better.) - by Steven Stosny, Ph.D.
excerpt:
... Encouragement tends to evoke cooperation, almost as consistently as shaming evokes resistance. ...
How to Avoid Shaming Your Child – And Keep Strong, Loving Boundaries - by Karen Young, psychologist, for Hey Sigmund
Shaming Children Leaves Scars on the Brain that Adversely Affect Emotional Health - by Jennifer Fraser, PhD. for Emotional Intelligence Magazine
Child Shaming: How We’re Ruining Our Own Children’s Future - by Swati Reddy for K8 School excerpt:
... Encouragement tends to evoke cooperation, almost as consistently as shaming evokes resistance. ...
How to Avoid Shaming Your Child – And Keep Strong, Loving Boundaries - by Karen Young, psychologist, for Hey Sigmund
Shaming Children Leaves Scars on the Brain that Adversely Affect Emotional Health - by Jennifer Fraser, PhD. for Emotional Intelligence Magazine
Why Shaming Your Children Doesn’t Change Their Behavior - by Rachel Tomlinson, Registered Psychologist for Baby Chick
excerpt:
Shaming kids is not a great discipline tool. It can be easy to slip into shaming comments out of frustration. You want to try and get some kind of response or reaction from your child. Or perhaps it was the way you were parented. You might say things like:
“You’re such a liar. I can’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.”
“Why are you crying? It’s not that bad!”
“All you do is whine and complain. You’re being annoying.”
When Parents Publicly Shame Their Kids - by Susanna Schrobsdorff for Time Magazine
excerpt:
The story was so disturbing, it instantly became the latest parable of punishment in the digital age. A dad in Tacoma, Wash., filmed his 13-year-old daughter with her long hair cut off and piled on the floor around her. She was being punished for sending a boy a racy photo. “Man, you lost all that beautiful hair,” says his voice in the background. “Was it worth it?”
That video went viral–especially after news spread that within days, she had jumped to her death from a highway overpass. Outraged YouTube viewers called for the father to be criminally prosecuted. There were headlines all around the world: Teen commits suicide following father’s public shaming.
The Real Problem With Publicly Shaming Your Kids - by Elizabeth Flora Ross for Yahoo News
excerpt:
... Dr. Shefali Tsaberry, author, speaker and clinical psychologist, is not comfortable with the shaming of children in any manner for any reason. She describes shame as toxic. “[Shame] creates disconnection, a betrayal of trust. Shaming never works. Connection is the only way.”
Katie Hurley, LCSW and author of “The Happy Kid Handbook” agrees.
“Parenting has never been easy, and parents today are navigating new territory,” Hurley says. “It’s difficult to say what triggers one parent to take to the Internet to shame a child for‘misbehavior’ while another confronts the issue in the safety of the home, but there does appear to be a combination of anger and control beneath the surface of these posts.”
Children of all ages make mistakes. Trial and error is the business of growing up, and they can’t get it right every single time. Shaming them, online or just in person, causes significant damage to the parent-child relationship. The parent-child relationship should focus on unconditional love and trust.
What’s the Best Way to Discipline My Child? - HealthyChildren.org, The American Academy of Pediatrics
excerpt:
As a parent, one of your jobs to teach your child to behave. It's a job that takes time and patience. But, it helps to learn the effective and healthy discipline strategies.
excerpt:
Shaming kids is not a great discipline tool. It can be easy to slip into shaming comments out of frustration. You want to try and get some kind of response or reaction from your child. Or perhaps it was the way you were parented. You might say things like:
“You’re such a liar. I can’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.”
“Why are you crying? It’s not that bad!”
“All you do is whine and complain. You’re being annoying.”
When Parents Publicly Shame Their Kids - by Susanna Schrobsdorff for Time Magazine
excerpt:
The story was so disturbing, it instantly became the latest parable of punishment in the digital age. A dad in Tacoma, Wash., filmed his 13-year-old daughter with her long hair cut off and piled on the floor around her. She was being punished for sending a boy a racy photo. “Man, you lost all that beautiful hair,” says his voice in the background. “Was it worth it?”
That video went viral–especially after news spread that within days, she had jumped to her death from a highway overpass. Outraged YouTube viewers called for the father to be criminally prosecuted. There were headlines all around the world: Teen commits suicide following father’s public shaming.
The Real Problem With Publicly Shaming Your Kids - by Elizabeth Flora Ross for Yahoo News
excerpt:
... Dr. Shefali Tsaberry, author, speaker and clinical psychologist, is not comfortable with the shaming of children in any manner for any reason. She describes shame as toxic. “[Shame] creates disconnection, a betrayal of trust. Shaming never works. Connection is the only way.”
Katie Hurley, LCSW and author of “The Happy Kid Handbook” agrees.
“Parenting has never been easy, and parents today are navigating new territory,” Hurley says. “It’s difficult to say what triggers one parent to take to the Internet to shame a child for‘misbehavior’ while another confronts the issue in the safety of the home, but there does appear to be a combination of anger and control beneath the surface of these posts.”
Children of all ages make mistakes. Trial and error is the business of growing up, and they can’t get it right every single time. Shaming them, online or just in person, causes significant damage to the parent-child relationship. The parent-child relationship should focus on unconditional love and trust.
What’s the Best Way to Discipline My Child? - HealthyChildren.org, The American Academy of Pediatrics
excerpt:
As a parent, one of your jobs to teach your child to behave. It's a job that takes time and patience. But, it helps to learn the effective and healthy discipline strategies.
Here are some tips from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on the best ways to help your child learn acceptable behavior as they grow. ...
... Verbal abuse: How words hurt. Yelling at children and using words to cause emotional pain or shame also has been found to be ineffective and harmful. Harsh verbal discipline, even by parents who are otherwise warm and loving, can lead to more misbehavior and mental health problems in children. Research shows that harsh verbal discipline, which becomes more common as children get older, may lead to more behavior problems and symptoms of depression in teens. ...
Such a Shame: A Consideration of Shame and Shaming Mechanisms in Families - U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs
excerpt:
... Verbal abuse: How words hurt. Yelling at children and using words to cause emotional pain or shame also has been found to be ineffective and harmful. Harsh verbal discipline, even by parents who are otherwise warm and loving, can lead to more misbehavior and mental health problems in children. Research shows that harsh verbal discipline, which becomes more common as children get older, may lead to more behavior problems and symptoms of depression in teens. ...
Such a Shame: A Consideration of Shame and Shaming Mechanisms in Families - U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs
excerpt:
This paper focuses on shame in the family context and how the shaming of children is a core component of child abuse and its effects.
... Although shaming by a parent toward a child is important for the development of certain positive qualities in a child, toxic shaming occurs when it is performed for the benefit of the parent rather than the child. This occurs when the parent uses shaming toward the child as a regulator of self-esteem in the parent, as a means of managing past suffering, and as a means of controlling the child. The key feature of excessive shaming is emphasis on the failure of the child in the eyes of the parent, accompanied by turning away and conditional love. The most severe consequences of shaming are self-attack, the disowning of the self, and the splitting of the self. ...
... Although shaming by a parent toward a child is important for the development of certain positive qualities in a child, toxic shaming occurs when it is performed for the benefit of the parent rather than the child. This occurs when the parent uses shaming toward the child as a regulator of self-esteem in the parent, as a means of managing past suffering, and as a means of controlling the child. The key feature of excessive shaming is emphasis on the failure of the child in the eyes of the parent, accompanied by turning away and conditional love. The most severe consequences of shaming are self-attack, the disowning of the self, and the splitting of the self. ...
Hidden Damage: Understanding the Toxicity of Shaming Children - from the administrators of Empathetic Parenting Counseling
"Good" Children - at What Price? (The Secret Cost of Shame) - by Robin Grille and Beth Macgregor for The Natural Child Project (article discusses research on the subject)
Child Shaming Quotes - Google
Break the Shaming Cycle - by Dena Landing for Esme
excerpt:
... Shaming can take the form of telling your child that he’s careless because he knocked over a chair, associating a onetime action with a negative character trait. Parents engage in shaming in an attempt to control their children’s behavior, but it can have lifelong negative consequences.
Why is shaming so damaging?
Shaming your child creates an environment in which she feels like she can never make a mistake. Because children naturally want to avoid being shamed again, they begin to fear ever doing anything wrong, which could lead them to avoid challenges or new situations. ...
Raising Resilient Kids in a Fat Shaming World - by Judith Matz, LCSW for NationalEatingDisorders.org
Why body shaming children is a strict NO. Read about the adverse physical and mental health consequences (Fat-shaming children and adolescents is becoming a common phenomenon. Worryingly, it can lead to serious psychological consequences. Read on to find out why) - by Team Parent Circle for Parent Circle
Shaming Kids: Good Parenting or Not? - by Ronit Baras for Family Matters, Practical Parenting Guide
excerpt:
... Shaming kids is a form of bullying
Shaming kids is an act of bullying. Bullying is picking on someone else’s weakness. This is what parents are doing by shaming children. They pick on their kids’ greatest weaknesses (e.g. the fear of being ridiculed, or the fear of being disrespected). ...
... The fear of punishment can only go so far
Shaming Children So Parents Will Pay the School Lunch Bill - by Bettina Elias Siegel for The New York Times
excerpt:
... On the first day of seventh grade last fall, Caitlin Dolan lined up for lunch at her school in Canonsburg, Pa. But when the cashier discovered she had an unpaid food bill from last year, the tray of pizza, cucumber slices, an apple and chocolate milk was thrown in the trash.
Child Shaming Quotes - Google
Break the Shaming Cycle - by Dena Landing for Esme
excerpt:
... Shaming can take the form of telling your child that he’s careless because he knocked over a chair, associating a onetime action with a negative character trait. Parents engage in shaming in an attempt to control their children’s behavior, but it can have lifelong negative consequences.
Why is shaming so damaging?
Shaming your child creates an environment in which she feels like she can never make a mistake. Because children naturally want to avoid being shamed again, they begin to fear ever doing anything wrong, which could lead them to avoid challenges or new situations. ...
Raising Resilient Kids in a Fat Shaming World - by Judith Matz, LCSW for NationalEatingDisorders.org
Why body shaming children is a strict NO. Read about the adverse physical and mental health consequences (Fat-shaming children and adolescents is becoming a common phenomenon. Worryingly, it can lead to serious psychological consequences. Read on to find out why) - by Team Parent Circle for Parent Circle
Shaming Kids: Good Parenting or Not? - by Ronit Baras for Family Matters, Practical Parenting Guide
excerpt:
... Shaming kids is a form of bullying
Shaming kids is an act of bullying. Bullying is picking on someone else’s weakness. This is what parents are doing by shaming children. They pick on their kids’ greatest weaknesses (e.g. the fear of being ridiculed, or the fear of being disrespected). ...
... The fear of punishment can only go so far
The fear of punishment can only go so far. Nobody misbehaves for the sole purpose of misbehaving. Unaddressed, the real reason for their behavior will make them do it again. For example, no person on earth has stopped speeding after being caught speeding once, because the need to speed has not changed!
The fear of pain can only last so long. ...
Shaming Children So Parents Will Pay the School Lunch Bill - by Bettina Elias Siegel for The New York Times
excerpt:
... On the first day of seventh grade last fall, Caitlin Dolan lined up for lunch at her school in Canonsburg, Pa. But when the cashier discovered she had an unpaid food bill from last year, the tray of pizza, cucumber slices, an apple and chocolate milk was thrown in the trash.
“I was so embarrassed,” said Caitlin, who said other students had stared. “It’s really weird being denied food in front of everyone. They all talk about you.”
Caitlin’s mother, Merinda Durila, said that her daughter qualified for free lunch, but that a paperwork mix-up had created an outstanding balance. Ms. Durila said her child had come home in tears after being humiliated in front of her friends.
Holding children publicly accountable for unpaid school lunch bills — by throwing away their food, providing a less desirable alternative lunch or branding them with markers — is often referred to as “lunch shaming.” ...
10 Reasons Why We Need To Stop Public Shaming Of Kids - by Fiona Peacock for BellyBelly
excerpt:
... Your child needs to be able to trust you, to know that you love her unconditionally, and to know that she can come to you with any problem for help. By shaming your child, you’re burning that bridge. Your child simply isn’t going to seek you out for help, support and guidance again for fear or publicly humiliated. ...
10 Reasons Why We Need To Stop Public Shaming Of Kids - by Fiona Peacock for BellyBelly
excerpt:
... Your child needs to be able to trust you, to know that you love her unconditionally, and to know that she can come to you with any problem for help. By shaming your child, you’re burning that bridge. Your child simply isn’t going to seek you out for help, support and guidance again for fear or publicly humiliated. ...
Reduce Shame: 21 Things Your Child Needs To Hear (Is your child stuck in the “I’m a bad kid” cycle? Caregivers can reduce the effects of shame, using these phrases to remind your child that they are seen, known, and loved.) - by Nicole Scwartz, LMFT, for Imperfect Families
Why Shaming Kids For Bad Behavior Doesn’t Work - by Tricia Gross for ABC News, San Diego
... Researchers have found that chastising, belittling and punishing children to make them feel bad — shaming them, in other words — might do more harm than good.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has a strong stance on the benefits of effective discipline, which refers to respectful discipline applied in a consistent, firm, and fair way.
AAP research shows that yelling at or shaming children is minimally effective in the short-term and ineffective in the long-term. The organization states that doing so puts children at a higher risk of adverse behavioral, cognitive, psycho-social and emotional outcomes.
Similarly, Claire McCarthy, MD, senior faculty editor of Harvard Health Publishing, states that there is a fine line between criticizing and shaming a child. McCarthy notes that shaming kids can cause issues with self-esteem. They might come to believe there is something inherently wrong with who they are or that they are not capable of changing. ...
Why Shaming Kids Doesn’t Work Long-Term - by Heidi Rogers for HeidiRogers.com
Stop Shaming Kids - Sign here! - by Lori Petro, Amy Bryant, & Robbyn Peters Bennett #StopShaming Kids Petition HERE
From the site:
Why Shaming Kids For Bad Behavior Doesn’t Work - by Tricia Gross for ABC News, San Diego
... Researchers have found that chastising, belittling and punishing children to make them feel bad — shaming them, in other words — might do more harm than good.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has a strong stance on the benefits of effective discipline, which refers to respectful discipline applied in a consistent, firm, and fair way.
AAP research shows that yelling at or shaming children is minimally effective in the short-term and ineffective in the long-term. The organization states that doing so puts children at a higher risk of adverse behavioral, cognitive, psycho-social and emotional outcomes.
Similarly, Claire McCarthy, MD, senior faculty editor of Harvard Health Publishing, states that there is a fine line between criticizing and shaming a child. McCarthy notes that shaming kids can cause issues with self-esteem. They might come to believe there is something inherently wrong with who they are or that they are not capable of changing. ...
Why Shaming Kids Doesn’t Work Long-Term - by Heidi Rogers for HeidiRogers.com
Stop Shaming Kids - Sign here! - by Lori Petro, Amy Bryant, & Robbyn Peters Bennett #StopShaming Kids Petition HERE
From the site:
Child maltreatment constitutes all forms of physical and emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, or exploitation resulting in harm to the child’s health, survival, development, or dignity. Clearly, publicly shaming a minor is an abuse of power and a form of child maltreatment. To protect the basic human rights of children, we ask that Facebook and other social media sites establish parameters which prohibit public shaming of minors via photo/video and allow users to flag “suspected child maltreatment,” and/or “bullying of a minor.” Please help us make Facebook and other social media sites safe for our children.
The Toxic Effects of Shaming Children - by Rebecca Eanes for Creative Child
Are You Teaching Your Kids To Body-shame? - by Ashley Brantley for bcbstnews (News Center of Tennessee)
How To Reduce Your Child's Exposure To Shame - by Rebecca Eanes for Generation Mindful
excerpt:
Shame eats away at a child’s core emotional need to feel loved and connected, leaving them feeling small, unworthy, flawed, and unacceptable. As we learn to heal our shame wounds, we give our children chances for a healthy and happy emotional life. Here are 3 shame-free discipline tactics. ...
Are you food shaming your child? It’s time to stop! - by Ginny Jones for More-Love.org
For an opposite view on all of this, here is this article: Danielle Smith: Public shaming of children is sometimes justifiable - by Danielle Smith for Global News
excerpt:
A Windsor, Ont. mother who took to social media to publicly shame her misbehaving kids got more than she bargained for.
The Toxic Effects of Shaming Children - by Rebecca Eanes for Creative Child
Are You Teaching Your Kids To Body-shame? - by Ashley Brantley for bcbstnews (News Center of Tennessee)
How To Reduce Your Child's Exposure To Shame - by Rebecca Eanes for Generation Mindful
excerpt:
Shame eats away at a child’s core emotional need to feel loved and connected, leaving them feeling small, unworthy, flawed, and unacceptable. As we learn to heal our shame wounds, we give our children chances for a healthy and happy emotional life. Here are 3 shame-free discipline tactics. ...
Are you food shaming your child? It’s time to stop! - by Ginny Jones for More-Love.org
10 Ways You're Accidentally Shaming Your Toddler - by Dina Leygerman for Romper.com
excerpt:
Toddlers are incredibly complicated humans. After the first year of remarkable milestones, they start growing into their own personalities and focusing on mastering specific capabilities. Toddlerhood is also the time when kids start testing boundaries and learn the power of their actions and words. While it can be exciting for both parents and kids, it can also be frustrating and difficult for both. It’s no wonder so many of us parents don't realize we are shaming our toddlers. In the end, it seems, those of us in charge of toddlers must walk the thin line between teachable moments and losing all of our damn self-control. ...
For an opposite view on all of this, here is this article: Danielle Smith: Public shaming of children is sometimes justifiable - by Danielle Smith for Global News
excerpt:
A Windsor, Ont. mother who took to social media to publicly shame her misbehaving kids got more than she bargained for.
She didn’t expect the posting to go viral or for people to misunderstand her intentions. Her post showed a picture of her kids walking seven kilometers and carrying a sign that said, “being bad and rude to our bus driver, mom is making us walk.”
She said she had them carry a sign because she lives in the kind of community where people would stop to offer a ride and she wanted her boys to learn a lesson. It went viral, with 28,000 people reposting the image and giving it a thumbs up. But, she also received death threats and was reported to Children’s Services. ...
Another opposing view from most of the experts listed above: What is the Deal With Shaming Parents in Our Society? - by Mercedes Samudio, Shame-Proof Parenting and EMDR for Parents for Shame Proof Parenting
excerpt:
... To all the parents and families who chose to hit, yell, or discipline their children the best way they know how this video is for you. ...
Another opposing view from most of the experts listed above: What is the Deal With Shaming Parents in Our Society? - by Mercedes Samudio, Shame-Proof Parenting and EMDR for Parents for Shame Proof Parenting
excerpt:
... To all the parents and families who chose to hit, yell, or discipline their children the best way they know how this video is for you. ...
FOUND ON FACEBOOK
Looking at the last things you found on Facebook, it says that my feelings, desires and needs matter even if they conflict with other people's. No one had conflict with those things in my family. They just didn't care about any of those things when I came out of the birth canal. It seemed like no one in my family even had feelings except me. I was the freak because of it, and they abused me just to see me get upset. Is that narcissism or something else?
ReplyDeleteOn the second one, I don't feel they even know they did wrong. They were so plain cruel. I'm often astonished I survived. But my grandmother took to raising me when my family no longer wanted me. Before then I was on the road to self destruction, laying in the middle of the road, not coming home after school and sleeping in the woods, sticking my hand on a burner on purpose, all kinds of self torture.
On the third one, I doubt they ever saw worth in me. I'd be absolutely shocked if I knew that and would never believe it if they said it anyway. Both parents are deceased so I will never know.
Let me say first: how horrible it must have been to be the only one who had or expressed feelings. That had to hurt!
DeleteAs for whether your parents were narcissists or had narcissistic qualities, I don't know enough from the story you told me, and I'm not a clinician. I am just a researcher.
But making a wild guess, it sure sounds more like psychopathy than narcissism.
The big difference between narcissism and psychopathy (the primary and secondary kinds) is that psychopaths have no remorse for hurting others. They can go through a day of abusing others, and know they have hurt others, even gravely, and still sleep well at night.
The run-of-the-mill narcissists? Not so much.