From tallying up the results in several forums and other sources where hundreds of adult children of narcissists and sociopaths replied, in roughly half of children targeted by the parent to "feel jealous", it did work in making the child feel jealous.
This was true even when the abused child knows they are being manipulated to feel this way.
Of those half that felt jealousy and envy, a small number of them viewed it in childhood as an on-going never-ending punishment by the parent (trying to make the child jealous and to feel "less than", by over-giving to the siblings and either severely under-giving or not-giving at all, along with all of the other kinds of tactics to permanently make these children feel sad, hurt, hopeless or damaged). Reading through these answers, I would also surmise that a small number of parents may have wanted to destroy their child altogether, or would not mind if their child took their own life.
One of the things that almost all survivors realize in childhood and later on, is that they were presented with a
double bind situation when it came to jealousy. Double binds are extremely common for narcissists and sociopaths. In this situation the double bind is presented in this way:
* The parent provokes the child to feel jealousy over his or her siblings, or what his or her siblings
get and then hurts or makes a laughing stock out of the child
for being such a jealous person. Double binds are
damned if you do and damned if you don't situations and are usually reserved for the
scapegoats of a family, although
lost children and
mascots are not exempt.
What I found to be much more common than I ever thought I would (and also extremely disturbing) was that many survivors of child abuse never had a single birthday celebrated throughout their childhoods and adulthoods, or a single gift given to them by their parent, while the parent lavished gifts, rewards and birthdays on their other siblings. How sad!
The majority of these children had either two narcissists as parents, or one narcissist and one sociopath, or two sociopaths. The minority had one narcissist parent and one enabling "I'm-going-to-close-my-eyes-to-the-damage" parent. To me, it is a wonder that children treated in this way and who have parents like this survive at all.
The answer to why they survived is often that some other family member mitigated the circumstances in some way, or a school or teacher intervened, or CPS got involved and there was foster care, or that the hopes and the dreams of the child became much more of their reality than what was happening to them in the family. Often it is a combination of things that add up to survival. But be aware that so many child abuse survivors do not survive: take up risky behaviors, take up risky substance addictions, or commit suicide especially if they feel entrapped by their parents or their situations (finances, disabilities, feeling childhood is too endless, and so on).
A huge number of survivors are actually Scapegoat #2 because their former scapegoat sibling ran away, left, went "no contact" or died by suicide. This may be another reason they were able to survive: they weren't necessarily targeted throughout their entire childhoods.
My other point is that we cannot hear the voices of those who passed away (though I think the last poster would sound like many of them), so the following are only the voices of those who survived it all.
The other half:
The other half who did not feel jealousy or envy usually had some sort of on-going physical abuse or sexual abuse. In other words, they were dealing with something dangerous or threats of danger.
They knew they were being toyed with to feel jealousy and envy too, but they described themselves as feeling numb or dumbfounded instead. Most of these "I can't feel jealousy or envy" type of child abuse survivors also were told that they were "jealous people" by their narcissistic or sociopathic parent, even though the child did not show jealousy or envy, or feel it at all. Some stories were made up about them by the parent for jealousy fantasies as well.
This led me to another realization: that every child abuse survivor who is scapegoated to receive deprivation, or "less than" a sibling is called "a jealous person." In fact, it is as common as
gaslighting (I haven't met a single survivor who has not been gaslighted, it is that common, so now we can add the projection of jealousy to this too).
When pressed as to why they did not feel jealousy or envy, many of them did not know why. The feelings of jealousy and envy were that foreign to them. But reading between the lines, safety from physical abuse and sexual abuse were so prevalent in the minds of these children that it superseded all other feelings.
A lot of these children were awake half the night, dealing with panic, fear and anxiety to such levels that they felt it was taking over their entire beings. They replayed events in these hypervigilant states to figure out how they could make the situations more safe or palatable the next time, or how they could escape, or how they could put themselves in danger to end it all, sometimes vacillating between these extremes over the course of one night.
There is a reason why PTSD symptoms often manifest as a numbness of feelings (accompanied, perhaps by Alexithymia). If the abuse is severe enough, that is what it will do.
But for all intents and purposes, narcissists and sociopaths are not tuned into their children's feelings (or anyone's feelings other than their own), so they will use
perspecticide to further their own agendas and tell themselves and everyone else that their child is "a jealous person."
Why do narcissists and sociopaths want their child to feel envy and jealousy of their siblings and provoke them in this way? (shortened version):
Note: I will be discussing
envy and jealousy as it relates to narcissists and sociopaths in an upcoming post. How they use it can be found in my post on
favoritism in the family, but in the meantime the following will explain some of it:
Narcissists and sociopaths feel jealousy and envy to such extremes that they reason to themselves that other people must be feeling those feelings too. So it is, in part, about
projection.
If they sense that other people aren't jealous and envious, or that they are happy, or thinking autonomously, they want to provoke them to feel bad, the way they feel. Narcissists and sociopaths are often referred to as "happiness vampires" and what ever they can do to stir up some misery and trouble in other people's lives, that is what they will often do. It is even clear to underage children.
So in order to feel they have control, power and dominance over their child, they like to use jealousy and envy as a weapon. If they feel threatened by a child (in terms of stature, beauty, talent, likability, popularity, success ... or if they feel they cannot dominate the child enough
for them ... or if they want to put all of
the family's faults on to one child), they will be trying very hard to weaponize jealousy and envy on an ongoing basis.
Normal parents will threaten, "If you don't do this, then (there will be some sort of deprivation or consequence the child won't like)." The difference between normal parenting and narcissistic parenting (or sociopathic parenting) is that in normal parenting these threats are mild and sporadic and most often go away when the child becomes an adult.
For narcissists and sociopaths "If you don't do this, then _____________" is a very severe form of it. And it does not end at age 18 or 21 like it does for normal parents. It often goes on for the entire lifetime of the child. The reason why adult children are punished like they are still underage little children is because narcissists and sociopaths spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to talk themselves, their child and their entire families into the child being baby-like and inept (called
infantilizing), cognitively challenged (i.e. "stupid"), crazy (called
gaslighting), over-sensitive (because narcissists and sociopaths provoke injustices and
erroneously blame so that their child will react with tears or anger) and spacey (which is often the result of
PTSD from all of the abuse, labeling and manipulations).
They don't necessarily see their two year old child as being any different from their sixty eight year old child. The labels live on, and on, and on, and rarely change, in their fantasies.
Which brings up my other point. Narcissists (and to some degree sociopaths) put everyone in their lives in roles, complete with labels, complete with character traits that the narcissist (and sociopath) makes up, complete with putting people into
all good and all bad camps, and according to value
for the narcissist (whether the person they are putting into a role is living up to the role and providing them with
narcissistic supply in doing so).
If roles aren't adhered to, they will be met by the narcissist (or sociopath) with severe punishments, abuse, labeling their child even more derisively than before to other family members, and very often isolating their child from love and familial belonging. In effect they are treated like
Jane Eyre ... or worse.
I will be discussing
envy and jealousy in a lot more detail as it relates to narcissists and sociopaths in an upcoming post. However, a glimpse into how they use it on their children can be found in my post on
favoritism in the family.
SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT ABOUT BEING PITTED AGAINST
THEIR SIBLINGS IN A RIVALRY GAME,
AND WHETHER THEY EXPERIENCED JEALOUSY AND/OR ENVY:
Note: I am only using some of the responses (cutting those that were redundant or irrelevant or confused. I also cleaned up grammar and spelling to make the posts more clear). Each survivor response is a separate individual and separated by asterisks. No names or identifying situations occur in these posts.
If you are a psychologist or research abuse, feel free to run this question on other survivors. I think you will find that there are a lot of matching answers and that more stringent child abuse laws need to take effect as you will see that there are several mentions of suicide as well as egregious forms of sibling abuse:
Some of the survivor responses follow:
* Yes, I used to feel envious of the GC. But not since reaching adulthood and going to therapy. Everything changed and learning my mother was a narcissist and that I was used as a pawn for this game of hers has changed the way I respond to "the sick game".
* No we are the doormats....... Feel nothing. Even though we feel everything.
* Seriously? How can we feel anything but disgust for these low-lifes?
I went through a period of feeling so sad about not having a family. I was so rejected by them. Vicious GC. I wanted to kill myself.
Healed myself over a ten year period. Went back. Realized how trashy they were. Realized I had so much more on the ball than they did. Laughed at them and their game and felt like one lucky dog.
They have to try to make you feel jealous because they are pathetic. They have nothing and are nothing. When that's all they have and are, you realize how grasping this game is. It's the gutter game, the last bitter dregs of the barrel to make them feel like they matter.
Stay clean everyone. Don't get dragged into this!
* Sure, I would feel envious when my sister received everything and I received nothing. Jealousy is typically a side effect of insecurity. How can a scapegoat not feel envious and jealous when they are denied the pleasures that a golden child has been given ten fold?
* I tried to get my mother to love me. She never would or could. And she would try to provoke a reaction out of me by treating the golden child like gold. No pun intended. And that's the rub. I think if she had just said "I can't love you" and didn't try to hurt me with grand gestures of affection to the GC right in front of my nose, I could have forgiven her. But the fact that she purposely tried to make me feel bad my whole childhood with this, no. There is no excuse she could ever give me for that.
I don't know if I was jealous, tho. Maybe. It was more the feeling of wanting another mother and another family who could love me. And also to have a sister who I was close to who would not goad me that she had Mom's attention and love and I didn't.
My sister was always counting her toys and my toys and I always came out short by about half the toys she had.
It's sick what mothers like this do to our self esteem.
Being in therapy helps because you learn that it isn't normal. But by then we are so scarred and it takes years to heal from it.
* I am just the opposite. I feel pity for the GC. Don't get me wrong. I knew I was expected to compete with the GC in childhood, but did not adhere to this fantasy of the N father and as a result I was often not a part of my father's life. Definite punishment. But I didn't want to be anyway even though I never told him. I really preferred being alone to work on my own interests rather than on his interests and with my father, you were just stupid if you didn't think his interests and ways of thinking were awesome. Arrogance noted, and that's what turned me off.
I have a very successful career, a loving wife, children I am proud of while my brother has gone nowhere and done nothing with his life except to be a shadow to our overbearing father. If anything, he is depressed, caught in an addiction and jealous of me.
I had the foresight to know that our father was going to be my downfall and my brother didn't. I didn't respect my father and he did. He believed in his promises and I didn't. Our father's promises were as frequently taken away as his volatile temper. Why my brother hung on to something so fleeting and unstable is something I will never understand.
* The GC role was handed out in alternating waves with my sister depending on NM's wild mood swings.
In childhood when my sister was the GC, I was jealous of her, and when I was the GC she was jealous of me.
However as this game progressed, I saw it for what it was and that the jealousy provoked was intentional by our NM. I was tired of being manipulated.
Being the GC is not all it is cracked up to be. It's a role for the brainwashed. I preferred thinking for myself.
* When I was a kid, yes. I was born with an innate sense of fairness and equality so my golden brother's treatment really tore at me.
But when all grown up, I really did not have envy or jealousy for anyone.
I have a theory that we are often chosen as the scapegoat because we are empathetic or sensitive and a narc has to destroy those qualities. It's just how they are. Sensitives generally don't feel much envy.
* No, I don't, but the GC accused me of being insecure about her. Those who know me believed otherwise, that she is the one who is insecure and envies me. Projection is their game.
* I notice that many people get jealous of me within the family. They do not want to support me no matter what. Enjoy that I get mistreated. They get off on my serious health problems too.
I believe they are jealous because I am strong and clever. Able to break the pattern and take a step by step approach to the top with true colors. While they choose to stay on the team of mis-treaters.
My huge question is why? Do they not understand that they just prove that when they do this they are in the basement?
I am able to understand the narc. But not the ones on their team. And they feel shame to admit the truth, facts and the reality.
They have to understand that they have to break the pattern. Otherwise they are in the basement forever.
* Scapegoats feel neither. Scapegoats grovel for approval and validation yet have no idea they are being gutted behind their backs by the very people they loved the most. When the truth sets in and sets in hard, that’s when they walk away. It’s over and at that point there’s no going back because it’s obvious there is nothing there.
These narcs have manufactured something to be jealous of because there isn't anything to be jealous of. Kind of like the man behind the curtain in the "Wizard of Oz". Just some wimpy desperate thing they have to do to feel powerful and wanted. It doesn't work.
* I'm not a jealous person at all. Growing up my two older sisters' birthdays were celebrated and mine wasn't.
My parents would spend hours washing and braiding their long hair. Mine was always unkempt. They got treated like heaven on earth and I was such a burden.
I just accepted that's the way it was.
It was only when I was in my 40s that I saw how everything was, that I have huge issues with everything that happened to me.
Still not jealous though. Just unhappy and angry.
* My NM really wants me to be jealous of others. She projected herself on to me. I am pressured to be like her and to be as jealous as she is.
Like I am not allowed to think that it is just fine if other siblings are managing themselves.
She wants me to feel worthless and empty. To not make me like her reminds her of being a loser. Like she believes two losers are better than one and that she has to have company in that.
* Yes, I felt jealousy. but I think it was more the pain of unfairness and preferential treatment that made me feel "jealous". I never felt entitled or like I deserved something ... it was a realm I never felt a part of, so it didn't occur to me to want what my sister had. I was on the outside of the store window, looking in.
* Me either, not jealous at all.
* No. I just wanted things to be fair. Equal. But my NM always said I was jealous of "this or that" and that I was confused when I would deny feeling jealous. It was as if she wanted be to be jealous. She obviously wanted to hurt me.
* The bad children in my family were the GC.
* Yes...it almost destroyed my relationship with my sister and then we talked about it and worked through it. I have always been treated differently from her, been separated from her by my narc parent, been jealous....I am working through it.
* I DID compete. He is DEAD now. I am alive. Still doesn't matter though because I am always a scapegoat. They want to beat me down so I kill myself like he did. Pitting children against each other for your own sick fantasies and desires is what they do. What do you mean "Do we feel?" Of course we do! We feel like we need protection and acceptance and love and are abused and not protected as children. It is like the damn Hunger Games in these homes. It is Survival.
* I think my mother tried to triangulate and use jealousy to her advantage. But she never understood me enough to make it work too well. I still remember my little sister being so impressionable and getting all of these hideous velour gym clothes at Christmas in horrid colors (matching with my NM). It made me laugh and I was so happy NM didn’t buy those for me, as my GC little sister made rude comments to me and showed off on xmas morning. She used to LOVE bragging and I used to just watch in disgust. I even took photos I still have somewhere of her sticking her tongue out at me in a purple one.
* As a child I did feel a lot of frustration and confusion about being treated differently, that I couldn’t figure out how to make my parents love me. Now I know that was never my responsibility. They were just not doing their job as parents.
As for jealousy, I’ve never really felt it towards anyone.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s because I'm a little self absorbed? I live in my head an awful lot. I also don’t want the same things as most people.
My GC sis used to insist that I was or should be jealous of her, and I couldn’t make her understand that although I was glad that she was happy with her life, that it just wasn’t the kind of life that I wanted.
* I won’t lie. Sometimes I did get jealous. But more over the way my mother could be there for my sister but not for me.
* Let's get realistic here. A mature parent is supposed to protect their children from sibling rivalry and most of all, sibling abuse. But narcissists are too immature for that. They try to bring out the sibling rivalry and enhance it, make it grow, get it to be severe, get their own child to be beat up by it.
I bet we know a lot of families where the siblings are best friends. I would bet no one here has even a slightly close or even a modicum of a healthy relationship with a sibling.
These narcissists only care about their little puny egos being worshiped. They have to have people fighting over them or they feel meaningless. That's because they are in many ways. Look at their own lives. Most of them are failures at their jobs, they aren't all that smart even though they pretend to be or greatly inflate their intelligence, or they get somewhere by acting like mobsters, through dishonesty, back-stabbing and false gossip, breaking laws or moral codes of conduct, and belligerence. They are always concerned with who has what, putting other people down, making crap up about people. We know that about them. They are all like in that way!
These are child abusers. Who can be proud of that?
So since they have very little to be proud of, they have to manufacture a game where they pretend to be so desirable that they have to have their own children fighting over them.
Bring the innocents to the slaughter, right? How many of us have seen how one of their children commits suicide and they don't feel a thing. They are such sickos they appear to glorify in it. "Oh, my child killed himself over me! I'm so important! Let's go shopping and celebrate!"
Don't waste your time and your life being sad over not being wanted by someone like that. Be glad you are not in their sights because if you are, they will throw you in the gladiator ring with what ever brute of a sibling or some other relative or even their newest flame.
Get therapy, learn about these monsters, heal and forget about them. Let their wispy little egos blow away to go elsewhere for their sicko supplies.
* So true. But we don't realize it until some therapist says, "Your parent sounds very narcissistic". My therapist said, "That's a very sociopathic thing to say" so many times about my father. My ears perked up. I was like, "What? What did you just say?" And then I was told how real parents respond. My father's response was so far away from that. I was told it was the opposite from how real parents react. It was the first time in my life that I got the sense that something was wrong with him rather than me.
I hadn't thought to look at him as the culprit.
Our parents don't want us to find out about child abuse and Antisocial Personality Disorder. They want us to believe we are flawed and that their punishments of us are never abuse. They have to gaslight us like crazy that we are unlovable and unwanted, that no one would ever put up with us. Once we know the truth, how they view us never effects us again. They are depraved sociopaths. And they know it. And now we finally know it too.
That's when the sibling rivalry, the suicidal thoughts and all of the abuse finally ends. They can only get away with it for so long. They know they are up against professionals. Whose parent hasn't gone into hiding when the professionals come on the scene?
*Therapists frighten the hell out of them. Therapists are such sibling rivalry spoilers! Such game spoilers too! Rotten narc busters! Lol!
* Their jealousy is about our youth, beauty, inner beauty which they can never possess. I believe they have had terrible childhoods which created their problem. Someone told me what they have gone through is even worse than what we have gone through. I know mine was pretty bad. Wish I knew more but they revealed nothing, making me feel like I was doing something wrong. Nope they were just jealous thinking my life was better.
* I do. I have competed with my brother. We don’t have a horrible relationship. He isn’t a bad dude. He has a few narc tendencies, but he really does try. He has always been smarter and more successful. He went to an Ivy League, fell into a successful career while I’ve spent 10 years still not figuring it out. He has dozens of close friends. I have almost no friends. It’s definitely normal to feel jealous and competitive when your parents set you up to be so.
* I think there is a healthy amount of jealousy and a toxic amount. Fleeting moments of it and consistent feelings of it. No I don’t feel the envy or jealousy. I want to be happy for people and them to be happy for me.
* I personally don't feel jealousy in general. I don't know why. I had a violent GC. I wanted to be protected more than anything, but if I complained, I would be punished. It was like getting hit twice.
I also have an incredible amount of empathy to the point that when I see a cut on someone, my whole body aches. I have had that since I was a tot.
I also was so, so aware, even from the earliest age that NM wanted me to be jealous of the GC - would provoke me with so many injustices so that I would react and then punish me egregiously if I did react. I was also abandoned a lot.
Perhaps it was the trauma that numbed emotions? Or protecting myself from violence overtook any jealousy?
At any rate, I can only count the number of times I have felt jealous to two occasions and neither was about my family. One was with a colleague and friend who was excelling at a craft I wanted to be good at. I told him that I felt awful feeling that way, that it wasn't right, and he hugged me and told me that he was not someone to be jealous of because he had been severely abused as a child. His father used to hang him by one foot over very tall bridges and sexually abused him too. Then we started making art pieces together about our abuse. I have no jealousy feelings for him now. Love took over.
If you are healthy you are going to be feeling jealous of someone who is paraded in front of you as a god, who is given much more than you are, who is your parent's best friend, who can do no wrong in your parent's eye while you are treated the opposite way and hated by your parent for no other reason other than that you are not the same person as your GC sibling.
It's not wrong to feel jealous. It is natural.
Do you mean to tell me that you all deny that feeling? Why?
* Sorry, but I do not feel it. It is genuine. Maybe it is beaten out of us so much that we can't feel it even if we tried.
But it often co-occurs with post traumatic stress disorder which a lot of child abuse sufferers go through. It can be as high as 50 percent of all PTSD sufferers. That might explain why around half of us experience envy and jealousy and the other half don't:
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-03873-001
You can see why this happens. The brain fills up with "fight or flight". In "fight or flight" you don't feel anything except that. You don't feel angry, or sad, or compassionate, or competetive, or jealous ... and you also experience amygdala hijacking so you aren't able to reason, learn, think things through that have steps and progressions. All you want to do run and be safe.
Childhood trauma tends to produce the kind of PTSD that is on-going.
In this context, it is very understandable why so many of us don't have the slightest inkling of what jealousy or envy feels like.
* I was told I was jealous... it was a sick and disgusting label to put on a little girl who was struggling with being abused by the golden child who was 8 yrs older and no one would discipline said GC. He was out of control and doing drugs and so abusive and no one did a damn thing because they liked it that way. They bred him that way. He became a violent and abusive adult. You don't compete with that, you run from it. He became addicted to rx meds finally and died an addict in his early 50's and to his NM he is a martyr. He died in his childhood room broke and broken and alone.
* I do. I am over 10 yrs older than the GC and I never knew my NM was capable of the love I saw going towards the GC sister. The difference is night and day. She also favors the GC's children too. She doesn't even try to hide it. It's blatant favoritism. My kids pretty much hate her.
It's mind blowing. But she did tell me I was an accident as a teen. They had only been married 1 year and 2 months when I was born and my father was still in school. I wasn't in the plan. She had graduated college and was the main bread winner.
When my sister was born, they had tried for five years, so she was really wanted.
* Depends on where you are in your healing journey. I felt no jealousy when I went NC and moved across the country. I felt relief and peace.
As a child, it is hard to understand why the dynamics are so intentionally hurtful and skewed. As an adult, those of us that have made it have undergone enough therapy, counseling (etc..) to teach us of the dynamics of scapegoating, and the other harmful dynamics at play.
* I am trying to decipher whether most scapegoats experience significantly less jealousy than the general population. Like is it really felt? I don't feel it. And why a lot of us don't feel jealous - numbing from trauma? That most of us are empaths? That the narc parent wanted us to be like them and so badly to feel jealousy that we rebel by not feeling jealous?
* I didn't feel it .. Jealousy was always their realm. It was jealousy that fueled my NM to act the way she did.
* There is nothing about my NF that is at all enviable. It would be like envying hot air. The GC emulated the bastard and nothing there either. I was certainly tortured in every way imaginable by both of them, but envy or jealousy? Not a chance of it.
* Unfortunately, I feel it. No matter how much I have learned about the scapegoat being the lucky one in the family because they are the only one who has the insight to break away from the dysfunction, I am still FIERCELY jealous of my Golden Child sister and the wonderful and exciting life she leads - her friends, career, yada, yada yada. If I had known about all of this sooner (before the age of 55), perhaps I could have found the same success in life that my sister has, instead of believing the subtle message I was given, that I was never going to amount to much!
* I don't have a jealous bone in my body. My NM was abused by her narc mom. My grandmother's mom had schizophrenia and was taken away from the family. So this was all passed down from the generations. It stopped with me, and my children understand these dynamics. Thank goodness. I am an only child, however my mom has a younger sibling that is 8 yrs older than me. She always compared me to her, even when we both had kids. It was annoying but I was never jealous because everyone has their shit to deal with, and me too.
(My note here about the post above: in the past, particularly pre-1980, many child abuse victims were wrongly diagnosed as schizophrenics. So if a grandmother or great grandmother was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, they could have been part of the multi-generational trend of child abuse instead. Being "taken away from the family" was also much more common than it is today. A parent could have a child institutionalized without proper investigations ... the idea then was that parents were saints and could never intentionally hurt their own children, however we know much better now: child abuse of all kinds is actually up quite a bit, and some of the past mistakes of mis-diagnosis and incarcerating abused children in insane asylums probably helped to contribute to it)
* I was made the caregiver to my younger sister and brother. I consider them my children in a way. My mother was extremely neglectful. I was really more of an employee than a daughter except that I didn’t get paid. I’m not jealous of the easier life that my younger siblings had. But it was very hurtful to realize they didn’t feel the same depth of love and care for me that I felt for them. Now they are flying monkeys to my mother, supporting her lies and denials of the abuse. We had completely different childhoods.
* I had to ignore my emotions to survive. So I felt nothing.
* Aha! There you have it. Believe that it was the same with me. Just be invisible.
I had to be the mother of my brother. He never wanted to be close to our NM either as a child. Got bonded to me and my father.
He became addicted to her when he became older.
I went NC with NM when I was young.
We had different fathers and his became alcoholic.
We are both alone. And separated from each other too.
* I’m not jealous of someone who lacks empathy, who triangulates people and who can’t unconditionally love their own children. Nope.
* Yes, I think this is the difference between 'Us' and 'Them'. Whilst we might feel jealous from time to time we don't actively seek to destroy the other person, which is what a narc would do.
* I always knew it was a game because my mother was a major cheater and once told my father to fight a duel with her lover to figure out who would get her. She was willing to have one of them die over her. I think the same goes for my brother and me. She wanted us to fight it out as to who would get her love and money and who wouldn't, even though my brother weighs twice as much as me and would kill me over any tiny thing she has. You don't feel jealous in that case. You feel frightened and want to run. She picked him by default because he was willing to fight and I wasn't. I have no idea what he is receiving from her, and if I did, she would probably rub my nose in it, so I like being willfully blind to it all.
My question is: does this mean she is a psychopath?
* I think I might have a psychopath for a mother too. My father went missing mysteriously when I was fifteen. Never found his body, never seemed to love him, had a lover on the side during the time he went missing even though the cops never knew it. My mother constantly told me to run away while I was growing up and it started as early as I can remember. She also shouted at my father to go kill himself more times than I can remember. One of my siblings committed suicide (or maybe something else?).
My father was always trying to protect me so she would glare at him. And then when he went missing, the glares went in my direction. The violence increased. She definitely favored my youngest sister. I believe it is because my sister was only five when Dad went missing. I think my mother hates me because she is suspicious of me looking into the truth.
I was never jealous of my sister even though she received a great deal more than I did. I look at it as my mother buying off my sister so that she wouldn't be close to me, or worse, wonder what happened to our father too. She's a victim of a mountain full of lies and NM will always put her affairs with men above my sister.
I chose to escape. I could have brought up my suspicions with police, but she would know who went to the police. If she killed my father she is dangerous to me too. I decided to leave the country. I look her up once in awhile to see if she might be committing crimes, or if my sister is on the "missing persons" list, but that is it. She didn't want me, so now she doesn't have me. She wanted me to run away and I have.
Jealousy is a waste of time. These mothers are not worth anyone's jealousy. Those of us who gave them up are the lucky safe ones.
* Lesson learned from the poster above. If our parent was just slightly worse, then we would all feel like lucky safe ones. It's like they aren't quite psychopathic enough, so we get dragged kicking and screaming into their sick narcissistic supply games where they feel validated only if their children experience jealousy or compete with one another for parental love.
By the way, most families experience parental love without having to work so hard for it. Only crap parents think they are owed something for acknowledging that we exist, that we children need affection and have feelings.
* Of course we feel jealous. Most of us are highly emotional and empathetic but jealousy is a natural emotion in some situations. I felt jealous of my younger brother often. At some point though I realized that it brought nothing but bad emotions and I sort of just accepted being the black sheep.
* Yeah, I get jealous. Especially when I can’t be in the room with my dad for more than ten minutes without us fighting while my brother goes and spends all day learning woodworking from him.
I also feel like everyone is out to get me 24-7. It’s an awful feeling I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.
* I notice they try to provoke those feelings in us. They do this and carefully watch your reaction. It's like a game with them to provoke, retreat and then they try to fake you out by pretending they aren't really trying to provoke you at all. They are waiting for you to react so that they can then blame you for reacting. I never responded the way they liked. I wasn't jealous and it showed.
* I do not feel envy or jealously. Foreign to me.
* Me neither. Too scared to feel anything. Fear literally became everything and other feelings did not exist. If I happened to feel anything early on, those feelings were used against me. The way they were used was to put me in even more danger, to get the GC to abuse me more, and to use him as their excuse if they were ever caught. I didn't feel, I wasn't allowed to feel anyway, and fear literally took up all of my brain's energy. Second to that were wishes, wishes that I could escape, wishes that I could belong to a family or get abducted by another family, or that I'd be so unwanted that they would drop me off to live with a loving family. When my wishes didn't come through, I wanted to die. So, no. No feelings of envy. But I still feel fear 17 years later, and like I can never trust anyone or have a life without fear. And this is like this even when I have had full NC for those 17 years.
I just don't feel they will let me disappear and go unscathed without trying to hurt me again.
* I just feel ripped off. Like they had a good childhood at my expense. They were taught that by hurting me, they would feel better. Like they could steal from me and enjoy what was mine or destroy my things if they wanted. Like they could have everything I wanted, but I didn't deserve even common decency. I felt like Cinderella in an endless nightmare. It's literally the injustice that drives you crazy. But I don't envy or feel jealous of any of them. They are too evil to be jealous of. I'm glad to be me, but it's too bad I had to go through so much pain at age seven. And way beyond age seven.
I just want peace, locked doors, an alarm system, cameras in every room and for all of them to leave me alone.
* Has anyone else’s GC sibling accused you of being jealous of them? If so, they were projecting. Golden children are jealous of the SG’s freedom, strength, etc.
They are stuck on the puppet strings of the narc parents and must always conform. We are free! We can say anything we want because we are not tied into worrying about their approval. This eats them alive. An email from my NGC bro really opened my eyes to this.
* I think I got over those feelings very early in life. There was just no point in being jealous. I think I am a better woman and better female friend as a result of my experiences. I never feel jealous of other women. I feel genuinely happy for them.
* This isn't just about jealousy, is it? Isn't this really about sibling abuse and our narc parents not protecting us so that we get abused by proxy? So that they are not held accountable for the abuse and instead our sibling is? Who doesn't have a GC sibling who is highly abusive? Aren't they all that way?
If you are abused by your sibling, you aren't going to be jealous. I don't see how you can be. You are going to want him away from you. Far away. Maybe you can endure a recorded phone call or an e-mail if it's a health problem with a family member, but for the most part physically separated.
* No, a lot of GCs are not abusive. It seems like most of them are, but there are a lot that aren't. Mine isn't. She's just blind more than abusive. Like she's been taught that I'm crazy, but I have never been diagnosed with a mental illness. NM claims I have been but she has no proof.
The way they gang up on me is to say I need counseling. I am also treated like an outsider to their relationship. And that is about it.
The tell-tale sign of the GC is that they are enmeshed with the parent. The are mold-able and susceptible to brainwashing. They are also usually agents of the parent and the parent's agendas. Some of these parents want their GC to be abusive to their siblings and others don't.
So the GC is more like a worshiping boot licker than anything else.
The GC is rewarded more than we are because a lot of us don't want to be enmeshed, not that we could be anyway. I think narc parents are too frightened by our intelligence and independence to want enmeshment with us. Enmeshment and co-dependency equates to love in their world view and the GC is the safest bet for that.
* My presence makes the GC feel small because I have made something of my life. He hasn't done a thing except to be NM's slave. So our NM compensates for that by making him feel higher than me. I realize that and I don't try to make him feel bad over it.
But I am able to break the pattern. He can't even take the first step out of being a slave. NM doesn't have enough money to keep him going if she dies, so he is not helping himself. His whole existence rides on whether or not he can be free.
Meanwhile he is constantly pressured to be underneath the level of the NM. The basement. So that NM does not feel any competition from him.
I am not jealous of the GC. He destroyed his whole life by throwing away all of his energy on pipe dreams and false promises that can never materialize. He is the one who is jealous of me. Because I remind him that he is no more than NM and NM's needs.
* I was relieved when NM was focused on the GC because then she forgot about me. I could withdraw into my room and daydream or read. I was emotionally safe if she was focused on someone else.
* I was definitely jealous. Jealous that my sister got better food, better clothing, better everything, and yet I wasn't allowed to even complain. And the rules were quite literally different for her than for us. We would clean the entire house and she never had to clean up after herself. I buried that resentment deep inside me. Even though she turned out to be such a sweet girl, I don't feel as close to her as I do my other sibling, who was primarily the lost child. I need to work on that resentment.
* There is jealousy both within me, the scapegoat, and my GC brother due to my N mom's triangulation and my brother's need to constantly compete with me and his thirst for praises. He received so much positive attention, and feels he is never wrong. He is never made responsible for anything. I was constantly compared to him, negatively. I was teased and criticized and called different, stubborn and weird because I was a quiet child and I was never allowed to express myself.
Art was my escape and I think he is jealous that I have that talent while I'm jealous because my parents love him more. Because of our upbringing, there is sibling rivalry between us. He doesn't realize he's like our mom now, but he's more of a covert narc than she is.
* I was never jealous due to the fact I was far too busy trying to find out what I was doing wrong all the time.
* My husband and I could care less about NM and her relationship with the GC. NM has tried to stir up both competition and trouble between my husband and me in the same way she used to with the GC and me. It's always about her as queen of praise and approval, always. As if we should care to receive it! The praises are as empty as the criticisms and both are totally self serving.
When I finally figured out what she was trying to do, I cut her off!
Now she claims that we are envious and jealous of her, but that's to give her the illusion of feeling better and I'm sure that she's hoping that it will rope us back in. No chance of that and she's not getting a reaction either!
* I can't say that I was jealous of the GC. The GC was just surviving our NF's abuse as I was, just in different ways. I survived it by saying nothing, playing dumb, trying to get out of dodge and not taking NF's mood swings into my soul, and the GC did it by trying to please the bastard. None of it worked in the end. Family estrangement at its ultimate.
* Sexually abusive incestuous GC. No. Just wanted permanent separation. Separation from parents was also the unintentional result, but better than being raped.
* My GC sister is really, really sweet. But she is also too tied to pleasing our mother and being overly dutiful. Did Mom try to triangulate us and make us hate each other and be jealous over each other? Sure she did. But my sister never felt comfortable being the GC. Our mother gave her a lot of stuff and rewards that we never got. But our sister knew we felt jealous and resentful and would try to compensate by sharing what she received in secret.
One of my other sisters blew it. When Mom found out what our GC sister was doing, she was livid. She told her under no circumstances was she ever to give us a single thing and that it was up to NM to decide who got what.
So then everyone kept it secret after that.
I think the reason our sister is the GC is because she is highly empathetic which a narcissist is going to see as someone to exploit and get things out of. NM takes such advantage of our sister. We tell her that, but she looks scared and traumatized when we say that to her. I just hope that NM doesn't break her like she broke the rest of us.
* My GC brother is ten times more abusive and violent than my parents. Orders me around like he's my Drill Sargent and my narcissistic mother lets him get away with it. Even laughs and thinks it is endearing. After a break in and stealing things of mine, destruction to my property, siding with my enemies, being physically wounded to the point where one of my joints is permanently out of alignment, destroying our father's last will and testament where some property was supposed to go to me, stealing the contents of our father's house, I had enough. NM told me to apologize to him, that she held me to be totally accountable. I told her that it was sick, and no way would I apologize. I was dumbfounded by her insistence of it, but I think she always liked seeing me suffer from injustice and treating me like the family martyr.
Then she smeared my name with the rest of my family, trying to isolate me to make it seem like he was the saint and I was the devil. She told me that she never wanted to have anything to do with me again unless I apologized to my brother and to her and agreed to their version of things.
It was blackmail but there was absolutely no reason to apologize except to accept more abuse and more danger and I was no longer willing to do that. I felt it had gotten to a life and death situation.
I was told by a therapist that narcissists will blackmail like this to keep their image clean, so they very often blame the victim.
I felt like committing suicide for the longest time. If it wasn't for CoDA and other groups, I might have gone through with it.
I have been without them going on six years now, and I don't miss them. A little bit my mother, but cognitively I don't know why. I have to ask myself if I want to be hurt again.
As for jealousy, it is impossible to feel when your main purpose is to keep safe and to keep them away from your home and child. I was often tortured in childhood if NM thought I might be jealous. It isn't something I can relate to. I think it would be healthy to feel jealous that my brother was able to take so much from me, but all I feel is the desire for him to leave me alone for the rest of my life. I feel that most of the time about my mother too. Realistically, I have nothing to talk to her about because she is so blind and full of hate for me and so many other people, but there is a little bit of co-dependency in me. I'm working through that. No therapist has said that I should go back to her under any circumstance, that there would be too many consequences and dangers. Little by little the co-dependency is going away.
The last step for me I feel is forgiving her for what she has done. I think if I could truly forgive her, I could put most of the intrusive memories behind me forever and feel a lot more freedom too. It would also be nice to feel that the danger is totally in the past.
* For me it is that I would like my kids to have a big happy family. I envy healthy families who have that.
* No, I don't feel jealousy. I don't know why. Odd, huh?
* I was definitely jealous. Jealous that my sister got better food, better clothing, better everything, and yet I wasn't allowed to even complain. And the rules were quite literally different for her than us. We clean the entire house and she didn't even have to clean up after herself. I buried that resentment deep inside me. Even though she turned out to be such a sweet girl, I don't feel as close to her as I do my other sibling, who was primarily the lost child. Need to work on that resentment.
* I always thought the reason I was abused as a child was that I wasn't perfect. The GC was perfect and we were told that he was. We were told that if we wanted to please our mother to be more like the GC. I tried. I think all of the rest of my siblings tried too but we could never live up.
For me there were always chinks in his armor anyway. I couldn't see him as perfect no matter how much brainwashing we got about that. I began to see a pattern of lying and subtle bullying.
Once when our mother caught him kissing a girl it enraged her because in order to be perfect for the NM you don't kiss a girl. Or even think about a girl. Or belong to anyone but her. He was grounded and we were told not to talk to him at all. He was so shunned and made fun of by the NM that he eventually complied.
Our family eventually fell apart. I think if it had stayed together, I might have been jealous of the GC. But I felt grief instead that we were pitted against each other causing massive damage to the family unit.
* I can understand that. I went around thinking something was wrong with my facial expressions, that perhaps they weren't doing what I wanted them to do. I was punished over facial expressions.
The GC never was, so I thought he had perfect facial expressions.
* I think some of us don't feel jealous because we know that it is part of the game of narcs: crush your child's self esteem, install a great deal of injustice, play with the emotions of your children, do anything and everything to dominate and control them 100 percent and reject the ones who don't comply.
* I thought it was odd that I’ve never felt jealous or envious of anyone, especially the GC. It’s an emotion that I just cannot feel. Wonder why that is?
Very inquisitive post! Interesting to read the comments.
* I have never even thought about this throughout my life. What I realise now is that the GC (my sister) has always been envious/jealous? What I realise is that I tried to make myself 'lost' and tried to do as little as I could to create attention. When I was young (primary age) on family holidays I used to walk along the beach for hours collecting shells. My GC sister got braces to make her teeth straight, got to go on a cruise with my mother when I was in my teens, got to go to uni. I never got these things but just didn't think about it. Years later she said to me in a phone call that she always thought I was 'the spoilt one'. That just simply wasn't true ... Cheers from Oz.
* My GC's life is filled with loneliness and abandonment. He was mean to everyone. Paid for it. NM loves him, uses him and likes it that he is cruel to others, but that is about it.
* It is hard not to feel those emotions. I am well aware I am going to be cut out of the Will. I was cut out of my grandmother's Will too. The two golden children have had financial benefits showered on them for 3 decades while I have struggled through intense poverty. Have I been some gross drug addict or criminal? No, just an ordinary person who was outspoken about the abuse.
It's easy to say, like people do on tv shows sometimes "I don't want your dirty money!" A lot harder to do in person. I eventually made it and have my own family and house now but I have suffered for it.
* I think I did. Not even my birthday was celebrated my entire childhood while theirs were. But now everything has been taken away from me. Six siblings went against me. I wish they hurt as much as I do. I know it is wrong to be vengeful. But when I stop feeling vengeful and angry, I get close to taking my own life instead. I literally feel nothing but despair, anger, rage over the injustice, vengeful and wanting to die. In other words, no positive feelings at all. It's been months of this. I actually don't think I can make it like this.
I am sick of people who want to hurt other people. This world is too full of them for me.
Recommended reading of a more fleshed-out story of this phenomenon (personal story):
Sister Light, Sister Dark - by 500 Pound Peep
