My friend Lise, wrote this article, and it's a good one.
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?
Ah shame, narcissists love to dish it out in spades. My mother is severe, she didn't feel feelings of shame, like lesser narcissists, she considered herself perfect and everyone else inferior. This was true for my sister and other relatives. She shamed me constantly. "YOU ARE" as Lise states definitely is used by narcissists over and over.
In my case it was:
YOU ARE TOO FAT
YOU ARE TOO WEIRD
YOU ARE TOO SENSITIVE
YOU ARE TOO UGLY
YOU ARE TOO SMART FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
YOU ARE TOO SMELLY
YOU ARE TOO LAZY
and so forth and so on.
This meme sums it up for me. I made the choice to heal the self. Covid was a giant blow, but many things have changed for me.
I don't have guilt that some people suffer who go no contact. Usually when the feelings of "OMG I ditched my whole family!" used to rise up, I would think, "Well I did us both a favor, they couldn't stand me and I could not stand them. I never could be what they wanted anyway." I took too long to finally turn my eye on her and judge my mother in the same way. What made her so perfect? She wasn't. She dressed too masculine in my opinion. She lacked love, creativity, integrity, honesty and even core values I thought were important. She was a system-believer, that worshipped wealth and power--one of the worse offenses to me personally. She defended the Patriot Act to me once which offended my political beliefs. To go no contact, I asked myself, "What made her the icon of perfection?" She wasn't. She definitely had the superiority complex going in spades. Sadly a lifetime of being told one is "not enough", this gets internalized, your whole life is going around making way for other people instead of yourself.
"The other reason they do this is that narcissists have a superiority complex, and many of them, when the manipulations of coercing people to change for them, they can actually start to believe they are better than everyone else when everyone works so hard for them to fit into their idealized visions, and where they don't have to work hard at all in their relationships. It goes to their head, in other words, and they think it is okay to take it to the point where your thoughts are their thoughts, your feelings are their feelings, your interests are their interests - to the point where they feel it is absolutely necessary to teach others constantly how to behave too - to be as "perfect" as they try to convince you that they are.
It was weird to realize after I was gone how my mother controlled the whole family via shame. Lise mentions the less severe narcissists who live according to the edicts of shame, and I've seen that behavior too. They always look and sniff out "wrongdoings". They never relax. They seek out constant offenses. Even the rich ones in my family seemed miserable beyond belief. As Lise writes above, the malignant narcissists do start to believe they are better than everyone else, and they set up things so everyone works hard to please them. I noticed as my mother aged [I left when she was in her mid to late 60s] her power in the family grew. For many of these narcissists, who gain this power, I think they worsen as they age. They have been kowtowed for so long the cult family has created a monster.
Then there's the fact that even if you scurry around pleasing them, all they do is raise the bar. Lise mentions the ones who start trying to control your facial expressions. I had my emotions addressed and many of my abusers got more and more nit-picky. They'll make stuff up to claim perfection anyhow.
In my case, some narcissists would yell at me for autistic affections and for not smiling enough. It got weird. They always raise the hoops for you to jump through like a circus dog, and lift it a couple feet higher if you made it through one. A lot of religion operates via shame, do this and that, be giving, and the constant search for "wrong", "sin" and the demand for tithes got hard on me. Even liberal churches with dogmatic demands can raise the hoops. I remember when one could be accepted as a liberal just for honoring differences between people and wanting everyone to have an equal chance, but even there the hoops got raised and things got crazy.
I had weird thoughts even during some of those last phone conversations with my cousins. How no one seemed to enjoy life, and it was all about "measuring up" for endless goal posts. Even emotionally they all seemed blunted. This was more noticeable as time passed too. Its a strange thought I had but it makes sense. If you live long enough in the shame based cult where's the fun or the spontaneity. They truly saw her as perfection and it's almost like she was a god/goddess to them where everything was to be judged by her pleasure or approval. It creeped me out.
Lise talks about the period of figuring out who you are, after you go no contact. A process especially for those long into no contact, is no longer bending and twisting yourself to serve narcissistic demands.
And many scapegoats can struggle with an identity too. The disparaging "You are -" statements don't ring true to most scapegoats (they are often the first child to notice the coldness, the lack of empathy in their parent), but scapegoats also get so used to the "You are -" statements that they stop defending themselves to anyone who uses them, and life can become like Chauncy Gardner's in the novel by Jerzy Kosinski, "Being There" (link takes you to the movie version). You are an echoist, letting everyone you meet describe you, whether good, bad or indifferent. And you don't try correcting them - and that can, and does attract, other kinds of narcissists, and even psychopaths.
This definitely applied to me. I always had a core strong identity inside, something sadly borderlines are said to lack from abuse, but it was suppressed. I let others describe and define me. Sadly I also didn't ask if they were right, but if I was right all the time. This definitely brought out the Project Friends, Abusive Religionists, and other toxics.
One sees this in abused people, there's always this DEFERENCE, I had it in spades, where they step aside for other people. I was better off in that some strongly held values were impenetrable, and this often ended relationships in my life even early on but any boundaries keeping was very foreign. I would defend myself but got shouted down so often, sadly I became repressed and suppressed. To change all this, I often had to do things on an intellectual basis, putting aside emotion and what came "naturally."
This process for me vaporized a lot of friendships as I have written about years ago. Many of these toxic friends were always telling me I was not enough. I still remember the friend I had around 8-9 years ago. She was constantly shaming me over housework just like my mother. I even once asked her, "I don't think I can get it clean, I try, it's hard, could you help me?" She refused. That's one thing they will shame you for things but trust me they have no interest in actually providing solutions, support or ideas in fixing problems. They want to just use your faults to play king and queen of the mountain. Today, I'd hand a person like that a broom and say, "Help or get out. Otherwise I don't want to hear it."
One sees this in abused people, there's always this DEFERENCE, I had it in spades, where they step aside for other people. I was better off in that some strongly held values were impenetrable, and this often ended relationships in my life even early on but any boundaries keeping was very foreign. I would defend myself but got shouted down so often, sadly I became repressed and suppressed. To change all this, I often had to do things on an intellectual basis, putting aside emotion and what came "naturally."
This process for me vaporized a lot of friendships as I have written about years ago. Many of these toxic friends were always telling me I was not enough. I still remember the friend I had around 8-9 years ago. She was constantly shaming me over housework just like my mother. I even once asked her, "I don't think I can get it clean, I try, it's hard, could you help me?" She refused. That's one thing they will shame you for things but trust me they have no interest in actually providing solutions, support or ideas in fixing problems. They want to just use your faults to play king and queen of the mountain. Today, I'd hand a person like that a broom and say, "Help or get out. Otherwise I don't want to hear it."
I started asking what I wanted out of life after no contact and it was a process to get rid of people out of my life who operated from the stance of constantly shaming me. The slate cleaning process was difficult and very hard. I believe it even impacted my religious deconversions and changes. One's own values become more important than trying to assent or match the values of others. Even my leaving the Unitarian Universalist church was over me putting my own values first. I realized I did really view society quite differently from my family and what I considered important. The values of being an artist that they tried to stomp out, were important.
I remember when I first went no contact 10 years ago, thinking "Now it is time to Quit! You are never going to be what these people want you to be" There was nothing left in the game for me. Many ACONS probably reach this point realizing they are in a losing game, but sadly many are captured for life not wanting to bear "not having a family."
Imperviousness was a word I thought of in trying to escape the "people pleasing" twists and escape the results of the constant shaming. I needed to become impervious. I had to stop being so weak and letting others define me and tell me what to do. My disabilities including autism and severe obesity from Lipedema made this more of a danger.
Lise wrote this
"Instead, they infantilize you and punish you to teach you a lesson, as though you are a naughty child, rather than an adult. It doesn't work."
and
" Infantilizing you becomes the terrible and extremely unhealthy go-to tactic and rut they put you and others through time and time again. Most of them don't know how to do anything else because it is the personality disorder at work: they feel they must always go for superiority, and what better way to do it than to insist that you act like an inept child who doesn't know how to behave. "
It scared me even as I got deep into my 40s, I was still treated like a child by my family. I blamed this on money, I was poor, and didn't achieve the money or status of an adult, but it went deeper. I had thoughts about that one woman on My 600lb life I saw years ago. I hope she's escaped her family. They all hated her, they all treated her like a child. That was my life among my family. It has occurred to me, if I never did leave my family, I probably wouldn't be alive today. My fight to even get my Lipedema diagnosis was rooted in self-belief and value.
You know this many years in, I still grieve having no family at times, but I have no regrets that I escaped. Mine were squashing me into nothing even putting my physical life at risk with all the stress and lack of empathy. The shame though, well how do I explain this but a life of self value is far happier even with challenges and difficulties. You get away from these people who do nothing but shame you, and well life is easier WITHOUT THEM in it. I even thought during times our money dipped and we are in one of those times now, I don't have to worry about one of those jerks being around to shame me for it! That comes as relief!
A hoovering attempt of a few months ago, was so nuts so crazy, I can't get into details here, it was like reliving something that happened to me as a child, where she wanted to destroy an accomplishment, and ruin me in the face of others. It was the same thing like Ground Hog Day. I avoided her, but she attempted something that matched Reading Award Day at school when I was 10 years old. It was so insane, she's losing her touch, maybe having some old age senility kick in, because even other people said, "This is not normal!" It centered around shame. That's all she ever did was shame me in front of others and say "She's not enough". It told me she doesn't even see me as a human in my own right just an object to destroy. The more years you are away, the crazier they will appear. My no contact stayed intact.
Years ago, I made the decision, that I wasn't going to let people "correct" me anymore. If I was actually mean like I told them off in a fight or did anything "wrong" they confronted me with, I would analyze that and apologize for actual wrong-doings. However I wasn't going to let other adults talk to me as a child, and tell me what to do, what to say, what to think and how to live. I thought I'm an old woman now, there's people my age who are grandmothers, part of growing up too was no longer letting myself be put in the "child" role. I forget where I read it, but I read about the child, parent, adult transactional analysis online somewhere and thought this needs to change. Disabled people are often infantalized and it was happening to me too often.
The autism group broke this boundary. They tried to silence me. Even when I left the autism group, I thought, there was some narcissism happening. We were forced into ideologies I didn't agree with either. I was being minimized, dismissed and silenced. This was an error in leadership. Why stick around for more ill treatment? I never did go back. I don't blame my fellow autistics. A lot of institutions have been captured.
Relationships based in shame, are failed and not really relationships. I never really had a mother in any meaningful way and as I got older and deeper into my no contact, I realized the depth of the rejection and how everything was rooted in shame. My mother in the over 40 years I spent with her, never once complimented me. I couldn't remember one "special moment" or loving moment, where I was hugged. It was all about "shaming" me and putting me down. Endless criticism, endless shame. It was so extreme. As a child, sadly we believe what our parents have to say about us. Us lucky ones get out and define ourselves outside of their scope. Those of us who heal do find positive people who treat us like human beings, and close out the abusers.
Some years ago I even went through a process, where I told myself, "Now is time to do what you want to do, and make your own decisions." One way I avoid narcissists now, is I avoid the constantly critical and those who make me feel like less of a person. Those are screening tools to avoid the shamers. Read Lise's article, its a good one and goes into detail with their techniques.
The Gift of Narcissistic Parents: Shame and Codependency
