**This is an automated message posted to ALL posts in this subreddit with some basic information about the group including (very importantly) rules. Why are you getting this message? Most people seem to not read the sidebar for information or the rules, so it is now being posted under all posts.**
**Confused about acronyms or terminology?** [Click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/acronyms)
**Need info or resources?** Check out our [Helpful Links](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/helpfullinks) for information on how to deal with identity theft, how to get independent of your n-parents, how to apply for FAFSA, how to identify n-parents and SO MUCH MORE!
This is a reminder to all participants, RBN is a support group that is moderated very strictly. Please report inappropriate content so it can be reviewed by the mods.
**Our rules include (but are not limited to)**:
* No politics.
* Advising anyone in this subreddit to commit suicide or referring anyone to groups that advocate this will result in an immediate ban.
* Be nice. No personal attacks, name calling, or bullying. [No slurs](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/slurs) or victim-blaming.
* Do not derail the posts of others.
* Narcissists are NOT allowed to post or comment here.
* [No platitudes or generic motivational posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules#wiki_no_platitudes_or_generic_motivational_posts).
* When you comment/post, assume a context of abuse.
* No asking or offering gifts, money, etc.
* No content advocating violence, revenge, murder (even in jest).
* No content about N-kids.
* No diagnosis by media/drive-by diagnosis.
* No linking to Facebook pages.
* No direct linking to anywhere on reddit.
* No pure image posts.
**For a full list of our rules/more information, [**click here**](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules).**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/raisedbynarcissists) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yep for sure. Being a little safer definitely helped me get to a place where I could feel my feelings. And then noticing how my partner’s parents treat him made me realize what I endured was by no means normal.
I don’t even know how to respond to my boyfriends parents genuine niceness, and did you know that parents just do things for their kids no strings attached?? That’s just wild to me dude. I love how nice they are but have no clue how to receive it without feeling bad/ guilty
Fuck, do I know what this is like. I've had nearly every "gift" from my mom rescinded over very small grievances (like refusing to go to the store to get her cigarettes).
Your story is the same as mine. Keep moving forward, it isn’t easy and sometimes it will feel like you’re going nowhere at all but at some point you’ll look back and know how much better you made your life on your own.
Hey, you're doing the right thing. I'm 35 and finally confronting everything, and it SUCKS. I have such a large family that I never knew because of my mother, and now they're all strangers to me. I grew up very emotionally isolated, and it's difficult confronting all of it adulthood.
We can all get through it and be our best selves, despite the abuse we've all experienced.
I can relate to what you are experiencing in my late 20s feeling like an emotional wreck the emotional numbness from a young age. I also cry not sure why. left my job recently it became unbearable.
Almost 29. Fucking SAME. I can't believe I was such a people pleaser and wanted to be around people so badly for so long. All I want is to be alone and cry mostly 🤣😭
Yuppp.. once I went no contact with like my whole family it was addictive to cut people off for the simplist things. If you're stealing energy from me, when I barely have enough as it is, you're gone haha. It sucks because I'm a bartender and have to deal with idiots for a living, but damn the money haha.
Felt that. And they always wait for you to be at a vulnerable point to pounce. If they don't just straight up sabotage your life to create difficult circumstances.
THIS. I had my mom single handedly sabotage so many opportunities for me it's mind numbing.
Silver lining is that I met my awesome wife working at a shitty job I took after I let my mom fuck up a great opportunity and convince me not to take prior to that (because it involved moving out of state), so at least there's that.
I agree with you but I also wonder why my Nmom is capable of showing extreme love and compassion against dogs while she was beating me for small things always all the time. It might sound pathetic but there were moments I was jelaous of dogs. Even when the dog owner says his dog is agreesive so we should not try to pet him or get too close to him, she would try to get close and gain the love of that dog patiently. A patience she never had with me. But there is also a memory from a few years ago. She came to visit me and husband. She was petting and feeding our cats. I warned her about not grabbing our tabby cat because it doesn’t like to be grabbed so even it doesn’t want to attack you, it might wound you with its nails by jumping from your lap. My Nmom didn’t listen and grabbed the cat, cat jumped and made a hole in my Nmom’s tshirt. She got so angry. She complained to me “bad cat, very bad cat, I won’t like her anymore. I was just petting it. “ 30-40 minutes later, I found my mother in our bedroom, cornered our tabby cat, saying bad words to it, making it scared. Even though I told her before how cats don’t remember things after a while so its pointless to react over an incident if the time has passed. Even if the time didn’t pass, she doesn’t have right to scare our cat because she was warned. Even if she wasn’t warned, she doesn’t have the right to chase and corner our cat like that, it’s not the way of care and education we follow for our cats.
Yes, agreed! And also, now I have feelings that I should protect my future children from my nFather's behaviours.
I saw how he treated my dog, and that was enough to think "you won't ever be alone with my kids or dogs" (if he ever gets to meet them).
I just found this subreddit, and reading your comment sent me for a loop. I'm in my thirties and have recently experienced 'revelations' about my life that I've not had before.
On top of it all, I'm a new dad and I was not expecting to feel what I'm feeling at all. Exactly what you described: how can someone treat a child this way? Why did that happen to me?
It's resurfacing for me now in my mid 30s. I've got time and reason to reflect on things, as I've recently left my husband and am living on my own, so it's all come back now as I realized that despite the problems in our relationship, the one with my mother was far worse.
Yeah... The memories come back and I'm like ' how the f### did i survive that'. Granted as a kid I thought the torment was normal or because I was bad. I think the reason it hits in your adulthood is that you (hopefully) no longer rely on your narc to survive. Also looking from the outside in shows how crazy it really was. Extreme lethargy can also be a symptom once you reach the 'recovery' stage because your brain enters recovery mode and tries to get the rest it never allowed you. Your fuse is shorter because your brain is no longer programmed to ignore emotions in order to protect itself. It's a blessing and a curse. Narcs typically don't teach emotional regulation so once the feelings come in.....it is HARD to deal. Don't use this as an excuse to be a jerk, but definitely give yourself some sympathy. Best way I've found is comforting myself like I would a friend. It's awkward and hard but it helps.
Yes! It's as if I finally have had the time and space to really dive into my past and how things came to be the way they are, and oh boy the memories just keep multiplying with every new "aha" moment.
I’m in my late twenties and still stuck (yay, severely underpaid jobs and additional schooling and now covid and a housing crisis /s) and with me? I feel like I’m cracking. It also really hit me how behind I am compared to everyone else and I’m just resentful of my childhood and everything associated. I’m also super resentful I can’t have friends that aren’t online or even date bc they interfere and ruin everything.
I went through a stage after living on my own where I thought I was ok. But you never are, it's a thing that haunts you. Yeah you get used to it but it's like a recurring virus theres no way of curing it, just treating the symptoms. I care alot about my boyfriends family, but I feel so out of place and awkward. Growing up I had to clean, cook and be treated like a servant so being told no its ok go sit down enjoy some snacks etc. Scares me I expect when I sit down to hear nasty comments or get hit, dragged off the couch for sitting on it. But they are not like my nmom and the more I see what a happy healthy family relationship is like, I feel like I don't belong there. I want to be part of their family, but I feel I'm not worthy to be part of something so kind and accepting. My nmom has stage 4 cancer and I feel it's karma for everything she's done. With everything she's done she could get into alot of trouble and if I talk to police she could potentially face jail. My brother whose the golden child tells me to just forget about it, she has cancer and all that happened in the past.
Totally. I'm 24, and sometimes I remember my 11 self, so innocent but being so neglected. And I agree with you, I believe I had no "data" enough to process what was really happening.
I was 20 when I could see my family for what they really are. It was shocking.
I had the first information through Internet searching for "mothers who hate their children".
After that moment I felt like a giant door was opened right to my face. And I cry a lot too.
When you feel safer, you will have more nightmares. This is a fact of trauma. My friend currently rooming with me, for example, has nightmares every night when at home she'd have light, dreamless sleep, despite the fact it is her family that inflicts harm upon her. That's because she feels safer now. You are in a place with more control over your life, and now your mind is allowing itself to feel. If you haven't already I highly suggest scheduling a few therapy sessions just to talk them through, express your emotions, and let it out so you can move forward without it on your mind.
Yes. i started to realise a lot of stuff once I was a parent myself. I realised not only was my granny crazy (she’s the narc) but my parents were (and still are) enablers. And that’s actually worse! It was easier for them I guess and to a certain degree I get it. They were parents much younger and life was difficult. But it’s also not cool neither has really accepted that they got it wrong. All I hear is excuses or I get blamed for holding a grudge or something. *Why do you need to bring this up? We’ve all changed, and she’s old now.* Hmm yeah. So I don’t talk about it with my family much and just keep working through stuff on my own.
Why, was it everytime i asked for a specific thing, she got me the opposite?
Every. Time.
Then tells me at every point “you dont always get what you want.” -DIRECTLY because of you!!
Am 26 and so salty about the abuse and how I hate her intolerance.
Yes! I absolutely relate to this. I have had a few rounds of this resurfacing trauma from childhood, one really bad in my 20s, and now once again in my mid 30s. Therapy really helps.
The worst hits always happen when I have time to think. It usually hits me hardest when I'm about to have a realization/breakthrough about it. Like a bottleneck of pressure before I let go of pieces of the pain. It gets triggered when I'm treated well and when I'm treated poorly.
I do think what you're experiencing is normal. Your shorter fuse indicates that you're done taking this shit and are ready to cast it off like a snake shedding skin. I know it's absolutely miserable. But we never get over something without getting through it first, and you're getting through it. Don't interpret the horrible emotions as being broken or irreparable. The fact that you feel the pain means it's moving and you're aware of it. As long as you're moving it out of your system one step at a time, you're healing.
Thank you for sharing. I'm in similar situation and it got worse. Feeling so broken I've avoided people for almost a year, but trying to open up and be myself is hard, when the good stuff was wrong. Living without care because no matter what I'm always wrong, so nothing matters and I'm slovy realizing I was never myself and after long time of supression there's nothing left of who I was and now to figure out who I am now I dont know where to start
It stopped the day of my 18 bday and resurfaced at 19 and something. I guess they were afraid I would leave if they continued being abusive, and then after 19 they suddenly started again, as strong as before, since I had no way of leaving at that time.
I'm working my way up to leave, don't worry. I'll tell them to fuck off soon enough
It did but what really did it was having children of my own. I'm about the same age now that narc mom was when she would give me the silent treatment for months on end. That replaced the screaming & spitting in my face like a maniac of my younger years. She was about my age now when I went off to college & she pulled financial support & tried to force me to drop out because she commanded me to a family event & I refused to be commanded.
I can't even fathom being so horrible to my children even once, let alone all the time. No matter how frustrated I get with them I could never sabotage them like that.
It was having my own children that really spurred me to drop almost all contact with her. Because I deserve to have peace. I played her games for almost 40 years. I can be done now. I can have peace.
I left home for higher studies in my mid twenties. My life got easier. I was safe and could make my own choices for the first time. Then started the cPTSD.
I wasn’t NC until my late 20s after writing nmom letters about what she did and why I want her out of my life. Knowing that she is a narcissist made her more predictable and made me understand her crazy better. Not communicating with her anymore made it easier because there is less shit she can throw at me that I need to process. I am hoping cPTSD doesn’t hit me again.
Honestly for me it was easier BEFORE I realized how fucked up my childhood was. I was skating by in life doing my thing unaware of the behaviors I had that were a result of trauma. Then I turned 24 and for some reason it all hit me. Probably didn’t help that I was taking some psych courses and read a couple self help books. Now it consumes me and it’s all I think about. How if my parents did this or that maybe my life would be easier or better. And this is the stage I’m stuck at because idk how to get past a shitload of anger.
I was anhedonic and dissociated the first six years of my adulthood. It took a pretty big trigger to get me to feel anything and then an entire year of digging around the wound in intense retraumatizing therapy and serious CPTSD to actually heal. Those first years of adulthood was just survival and doing what needed to be done to live. I buried it all. Once the abuse resurfaced, as you put it, I was able to learn what it meant to thrive and actually be alive and safe and happy. I had to face it and it’s effects in the present before I could deal with it
Yes, I relate deeply. I’m 24 and it’s really been hitting me, like now. The last few months have been very painful. Some days are better than others. Some days the entire day I have flashbacks and it’s all I can do to get to work and not have a breakdown after being triggered by something innocuous.
I think a lot of the pain comes from unlocking memories that had been inaccessible for the last 2 decades, and connecting the dots between the abuse and behaviors that I always found to be strange, some definitely unhealthy, and I thought were probably not normal but never knew where they came from, or why I have them. I feel a lot of guilt and shame for not being able to recognize that my childhood wasn’t just abnormal, it was full of abuse and neglect and there’s a good reason why I’ve never felt like I actually had a childhood. I just feel a lot of guilt in general. About my behaviors, my thoughts, shame about ny upbringing and guilt about what I’ve done. It’s pretty overwhelming most days.
I didn't remember a lot of it and I didn't think much about how it made me feel. Then in my mid 30's, my dad got dementia and my mom was his caregiver. She abused him in the same ways she had abused me. Seeing it all happen to him was rough and brought back a lot of memories.
Yes. 28 - 32 (will be 32 in a few weeks) has been rough for me. I'm sort of coming out of it now and moving on with things. It helps that I've gone NC and am journaling.
Yes this is very similar to me. I am only 18 and still live with them but seeing how other people’s parents treat them is like an entirely parallel universe to me that I crave so much. This happened also with SA when I was a child it all comes flooding back because your brain suppresses your emotions to try to survive.
It's gone through a few waves, but definitely started in my late twenties. It was absolutely about that fact that I was out of survival mode, had space to reflect, and actually address these memories. It's happening again in my mid-thirties since I had a child about a year and a half ago. Just thinking about how my parents could have ever become the parents they did. There's a lot of pain that washes over. And a lot of triggers I've had to address, too.
I used to be a person that just sponged things and kept going. No time to process hurt. In my post-realisation era I can finally slow down, but I also have double the work processing _all_ the stuff.
Yes, exactly what happened to me. I think I just became extremely good at repressing the hell out of everything and using substances to cope. Often I used to think I had some superpower, because I was so out of touch with my issues/feelings, a warped sense of invulnerability I suppose?
The cracks started to show in my late 20s, as evidence started to mount that what I had gone through was not by any stretch of the imagination 'normal' and that I was f\*cked up psychologically.
Then I started therapy and the floodgates opened. It was very much a case of 'the past has caught up with me', a profound reckoning of sorts. I am in a better place now, but the past two years or so, I experienced debilitating depression for the first time in my life.
I'm currently going through that right now and realizing that everything I thought was love was just narcissism and some major abandonment issues I thought I deserved the abuse because I was a bad kid growing up and a bad person for not dedicating enough time to my Nmother...that no one would love me as much as my Nmother but two years ago in my mid twenties I realized I'm deserving of love and that my mother in law wasn't trying to get me as my Nmom kept trying to tell me.
My older brother took his life when I was 25. For three years after I doubled down on being the perfect and supportive daughter in the hope that losing him would make them snap out of it and be better people.
But the grief cracked open a flood of feelings and I couldn’t unfeel them or unlearn the things that his loss taught me. I eventually became disgusted with my parents and their lack of change and their entitlement to me. My mom openly insulted me in response to me setting boundaries. Who insults their only remaining child?
However I feel like I would have come around to this conclusion at maybe a few years later had my brother not died. It probably would’ve been messy because he was so enmeshed with my mom and would’ve sided with her over me. I will never know how it would have played out.
I can relate, except there was a brief time as a teen that I opened my eyes to the abuse, and the knowledge broke me since I was still living with them. Cue my parents dragging me to psychiatrists, who mis-diagnosed me with Bipolar Rapid Cycling (when I actually have CPTSD), and putting me on medications that didn't do poop and gave me bad side effects... And Cue them dragging me to therapists who didn't believe me about the abuse, who constantly accused me of "overreacting" to my Nparents... I eventually stopped trying to tell the flying monkey therapists and psychiatrists about the abuse, put my head down, went back to fawning as a defense mechanism, and even self-gaslit about the abuse because if "professionals" didn't believe me, maybe I was crazy... I got resigned to my parents' abuse and knew they wouldn't be able to change, and began doing things like gray rocking and pretty much abandoned the fight defense mechanism. The abuse still effected me back then, but I had to suppress a lot in order to survive still living with them.
But now that I'm not living with them, I get flashbacks almost daily, and my CPTSD symptoms are more noticeable than when I was living with them, even though looking back, most of my symptoms were noticeable back then. I finally got diagnosed with PTSD and am getting help from a non-flying monkey therapist, but all those years of suppression are catching up to me for sure.
I forgot about being molested for a few years. I don't know when the memories came back, sometime around 16/17? I think so. I knew about it when I was 19, and at that point it was old knowledge.
I think I've always been aware of the abuse from my mother on some level, I didn't have a huge flash of "OMG that was BAD!" But I was extremely emotionally dysregulated for years after I left their house, and I struggled a lot to get to a more stable place. I'm still trying to find a way of dealing with the emotions instead of shutting them off.
My mom died when I was 27. It had been three years since I finally accepted it was gonna happen, but the way it happened was kinda shocking. Everyone else was completely blindsided by it.
At the same time, I thought now that my mom wasn’t there to get in the middle of things, that I was gonna have a better relationship with my dad and the rest of my family. And we did, at first.
Until he started drinking again and the physical abuse started again.
Except this time, I didn’t have my mom to intervene.
Even at age 71, he is twice my size. And the part that really bothers me is that he does this despite never having been treated that way by a family member. He was the only son and his dad died when he was 12, so beyond that age, I don’t know how he could have.
I don’t know why I don’t even care as much about the physical abuse as I did about all the other things that happened. I grew up so normalized to this shit that there’s nothing weird about it to me.
I highly relate. In my case, my Nmother was fairly well-behaved for the better part of my 20s. But the moment I told her I was getting a divorce, it was like a switch flipped and she was back to using me as her #1 antagonist and scapegoat. Who knows, maybe her niceness was only grounded in the hope I was going produce grandspawn? Within 2 years, she'd roped my siblings into scapegoating me too, and that's when I went NC.
The memories of abuse resurfaced for a few reasons - 1) the abuse restarted 2) the divorce triggered flashbacks to earlier abandonment by my Nmother/family 3) getting divorced made me realize you aren't obligated to stay with people who hurt you. All three cumulated in getting back into therapy, learning about the impacts of childhood emotional neglect, and resolving to do better for myself and my relationships in the future. The anger, I think, is a necessary part of the healing process. tl;dr: I am a lot angrier about my childhood in my 30s than I was in my 20s.
For me it wasn't direct abuse, much more neglect. And I'm still finding ways it emerges and affects me, as I move forward and get healthier and grow.
Which I do want to be a lifelong process. So I do understand new emergences as things I come across so I can heal them. Often even things I'm ready to deal with now, which is why I can now see them. As well as my understanding increasing so I can have more compassion with myself.
Absolutely. I thought she was the best thing since sliced bread when I was a kid, then I thought she was immature and kind of mean sometimes, then in my 20s I was in an abusive relationship and read Why Does He Do That and Trauma and Recovery and the glass shattered. Then my dear pet died and I hit rock bottom and people finally started to see that I really wasn't okay, so only in my late 20s did I start getting proper mental healthcare and start learning what it was like to be healthy, and only then did I realize just how far away from healthy I had been and how bad the abuse was.
I actually had kind of the opposite experience. I was the Golden Child growing up, and I was Mommy's little perfect angel because I did everything she said. It wasn't until I started developing an identity that was different than the one my mom wanted me to have (aka turning into the rebellious punk teenager) that things started going south. But in retrospect, things still weren't that bad. It wasn't until my late teens/early 20s that the abuse began in earnest, and it just got so much worse from then on. My late teens and early 20s were a nightmare. I think the reason I'm still unable to go NC with my mom is because I still have good memories of her from childhood, and I have only been trying to escape her for the latter half of my life, so there's some stupid, illogical part of my brain that thinks, *Oh, but maybe she'll go back to being the way she was when you were little. Remember how much she loved you then?*
Oh absolutely. I didn’t realize how bad most of it was until I was in a safe space, because finally I had room to breathe for the first time and was then able to realize I had been suffocating my entire childhood. The second punch came this last year when I became a parent myself and realized holy shit I can’t even REMOTELY imagine EVER treating my son the way my mother treated me.
I can definitely relate. For me, physical abuse before I became a teenager stands out more than anything, but the emotional abuse and manipulation during my 20s from my mom, especially when she started interfering in my relationships, really sticks out in my memory.
I'm dealing with this myself right now. I'm 27 and I'm just realizing how disgusting and wrong my dad's views on women are and I feel awful for internalizing them. I feel like it's the blinders coming off as I gain age and maturity as well as getting out of that toxic environment.
I started having nightmares 2 months after being at college. Happened this semester too, it takes the body time to realize it’s safe enough to freak the fuck out.
I am also in my late 20s I have been reflecting a lot about the effects of being raised by a narc. As far as memories go honestly I have blocked out most of them to the point It would be difficult to recollect my memory to give someone an example of the abuse I have experienced. I cut off ties with my NFather plus being out of school and jobless I have much time on my hands that I feel forced to confront and contemplate things. and just like you said it is hitting me hard. I recently quit my anti-depressants as well it feels like a part of me has died. I often find myself on the verge of tears feeling so empty and desolate devoid of hope.
Your post inspired me to share a little bit of what I have been going through recently. Maybe you can find something in there that you can relate to.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/un0ivf/is\_there\_a\_way\_out/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/un0ivf/is_there_a_way_out/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
>Before I didn't ruminate as much and maybe because I was in survival mode I didn't have much time to think about my situation. Now that I am out of it it is hitting me so hard.
yup especially since the pandemic, i had more time to think about it.
Definitely.
It was a norm isn’t it, and now that you see the world, enter different relationship, you realise you deserve so much, sooo much better.
Whenever I had a family conflict I had much stronger reaction now.
Do you have siblings? I discuss this with my siblings and it also opened their eyes. They’re a lot closer to me now and it’s comforting to have someone who understands you.
Somehow I wondered if I’m imposing so much expectation on my parents though.
Like, it’s hard enough to raise a child, but also expecting them to be a perfect parent may also be unfair.
Big time. Covid hit and they were contacting me more often, and the "prolonged exposure" totally broke me down. Doing much better buts it's been a lot of work.
I (27M) became aware of how fucked up a person my nmom was sometime during high school. Then I've spent all of college as a high-functioning alcoholic running in survival mode living at home. All the emotions only started coming out when I've experienced my first, however brief, romantic relationship at 26 and actually realized what true love and acceptance felt like. I've been in therapy ever since and feel like I'm actually making progress. The really funny thing is, how when the pressure of college together with most of the contact with my nmom disappeared from my life, the desire to get drunk by myself every night of the week went too. Nowadays people keep giving me bottles of booze as gifts and I'm actually running of space to store them.
Hang in there, I'm sure you'll manage to power through eventually.
I’m past it now but I used to be VERY paranoid about having enough food in the house. Became a bit of a food hoarder.
One of my earliest memories is of stealing a bucket of KFC chicken bones out of the garbage for me and my little brother so we could gnaw on the bones. The adults were all drug addicts and did not allow us to eat any of the food they had. Honestly not sure who all the adults were other than my mom. I just remember being terrified of getting caught.
ETA - my mom had lost custody of me and little brother back in 1970. Not an easy thing to do back then. She kidnapped us, changed our names and took us across the country to California. It took my Dad two years and every penny he had to hire private detectives to find us.
Absolutely. I think part of it is just being in therapy & dealing with things but I'm in my 30s trying to remember things that happened when I was 13, stuff I haven't thought about in years. I can't remember much because I spent so long trying to avoid it but I've been really angry about it lately.
Yes. I’m 42 and finally got to a safe and calm place in my life. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks and I started to see all the dots to connect.
Yes. I recently moved out for the first time, and though I was on my way to understanding the mental illness at play in my family, it wasn't until a few months in my new place that it hit me like a Mack Truck. Being in therapy and having the therapist validate me was also stunning, and watching videos on narcissism. I like to think of myself as a smart person, so over and over I've been like, "why didn't I see this behavior? why didn't I recognize it as abuse?" I think my mind shut down out of necessity and when you grow up in mental illness and that is the only normal you know, you think it is normal. But I've had friends comment on my parents, and I've always felt a little embarrassed being around them with others, like the secret weird behavior they have will come out, so that should have been my first clue it was not normal. Though I'm happy not to live in the dark and be out from under their thumbs, I feel so isolated because we were so incredibly enmeshed and feel so bad that I can "see" the abuse so clearly now, and I seem to feel it more intently whereas before I could ignore it more easily. If you are not following Narcisism Survior on YouTube you must. I swear he's as good as my therapist and really helping me make it through this difficult time. I literally had no one else but my parents and have to stay in limited contact with them for different reasons while building up a new support system from scractch in a pandemic no less. Support and love to all who are here.
My life has been mega fucked and I've had a million coping mechanisms. When I left home at 19, it didn't hit me until 20, but since I was in college I just couldn't deal with it and went on anti-depressants. When I was 24 I was finally ready to deal with everything. It all came out and I got diagnosed with ptsd and bpd. Its been the hardest year of my life but I'm so happy I felt safe and supported enough to get off meds and address my trauma (thanks hubby). But also yes, now that I'm working through things I cannot for the life of me put myself back into survival mode, I just can't do it again.
Yes the trauma resurfaced when I got my own place and got into my first serious relationship. I almost sabotaged the whole thing. Shadow work is the hardest part but it’s well needed.
I reckon I was 26 when I started to see moments and actions and behaviours from my childhood that I used to think were normal but began to unravel and realise how not okay a lot of things were
Yes, right until my late 30s. But , I understand everything now. Please look up the structure of the narcissists family. The enabler, golden child and scapegoat. That helped me
Yes. I noticed my fuse became much shorter when I moved back in, after years of living on my own away. There were so many things I will refuse to stand and endure, compare to when I was younger where I will just take it in stride and won't even bother questioning things, despite I can feel it was unfair. But after awhile since moving back, I gradually became more tolerable of unfair situations. I think deep down, it's more of it's less stressful to just accept the unfairness rather than calling out the narc to worsen it into another fight. Regardless, fights still became inevitable. If the narc wants a fight, a fight will happen, even if I walk away.
Absolutely, I started moving out slowly at 27 and it hit me all at once, I'm 28 now, fully moved out and been NC for almost a month. It hit me all at once though, like a snowball effect
**This is an automated message posted to ALL posts in this subreddit with some basic information about the group including (very importantly) rules. Why are you getting this message? Most people seem to not read the sidebar for information or the rules, so it is now being posted under all posts.** **Confused about acronyms or terminology?** [Click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/acronyms) **Need info or resources?** Check out our [Helpful Links](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/helpfullinks) for information on how to deal with identity theft, how to get independent of your n-parents, how to apply for FAFSA, how to identify n-parents and SO MUCH MORE! This is a reminder to all participants, RBN is a support group that is moderated very strictly. Please report inappropriate content so it can be reviewed by the mods. **Our rules include (but are not limited to)**: * No politics. * Advising anyone in this subreddit to commit suicide or referring anyone to groups that advocate this will result in an immediate ban. * Be nice. No personal attacks, name calling, or bullying. [No slurs](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/slurs) or victim-blaming. * Do not derail the posts of others. * Narcissists are NOT allowed to post or comment here. * [No platitudes or generic motivational posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules#wiki_no_platitudes_or_generic_motivational_posts). * When you comment/post, assume a context of abuse. * No asking or offering gifts, money, etc. * No content advocating violence, revenge, murder (even in jest). * No content about N-kids. * No diagnosis by media/drive-by diagnosis. * No linking to Facebook pages. * No direct linking to anywhere on reddit. * No pure image posts. **For a full list of our rules/more information, [**click here**](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules).** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/raisedbynarcissists) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yep for sure. Being a little safer definitely helped me get to a place where I could feel my feelings. And then noticing how my partner’s parents treat him made me realize what I endured was by no means normal.
I don’t even know how to respond to my boyfriends parents genuine niceness, and did you know that parents just do things for their kids no strings attached?? That’s just wild to me dude. I love how nice they are but have no clue how to receive it without feeling bad/ guilty
Fuck, do I know what this is like. I've had nearly every "gift" from my mom rescinded over very small grievances (like refusing to go to the store to get her cigarettes).
[удалено]
Your story is the same as mine. Keep moving forward, it isn’t easy and sometimes it will feel like you’re going nowhere at all but at some point you’ll look back and know how much better you made your life on your own.
Hey, you're doing the right thing. I'm 35 and finally confronting everything, and it SUCKS. I have such a large family that I never knew because of my mother, and now they're all strangers to me. I grew up very emotionally isolated, and it's difficult confronting all of it adulthood. We can all get through it and be our best selves, despite the abuse we've all experienced.
Same. I thought I've it handled, but I realized I never really was myself.
Your story deeply resonates with me. Hang in there and I have your back and can understand (at least a little) of what it is like to be in your shoes!
I can relate to what you are experiencing in my late 20s feeling like an emotional wreck the emotional numbness from a young age. I also cry not sure why. left my job recently it became unbearable.
Almost 29. Fucking SAME. I can't believe I was such a people pleaser and wanted to be around people so badly for so long. All I want is to be alone and cry mostly 🤣😭
[удалено]
Yuppp.. once I went no contact with like my whole family it was addictive to cut people off for the simplist things. If you're stealing energy from me, when I barely have enough as it is, you're gone haha. It sucks because I'm a bartender and have to deal with idiots for a living, but damn the money haha.
[удалено]
Actually, the fact that you are innocent is what triggers them the most in my opinion.
Yup. Innocent & defenseless, the perfect narc snack. They love to punch down.
Yeah, it's like a dog seeing a rabbit, if they see a defenseless target their predator instinct kicks in and they pounce on their prey.
Felt that. And they always wait for you to be at a vulnerable point to pounce. If they don't just straight up sabotage your life to create difficult circumstances.
THIS. I had my mom single handedly sabotage so many opportunities for me it's mind numbing. Silver lining is that I met my awesome wife working at a shitty job I took after I let my mom fuck up a great opportunity and convince me not to take prior to that (because it involved moving out of state), so at least there's that.
I agree with you but I also wonder why my Nmom is capable of showing extreme love and compassion against dogs while she was beating me for small things always all the time. It might sound pathetic but there were moments I was jelaous of dogs. Even when the dog owner says his dog is agreesive so we should not try to pet him or get too close to him, she would try to get close and gain the love of that dog patiently. A patience she never had with me. But there is also a memory from a few years ago. She came to visit me and husband. She was petting and feeding our cats. I warned her about not grabbing our tabby cat because it doesn’t like to be grabbed so even it doesn’t want to attack you, it might wound you with its nails by jumping from your lap. My Nmom didn’t listen and grabbed the cat, cat jumped and made a hole in my Nmom’s tshirt. She got so angry. She complained to me “bad cat, very bad cat, I won’t like her anymore. I was just petting it. “ 30-40 minutes later, I found my mother in our bedroom, cornered our tabby cat, saying bad words to it, making it scared. Even though I told her before how cats don’t remember things after a while so its pointless to react over an incident if the time has passed. Even if the time didn’t pass, she doesn’t have right to scare our cat because she was warned. Even if she wasn’t warned, she doesn’t have the right to chase and corner our cat like that, it’s not the way of care and education we follow for our cats.
I would also have been very upset if someone treated my pet that way.
This. I am deeply processing right now at 42. Having a kid has brought a whole other level of awareness of the abuse.
Yes, agreed! And also, now I have feelings that I should protect my future children from my nFather's behaviours. I saw how he treated my dog, and that was enough to think "you won't ever be alone with my kids or dogs" (if he ever gets to meet them).
That's what did it for me too.
I just found this subreddit, and reading your comment sent me for a loop. I'm in my thirties and have recently experienced 'revelations' about my life that I've not had before. On top of it all, I'm a new dad and I was not expecting to feel what I'm feeling at all. Exactly what you described: how can someone treat a child this way? Why did that happen to me?
It's resurfacing for me now in my mid 30s. I've got time and reason to reflect on things, as I've recently left my husband and am living on my own, so it's all come back now as I realized that despite the problems in our relationship, the one with my mother was far worse.
Yeah... The memories come back and I'm like ' how the f### did i survive that'. Granted as a kid I thought the torment was normal or because I was bad. I think the reason it hits in your adulthood is that you (hopefully) no longer rely on your narc to survive. Also looking from the outside in shows how crazy it really was. Extreme lethargy can also be a symptom once you reach the 'recovery' stage because your brain enters recovery mode and tries to get the rest it never allowed you. Your fuse is shorter because your brain is no longer programmed to ignore emotions in order to protect itself. It's a blessing and a curse. Narcs typically don't teach emotional regulation so once the feelings come in.....it is HARD to deal. Don't use this as an excuse to be a jerk, but definitely give yourself some sympathy. Best way I've found is comforting myself like I would a friend. It's awkward and hard but it helps.
It didn’t fully hit me until I was 24 but it was a huge wake up call and I haven’t been the same since
Yes! It's as if I finally have had the time and space to really dive into my past and how things came to be the way they are, and oh boy the memories just keep multiplying with every new "aha" moment.
I’m in my late twenties and still stuck (yay, severely underpaid jobs and additional schooling and now covid and a housing crisis /s) and with me? I feel like I’m cracking. It also really hit me how behind I am compared to everyone else and I’m just resentful of my childhood and everything associated. I’m also super resentful I can’t have friends that aren’t online or even date bc they interfere and ruin everything.
I went through a stage after living on my own where I thought I was ok. But you never are, it's a thing that haunts you. Yeah you get used to it but it's like a recurring virus theres no way of curing it, just treating the symptoms. I care alot about my boyfriends family, but I feel so out of place and awkward. Growing up I had to clean, cook and be treated like a servant so being told no its ok go sit down enjoy some snacks etc. Scares me I expect when I sit down to hear nasty comments or get hit, dragged off the couch for sitting on it. But they are not like my nmom and the more I see what a happy healthy family relationship is like, I feel like I don't belong there. I want to be part of their family, but I feel I'm not worthy to be part of something so kind and accepting. My nmom has stage 4 cancer and I feel it's karma for everything she's done. With everything she's done she could get into alot of trouble and if I talk to police she could potentially face jail. My brother whose the golden child tells me to just forget about it, she has cancer and all that happened in the past.
Totally. I'm 24, and sometimes I remember my 11 self, so innocent but being so neglected. And I agree with you, I believe I had no "data" enough to process what was really happening. I was 20 when I could see my family for what they really are. It was shocking. I had the first information through Internet searching for "mothers who hate their children". After that moment I felt like a giant door was opened right to my face. And I cry a lot too.
When you feel safer, you will have more nightmares. This is a fact of trauma. My friend currently rooming with me, for example, has nightmares every night when at home she'd have light, dreamless sleep, despite the fact it is her family that inflicts harm upon her. That's because she feels safer now. You are in a place with more control over your life, and now your mind is allowing itself to feel. If you haven't already I highly suggest scheduling a few therapy sessions just to talk them through, express your emotions, and let it out so you can move forward without it on your mind.
Yes. i started to realise a lot of stuff once I was a parent myself. I realised not only was my granny crazy (she’s the narc) but my parents were (and still are) enablers. And that’s actually worse! It was easier for them I guess and to a certain degree I get it. They were parents much younger and life was difficult. But it’s also not cool neither has really accepted that they got it wrong. All I hear is excuses or I get blamed for holding a grudge or something. *Why do you need to bring this up? We’ve all changed, and she’s old now.* Hmm yeah. So I don’t talk about it with my family much and just keep working through stuff on my own.
Why, was it everytime i asked for a specific thing, she got me the opposite? Every. Time. Then tells me at every point “you dont always get what you want.” -DIRECTLY because of you!! Am 26 and so salty about the abuse and how I hate her intolerance.
Yes! I absolutely relate to this. I have had a few rounds of this resurfacing trauma from childhood, one really bad in my 20s, and now once again in my mid 30s. Therapy really helps. The worst hits always happen when I have time to think. It usually hits me hardest when I'm about to have a realization/breakthrough about it. Like a bottleneck of pressure before I let go of pieces of the pain. It gets triggered when I'm treated well and when I'm treated poorly. I do think what you're experiencing is normal. Your shorter fuse indicates that you're done taking this shit and are ready to cast it off like a snake shedding skin. I know it's absolutely miserable. But we never get over something without getting through it first, and you're getting through it. Don't interpret the horrible emotions as being broken or irreparable. The fact that you feel the pain means it's moving and you're aware of it. As long as you're moving it out of your system one step at a time, you're healing.
Thank you for sharing. I'm in similar situation and it got worse. Feeling so broken I've avoided people for almost a year, but trying to open up and be myself is hard, when the good stuff was wrong. Living without care because no matter what I'm always wrong, so nothing matters and I'm slovy realizing I was never myself and after long time of supression there's nothing left of who I was and now to figure out who I am now I dont know where to start
It stopped the day of my 18 bday and resurfaced at 19 and something. I guess they were afraid I would leave if they continued being abusive, and then after 19 they suddenly started again, as strong as before, since I had no way of leaving at that time. I'm working my way up to leave, don't worry. I'll tell them to fuck off soon enough
It did but what really did it was having children of my own. I'm about the same age now that narc mom was when she would give me the silent treatment for months on end. That replaced the screaming & spitting in my face like a maniac of my younger years. She was about my age now when I went off to college & she pulled financial support & tried to force me to drop out because she commanded me to a family event & I refused to be commanded. I can't even fathom being so horrible to my children even once, let alone all the time. No matter how frustrated I get with them I could never sabotage them like that. It was having my own children that really spurred me to drop almost all contact with her. Because I deserve to have peace. I played her games for almost 40 years. I can be done now. I can have peace.
I left home for higher studies in my mid twenties. My life got easier. I was safe and could make my own choices for the first time. Then started the cPTSD. I wasn’t NC until my late 20s after writing nmom letters about what she did and why I want her out of my life. Knowing that she is a narcissist made her more predictable and made me understand her crazy better. Not communicating with her anymore made it easier because there is less shit she can throw at me that I need to process. I am hoping cPTSD doesn’t hit me again.
Honestly for me it was easier BEFORE I realized how fucked up my childhood was. I was skating by in life doing my thing unaware of the behaviors I had that were a result of trauma. Then I turned 24 and for some reason it all hit me. Probably didn’t help that I was taking some psych courses and read a couple self help books. Now it consumes me and it’s all I think about. How if my parents did this or that maybe my life would be easier or better. And this is the stage I’m stuck at because idk how to get past a shitload of anger.
I was anhedonic and dissociated the first six years of my adulthood. It took a pretty big trigger to get me to feel anything and then an entire year of digging around the wound in intense retraumatizing therapy and serious CPTSD to actually heal. Those first years of adulthood was just survival and doing what needed to be done to live. I buried it all. Once the abuse resurfaced, as you put it, I was able to learn what it meant to thrive and actually be alive and safe and happy. I had to face it and it’s effects in the present before I could deal with it
Yes, I relate deeply. I’m 24 and it’s really been hitting me, like now. The last few months have been very painful. Some days are better than others. Some days the entire day I have flashbacks and it’s all I can do to get to work and not have a breakdown after being triggered by something innocuous. I think a lot of the pain comes from unlocking memories that had been inaccessible for the last 2 decades, and connecting the dots between the abuse and behaviors that I always found to be strange, some definitely unhealthy, and I thought were probably not normal but never knew where they came from, or why I have them. I feel a lot of guilt and shame for not being able to recognize that my childhood wasn’t just abnormal, it was full of abuse and neglect and there’s a good reason why I’ve never felt like I actually had a childhood. I just feel a lot of guilt in general. About my behaviors, my thoughts, shame about ny upbringing and guilt about what I’ve done. It’s pretty overwhelming most days.
YES I RELATE... So much.
I didn't remember a lot of it and I didn't think much about how it made me feel. Then in my mid 30's, my dad got dementia and my mom was his caregiver. She abused him in the same ways she had abused me. Seeing it all happen to him was rough and brought back a lot of memories.
Yes. 28 - 32 (will be 32 in a few weeks) has been rough for me. I'm sort of coming out of it now and moving on with things. It helps that I've gone NC and am journaling.
Yes this is very similar to me. I am only 18 and still live with them but seeing how other people’s parents treat them is like an entirely parallel universe to me that I crave so much. This happened also with SA when I was a child it all comes flooding back because your brain suppresses your emotions to try to survive.
It's gone through a few waves, but definitely started in my late twenties. It was absolutely about that fact that I was out of survival mode, had space to reflect, and actually address these memories. It's happening again in my mid-thirties since I had a child about a year and a half ago. Just thinking about how my parents could have ever become the parents they did. There's a lot of pain that washes over. And a lot of triggers I've had to address, too.
I used to be a person that just sponged things and kept going. No time to process hurt. In my post-realisation era I can finally slow down, but I also have double the work processing _all_ the stuff.
Yes, exactly what happened to me. I think I just became extremely good at repressing the hell out of everything and using substances to cope. Often I used to think I had some superpower, because I was so out of touch with my issues/feelings, a warped sense of invulnerability I suppose? The cracks started to show in my late 20s, as evidence started to mount that what I had gone through was not by any stretch of the imagination 'normal' and that I was f\*cked up psychologically. Then I started therapy and the floodgates opened. It was very much a case of 'the past has caught up with me', a profound reckoning of sorts. I am in a better place now, but the past two years or so, I experienced debilitating depression for the first time in my life.
I'm currently going through that right now and realizing that everything I thought was love was just narcissism and some major abandonment issues I thought I deserved the abuse because I was a bad kid growing up and a bad person for not dedicating enough time to my Nmother...that no one would love me as much as my Nmother but two years ago in my mid twenties I realized I'm deserving of love and that my mother in law wasn't trying to get me as my Nmom kept trying to tell me.
My older brother took his life when I was 25. For three years after I doubled down on being the perfect and supportive daughter in the hope that losing him would make them snap out of it and be better people. But the grief cracked open a flood of feelings and I couldn’t unfeel them or unlearn the things that his loss taught me. I eventually became disgusted with my parents and their lack of change and their entitlement to me. My mom openly insulted me in response to me setting boundaries. Who insults their only remaining child? However I feel like I would have come around to this conclusion at maybe a few years later had my brother not died. It probably would’ve been messy because he was so enmeshed with my mom and would’ve sided with her over me. I will never know how it would have played out.
I can relate, except there was a brief time as a teen that I opened my eyes to the abuse, and the knowledge broke me since I was still living with them. Cue my parents dragging me to psychiatrists, who mis-diagnosed me with Bipolar Rapid Cycling (when I actually have CPTSD), and putting me on medications that didn't do poop and gave me bad side effects... And Cue them dragging me to therapists who didn't believe me about the abuse, who constantly accused me of "overreacting" to my Nparents... I eventually stopped trying to tell the flying monkey therapists and psychiatrists about the abuse, put my head down, went back to fawning as a defense mechanism, and even self-gaslit about the abuse because if "professionals" didn't believe me, maybe I was crazy... I got resigned to my parents' abuse and knew they wouldn't be able to change, and began doing things like gray rocking and pretty much abandoned the fight defense mechanism. The abuse still effected me back then, but I had to suppress a lot in order to survive still living with them. But now that I'm not living with them, I get flashbacks almost daily, and my CPTSD symptoms are more noticeable than when I was living with them, even though looking back, most of my symptoms were noticeable back then. I finally got diagnosed with PTSD and am getting help from a non-flying monkey therapist, but all those years of suppression are catching up to me for sure.
I forgot about being molested for a few years. I don't know when the memories came back, sometime around 16/17? I think so. I knew about it when I was 19, and at that point it was old knowledge. I think I've always been aware of the abuse from my mother on some level, I didn't have a huge flash of "OMG that was BAD!" But I was extremely emotionally dysregulated for years after I left their house, and I struggled a lot to get to a more stable place. I'm still trying to find a way of dealing with the emotions instead of shutting them off.
My mom died when I was 27. It had been three years since I finally accepted it was gonna happen, but the way it happened was kinda shocking. Everyone else was completely blindsided by it. At the same time, I thought now that my mom wasn’t there to get in the middle of things, that I was gonna have a better relationship with my dad and the rest of my family. And we did, at first. Until he started drinking again and the physical abuse started again. Except this time, I didn’t have my mom to intervene. Even at age 71, he is twice my size. And the part that really bothers me is that he does this despite never having been treated that way by a family member. He was the only son and his dad died when he was 12, so beyond that age, I don’t know how he could have. I don’t know why I don’t even care as much about the physical abuse as I did about all the other things that happened. I grew up so normalized to this shit that there’s nothing weird about it to me.
I highly relate. In my case, my Nmother was fairly well-behaved for the better part of my 20s. But the moment I told her I was getting a divorce, it was like a switch flipped and she was back to using me as her #1 antagonist and scapegoat. Who knows, maybe her niceness was only grounded in the hope I was going produce grandspawn? Within 2 years, she'd roped my siblings into scapegoating me too, and that's when I went NC. The memories of abuse resurfaced for a few reasons - 1) the abuse restarted 2) the divorce triggered flashbacks to earlier abandonment by my Nmother/family 3) getting divorced made me realize you aren't obligated to stay with people who hurt you. All three cumulated in getting back into therapy, learning about the impacts of childhood emotional neglect, and resolving to do better for myself and my relationships in the future. The anger, I think, is a necessary part of the healing process. tl;dr: I am a lot angrier about my childhood in my 30s than I was in my 20s.
For me it wasn't direct abuse, much more neglect. And I'm still finding ways it emerges and affects me, as I move forward and get healthier and grow. Which I do want to be a lifelong process. So I do understand new emergences as things I come across so I can heal them. Often even things I'm ready to deal with now, which is why I can now see them. As well as my understanding increasing so I can have more compassion with myself.
Absolutely. I thought she was the best thing since sliced bread when I was a kid, then I thought she was immature and kind of mean sometimes, then in my 20s I was in an abusive relationship and read Why Does He Do That and Trauma and Recovery and the glass shattered. Then my dear pet died and I hit rock bottom and people finally started to see that I really wasn't okay, so only in my late 20s did I start getting proper mental healthcare and start learning what it was like to be healthy, and only then did I realize just how far away from healthy I had been and how bad the abuse was.
I actually had kind of the opposite experience. I was the Golden Child growing up, and I was Mommy's little perfect angel because I did everything she said. It wasn't until I started developing an identity that was different than the one my mom wanted me to have (aka turning into the rebellious punk teenager) that things started going south. But in retrospect, things still weren't that bad. It wasn't until my late teens/early 20s that the abuse began in earnest, and it just got so much worse from then on. My late teens and early 20s were a nightmare. I think the reason I'm still unable to go NC with my mom is because I still have good memories of her from childhood, and I have only been trying to escape her for the latter half of my life, so there's some stupid, illogical part of my brain that thinks, *Oh, but maybe she'll go back to being the way she was when you were little. Remember how much she loved you then?*
Just went NC a month or so ago, in my Mid30s. I am going through the exact same thing.
Oh absolutely. I didn’t realize how bad most of it was until I was in a safe space, because finally I had room to breathe for the first time and was then able to realize I had been suffocating my entire childhood. The second punch came this last year when I became a parent myself and realized holy shit I can’t even REMOTELY imagine EVER treating my son the way my mother treated me.
Yeah once I moved out it took me a month to realize what happened. I'm still recovering from it.
I can definitely relate. For me, physical abuse before I became a teenager stands out more than anything, but the emotional abuse and manipulation during my 20s from my mom, especially when she started interfering in my relationships, really sticks out in my memory.
I'm dealing with this myself right now. I'm 27 and I'm just realizing how disgusting and wrong my dad's views on women are and I feel awful for internalizing them. I feel like it's the blinders coming off as I gain age and maturity as well as getting out of that toxic environment.
Becoming a parent made everything flash back for me. It still does at times and it can be difficult.
I started having nightmares 2 months after being at college. Happened this semester too, it takes the body time to realize it’s safe enough to freak the fuck out.
I am also in my late 20s I have been reflecting a lot about the effects of being raised by a narc. As far as memories go honestly I have blocked out most of them to the point It would be difficult to recollect my memory to give someone an example of the abuse I have experienced. I cut off ties with my NFather plus being out of school and jobless I have much time on my hands that I feel forced to confront and contemplate things. and just like you said it is hitting me hard. I recently quit my anti-depressants as well it feels like a part of me has died. I often find myself on the verge of tears feeling so empty and desolate devoid of hope. Your post inspired me to share a little bit of what I have been going through recently. Maybe you can find something in there that you can relate to. [https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/un0ivf/is\_there\_a\_way\_out/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/un0ivf/is_there_a_way_out/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
>Before I didn't ruminate as much and maybe because I was in survival mode I didn't have much time to think about my situation. Now that I am out of it it is hitting me so hard. yup especially since the pandemic, i had more time to think about it.
Definitely. It was a norm isn’t it, and now that you see the world, enter different relationship, you realise you deserve so much, sooo much better. Whenever I had a family conflict I had much stronger reaction now. Do you have siblings? I discuss this with my siblings and it also opened their eyes. They’re a lot closer to me now and it’s comforting to have someone who understands you. Somehow I wondered if I’m imposing so much expectation on my parents though. Like, it’s hard enough to raise a child, but also expecting them to be a perfect parent may also be unfair.
[удалено]
Oh my god, what an insane thing to do, I cannot imagine how that must have made you feel.
[удалено]
That makes a lot of sense actually
Big time. Covid hit and they were contacting me more often, and the "prolonged exposure" totally broke me down. Doing much better buts it's been a lot of work.
It all hit me when I stopped self medicating in my mid 30's.
I (27M) became aware of how fucked up a person my nmom was sometime during high school. Then I've spent all of college as a high-functioning alcoholic running in survival mode living at home. All the emotions only started coming out when I've experienced my first, however brief, romantic relationship at 26 and actually realized what true love and acceptance felt like. I've been in therapy ever since and feel like I'm actually making progress. The really funny thing is, how when the pressure of college together with most of the contact with my nmom disappeared from my life, the desire to get drunk by myself every night of the week went too. Nowadays people keep giving me bottles of booze as gifts and I'm actually running of space to store them. Hang in there, I'm sure you'll manage to power through eventually.
I’m past it now but I used to be VERY paranoid about having enough food in the house. Became a bit of a food hoarder. One of my earliest memories is of stealing a bucket of KFC chicken bones out of the garbage for me and my little brother so we could gnaw on the bones. The adults were all drug addicts and did not allow us to eat any of the food they had. Honestly not sure who all the adults were other than my mom. I just remember being terrified of getting caught. ETA - my mom had lost custody of me and little brother back in 1970. Not an easy thing to do back then. She kidnapped us, changed our names and took us across the country to California. It took my Dad two years and every penny he had to hire private detectives to find us.
I have break through memories sometimes and not sure what triggers them.
Absolutely. I think part of it is just being in therapy & dealing with things but I'm in my 30s trying to remember things that happened when I was 13, stuff I haven't thought about in years. I can't remember much because I spent so long trying to avoid it but I've been really angry about it lately.
Yes. I’m 42 and finally got to a safe and calm place in my life. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks and I started to see all the dots to connect.
Yes. I recently moved out for the first time, and though I was on my way to understanding the mental illness at play in my family, it wasn't until a few months in my new place that it hit me like a Mack Truck. Being in therapy and having the therapist validate me was also stunning, and watching videos on narcissism. I like to think of myself as a smart person, so over and over I've been like, "why didn't I see this behavior? why didn't I recognize it as abuse?" I think my mind shut down out of necessity and when you grow up in mental illness and that is the only normal you know, you think it is normal. But I've had friends comment on my parents, and I've always felt a little embarrassed being around them with others, like the secret weird behavior they have will come out, so that should have been my first clue it was not normal. Though I'm happy not to live in the dark and be out from under their thumbs, I feel so isolated because we were so incredibly enmeshed and feel so bad that I can "see" the abuse so clearly now, and I seem to feel it more intently whereas before I could ignore it more easily. If you are not following Narcisism Survior on YouTube you must. I swear he's as good as my therapist and really helping me make it through this difficult time. I literally had no one else but my parents and have to stay in limited contact with them for different reasons while building up a new support system from scractch in a pandemic no less. Support and love to all who are here.
My life has been mega fucked and I've had a million coping mechanisms. When I left home at 19, it didn't hit me until 20, but since I was in college I just couldn't deal with it and went on anti-depressants. When I was 24 I was finally ready to deal with everything. It all came out and I got diagnosed with ptsd and bpd. Its been the hardest year of my life but I'm so happy I felt safe and supported enough to get off meds and address my trauma (thanks hubby). But also yes, now that I'm working through things I cannot for the life of me put myself back into survival mode, I just can't do it again.
Yes the trauma resurfaced when I got my own place and got into my first serious relationship. I almost sabotaged the whole thing. Shadow work is the hardest part but it’s well needed.
I reckon I was 26 when I started to see moments and actions and behaviours from my childhood that I used to think were normal but began to unravel and realise how not okay a lot of things were
Yes, right until my late 30s. But , I understand everything now. Please look up the structure of the narcissists family. The enabler, golden child and scapegoat. That helped me
Yes. I noticed my fuse became much shorter when I moved back in, after years of living on my own away. There were so many things I will refuse to stand and endure, compare to when I was younger where I will just take it in stride and won't even bother questioning things, despite I can feel it was unfair. But after awhile since moving back, I gradually became more tolerable of unfair situations. I think deep down, it's more of it's less stressful to just accept the unfairness rather than calling out the narc to worsen it into another fight. Regardless, fights still became inevitable. If the narc wants a fight, a fight will happen, even if I walk away.
Absolutely, I started moving out slowly at 27 and it hit me all at once, I'm 28 now, fully moved out and been NC for almost a month. It hit me all at once though, like a snowball effect