This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I Heart Media, or their employees. I had it in my head that we were strong, we could come overcome this. We're not weak. I'm not weak, and I just kept telling myself that over and over, and I would constantly say, no matter how now I have it, somebody else out there has a way worse than I has, and that kind of helped me overcome the obstacles. Lots of people talk about having narcissistic parents, and everyone who has had that history obviously has different stories, but there are similar themes. The fear, confusion, self blame can result in so many difficult experiences that trail a person into adulthood. Most pointedly. Many survivors of parental narcissistic abuse are afraid of becoming like their toxic parent when they become parents. Sometimes one person story of a narcissistic childhood can capture the themes that are observed in many people's experiences. The story of our guests in this episode is powerful because aspects of it will feel so familiar to so many survivors. Her story of having endured a manipulative, abusive parent who would vacillate between being interesting and engaging to active, invalidating, and abusive is the story of how trauma bonds are formed, the triangulation, gas lighting, and manipulation that can fill survivors with shame and self blame, the many ways that children adapt to these situations, and how all of this shapes our personalities and how we go through the world in adulthood. The volatility and unpredictability of having a narcissistic parent makes childhood a place of fear and anxiety. In this episode, you will hear about her childhood, what the toxic and manipulative patterns look like, how they affected her and a sibling differently, and how it affected her relationship with her other parent. And in our next episode featuring this guest, you will hear her share openly and vulnerably how a history like this affected her as a parent. All right, dr Aronne, thank you for having me absolutely Well, what was your dad like? Because I know that that's a lot of what your story is growing up. My other was a very charming individual. We always were projected as if we were a very well put together family. We grew up poverty long right there. However, we always had nice shirts, nice you know, shoes, made sure that we always presented ourselves with manners. He would glare at us, make sure you behave that type of look, you know, that mom look that you normally get behave yourself, except it would be a lot worse. And we essentially projected like we were keeping up with the Joneses. Except that wasn't what it was like in the behind the scenes. It was very doctor jackal Mr Hyde. Okay, So the father then, who made sure you had the clean clothes and made sure your behavior was in line and all of that. The charming guide. That's the one face of your dad, that is the one facet of him, Yes, the client facing. What about that other face of your dad? Behind clothes stores. It was walking on eggshells constantly. He really had to gauge his behavior or his mood rather to to really broach any subject. If you wanted to ask him any questions, he could sit there and be joking with you, and then all of a sudden, you say the wrong thing, and it's like a switch goes off, and what are you talking about? How dare you? Blah blah blah blah, and they just go off on a tirade. And his tirades would last anywhere from hours like minimal hours, because they would they would start stop, start, stop, start stopping, like just to get that last word and just to get that point really drilled home, or days they'll bring it back up the next day or the day after. It wasn't constant, I would from memory, if memory serves me right, it probably be about fifty. So you do get the happy, go lucky, adventurous. Hey, I love I love music, I love education. Let's go learn a little bit of history. Let's go drive here, let's go drive there. So that part in that aspect I also took on as I got older. I enjoyed that very very much so, and I enjoyed he drilled home that education was extremely important, so whatever you do in life, that is key. So that I took. But it was very much a do as I say, not as I do persona, and that was kind of his rule. And if you got in trouble, he would fly off the handle. He would, you know, veins popping, red face, screaming at you. And I remember this particular one time that he answered the phone and it was his buddy and he was going to meet him at the karaoke bar, something along those lines, and he's like, you don't know what you're talking about. Hello, Oh yeah, yeah, I'll be there in the twenty minutes or so, hang up the phone, and then continue with the same amount of rage, screaming at my brother and I that's so interesting. So let's unpack that because from the jump, that tells me he had control over the behavior. You think so, because to me, I felt like he didn't, well think about it, scream, scream, veins popping, yell, yell, bad kid, bad kid, bad bad bad, the phone rings. If he didn't have control over his behavior, he screaming, it was a choice, so he chose to let himself go unbridled. Yes, with you. I just I always thought that it was just because he called it seeing red, like he didn't know what he did when he when he saw red. That's what he would say. Oh, no, you don't know what you're talking about. I have no I have no recollection of that. That's convenience. I guess that's part of that gas lighting, right, But you understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm seeing that. You're surprised, you know. And I think that that, to me, though, is not unusual. A lot of people are told they saw red, they forgot, they lost consciousness. Okay, but then you how did you all of a sudden now you're seeing, not read when you're talking to your buddy that you're going to see later. That is a really, really excellent point. I never even thought of that. I wonder if that left you wondering while he's not yelling at the other guy. So it's got to be something about us. Oh, absolutely constantly, and he would tell us it was us. It would constantly sit there, and you're the reason I divorced mother. You're the reason that I lost my temper. It hurts me way more than it hurts you. Believe me, you got it a lot easier than I had when I was growing up. So you've got a lot of really classical parental gas lighting in all its forms, and really manipulation even above and beyond the gas lighting, in the sense that telling a child that they're the reason for his momentous and disruptive a decision as a divorce is a really really cruel Literally what less than zero is about human development? Like this person is has no problem saying these absolutely forbidden things. But what I'm wondering that is that this very father who was able to blame his kids for a divorce tell them that you ain't. This is nothing compared to what I went through while being abusive. That same person was able to turn it on for their friend. I am wondering if when he was with his friends he was really well put together. I've actually been out. When he's out, he's the life of the party. He is the guy track and jokes and and the fun guy next door and just man about town. I've seen it. I've seen what he's like. So let me ask you this. Let's connected back then to this idea of your military brat. You're moving all around. You've got this rageful father he's the reason you're moving around and you go from place to place. It's got to be confusing to have this rageful dad and then you don't have consistent friends. How did that all play out for you? How did you cope with all of that? Well, the psychological was actually the worst part. Honestly. I chose to project have a similar pattern where I would project everything's fine, everything's hunky, dorry, I am this funny, outgoing girl and very much an extrovert, Let's go this place, let's go that place. But inside I felt very dark, very depressed. I guess I didn't really identify as depressed. I identified it as just a low self esteem. I don't want to minimize that, but it was a low self esteem, low self es, sense sense of self worth. And I would write a lot. I would write to help me get it out, you know, write the pros and cons of me. And I only told a few of my friends, and I would just kind of gauge their reactions first, and you know, kind of similar situations where they would do something that I had done to misbehave. They would get put in the corner. I would get beat with a two by four thrown down the stairs. There's plenty of times where I didn't know how to express myself in in a healthy, cathartic manner because he didn't teach me, and he also didn't exercise those healthy ways of emotional balance, I guess is a good way to put that. What kinds of things would set him off. One time, I was eating stuff out of the fridge and you you weren't allowed to unless it was like dinnertime, and I had stuck craft singles on. I was reading a book and I was eating cheese, and he came through the door and I didn't expect him home, so I hurried him, shoved it inside the book, and I closed it. I think I was about five, and he found it and I didn't say anything, so he assumed my brother did it. So I had all this guilt. And that's not the first time that's something like that has happened where I just let him assume that my brother did it. I think again, psychologically, it's the screams that you can still remember. It's the beatings and expectives and everything else that you just still remember. Here, when she was talking about hiding the slice of cheese for fear of getting in trouble and then blaming it on her little brother is a situation that many survivors of narcissistic parents find themselves in, shifting blame onto a sibling out of fear or even the belief that maybe the sibling may not get it as bad, and in this case, her brother was quite young. This triangulation and division within a family is one more example of the chaos of a narcissistic family system. She also shares the horror and pain of listening to her brother being punished for it. So these triangulated situations also foster further harm to all children in the home who either live in fear of the narcissistic parents, rage, or witness it happening to siblings, and the harm can be magnified when a child feels responsible for the abuse a sibling is facing. So it's a lot of guilt as I'm growing up, and on top of that, just you never knew when he was going to flip out. So it was like living with a bucket of live grenades with the pins pulled out, and you just didn't know when they were going to blow. An incredible metaphor. Absolutely, because I'm even feeling the tension as you're telling the story of what it would be like for a small child to be doing something as innocent as eating a piece of cheese and reading a story, and and panicking and hiding the cheese. That's not a bad thing to do, by the way, you eat a piece of cheese while you read a book. Basically your answer, I'm interpreting that as everything set him off. You just didn't know anything, anything could set him off. Our session will continue after this break. What is your earliest memories? Do you feel like this was happening your entire life even before? Remember, Okay, my brother was a baby, and I actually remember it was a two story townhouse, and I remember looking up on the second floor and hearing them screaming, my mother, my father, and he he broke the door off the hinges, and I just remember sharing her screaming. That's the earliest memory. That's your earliest memory. It's so hard when that is your earliest memory, which there was then so much fear, Fear would have been your earliest consistent emotion. Sadly, because fear memories, especially repeated fear memories, are so physically held, they are typically the first memories or some of the clearest early memories that many survivors of parental narcissistic abuse will share. Memories of abandonment, fighting parents, accidents, physical abuse, and sometimes just an amorphous sadness are often the memories that are the earliest ones for survivors of these situations. When these are the earliest memories, it's a set up for anxiety eight and a loss of safety that can shadow survivors for a lifetime. I learned how to hide it. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that big bright smile and yeah, so I'm already getting a sense of what your parents marriage was like. It sounds like it was certainly smultuous, tumultuous, volatile, a mess, and that's what that was sort of the template you saw of their relationship, which must have it must have been so scary too, seeing that the one person who could protect you, your mother, was also under siege. She she was very quiet, kept to herself. She didn't really I want to say that she did maybe play with us a little bit, but for the most part she was just constantly buffering between him and us, just to make sure that we're kind of keeping the piece. So the verbage make sure that oh yeah, we're just we're gonna have spaghetti, spaghetti, okay, alright, alright, we're gonna do this instead and appeasing. Just she tried to to fit out, She tried to make the situation not happen. But I don't remember her interacting with us very much. And I remember that she specifically said her parents were very traditional, so you couldn't get out of it. So I guess that's that trapped in a cage feeling where you shouldn't get a divorce, you have a religious background, they don't believe in it. Again, this is growing up in the eighties and the nineties, and it was taboo. It was pulling teeth, getting child supports. So she worked three jobs. She was never home. She had to do what she had to do to keep food on the table, roof over our head. She is definitely a fighter, and I feel like, growing up, seeing that as an example, I didn't want to get married. Yeah, I mean completely understandable. It's so funny because when people grow up the way you did, witnessing the model of marriage you did, experiencing your own form of emotional and sort of physical abuse growing up, I almost see it clinically. Often see it go in two directions. One group is I'm never getting married a way, no, how absolutely not. The second group is a tremendous risk of repeating that cycling, almost trying to escape that situation. They will very quickly get into a relationship. They often won't be discerning because they don't know how to be discerning because they don't have any template, get into something quickly, and then just open their eyes and say here I am. You know, they've literally recreated that cycle again, and so I kind of see it happening both sorts of ways, and some ways. Not getting into relationship is almost the safer path forward for folks to come mack alone. But you know, obviously the best path forward is that we could work with people to help them see that none of this was their fault. That's the ideal. I was the ladder of those two and I ended up having my first real relationships. You know, you have holding hands, yeah, through middle school, and then there comes the semi serious as you get older. And I did that, I think the first to me your relationships. I did that running headlong right into it and not seeing the signs because it's so incremental, and you would think growing up with it, you would see all those red flags, and it's almost like you almost want to deny it and ignore it because you know, quote unquote, you're in love. Did you think they were red flags? Like, did you identify your father's behavior as a red flag as you started coming up through adolescence as into dating age? Not until I was about eighteen, I would say, when I was around sixteen, I started getting an inkling, probably because things got a little more violent as I got older, and we'd try to set our boundaries or stand our ground, and he just wasn't having it. So I think as I turned eighteen and I started he had disowned me. In his words, he had disowned me because my behavior wasn't conducive to what he thought I should be holding myself up to. So, going back your you said your parents got a divorce because your father left your mother when you were twelve. Did he go on into a new relationship or did he just immediately? Of course? And actually now currently in present day, he's on wife that I know of, wife number five. I've disconnected all communications with him. He enjoys falling in love that he those are his words, he loves falling in love. Correct, It's like saying I only want to eat the icing off the cupcake. You gotta go on all in and eat the stump of the cupcake or you're not committed to that cupcake. It can't all be all frosting all the time. And that's what analogies, right, So that seems to me it's thing though that I love falling in love and think about what falling in love is. It's all dopamine, it's all reward, and it's all validation. Right. Once that part of the relationship is done, Yeah, adoration all that, the worship be part. Once that part's done, the falling in love part, that's the fun swoopy down on the roller coaster. Then you're back in the line with the long line. You gotta wait to get back on the roller coaster again. And that's when he's stopped being interested. So it twelve. When your parents split up, did you live with your mom, with your dad or with both? Like go back and forth. I went back and forth. Initially it was with my mom and then I hit my team years, which wasn't graceful rarely, so that is the part of growing up where you can't identify, or at least if you're not taught properly, you can't identify those emotions that you're feeling, and you get all this pent up something or other, either anxiety or rage or just It got to a point as I grew up that I ended up wanting to feel something break like I'd get aggressive. Living with my brother, it was like love hate relationship. Again, it's probably mirroring and projecting the relationship that I saw with my parents. So we'd be best friends one day, and then the next day he and I would duke get out and just throw him a boxing glove and I grab a boxing glove and let's go. So it was not healthy, and it's hard to to find some outlet to really let that out. And then that's the other issue, is that in the back of your mind, what's abuse. You know it's not right, but you're also afraid to say something. So I did have a counselor. At the time we were we didn't have enough money for therapy, so I did have a counselor at school, and we scratched the service. But I was very careful not to let too much information out, simply because I didn't. I was afraid of the unknown. I mean that's I didn't want to accidentally screw things up for my mom. I didn't want to implicate her in any capacity. I didn't want her to be complacent with the whole situation either. So it's kind of a way of protecting. But also my mom and I just we were also in a phase where we started budding heads really bad. So I would end up at some point I was being bullied at school. Was very much a what they called brown noser because I was constantly raising my hand because I wanted to know I enjoyed psychology, I will stay with educational aspect. I was constantly raised my hands like what does this mean? What does that mean? And so I got made fun of a lot, I got bullied a lot. I ended up um just having a really rough time in school and at home. And then when I got home, I was frustrated. My mom was frustrated. She was working three jobs, she's trying, she's going to night school, she was trying to keep a roof over our heads, and so we just kind of went at it. And at one one time she had had enough and I hadn't had enough. And then I just I switched over to my dad. I'm fifty, I'm old enough to decide for myself. I'm done, and I called my dad. I said, come get me. And that was the part where I remember distinctly saying I had a conversation with my dad, and he's not gonna be all peaches and roses. You know you're gonna have to do chores. You know you're gonna have to do this. Yes, just ess I know, and I know it's discipline. I know it's disciplined. And I said those words, you know this is what's happening. So it's okay. So we switched and I went to his house. I remember very distinctly his third wife. She stood up for herself, she would fight for herself. She had just as much of a dominant personality as he did, which was extraordinarily volatile. I thought growing up was bad enough. This time in my middle school into high school years was extremely tough. When I lived with him, they would fight and it got to a point. I remember he would be drunk. Alcohol usually played an amplification factor for him, and he drank every day, but his core personality was there. He wasn't all of a sudden, that person and they were streaming at each other and he was just completely obliterated and had punched the front window and blasts everywhere. There was blood everywhere, and I remember coming out of my room and they're fighting over the baby at the top of the stairs, and I just I literally I've frozen, but I stood in the middle because I'm like, oh my god, one wrong sway and they're toppling over the stairs. It freaked me out so bad. I mean, that is imprinted in my mind. And that's honestly trying not to tear up here. That's at that point why I remember seeing like what all over him and every just it was bad, and the cops were called by the neighbors because I was terrified. I didn't know if I should or shouldn't. You know, as my father, I'm supposed to love him, I was supposed to be loyal. But in the same capacity, this was literally an emergency. Yeah, yeah, you know what. This has got to be the narcissism starter kid. They all say that, but he did it would get out of it. He keeps finding people to marry him, so he's obviously able to convince people of stuff do you remember what your emotions were like? There's you know, knowing that no one's going to believe me even if I did say something adapt overcome. I had it in my head that we were strong, we could come overcome this. We're not weak. I'm not weak. And I just kept telling myself that over and over, and I would constantly say, no matter how bad I have it, somebody else out there has way worse than I have. And that kind of helped me overcome the obstacles. And I was like, if life throws me offstacles, I'm just gonna go over every single hurdle and I'm gonna pass with flying colors. And That's how I'm going to go. Sometimes I get down on myself, but then eventually I always try to crawl back out of the well, so to speak, and just kind of raw myself back up. And that's just how I'm wired. I suppose. Yeah, I think it is, because I'd be curious to know you said, you have not this small, small brother you're talking about, but your two and a half year younger brother. My other brother, was he able to do that whole bring himself up. I've got to be strong kind of thing. Too. We could go through the same exact experience and he would tell me a totally different perspective. He would shove things deep down inside and not say anything for years, and I wouldn't know until like he would write me letters or you know, say something along those lines like this actually bothered me, and he would be truthful with himself. Otherwise, he wouldn't label it as abuse. It's just with something that we grew up with, you didn't exhibit emotional states otherwise. He actually turned to addiction issues. Yes, I would expect that to help cope with everything that he was feeling. Because he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to relive it. I'm sure that maybe he feels things a little bit more. I say I grew up sensitive, but I wore it on my save I I spoke about it. I feel like he might have been more emotionally sensitive and I never knew, because even to this day, there are things that he's still trying to deal with and try to peel back and having a hard time. His was more physical aggression growing up, but right now currently as an adult, he's actually one of the most even kill non biased people I've ever met and he'll tell you a non biased opinion. So if you have a dilemma, if you have a problem. He's very logical, he's very rational, and he's just such a like a Buddha type energy. That's amazing. He's just very just chill and he's like, ye know, thing has happened. You put it in the crap happens file. It is what it is or which I didn't particularly like, but I'm glad that I had somebody to tell me the truth. If I have a situation and I explained it to him and he says, well, you're in the wrong. Okay, wait you're supposed to be on that side. Well, he's able to see the outside. We will be right back with this conversation. Now, what was it like? Because obviously what you are growing up with, the emotional abuse, the physical abuse, all of it was not the norm. What would happen when you saw other people's lives, maybe you went and played with a friend at their home, or visited a friend at their home. You saw other people's lives. What was that like for you? What I went through I thought was normal. When I would see other people experiencing that was the other thing that was fun hugs and kisses from their family. Yeah, my mom was not a touchy feely per sen she still listen. She doesn't do the hugs and kisses. My father was the one that did that, and it would be right after he beat us, Oh my goodness, so he would hit us with the metal belt of the metal buckle belts or the two by fours, and then he turned around and say, now give me a hug. And that messed me up for a long time. I still to this day, I have male friends. I've always had male friends growing up, but I still freeze up when somebody gives me a hug and I'm just like, what do I do with my hands? I don't know. But that type of hugs and kisses with their parents, especially with their fathers, I almost felt, and I don't typically get jealous, but I almost felt a twinge of envy. I give you a lot of credit for just having a twinge. I think for other people, the envy and the jealousy of seeing those other kinds of homes where a hug was not sort of the you know, because for you, the hug for them didn't come with abuse. For you, a hug was classically conditioned. It was paired with a use with abuse. Yeah, And so we talked about and I know you're so well spoken about all of this. We talk about the trauma bond and all of that. Right in all my life, in all my career, I have never heard that tight an example of creating a trauma bond beating someone and then going in for the hug. That's it. That's the trauma bond right there. That it's the abuse, hug love and abuse which you carry on into clearly into adulthood. How could you not so just to have that experience, and again against the backdrop of the only other expectable source of affection your mother, That wasn't her way. And I would speculate after the marriage she had to survive with your father, I wander very desensitized. I mean she your mom would then very much qualify to what we would can see an adult narcissistic abuse survivors. Right, that kind of down regulation for many people, it's sort of not trusting those physical spaces, not trusting those emotional spaces, and you know, you do sort of start feeling isolated within yourself, even from your own kids. Shut down, shut down, Oh, That is an excellent revelation. I didn't think of that because she did. She kind of shut herself off from us. I just thought it was because she was working constantly, she was exhausted constantly, she would yell at you know, keep it down, you know, because she was trying to sleep. But that's a really good point. Yeah, I mean, her nervous system may have been forever on high alert. It may have been because she had the added burden of being an adult who was attempting to protect kids in a situation where she couldn't protect them, and she probably knew there was no way to get help, and with the traditional family background where she had no recourse, she may have thought she couldn't get a divorce. The only sort of quote unquote luck she had was that he left her, But then she was left with this financial burden, not being able to be there with a child that in many ways was what your mom was experiencing, and your brother and you as well. It's much more in line with what we also see in complex post trauma c PTSD. More because in narcissistic abuse and complex post trauma they're very associated and in some adult survivors when it's more severe. We do see that they look more likely they have complex post trauma than they do the straight narcissistic abuse, which is sometimes a less severe look in a person. Their nervous system may not be quite as shut down in the same way. And that plays into what I experienced as I got older. I learned how to shut off my emotions when when things became too hairy or somebody displayed too much emotion. So for me, I also became desensitized. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Desensitizes the perfect word, because for you safety seeking, you did it in so many different ways. You did it through smiling, you did it through desensitization, but created all these zones of fear. Right, this is scary. That's scary, that's scary, And like you said, and then even these poignant, painful experiences of seeing, for example, a friend getting a hug but it didn't require them to get beaten before they got that hug. That incredibly painful revelation, and then you feel like maybe I need a night in shining armor. And then you jump headlong into those relationships that are not good for you, that are very similar in cycle, and you do kind of the same thing, like, do I need to argue, do I need to you create this unhealthy relationship or this unhealthy putting them on a pedestal? Did you ever blame yourself for your father's behavior? For a long time, until I found out my grandfather had a conversation he was a strange, so I didn't realize systematically we workut off from their side of the family. So your father's father, you're talking about your grandfather and they he was a strange from his own father. Yes, And I found out that he was always like and that was like a burden off of my shoulders. I wasn't just in Schockle was like, so it's not us, but he would throw bricks at my head. I'm the oldest. He was also the oldest, so that type of dynamic. And my grandfather says, you know, I love my children though, do not get me wrong. I love my children, all of them. But your father came out and ass, Wow, that's fascinating. And I guess that's my question to you, is that can you just be born like that or is that more of a pattern. You bring up a really interesting question here, because given how abusive your father was brick throwing, and really physically violent siblings. I don't know if your father ever got arrested or got in trouble in school as a kid, or if any of those things, because the level of extremity of what you're describing could be more in line with something we call conduct disorder, and conduct disorder is a pattern where kids. These are kids who are physically violent against other kids, physically violent against their own siblings. They may harm animals, they may set fires, they may be truant from school, they may shoplift. Those sorts of patterns we'd see prior to the age of fifteen when that pattern gets established, and then we see once they're eighteen and over that they're continuing to engage in behavior where they're menacing people, they're not adhering to social norms, they're breaking the law, they're not following the rules, they have a parasitic lifestyle. That kind of stuff. That's when we start getting into what we call anti social personality or what's sometimes called psychopathy. So when that childhood behavior is so severe and almost violent out of nowhere, like they're little, like they're five years old and doing some real harm and acting out that sometimes gives people pause because that may be an indicator of this long term cycle. It's not clear. I don't know if that's your dad's whole story. But what we do know is that when people go on to develop even narcissistic personalities, we do know that there's a certain kind of temperament that certain kids can be born with. They behaviorally act out a lot. They're very attention seeking, they're very competitive, they have to win it at all costs. They will overwhelm their peers, that will overwhelm their siblings. That temperament, nobody likes those kids. Nobody, So every interaction that they have with the world is people saying stop that, no, don't do that. Nobody likes those kids, so they're always invalidated. That temperament, plus the invalidation can be the seeds for that ongoing development of narcissism. So unless there were people who really are good at that, then who could really support a kid like that? Which the vast majority of people cannot. I noticed as I got older and I was able to stand up for myself more and speak up for myself, that was the hardest part. I realized. I almost looked at him now as like a five year old with a temper tantrum. Yes forever, yes, exactly it is. Here are some takeaways from my conversation with today's guest. Many times after people endure a narcissistic childhood, or frankly, any narcissistic relationship, they may be told, mom, now take responsibility for yourself. You can't keep blaming someone else for your struggles. In the rush to make survivors take responsibility, it is also essential that they also are given a framework for how antagonism and manipulation and invalidation from a parent affect us developmentally to learn to connect those dots. Then and only then can survivors be expected to move to accountability. Asking for accountability without a framework more often ends up in self blame for survivors than a sense of true personal responsibility. And for my next takeaway, triangulation of siblings and family members being turned against each other is common in narcissistic families. This can leave siblings feeling as though they are betraying each other, or may even feel compelled to betray each other in the service of the narcissistic parent. It's a terrible legacy of these family systems. Children, maybe trying to do anything they can to survive these family systems, and may years later still experience strong emotions as adults when they recognize that their siblings and other family members were harmed, if they were ever in a situation of blaming them to protect themselves. In my next takeaway, this guest story shows us that within one family, siblings can have a range of reactions to a toxic parent, and even a range of ways they conceptualize what happened to them. She shared that she was more emotionally restricted and even obsessive, something that may have given her a sense of control in her situation. Her brother reacted quite differently. The differences and experiences can sometimes leave siblings within the same family system wondering if they read or are reading the situation right with the difficult parent. A key element of healing from narcissistic abuse, whether in a family system or in a relationship, is to hold space and acknowledgement for your experience and to not gaslight yourself. Children and narcissistic family systems are often put in different roles. Some are scapegoats, some are golden children. Some get it worse than others, and as a result, you may have had different experiences, but that doesn't make your experience any less valid or real. Having a complicated journey with the other parent, the one who was not narcissistic in this case, is to be expected in these situations. Only as she grew up is she slowly recognizing that some of her mother's patterns may have been a manifestation of being in the toxic relationship, the emotional distance, the disengagement. But at the time a child may only see that they are not being protected, and this can result in difficult relationships with that parent as time proceeds. The story can play out quite differently for people, and there are many ways it can go, but there can sometimes be guilt over recognizing that the parent also went through something difficult you didn't see at the time. It is not a child's responsibility to be a parent to their own parent, but this is just one more example of the collateral harm that an antagonistic and difficult parent can do to a family system. A big thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Valen Jethrow, Ellen Rakaton, and Dr Rominey de Vassila, And thank you to our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara Dela Rosa and consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you to our editors and sound engineers Devin Donnahe and Calvin Bailiff.

This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I Heart Media, or their employees. I had it in my head that we were strong, we could come overcome this. We're not weak. I'm not weak, and I just kept telling myself that over and over, and I would constantly say, no matter how now I have it, somebody else out there has a way worse than I has, and that kind of helped me overcome the obstacles. Lots of people talk about having narcissistic parents, and everyone who has had that history obviously has different stories, but there are similar themes. The fear, confusion, self blame can result in so many difficult experiences that trail a person into adulthood. Most pointedly. Many survivors of parental narcissistic abuse are afraid of becoming like their toxic parent when they become parents. Sometimes one person story of a narcissistic childhood can capture the themes that are observed in many people's experiences. The story of our guests in this episode is powerful because aspects of it will feel so familiar to so many survivors. Her story of having endured a manipulative, abusive parent who would vacillate between being interesting and engaging to active, invalidating, and abusive is the story of how trauma bonds are formed, the triangulation, gas lighting, and manipulation that can fill survivors with shame and self blame, the many ways that children adapt to these situations, and how all of this shapes our personalities and how we go through the world in adulthood. The volatility and unpredictability of having a narcissistic parent makes childhood a place of fear and anxiety. In this episode, you will hear about her childhood, what the toxic and manipulative patterns look like, how they affected her and a sibling differently, and how it affected her relationship with her other parent. And in our next episode featuring this guest, you will hear her share openly and vulnerably how a history like this affected her as a parent. All right, dr Aronne, thank you for having me absolutely Well, what was your dad like? Because I know that that's a lot of what your story is growing up. My other was a very charming individual. We always were projected as if we were a very well put together family. We grew up poverty long right there. However, we always had nice shirts, nice you know, shoes, made sure that we always presented ourselves with manners. He would glare at us, make sure you behave that type of look, you know, that mom look that you normally get behave yourself, except it would be a lot worse. And we essentially projected like we were keeping up with the Joneses. Except that wasn't what it was like in the behind the scenes. It was very doctor jackal Mr Hyde. Okay, So the father then, who made sure you had the clean clothes and made sure your behavior was in line and all of that. The charming guide. That's the one face of your dad, that is the one facet of him, Yes, the client facing. What about that other face of your dad? Behind clothes stores. It was walking on eggshells constantly. He really had to gauge his behavior or his mood rather to to really broach any subject. If you wanted to ask him any questions, he could sit there and be joking with you, and then all of a sudden, you say the wrong thing, and it's like a switch goes off, and what are you talking about? How dare you? Blah blah blah blah, and they just go off on a tirade. And his tirades would last anywhere from hours like minimal hours, because they would they would start stop, start, stop, start stopping, like just to get that last word and just to get that point really drilled home, or days they'll bring it back up the next day or the day after. It wasn't constant, I would from memory, if memory serves me right, it probably be about fifty. So you do get the happy, go lucky, adventurous. Hey, I love I love music, I love education. Let's go learn a little bit of history. Let's go drive here, let's go drive there. So that part in that aspect I also took on as I got older. I enjoyed that very very much so, and I enjoyed he drilled home that education was extremely important, so whatever you do in life, that is key. So that I took. But it was very much a do as I say, not as I do persona, and that was kind of his rule. And if you got in trouble, he would fly off the handle. He would, you know, veins popping, red face, screaming at you. And I remember this particular one time that he answered the phone and it was his buddy and he was going to meet him at the karaoke bar, something along those lines, and he's like, you don't know what you're talking about. Hello, Oh yeah, yeah, I'll be there in the twenty minutes or so, hang up the phone, and then continue with the same amount of rage, screaming at my brother and I that's so interesting. So let's unpack that because from the jump, that tells me he had control over the behavior. You think so, because to me, I felt like he didn't, well think about it, scream, scream, veins popping, yell, yell, bad kid, bad kid, bad bad bad, the phone rings. If he didn't have control over his behavior, he screaming, it was a choice, so he chose to let himself go unbridled. Yes, with you. I just I always thought that it was just because he called it seeing red, like he didn't know what he did when he when he saw red. That's what he would say. Oh, no, you don't know what you're talking about. I have no I have no recollection of that. That's convenience. I guess that's part of that gas lighting, right, But you understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm seeing that. You're surprised, you know. And I think that that, to me, though, is not unusual. A lot of people are told they saw red, they forgot, they lost consciousness. Okay, but then you how did you all of a sudden now you're seeing, not read when you're talking to your buddy that you're going to see later. That is a really, really excellent point. I never even thought of that. I wonder if that left you wondering while he's not yelling at the other guy. So it's got to be something about us. Oh, absolutely constantly, and he would tell us it was us. It would constantly sit there, and you're the reason I divorced mother. You're the reason that I lost my temper. It hurts me way more than it hurts you. Believe me, you got it a lot easier than I had when I was growing up. So you've got a lot of really classical parental gas lighting in all its forms, and really manipulation even above and beyond the gas lighting, in the sense that telling a child that they're the reason for his momentous and disruptive a decision as a divorce is a really really cruel Literally what less than zero is about human development? Like this person is has no problem saying these absolutely forbidden things. But what I'm wondering that is that this very father who was able to blame his kids for a divorce tell them that you ain't. This is nothing compared to what I went through while being abusive. That same person was able to turn it on for their friend. I am wondering if when he was with his friends he was really well put together. I've actually been out. When he's out, he's the life of the party. He is the guy track and jokes and and the fun guy next door and just man about town. I've seen it. I've seen what he's like. So let me ask you this. Let's connected back then to this idea of your military brat. You're moving all around. You've got this rageful father he's the reason you're moving around and you go from place to place. It's got to be confusing to have this rageful dad and then you don't have consistent friends. How did that all play out for you? How did you cope with all of that? Well, the psychological was actually the worst part. Honestly. I chose to project have a similar pattern where I would project everything's fine, everything's hunky, dorry, I am this funny, outgoing girl and very much an extrovert, Let's go this place, let's go that place. But inside I felt very dark, very depressed. I guess I didn't really identify as depressed. I identified it as just a low self esteem. I don't want to minimize that, but it was a low self esteem, low self es, sense sense of self worth. And I would write a lot. I would write to help me get it out, you know, write the pros and cons of me. And I only told a few of my friends, and I would just kind of gauge their reactions first, and you know, kind of similar situations where they would do something that I had done to misbehave. They would get put in the corner. I would get beat with a two by four thrown down the stairs. There's plenty of times where I didn't know how to express myself in in a healthy, cathartic manner because he didn't teach me, and he also didn't exercise those healthy ways of emotional balance, I guess is a good way to put that. What kinds of things would set him off. One time, I was eating stuff out of the fridge and you you weren't allowed to unless it was like dinnertime, and I had stuck craft singles on. I was reading a book and I was eating cheese, and he came through the door and I didn't expect him home, so I hurried him, shoved it inside the book, and I closed it. I think I was about five, and he found it and I didn't say anything, so he assumed my brother did it. So I had all this guilt. And that's not the first time that's something like that has happened where I just let him assume that my brother did it. I think again, psychologically, it's the screams that you can still remember. It's the beatings and expectives and everything else that you just still remember. Here, when she was talking about hiding the slice of cheese for fear of getting in trouble and then blaming it on her little brother is a situation that many survivors of narcissistic parents find themselves in, shifting blame onto a sibling out of fear or even the belief that maybe the sibling may not get it as bad, and in this case, her brother was quite young. This triangulation and division within a family is one more example of the chaos of a narcissistic family system. She also shares the horror and pain of listening to her brother being punished for it. So these triangulated situations also foster further harm to all children in the home who either live in fear of the narcissistic parents, rage, or witness it happening to siblings, and the harm can be magnified when a child feels responsible for the abuse a sibling is facing. So it's a lot of guilt as I'm growing up, and on top of that, just you never knew when he was going to flip out. So it was like living with a bucket of live grenades with the pins pulled out, and you just didn't know when they were going to blow. An incredible metaphor. Absolutely, because I'm even feeling the tension as you're telling the story of what it would be like for a small child to be doing something as innocent as eating a piece of cheese and reading a story, and and panicking and hiding the cheese. That's not a bad thing to do, by the way, you eat a piece of cheese while you read a book. Basically your answer, I'm interpreting that as everything set him off. You just didn't know anything, anything could set him off. Our session will continue after this break. What is your earliest memories? Do you feel like this was happening your entire life even before? Remember, Okay, my brother was a baby, and I actually remember it was a two story townhouse, and I remember looking up on the second floor and hearing them screaming, my mother, my father, and he he broke the door off the hinges, and I just remember sharing her screaming. That's the earliest memory. That's your earliest memory. It's so hard when that is your earliest memory, which there was then so much fear, Fear would have been your earliest consistent emotion. Sadly, because fear memories, especially repeated fear memories, are so physically held, they are typically the first memories or some of the clearest early memories that many survivors of parental narcissistic abuse will share. Memories of abandonment, fighting parents, accidents, physical abuse, and sometimes just an amorphous sadness are often the memories that are the earliest ones for survivors of these situations. When these are the earliest memories, it's a set up for anxiety eight and a loss of safety that can shadow survivors for a lifetime. I learned how to hide it. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that big bright smile and yeah, so I'm already getting a sense of what your parents marriage was like. It sounds like it was certainly smultuous, tumultuous, volatile, a mess, and that's what that was sort of the template you saw of their relationship, which must have it must have been so scary too, seeing that the one person who could protect you, your mother, was also under siege. She she was very quiet, kept to herself. She didn't really I want to say that she did maybe play with us a little bit, but for the most part she was just constantly buffering between him and us, just to make sure that we're kind of keeping the piece. So the verbage make sure that oh yeah, we're just we're gonna have spaghetti, spaghetti, okay, alright, alright, we're gonna do this instead and appeasing. Just she tried to to fit out, She tried to make the situation not happen. But I don't remember her interacting with us very much. And I remember that she specifically said her parents were very traditional, so you couldn't get out of it. So I guess that's that trapped in a cage feeling where you shouldn't get a divorce, you have a religious background, they don't believe in it. Again, this is growing up in the eighties and the nineties, and it was taboo. It was pulling teeth, getting child supports. So she worked three jobs. She was never home. She had to do what she had to do to keep food on the table, roof over our head. She is definitely a fighter, and I feel like, growing up, seeing that as an example, I didn't want to get married. Yeah, I mean completely understandable. It's so funny because when people grow up the way you did, witnessing the model of marriage you did, experiencing your own form of emotional and sort of physical abuse growing up, I almost see it clinically. Often see it go in two directions. One group is I'm never getting married a way, no, how absolutely not. The second group is a tremendous risk of repeating that cycling, almost trying to escape that situation. They will very quickly get into a relationship. They often won't be discerning because they don't know how to be discerning because they don't have any template, get into something quickly, and then just open their eyes and say here I am. You know, they've literally recreated that cycle again, and so I kind of see it happening both sorts of ways, and some ways. Not getting into relationship is almost the safer path forward for folks to come mack alone. But you know, obviously the best path forward is that we could work with people to help them see that none of this was their fault. That's the ideal. I was the ladder of those two and I ended up having my first real relationships. You know, you have holding hands, yeah, through middle school, and then there comes the semi serious as you get older. And I did that, I think the first to me your relationships. I did that running headlong right into it and not seeing the signs because it's so incremental, and you would think growing up with it, you would see all those red flags, and it's almost like you almost want to deny it and ignore it because you know, quote unquote, you're in love. Did you think they were red flags? Like, did you identify your father's behavior as a red flag as you started coming up through adolescence as into dating age? Not until I was about eighteen, I would say, when I was around sixteen, I started getting an inkling, probably because things got a little more violent as I got older, and we'd try to set our boundaries or stand our ground, and he just wasn't having it. So I think as I turned eighteen and I started he had disowned me. In his words, he had disowned me because my behavior wasn't conducive to what he thought I should be holding myself up to. So, going back your you said your parents got a divorce because your father left your mother when you were twelve. Did he go on into a new relationship or did he just immediately? Of course? And actually now currently in present day, he's on wife that I know of, wife number five. I've disconnected all communications with him. He enjoys falling in love that he those are his words, he loves falling in love. Correct, It's like saying I only want to eat the icing off the cupcake. You gotta go on all in and eat the stump of the cupcake or you're not committed to that cupcake. It can't all be all frosting all the time. And that's what analogies, right, So that seems to me it's thing though that I love falling in love and think about what falling in love is. It's all dopamine, it's all reward, and it's all validation. Right. Once that part of the relationship is done, Yeah, adoration all that, the worship be part. Once that part's done, the falling in love part, that's the fun swoopy down on the roller coaster. Then you're back in the line with the long line. You gotta wait to get back on the roller coaster again. And that's when he's stopped being interested. So it twelve. When your parents split up, did you live with your mom, with your dad or with both? Like go back and forth. I went back and forth. Initially it was with my mom and then I hit my team years, which wasn't graceful rarely, so that is the part of growing up where you can't identify, or at least if you're not taught properly, you can't identify those emotions that you're feeling, and you get all this pent up something or other, either anxiety or rage or just It got to a point as I grew up that I ended up wanting to feel something break like I'd get aggressive. Living with my brother, it was like love hate relationship. Again, it's probably mirroring and projecting the relationship that I saw with my parents. So we'd be best friends one day, and then the next day he and I would duke get out and just throw him a boxing glove and I grab a boxing glove and let's go. So it was not healthy, and it's hard to to find some outlet to really let that out. And then that's the other issue, is that in the back of your mind, what's abuse. You know it's not right, but you're also afraid to say something. So I did have a counselor. At the time we were we didn't have enough money for therapy, so I did have a counselor at school, and we scratched the service. But I was very careful not to let too much information out, simply because I didn't. I was afraid of the unknown. I mean that's I didn't want to accidentally screw things up for my mom. I didn't want to implicate her in any capacity. I didn't want her to be complacent with the whole situation either. So it's kind of a way of protecting. But also my mom and I just we were also in a phase where we started budding heads really bad. So I would end up at some point I was being bullied at school. Was very much a what they called brown noser because I was constantly raising my hand because I wanted to know I enjoyed psychology, I will stay with educational aspect. I was constantly raised my hands like what does this mean? What does that mean? And so I got made fun of a lot, I got bullied a lot. I ended up um just having a really rough time in school and at home. And then when I got home, I was frustrated. My mom was frustrated. She was working three jobs, she's trying, she's going to night school, she was trying to keep a roof over our heads, and so we just kind of went at it. And at one one time she had had enough and I hadn't had enough. And then I just I switched over to my dad. I'm fifty, I'm old enough to decide for myself. I'm done, and I called my dad. I said, come get me. And that was the part where I remember distinctly saying I had a conversation with my dad, and he's not gonna be all peaches and roses. You know you're gonna have to do chores. You know you're gonna have to do this. Yes, just ess I know, and I know it's discipline. I know it's disciplined. And I said those words, you know this is what's happening. So it's okay. So we switched and I went to his house. I remember very distinctly his third wife. She stood up for herself, she would fight for herself. She had just as much of a dominant personality as he did, which was extraordinarily volatile. I thought growing up was bad enough. This time in my middle school into high school years was extremely tough. When I lived with him, they would fight and it got to a point. I remember he would be drunk. Alcohol usually played an amplification factor for him, and he drank every day, but his core personality was there. He wasn't all of a sudden, that person and they were streaming at each other and he was just completely obliterated and had punched the front window and blasts everywhere. There was blood everywhere, and I remember coming out of my room and they're fighting over the baby at the top of the stairs, and I just I literally I've frozen, but I stood in the middle because I'm like, oh my god, one wrong sway and they're toppling over the stairs. It freaked me out so bad. I mean, that is imprinted in my mind. And that's honestly trying not to tear up here. That's at that point why I remember seeing like what all over him and every just it was bad, and the cops were called by the neighbors because I was terrified. I didn't know if I should or shouldn't. You know, as my father, I'm supposed to love him, I was supposed to be loyal. But in the same capacity, this was literally an emergency. Yeah, yeah, you know what. This has got to be the narcissism starter kid. They all say that, but he did it would get out of it. He keeps finding people to marry him, so he's obviously able to convince people of stuff do you remember what your emotions were like? There's you know, knowing that no one's going to believe me even if I did say something adapt overcome. I had it in my head that we were strong, we could come overcome this. We're not weak. I'm not weak. And I just kept telling myself that over and over, and I would constantly say, no matter how bad I have it, somebody else out there has way worse than I have. And that kind of helped me overcome the obstacles. And I was like, if life throws me offstacles, I'm just gonna go over every single hurdle and I'm gonna pass with flying colors. And That's how I'm going to go. Sometimes I get down on myself, but then eventually I always try to crawl back out of the well, so to speak, and just kind of raw myself back up. And that's just how I'm wired. I suppose. Yeah, I think it is, because I'd be curious to know you said, you have not this small, small brother you're talking about, but your two and a half year younger brother. My other brother, was he able to do that whole bring himself up. I've got to be strong kind of thing. Too. We could go through the same exact experience and he would tell me a totally different perspective. He would shove things deep down inside and not say anything for years, and I wouldn't know until like he would write me letters or you know, say something along those lines like this actually bothered me, and he would be truthful with himself. Otherwise, he wouldn't label it as abuse. It's just with something that we grew up with, you didn't exhibit emotional states otherwise. He actually turned to addiction issues. Yes, I would expect that to help cope with everything that he was feeling. Because he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to relive it. I'm sure that maybe he feels things a little bit more. I say I grew up sensitive, but I wore it on my save I I spoke about it. I feel like he might have been more emotionally sensitive and I never knew, because even to this day, there are things that he's still trying to deal with and try to peel back and having a hard time. His was more physical aggression growing up, but right now currently as an adult, he's actually one of the most even kill non biased people I've ever met and he'll tell you a non biased opinion. So if you have a dilemma, if you have a problem. He's very logical, he's very rational, and he's just such a like a Buddha type energy. That's amazing. He's just very just chill and he's like, ye know, thing has happened. You put it in the crap happens file. It is what it is or which I didn't particularly like, but I'm glad that I had somebody to tell me the truth. If I have a situation and I explained it to him and he says, well, you're in the wrong. Okay, wait you're supposed to be on that side. Well, he's able to see the outside. We will be right back with this conversation. Now, what was it like? Because obviously what you are growing up with, the emotional abuse, the physical abuse, all of it was not the norm. What would happen when you saw other people's lives, maybe you went and played with a friend at their home, or visited a friend at their home. You saw other people's lives. What was that like for you? What I went through I thought was normal. When I would see other people experiencing that was the other thing that was fun hugs and kisses from their family. Yeah, my mom was not a touchy feely per sen she still listen. She doesn't do the hugs and kisses. My father was the one that did that, and it would be right after he beat us, Oh my goodness, so he would hit us with the metal belt of the metal buckle belts or the two by fours, and then he turned around and say, now give me a hug. And that messed me up for a long time. I still to this day, I have male friends. I've always had male friends growing up, but I still freeze up when somebody gives me a hug and I'm just like, what do I do with my hands? I don't know. But that type of hugs and kisses with their parents, especially with their fathers, I almost felt, and I don't typically get jealous, but I almost felt a twinge of envy. I give you a lot of credit for just having a twinge. I think for other people, the envy and the jealousy of seeing those other kinds of homes where a hug was not sort of the you know, because for you, the hug for them didn't come with abuse. For you, a hug was classically conditioned. It was paired with a use with abuse. Yeah, And so we talked about and I know you're so well spoken about all of this. We talk about the trauma bond and all of that. Right in all my life, in all my career, I have never heard that tight an example of creating a trauma bond beating someone and then going in for the hug. That's it. That's the trauma bond right there. That it's the abuse, hug love and abuse which you carry on into clearly into adulthood. How could you not so just to have that experience, and again against the backdrop of the only other expectable source of affection your mother, That wasn't her way. And I would speculate after the marriage she had to survive with your father, I wander very desensitized. I mean she your mom would then very much qualify to what we would can see an adult narcissistic abuse survivors. Right, that kind of down regulation for many people, it's sort of not trusting those physical spaces, not trusting those emotional spaces, and you know, you do sort of start feeling isolated within yourself, even from your own kids. Shut down, shut down, Oh, That is an excellent revelation. I didn't think of that because she did. She kind of shut herself off from us. I just thought it was because she was working constantly, she was exhausted constantly, she would yell at you know, keep it down, you know, because she was trying to sleep. But that's a really good point. Yeah, I mean, her nervous system may have been forever on high alert. It may have been because she had the added burden of being an adult who was attempting to protect kids in a situation where she couldn't protect them, and she probably knew there was no way to get help, and with the traditional family background where she had no recourse, she may have thought she couldn't get a divorce. The only sort of quote unquote luck she had was that he left her, But then she was left with this financial burden, not being able to be there with a child that in many ways was what your mom was experiencing, and your brother and you as well. It's much more in line with what we also see in complex post trauma c PTSD. More because in narcissistic abuse and complex post trauma they're very associated and in some adult survivors when it's more severe. We do see that they look more likely they have complex post trauma than they do the straight narcissistic abuse, which is sometimes a less severe look in a person. Their nervous system may not be quite as shut down in the same way. And that plays into what I experienced as I got older. I learned how to shut off my emotions when when things became too hairy or somebody displayed too much emotion. So for me, I also became desensitized. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Desensitizes the perfect word, because for you safety seeking, you did it in so many different ways. You did it through smiling, you did it through desensitization, but created all these zones of fear. Right, this is scary. That's scary, that's scary, And like you said, and then even these poignant, painful experiences of seeing, for example, a friend getting a hug but it didn't require them to get beaten before they got that hug. That incredibly painful revelation, and then you feel like maybe I need a night in shining armor. And then you jump headlong into those relationships that are not good for you, that are very similar in cycle, and you do kind of the same thing, like, do I need to argue, do I need to you create this unhealthy relationship or this unhealthy putting them on a pedestal? Did you ever blame yourself for your father's behavior? For a long time, until I found out my grandfather had a conversation he was a strange, so I didn't realize systematically we workut off from their side of the family. So your father's father, you're talking about your grandfather and they he was a strange from his own father. Yes, And I found out that he was always like and that was like a burden off of my shoulders. I wasn't just in Schockle was like, so it's not us, but he would throw bricks at my head. I'm the oldest. He was also the oldest, so that type of dynamic. And my grandfather says, you know, I love my children though, do not get me wrong. I love my children, all of them. But your father came out and ass, Wow, that's fascinating. And I guess that's my question to you, is that can you just be born like that or is that more of a pattern. You bring up a really interesting question here, because given how abusive your father was brick throwing, and really physically violent siblings. I don't know if your father ever got arrested or got in trouble in school as a kid, or if any of those things, because the level of extremity of what you're describing could be more in line with something we call conduct disorder, and conduct disorder is a pattern where kids. These are kids who are physically violent against other kids, physically violent against their own siblings. They may harm animals, they may set fires, they may be truant from school, they may shoplift. Those sorts of patterns we'd see prior to the age of fifteen when that pattern gets established, and then we see once they're eighteen and over that they're continuing to engage in behavior where they're menacing people, they're not adhering to social norms, they're breaking the law, they're not following the rules, they have a parasitic lifestyle. That kind of stuff. That's when we start getting into what we call anti social personality or what's sometimes called psychopathy. So when that childhood behavior is so severe and almost violent out of nowhere, like they're little, like they're five years old and doing some real harm and acting out that sometimes gives people pause because that may be an indicator of this long term cycle. It's not clear. I don't know if that's your dad's whole story. But what we do know is that when people go on to develop even narcissistic personalities, we do know that there's a certain kind of temperament that certain kids can be born with. They behaviorally act out a lot. They're very attention seeking, they're very competitive, they have to win it at all costs. They will overwhelm their peers, that will overwhelm their siblings. That temperament, nobody likes those kids. Nobody, So every interaction that they have with the world is people saying stop that, no, don't do that. Nobody likes those kids, so they're always invalidated. That temperament, plus the invalidation can be the seeds for that ongoing development of narcissism. So unless there were people who really are good at that, then who could really support a kid like that? Which the vast majority of people cannot. I noticed as I got older and I was able to stand up for myself more and speak up for myself, that was the hardest part. I realized. I almost looked at him now as like a five year old with a temper tantrum. Yes forever, yes, exactly it is. Here are some takeaways from my conversation with today's guest. Many times after people endure a narcissistic childhood, or frankly, any narcissistic relationship, they may be told, mom, now take responsibility for yourself. You can't keep blaming someone else for your struggles. In the rush to make survivors take responsibility, it is also essential that they also are given a framework for how antagonism and manipulation and invalidation from a parent affect us developmentally to learn to connect those dots. Then and only then can survivors be expected to move to accountability. Asking for accountability without a framework more often ends up in self blame for survivors than a sense of true personal responsibility. And for my next takeaway, triangulation of siblings and family members being turned against each other is common in narcissistic families. This can leave siblings feeling as though they are betraying each other, or may even feel compelled to betray each other in the service of the narcissistic parent. It's a terrible legacy of these family systems. Children, maybe trying to do anything they can to survive these family systems, and may years later still experience strong emotions as adults when they recognize that their siblings and other family members were harmed, if they were ever in a situation of blaming them to protect themselves. In my next takeaway, this guest story shows us that within one family, siblings can have a range of reactions to a toxic parent, and even a range of ways they conceptualize what happened to them. She shared that she was more emotionally restricted and even obsessive, something that may have given her a sense of control in her situation. Her brother reacted quite differently. The differences and experiences can sometimes leave siblings within the same family system wondering if they read or are reading the situation right with the difficult parent. A key element of healing from narcissistic abuse, whether in a family system or in a relationship, is to hold space and acknowledgement for your experience and to not gaslight yourself. Children and narcissistic family systems are often put in different roles. Some are scapegoats, some are golden children. Some get it worse than others, and as a result, you may have had different experiences, but that doesn't make your experience any less valid or real. Having a complicated journey with the other parent, the one who was not narcissistic in this case, is to be expected in these situations. Only as she grew up is she slowly recognizing that some of her mother's patterns may have been a manifestation of being in the toxic relationship, the emotional distance, the disengagement. But at the time a child may only see that they are not being protected, and this can result in difficult relationships with that parent as time proceeds. The story can play out quite differently for people, and there are many ways it can go, but there can sometimes be guilt over recognizing that the parent also went through something difficult you didn't see at the time. It is not a child's responsibility to be a parent to their own parent, but this is just one more example of the collateral harm that an antagonistic and difficult parent can do to a family system. A big thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Valen Jethrow, Ellen Rakaton, and Dr Rominey de Vassila, And thank you to our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara Dela Rosa and consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you to our editors and sound engineers Devin Donnahe and Calvin Bailiff.