That was what senior leaders did to junior leaders, what mid-careerists did to junior careerists; that was that was the process, that was the culture...

-Andrew Bustamante, excerpted from How the CIA's Culture Broke Me—and Why I Left

Memory loss or fragmentation

A traumatic event might lead to fragmented or lost memories about it due to dissociation during it.

Fragmentation might look like only have access to a few 'snapshots' of the event or confusion about the order of events.

Sense of a foreshortened future

A perpetual feeling that your life will be cut short by something, chronic inability to imagine your future self, or a feeling like you won't have the time to reach certain milestones might occur after trauma.

Extreme independence

Independence in itself isn't a bad thing, but some trauma survivors might development hyper-independence.

This might look like:

• self-isolation and lack of trust
• rejecting support, connection, or help, even when it's needed
• only wanting to be reliant on yourself

Risky behavior

Trauma survivors might engage in risky behavior to cope or escape.

Common examples include:

• driving too fast or too recklessly
• substance use
• purposefully injuring yourself
• disregarding your own limits
• not caring if you get hurt
• otherwise acting impulsively
• hyper-sexuality (especially after sexual assault)

Trauma re-enactment (also known as "repetition compulsion")

Some trauma survivors might unconsciously repeat or seek out behaviors, situations, or patterns that are similar to the traumatic event.

This is often done in a (subconscious) attempt to process and make sense of the events.

Emotional flashbacks

In addition to other types of flashbacks, emotional flashbacks include suddenly experiencing intense emotions that you felt during the traumatic event.

This is particularly common after complex or childhood trauma.

Chronic loneliness

Trauma might make you pull away from loved ones - or make you feel isolated and lonely even when you're around other people.

This often stems from feelings of shame or from feeling like no one understands what you've been through.

-adapted from post by @igototherapy

A securely attached person is someone who has empathy, insight, trust in others, and self-awareness, and someone who is authentically accountable.

They are also strong enough to be aware of their insecurities.

A narcissist, on the other hand, defends against feeling insecure by judging others, projecting their flaws onto others, and always assuming that they are right and that their perspective is superior.

They often play the victim, which makes them seem like they are aware of their flaws, but it is a manipulation to escape responsibility.

##Most people with a secure attachment style feel deeply insecure when they are involved with a narcissist for four reasons.

1. The narcissist's approval or affection is conditional. Meaning, they withdraw their love or approval when you don't do or say what they want. They shame you for expressing a feeling that they do not want you to have or that they disagree with. (A securely attached person is self-reflective, introspective, and can see things from someone else's perspective.)

2. The narcissist also distorts things and positions themselves as the victim although they have been the aggressive party. When they take a victim stance, you are automatically juxtaposed as the "villain." This may devastate you because as a securely attached person who possesses empathy, the last thing you want to be is someone who hurts others.

3. The narcissist manipulates you into thinking that your requests and desires for closeness are insecurities and clinginess. They are not. The narcissist cannot be close and prefers to have control, so they must camouflage this by making you the problem.

4. The narcissist's insensitivities and selfishness understandably make you angry. The narcissist then points to your anger and labels you, "out of control." However, your anger is warranted and is data that something unfair in the relationship is occurring.

Remember that when assessing your attachment style, it is important to consider your current partner's traits.

You may not be the insecure one. A narcissistic partner love bombs at first, but then quickly switches gears and lacks empathy and the ability to consider your perspective. Their victim stance can very quickly make you feel like the "bad guy," even when you are not.

-Erin Leonard, excerpted and adapted from Are You Insecurely Attached or Are You With a Narcissist?

In addition to other rage/anger outbursts, including yelling, screaming, name-calling/cussing, and throwing objects (not my objects and also not direct at me, but in the same room as me), one time my partner woke me up in the middle of the night after I fell asleep to yell at me. He has a short fuse with difficult to control anger problems (which he acknowledges and is trying to work on, he has impulse control/ADHD issues). He can be set off by minor things, such as me not putting dishes away, not cleaning up the bathroom, leaving things out, having a facial expression or using a tone of voice which he thinks is rude (even if it isn't). One time he woke me up screaming at me because I didn't scrub the toilet after using it (I am usually a neat person and I clean up after myself most of the time, I just forgot to do it that time since I was tired). He was calling me dirty, filthy, and unhygienic and he made me get up to scrub it, then I couldn't fall asleep afterwards because I was so anxious and upset. He also occasionally forgets to scrub the toilet, put dishes away, or leave things out sometimes. I don't really care when he forgets to do these things, I'll either clean it up myself or just ask him if he can do it when he gets the chance. But when I get super busy/tired and forget to clean up after myself sometimes, it triggers rage. I'm wondering if waking someone up while they're sleeping to yell at them is considered emotional abuse?

Aaron Balick, a psychotherapist and author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking, believes that new technologies have ushered in an era in which "there are more ways to express anger" and there is less shame attached to its expression.

He also attributes this cultural shift to politicians such as Donald Trump who have "normalised" anger.

According to the Gallup Global Emotions Report, anger around the world has been rising since 2016, with 23% of respondents now feeling angry on any given day – figures are understandably much higher in war zones.

In the UK in recent years shop workers and service staff have reported sharp rises in customer abuse in recent years, and one study showed criminal violence in GP surgeries had doubled in five years (this was back when it was possible to get an appointment in a GP surgery). Reported road-rage incidents also increased by 40 per cent from 2021 to 2022 (although lockdowns would have played a part).

Anger, aggression, abuse and criminal violence are, of course, all different things.

There is also a psychiatric classification of "intermittent explosive disorder". Psychologists draw a distinction between anger (an emotion) and aggression (a behaviour).

"Anger is a natural emotion that arises involuntarily," says Balick. In basic psychological terms anger is a means of alerting another that a boundary has been crossed. "Obviously you can also be angry on false premises," adds Balick.

"Saying how you feel is anger," says Michael Fisher, founding director of the British Association of Anger Management. "It becomes aggressive when you start to scream and shout abuse."

...like the online world, on the road "there’s no interpersonal complexity," says Balick, "so it's easier to be angry at somebody, because you’re not really seeing them as a person, but as an object or an enemy."

To take control of a vehicle is to place yourself in a position of decision-making, not just about routes or gear changes, but often about the moral character of everyone else on the road. So there exists a heightened sense of judgment even before a conflict arises.

Many psychologists talk about an anger or aggression cycle that has distinct stages: trigger, escalation, crisis, recovery, depression.

However, Balick says that what is often ignored is that "it feels good in the moment to express the energy that comes with anger". There's the thrill of increased heartbeat and senses on alert that can be addictive. "People react energetically to this hot emotion to the degree that they’re not forecasting the consequences," he says.

Angry car drivers and social media warriors also find themselves empowered by a greater sense of anonymity.

The same process takes places in crowds, where aggression can also be infectious. To what degree these zones of poor behaviour affect conduct in everyday life is almost impossible to establish. But it's a reasonable working assumption that trolls with names like Ratface6788891 might carry some of their online enmity into the real world. For one thing, the ubiquity of the smartphone has brought the virtual world into all aspects of the real one. Balick is in no doubt that the internet age has also lowered social barriers against anger. As he has put it, "the capacity for emotional contagion of anger has increased, certainly you see anger crossing populations much more easily."

As with online anger, there is often an element of virtuous indignation at play in the angry person's self-perception.

Threatening forms of anger are always focused on another person but in reality they’re almost invariably about the aggressor

-Andrew Anthony, excerpted and adapted from article

They have a need to feel the power they get from people kowtowing to them and now you refuse.

I set off that bomb big time and I quit walking on eggshells. Sometimes you need to be true to yourself and not worry about what other people are going to do or say.

The bomb didn't talk to me for like two years, and the folks were very quiet with me for awhile. Didn't care. Never did go back to accepting eggshell behavior. I figure I can be a bomb too.

-u/corgihuntress, excerpted and adapted from comment and comment

You are an adult now.

Boundaries aren't "cross my line less." Boundaries are "don't cross my line at all ever."

You need to make that clear. Years back you negotiated your boundary as a child. It's time to do it again, as an adult.

-u/Thortok2000, adapted from comment

We pour over their childhoods, the way they were raised, etc etc - searching for the reason why they act they way they do.

We search through catalogues of our memories, looking for things that may have happened to them or circumstances that may have occurred which causes them to become abusive.

Why do this?

I realized a few years ago that in searching for the "reason" my abusers chose to abuse me, I was still acting in allegiance with them. I was still on their team, searching to find answers on their behalf.

I was searching for some hidden justification that would make it "make sense" why they treated me so terribly.

It took me a long time to view it this way, but now I can see that any mental energy I use to search for reasons for their bad behavior is basically an act of self betrayal.

I am not their devils advocate.

I'm not a lawyer on their legal defense trying to give them a sympathetic back story.

I don't care why they acted the way they did.

It doesn't matter because I could spend my entire life searching for the mysterious "reason" - and for what? So that once I find the reason, what? They will be absolved of their crimes?

No.

I don't care to wonder anymore. It doesn't serve me in the slightest to wonder why they acted the way they did.

-u/Streetquats, adapted from comment

Usually, when you're asking yourself this question, you realize that something isn't right with your relationship with your parents.

This form of abuse systematically wears away the victim's self confidence and trust in their own feelings, so at some point, all victims ask themselves this question.

Is there actually a problem, or am I just overreacting?

You can recognize whether your parents are emotionally abusive by asking yourself these questions:

• Do they put me down frequently? People aren't perfect, and if parents snap at their child occasionally, it's not automatically abuse. The thing is, emotional abuse follows a pattern. If they insult their child regularly and by saying things they know will upset and hurt their child more than necessary, then it becomes abuse. A few examples of emotionally abusive phrases would be "I wish you'd never been born" and "You're the worst".

• Do they punish me for my feelings? Alternatively: Do my feelings not have the same value as theirs? They yell at you, but you are the snappy one when you raise your voice? They cry in front of you, but once they see a tear in your eye, you're just being dramatic again and trying to get their pity? It feels like their feelings are on a golden pedestal, while yours are nothing but a burden. That is not okay.

• Do they punish me for making them look "bad"? A common way emotionally abusive people are portrayed in media, for example, is by making them say the phrase: "Great, now I'm the bad guy". When you ever tell anyone about how bad you feel talking to your parents, they will find a way to punish you. See, emotionally abusive parents would go great lengths to make it seem like you are the one who’s bad in the story. Which brings us to

• Do they gaslight me? Gaslighting means denying their child's emotions, and making them question their sanity. What, I said you're the worst? You must have been dreaming. I would never say something like that! How dare you! That really hurts my feelings! You must think I'm such a monster! I wish you weren't my child.

• Do they isolate me? Are they trying to make you cut ties to your friends? Family members? That’s because they need control over you, and they need to make you feel vulnerable and alone. Like you depend on them. Also, they need to prevent you from growing. It may sound dumb, but if you’re their baby forever, you will not leave, and you will endure what they're doing without complaining or trying to get help.

• Do I feel unsafe? Do I feel like I can't trust them?

• Do I feel like they expect too much from me? Can I never win?

-Kellie Hahnel, excerpted from Quora Do I feel like something is just not right?

excerpted from comment

The way he hit me and tried to control me

...the way he saw me in the most negative light, or tried to get me to be a harsher parent to my son, the way he cheated on me while trying to convince me that the (young) woman he cheated with was so incredible while also (ridiculously) talking about how immature she was.

But I watched him tie the tie of a homeless man on that man's way to an interview.

Saw the way he would stop and help anyone stuck at the side of a road. How he watched out for children to make sure they were safe. How he combed through my back yard to make sure there were no rogue nails for my toddler to be injured by (after my child's father dumped carpet and carpet nails in the backyard). His patience with my son and how he attended to him wholly when my little one wanted to talk. Or any child. How he'd notice people wanted to take a picture together and would offer to do so.

Not to mention his extreme (blue collar) competence and intelligence.

He was almost everything I'd ever wanted in a partner...if you took out how he treated me.

I thought I could explain that how he was treating me was wrong and keep the him that showed up for others.

When we hold on to abusers, it's often because we see them as incredibly special

...unique and precious - and we don't want to let go of who we see them to be. That could be a romantic partner, a parent, a friend.

It hurt to realize that my brightline had to be how this person treated me, and solely that.

And even if I recognized his prior trauma, the reasons why he hurt me the way he did, that this wasn't relevant and didn't matter. To have to let go of someone I found so unique hurt me in my soul. I have never met anyone who showed up for others the way he did except for myself.

But that's exactly why I had to leave - because I show up for others that way too.

And I wasn't showing up for myself by staying. I had to learn that watching someone be kind to strangers doesn't make up for their cruelty to the people they 'love' most. That public goodness doesn't negate private pain, even if it is born of trauma.

I had to accept that someone can be both wonderful and destructive, and that the destruction, when it's aimed at me, has to matter more than all the wonderful parts.

Sometimes the hardest person to stand up for is ourselves. It's easier to see his gentleness with a homeless man's tie than to acknowledge how he was slowly untying everything that makes me who I am. Easier to focus on him cleaning nails from my son's yard than to face how he was trying to nail my spirit into a box.

The way they treat you has to be enough to leave.

To recognize that this dynamic will destroy you, and that you are so precious, too, that your destruction would be a tragedy.

Because I learned that my value isn't measured by how well someone treats others, but by how well they treat me.

Hello guys im 18 years old student of high school. The issue with my parents is that they are manipulative, abusive, superficial and not unconditional. Both have fear of abandoment, we often moved out with my mother and my brother with aspergers. I had pretty big ambitions, especially when i was living in the boarding school, but that changed when my parents couldnt afford it(mom later told me that us living in home is more expensive lol i told her that) and now I'm living with my parents. I struggle with the basic Maslov's pyramid needs like warmth, food, sleep, fresh air(no air conditioning), less but still pretty basic like safety(my father has threatened of offing me in the past, also my mother if i misbehave could spread lies about me/ call mental hospital on me she threatened me with that), fincancial stability is a big issue, parents constantly give me money and then borrow it like crazy and then lie to me(mostly mother lies about the money to me and my brother) that she is so good and gave me a lot of money. Needs that i crave, but lack mainly because of not having the more basic ones are: relationships, frienships , condfidence, social status, and what i crave the most is the using my potential and do self-fullfillment/improvement. I have ambitions academical, in sports, money, and those i wrote previously. Also i would like to have good mental health, more empathy, more EQ and don't get in legal trouble. But that's not really possible if I'm constantly hungry, cold hands, and my parents don't have a car so i need to firstly ride 25 min bus and then walk 3,5 that's 2 miles which takes around 45 minutes. Then get undressed in a cold home( I realized today that I procrastinate on it because of the cold and lose another 30 minutes). Then i need to eat and half and hour or an hour of chopping wood with not much food on average( I have big need for food like 3000-3400kcal to feel full maybe I'm in a growth spurt or still developing), man that's exausting and taxing. My autistic brother has it even worse: he is having always i mean always(maybe not in the summer) cold purple hands and is constantly catching colds. He just lays in bed all day, because its the only place he feel warm. He doesnt study, fails almost all subjects his average grade/gpa is around 1.6 which is insane, he has below 50% attendance on average, he may fail class or go to special needs school(which may not be that bad).
What i want to achieve by this post:
a)tips on how to deal with narcissistic parents, how to deal with manipulation, economical abuse, verbal abuse and threats
b) should i get them in legal trouble or get social care to help us?
c) should i go to boarding school again? People are worrying about me, asking why we constantly move out and change places, I'm in my family house 3rd week now. I don't want humiliation again of people asking and being tired of me changing places. I've already needed to explain it so many times in my life... Now to come back after 3 weeks? How to ensure that I will stay there? My mom will always find a dumb argument and force us to live at certain places. She used to rent places, loose money, a lot and then come back to alcoholic dad. I hate the feeling of coming back from rented apartment/ from family to cold, unclean place with small amount of square feet and constantly clothes and other mess laying everywhere.

Without the concept of a table, you would be staring blankly at the assemblage of incongruent surfaces and angles. Without arranging the facts and events of your life into a story — that narrative infrastructure of personhood — it would not be you looking out of your eyes.

To know yourself is to tell a congruent story of who you are, a story in which your concept of yourself coheres even as it evolves.

Without this central organizing principle of selfhood, life would be a continuous identity crisis.

Crisis, of course, is important — it is, as Alain de Botton writes in his deeply assuring meditation on the importance of breakdowns, “an insistent call to rebuild our lives on a more authentic and sincere basis.”

There come times when the tedium and turmoil of being yourself become too much to bear, exasperate you, exhaust you, make you wish to be someone else, send you searching for a different organizing principle. (It takes some living to reach that point, which is why midlife can be such a time of tumult and transformation.)

We live and die with these questions, rooted in our earliest childhood, in those first reckonings with what makes us ourselves, those first experiments in self-acceptance.

And in the end, we can call on our friends, our loved ones, to restore us to ourselves — a lovely reminder that the greatest gift a friend can give is to sing back to you the song of yourself when you forget it.

-Maria Popova, excerpted and adapted from The Dictionary Story

The fatal mistake being there was nothing to fix, this was who s/he was and I was naive to it all.

-u/M3g4d37h, excerpted and adapted from comment

Self-care needs to be learned

Self-care is not an inherent skill- it must be learned, and (as human beings) we will never understand how shitty we are at something until we understand that others are doing it better. It took having children of my own to learn how terrible I was at taking care of myself. It was then that I also started spending more time with better adjusted moms, and professionals that were good examples of proper self-care.

The two kinds of self-care: splurging on stuff vs meeting your own needs

I thought [self-care] meant basic hygiene or buying the things we like. This is FALSE. For example: if you are depressed and feeling lonely- buying yourself a new item to “cheer up” is not self-care. That is the equivalent to your childhood self desperately needing your mom or dad to spend time with you and connect, but instead they just buy you a new toy and tell you to play by yourself. STOP THE CYCLE.

Proper self-care is about learning what you ACTUALLY need and finding new ways to meet those needs. Otherwise- you are neglecting yourself.

As a new mom- I had to clothe my baby for proper weather. Well, I never realized how shit I was at dressing myself for weather. I sat for 30 minutes one afternoon bundling my baby for a snowy drive to her new pediatrician, and then it dawned on me that the only outwear I owned was a thin jacket. No one in my life had ever pointed it out, and I never really cared. It was completely normal for me to be walking around in freezing temperatures with simple tennis shoes on my feet and a light jacket to cut the breeze off. That same day when I arrived for our appointment- another mom was sitting across from me in a puffy coat, and a slouchy knitted cap. I looked at her and felt embarrassed.

If you were neglected, trying to meet your needs will put you out of your comfort zone

if you’re feeling socially awkward or that you’ll never find new friends/partners. Don’t get a new haircut/get a makeover and then try to go to a bar or to a club! You are setting yourself up for failure; people in bars and clubs are not looking for meaningful relationships! No… go to a free class at your local library. Go as often as you can. Join a club. Find events that interest you and talk to strangers. Is it awkward at first? Hell yes. but people form the best relationships with people we share interests with, so searching for meaningful relationships is part of self-care.

Make yourself do stuff out of your comfort zone! Or else you are neglecting yourself. Staying home all the time because you’re an “introvert” is the same as your alcoholic/substance abusing parents never wanting to socialize because it would call attention to their abuse. They were afraid of social censure just like you are now- it’s a learned behavior and you can train yourself to cope in healthier ways.

Self-regulating as self-care: identifying the cycle of abuse and stopping it

Self-regulating is realizing when you are mimicking your parents and fixing it in real-time. Trauma can make us copy our parents’ worst traits and their worse behaviors in ways that disguise themselves to our notice.

When I was about 7 my parents stopped attending family events and holidays. At the time, my dad complained they wouldn’t let him smoke in the house and “how dare they judge him”. In fact, everyone my parents disapproved of were “stuck up” or “assholes” whom our family just didn’t need in our lives.

I’ve started to rekindle some of those family members my parents pushed away. My aunt has grandkids the same age as my kids and I’ve being seeing them occasionally. Then she mentioned that I never tried to reconnect with them after I ran away from home. It made me see that for years I assumed everything my parents had said about our relatives was true… 20 years later and I was still that little girl taking what my dad said as fact.

It took me years to see that I push people away just the way my parents taught me, and I discover more of my own toxic behaviors and habits all the time.

Adapted from this post from an ACoA.
*ACA or ACoA = Adult Child of Alcoholics and/or dysfunctional family.