Did I suffer a narcissistic wound, early in my childhood? Quite possibly.
It was different, though, from the kinds of abuse that most of the Cluster Bs report having experienced – physical, emotional etc. I don’t recall either of my parents every devaluing or dismissing or criticizing me. Au contraire, I was their ‘golden child’ – in a sense. Dutiful, responsible, conscientious, studious and, to a large extent, obedient.
But there was no validity for my emotions. More accurately, there was no space in the household for these. The fights between my mother, my father and his foster mother took up pretty much any/all of the space available. To their credit though, they attended to me – if/when I approached them for/with anything – with full attention. They took their jobs as responsible parents seriously – regardless of the questions that can be raised – now – about how they went about it.
There’s one clue though – which has been termed CEN or Childhood Emotional Neglect. Which I think both my parents were guilty of.
My father opened up his world and himself to me – intellectually, cognitively and even emotionally, but it never occurred to him to either ask of me what I felt about anything or what I might want (he took good care of whatever a curious, sensitive – if a bit too much so, and academically talented child needed). There was no physical gesture of affection. He was very old-school in that sense, that a father maintains a certain stolid distance from his son – who is to be raised/groomed very ‘seriously’ before he is allowed out into the world.
I’m not sure I’d blame him though – raised by an authoritarian/strict disciplinarian of a father and his younger sister who served as foster mother (after his mother died in childbirth; my grandfather never remarried). She never married either. (It’s interesting how that might have shaped my father’s world-view and his own needs and who he chose, later, for their fulfilment).
My mother was something else though. It’s only now – the last 10-12 years after my father’s passing away in 2009 – that I have started to unpack what she did and how. And what that did to me and set me up for.
More details might emerge later, as I try and unpack whatever’s left of or repressed in my memory. But suffice to say – that she was who I could turn to – to complain to, to ask for special treats and favors and, most importantly, permission to do/get stuff that my father forbade. I didn’t realize the significance of what she cultivated when she fulfilled or acceded these demands/requests.
I’ve homed onto the sense that she was narcissistic. Not in the currently understood sense of how people tend to describe narcissists as, but far more subtle and, possibly, more insidious. She was a perpetual martyr and a ‘victim’. She deserved much better – than my father and what he did/could provide for. And she ‘suffered’ so much. And was always ‘suffering’ in doing her ‘duty’ to my father and my sisters and I.
She did her ‘duty’ well though. But all the ‘suffering’ was offloaded onto me. In a sense, she was grooming me – to be her bulwark against my father. So, while I could turn to her for what I might want or need, she’d fulfil those so that she could complain to me, 7 years old onward, about how miserable she was.
I’m led to believe – that the word for what was done to me, by her, is parentified.
I felt responsible for soothing her, validating her experience, doing whatever she asked of me, standing up for her and devoting myself to treating her nothing short of a perfect goddess. She was – to me. Nothing that was going on with me ever mattered enough that it could not be sublimated or set aside – to comfort and please her. And on the off-chance that something did still push through to expression, there isn’t a measure of the shame and guilt that suffused through me.
Note: Some clues here and here. I find this bit rather interesting and resonates well with what I have experienced with partners for over 32 years now:
What’s more, “parentifictaion in childhood is often related to co-dependence in adulthood,” adds Dr. Kennedy. Children who were parentified learn to push away their own feelings and needs, which they view at a threat. As a result, they might always focus on others, instead of honoring what they feel themselves. “This can lead to being in relationships that can be very toxic,” says Dr. Kennedy. They might seek relationships with people who reject or ignore their needs because it feels familiar to them.
Satyre 