How to Heal From Childhood Narcissistic Shaming | Subscriber Question

We need to question that defective story and we also need to start questioning this armour that we're building up around ourselves, like the alpha or the intellectual or the smart guy or the guy that can dismantle people in intellectual debates, right? None of those things, as safe as they seem and as helpful as they seem, none of them are actually helpful. We're going to talk about the legacy of having a narcissistic parent. And before we do, when we get into this question here, the way I always explain it to people is the way I approach recovery from trauma or childhood neglect or abuse. There's really three main tenets to it. The first one is we come away from that experience with the belief that, well, I'm alone. The feeling of abandonment is the first underlying belief or assumption your nervous system starts to assume when you have this experience. So I'm alone or I'm abandoned. Then what we do when we're in this experience for a long period of time, when we're younger, is we go into this story of, well, why am I alone? Why am I abandoned? I know I'm defective. There's something wrong with me. So that's second core belief in this. And the final one is, well, because I'm defective and because I've been abandoned, I'm vulnerable. So vulnerability, all sorts of fears and anxieties that come around that. So the three tenets of this, abandoned, defective, vulnerable. And I'm going to read down through this question this person asked me. This is kind of, I wanted to share this because it kind of shows how the legacy of difficult childhood and living with a narcissistic parent shows up in our lives later in a myriad of different ways, small ways, small interactions with people. We can see it show up in the beliefs and the feelings we have about ourselves. So I'll read down through this question. It says, little bit of background. I have a strained relationship with my father. I lived with his narcissism for years and I'm working on moving past this issue. Defooing is something I've been considering for some time. So defooing, if you don't know, is moving away from your family of origin. Okay, so removing people from your life, influences from your past, your childhood, not being around a parent anymore, limiting your exposure. And that's not a decision that's arrived that lightly for most people who consider it or do it. I feel the legacy of my past shows up all the time. Recently, a person at work was using narcissistic tactics on someone else, gaslighting, etc. And I brought this up with him. However, it was his response that really bothered me. He started to correct me and said that I was uninformed. It's not his behavior that actually triggered me, but more it was the feeling of being stupid when he corrected me. So already we're beginning to see what's going on here. Already, we can see that the defective story is there, stupid, something wrong with me. Okay, now this is something that stems from living with a narcissistic parent because you feel abandoned and then the defective story comes in. It's difficult, and this person is considering defuing because. When you have a parent like this, it's almost as if you don't have a parent at all, you begin to come to terms with the fact that. I didn't have a parent when I was growing up. And that can be very, very painful thing to to realize. There was no parent there. So I'm going to continue reading with this, but we're already seeing that defective story, and that's going to be something that's going to have to be questioned and inquired into more deeply. To move past this. For anyone watching this, you will have these internalized feelings of defective. There's something wrong with me, and that shows up in a million different ways in a million different stories and self judgments, but they will have to be sat with and questioned because they're not true. They're not true. That was something that was put on you at a young age, and a part of the recovery in this is to gently start pushing back and questioning that inner dialogue. Feeling like I'm not smart enough is an issue for me. I feel that I won't be able to live the life I want. If I'm not smart enough. So there we see it. I won't be able to live the life I want. The defective story has now gone into the vulnerable story. I'm vulnerable. What will I do? I won't have the resources. I won't be able to take care of myself. Always the three primary beliefs and ultimately questioning those three beliefs. Is how we let go of this and start to move on. I'm trying to study people like Paul Ekman and Richard Dawkins. I'm trying to push myself beyond my horizons. But when he said that to me, the guy at work, I felt so insecure. So this is what we're doing here. This is we're searching now for some kind of a persona to put on. And that could be some kind of an intelligent, smart persona. And really, we're intellectualizing this. We're thinking that if we can get smart enough up here, we'll be able to defend ourselves and keep safe around this. So that's kind of what that impulse is. Many of us do this for a long time. We try to find this corrective persona that will be acceptable to other people and will keep us safe. And really, what we have to start doing is just questioning those underlying stories of abandoned, defective and vulnerable. Because these personas don't work. Unfortunately, reading all these books is intellectualizing an emotional issue. Of course, there's nothing wrong with reading the books. Read the books for sure. But do with an awareness of this is not going to address this underlying feeling that I have. And this issue will keep coming up again and again. Unfortunately, and of course, it's not your fault. That goes without saying, none of this is your fault. But it's not really the way to heal this. The person who said that at work is actually in a position of authority over me, which complicates things. OK, so. Look, then, for anyone in your past that was in a position of authority. And made you feel these similar feelings and you may begin to realize there may be some projection going on here from my past. This could have been about my father. This is what we do with managers, bosses, anyone in positions of authority. We often find ourselves having problems with these guys because. It's not their behavior. It may very well be inappropriate and bad behavior, you could say. But our emotional intensity to their behavior is really showing us something. I haven't dealt with these feelings from the past and it's getting triggered in people and I'm projecting these issues out onto them. Now, I don't only see my manager or my boss or whoever. Now I see them and superimposed on top of them is now my father. OK, so it's become so emotionally intense. I'll read on. Isn't a sign of intelligence to the ability to win character matches? I'm not really sure. I know what you mean, I think character matches. Maybe that's stooping to a new low, but it's nice to think I can win a character match, so that's again, that's another another persona and that's the persona of the alpha. Alpha is in the good room, beta is in the bad room. OK, it's not being an alpha male, it's wanting to be or trying to be and you can just let go of those concepts entirely because they're completely unhelpful. But it's natural that we want to do that. We want to arm ourselves to feel safe. That's what that is. I know it may be immature, but it's understandable. Don't be hard on yourself about any of this, by the way. But it's nice to think I can prove I'm smarter than someone else. Like I could take their point and show them how stupid they are for thinking that way. Who do we really want to say that to is the question. I need to feel that sense of exceptionalism. What you're what you're experiencing here is anger, you know, and it's absolutely understandable. It gets projected and amplified a little bit too much with other people who had nothing to do with the original issue. But it's very understandable this anger. But I always tell people that it's the anger part of it is very, very important and it's understandable because some people think that, well, I have to forgive the past and let go of the past. And therefore, I just, I just, I'll forgive. And they forget the whole process of dealing with all those complex emotions that eventually will lead you to the point of being able to let go of the past. But for a while, anger is going to be there. And of course it is. Of course there's going to be anger there. When you're a child and you're in a situation like that with a parent, well, what does the nervous system always tell us to do? It either tells us fight or run away. And if you can't fight, which you can't, you can't fight your parents, at least not and win or in the long, long term, and you can't run away, you can't run away from home because you're completely dependent. Well, what does your nervous system do? It buries feelings, it represses things, and it takes on the stuff, the nonsense that we've been fed from narcissistic parents, which is why we have to do some inquiry on that at some point. But anger is completely normal for this. Um, where am I here? Okay. I need to feel smart and to be able to look back at my life and say, I was able to make something because I was smart. Sometimes, however, I think I am stupid. Here we go. There it is. There's the, there's the shadow part. There's the final part of the piece. There's the defective story. Okay. And all those beliefs about you're stupid, you're stupid, you're stupid. Are they your beliefs? Or did someone tell you those beliefs and someone gives them to you? This has nothing to do with the guy at work. You know that I think this is to do with the parenting situation that you're dealing with when you're younger. Someone telling you, and we can get that message. It's either telling you directly that that's who you are, or it's inferring that by ignoring you or undermining, undermining your emotional needs or your input, many, many different ways that that can be, that can be registered with the child, but that's the shadow revealing itself there now. Okay. It's the belief that I'm stupid. That's the defective story that we need to start questioning. We need to question that defective story. And we also need to start questioning these, this armor that we're building up around ourselves, like the alpha or the intellectual or the smart guy, or the guy that can dismantle people in intellectual debates, right? None of those things as safe as they seem and as helpful as they seem, none of them are actually helpful because all they're doing is they're just a reaction to the underlying belief that there's something wrong with me and I'm stupid, right? If this belief goes away, why would there be any need to take off armor and protect myself and become somebody who is going to protect themselves, right? And doing that, reinforcing those, that persona only reinforces the underlying belief that we need to look at, which is why it's so important to look at them. It finishes up here. It says people in the self-esteem movement, so therapists, I guess, always want to absolve people of their insecurities. But what if I really am stupid and I need to hear this? So again, it's not that I've done inquiry with people for a number of years, I've done it thousands of times with people, and I'm yet to find one of these beliefs. I'm open-minded about it, but one of these limiting beliefs that we get from childhood that is actually objectively true, when you start to question them, they fade away. There's not much holding them up. There's no really supporting evidence for it. But really, it's not the therapist's job to convince you of this. The therapist's job is to facilitate you in inquiring into these beliefs. What if I really am stupid and what if I need to hear this? Again, where did we hear that in the past? You're stupid and you need to hear this. It's for your own good, maybe. This is when you're a child, you can't fight, you can't run away. What's your only option? I need to take it in. I need to accept this if I'm going to continue to live in these circumstances. I need to accept that the big people are correct, because it's terrifying to think that they're not correct. So that is the voice of your father talking to you more than likely, and it's an interjection. You took that one right in, because you had to. So again, that's not your fault. None of this is. But what you're doing is you're asking some really interesting questions there. What's it like growing up with a parent like this? They're emotionally volatile. Okay. And yet they point out all of your flaws. That's something that could have happened. They're very, very rarely, if ever, wrong and will very rarely, if ever, apologize for anything that they do. Always giving unsolicited advice about how you should change or improve. And ultimately, they're just projecting their insecurities onto you. That's what you're dealing with here. And you're not dealing with it as an adult. You're dealt with it as maybe like a little boy or something, which meant you were very open minded, very scared, very easily influenced. And these interjections go right in and they stick with us until we get to the point where we realize the past is still showing up in my life. It's showing up in interactions with managers. It's showing up in millions of different little ways and insecurities. I feel this constant defective story that's running in my mind, this feeling that I'm alone, this feeling that I'm vulnerable and I won't be able to, to meet my own emotional needs. So you're asking the right questions here. It's an understanding that will help you understanding of why you feel like this. Why this happened and how to start moving forward. We need to start questioning those stories that you were made to believe about yourself when you were younger. Then you won't need to be this intellectual titan that can go and dismantle other people because it's not that, um, it's, it's, it doesn't work. And even if it did work, it would be very, very, uh, you just feel yuck about it. You know, it's not a particularly nice thing to do. And you know that you didn't said there, you know, this is a new law or something. You're aware of that already. But my advice is to start doing inquiry, start journaling about those beliefs about yourself, that I'm stupid. If you start to sit down with that belief, I'm stupid. And you start to really question that. Where's the evidence? Is there any evidence for opposite thoughts of that? I bet you will find, I can give you one piece of evidence already. This, the opposite. I'm smart. Your question is very insightful. It's well written, right? There's just one tiny piece of evidence. And it took me what, five seconds to find that you're not. And, uh, accepting that about yourself will mean accepting that my parents were wrong. My father was wrong. And to give yourself permission to say he was wrong. It was completely wrong. There was no evidence for that at all. And this was really about him, not me. Reach out, if you're out there and you're going through something like this, if you feel like these, these old traumas from, from abusive childhoods are influencing your life now, that's why we look at it. We don't go to dig up the past just for the sake of doing that. We do it because the past stays with us until we start to question all of that garbage that went into our heads and start to let it go. I hope that was helpful. If you have a question yourself and I feel I can give some kind of a decent insight into it, go to my website and you can contact me. Thanks so much for watching. Take care of yourself and bye for now.