N parent's message to their children-

[Anonymous]

Several times posters have expressed some doubt or confusion about their parent's behavior and, in particular, whether it was NPD.
From my understanding there is one unambiguous, truncated message that N parent's send to their kids on a daily basis-  " You are nothing".
It manifests in several forms -

"WE are your all powerful parents,and we can do no wrong."

"Because we are perfect ,when mistakes and problems arise it is your fault."

" You are not to have any personal thoughts, feelings and wishes for yourself. We, as parents, will decide these for you."

"If you ever show any signs of self-satisfaction through your achievements we will crush. We decide when you feel good."

" We will decide when and how you are to feel your feelings- and we reserve the right to tell you that, even then, that your feelings will be wrong."

" We will tell you how hard to study, workout, try out for the team and we will choose your friends and control your social connections because we CAN."

" We will use insults, belittling, humiliation,sneering and criticism to 'discipline' you - this will build your character."

" We reserve the right to break our promises to you, to move the finish line and to arbitrarily decide what we want from you in order to show you how we can control you'"

" You owe us total compliance because we are your parents and we pay the bills."

In other words, children are valueless objects to be used by parents on a daily basis. If you are nodding, then you are the adult child of an NPD parent(s)  Welcome!

John..

[jophil]

Ooops! I did not logon before I posted the above --Jophil  ( John )

[Plucky G2]

Nod, nod, nod....

"We require your complete unquestioned loyalty.  Any attachment you form to anyone else shall be undermined, belittled, questioned, or otherwise destroyed until you have no other meaningful contact except with us.  We. however, reserve the right to form any type of attachment to anyone, and to behave nurturingly to that person, and to confide all sorts of lies about you, and to call those relationships "daughter", or wish out loud that that person was your relative, and flaunt my admiration for that person, even though this is admiration you will never ever be able to earn, and you do not have the right to question this in any way."

[Anonymous]

" We will decide when and how you are to feel your feelings- and we reserve the right to tell you that, even then, that your feelings will be wrong."

" We will tell you how hard to study, workout, try out for the team and we will choose your friends and control your social connections

" We will use insults, belittling, humiliation, sneering and criticism to 'discipline' you

" We reserve the right to break our promises to you, to move the finish line and to arbitrarily decide what we want from you in order to show you how we can control you'"

" You owe us total compliance

or as my daughter sums it up - "RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

I love your summaries of 'what N's say'. I think we had the same family.

Its very interesting to compare their tactics with whats called a 'cultic relationship' which can be as small as between two people. its possible to have a cultic 'romantic' relationship, or a cultic family. ive come to believe these people control us similarly to how destructive cults control their targets. all these techniques especially the ones you mentioned are actually typical mind control techniques.

there is a theory called the BITE model of how people are able to destroy others self esteem and exert 'undue influence' over the choices and actions they take in life -  our parents control us maybe more than anyone in life has the opportunity to.... the BITE  model postulates that if you can control someones:

Behavior - what they do, what they are allowed to do, where they are allowed to go, who a person associates with, what they are allowed to experience in life -

their

Information they recieve - what version of the 'truth' they are forced to accept, whether they have free access to information and can make informed choices or if their information pool is limited and constrained so they cannot have informed choice about life and the world

their

Thoughts - the thoughts that are alright to think, the ideas that are 'ok' to have, whether they are allowed to 'disagree'

and their

Emotions - what emotions are 'allowed' or what emotions will be punished or discouraged.....

all these items being controlled by extremely standard tactics such as shunning, peer pressure, public humiliation, threat of excommunication, and constant shifting of expectations to unmeetable standards, among others, you can totally destroy someones personality and pretty much force them to do anything you want after a period of time. if this can work with consenting adults and total strangers in a cult situation imagine how devastating it is with a persons own parents doing it.....

its very standardised. if you study cult info its very very similar to what these controllers do and the techniques they used to break us down and make us targets for what they do.

just thought id toss that out becuase ive learned a lot about these people from studying mind control tactics.

take care
Anna

[jophil]

Thanks Anna and 'the PluckyOne' , Up until I started reading this forum I had only a vague definition of my original family - "dysfunctional."
Now, after reading and posting here for a few months, I KNOW what they are. Their behavior has a name,and I have a diagnosis which fits my need to understand. Let the healing begin....John.

[Bliz]

This has come through in spades for me.  My mother had offered to help me with the house repairs.  In the mean time a small camper had become available that I could use to sleep on our river property.  WHen I told her I had purchased the camper, that later fell through, she accused me of playing a manipulative, evil game to get money from her.  First of all I never asked for it and she never gave it to me.  YOu may remember that they recently gave my brother a 200,000 loan against their estate.

The message to me is we will help,but you will dance to our tune.  THe camper deal fell through and I actually lost a substantial amount of cash to the deal, which is another story.  So now I not only dont have their help, but lost that money also.  

I am feeling pretty crappy today once again as help is given to the boys for all sorts of things, but not me. If it is offered there are strings. I am not sure what to do with my feelings right now.  I am trying to feel them and work through it.  I have thought of writing a letter to Mom but not sure that will do any good beyond getting my feelings out.

Here I was attempting to move outside the parental box and do something nice for myself. I was squashed mercilessly by both losing money on the deal and then having MOm go ballistic becuase I dared to step outside their wishes.

[Anonymous]

John, Great list. My parents are heavily into compliance - even when they don't pay the bills! And they don't understand that they expect compliance. They would deny it and feel baffled at the accusation. A lot of stuff N parents do is knee-jerk in my opinion. They don't even know how bad it is. This is not an excuse, though.

Bliz, My feeling is that your parents' message is, "This family needs a trash dumpster and Bliz is it." You are the scapegoat. They are in massive denial of doing this to you; in fact they would deny concrete evidence of it, and you can't make them change. So here's what I'd do (unsolicited advice). I'd have a personal boundary regarding money. I would never talk to them about money. If they brought it up, I'd change the subject. I would not even mention the amount I spent on a candy bar. This eliminates a big bullseye for their target practice. Know what I mean?

bunny

[Anonymous]

Up until I started reading this forum I had only a vague definition of my original family - "dysfunctional."

Nodding along. Would add some other than family relationships bring more nodding.

And some things on the list......done very subtley....to confuse.

"We reserve the right to send as many confusing messages to you as we think necessary to keep you under our control.....hooked."

Also:

"If you show any sign of noncompliance we will go ballistic!"

GFN

[Plucky]

Thou shalt appear only as we ordain.  Any deviation from the hairstyle, clothing, or weight specifications shall be swiftly, harshly, and continuously punishable by humiliation, silence, withdrawal of invitations or material goods, and shall continue until said infraction is corrected and profuse apologies offered.

[jophil]

Gee the'horror' list goes on and on !
I am really amazed that we are as sane as we are after being raised by these nutcases.
I have a question to any of you who have psych training -

My mother was the original passive abuser and my father was the N in the family.He waged psychological warfare on his children(4) and savagely controlled and stifled my mother. She had a nervous breakdown when I was 4 years old. He fit the stereotypical NPD profile and she fits the passive dependent wife cut-out . However he died in 1993 and since then my mother and my youngest brother now behave and sound just like my father. The same grandiose self-opinion,the same sneering attacks and so on, the same control attempts via money and so on.
My question is this . What in psych terms is going on here. I do love psych  jargon. You guys have all the cool words. I am but a humble engineer who has access to the stadard physical science talk stuff which is a bit old .
Tell me about my Mom and my bro...

Johnimo

[Anonymous]

John,

Your list could be made into a N's handbook to parenting and my X N would be your number one subscriber.

He is very skilled at squashing anything that brings joy to the children. He goes out of his way to look for negative qualities/behaviors and will highlight them..all the while looking right through the positive that is staring him dead in the face.

Mia

[jophil]

Mia -I gather that you are refering to your N ex H ? Boy are this people sicko. Did you have any NPD in your parenting? I am tired of being an abuse magnet- time to kick some N butt.  Too bad that they beyond dumb and will never 'get it'...
Johnimo

[Plucky G]

My question is this . What in psych terms is going on here.

I will dare to respond although my psych jargon is nonexistent.  I have a quote I like, can't even remember who it is from:

"How a minority, gaining majority, seizing authority, hates a minority!"

Your M and B are now able to get back at your only, inconvenient isn't it? that he's dead.   So the nearest target is.......You!  And they spent years in training!
The Plucky One

[d'smom]

Your list could be made into a N's handbook to parenting

He is very skilled at squashing anything that brings joy to the children.

thats so awful   on websites about getting free from cults they actually prescribe laughing, to 'break' the spell... controllers HATE joy becuase joy is free, its not controllled.  :}  theres a place in hell for those who deny a child joy. i know it.

its funny you say that about parenting.   just today I was thinking, i know my fathers idea of parenting, is like trying to bake a cake by putting a bag of flour and an egg somewhere kind of close to a bowl and yelling at them until they form a cake.....

after months of yelling or perhaps throwing things depending on preference all hapless ingredients are banished to the trash for their inexcusable personal failure to become a perfect nobel-prize winning cake...... geeeeeeeee wonder what went wrong....??????.

I seriously want to wrap their head with eels.... the electric ones....

[Anonymous]

Hey Jophil

My parents were/are great (Dad passed away two years ago this August).

I was young and naive when I met X N.  So far he has been the only N in my life....knock on wood.  One too many though.

Mia