Many of us in this community have struggled with toxic and narcissistic relationships.
You may have wondered …
Why did you stay connected to people who hurt you, rather than pull away and be able to look after yourself? Why did you make excuses for them, trying to convince yourself and others that things would change, when they didn’t?
Please know it is because of this … you grew up with toxic family dynamics.
What is a toxic family dynamic?
It’s a way the family operates which causes a child to be stunted in their personal self-belief, power, and ability to make healthy choices in their life.
Most of us in our wonderful community have experienced toxic family dynamics; this is very common. You are not alone!
You may have suffered incredibly painful family dynamics which set you up for future toxic relationships. Maybe you have suffered narcissistic relationship as an adult even though your parents were lovely people. Toxic family dynamics can be very subtle, they aren’t necessarily overt and obvious.
In today’s article I want to explain to you what I believe are the four major signs of growing up in toxic family dynamics.
I want you to know these dynamics can be very painful. I understand them intimately because I too suffered from them. I also deeply understand because I have helped thousands of people in this Community, over the last 10 plus years, heal from them.
This is what is UNIQUE about my work – it is powerfully SOLUTION based.
So, please don’t despair if you read this information and say, “Oh NO this is ME!” because I want you to know with all of my heart there is MORE than hope for you!
You will read what this is, at the end of this email.
Okay let’s investigate these 4 toxic family dynamic signs, and what they create.
Number one – You feel unimportant and not heard
Not being able to express and live your truth comes from being INVALIDATED.
Maybe your parents were too busy providing to validate WHO you were emotionally. Or, they could have believed that “their word” was essential, as an authoritarian role. Perhaps they wanted to protect you and grant you the best life possible by running your life for you.
Parents need to guide, lead the way and implement boundaries, yet if you are not allowed and encouraged to have your own thoughts and feelings, and even choices in regard to your life, then you will feel small, unimportant and struggle to define your own values and truths, stand in them and implement them in your life.
What is likely, as an adult, is you don’t speak up about your rights and preferences. You tend to hand your power away to others, letting them decide life choices and directions for you. You may choose seemingly strong people in your life, unconsciously to run it for you, and then be devastated when your needs and feelings are run roughshod over. You don’t have a voice. Your thoughts and feelings and desires are not listened to.
The narcissist’s reaction to being invalidated as a child
The narcissist creates a False Self because the True Self has been deemed irrelevant and ineffectual to get his or her needs met. This fictitious character then creates a “version of self” who is unique, superior and beyond entitled to be noticed, heard and obeyed, and gets deeply offended and even abusive when not served adequately by others.
Number two – People mining and abusing you
Not being able to implement boundaries and leave toxic people comes from being VIOLATED.
if your parents didn’t respect your boundaries in regard to your “self” mentally, emotionally and physically, or your “stuff” or your body sexually, then you have been infiltrated and traumatised.
No matter how much you hate it when people take from you and abuse you, you will find it really hard to leave them and take care of yourself.
You may find yourself continually entering into relationships with people like this, regardless of it being so traumatising for you. You will try to explain to them how wrong this is, and try to get them to act decently. You may attempt to expose their behaviour to others hoping they will come and help you get your power back. This doesn’t work and the abuse escalates even further.
The narcissist’s reaction to being violated as a child
The True Self’s devastated feelings are pushed down and rage replaces despair. The installed False Self seeks vengeance for the violations and projects onto those who are close enough. The narcissist expects subterfuge, deeply distrusts others, and tries to keep the upper hand by controlling with deception, manipulation or force.
Number three – High expectations on yourself and from others
Feeling “never good enough” comes from receiving CONDITIONAL LOVE.
You may have felt loved only for your accomplishments or even perhaps your appearance. If when you were sad, emotional, angry or flailing and were told to just get over it, or were ignored or even punished, then the message you received was you had to be “perfect”, “good” or “always functioning” to be acceptable.
You will be incredibly hard on yourself and believe that you are only lovable if you achieve, look like, or behave as A, B, C or D. You will discover the people who enter your life do not unconditionally love and support you.
They have unreachable expectations on you, just as you do yourself, and are highly critical of you when you are not performing as expected.
You will try to do better, look better, be better, and grant incredible support and achievements in order to earn the right to be loved.
The narcissist’s reaction to receiving conditional love as a child
The true Inner Critic within the narcissist (which he or she attempts to bury) is a relentless pit of self-loathing. The narcissist frantically requires narcissistic supply (attention, acclaim or notoriety good or bad – it makes no difference) in order to feed the False Self enough significance to emotionally survive. Without narcissistic supply the narcissist suffers the shocking narcissistic injury of the crippled True Self engulfing them.
People and things only exist in the narcissist’s life for them to feed the False Self enough “food” to exist.
Number four – You “people please” and lecture and prescribe
Trying to please and change and fix others comes from being ABUSED.
You may have been assaulted mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually or sexually. This ranges from emotional and mental putdowns, betrayals and threats, to actual physical violence. Maybe you suffered inconsistencies, where you didn’t know where the boundaries lay one day to the next. You may have had depressed, sick or addictive role models who were unpredictable.
This taught you at a young age that foundational people in your life were not safe.
Because you were not able to implement your own boundaries or leave, there was no other option other than to try to read other people and behave in ways to try to stop them hurting you. You may have tried to make yourself invisible. Maybe you attempted to appease them. Possibly you left as soon as you could and then found yourself in similar situations.
It’s likely that you feel other people’s energy intensely, it makes you anxious and you try to do all that you can for them so that they will love and care for you. When this doesn’t work you try your best to explain to people how they are behaving badly, and justify yourself, explaining why you are a good person. It doesn’t work. The more you try to control what this person is or isn’t doing, the more they escalate the abuse and the more out-of-control you feel.
The narcissist’s reaction to being abused as a child
The unhealed, unmet wounds of abuse go off within the narcissist on a hair line trigger. The narcissist lashes out, and delivers brutal abuse when they are running amok in the energy of that trigger.
With the cold narcissist that can be plotted behind-the-scenes attacks such as abuse by proxy, smearing and assaults on your structures, and with a hot narcissist there can be violent verbal or physical attacks and threats.
Maybe the assaults come from both fronts.
In conclusion
I really want you to understand that unconsciousness is unconsciousness. People have to get better to do better. Many of our parents were the product of their own toxic family dynamics. Many of them were carrying the unconscious wounds that were causing them to react in certain ways with very limited under-developed resources.
This article is not about holding our parents responsible, it is about raising our consciousness to understand that the only person that we can heal is ourself.
The great news is all of the toxic dynamics can be powerfully and directly healed with my Quantum Thriver Tools. How this works is a simple and powerful process that reaches into and releases the trauma and the belief systems from these toxic relationships.
I promise you that when YOU get better, then you will do so much better, and be able to be in and generate much better relationships, as well as powerfully and decisively leave the ones that are not serving you healthily.
I would love to introduce you to my Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP) that specifically reverses these toxic family programs, not just delivering you from the patterns of them, but also the terrible unhealed symptoms and trauma you have struggled with after toxic relationships.
Myself and thousands of others are FREE from these symptoms, living our Best Thriving Abuse Free Life as a result of NARP.
Also, if you are already a NARP Member you may wish to investigate my Transforming Family of Origin Wounds Mini-Course which is an add-on powerful cleansing and reprogramming for childhood trauma.
I highly suggest it to NARPers who resonated deeply with this article – this specific inner work will take you to the next level of Thriver relationships in every area of your life.
I hope that this information has helped you understand how common toxic relationship patterns are, and granted you the inspiration that you can live free of them – once and for all.
No comments:
Post a Comment