If I had to summarize my childhood in one blanket phrase, I would definitely say, “living in fear”. As I mentioned in a previous post “The Ability to Heal is Within All of Us“, I am not professionally qualified to diagnose whether anyone is a narcissist or not. However, I can certainly go through the kind of traits that are related to The diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder and tell you about plenty of events that occurred in my childhood which would support this possibility.
The Narcissist Checklist
In her book, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, Dr. Ramani Durvasula, PhD, describes 30 traits and patterns indicative of pathological narcissism. She suggests that should you check off 15 or more of these then it would mean you are likely dealing with a narcissist and that 20 or more would be pretty much a guarantee.
She does note, however, that all of us are guilty of some of these, some of the time. The key is to look at the consistency and context.
The traits
- Lack of empathy
- Grandiose
- Entitled
- Manipulative
- Angry and Rageful
- Paranoid
- Hypersensitive
- Jealous
- Lack of Guilt/Insight
- Needs Constant Admiration and Validation
- Lying
- Everything is a Show
- Projection
- Greedy
- Emotionally Cold
- Gaslighting
- Cheap
- Never Takes Responsibility
- Vain
- Controlling
- Unpredictable
- Takes Advantage of Others (or you) on a Regular Basis
- Revels in Other’s Misery
- Does Lot Like to Be Alone
- Poor Boundaries
- Infidelity
- Doesn’t Listen
- Fragile
- Careless
- Seductive
If it applies most of the time, then you can consider it a typical behavior or trait. I would check off 28 of the 30 for sure for him. I am not sure if the remaining 2 are things I was just not aware of as a child, or whether they are genuinely traits he doesn’t possess. In any case it is certainly more than the required 15 or even 20!
In this article, I am going to look at 6 of the things which I would say primarily characterized my childhood.
1. Anger and Rage: Living in fear
The fear was paralyzing. We never knew how he’d react. It could be over the smallest thing too: being in the shower too long, using too much toilet paper, sniffing, making a “loud” noise, leaving food, not saying hello cheerfully enough when he came home, disagreeing with him in any form, having a friend call the house phone, needing to stop to pee on a car journey. If he exploded we would be instantly paralyzed. It was the safest option to avoid physical retribution. It worked most of the time, but it was still no guarantee. The verbal attacks largely bounced off us. We were used to being called all manner of things. Some would stick though. He always knew which ones worked best. I tried to hide my reactions as best I could.
2. Controlling
Everything was micro-managed. He would often diss our friends and tell us they weren’t good enough for us, but he would do it in a way that made it sound like it was we who were messed up, for picking such terrible friends. We had an 11pm bedtime until we left school, although that was relaxed when I started going out after the age of 18. When we travelled abroad, despite our specialism in languages, we weren’t allowed to speak French or Spanish and translate for him. He insisted in speaking in rude broken and loud English.
Good books or bad books
My sister and I grew up somewhat pitted against each other. One of us was always in his “good books” and the other was not. The one who was in the “bad books” would often be subjected to lengthy ranting and criticisms. This was particularly rough during meals, when we were trapped in his presence and couldn’t make the excuse that we needed to study and hide in our rooms.
The worst thing about this looking back, is that more often than not I would just feel glad it wasn’t me when he started on my sister. I wish I had stuck up for her more in his presence. It was at its worse for me during Sixth form (16-19), especially the year before I went away to university. He wanted me to stay at home and travel in to a local college. At this point I was underweight, depressed and thinking of suicide. I knew I needed to get away to survive. So I put my foot down.
Picking battles
I wanted to study Chinese and Japanese at university. However, I was scathingly told that it was an absolutely ridiculous idea and that there was no way he was supporting me to do a wishy washy degree like that. So, I let it go. I had a bigger fight on my hands: getting permission to attend a university that meant I would be able to leave home. I decided to put my Asian languages dream on hold for a while. He had insisted on European languages, so I opted for French and Italian. This was mainly because Italian wasn’t offered at my local universities. It was a huge battle. Every day for months and months I was subjected to his rants and guilt trips.
My form tutor saw something was badly wrong. She showed me kindness at the darkest time of my life and I cannot adequately express the gratitude I have for her. Some close friends were also there for me, without even realizing, in a way that I can probably never even partially repay. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know if I would be here now.
3. Guilt Trips
Every time we had something bought for us, he would complain and complain about how much it had cost to the extent that we wished we had never received it in the first place. This went for birthday gifts, holidays, meals out, essential new furniture, absolutely anything. He would even complain about driving us places and come up with these crazy amounts of money that it cost him to take us 10 mins down the road. In addition to petrol, he would rant about the cost of the car, the maintenance, the tires, even wear and tear on the seats. Asking him to give us a lift somewhere felt like such a burden we were terrified to ask. We felt like we were asking for the earth and that we would be in his debt for weeks.
Of course we were. That time he took us somewhere or other would be brought up months later to be used against us if he thought we were being disagreeable or argumentative. I have to admit it was a pretty effective technique to silence us.
4. Lack of Empathy
Christmas Day is supposed to be a happy day of celebration. I remember this one Christmas when he got really angry over something or other – can’t even remember what now – and being in my room in tears. All I remember is how miserable I felt. I’ve blotted out a lot of the actual events of my childhood, but I remember how I felt clearly.
There were many occasions where we had a truly horrible time, but he would force us to say we enjoyed it. That was one of the worst things, having our reality and feelings completely denied. There were also many times he would rant and say nasty things, then afterwards insist we give him a kiss and a cuddle goodnight and act like loving daughters. I hated it so much. I pretended that I detested hugs and physical affection with everyone, including my mum, just so I could justifiably avoid it with him without saying it was him.
Burying my feelings
I learned to hide my feelings, because they would be used against me. I’d be relentlessly teased and mocked. I was then told I was cold and unfeeling. It was so confusing. I would compose music on the piano and write songs, cry for characters going through tough things on TV or in books and dream of tender love and care and I couldn’t relate that side of me with the cold and unfeeling person he said I was. Sadly, I believed everything he said. The truth is though, the feelings were there, I just didn’t allow myself to acknowledge them. I have this weird memory. I can’t even remember what age, but I remember feeling like something switched inside me and I shut down emotionally.
He told me that no man would ever want to marry me and I believed him. I thought I was ugly and gross and a weird and a horrible person. I was so ashamed of myself. So, I tried my hardest to hide my horrible “real” self as much as possible and be a good friend and sister. But I was scared people would see through the charade and see the real “bad” me underneath and then run a mile.
It has only been during the last few years that I have properly understood how he created a thoroughly false self-identity within me and that the real me is nothing like what he said I was.
5. Poor Boundaries
We didn’t have any privacy. He would walk into our bedrooms freely, open our mail, often grill anyone calling the house for us, asking who they were and why they wanted to talk to us. When I went away to uni, I didn’t have a mobile phone at first and still communicated via letter with a lot of people. I would often write to my sister. He would insist she read out my letters to him, so she became an expert at pretending to read and just making up a load of bullshit, keeping the real letter a secret. I would also often write two letters to make it easier for her. One would be the fake one for her to read out to our parents and the second would be the real one.
6. Reveling in Misery
Before I came away to Japan, I would often come home from my part-time job to find yet another article on my bed that he had printed off. They were usually about horrible murders that had taken place in Japan, designed to scare me out of going I guess?
I remember when I was fairly young, maybe around 7, we were driving to Cornwall, off on holiday, and we passed a crash where the car was upside down. Even though there were people there dealing with it, he insisted on stopping and forced my mum to offer her help, as she was a nurse. That crash freaked me out for the longest time. I was terrified we would be in a similar crash and that the car would burst into flames and we’d burn alive. He knew my fears and would often say things like he could smell petrol. If the roads were particularly dangerous that day due to windy or icy conditions, he would draw attention to that and say we were probably going to crash.
He would also focus on negative news a lot, either from TV or from the newspaper. He was always pessimistic and thought the worst would happen. I think I spent an inordinate amount of time fearing random things as a kid.
Reflection
This is just a snapshot of my childhood. The crazy thing to me when I look back on it now is how I just knew no different. I thought this was all normal and that everyone lived like this.
I think the nature of all kinds of child abuse, is that we often end up blaming ourselves in order to explain it, comparing ourselves to others who’ve “had it worse” and hiding our pain and shame, unable to talk about it. The problem with that is that it often inevitably eats away inside us and continues to negatively affect us our whole lives.
No longer living in fear
Why do we hide? We were innocent children, who deserved unconditional love and compassion. Every child deserves to be nurtured and encouraged and guided towards reaching their full potential. We were never here to be used, disrespected and disregarded by any other human being, especially not a parent.
We deserve better. All of us deserve to be loved and cherished. Our stories deserve to be told in the hope that we as a society will learn and stop allowing children to grow up screaming inside, unseen and unheard. I was silenced as a child, but I am no longer living in fear and I refuse to carry any more shame.
I did nothing wrong.
Click here to read about how alcohol became a part of my life