Category: Malignant Narcissism

Disarming the Enemy

By definition, the pathological covert narcissistic personality prefers passive aggressive tactics to control, dominate, outdo, and punish others. You don’t have to read The Art of War to recognize the power of disarming your enemy, and what better way to disarm someone than to pretend to be a friend?

Dependent on their caregivers for physical and emotional survival, relational attachment, and identity formation, children have no choice but to return to the hand that feeds, even when it also grabs, slaps, and withholds. When a parent hides abuse and frames it as love, it is that much more difficult to recognize and even harder to call out.

How Covert Narcissist Parents Groom Children for Abuse

1. They exploit cultural assumptions. Society tells us in countless ways that all parents want the best for their children. Questioning a parent’s love and loyalty flies in the face of conventional wisdom and forces us to reexamine our most fundamental beliefs about family. Covert narcissist parents rely on cultural assumptions to hide their abuse and neglect, and they gaslight their children about their behavior by leaning hard into their unimpeachable status as “loving” parents.
2. They play the paragon of virtue. It is common for a covert narcissistic parent to cultivate an image in and beyond the family that he or she is caring, principled, devoted, and/or self-sacrificing while also targeting a scapegoated child as a negative foil. Such a parent may be skilled at manipulating family members, such as an enabling partner or golden child, as well as people in that parent’s social circle, to support his or her narrative. Children in this scenario struggle with the cognitive dissonance of what they are told about that parent versus how that parent actually behaves behind closed doors.
3. They master the microaggression. By definition, the narcissistic personality is competitive, envious, and prone to hostile attacks. Unlike the overt narcissist’s obvious one-upmanship, the covert narcissist parent uses microaggressions cloaked as oversights, slips of the tongue, humor, help, or caring concern. For the child treated to such abuse, it is death by a thousand cuts.
4. They play the innocent victim. Assuming the role of victim allows the covert narcissist parent to pivot away from responsibility and blame while garnering sympathy for all the ways other people, especially their children, disappoint, neglect, and harm them. Parents who act the victim often use guilt and pity plays to solicit attention and care-taking from their children and others beyond the family.
5. They operate within plausible deniability. Covertly narcissistic parents employ indirect forms of manipulation such as dismissal, redirection, minimizing, gaslighting, and triangulation. Typically they calibrate the abuse so it is within plausible deniability if their kids or other adults question them about it.
6. They look good by comparison. In many narcissistic families, a covert narcissist parent is partnered with an overtly abusive and neglectful one, allowing the covert to appear reasonable, selfless, easygoing, or otherwise “good” by comparison while playing up the long-suffering martyr routine. Children have no choice but to seek out whatever caregiving they can get from the less volatile parent in the home.
7. They give intermittent reinforcement. Covert narcissist parents typically exert ongoing control over their children by sporadically offering forms of desperately craved validation, such as attentiveness, praise, caretaking, and gifts. This confusing push-pull dynamic keeps children “in the game” and coming back for more.

Continue reading “7 Ways Covert Narcissist Parents Groom Children for Abuse” →

When a mother claims abuse in the Family court and the father counterclaims with Parental Alienation, the abuser’s allegations of Parental Alienation become the judge’s focus, and accusations of abuse by the victim can then help the abuser’s position since the abuser claims these accusations are alienating behaviour. This result’s in the evidence of abuse not being given the weight it deserves and the real alienating behaviour, and other abuse, not being sufficiently explored.

The judgment given can result in one of the cruellest miscalculations of justice, and it is happening at a worryingly high rate.

The judgment can result in;

• The healthy, safe parent having contact time reduced

• The healthy, safe parent losing the residency order

• The traumatised child getting forced into direct contact or into the residence of their abuser, against their wishes.

• The healthy, safe parent feeling suicidal. They are overwhelmed by feelings of loss, grief and helplessness. They may now face financial ruin and may have lost their home in the process too.

• The narcissistic parent now attempting to alienate the child further, from the parent who has fought to the ends of the earth to protect them from abuse.

• The victim getting gagged by order of the court.

Imagine the narcissist’s delight, at having accomplished revenge on such a grand scale, on the ex who caused their ego its most significant injury. Imagine the devastation of the loving, safe parent, who’s greatest mistake in life was to fall for a cruel individual who preyed on their weaknesses. Imagine the distress of that same parent closing their eyes every night, knowing that their child’s abuser is free to continue the abuse. Think, for a moment, of the terrified child.

The resulting injustice for the female victim in the Family Court due to the misuse of ‘Parental Alienation’ is deplorable and would make headlines if society were allowed to hear about it. Brunel University, London propose further research and to carry out an international study on the extent of this significant problem, and the response to it in courts around the world. This study would be valuable to those actively seeking a solution in the UK.

With narcissism infiltrating our society, and the number of abuse cases rising rapidly, the Judiciary must address this issue soon. Abusive parents and those with extreme narcissistic traits are a threat to children, and those children must be protected. The narcissist’s willingness to psychologically torture their child to maintain power and control is shocking. It is no wonder children withdraw from, and seek to reduce contact with, these parents. The narcissistic perpetrator’s skilful ability to mask their true character and portray themselves as a victim should be a grave concern for those seeking to administer justice.

The number of confirmed cases of Parental Alienation, as a counterclaim to abuse in the UK, is currently unknown. Still, one doesn’t need to look far to find the victims who have suffered gross injustice as a result. Traumatised and silenced parents, who have lost parenting time with, or custody of, the very children they sought to protect are in their thousands, on groups on social media, worldwide. Groups such as ‘The Court Said’ headed by Natalie Page are snowballing and gaining the support of journalists, law and medical professionals and politicians.

Society is ‘onto’ the dangerous abuser’s who counterclaim Parental Alienation; one would hope the Judiciary will now catch up. Continue reading “The Narcissistic Abuser and the Parental Alienation Counterclaim” →

Under the sole care of a parent who exhibits extreme narcissistic behaviors, children’s normal needs to feel seen, heard, and responded to may be frequently frustrated and placed behind what the narcissistic parent wants. Therapists refer to this kind of parent-child relationship as pathological enmeshment.

Alienated children develop high rates of depression, anger, anxiety, drugs, and alcohol, and relationship difficulties. Psychologist Jennifer Harman and others conclude from a summary of extensive research that alienation is one of the very most harmful forms of child abuse.

At the same time, Harman’s article suggests that alienation should be considered a form of family violence because of how it impacts the co-parent. Learn here techniques for coping with the emotional roller-coaster provoked by the narcissistic behaviors of an alienating co-parent. Continue reading “Understanding the Risks of Parental Alienation and Narcissism” →