When victims (have to) care for the perpetrators

But what if not? What if your parents were narcissistic and/or abusive towards you? Either openly, in the form of physical or sexual violence or – and this is extremely more common – in the form of conscious or unconscious emotional abuse?

Then the issue becomes highly complex and often doesn’t end well. Not for either side. This is exactly what the following article is mainly about.

Because when the burden of caregiving itself is compounded by unconscious dependencies, narcissistic behavior and mutual pressure, then the whole construct becomes dangerous to the point of the caregiver giving up on themselves.

Such dependency relationships are by no means limited to care. Often enough, parents exercise power in a much more subtle way. They make their long-grown children dance like puppets. Make them do things that they would never have done on their own. Sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously.

But there are ways out if you are prepared to start with yourself – there is no other approach anyway – and resolve the underlying patterns. Because unlike in your childhood, you are no longer at the mercy of others. It still feels like that, but it’s no longer like that. Only the old programs are still running, but programs can be changed or deleted.

Such a path is exhausting, but much less exhausting than driving your own life into self-abandonment.

Example “it’s already working”

Ines, 58 years old, single, cares for her 83-year-old mother. As always, names are fictitious, the story behind them is not.

Ines has two more siblings, but they don’t care. They have families of their own and don’t have time. More like they don’t want to, but of course they don’t say that. Ines is alone, so she has time. She can be there for her mother.

She doesn’t need full care, but she can no longer get to the shops on her own and she can no longer clean her apartment. Ines does all that. Even though she works full-time, but otherwise she has time, doesn’t she? “I can manage,” she says to herself again and again.

Her mother is not easy. She never was. She would be called “narcissistic” today, but Ines still defends her. “She never had it easy”.

Is that an excuse for the fact that she keeps calling Ines nasty names? For the fact that Ines really can’t do anything to please her? For slandering her own daughter to the neighbors, shouting at her, throwing objects at her head?

Ines ignores all that. She has to, otherwise she couldn’t care. And she has to, doesn’t she? Her mother isn’t that bad … she’s never had it easy.

Ines has always been the unloved child. Always the child that her mother beat up. Psychologically and then also physically. Even as a child, Ines could never be right, she was always wrong, always ‘at fault’. She desperately tried to finally get it right, to finally be seen, to finally be loved. She is still trying today. She doesn’t even realize it anymore, she doesn’t know any different.

And so Ines doesn’t even realize how quickly she herself is deteriorating. How bad her health is. “I’ll be fine”. Sure, she was always “fine”, somehow. But she can’t let up, what would her mother say? What would the neighbors say? Then it would be her fault. Once again. She MUST be loved at some point! She can’t, so she carries on.

She actually came to me for something completely different, her health had been failing for some time. But the issue with her mother quickly came to the fore. This toxic dependency on a person who had always treated her like dirt. From childhood onwards. This sense of responsibility, coupled with a perpetual feeling of guilt.

Ines didn’t want to see this for a long time, there was always the hope that it would stop at some point … a hope that was never fulfilled. Not until death and beyond.

Solving this huge issue was not easy – especially not the guilt issue – but in the end Ines got her zest for life back. And her health. And her mother is no worse off than before, the solution just looks completely different now.

General

This example is not ONE story, it is many stories. This topic is huge but hardly visible in society. Who talks about it? And who should you talk to about it? Most people are not even aware of it.

Especially when it’s not about obvious dependency relationships but very subtle ones. Parents who are not in need of care, but still keep their adult children “on a tight leash” against their will.

Coercing them into unhealthy behavior, belittling them, controlling and bullying them. Emotionally blackmail them. Binding them to themselves against the will and needs of their partners or children.

What worked for you as a child will still work when you are an adult. Until you actively end these patterns. This requires courage and determination and is a big step.

You may feel “guilty” and you may be misunderstood, even attacked. But only at the beginning of the process.

Feelings of guilt

Consciously or unconsciously creating feelings of guilt in other people is an extremely effective strategy for getting what you want. If you manage to convince the other person that they are to blame if you are not doing well, then you have them in the palm of your hand.

Especially if it’s a person who is dependent on you. Your child, for example. If you as a parent manage – and this is not difficult – to give your child the “job” of making you happy, then they will do everything, really EVERYTHING to achieve this.

Because it depends on you. It MUST make you happy. A direct hit for narcissistic parents. Once they’ve got this pattern down, they can do practically anything with their children without fear of consequences.

This goes as far as physically abused children who nevertheless protect the perpetrators, their parents. Often well into adulthood. This leads to people who, even as adults, even in old age, still do everything they can to live up to the expectations or presumed expectations of their parents. Even when their parents are long dead.

In extreme cases, such patterns can lead to complete self-abandonment, but in most cases they lead to a subtle, latent pattern of suffering. And without the parents ever feeling any better as a result.

Help

There are hardly any people who can help, because the causes of such dependencies lie beyond what most people can perceive, let alone solve. You have to look specifically and want to see what you see.

And then draw the consequences. That’s hard at first. But how many people die from something like that? How many people care for their parents until they die, only to realize that they are still unloved and that the pattern of dependency continues to torment them even after their parents have died? Even worse than before.

How many people ruin themselves, always hoping that they will be loved for it at some point?

Spoiler: This will never happen!

The love that you should have experienced as a child but didn’t get, you can ‘t get from the outside later on. You simply can’t. Even if your parents were to develop into angels, it wouldn’t work.

You have to get it from a completely different source and you can get it with the right guidance. But you have to go deep to do this. You have to get to the root cause, to your energetic basis, which lies much deeper than your parents. Such patterns build up over very long periods of time and pass from one generation to the next (or the next but one).

You can’t solve a pattern like this at the level at which it originated. But together we can get to the point where you can solve it. Sustainably and forever. Taking the first step is entirely up to you.

Feel free to write to me at any time if you have any questions: mail@gerhard-zirkel.com