How Toxic Families Rob You Of Your Life, Joy and Identity (And How To Get Them Back).
If this were a poem, it would be titled “All That You’ve Lost”.
One of the hardest parts of being an adult with attachment trauma is looking back on your life and wondering what could have been.
One thing I hear most from my clients is that they feel they have wasted so much of their lives living for others, not even stopping to ask themselves “Am I happy?” They share with me how scared they are that time is running out, and they have only just realized they were victims of abuse. They are relieved that they can finally stop blaming themselves, but they have no idea what to do instead. How much more life will they watch go by as they desperately try to take hold of joy, fulfillment, and wholeness as time speeds up on them? They finally see happiness is out there, but is it too late?
So many of those who suffered narcissistic or family scapegoating abuse often don’t “clue in” to all that they have been subjected to— and all the different ways it has affected them emotionally, socially, psychologically and even physically—until they are well into their lives. It is not uncommon to be 45, 55, 65 and beyond and finally understand what happened to them. And by that time it feels like there is no way to reverse course.
Growing up in narcissistic, toxic, and scapegoating dynamics meant they were actively trained to sideline themselves. They were expected to push their needs to the side, swallow their feelings, and dampen their pain. They were conditioned to deny their perceptions, twist their reality, and plaster on a mask to please and placate others. But it wasn’t just their pain they ignored and contorted, it was their joy as well. They knew instinctively to play down their excitement, interests and successes so that they did not take up too much space, or steal the spotlight away from their parents. They learned to not give their abusive parent any indication that they had talents or abilities that could benefit them, draw friends to them, or create opportunities for them. Because their parents knew they could not control them — and thus get their needs met by them— if they possessed independence.
You Were Bred To Stay Small So Others Could Feel Large.
Sometimes the death of the oppressive parent is what gives people permission to examine their life and step out into their own. Other times the awareness of a looming end — a genuine existential crisis — forces people to take stock and say, “I don’t know what has happened to me or why I struggle so much, but I cannot continue to live in a cage.” And through that exploration, they uncover the emotional and psychological neglect and torture that they were subjected to. It clicks into place.
And it’s just so gut-wrenchingly sad.
It is sad to get one life and finally have a chance to make that life your own, but feel you don't have enough time left to do so.
It is sad to look back on all your potential, all your accomplishments, all your gifts and see how you had to hide them. How you weren’t able to take up space in your own existence. What life could you have had? What happiness could you have experienced? What would have been different if only you had had different parents?
It is sad to finally realize it wasn’t you that was the problem yet you wasted so much time thinking you were; thinking you were the reason why you didn’t get the love and support and nurturance you needed. Believing you just needed to be better and try harder. It turns out that this whole time you were full of gifts and life and brightness and light. It turns out people liked you, loved you, and desired you a lot but they weren’t able to get close enough to express that or share it with you. Perhaps they were overtly threatened by the oppressive parent who interfered, intervened and sabotaged whenever you got close to someone. Or maybe you subconsciously pushed them away because receiving love didn’t align with the narrative you were given growing up that told you you weren’t deserving, that you were too difficult to love and that love couldn’t be trusted. It is so sad to realize how much you learned that closeness was dangerous.
It is sad to finally understand that the world wasn’t hard because you were damaged or broken or undeserving, but because you were caged.
What a terrible loss.
When Jenni* (not her real name), went no contact with her family (not initially by choice, but by abandonment which turned into the choice to not reconcile in order to protect herself), she leaned on the one person who stayed in her life when everyone else left: a family friend named Liz* (not her real name). Liz was a mother-type figure who, despite being literally threatened by Jenni’s abusive parent to “not show Jenni any love or support or else”, stayed nonetheless. Liz lost her best friend (Jenni’s mother) in order to love Jenni.
Jenni shared with me (and with permission, now shares with you): “Spending time with her showed me what it could have been like to be surrounded by someone who wasn’t targeting me, who wasn’t always on edge ready to pounce on me if I sneezed in a way that “insulted her”, or would constantly guilt me or stonewall me or gaslight me and share with me just how unwanted I was.”
She continues: “I remember one incident with my new “chosen mum” where I accidentally recycled a catalogue she wasn’t finished with. I worked up the courage to tell her and apologized profusely. I was in agony worried about how much I would upset her. And she said, “Oh! No big deal. Don’t even sweat it. I was going to share it with a friend but I’ll just tell her I lost it. Anyway, what do you want for lunch…”
Jenni told me she was genuinely shocked. She recalls thinking, “It’s…no big deal? You’re not going to guilt me for the next two weeks? No silent treatment or telling me this is exactly why my whole family hates me? You’re not going to exclaim to me in passing — once I let my guard down and think the coast is clear again — that my aunts and brothers and family friends also think I’m selfish and ungrateful and you just “needed to let me know”? You’re not going to have a big dramatic meltdown that makes me think this catalogue was some priceless heirloom? You’re just going to say, “No big deal”? More than that, you’re going to protect me and my reputation by taking the blame?”
Jenni paused and stared at me before asking: Is this what safety and security are like?
Imagine what she could have accomplished if she had felt the world — and family — to be essentially safe and secure!
How unbelievably sad.
Jenni only had one year to experience what genuine love, safety, and acceptance felt like before her dear “chosen mum” suddenly passed away.
Reflecting, many years later, she told me she soaked up as many of these feelings as possible so that in her heart she never loses what it means to feel loved. She says she can access it anytime her trauma responses kick in and start chastising her for existing. For thinking on her own. For thinking about herself, and her needs. For thinking about her feelings, and nurturing them.
Jenni never knew that this is what family was supposed to feel like.
I call these feelings the real truths because they are the actual blueprints for healthy relationships and family dynamics.
Those who grew up with attachment wounds were never given those blueprints. They were given skewed maps which took them off course from their actual life.
What Jenni’s year with her “chosen mum” taught her was that she had never been given a chance to realize her full potential. She had no idea her actual capacity for happiness! Imagine what she could have done had she grown up in this environment instead; She would have developed self-esteem and the ability to make decisions without crippling terror and paralysis! She could have lived without crushing anxiety. Imagine what doors self-esteem and the absence of generalized panic would have opened for her.
And for you, too.
Imagine not staying small, but instead fully embracing your wonderfulness and wildness.
Imagine knowing that the things that made you a target in the first place — your keen sense of truth and justice, your bottomless empathy and compassion, your spirit and creativity, your brightness (that they were jealous of and tried to subdue) — were the things that made others magnetically drawn to you! Imagine trusting that these qualities would never make people recoil from you, despite what you were told. Imagine what would have become of you had those gifts been nurtured and allowed to take up space and flourish.
Having narcissistic and scapegoating parents steals your energy and hope to fight for a better future for yourself. It steals your identity and your belief that you matter in this world.
Abandonment wounds, betrayal trauma, and attachment anxiety all rob you of basic adulting functions like decision-making, focus, confidence, and boundaries.
And it’s not just mental or emotional scars; You are also left with physical ramifications. It’s like an insulting parting gift — not only do you bear the brunt of the family dysfunction, but research also reminds you that complex trauma lives in your body in ways that can actually lead to chronic illness, disease and early death.
Great.
When I work with trauma survivors, I hear the drip drip drip of this awareness start to take over.
Carl* (not his real name) says, “I sometimes sit in meditation, practicing feeling safe in my body again only to be confronted by the spiralling thoughts reminding me that my body has been in a state of chronic stress, cortisol overload, generalized and persistent inflammation for so long, that as such, supposedly the telomeres in my DNA sequence have been altered. Shortened. I know meditation is about being with these thoughts without judgement…but they make me want to flee my body.”
According to research, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) such as the repeated trauma of growing up targeted and neglected is correlated with complex PTSD. Complex PTSD is related to declines in physical health, in addition to mental and emotional anguish.
How infuriatingly unfair and sad.
So here you are, many of you in the middle of your lives or beyond, looking back knowing you can’t get the time back. Wondering what happiness means and whether you will get your shot at it before the physical effects of complex trauma steal what you have left.
Hope and Recovery
In writing this I realize what a miserable and gloomy trip I have just taken you on. Well hello, bottom of the well of despair, nice to see you again!
Yes, I have asked you to face these scary facts with me. But I would not leave you there dangling if I didn’t know there was hope and healing ahead. I would not share with you the scientific evidence of how trauma impacts the body if I didn’t also know that it doesn’t mean you will actually get sick or have a short life. Science examines patterns of data across groups of people and cannot say anything about your individual experience and potential.
I also choose to write about these very real, and sometimes dark, consequences of dysfunctional and toxic parenting because it’s the thing that society (and even some professionals) don’t give enough space to. We jump right into problem-solving, to cheering up, fixing, to creating a new life. Survivors are told to work on themselves. Work on recovery. Try harder. Do this, do that. Get happy already! Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Until your arms give out and you are exhausted from the effort to just stay afloat.
Looking to the future is important. But if we don’t address the past properly, we will assume the future will look just like the past to us. We will filter our hopes through a lens of trepidation and dread, shaped by what we have already gone through. Without evidence to the contrary, why would we assume the future looks brighter?
We cannot cross the bridge from despair to joy if we don’t properly acknowledge and honour our grief so that we can unfilter our lens.
Feelings Are Your Voice.
Think of it this way: Grief is like a small toddler pulling at your pant leg. If you ignore them or try to shake them off they just get louder. They follow you around. They climb all over you. Suddenly all you can focus on is toddler and tantrum! They make themselves heard. And rightfully so.
Our emotions are no different. If we do not face them, they grow stronger and louder. They will persist until you pay attention.
You just spent a lifetime being told to ignore your feelings in favour of others. You just spent a lifetime squashing feelings down in order to survive. And now, you are awake and want to start living. Which means you need to address the toddler and give them the attention (and hug) they need and deserve.
Finding your feelings is finding your voice.
Here’s Where Joy Factors In.
Joy is on the same emotional circuit as grief. If you turn off the switch to grief, you shut down joy as well. You can walk a million miles across that bridge to joy and never reach the other side if you do not acknowledge grief. It becomes a long and exhausting and demoralizing walk when we try to move ahead without honouring our past. Because our inner toddler is still in the past. And they are tugging at your pant leg.
The shortest route to joy is the painful one. The one where you gather up your losses, all the things that attachment wounds stole from you, and sit them in a circle and say, “I hear you, I see you, it wasn’t OK what happened to you and I’m going to take care of you now”.
The Invisible Backpack
Survivors of narcissistic abuse spend their lives being invalidated for every thought and every word. By denying your grief airtime, it is as if you are continuing to invalidate yourself.
Instead, we need to examine what is in our “invisible backpack.”
Your invisible backpack is what you’ve been carrying around with you since childhood that is getting in the way of thriving. It is filled with all the pain you have carried with you, with the rocks, stones, pebbles and boulders of all the injustices that you faced. Of all the losses. Of all the limiting beliefs and cruel words. Of all the hypocrisies between how your parents treated you compared to your siblings. Of all the people who stood by and believed them at your expense. Or stayed silent and asked you to do the same. Of all the things you could have been but were not allowed to be.
Waking up and looking at that backpack is to realize you are allowed to be. You are allowed to be anything, everything, and all of you. It’s just that that backpack is full to the brim with a weight that is impossible to carry, and it’s holding you down.
If you want to lighten your load, it means facing the weight of it all. To begin, you need to acknowledge that there is an invisible backpack in the first place. Then you need to look inside it to see what is there.
What happened to you is real and it did matter. If you don’t look inside and examine what’s there, you will think that this weight is a burden you are supposed to carry. A weight you brought on yourself. You will continue to believe that you are responsible for your exhaustion. That you are required to struggle harder and longer for others. That you are not inherently deserving of joy and happiness.
And none of that is true.
As a survivor of narcissistic or scapegoating abuse, you were saddled with everyone else's rocks too. When they didn’t want to take responsibility for carrying them or examining them themselves, they handed them to you to carry around. And you did because that’s how you survived.
But they are not yours to carry. You can put them down now.
Hear me now when I say: You do not need to work harder for joy than anyone else.
You have permission to stop working to create joy for them at the expense of yourself.
Joy is for you — yes you — too! And the bridge to get there isn’t as long as you think. Without that backpack weighing you down, and that emotional “toddler” clinging to your leg, you will see just how close the other side is. Just how close joy is.
Disclaimer: This article is not a substitute for professional 1:1 support. Please speak to a qualified medical professional for medical information.
©Erin Watson, PhD
ABOUT ME: In my work as a Narcissistic Systems and Scapegoating Expert, I tackle the toughest, deepest pains and traumas that result from this type of attachment abuse. My work focuses on bystander silence and compliance, betrayal trauma, embedded injustice, moral injury, recovery without closure or accountability, complex and disenfranchised grief, traumatic invalidation, reputation assassination and wrongful convictions with no restoration possible, and how to take the risk of developing identity, agency, autonomy and embodiment in the face of imminent toxic backlash. Join me to learn about recovering with ease not effort, and how to reclaim your life, identity, energy, and confidence so you can experience genuine joy, fulfillment, wholeness, and connection no matter where you are at in your healing journey.
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