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Not the eggshell thing, but they’ve definitely done the reverse victim and offender thing (DARVO). I brought up that my Nparent used to beat me and say terrible, abusive things to me (all very true, the abuse went on for years). Then my Nparent accused me of abusing my daughter. I have never hurt my kid, I love her so much and would never do that.
This is why the advice for narcs is to get away as soon as possible. It’s impossible to have a relationship with them.
Yes. This was my mother’s favorite saying. She said it about my father daily. It took me years to realize that she wasn’t actually tip toeing around us and that she was the true aggressor. She also loved to say she was everyone’s punching bag. The perpetual victimhood gets old.
I feel like they did this to us to make it seemed like we’re the aggressor and they’re being wary about not stepping on our minefield. And trying to silently project to others that you’re the offender and you hurt their feelings. Because it’s upsetting to them that we’re not “forgive and forget” and be constantly happy to them and allow them to have our boundaries perpetually ignored and allow them to do whatever they want again.
It’s part of dismantlement and devaluation. Trying to correct our behavior in passive aggressive way. We walk on eggshells around them so they mirror it to us thinking it as our style of manipulation technique. Except we did it as part of trying to fade in the background and protecting ourselves and hope they stay away. Narcissist does this to make themselves as our victim because it make them feel isolated and ignored and they do it for attention.
This is the narcissist’s playbook, word by word. Some are more extreme than others, all are bad nonetheless.
I have a former friend whom I had forbidden to visit me at my home; this was partly due to him being intimidating and difficult to handle when upset, and partly due to concerning rumours that he had SA’d someone. He showed up uninvited to my apartment a few months later, assaulted me, threatened me when I tried to contact the police, and then curled up in the fetal position and rocked back and forth when I finally snapped and called him a psychopath to his face.
He has later contacted my old friends from university, claiming that he has been diagnosed with PTSD due to how I treated him while he was ‘visiting’ my home. None of them gives him any sympathy for how my words affected his self-esteem when he entered my home uninvited and assaulted me, and he considers this misandry against male victims of emotional abuse. Meanwhile, I had to move out of that apartment because I was too scared to continue living there.
Yes. “You are just like your dad. When I hear you, I can hear him standing in our living room screaming at me.” Also, “Before you berate me, let me tell you something.” IDK what she’s talking about.
Yep. Their favorite thing to do is ignore me for a few days, then say “we just don’t know what will set you off, you’re so sensitive” and I’m like … Abuse sets me off .. that’s about it .. but jokes on them cuz those few days of the silent treatment are amazing for me. For them, its “I’m so important that without access to me she is miserable” and “take what you can get because you don’t deserve better” said not so explicitly but also pretty explicitly.
Yes, I also get told she’s worried about my future because no man will want to marry someone with such short a fuse. What’s funny is nobody pushes my buttons like she does; my partner actually grounds me and calms me down when I can feel myself getting worked up. You know, the way emotionally mature people who actually love you tend to do.
My favorite was when I went nc the first time she told my dad to have me write a list of all the things I didn’t like her doing. Told him there wasn’t enough paper in the world to write that list, lol.
All the time growing up. And as an adult when I was VLC, that I was emotionally blackmailing her? IDK what kind of wild shit she’s saying now that it’s been 4 years NC with her, I just know my whole family won’t talk to me anymore.
ALWAYS. I was the odd one out politically, socially, etc. I’d keep everything to myself and wouldn’t say anything to them when they’d have [aggressively political news] channel on the TV or radio for every waking moment and all of these political signs in their yard or by the road. when I’d show a rare ounce of any “negative” emotion suddenly they were walking on eggshells around ME. “We can’t say anything to you without you getting offended. You’re always such a brat.”
Yes, I get darvo’d often.
No, dad you cannot control what bike I’m buying for my son.
No, dad. Stop rooting through my garbage and fridge checking prices of things to ridicule me about.
No, dad. My son cannot keep rewearing the same clothes to save in water (that I pay for at my house ).
Etc etc he rages and throws fits about everything that is hardly ever any of his business.
But will say – it’s like you’re poking me with a hot iron! You may as well dump hot ashes on me.
Next time I’ll say- well I’m preparing you for hell. I’ll try make it “hotter”. He may actually hit me though . For real . He rages like crazy
my nFather has, on several occasions, tried to paint me as the explosive, angry, irrational and incoherent person, when in reality, I never once raised my voice to him, was angry toward him, demonstrated irrationality in front of him and I never, ever got the opportunity to even tell him how I felt about things, let alone the reason I believe certain things.
He never allowed me to express myself in any way, ever and I was never allowed to say that I was going to live my life in my own way.
I remember an incredibly fucked up convo with him right before I moved out on my own, where he tried to pin me down on what my ‘life plan’ was and how I had ‘no plan’ when in reality, I had two job at the time and my entire plan was to get out of ‘his house’ and get away from him.
My plan was to survive, My plan was to be happy, my plan was to live a life of contentment and satisfaction and my plan was to never, ever, ever allow him to fuck up my life again.
Of course he couldn’t hear that and the ‘conversation’ ended with him screaming at me at the top of his lungs in the street while I drove away to go have a nice evening with my friends after a 12 hour shift at work.
He always, always, always, always, ALWAYS tried to pretend that his kids and his spouse were the problem while he was the victim and completely mistreated by his kids and spouse.
I finally stood up for myself and told her I wasn’t taking anymore of her narc bs and then got blamed for her anxiety attacks whenever I visited. Stopped visiting. Fixed it!
One of the last things my mother ever said to me was that they’ve been walking on eggshells with me since I was three years old. I’ve had about two and a half years to mull that over, and I can’t make it make the slightest bit of sense. How do you come to that conclusion about your toddler? I barely had self-awareness, but I was using my emotions to control adults? If my emotions were truly that outsized at age three, shouldn’t they have taken me to a doctor? I’m haunted by this desperate need to make sense out of it, but I can’t, because it seems so completely irrational.
I’d believe it — something I’ve realized about my mother is that she doesn’t realize that she’s the owner of the terrible dog she allows to bite at everyone’s heels, metaphorically.
I can’t know for sure, but in my own emotional journey I’ve definitely realized how much I used to abuse myself; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’s the person she terrorizes the most. I can at least leave the state, she has nowhere to go.
So I’d definitely believe my mom was constantly walking on eggshells around me — not because my behavior was harmful, but because even slightly maligning her would wake the dog and get it barking, either inside at her or outside at me.
Every single day! Once she screamed that at me after I walked away from an argument where I confronted her on stealing my money I left in my room. Apparently I’m a brat and disrespectful because I didn’t allow her to continue to scream at me and I walked away. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE
If they are therapy cognizant they will learn to use that terminology against you. They are walking on eggshells bc they don’t know how to deal with boundaries
They discern what you think about them and then just say it back to you. They don’t even have to understand what it means. It’s tactic #8754 in their infinite armory of defence mechanisms.
My mother and grandmother were amazing at making me out to be the bad guy and themselves the victims to outside people. they even had me questioning if I was an unstable mess not fit for society for most of my life, that mixed with my depression made me a lot more compliant. That’s how they kept a hold of me for so long, all it took was for a friend to open my eyes and get me away from my mother for more then 24 hours and I was literally free a few years later. Most of the time they were trying to make me feel like I was abusing them for making them abuse me because I was lazy and disrespectful. Gaslighting, guilt tripping, and manipulation are all forms of abuse and control. Sorry if I over shared here, if I did or if I triggered anyone I can delete.
Yes, exactly those words. I sponged their screaming for 25 years and then finally cracked under pressure when I was unsupported dealing with major health issues and yelled back just a few times. I literally had to tiptoe around my house for my entire childhood because my mom would storm down and scream at me if I made the house creak at all, and sneak into the kitchen late at night to eat to avoid their aggression. They used that as ammunition for the rest of my life against me, painting me as unstable and “we never know how youre gonna react”. Theyre deeply and completely blind to their own behaviour, even when it’s pointed out to them. I’m forced to act emotionless around them or they will use anything I do to deride and disbelieve me. Fine, I can do that. I did it my whole life anyway. At least they gifted me an accurate description of what I had to do to accommodate them, even if accidentally
yeah no, my nparent will literally be yelling at me “domt raise your voice at me its disrespectful” and always call ME out for acting crazy or raising my voice or speaking “with a tone.” like im not reacting to THEM.
It is insane. Here’s my first hand experience when I moved in with them as an adult.
Tried to set up boundaries before I moved in, they happily agreed to all my points, with smiles. Thought I’d finally reached a point of understanding.
Immediately I realized I had been tricked and was now trapped. I spent months explaining what they were doing was triggering, that it was an invasive of my privacy, and down right cruel to treat me in the manner they had, – pointed out they broke every agreement we made about space before I moved in.
I broke down and had a full meltdown.
Poured my heart out about how I couldn’t function because they were mimicking some of the behaviors (on purpose it turns out, they confessed during this conversation, in their mind they needed to “desensitize me” to “fix me”) of my abusive ex’s and my life was in shambles directly because they were terrorizing me. Daily.
Immediately, I regretted it because they twisted it to my reactions as being the real abuse. Clearly I should have seen they were “helping me” by doing these cruel things. And this conversation was yet another unjustifiable attack on them entirely inappropriate of me.
For example of what I was talking about – when I reacted by screaming to each of them (separately, multiple occasions each) trying to grab my arm when I was walking in the hall after jumping out from behind a door where I couldn’t see them, my screaming at them, to not do that and why would they ever do that, was me abusing them.
Another time they switched up who was being abusive, I asked one to stop following me around to monitor every move I made, and when she kept getting closer to me I screamed at her to get tf away from me, she tried to dramatically turn and huff away, somehow tripped and fell onto the floor, began screaming that I hit her.
I wasn’t even in close enough to have been able to touch her.
One of the toughest for me, asking to be able to use the kitchen without either of them interrogating me? (All I asked was to pick an hour before or after their dinner time to prepare my own food.) That is me abusing them.
How dare I even suggest boundaries in their home, how evil and offensive of me.
I had a meltdown over this one. I was constantly starving myself to avoid them, begged to please just let me know when the kitchen would be free.
They looked at me and said “no the kitchen is never free you have to make food in front of us while we monitor you to make sure you don’t break any of our stuff or you can’t use the kitchen” and then proceeded to split the entire day so one or the other guarded the kitchen from 630am till 10pm every. single. day. For weeks (months? it is such a dark blur) to make a point.
The point?
Obviously it was I was the abusive one for even asking them for space, boundaries or compromises. I had never broken anything in the kitchen or given them ANY reason for that wildly outrageous statement.
Made up hypotheticals in their heads where I might damage something, used it like a proven fact as justification for their behaviors.
I ate canned food, cold, in my room just to survive and just accepted they would never ever see me as a human.
Narcissist parents will start out right psychological warfare. What reasonable, sane would start mimicking trauma triggers that had previously been mentioned to them? None.
A narcissist only thinks their solution is correct, since “triggers aren’t real” to them, they decided the only way to respond to someone disclosing a trigger is to begin systematically doing said trigger as often as possible since they decided “thats how you get over that” … and you “owe them” for “helping you realize how ridiculous it is to have a trigger for a past trauma”
I’ve been through a lot, that time I lived with them as an adult was by far the darkest chapter of my entire life.
Honestly, didn’t mean to go on this massive tangent but wow did this topic strike a nerve.
To the narcissist parent, if you aren’t compliant, you are abusing them for ruining their perfect little world.
So yes, it’s deff a common theme for narcissistic parents to deny any wrong doing and immediately accuse you of being abusive when (spoiler alert) no such thing ever occurred.
My dad had no filter and no sense of boundaries. He would say really off-colour stuff and then get angry when we reacted with disgust or horror on our faces. I’ve blocked most of the memories, but I have a strong sense he was doing this when I was six and up, because I remember my mom being angry about it. The last time I let myself be vulnerable enough with him to let him do that again, I was in my twenties, and he told me about his use of Viagra. I didn’t say anything and just kind of leaned away from him and looked uncomfortable. He was really offended and said, “I’m not dead!”
So, I was not directly told he was walking on eggshells, but he treated me like a bad person because he couldn’t say weird, inappropriate shit to me.
Yes! Weird stuff like that or also “you won’t let me get away with saying shitty hurtful things about everyone all the time”
Toward the end of my LC into NC I told my mom through tears to please stop being so fucking mean. She got upset that I wouldn’t let her be mean to me. Absolutely bananas
Their golden child also kept telling people she’s afraid of me and what might do to her, even though I don’t even interact and acknowledge her presence.
All the time. I also was often told that “We don’t give ultimatums in the house” when I was trying to set what I now know were very healthy boundaries. No wonder I struggled with boundaries so much my entire life. They needed to paint me as the unhealthy one, the mentally ill one, so that nobody believed me when I told about the abuse.
Yes. Every single time I confront her about anything concerning her behavior, she acts like she’s the victim and says that I’m just “too sensitive” and claims that she has to “walk on eggshells around me”. She actually has the gall to sit there and look “afraid” of me whenever I seem mildly frustrated by her constant nettling and the way she says everything to me in a harsh tone. She talks to me like a disobedient teenager.
Meanwhile, I’ve felt afraid of her my entire life. I’ve never felt that I could ever truly be myself around her, and any time she’s around me, I feel a kind of unbearable tension inside of me that makes me feel as though I need to “shrink” so that I cannot be “seen/noticed”. (Probably due to having my hair violently yanked as punishment when I was a child.) Everything I do must be in service of her, everything I say must be a reflection of her opinions, or else she throws a tantrum.
Yet the moment she says “I have to walk on eggshells around you!” I start doubting myself and wondering if I’m really being “too sensitive”. Then my brain starts in with the “It’s not that bad why are you over reacting, your mom has been sooo kind to you, look at all she’s done for you!” gaslighting. Or “Why can’t you just ‘be good’ and ‘keep the peace’.”
Oh, and here’s the best part- last time I confronted her about treating me poorly/screaming at me about minor things when she comes home (unfortunately, I have to be a caretaker to her and my father due to their medical issues =_=) She comes out with “I feel like I can’t be myself around you! It’s worse than being at work was! Why can’t you just leave me alone and let me be myself, you’re always trying to change me! I have to walk on eggshells around you, I can’t just be meeee!”
She thinks having screaming fits at someone is a “passing thing” they should “let go of” so that she can “express herself.” And seems to have…no problem whatsoever saying that this is her “true self”…would that not raise a red flag in your own mind if you felt that screaming at others and tearing them down was your true self?!
Ah, but yes- I’m definitely the horrible villain that just fills the house with my bad energy, apparently.
I wish I could find a way to pry myself out of this mess and go no contact. I’m trying to claw my way out, but ensuring that she and e-dad can’t leech off my finances has been difficult. They’ve exploited me financially before, and hiding my income from them is my top priority at the moment.
Constantly. I’ve been told I’m so sensitive that it’s impossible to talk to me without being worried I’ll blow up at them. But I’m not like that around literally anyone else. My parents have even asked me that. “Are you this way around anyone else?” When I say no, they’ll say I have a warped sense of morality and I somehow think it’s okay to be cruel just to them and nobody else.
Nmother used to constantly violate my boundaries, I would tell her a million times to stop, and she would still do it. After telling her so many times and her not listening, I started to get really angry at her.
She would then tell me that she had to walk on eggshells around me.
No, you just have to shut the fuck up and listen when someone else tells you to stop. YOU’RE the problem, not me.
She should be extremely happy now that I am no contact.
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DARVO
Text-book DARVO
Not the eggshell thing, but they’ve definitely done the reverse victim and offender thing (DARVO). I brought up that my Nparent used to beat me and say terrible, abusive things to me (all very true, the abuse went on for years). Then my Nparent accused me of abusing my daughter. I have never hurt my kid, I love her so much and would never do that.
This is why the advice for narcs is to get away as soon as possible. It’s impossible to have a relationship with them.
Basically she copied my emotions of how I feel about her.
Yes. This was my mother’s favorite saying. She said it about my father daily. It took me years to realize that she wasn’t actually tip toeing around us and that she was the true aggressor. She also loved to say she was everyone’s punching bag. The perpetual victimhood gets old.
ALL. THE. TIME.
My favorite is “I can’t say anything around you!”
Yes. And it’s true – I’m EXTREMELY hostile toward them. It’s not bc I’m a hostile person, though. It’s bc I hate their guts.
Yes
Not the n-parent but definitely the n-ex. It was one of many shocking moments.
Yep… and if I set a boundary, I’m being mean… or I get the eggshell comment. 🙄
My dad has mentioned he hates that he has to walk on eggshells around my wife, but I know that’s because she dosent rake any of his shit.
I feel like they did this to us to make it seemed like we’re the aggressor and they’re being wary about not stepping on our minefield. And trying to silently project to others that you’re the offender and you hurt their feelings. Because it’s upsetting to them that we’re not “forgive and forget” and be constantly happy to them and allow them to have our boundaries perpetually ignored and allow them to do whatever they want again.
It’s part of dismantlement and devaluation. Trying to correct our behavior in passive aggressive way. We walk on eggshells around them so they mirror it to us thinking it as our style of manipulation technique. Except we did it as part of trying to fade in the background and protecting ourselves and hope they stay away. Narcissist does this to make themselves as our victim because it make them feel isolated and ignored and they do it for attention.
Yes
Yes, because they’re projecting. As usual.
This is the narcissist’s playbook, word by word. Some are more extreme than others, all are bad nonetheless.
I have a former friend whom I had forbidden to visit me at my home; this was partly due to him being intimidating and difficult to handle when upset, and partly due to concerning rumours that he had SA’d someone. He showed up uninvited to my apartment a few months later, assaulted me, threatened me when I tried to contact the police, and then curled up in the fetal position and rocked back and forth when I finally snapped and called him a psychopath to his face.
He has later contacted my old friends from university, claiming that he has been diagnosed with PTSD due to how I treated him while he was ‘visiting’ my home. None of them gives him any sympathy for how my words affected his self-esteem when he entered my home uninvited and assaulted me, and he considers this misandry against male victims of emotional abuse. Meanwhile, I had to move out of that apartment because I was too scared to continue living there.
Absolutely. I’m “too difficult”, “too sensitive”, and “ruin everything”
Basically saying, “Just letting you know, if I abuse you it’s your fault.”
She said that more times than any human cam stand saying It.
Unrelated. I read the title as “n-word parent.” I’m going to bed.
Yes. “You are just like your dad. When I hear you, I can hear him standing in our living room screaming at me.” Also, “Before you berate me, let me tell you something.” IDK what she’s talking about.
Yep. Their favorite thing to do is ignore me for a few days, then say “we just don’t know what will set you off, you’re so sensitive” and I’m like … Abuse sets me off .. that’s about it .. but jokes on them cuz those few days of the silent treatment are amazing for me. For them, its “I’m so important that without access to me she is miserable” and “take what you can get because you don’t deserve better” said not so explicitly but also pretty explicitly.
Yup! My therapist when I told her said “Good, she should be” 🤣🤣🤣
Yes, all the damn time. Ugh! 😩
Yes, I also get told she’s worried about my future because no man will want to marry someone with such short a fuse. What’s funny is nobody pushes my buttons like she does; my partner actually grounds me and calms me down when I can feel myself getting worked up. You know, the way emotionally mature people who actually love you tend to do.
My favorite was when I went nc the first time she told my dad to have me write a list of all the things I didn’t like her doing. Told him there wasn’t enough paper in the world to write that list, lol.
“It’s hard to talk to you because you don’t like the way I talk” (manipulative circular arguments).
“I don’t know why you’re always so angry.” (When I lose my cool after they won’t drop something for the 500th time).
😂😂😂 most recently my extreme narc father said he was an EMPATH. That’s why he has been abused by everyone in his entire life LMFAO
All the time growing up. And as an adult when I was VLC, that I was emotionally blackmailing her? IDK what kind of wild shit she’s saying now that it’s been 4 years NC with her, I just know my whole family won’t talk to me anymore.
These folks project like it’s their job.
ALWAYS. I was the odd one out politically, socially, etc. I’d keep everything to myself and wouldn’t say anything to them when they’d have [aggressively political news] channel on the TV or radio for every waking moment and all of these political signs in their yard or by the road. when I’d show a rare ounce of any “negative” emotion suddenly they were walking on eggshells around ME. “We can’t say anything to you without you getting offended. You’re always such a brat.”
OMG yes my mom literally said this after my wife and I confronted her.
They always do this. it’s one of their favorite games.
my nmom recently said “i have been over accommodating you your entire life!” like girl huh??
Yeah, of course they do, I’m like the only person that holds them accountable for their shitty behaviors. They fear me bc I can see through them.
Yes, I get darvo’d often.
No, dad you cannot control what bike I’m buying for my son.
No, dad. Stop rooting through my garbage and fridge checking prices of things to ridicule me about.
No, dad. My son cannot keep rewearing the same clothes to save in water (that I pay for at my house ).
Etc etc he rages and throws fits about everything that is hardly ever any of his business.
But will say – it’s like you’re poking me with a hot iron! You may as well dump hot ashes on me.
Next time I’ll say- well I’m preparing you for hell. I’ll try make it “hotter”. He may actually hit me though . For real . He rages like crazy
Yes. Not only this, my nmom repeated word to word what I said to her once about how she hurts my feelings. She can’t even be original 🙄
my nFather has, on several occasions, tried to paint me as the explosive, angry, irrational and incoherent person, when in reality, I never once raised my voice to him, was angry toward him, demonstrated irrationality in front of him and I never, ever got the opportunity to even tell him how I felt about things, let alone the reason I believe certain things.
He never allowed me to express myself in any way, ever and I was never allowed to say that I was going to live my life in my own way.
I remember an incredibly fucked up convo with him right before I moved out on my own, where he tried to pin me down on what my ‘life plan’ was and how I had ‘no plan’ when in reality, I had two job at the time and my entire plan was to get out of ‘his house’ and get away from him.
My plan was to survive, My plan was to be happy, my plan was to live a life of contentment and satisfaction and my plan was to never, ever, ever allow him to fuck up my life again.
Of course he couldn’t hear that and the ‘conversation’ ended with him screaming at me at the top of his lungs in the street while I drove away to go have a nice evening with my friends after a 12 hour shift at work.
He always, always, always, always, ALWAYS tried to pretend that his kids and his spouse were the problem while he was the victim and completely mistreated by his kids and spouse.
Yep.
Yes! Those exact words
I finally stood up for myself and told her I wasn’t taking anymore of her narc bs and then got blamed for her anxiety attacks whenever I visited. Stopped visiting. Fixed it!
My mom has said she “can’t say certain things” to me, and I’m like GOOD, KEEP IT UP!
“You’re so sensitive!” “Learn to take a joke.” Yup.
>Did the pharmacy lapse on your prescription again?
For some reason, this makes me infuriated, many sinful thoughts that I need never speak.
,
Yeah my mum used to say the abuse goes both ways (that I abused her.) I’m 12 ma’am but ok…
One of the last things my mother ever said to me was that they’ve been walking on eggshells with me since I was three years old. I’ve had about two and a half years to mull that over, and I can’t make it make the slightest bit of sense. How do you come to that conclusion about your toddler? I barely had self-awareness, but I was using my emotions to control adults? If my emotions were truly that outsized at age three, shouldn’t they have taken me to a doctor? I’m haunted by this desperate need to make sense out of it, but I can’t, because it seems so completely irrational.
Omg yes my mom would tell me that so many times
I’d believe it — something I’ve realized about my mother is that she doesn’t realize that she’s the owner of the terrible dog she allows to bite at everyone’s heels, metaphorically.
I can’t know for sure, but in my own emotional journey I’ve definitely realized how much I used to abuse myself; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’s the person she terrorizes the most. I can at least leave the state, she has nowhere to go.
So I’d definitely believe my mom was constantly walking on eggshells around me — not because my behavior was harmful, but because even slightly maligning her would wake the dog and get it barking, either inside at her or outside at me.
All the time. Always when I remind her of a boundary or call her on her bad behavior.
My other favorite “I would crawl across broken glass for you!”
😆 yes. Only when they’ve been called out
Yes, because I took offense at their assertion that anti gay discrimination should be legal. I am bisexual.
“You’re SO SENSITIVE!”
“I’m just playing devil’s advocate, if that upsets you clearly that means you are doing something wrong or you’re guilty of something.”
“You’re crazy. No one thinks that way or feels that way.”
“God grow up and get over it already.”
“That happened so long ago, it shouldn’t bother you anymore.”
“You’re so abusive!” When I state and enforce boundaries by walking away.
Regularly, on the daily.
I’m sure they think it. But interacting with them makes me crazy.
Every single day! Once she screamed that at me after I walked away from an argument where I confronted her on stealing my money I left in my room. Apparently I’m a brat and disrespectful because I didn’t allow her to continue to scream at me and I walked away. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE
Yep, mom does it all the time. I freaking hate it.
Yes constantly.
If they are therapy cognizant they will learn to use that terminology against you. They are walking on eggshells bc they don’t know how to deal with boundaries
Yep, that was a favorite of my nmom, especially ear the end when she got nastier to me.
They discern what you think about them and then just say it back to you. They don’t even have to understand what it means. It’s tactic #8754 in their infinite armory of defence mechanisms.
Yes! My mother swears I’m cruel.
yes😭😭😭😭 like i wonder why im so defensive around yall wtf
My mother and grandmother were amazing at making me out to be the bad guy and themselves the victims to outside people. they even had me questioning if I was an unstable mess not fit for society for most of my life, that mixed with my depression made me a lot more compliant. That’s how they kept a hold of me for so long, all it took was for a friend to open my eyes and get me away from my mother for more then 24 hours and I was literally free a few years later. Most of the time they were trying to make me feel like I was abusing them for making them abuse me because I was lazy and disrespectful. Gaslighting, guilt tripping, and manipulation are all forms of abuse and control. Sorry if I over shared here, if I did or if I triggered anyone I can delete.
Yes, exactly those words. I sponged their screaming for 25 years and then finally cracked under pressure when I was unsupported dealing with major health issues and yelled back just a few times. I literally had to tiptoe around my house for my entire childhood because my mom would storm down and scream at me if I made the house creak at all, and sneak into the kitchen late at night to eat to avoid their aggression. They used that as ammunition for the rest of my life against me, painting me as unstable and “we never know how youre gonna react”. Theyre deeply and completely blind to their own behaviour, even when it’s pointed out to them. I’m forced to act emotionless around them or they will use anything I do to deride and disbelieve me. Fine, I can do that. I did it my whole life anyway. At least they gifted me an accurate description of what I had to do to accommodate them, even if accidentally
yeah no, my nparent will literally be yelling at me “domt raise your voice at me its disrespectful” and always call ME out for acting crazy or raising my voice or speaking “with a tone.” like im not reacting to THEM.
My mom said this once and I replied back… “yeah and either you accept that you’ll be walking on eggshells or you won’t see us.”
Her definition of eggshells is what is considered normal behavior.
Oh good lord. I feel this.
It is insane. Here’s my first hand experience when I moved in with them as an adult.
Tried to set up boundaries before I moved in, they happily agreed to all my points, with smiles. Thought I’d finally reached a point of understanding.
Immediately I realized I had been tricked and was now trapped. I spent months explaining what they were doing was triggering, that it was an invasive of my privacy, and down right cruel to treat me in the manner they had, – pointed out they broke every agreement we made about space before I moved in.
I broke down and had a full meltdown.
Poured my heart out about how I couldn’t function because they were mimicking some of the behaviors (on purpose it turns out, they confessed during this conversation, in their mind they needed to “desensitize me” to “fix me”) of my abusive ex’s and my life was in shambles directly because they were terrorizing me. Daily.
Immediately, I regretted it because they twisted it to my reactions as being the real abuse. Clearly I should have seen they were “helping me” by doing these cruel things. And this conversation was yet another unjustifiable attack on them entirely inappropriate of me.
For example of what I was talking about – when I reacted by screaming to each of them (separately, multiple occasions each) trying to grab my arm when I was walking in the hall after jumping out from behind a door where I couldn’t see them, my screaming at them, to not do that and why would they ever do that, was me abusing them.
Another time they switched up who was being abusive, I asked one to stop following me around to monitor every move I made, and when she kept getting closer to me I screamed at her to get tf away from me, she tried to dramatically turn and huff away, somehow tripped and fell onto the floor, began screaming that I hit her.
I wasn’t even in close enough to have been able to touch her.
One of the toughest for me, asking to be able to use the kitchen without either of them interrogating me? (All I asked was to pick an hour before or after their dinner time to prepare my own food.) That is me abusing them.
How dare I even suggest boundaries in their home, how evil and offensive of me.
I had a meltdown over this one. I was constantly starving myself to avoid them, begged to please just let me know when the kitchen would be free.
They looked at me and said “no the kitchen is never free you have to make food in front of us while we monitor you to make sure you don’t break any of our stuff or you can’t use the kitchen” and then proceeded to split the entire day so one or the other guarded the kitchen from 630am till 10pm every. single. day. For weeks (months? it is such a dark blur) to make a point.
The point?
Obviously it was I was the abusive one for even asking them for space, boundaries or compromises. I had never broken anything in the kitchen or given them ANY reason for that wildly outrageous statement.
Made up hypotheticals in their heads where I might damage something, used it like a proven fact as justification for their behaviors.
I ate canned food, cold, in my room just to survive and just accepted they would never ever see me as a human.
Narcissist parents will start out right psychological warfare. What reasonable, sane would start mimicking trauma triggers that had previously been mentioned to them? None.
A narcissist only thinks their solution is correct, since “triggers aren’t real” to them, they decided the only way to respond to someone disclosing a trigger is to begin systematically doing said trigger as often as possible since they decided “thats how you get over that” … and you “owe them” for “helping you realize how ridiculous it is to have a trigger for a past trauma”
I’ve been through a lot, that time I lived with them as an adult was by far the darkest chapter of my entire life.
Honestly, didn’t mean to go on this massive tangent but wow did this topic strike a nerve.
To the narcissist parent, if you aren’t compliant, you are abusing them for ruining their perfect little world.
So yes, it’s deff a common theme for narcissistic parents to deny any wrong doing and immediately accuse you of being abusive when (spoiler alert) no such thing ever occurred.
Yeah.
My dad had no filter and no sense of boundaries. He would say really off-colour stuff and then get angry when we reacted with disgust or horror on our faces. I’ve blocked most of the memories, but I have a strong sense he was doing this when I was six and up, because I remember my mom being angry about it. The last time I let myself be vulnerable enough with him to let him do that again, I was in my twenties, and he told me about his use of Viagra. I didn’t say anything and just kind of leaned away from him and looked uncomfortable. He was really offended and said, “I’m not dead!”
So, I was not directly told he was walking on eggshells, but he treated me like a bad person because he couldn’t say weird, inappropriate shit to me.
Yes! Weird stuff like that or also “you won’t let me get away with saying shitty hurtful things about everyone all the time”
Toward the end of my LC into NC I told my mom through tears to please stop being so fucking mean. She got upset that I wouldn’t let her be mean to me. Absolutely bananas
YES hahahaha
Their golden child also kept telling people she’s afraid of me and what might do to her, even though I don’t even interact and acknowledge her presence.
All the time. I also was often told that “We don’t give ultimatums in the house” when I was trying to set what I now know were very healthy boundaries. No wonder I struggled with boundaries so much my entire life. They needed to paint me as the unhealthy one, the mentally ill one, so that nobody believed me when I told about the abuse.
evwryone who has ever said this to me is someone I have called out for their obviously shitty behavior lmao
This. My folks would also call me “perpetually offended” all the time.
Yep classic reversal. They make you out to be the one with the issues, its how they divert being recognized themselves.
Yes lol. “I’ve been suffering for 20 years and I can’t even be myself.” lol wut. It’s so random.
Yes. Every single time I confront her about anything concerning her behavior, she acts like she’s the victim and says that I’m just “too sensitive” and claims that she has to “walk on eggshells around me”. She actually has the gall to sit there and look “afraid” of me whenever I seem mildly frustrated by her constant nettling and the way she says everything to me in a harsh tone. She talks to me like a disobedient teenager.
Meanwhile, I’ve felt afraid of her my entire life. I’ve never felt that I could ever truly be myself around her, and any time she’s around me, I feel a kind of unbearable tension inside of me that makes me feel as though I need to “shrink” so that I cannot be “seen/noticed”. (Probably due to having my hair violently yanked as punishment when I was a child.) Everything I do must be in service of her, everything I say must be a reflection of her opinions, or else she throws a tantrum.
Yet the moment she says “I have to walk on eggshells around you!” I start doubting myself and wondering if I’m really being “too sensitive”. Then my brain starts in with the “It’s not that bad why are you over reacting, your mom has been sooo kind to you, look at all she’s done for you!” gaslighting. Or “Why can’t you just ‘be good’ and ‘keep the peace’.”
Oh, and here’s the best part- last time I confronted her about treating me poorly/screaming at me about minor things when she comes home (unfortunately, I have to be a caretaker to her and my father due to their medical issues =_=) She comes out with “I feel like I can’t be myself around you! It’s worse than being at work was! Why can’t you just leave me alone and let me be myself, you’re always trying to change me! I have to walk on eggshells around you, I can’t just be meeee!”
She thinks having screaming fits at someone is a “passing thing” they should “let go of” so that she can “express herself.” And seems to have…no problem whatsoever saying that this is her “true self”…would that not raise a red flag in your own mind if you felt that screaming at others and tearing them down was your true self?!
Ah, but yes- I’m definitely the horrible villain that just fills the house with my bad energy, apparently.
I wish I could find a way to pry myself out of this mess and go no contact. I’m trying to claw my way out, but ensuring that she and e-dad can’t leech off my finances has been difficult. They’ve exploited me financially before, and hiding my income from them is my top priority at the moment.
Absolutely. Like I’m the emotional terrorist and not him.
Constantly. I’ve been told I’m so sensitive that it’s impossible to talk to me without being worried I’ll blow up at them. But I’m not like that around literally anyone else. My parents have even asked me that. “Are you this way around anyone else?” When I say no, they’ll say I have a warped sense of morality and I somehow think it’s okay to be cruel just to them and nobody else.
Every accusation is a confession
Nmother used to constantly violate my boundaries, I would tell her a million times to stop, and she would still do it. After telling her so many times and her not listening, I started to get really angry at her.
She would then tell me that she had to walk on eggshells around me.
No, you just have to shut the fuck up and listen when someone else tells you to stop. YOU’RE the problem, not me.
She should be extremely happy now that I am no contact.