drerinwatsonHow many of you didn’t pursue your goals and dreams?
How many of you aren’t just grieving what happened to you, but are grieving the loss of who you wanted to be (and knew you could be!) but never got to be?
Narcissistic System Abuse (NSA) and Scapegoating clamps down hard to hold you small and in place. Even those who break free often find themselves continuing to play small, forfeiting their right to genuine joy, fulfillment, wholeness and connection.
Is this you?
You’re not alone. And it’s not your fault.
You were trained to be this way.
Narcissistic Training: What it is and why it happens
I recently published a piece talking about my experiences with perfectionism. The responses I got from you showed me that I wasn’t alone. That we, collectively, are feeling trapped by the need to be perfect in order to survive the system, while figuring out how to risk imperfection so we can break free to survive our lives.
Walking this tightrope can make recovery feel unstable and impossible.
How did we end up like this?
Scapegoats and survivors of narcissistic abuse learn to hide and play small and safe unless they can be certain they measure up. It’s literally about survival. If you aren’t exactly what your narcissistic family needs you to be, you actually risk losing love, resources, safety, connection. Abandonment is no joke. The younger you were when you learned you had to change yourself to be safe, the more likely it is that playing small feels like a necessary part of your existence.
Many survivors of Narcissistic System Abuse (NSA)and Scapegoat don’t pursue their goals and dreams. In fact, it’s one of the key indicators that someone may have experienced NSA growing up.
Many feel perpetually stuck, stalled and exhausted all the time and don’t know why. They say they constantly step in front of their own path and progress. They feel trapped by what they see as their one choice: be perfect, or be nothing at all. For a scapegoat, being perfect means they can maybe get crumbs of love, attention and care to sustain their emotional hunger. Being nothing at all means they may stay safe from emotional and psychological attack. Poking their heads up to see if there are crumbs they can “earn” is a risk, so learning to subsist on emotional starvation is safer.
We exit our lives, and go through the motions.
Survivors of Narcissistic System Abuse And Scapegoating are not in a position where they can make good choices and succeed. They must make perfect choices just to survive.
I call this “Narcissistic Training”: It’s a type of conditioning that gets into the deepest corners of your psyche, telling you how to think, see, feel, and make sense of the world. You are groomed to exist outside of yourself, but be perpetually present and available for others. The narc machine succeeds when you lose yourself completely, but continue to show up for them. The narc machine is refueled when you question yourself so heavily that you stop moving in life and start dedicating your life to the system.
But this is just step one: Sucking you in and making you feel like you are better off in the machine and serving the machine, than free from it.
Step two is how the training infiltrates your mind even when away from the system. It’s like a parasite or host that gets in your body so that even when you leave, it’s there operating in the background, dismantling you without you realizing it. And often, by the time you do realize it, you’ve already been fully convinced that you are the one causing the slow implosion of your life.
Narcissistic Training teaches us how to think of ourselves and our value even when we are not receiving feedback or instruction from the system itself. It teaches us how to view ourselves and our lives through a distorted lens: not just in relation to our family members or in relationships, but as an individual in all contexts of our life.
Narcissistic System Abuse Has A Long Reach
In my article on perfectionism I shared with you how in my dream job, in my hobbies, and even in my moments of quiet meditation and contemplation I couldn’t get away from the perfectionism parasite: I couldn’t stop panicking and getting in my own way. I couldn’t stop trying to be exactly what I was “supposed” to be for others, and I couldn’t stop chastising myself for effing it all up (and not figuring out how to be better and try harder) even when surrounded by loving, compassionate, and truly understanding people.
Narcissistic Training explains the unrelenting and far reaching impacts of narcissistic system abuse; The training (brainwashing) ensures that under no circumstances do you ever drop the effort to contort yourself so that others approve of you and accept you. Under no circumstances do you ever disappoint or unfulfill anyone’s needs, because they will discard you immediately. Under no circumstances do you ever believe that you are good enough to stop trying to be perfect.
The brainwashing is so profound, and so complete and encompassing that it shows up in spaces that have absolutely nothing to do with narcissistic systems; It shows up even when you are in healthy and safe relationships. It shows up when you are at work and you love your job and you have a supportive boss and coworkers. It shows up when you are alone yet still holding yourself to impossible standards even though no one is even around to assess you.
Breaking Through Brainwashing
How does Narcissistic brainwashing work? I think many people believe that they can outsmart brainwashing. That if they were strong enough or aware enough or smart enough that they wouldn’t be affected.
I have two important things for you to know: 1) Sometimes it’s the smartest and strongest that are most affected by these clever narcissistic manipulations, precisely because they are the designated target and b) You outsmarted it more than you realize (and that’s why you feel like shit).
Let’s start with point number one: The smartest, most self-aware, empathetic, strongest people are excellent targets; Because they spend so much time reflecting on themselves so that they can better themselves, better their relationships, and improve the world for others, it means they make good “prey” for narcissistic abusers. These whole-hearted, empathetic people are motivated by “self-improvement” and are often “doing the work” (to recover, to grow, to learn more about themselves) which means they are more open to receiving information that sounds like useful feedback but is actually subtle criticisms and encouragement to “change” who they are. These individuals are more open to “insights” and “guidance” on where they could “be better”, especially for the “betterment of others”. And that’s exactly how the parasite gets in. Wholehearted people are much more vulnerable to narcissistic system infection.
Which brings us to point number two: If you are reading this then you are not a cog in the narc machine (flying monkey, narcisisstic heir or heiress, compliant bystander, etc.), with your head in the sand trying to make the machine work harder. That tells me you resisted the narcissistic training designed to dismantle you completely and render you utterly compliant. So you did “outsmart” the brainwashing. You noticed a parasite in you. You questioned the legitimacy of the message and the teaching. You clapped back. That shows strength, intelligence, self-awareness and courage indeed!
But even if you know that what you were fed were lies, it doesn’t stop the computer virus from trying to reprogram you. The malware has already been installed on your harddrive — you didn’t have control over that — but at least you know it’s there so you can work to de-program.
The Narcissistic System created the malware so that you would believe that it was something about you that was the problem and not that the system was the problem. It did this by creating mental and emotional “codes” that ensured you struggled even when at a distance from the system. It ensured you didn’t have a support network, and were depleted all the time. It programmed you to not be able to make basic decisions because you question everything constantly and never know what’s “right”. It made you question your perceptions, deny your needs and ignore your boundaries. It installed a program that subverts your instincts and replaces them with false and limiting beliefs, fears, and panics. It re-routes you toward compliance and people pleasing even when your toxicity alarm bells are ringing. Narcissistic System Abuse is just that: systemic and systematic. It overhalus your entire system.
The outcome of all that covert programming is that you think: “If I’m not just struggling when I’m in the Narc Machine but I’m struggling when I’m far away from it (and even in my element), then that’s on me, right? (hint: wrong).
NSA infiltrated your mind well enough for you to repeatedly dismiss and dismantle yourself in all areas of your life so that you lose trust and stability in yourself. Which makes you hide and question yourself incessantly. Which makes you abandon yourself and try harder, try whatever anyone needs, in order to not feel so alone and excluded. The system successfully got you to believe “I’m just broken. It can’t be a toxic environment or toxic people if I am flailing in every area of my life. Afterall, I’m the common denominator.”
Narcissistic Training doesn’t just teach you to think you are “unwanted, unloveable and not good enough” in the context of relationships, it teaches you that your very being and how you interact with the world is flawed.
It makes you think your actual neurology, biology, and self-construction is broken. That you were targeted as a scapegoat because fundamentally you are “off”. There is something about you that sets others off. That isn’t likeable, desirable, safe, healthy, or acceptable.
(Fun Fact: I once visited an energy healer to see if my aura stank. Yes. Yes I did that. Because I didn’t know about the Narc machine yet. I only knew about me and my “flawedness”.)
Narcissistic training works hard to ensure that you believe that it’s not just that you are “unwanted and problematic” in your family unit or relationship or job, but that you are fully broken; you don’t think or behave the way “other normal people” do. You don’t see the world right. You don’t process information right. You don’t have the right energy. You’re too lazy or too eager. You don’t prioritize right. You don’t make decisions right. Your choices are stupid and since you made those choices you must be stupid. You don’t think right. You don’t do “human” right. You don’t exist right.
And therefore, you deserve the consequences of being so wrong. You brought it on yourself.
The training whispers in your ear, “If you can’t seem to “get it together” in any area of your life, then it must be because of you…”
And because it whispered in your ear all your life, it felt like your truth. Your voice. Your knowingness. You grabbed that voice, put it in your pocket and used it as your beacon to guide you towards “becoming better”.
But that isn’t your voice. It is a siren call that says, “I will give you everything you ever dreamed of, if only you exchange your needs, your life, your soul in servitude of me”. And then it drags you under forever.
If you were to reflect on how the Narcissistic System in your life trained you to question yourself, what would it reveal?
What did the Siren promise you and what did you have to exchange in order to get crumbs of love, care and acceptance? What parts of you had to be abandoned? And in what ways do you still tell yourself it’s all your fault or that there is someting “wrong” with you?
The ways you question yourself are just the beginning of Narcissistic Training. But it doesn’t stop there.
(Yes, this is an award show where you keep winning and the prizes are just more bees and trash can fires! Yayyyyy!)
Narcissistic Training also teaches you to actively turn away from yourself by preventing you from doing anything that could help you build recovery, health, independance and active participation in your life. It makes recovery dangerous. And it further entrenches you in the traps of rumination as a reprive from the pain.
But if you are able to recognise the system and how it works on you, then you have a strong chance of being able to escape its clutches. By examining what messages and belief systems the narcissistic machine tried to train you to adopt, then you can make intentional movements to stop living your life “by proxy” and instead start stepping into your own aliveness.
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