Trapped in a Secret Nightmare

One of the most pitiful aspects of malignant narcissism (MN) is the victim’s inability to name her experience.  It’s so covert, insidious, and cunning that, while she may sense that something is profoundly wrong, she struggles to pinpoint the real nature of her wicked torment. The entire family is bound by an unspoken oath of secrecy; rarely does anyone witness the malignant narcissist in a rage, unless the “mother” loses control in the presence of others.

The wounded daughter, especially having endured abuse from birth, is ensnared in a dynamic that’s all she’s ever known. She’s unable to give voice to her hell, paralyzed by the fear of disbelief and her inability to find words that convey her forced existence.   For her, always bad, wrong, or not enough, there has never been any other reality.

The Narcissist’s Masquerade

The malignant narcissist meticulously maintains the façade of a happy family for outsiders.  But behind closed doors, while siblings are at football practice and ballet, her daily tirades begin after school, directed at her chosen one, who must sit and endure the shrieking silently.  These hour-long rants frequently revolve around the malignant narcissist’s past grievances, such as a colicky baby who wouldn’t stop crying and “had to be” isolated in a crib, day and night, behind a closed door.  After all, her three-year-old brother had to be cared for, and the MN was far too owed and grandiose to tend to babies.  With the father in the Korean War for the target’s first ten months of life, the “mother” had free rein to inflict almost any form of neglect and most likely did.

The most severe harm occurs privately; other family members remain unaware of the worst.  The malignant narcissist has perfected her act, swiftly removing her mask when alone with her prey.  On weekends, though, all the family witness the wounding rants; the MN can’t control her vile anger for two days.  She slyly tones down her accusations slightly for the audience.  The sufferer and the rest of the family simply accept the “mother’s” inexplicable hatred for her own daughter as a grim fact.  All of them simply exit fast— if she’s getting blamed, it must be deserved, right?  They don’t ever address something that’s totally and mercilessly inappropriate and wrong, even though the damaged one is getting screamed at for what the brother or sister just did.  Everyone takes the easy way out.  If the attacker and the attacked are in the same room, even the largely-absentee father actually notices the resultant rage.  But he never cites the malignant narcissist as the problem, because then he’ll have negative repercussions for himself.  A malignant narcissist loves no one, ever, including herself.

The Scapegoat: Blamed Even for Acts of Nature

The siblings escape the brunt of the screaming, because everything that goes wrong is the target’s fault, no matter what – even natural occurrences like power outages.  The injured is the family scapegoat.  Sometimes, as in this case, her abused one, her golden child, and the family scapegoat are all one and the same.  Then the absentee-father has a convenient place for his blame, too.  And does he ever.

The father could be quite explosive: the wounded daughter never knew whether he would say, “Good morning” or snap her head off angrily.  One weekend while the victim was frying his eggs, he really shocked her.  The malignant narcissist had terribly high blood pressure, and a blood vessel in her eye had burst, leaving no sight in one eye.  He obviously had been hearing the pampered wife complain at length about her target, as he declared that her having sight in only one eye was the scapegoat’s fault, because she did so much for her victim.  The abused put down the spatula and left the kitchen, knowing that he couldn’t name a solitary thing that she had ever done for her.

Never Good Enough

The malignant narcissist is having bridge club.  Try as she may, the target does what she’s told (“Dust the living room.”), but her efforts are NEVER GOOD ENOUGH.  The screeching rage begins, with wild, incensed eyes, and she’s told to dust again, but that’s NEVER GOOD ENOUGH either.  Then comes the malignant narcissist’s favorite, ominous, open-ended threat: “You better do it right this time — you never know what might happen!”  What do you suppose a child’s mind conjures as a result?  It’s something that only happens in your worst nightmare imaginable and gives birth to perpetual fear and hypervigilance, due to non-stop exposure to her threat.  The wounded one becomes anxious and afraid of life itself.

Should the doorbell ring, an eerie silence descends within a second, and the mask slides precisely into place again.  With her new, pleasant facial expression, she could win an easy Emmy.  The abused seizes this opportunity to run up to her bedroom and shuts and locks the door.  She wonders how much screaming the guest at the front door heard and steels herself for being blamed later. 

Although it’s never been actually mentioned, the academic pressure is palpable and unambiguous: she knows that she must achieve perfect grades.  She anticipates being left alone to do homework until well after midnight.  However, she may be burdened with her siblings’ assignments again, too.

Psychological Shutdown: A Survival Mechanism

Due to the profound abandonment in infancy by someone meant to be a caregiver, the victim has no memory of her first nine years, except for a few fleeting flashbacks.  The psyche shuts down for protection when reality is too hideous to comprehend.  Years later, she would learn from the couple who formerly lived next door that, as a two-year-old, she would sit on their front steps for at least an hour daily, waiting for her “aunt” and “uncle” to return from work.  The sick “mother,” who hired housekeepers and never worked outside the home, had no concern for the toddler’s whereabouts.

When they got home, she would play dress-up with her aunt’s makeup, jewelry, and shoes until dinnertime.  Many nights she slept there, too.  This child latched on to her surrogate caretakers for dear life and miraculously learned to seek out older figures and pastors to guide her through her hellish existence, until psychoanalysis and medication at age 17.

The Deepening of Trauma

Working with a psychiatrist was a harrowing experience that only served to worsen her depression and anxiety as she realized just how maimed she was by the evil and cruelty of malignant narcissism, culminating in a suicide attempt that led to her 3-day confinement in a mental ward (due to lack of beds in the suicide ward).  The indignity of being chained to other patients for a trip to the zoo further compounded her trauma.  Except for a handful of hazy flashbacks, the victim would come to comprehend that all she would ever know about her first nine years would be screamed at her through the daily repetitive rages of a merciless, malignant narcissist.