Parental Rejection Jan 13

A normal child fears to dissapoint their parents because, on some level, they empathize with their parents. They don’t want to make thier parents sad, because making them sad would make themselves feel sad. That is healthy.

The child of a narcissist fears rejection. A narcissist idealizes, devalues, discards. The child has seen it done: done with family, done with friends who were treated like family. Done to people who seemed so integral, and were made to feel so special, that it seemed like it could never happen to them. But it did.

Usually, because they did not follow the rules. But sometimes, even if they followed the rules. The Narcissist just tired and moved on.

Maybe that is why Romans 8 spoke to me so deeply. “You have not been given a spirit of slavery, leading to fear again, but of adoption as sons, by which you cry out, ‘abba, father.’” When that really hit home…REALLY hit home, through counselling, I feel like God healed the deep wound of rejection in my heart. I had less need to impress others, to belittle others, to seek to compete and dominate to feel OK about myself.

I actually feel that that scripture healed me from potentially staying a narcissist, and becoming much worse.

That wound was created from my deep fear of being rejected. The fear was not unfounded.

My parents would pick people up, treat them like family, dote on them, give them things we could not afford, do anything for them, smile, spend time, do all of the things to make a person feel special. Then, they would just drop them.

Actually, it seems that the people would usually leave. Maybe they couldn’t take the smothering. At any rate, once they left, it seems that my parents just moved on without a second thought.

It really bothered me when dad said, “your (adoptive) sister has decided she doesn’t want to be my daughter anymore.” I knew she had said no such thing. Never having a father, she had clung desperately to my dad. When he gathered the family together and said they were adopting her, she really believed it.

But the ill-treatment got so bad that eventually she had to leave. And once she left, dad said, “I have decided I do not bless her leaving me.” He was taking control of the situation. When she would not come back (good for her) he created this story: “she has decided not to be my daughter anymore.”

And that was that. She was dead to him. At least, she became a distant cousin again: no longer a daughter.

And that is what he has threatened to do to me. Not once, but twice.

God has healed me deeply: but that is about the deepest wound you can find. “You will not have a father anymore.” Ouch.

He has used that to manipulate me, when nothing else would work.

But now, I have taken steps. I have explicitly broken rules. I have pushed it further than anyone I know, who has not been rejected.

I have all but begged him to disown me (at least, according to the narcissistic family code I have). Tonight, I sense that it is coming.

I don’t know how I know, but I have often been right so far.

There will be an ultimatum. And if I do not surrender, that will be it. He will disown me.

It’s what I have wanted — what I have been moving towards. But now that it is approaching, old fears and longings come again.

Who wants to be rejected by their dad?

But it is his baggage, not mine. No decent man would ever threaten to disown their child, simply on the basis of not allowing them to hold a child, or something similar. It is his baggage, not mine.

And if he disowns me, then many things in life will become much simpler. I hope very much that he does it in writing, so that I have proof.

That way, there will never be a way that he can demand anything from me, ever again.