It is important to raise awareness about the challenges a sibling faces when their brother or sister has special needs.
Many years ago, when I came across a book writen by a woman who grew up with a special needs sister and the struggles she and so many others like her faced, I felt validated for the first time in my life.
For this reason, I wanted to create a video about this important but mostly neglected topic.
If you have experience with this, then please feel comfortable enough to comment. If you think this video might help others in similar situations, then please re-blog.
I am hope you are enjoying your weekend and are generally doing ok.
Before I fly off to Scotland tomorrow, I wanted to upload Monday’s Youtube video early, as I won’t be able to work on it when visiting family.
This week’s video is about an abusive behaviour & defense mechanism that people with narcissistic personality disorder use very frequently.
Projection is something I experienced most of my life from my mother and it is something that was immensely painful.
This is the definition of Projection according to Wikipedia:
Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For example, a person who is habitually rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude. It incorporates blame shifting.
Happy Monday everyone! I hope your week started well 🙂
Today’s video, which unfortunately took me ages to edit due to many interruptions & distractions, is about pathological lying. Although I talk about other types of lying, I particularly wanted to highlight the importance of pathological lying because it is the most destructive form of lying there is. Compulsive lying is also similar, although not as spiteful.
Individuals which are high on the narcissistic spectrum (NPD’d, Malignant narcissists, Psychopaths, ASPD’d) are very skilled pathological liars.
Please like,share & subscribe to my youtube channel if you find this video helpful!
In today’s video, I talk about another type of child abuse known as parentification.
Parentification isn’t always through the known fault of a parent, as sometimes in single parent families or in families with a special needs child, the parent struggles to keep the needs of the child fulfilled appropriately. Sometimes, the parent may be also suffering from a severe disability such as a chronic condition or severe mental health difficulties, and it is only natural that the child may at times become a carer to the parent. This is especially true, if there isn’t an additional parent or family member around to support the child.
Unfortunately, in a family where 1 or both parents suffer with narcissistic personality disorder, this type of abuse is even more prevalent in both a physical and emotional way.
My video describes this in more detail:
If you have experienced parentification, then feel free to share your experience.
If you find this youtube video and blog post useful, then please like, share & subscribe.
Please support my youtube channel on my patreon page. There are exclusive patrononly videos on there, which are available specifically to those of you who contribute & become patrons.
You might have heard of the term infantilization but you may not realise how incredibly abusive it is when a parent does this to their child.
It is only natural for a growing child to start developing independent thoughts, actions and opinions. For a narcissistic parent this can be very threatening, as they want to continue controlling their child and use them for narcissistic supply.
Check out my video for an explanation of what infantilization is.
Some examples of infantilization are as follows:
A parent stops a teenager from socialising with friends or doesn’t allow them any privacy in their bedroom. The parent may still treat them as if they are a young child whereas a teenager needs growing independence and privacy.
A parent buys their child age-inappropriate clothing and/or arranges age-inappropriate activities.
A parent might not allow the child to speak for themselves, when they are asked a question directly by somebody else.
A parent might discourage the child from pursuing new interests as they don’t want the child to become more skilled at new things than they are.
If a parent isn’t able to have healthy relationships, they may try to influence the child against their choice of partner. They can’t allow their child to leave the family nest. The parent wants to continue their enmeshed relationship for as long as possible.
The effects of infantilization are as follows:
The adult child ends up having chronically low self-esteem
The adult child has difficulties academically
The adult child may find getting a job difficult
The adult child learns helplessness and enabling
The adult child may self-harm
The adult child may have poor social skills
The adult child may self-sabotage
The adult child may become avoidant
If you can relate to any of what I have written or said in the video, then please re-blog so it reaches more people.
Knowledge is power and with knowledge comes healing. To also further promote healing on a larger scale, I have recently signed up to patreon to further support my creations of videos, pdfs & hopefully in the near future, e-books.
Patreon is a platform that enables creators to reach new goals by having their followers & supporters fund their work.
If you find my videos & blog posts helpful, then please check out my patreon page.
It would mean the world to me to be able to reach more people and help them on their journey of recovery.
As many of you already know, my journey to qualifying as a Life Coach, was based on my own recovery from my narcissistically abusive parents.
For those of you who don’t follow my more personal blog, I wanted to just give you a little insight into my own struggles.
In the last few days, I have been struggling with contact again from my father, after 1 year and a half of not speaking.
I sent him a letter, so he could stop harrassing me by phone.
I never exclusively told him I wanted no contact, but after a very traumatic time following his attempted suicide, (as a way of stopping his wife from leaving him) he gave me the silent treatment for a year, so I just went along with it.
I was not willing to respond to him and was already in a grieving process, even though there was no closure of any sort.
When he finally decided to start hoovering me back in with his phonecalls and sudden caring, I continued to ignore his calls. This communication from him went on for 8 months. I finally got fed up with the constant calls that I decided to send him a letter to end our relationship. I briefly explained my reasons and gave him the chance to reply.
I received his reply and it hit me really hard! More than I expected it to.
I realised that I still had a tiny glimmer of hope that he might change his behaviour and this was a huge setback for me. I also realised how incredibly strong the trauma bonding is between us, even more so than with my mother.
As a means of coping with my recent distress and the final letter to him, which I am in the process of writing at the moment, I created the below video!
It outlines what I have been going through and what many other survivors of abuse face all the time.
Please feel free to share it, if you think it may help others.
Just visit my Youtube page and embed it into your page.
This is a topic I previously covered on my personal blog last year but it is important to highlight again, especially in the current climate.
Most extremely powerful & wealthy people in this world, are usually void of empathy. Politicians, country leaders, business tycoons etc..
Narcissists and especially overt & malignant narcissists, lack empathy, lack self insight and aren’t able to form healthy & reciprocal relationships.
In this video, I talk about the importance of money in a narcissist’s world.
I talk about financial abuse and how narcissists may use this sort of abuse.
Having had first hand experience with a narcissistic & very controlling father, I have witnessed the obsession of a narcissist with his money & how he uses it in his life, to harm those close to him.
If you have experienced financial abuse or known someone who has used money in a harmful way, then please feel free to share this in the comments below.
I have just completed the 2nd part of my sexual abuse video series.I know this topic isn’t relevant to a lot of you but for those it is relevant to, I hope it helps.If you have only just started coming to terms with any past sexual abuse, then this video series will be useful.
As I did at the end of the first video, which you can find here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKlfQMVeyBA , in this 2nd video I list a more comprehensive set of questions that you can ask yourself. The more of these you can relate to, the more support you will need in your recovery of sexual abuse.
Sexual abuse of any kind, whether that is long term childhood sexual abuse or sexual assault, has a profound effect on whoever experiences it.
Since starting my first blog nearly 2 years ago, I have come across so many sexual abuse survivors, who have brought me to tears with their resilience and courageousness. I have met both men and women who have been through hell and back and have suffered far worse experiences than I ever did. This video was created with them in mind and for one of them in particular who asked me to do a video on this important topic.
I have learnt so much more about myself through doing research on this heartbreaking topic. I have also learnt how insidious sexual abuse can be and how many layers of trauma a survivor has to work through before reaching a more comfortable state of being.This video will be PART 1 of a 2 video series.It is such a sensitive topic and I want to make sure I cover as much as possible for those who may be affected by a past experience and may not even realise it yet. I am currently working through a list of questions that survivors can ask themselves, so they can have a better idea of where their difficulties lie in relation to sexual intimacy. At the end of this first video I have included some of these questions. How many of these did you answer ‘Yes’ to? I really hope that your answer is ‘None’.
couragecoaching.net 