David McElroy

The advice is almost always well-meaning, but it’s completely clueless.

“Come on,” the advice goes. “That happened a long time ago. He didn’t really mean to hurt you. They did the best they could. You just need to let it go. It’s time to get over it.”

I know what it feels like to think this about someone, because I’ve done it, too. I remember a conversation I had years ago in which a friend and I mocked someone who couldn’t “get over it” and move on after childhood abuse. That was before I understood my own childhood trauma, so I eventually felt guilty about having said such things about someone else.

But I get it. When you watch someone else go through the agony of long-term pain and anger from emotional abuse, it’s baffling if you don’t have a frame of reference. The person who’s suffered abuse can come across as crazy — at least it can look that way to someone who’s not hurting.

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I consciously realized last night that I use manufactured praise to save myself from my fear of being bad and inadequate. If I can manipulate people into praising me, that gives me temporary relief from my fear of not being good enough.

That’s a pretty brutal realization. I think I already knew it, but I hadn’t quite put it into words like that. Not consciously. But as soon as I did, I recognized the pattern that I learned from my father.

A narcissist desperately seeks what is called “narcissistic supply” — and my father taught me to do something that was pretty much identical to what he did.

This is the next in a series of videos dealing with issues that come up for me to think about as I write a book about my childhood experience of growing up with a narcissistic father. You can visit that YouTube channel to subscribe to future videos. (Liking and subscribing help me quite a bit in reaching others with the videos.) Or you can watch the most recent video below.

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It’s been years since I figured out that my father was a narcissist. It’s been years since I started understanding the effects he had on me — how he warped my mind and damaged me at my core. And every time I start thinking that I’ve already dealt with the lingering legacy of his dysfunctional programming, I see something in myself that reminds me that he’s still inside me — in ways that might never change — and that I have to constantly watch for bits and pieces of his dysfunction to come out in me.

I was driving home from work this evening when it happened again. I started thinking about doing something that was nominally a good thing to do — but then I realized what my motivation was. I realized that I was once again trying to prove to myself that I was a good person. The old programming had kicked in once more.

This is the next in a series of videos dealing with issues that come up for me to think about as I write a book about my childhood experience of growing up with a narcissistic father. You can visit that YouTube channel to subscribe to future videos. (Liking and subscribing help me quite a bit in helping others to see the videos.) Or you can watch the most recent video below.

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