Wondering what to expect from toxic parents who spent their youth abusing others?
Expect overtly or covertly abusive Senior Citizens to pervasively abuse their friends, family, relatives, caregivers, or anyone who checks in on them regularly, tends to their daily needs and strives the most to treat them with care, consideration, thoughtfulness, and compassion.
If a person was a bully in grade school, aggressed people in middle school or junior high, behaved deplorably as teens and twenty-somethings, had a child or a passel of kids they abused pervasively throughout their childhood, and raised them to believe the lie they were going to hell if they did not willingly take abuse on the chin based on the misinterpretation of the “honor thy mother and thy father” biblical commandment, be mindful.
Cluster B people don’t “mature” as they age or mellow out. They simply are forced by biological circumstances to adapt their situational abuse styles.
More of the same, unfortunately — only worse… as narcissistic people tend to age poorly and develop Collapsed Narcissist personas when the inevitable time comes that they lose things like health, sexual prowess, and social power.
Narcissistic people and other social predators like Histrionics, people with Borderline Personality Disorder, and Anti-Social personality disorders are typically less skilled at hiding their true feelings about other people and social situations as they age.
Prone to blurting and impulsive behaviors, gaslighting, badgering, stonewalling, and simply being belligerent for no other purpose than to provoke duress in their caregivers and closest people of interest, their boredom and unhappiness tend to cause them all to behave in ways that are quite abusive with those who strive to be their caretakers.
Targeting the most emotionally sensitive and loving family members for the worst of the abuse, they know if a person was raised by a toxic parent and brainwashed into tolerating and overlooking abuse that they are likely to be able to get away with everything shy of committing “moider”.
Abusers are smart. They know on an instinctive level who will and who will not take abuse or verbal assault. Those who strive to behave in ways that are compassionate and loving are treated like garbage — while people who seldom appear, have little to no interaction with the senior, or who stand up to them will be respected more, put on a magical thinking bolstered pedestal, and be revered.
Expect them to do things like strive to promote a sibling rivalry atmosphere between adult children and their brothers and sisters, between adult children and the grandchildren, between paid companions or contract caregivers and blood relatives, and worse.
Bored with their life status, suffering from depleted professional or financial power, and hampered by health or mobility issues, the older the toxic social predator gets, the more likely they are to become irrational, verbally (if not physically) abusive, and dictatorial.
Lying is common in elderly Cluster B people — with gaslighting strategies and conversational con attempts getting more and more outlandish as the aging senior’s rage against life and their own body grows.
The worst the Cluster B senior’s health physically, the more likely they are to do things like stop using civil pleasantries to communicate their needs. The more extreme their disorder, the more likely they are to alternate stonewalling with aggressive bellows.
If you are the adult child of a Cluster B parent who committed routine acts of emotional abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, or physical abuse against you or a sibling (for instance) when you were young… but you did what you could to mend your relationship with them during your own early adult years, guess what?
It’s absolutely COMMON for the parent to revert to uttering the most caustic and demoralizing statements both to and about you — in public as well as private — when they age.
While many toxic parents dress down their kids in private in the cruelest and mentally abusive of ways when they are young, then behaved in a false loving manner when company arrived or they were forced to attend a parent-teacher conference… once they age, they tend to simply start blurting insults and psychologically distressing gaslighting tales and ad hominem attacks out loud with no filter.
It is easy to say be prepared to experience some of the most painful abuse incidents of your life related to your toxic parent’s words. They tend to blurt horrific, demeaning, and caustic verbal assaults at the most inappropriate moments, dropping their attacks in the middle for a nice day, a family event, or any time company comes over for a visit.
The goal of them blurting in front of people in their senior years — where they tried to hide they were verbally abusing children — is specifically to make themselves feel powerful.
When you were little, they felt powerful by making themselves look like the best of parents. But when you are an adult and your parent is unhappy with their life lot?
Suddenly their own adult children become scapegoats for their obnoxious, egocentric, sadistic, passive-aggressive parent’s personality type to come out.
Toxic parents believe if they can convince their former friends, professional connections, medical professionals, and paid nursing staff or home care companion service providers that they are all-powerful and their preferred scapegoat targets are monsters that no one will notice that their health and psychology are declining.
Citing old age as a reason for writing revisionist history suddenly is gaslighting. It’s not dementia if a Cluster B person lies in old age deliberately and purposefully in order to self-promote while promoting toxic shame in others.
Adult children of Cluster B parents tend to have been taught that abuse is their fault. The Abuser and Abuse Enablers always ask an abuse victim what they did to provoke their antagonizer or aggressor… or worse — told that they deserved the abuse (verbal, mental, emotional, physical, or sexual).
When the senior hits their “Golden Years”, they tend to truly blame their kids for ruining their lives. Lacking the ability to self-reflect in a meaningful way, a narcissistic or anti-social predator left to stew in a Lazyboy recliner chair or to sit on a couch camped out watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy nightly is likely to decide the reason their own life did not turn out the way they wanted was the direct fault of one or more of their own offspring, their romantic partner, or one or more of their blood relatives.
Abuse escalates over time, with financial abuse of family trusts being the most likely place the aging Abuser will tend to assert power.
Expect them to give away or donate your family’s most sacred and personally meaningful sentimental items to people or organizations that will find no value in them.
Expecting them to do things like making incredibly financially abusive choices to hurt the feelings of their most loyal, involved, and faithful of children while completely destroying them financially for their own senior years is par for the course.
Believing that things like money and family heirlooms that were supposed to be handed down to the grandchildren of their own parents are theirs to do with what they want simply because their own mom or dad left them in charge of being executor for a will or trust, they will break, throw away, or give away whatever they think will hurt their own adult child most.
Why?
Spite, typically.
Knowing they cannot take family heirlooms to the grave and playing a daily game balancing what’s left of family fortunes with what they personally can afford to waste or give away without compromising their own lifestyles while simultaneously ensuring adult kids who sacrificed decades of career potential to play housekeeper, lawn attendant, taxi service for doctor’s appointments, personal concierge, and nursemaid, the socially competitive Collapsed Narcissist tends to exhibit two emotions that are most commonplace.
The first is contempt, complete with acerbic tones and sneers. The second is rage.
To learn more about what to expect from Cluster B people and toxic parents, click the following “read more” link…
