Are you wondering what to expect from the Abuser in your life when they get older?
Do you find yourself daydreaming and hoping that once your deplorable lover, long time friend, or family member matures a few more years that they will suddenly see the light and begin to value the concept of treating people well?
If Darth Vader is your father, do not expect him to get nicer magically when he gets older. The same thing goes for adult children of Cruella DeVille or Cinderella’s Wicked Step-Mothers.
Be mindful, victims of narcissistic Sociopaths (a.k.a. Narcopaths). Folks guilty of reverse projecting while engaging in magical thinking oftentimes find themselves with a massive case of C-PTSD after being exposed to a social predator for a few weeks, months, or years.
Narcissistic Abuse of others gets worse when Narcissists, Narcopaths, and Sociopaths get old.
[Not better, meaning less intense and/or less frequent; no abuse is acceptable, but in the “real world” being abused by another human being less frequently and with depleting intensity is preferable to living in a world where social trauma is on the rise or has stalled itself on a status quo plateau instead of an incline.]
Victims of toxic thinkers who willingly enable are at the greatest risk of suffering from Cognitive Dissonance, leading them into shackle situations likely to leave them all with varying degrees and form of Stockholm Syndrome.
It is not a mental health condition that is a joke or a personality disorder, Stockholm Syndrome, no matter how many times people who have no earthly idea what they are talking about refer to the captive mental health state of voluntary submissiveness as a joke.
It literally is the hardcore rewiring of the brain, leaving a trauma victim at the psychological and social mercy of a person or peer group inclined to exercising extreme levels of power and control over their preferred targets and scapegoating literally everyone else outside the immediate social circle using appeals to emotion argument styles akin to claiming, “If you are not for [us or me], then you are against [us or me].”
Adult children of Dark Triad or Narcopath parents tend to find themselves in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s facing an (unfortunately) common conundrum. Having been raised by toxic parents, children tend to gravitate towards equally or more so toxic mates.
Once an adult child of an abuser has cast themselves willingly — albeit unknowingly or not — into the role of Abuse Enabler with a romantic partner who reminds them of one or more of their residential housemates or primary caregivers during their early childhood years, the cycle of Narcissistic Abuse has already commenced.
Those who grow up in the cycle of trauma bonding understand the phenomenon far too well.
One parent takes the abuse while the other dishes it out. Then, the abused parent behaves in ways that make them appear hostile and psychologically unwell, typically displaying signs of extreme upset, physical or psychological terror, and pervasive upset… followed (typically) by the Abuser behaving quite happily and relaxed, hoovering and deriving pleasure from being rewarded for causing pain for others with tons of praise and arguably unhealthy perks all submissive partners tend to lavish on their Abuser(s) during the honeymoon phase of the push-pull domestic abuse cycle.
Once a victimized parent goes no contact with an abuser, the Ambient Abuse environment for a child (to a certain degree) lessens or stops. Less exposure to trauma and stress translates to a healthier social, biological, and mental status for any person or peer, regardless of circumstance.
Unfortunately, the more narcissistic the abused parent, the more likely that same adult is to place their own romantic interest over the welfare of their own children.
Kids learn toxic relationship values from parents who stay in abusive situations far more than they do from men and women of strong character who leave their abusive romantic partners for the sake of the children. Forced to grow up watching the cycle of abuse and being told that Mommy Dearest and Enabling Henchmen or Hail Ceasar are in “love”, youth are taught a socially caustic and totally strange concept of the word love.
Cluster B people, above all else, are vertical thinkers. Every social interaction is seen as a competition — a power struggle of sorts for determining alpha or beta status as well as striving to dominate a preferred scapegoat target flock or pack rife with NPD, BPD, ASPD, or HPD people included.
If you are romantically involved with a Narcopath, expect abuse over time to become more overt in private but more subtly sinister in public. If you are the adult child, parent, sibling, family friend, or extended family member of one, expect exactly the same pattern behavior.
Narcissistic people tend to be egocentric and suffer from delusions of grandeur. They display varying degrees of entitlement-based thinking and view the world as if they are deliberately wearing blinders.
Sociopaths — referring to milder forms of people with Anti-Social Personality Disorder — tend to suffer from depleted ability to feel complex emotion. Most folks who develop ASPD symptoms in later adult years have been traumatized physically or psychologically, with trauma exposure, medical illnesses, head injuries, and/or medications that cause a suppressed response to social stimulation with regard to empathy are those most likely to behave abominably for fun or sport for no other reason than to neurologically do something to relieve their own boredom.
Ask any family member of a card-carrying Sociopath or Psychopath when their person is most likely to act up or lash out. Most will tell you that the Abuser’s behavior patterns tend to be cyclical, with happy, calm, or productive times of great social comfort and emotional or civic success being the “trigger” that seem to alight their fury.
Narcissistic Sociopaths tend to be most famous for pulling the rug out from under their loved ones’ proverbial feet. While housemates of people with BPD are forced to live feeling like they are walking on eggshells all the time while attempting to decrease the temper tantrums of more violent or verbally combative abusers, the relatives of Narcopaths deal with an entirely different abuse cycle entirely.
In youth, the Narcopath tends to manufacture overt chaos. They do arguably foolish and mean-spirited things like go out drinking or on wild drug benders, get themselves arrested for things like DUI or bar fighting, or they engage in things like going on rampant sex or party binges.
In their mid-years, these same people tend to become parents. For whatever reason, most vertical thinkers who behave abusively in their personal life believe that having more children — rather than less — is a good idea.
Procreating, in the mind of a Narcopath, is a necessity. In fact, the more children a Narcopath fathers or parents biologically, the more successful of a human they are likely to errantly perceive themselves to be.
You see, in the mind of a Narcopath, children are necessary evils. If one has children, they are prized as showpieces when they are little, then brainwashed into believing that the kids — as domestic abuse victims of the most common sort — are responsible for caretaking their parents throughout their own adulthood.
The “till death do us part” concept of being morally bound to remain socially enmeshed with a toxic parent is taught to children and the concept “honor thy mother and thy father” is distorted beyond all spirit of the commandment.
In a healthy family, a parent strives to parent well while a child strives to be a good child. A parent places the child’s needs and future well-being above their own interest.
In a toxic family, poop rolls downhill with no need for a starter push by an Egyptian dung beetle.
In a toxic family, if Mommy Dearest commands, everyone in the family unit is forced to capitulate. Endurance supplants survival instinct, with desensitization to trauma and reduction of fear or self-protection impulse core values taught to offspring.
In a healthy family, children strive to better themselves with the unconditionally loving social and emotional support of parents. In a toxic family, the child’s role — one continued throughout their adulthood until a parent or their abusive family member dies — is to take abuse, enable the Abuser, and to essentially spend their life committing the social biological health equivalent of passive suicide.
Kids of Dark Triads whose parents have already passed will almost unilaterally report the same thing to you if you ask them…
Dark Triad parents who exhibited strong personality traits rooted in extroversion and their own desire to control their social environment throughout youth and into their most productive years tend to hit their 40s or 50s and suffer from a mid-life crisis. Then, as they hit senior status, they all unilaterally tend to meltdown again… followed by a personality crash if any of the following starts to happen:
- loss of physical prowess (sexual)
- loss of physical ability (health)
- loss of physicality (strength or balance)
- loss of career (past prime or forced retirement)
- loss of financial power (reduction or depletion of financial resources)
- loss of social status due to age-related issues (community perception)
Narcopath Seniors tend to believe the hype and propaganda they were taught in elementary school eras.
If the senior who vexes you was born in the WWI or WWII era, they are likely to have been told if they worked hard and kept their nose out of other people’s business that they would be rewarded in their “golden years” with a magical retirement. Promises include being able to do or say whatever they want without consequence, to behave abominably and be rewarded with all positive care, praise, and attention, and that once their own parent was or is dead that they will be able to enjoy the fiscal benefit of all the family’s previous heirloom use and collective finances.
If they were or are Baby Boomers? The narrative changed.
Baby Boomers were taught that no matter how hard they tried, they would never be as good or worthy as their Greatest Generation Narcopath parents. Raised being taught “Enabler Values” instead of Alpha pack predator virtues, many currently suffer from what’s known as Collapsed Narcissist personality disorders.
A Collapsed Narcissist is a person who believes at their core they are fundamentally better than or more deserving and worthy of praise and special favors than others. Children whose parents spoilt them during their toddler years by lavishing undue heaps of praise and attentive affections on them then switch to ignoring or being harsh when a child heads off to school or a new baby is born do permanent harm.
Expecting constant praise and affection due to having been nurtured from birth to age four into believing they are the best, the brightest, and can do no wrong, the self-identity clings to the mindset of pervasive egocentrism. Once the child reaches the age of social maturity, meaning they are able to leave the home for a set period of hours each day or have the proper language and mentation skills to do something like attending primary school, if a parent under parents (meaning overindulges and fails to teach, set, or enforce healthy lifestyle boundaries and habits) or withholds affection, the youngster’s psychology tends to go askew.
Baby Boomers who were coddled until they headed off to elementary school then were treated like soldiers with regard to academics and social schedules are the most likely group to have collectively, as a cultural unit, to behave like Collapsed Narcissists in their senior years. Most were raised believing that the phrase “honor thy mother and thy father” meant that if they failed to tolerate and enable their own abuse, that they would go to hell or be considered by society to be moral failures.
Most Boomers were taught to believe that the victims of Narcissistic Abuse deserve to be punished or socially persecuted if they break the silence and self-advocate. Teaching their own children to shame and ridicule others for having been victimized is something they learned from their own parents and grandparents, and those who fail to self-reflect and study the forensic psychology history of their own family units and society have been the most prevalent social group to inculcate their own offspring into their cultish mindset.
A Boomer was taught to be seen and not heard as a child — and the philosophy extended for most throughout the duration of their parent’s years. Whatever mother or father said was viewed as gospel, and any person who would dare to question or fail to enable an abusive adult to behave in ways that are caustic to themselves or others was viewed as the black sheep of the family.
Children of narcy parents with cruel streaks learned to tolerate abuse without complaint. They were trained to keep their Abuser’s secrets and to feel ashamed of themselves for having been pervasively victimized or targeted.
Narcopath Seniors know their children and everyone else’s children are likely to have been brainwashed into believing the senior’s needs for power, control, physical comfort, and attention far outweigh the fundamental human rights of anyone younger.
Taking advantage of their own narcissistic supply source’s goodwill and express desire to strive to please them, the senior Narcopath tends to command the attention of all in a room while controlling the emotional body and psychology of their preferred scapegoat targets. The question to ask, for an adult child or romantic partner of a Narcopath, is not when to jump or how high but how OFTEN.
Expecting increased amounts of the following Narcissistic Abuse tactics is prudent to prepare yourself for the senior crankster’s inevitable descent into moral insanity driven by wave states resembling Collapsed Narcissist thinking is prudent. As a Narcopath ages and relationships chronologically mature, they tend to do more (rather than less) of the following:
- withholding affection or praise for others
- stonewalling
- giving people the silent treatment
- selective hearing
- feigned abuse amnesia
- blame shifting
- avoiding responsibility
- gaslighting
- verbally abusing
- financially abusing
- smear campaigning rivals
- poisoning the well against caretakers
- targeting caregivers for abuse
- scapegoating primary caregivers
- badgering
- hoovering after abusing
- less honeymoon, longer cycles of tension
- raging
- irrationality
- word salad arguments
- triangulating
- blurting
- baiting
- provoking
- name-calling
- lacking empathy
- tunnel vision
- magical thinking
- refusal to respect other people’s healthy lifestyle choices or boundaries
- general badmouthing of peers, groups, or institutions (offering no praise or constructive criticism)
- black and white thinking
- overlooking or denying abuse issues
- problem drinking or problem prescription drug use
- refusal to engage in pro-social actions (such as wearing hearing aids and turning them on while keeping them fit with charged batteries)
- refusal to flex with regard to schedule or to accommodate other people’s needs as well as their own
- pathological lying
- claiming false victimization (meaning pretending they are the victim when actually they antagonized or actively abused a target then got mad when they were asked to stop doing it)
- “crying wolf” (meaning faking illness or personal need for physical companionship or assistance when there is no need rather than simply admitting they would like to see or spend time with an adult child they feel is socially or emotionally neglecting them somehow)
- making irrational and illogical demands
- deliberately striving to inconvenience caretakers and loved ones in order to make themselves feel in control, socially powerful, and relevant
The list of abuses likely for any person involved with a Narcopath senior goes on and on, but pick any of the terms above and research them. Even one can make for an unpleasant relationship, noting that givers have to set limits with takers.
If an Abusive person, meaning the taker, is given even the slightest inch of courtesy or benefit of the doubt allowing their anti-social behavior patterns to go unchecked, expect them to take a liberty of literally hundreds of thousands of miles (speaking in the extreme atypical metaphoric).
If you are not sure whether your senior is Cluster B and getting worse — not better — try testing them. The next time they make an irrational demand for attention or to be believed about some nonsensical gaslighting claim, try standing up to them in a non-confrontational, assertive but emotionally neutral manner.
Try telling them no.
Instead of arguing a point that any fool can plainly see was made by them in order to bait or provoke targets into emotionally interacting and attention heaping, ask them why they hold their belief. Then, be the gadfly ever bright and self-educated Narcissistic Abuse survivor on the planet (in a perfect world) should aspire to be.
If your person of deplorable intent does something like say all Liberals are dirty, commie, pinko, hippies — and you happen to BE one — look them straight in the eye and say, “Really?”
If they say yes… ask them again.
Say, “Really?” — but raise one eyebrow while slightly dropping your chin.
Ask them if that is how they really feel about the issue. If they are a rageaholic, they will start to foam at the mouth and are likely to start to blather.
This is the point you know you have a Cluster B person in the tracking spotlight. Be the gadfly.
Say something like, “What makes you say so?” or “Why do you say that?”
Lulling them into a state where they feel impulsively compelled to blurt, knowing that if you keep asking them simple questions without adding your own subjective opinion is likely to lead them to a logical crash followed by an emotional meltdown might appear to be mean (on the surface) but it’s actually not.
What WOULD be mean is to allow a verbally abusive senior citizen prone to gaslighting, making ad hominem attacks, and abusing others using verbal assault tactics such as hate speech or belittling and victim shaming to be taken seriously in the mind of any conversation-privy target.
If you want to take power away from a verbal abuser, pretend they have Tourettes. If they start blurting or blathering on and on in an attempt to emotionally harm or invalidate the fundamental human rights of others, picture them wearing body pads and a safety helmet.
Picturing your senior wearing a harness, rocking back and forth on a special education short bus, and blurting random obscenities is the right way to put an abusive elderly person’s remarks in context.
As Cluster B people’s personality forms, neuroplasticity tends to freeze. In youth, they stop emotionally maturing typically by or before the age of six.
Cluster B people chronologically age without emotionally maturing psychologically. The higher their IQ, the better they are likely to be at hiding their own deficiency, with many turning to rote memorization of Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy-style facts to prove their intellectual superiority without ever stopping to consider that it takes high levels of emotional intelligence to be a healthy, well-rounded citizen.
Freezing emotional development in youth coupled with vertical thinking pattern adhesion throughout adulthood and crippling emotional psychology by repeated exposure to emotionally desensitizing trauma creates a senior citizen who is rude, dictatorial, demanding, pervasively egocentric, and grandiose. No amount of money can buy things like morals, manners, class, or conscience… leaving the wealthiest among the toxic senior class the most (rather than the least) abusive.
Prone to hoarding, striving to emotionally or psychologically destroy their family and caretakers, and to using things like control over family fortunes and sentimental heirlooms to spite, the more extreme the Narcopath’s personality disorder, the more likely they are to become more abusive to people in their senior years than they ever were in earlier life.
For these reasons, consider the possibility that a senior is as personally responsible for their word choice and behaviors as a young person is throughout the duration of their life. Holding one morally accountable for their bad behavior in life in a judicious rather than persecutory way is essential for them to be able to reduce the amount of karmic debt they have personally accrued throughout their life.
Honoring a Cluster B parent with anti-social, psychopathic, and/or narcissistic tendencies requires their preferred scapegoat targets to show unconditional love by limiting their parent’s opportunity to impulsively abuse. Going low to no contact with an Abuser of any age is advised for any person who is forced to witness, asked to overlook, or taught to tolerate and enable abuse.
Allowing a social predator to abuse more during their senior years is cruel, not refusing to enable. Refusing to behave like an Abuse Enabler honors all the generations of parents and grandparents who came genetically before you in your bloodline while simultaneously lessening the chance that your toxic parent will be able to say or do one more hospitality betraying thing to you before they die.
If there is a moral tipping point that defines what happens to a soul in the afterlife, then humanely limiting a senior’s opportunity to impulsively abuse is kind. Senior Abuse (in this case meaning parent or elderly abuse) involves going toe-to-toe with one, abusing while increasing enmeshment.
Adult child abuse happens the same way, too. The more you engage in the Narcissistic Abuse cycle, the more you strengthen, heighten, and lengthen the duration of the moral and psycho-social enmeshment.
Read more here about what to expect from an aging Narcissist or Narcissistic Sociopath but understand this… if you decide to remain enmeshed, it’s biologically essential to learn how to detach.
