I Dislike Posers
Also known as altruistic narcissists.
People who show up in public pretending to be perfect for all the world to see are posers. Altruistic narcissists who desperately seek public praise and validation despite dreadful behind-the-scenes behavior, mediocrity brought on by laziness and entitlement, and shadows they run from.
Hearkens back to so much this country was founded on.
Connected to Trump expecting a Nobel Peace Prize and punishing multiple nations when he doesn’t get one. Until he gets one he didn’t earn. From another altruistic narcissist.
I had a father and then a husband, both addicted to praise and adulation. Praise and adulation they believed they were due even as they made huge messes for others to clean up.
I am STILL cleaning up the messes my altruistic narcissistic father left for me. He died more than 10 years ago. After the messes he made killed my mother and had both me and my brother feeling completely suicidal.
For shame.
Entitled white men projecting the shame they can’t tolerate and the blame they refuse to take accountability for onto victims with less power is embarrassing. And debilitating to their wives, children, and animals. And society as a whole.
AND they team up with other altruistic narcissists (AKA posers) to try to shame victims for showing symptoms of their abuse. Birds of a feather flock together. White supremacy patriarchy supports itself. Out of terror of being found out as exactly who they are.
I watched two entitled white men roll their eyes at me one morning last week and ignore my words while leaving me to clean up the mess they are claiming credit for solving. With a white boy understandably having some identity issues. Because he’s too ashamed to act like the men in his life he sees abusing women. But also too shamed by these men to be like the women he sees the men in his life abusing.
Where is a fully feeling kid with compassion and integrity supposed to land?
Should he shape himself after the mom who defends and supports him, while watching the men in his life devalue her? Or should he be more like the men who shame and blame him for not just “getting it done”? The men who claim to understand neurodivergence while treating neurodivergent people in completely traumatizing ways. (To distract from their own neurodivergence.)
Meanwhile, the other boy I care for has regressed to sh!tting his pants. Which no one who has to clean up said sh!t (me and his mom) is delighted about. And yet dad angrily shaming the kid each time he sh!ts his pants is only making things worse for everyone involved and prolonging the problem.
Know why the kid is sh!tting his pants? Because he is feeling the anxiety his dad can’t own. In addition to the world being on fire, dad has had a big offsite to prepare for the past week and has been criticizing everyone around him even more than usual to avoid sh!tting his own pants. Leading his poor defenseless kid trained to mirror him showing the dysfunction dad is masking.
Which is why it is so profoundly painful for dad to face.
Leading him to shame and blame the small powerless victim he projects his energy onto for showing symptoms of his own dysfunction.
Vets and pediatricians both know a lot about family dynamics.
Vets and pediatricians treat the innocent victims in family systems. The ones who display the symptoms the adults shove off onto them. The dog in the family I babysit for is taking klonopin and sleeps much of the day. As dad calls him, the dog, “a lazy bum.”
Smart vets and pediatricians understand this. They also see an uptick in psych meds being prescribed to animals and children.
Smart vets and pediatricians do not blame small animals or children for symptoms that are the result of trickle-down anxiety from leaders of households.
I think my pediatrician is smart. We have an appointment tomorrow morning. We shall see.
Weird how dad now insists on scheduling and attending doctors’ appointments after years and years of never deigning to.
Because he wants to control the narrative.
Lucky for my kids, the narrative with their pediatrician began in utero. Not after divorce.
Dysfunctional men will be the downfall of society as we know it.
And they will blame it on their victims and punish and shame them for it. For showing symptoms of THEIR unprocessed trauma. Just ss they have been doing for centuries.
Know better, divorce altruistic narcissists.
Except divorcing narcissists in a legal system created by and for narcissists feels about as sh!tty as living with them. Post-separation abuse transformed me from a strong, confident entrepreneur and writer into a 50-year-old babysitter making $28 an hour.
I’m truly ready for a fresh start. No more narcissism. My white boy child does not show signs of narcissism. Mostly because he has thusfar chosen to be more like his mom than his dad. But I KNOW feeling like an outcast is no fun. So I will not take it personally if he shifts to try to fit in.
But I will cry and feel like I have failed completely.
They are all autistic, by the way. The narcissists and those they chose to victimize.
But NOT all autistics are narcissists.