As I grew up, I became increasingly oppositional to my father, who exhibited multiple symptoms of malignant narcissism and was likely a dark tetrad. In reaction, the man charged with my care targeted me more intently. I had the gall to stand up to him. That alone caused a rupture in his narcissistic supply. So he had to double down. He had to remind me who held the power, like what he did on my 26th birthday.
He invited me out to dinner at a nice restaurant. My father had never done that before. Never. He suggested I order the oysters Rockefeller. Compared to how he had behaved the rest of my life, it felt like royal treatment.
Then dessert came. And with it, a comedic birthday card in which he had written with a flourish, “Love, Dad.” Inside was a check for $50. He had consistently given my siblings and me twice that for birthdays and Christmas for years, even bragging that his consistency equaled laudable fairness. So I immediately knew there was a sharp point.
“You can’t count on anything,” my father admonished. Later, I learned that my brother had told him I was counting on that money to help me get through a rough patch after I had moved and changed jobs.
My father took advantage of my vulnerability to set me up like a princess so he could knock me down and make me thank him for abusing me. That was what he wanted: my gratitude for his cruelty. That was his nourishment. That’s how he got his jollies. Like his father got from him.
From an Interpersonal Neurobiology perspective, this was a rupture designed for maximum dysregulation. It wasn’t a moment of confusion or indifference. It was precise. He premeditatively crafted a situation to lure my nervous system into lowering its defenses. He created the illusion of care so he could destroy it. That shatters a person’s ability to trust. Not only trust in others, but trust in one’s reading of reality.
This kind of psychological trap is more than just painful. It fragments the sense of coherence that a person needs to function. It shakes the internal scaffolding of predictability and safety. Especially when the person doing the damage is the one who should have built those foundations in the first place.
Effectively, since I was born, my father tried to force me into failure, supposed mental health issues, and even death. It wasn’t just neglect or emotional abuse; it was strategic. He knew how to destabilize me, make me doubt myself, chip away at my capacity to survive, and practically guarantee I could never thrive. He orchestrated moments that looked like generosity or care so he could lunge when I was unguarded and twist the knife. It was never about love, but control, humiliation, and punishment for daring to resist him.
This kind of sustained, calculated betrayal from a primary attachment figure can have devastating effects on the nervous system. It trains the brain-body system to associate safety with danger, kindness with threat, and hope with collapse. It erodes a person’s ability to trust their perception, to feel internal coherence, and to regulate under stress.
It’s no wonder that the outcomes of such abuse can look like “mental illness,” such as the symptom clusters labeled “Borderline Personality Disorder” and “Major Depressive Disorder.” But they are symptoms of a nervous system shaped in an environment rife with betrayal, threat, and deep, chronic rupture. And when the world sees only the symptoms, not the strategy behind the harm, it compounds the damage.
But seeing it now–recognizing that sick systems and the abusers they keep in positions of power are the source of virtually all human misery–is part of my recovery. Clarity is a step toward coherence.
Standing up to my abusive father wasn’t rebellion. It was survival. And he couldn’t stand that. He had to remind me that love came with punishment. That hope came with a slap. But I saw it. I see it now, and helping others recognize the systems and structures that drive their supposed mental health conditions is part of how I create justice where there has been none.
