Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

[CapeStorm]

I'm the only child of a OCPD single mother, so my knowledge about this topic is limited.

(Anyway one of the reasons I'm on this site is to learn more about PDs and how they affect nons).

I see a lot of posts from kids who are expressing hurt/grief because of some (inter)action between them and their PD parent. But strangely this harsh behaviour is not shown to siblings.

How is that possible? Surely if you have a parent who has a PD, that PD will affect EVERYONE around them not just a particular kid.

I've seem my mom behave this way with her own sisters and even with supermarket staff. It's her (disordered) way of relating to others.

So, without minimising anyone's hurt, could anyone tell me how it's possible for only one sibling to be treated poorly and the others not? What don't I know here?

[Andeza]

I highly recommend researching the concept of the golden child vs the scapegoat. Essentially, one or more children are put on a shelf and can do no wrong, while one or more can do no right. Also have a look at abuse amnesia. In many cases, all the kids are treated horribly and yet not all of them realize that it is in fact abuse and would tell anyone that asked that their upbringing was perfectly normal and the had a good childhood.

Many people with pds also recognize that their "normal" behavior is unacceptable to the rest of society and act one way in the home and another way entirely outside of it. Narcs particularly come to mind as they can be very high-functioning and even quite successful in business endeavors.

It truly is a convoluted, complicated matter.

[TwentyTwenty]

Andeza is correct.
The Golden child must be elevated and prominent as the crowning achievement in the narcs life.  You mustn't be allowed ever to be seen as more important or better than the Golden child. Just the act of doing something right or correct is an offense to the status of the Golden child, so be prepared for lifelong failure and devaluation at the hands of the narc parent. You must be seen worse than the GC at all costs.

My personal advice, is to escape while you can, and avoid any further abuse and harm.

[Duck]

I can speak to this somewhat as my father has OCPD.

Many of the people here are children of people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) or narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). I’ve come to learn from this site and other reading that families with an NPD parent function in a very specific way. As the others say, there is a good child and a scapegoat. If it wasn’t so awful, it would be interesting how consistently those families function. It is uncanny. So, you will see many people on this site use the abbreviations SG and GC.

My family does not have an NPD parent, so we didn’t have these roles. We did have roles, but they were the roles of a more commonplace dysfunctional family such as those seen in alcoholic families.

My dad tormented me, my sister and mom, all three.

I will say he used to have more control over himself in public than he does now. Although he would inevitably blow up every relationship given enough time and opportunity, he could scrape together enough composure to perform social functions like being deacon at church. He was never composed at home. It is true that many people with PD’s think of their family members as mere extensions of themselves and are therefore most careless with them. However, he is losing control over time.

Even though my dad’s disorder is different from other parents’ disorders here, I still find a lot of good advice and understanding.

[Duck]

I just want to add that I know some dysfunctional families have scapegoats. However, with NPD parents, it seems to be an absolute requirement. The good child seems mandatory, too, to the point where an only child must play both roles in turn.

There also seems to be a subtle difference in how the scapegoat and good child roles are played for a narcissist parent vs. within a dysfunctional family like mine. To me, it seems related to how the children are used as personal mirrors, projections or extensions of the narcissistic parent. I played a hero type role for my family, but based on everything I’ve read here,  it does not seem to be the equivalent of an NPD good child role. My sister was a mascot/clown.