No one has a perfect upbringing, and no one comes out of the factory with every answer and every behavior correct.
But some parents are certainly better suited to raising children than others.
And if you grew up with parents who didn’t do a great job or had deep personal issues, that will leave a mark.
That’s why it’s important to look at the psychological symptoms of growing up with narcissistic, self-obsessed parents.
Let’s dive in and look at the signs.
1) You doubt your worth
Beliefs and narratives instilled in early childhood can be very difficult to unlearn later in life.
If you were raised by narcissistic parents, this often leaves scars surrounding your self-worth:
Because your parents used you as a support to validate and satisfy their needs and desires, you will not have a strong sense of value outside of pleasing others. As a result, you often doubt whether you have any innate or true value.
2) You often feel ashamed and guilty but you don’t know why
This relates to the previous point because narcissistic parents tend to leave behind deep issues of self-worth.
When you don’t feel like you’re a very valuable person, it causes you a lot of feelings of shame and guilt.
In essence, the saddest part of this is that your parents’ narcissistic dysfunction has been ingrained in your psyche with a simple and devastating message:
You are a burden. You are bad. You are worthless.
This inner feeling of being a burden or of low value still haunts you.
3) You often seek external approval
When you grew up with self-obsessed parents, you generally developed a feeling that you needed to have a stamp of approval.
Frequent criticism and monitoring of what you do, coupled with gaslighting, makes it very difficult for you to steer your ship later in life.
You often seek advice, make outsourced decisions, and require external approval. Even as an adult, the lighting you grew up with makes you question the validity of your choices and judgments.
“Narcissists are often skilled at narcissistic manipulation, the abusive tactic of twisting and distorting the truth in ways that can cause a person to question and question reality,” psychologist Hailey Shaffer LCMHCS writes.
“Over time, this causes children to doubt themselves and their reality, even wondering if they are imagining things or going crazy.”
4) You find it very difficult to say no
The fear of saying no lives strong within you.
Even small instances of saying no, such as turning down an extra helping of dinner or saying no to a date, tend to fill you with unreasonable anxiety.
It also causes you to re-amplify those previous feelings of shame and unworthiness mentioned earlier in the article.
“Who am I to say no?” You wonder, and you feel like a terrible, selfish person.
As Hayes says:
“Children of narcissistic parents often find it difficult to develop healthy relationships, set boundaries, and express their needs and emotions.”
Speaking of being afraid to say no…
5) You are extremely people-pleasing
People pleasing is the habit of deriving one’s well-being and sense of self from making others happy.
It goes beyond the enjoyment of seeing people happy, but is, instead, a complete inability to tolerate rejection, rejection, or letting people down.
This comes from being raised by parents who made you feel like your worth was completely dependent on pleasing them.
“The world” and society in general are now substitutes for your parents, and this same overwhelming fear of not being loved or wanted leaves you desperate to please at all costs, often at the expense of yourself.
“Narcissistic parents expect their children to make sacrifices so they can do or get what they want,” explains psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula.
6) You are very sensitive to criticism
As the child of narcissistic parents, you were taught to never criticize them and to always seek approval and be “good.”
When you grew up with narcissistic parents, your job was to please them and make sure they approved of you.
You’re used to them bringing their problems to you and using you as a platform to boost their ego and vent their frustrations.
This puts you in a very vulnerable position because any criticism of you means that you are not “good”, and hits your most sensitive core.
You go into a breakdown state, often becoming deeply depressed and convinced that you are a terrible person.
7) You keep your emotions inside you
When you grew up with selfish, self-absorbed parents, your feelings meant nothing.
As a result, you learned from a young age to pretend that you are okay when you are not, and to downplay your suffering.
Admitting that you are not well or that you are suffering is very difficult for you.
You feel too ashamed to even open up to yourself that you’re not feeling well and you’re not sure what to do about it. You run away from this vulnerability, pushing your hurt feelings down.
This links to the following point as well:
8) You have great difficulty trusting people
Growing up in a narcissistic family makes you very critical of yourself:
You spend your childhood and teenage years walking on eggshells and being surrounded by extremely insecure people who only care about themselves.
You’re used to being praised one day and then considered a terrible person the next because your parents were emotional kids who couldn’t handle their things.
As a result, you find it very difficult to trust the people you meet in your life.
You feel an instinctive fear that they too will be unreliable, that they too will manipulate your emotions and will not be as dependable as your parents were.
This fuels approval-seeking behaviors, where you seek greater certainty and emotional stability from the people around you by pleasing them…
9) You feel like you have to “earn” admiration and appreciation
You have great difficulty accepting compliments per se.
You’ve grown up under ever-changing (but ever-present) circumstances around being loved, and you have a built-in sense that love is something “earned.”
You try to boost people’s egos and never disagree with them in any way so that they will be liked and have a constant, loving presence in your life.
10) You tend to have problems with intimacy
Intimacy, sex, and relationships are difficult for children of narcissists.
When you grow up with someone who made you “earn” their approval and constantly uses you for validation, you not only have trouble trusting, but you also have trouble loving safely and healthily.
You tend to search for constant reassurance that you are truly “good enough” and are wanted by your partner and often fall into an anxious attachment pattern where you seek more time and affection from your partner and those you date.
But no matter how much you get it still feels inadequate.
“As adults, they may struggle with insecure attachment styles and may avoid intimacy or seek excessive attention. Without intervention, some may imitate their narcissistic parents, perpetuating a harmful cycle in future generations.”
11) You fall into enabling narcissists and manipulators
Perhaps the most challenging part of raising a narcissist is that it makes you more likely to fall in love with and enable the narcissist.
As you grow into an adult, unless the trauma of your narcissistic upbringing is fully and integrally confronted, you can move into a pattern of enabling emotional manipulators and narcissists.
The reason is simple: early imprints and experiences lead you to view narcissism as normal and to learn to love in an unhealthy way. If left to run its course, this leads to associating love with and allowing harmful narcissistic behaviors.
