One of the oldest clichés about parenting is that we begin to develop a newfound respect and compassion for our parents when we raise our children. But if you’ve chosen to read this post, your experience has likely been quite different. You may have already had a sense that your parents were strange—extraordinarily self-absorbed and inattentive to your needs—but it wasn’t until you had your children that you began to fully appreciate the significance of their indifference. In short, there was something about the experience of parenting that broke through long-standing denial and rationalization into the uncomfortable realization that you were the victim of profound childhood neglect. As a clinical psychologist, my experience has been that, while these interactions are deeply upsetting, they can pave the way for self-understanding and even healing.
The past decade has seen a flood of research on the profoundly negative psychological effects of childhood neglect, as well as abuse, which makes victims more vulnerable to adult depression, alcoholism, anxiety, suicide, and risky sexual behavior (Norman et al., 2012). Children’s emotional needs can be neglected for many reasons, including parental addiction, family breakdown, poverty, violence, and serious mental illness. But in my experience, the effects of emotional neglect by narcissistic parents are particularly damaging and difficult to recognize, let alone overcome. This is partly because neglect is generally rationalized and normalized by the parent according to inherent personality traits that cause great confusion for the developing child. Such a child is likely to grow up believing that his or her needs are unimportant and that the parent’s treatment was appropriate and loving. The child may even engage in self-blame for feeling unloved and unappreciated by the (ostensibly caring) narcissistic parent. The defining characteristic of a narcissist is an almost exclusive focus and interest in self-aggrandizement or self-enhancement. The narcissistic personality is organized around the need to deflect, neutralize, or negate feelings of shameful inadequacy (Zaslaw, 2017). We are all familiar with the emotion of shame, a universal experience of feeling inadequate, hurt, or bad. In contrast to guilt, where regret for actions that may have harmed others can foster efforts to make amends or apologize to the person harmed, the experience of shame tends to be private and nonsocial. The characteristic defenses against shame, such as anger, envy, or blaming others, are primarily isolating and manifest in conflict or avoidance (Zaslaw, 1998
For narcissists, relationships are dominated by the theme of self-enhancement. They tend to seek out others who will provide attention and admiration. Thus, the other parent may have adapted to life with the narcissist by learning to reinforce the inflated flow of input while protecting and making excuses for his or her weakness in the face of criticism. Young children provide little supportive currency to the narcissistic parent. The needs of a needy and helpless child may be seen as a burden. Worse, the child’s needs may lead to resentment by reminding the narcissistic parent of what he or she failed to receive in childhood. In the spectacle of new parents interacting with their newborns, we witness how evolution has shaped our inherent attention and concern for our children’s needs. Bowlby (1969) emphasized the critical importance of early experiences with caregivers in shaping future capacity for relationships and internalizing a stable, positive sense of self (“secure attachment”). Evolution certainly does not demand the impossible. Appropriate parenting does not require perfect attunement to the child’s needs. Indeed, the child develops internal emotional self-regulation resources through periodic failures of attunement and subsequent repairs (Schore, 2012). But parenting requires a drive to care about the child’s needs and reactions, and the ability to empathize with the child’s needs and reactions. The narcissistic parent presents several characteristics that are inconsistent with secure attachment scenarios. First, there is simply a lack of motivation or interest in maintaining attention to the child’s needs. With a personality style that is primarily based on the need to amplify a sense of self, narcissists are not very concerned with the needs or feelings of others. Furthermore, narcissistic parents lack the empathy or “other-mindedness” (Fonagy et al., 2005) needed to understand their child’s needs. The result may be a lack of interest mixed with anxiety about feelings of inadequacy as a parent. This anxiety will be immediately projected onto the child, who is seen as overly needy, difficult, and unappreciative of the narcissist’s parenting efforts. For the child, insecure attachment experiences in the first few years of life may compromise the development of optimal self-regulatory abilities. As Schorr (2015) summarizes, “emotionally insecure attachment narratives are burned into the infant’s early developing right brain.”
Insecure attachment (e.g., fear, avoidance, disorganization) may in itself predispose to some of the negative outcomes associated with childhood neglect as described above. However, my clinical experience is that we often find more subtle and persistent effects associated with continued childhood exposure to a family environment organized around narcissistic dynamics. The basic principle of the narcissistic environment is that any opposition to the assumption that the parents are healthy and free from fault or deficiency is unacceptable. The developing child gradually comes to realize that the narcissistically organized family psyche will not recognize or acknowledge the apparent inconsistency between his or her perceptions and reactions to the permissible parental narrative. Linehan (1993) has referred to this situation, in which the child’s experiences and emotions are labeled as wrong or forbidden, as an “emotionally unfit environment.”
The effects of raising a child in a narcissistic, invalidating family environment are myriad and depend on biology, attachment outcome, gender, and specific developmental experiences. Attention on the part of the narcissistic parent may range from outright neglect and lack of attention to intrusive efforts to control the child by the parent’s narcissistic needs. Examples include burdening the child with the parent’s fears, resentments, or intimate interests. Invalidation will continue into adulthood. Accomplishments by the now-adult child will go unrecognized or ignored to the point of arousing envy from the narcissistic parent. The lack of recognition will accumulate, making it difficult for the adult child to internalize a sense of pride.
In my clinical experience, when adults who have experienced these forms of neglect and abuse come to therapy, they typically present with self-image issues that include difficulty feeling worthy, whole, and complete. There may even be a sense of not existing at all. This is accompanied by highly charged and ambivalent feelings toward the parent. The specific conflict of this adult child of a narcissistic parent often centers around the need to find and maintain an ideal level of self-esteem. The person may have learned to associate even appropriate and deserved self-esteem with ugly memories of the parent’s greatness that they hate. If you are seeking healing from the neglect and trauma of being raised by one or more narcissistic parents, the first step is to explore your actual developmental history. It is important to note that even if your parents are alive and mentally healthy, they are likely to be of little help here. Because they were not concerned about your needs, they will produce a very distorted picture of the events if they recall them. This is where the support of a qualified and experienced psychotherapist can be invaluable as you identify and confront your actual history of trauma and neglect.
It may be necessary for you to let go of any expectation that your parents will acknowledge any role in your difficulties or change their behavior in any significant way. Given their need to distort or deny the facts and avoid honest self-evaluation (Beck, 1983), their version of events will be very different from yours. But healing will be rooted in your coming to terms with your internalized parental invalidation and taking responsibility for the difficulties that arose in response to real childhood neglect. When emotional regulation tools are provided, and through modeling of self-compassion that was absent during childhood, psychotherapy can be extremely helpful in helping to resolve these conflicts, which are the natural consequences of unrecognized childhood trauma. In turn, you will become a more available, loving parent and role model for your children.
