There is no doubt that our childhood and the way we were raised play a major role in the way we develop as adults.
We often don’t realize how much our upbringing has affected us until later in adulthood when we find ourselves feeling lonely and isolated from the rest of the world.
When we realize that maybe we are the way we are for a reason. The quality of your parents when you were younger is also important.
If you grew up in a devoutly religious family, you may have a strong connection to a higher being.
If you were raised by generous people, you may want to work for a charity as an adult.
If you grew up around narcissists, you may suffer from a variety of issues with your self-esteem, self-confidence, and relationships.
Here’s how your parents can turn you into a narcissist by being a narcissist themselves.
First, what is a narcissist?
To know if you were raised by a narcissist, it is important to consider what a narcissist is. There are many definitions of narcissism, some of which are far from reality.
To be clinically diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or the official manual for professional therapists) states that an individual must have 5 of the 9 narcissistic personality disorder traits listed. These include:
- They lack empathy for others
- They believe that they are inherently more important than those around them
- They crave recognition of their inherent superiority
- They show extreme arrogance through their attitude and behavior
- They are paranoid that others envy them so much
- They have a natural sense of entitlement, believing that the world is their oyster
- They are obsessed with delusions of power, love, and success
- They exploit others to satisfy their constant need for admiration and attention
- They believe that only special people can understand them properly
While some researchers believe that people are born with narcissistic personality disorder, others believe that it is a behavior that is learned through the environment.
They say that while disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have been shown to have genetic and chemical backgrounds, narcissistic personality disorder shows no physical abnormalities or brain differences.
#How do you know if your parents are narcissists?
It is important to ask yourself these five questions to understand whether you are truly aroused by narcissists:
1) Were your parents highly critical of your behavior and results growing up? Have you ever felt like you were never good enough?
2) Were they always competing with you and doing everything they could to win?
3) Were your parents too possessive and afraid to give you independence?
4) Do your parents seem to care about their appearance, how others view them, or any of your needs or wants?
5) Did your parents lack empathy for you while you were growing up?
6) Have you always felt that your parents could never love you for who you are?
If you can answer yes to these questions, then you were probably raised by narcissists.
But it’s important to remember that parents tend to be naturally protective and want their children to be as successful as possible.
What may seem like a narcissistic parent may simply be a difficult boss, who believes that pushing you to overcome challenges is the best way to achieve success.
It is important to be able to recognize the difference before you start making unfounded assumptions that your parents were narcissists.
What truly sets narcissistic parents apart is their consistency in denying their children’s identity and their choice to live life on their terms.
According to Preston Nee in Psychology Today, the main defining characteristic of a narcissistic parent is that “the offspring exists solely to serve the selfish needs and machinations of the parent(s).”
#6 Negative consequences you may experience if you were raised by a narcissist
1) You don’t have high self-esteem and feel like you can’t do what you want.
If you suffer from low self-esteem and can’t seem to pinpoint why, you may need to take a look at your childhood and ask some tough questions about how your parents raised you.
Start by looking at their expectations of your performance – have you failed in their eyes all the time?
Have you ever felt like you couldn’t do anything right?
It’s not true for you, but the message you were receiving from someone in your life was important enough to listen to and believe.
A common characteristic of narcissism is grandiosity: the feeling that one is superior to others.
Narcissistic parents may see themselves as superior to their children. This in itself is bound to affect the child’s self-esteem, which does not seem to live up to the expectations placed on him by his parents.
According to an article in the Huffington Post, this is why many children of narcissists end up working jobs they never wanted to do because they were forced into them by their parents.
2) You feel isolated from others.
As an adult, you may find it difficult to make friends and connect with people. You may not really know why you always have problems sharing space with people.
It’s possible that your parents didn’t make room for you in their lives and were too busy talking about themselves or their needs more than yours.
It is not uncommon for parents who have problems themselves to pass these problems on to their children.
According to Shannon Thomas, a trauma therapist, shame can be what creates a narcissistic person, and if they see some perceived weakness or flaw in their children, they emotionally reject them because of it.
3) You worry that people will leave you.
If you had a difficult childhood filled with narcissism, you may find it difficult to trust people. This, in turn, may make you want to push people away and focus only on yourself instead of others.
After all, according to Darlene Lancer in Psychology Today, narcissistic parental care is absent. When you’re a child, you start to believe that any close relationship will end in this way that you think will ultimately hurt you:
If you are single and believe that this will protect you from getting hurt, you may want to reconsider this reasoning and look in your past for evidence of how you were raised to think this way.
4) You feel that you are not as good as others.
Inferiority complexes are common among children—even adult children—of narcissistic parents. With your parents busy with their own lives, you may grow up feeling like your life didn’t have much value.
French psychologist Alfred Adler was the first to coin the term “inferiority complex.” Alder believes that all humans experience feelings of inferiority when they are children. They, in turn, spend the rest of their lives trying to compensate for these feelings.
These feelings usually change from dependence in childhood and develop towards independence in adulthood. Despite this change, these feelings of inferiority are still present – albeit at more persistent and varied levels.
For some people, this can become a motivating factor. They use feelings of inferiority to push them to become better performing individuals.
However, some have become controlling it. Feelings of inferiority become so overwhelming that they paralyze them.
They have become so paralyzed that they become extremely shy and have an overwhelming sense of unworthiness. Worse still, they tend to prevent themselves from failing by not trying at all.
As a result, you may feel that you are not as good as others and need to show off and look different to prove your worth.
This sounds like narcissism in some cases and can make you feel lonelier than you ever imagined.
It’s not your fault, because that’s the way you were raised, but it’s your responsibility to do something about it now so you can figure out why you are the way you are.
5) You feel anxious about life.
Everyone experiences some form of anxiety in their life from time to time, but if you’re feeling anxious about life itself, or about being alive, and you don’t seem to have any reason for that to be the case, you might turn your lens to your screen. Childhood and think about the connections that may exist between everyday events that make you anxious now and things that happened to you when you were younger that also caused forms of anxiety in your life.
Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Dodging Energy Vampires, describes what can happen when you have a long-term relationship with a narcissist. Ultimately, it drains you so emotionally that it can lead to other problems, even ones that affect your health.
While this is primarily talking about romantic relationships with narcissists, it can also be the case if your parents are narcissists.
Being held to high standards that are impossible for you to meet, and having parents who only care about themselves and their appearance, can take a toll on you emotionally, mentally, and physically.
6) You can’t assert yourself.
Even if you have residual forms of narcissism from your childhood, you may not be able to assert yourself productively and it will come out wrong.
According to Preston Nee in Psychology Today, the clear sign of a narcissistic parent is the tendency to use the child as an extension of the parent’s desires:
Furthermore, its harmful effects may best be viewed as a restriction of the child’s independence through the need to maintain dependence on parents, which in turn results in the individual being less able to live an adult life.
You may find that you have to scream to get what you want or that you manipulate people into doing things for you so that you don’t have to do them yourself. All forms of narcissism.
Whatever the cause of your thoughts and feelings, if you feel like your parents may have had something to do with your struggles — and they probably do — then you need to get help to manage your situation and come out on the other side as a friend. A better version of yourself than you were yesterday.
#How to treat yourself if you were raised by a narcissist
Growing up is hard enough without having to deal with parents who are completely narcissistic and only care about themselves, their needs, and their way in the world.
If you were raised by people who manipulated your emotions and made you feel bad about yourself, you probably have some healing to do.
While no one has a perfect childhood – and what is a perfect childhood anyway? – Some of us have had more difficulty than others when it comes to getting love and affection from the people who are supposed to help us become functioning adults in the world.
The irony is that your parents probably didn’t have a great start in life either and may not know the difference.
If you are holding on to your past and feel that something needs to change so that you don’t become like your parents, we would like to offer you some ways you can start healing your mind, body, and spirit now.
It may not be easy, but it’s worth it.
1) Learn more about what it means to be a narcissist.
One of the first things you need to do is spend some time learning about what it means to be a narcissist and find out for yourself whether or not you think your parents were actually on the wrong path.
Everyone has a little bit of narcissism in them, so if you feel like your parents had more than their fair share, do some research to see how it affects you and your adulthood before moving on.
