Key Points

Narcissistic parents treat their children as tools for their self-enhancement, and largely ignore their children’s developmental needs.

Children of narcissistic parents often suffer from low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression as adults.

To heal from the effects of a narcissistic parent, evaluation by a licensed mental health professional is always key.

In her initial psychotherapy session, Cathy, a 33-year-old married woman, struggled with recurring depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and particular difficulties with self-image and self-esteem. She reported that throughout her life she had struggled with feelings of worthiness, coherence, and wholeness. She often felt like she didn’t exist, or didn’t deserve to exist at all.

Over time, I noticed that Cathy had very charged and conflicted feelings toward her parents. She denied any overt abuse or abandonment in childhood. It was only gradually, as treatment progressed, that she began to reveal her disturbing history of emotional neglect by self-absorbed parents who showed a strange indifference to her childhood needs. In response to my expressed concerns about the harm such treatment causes, she immediately rushed to deny the truth or significance of what I had just shared.

Narcissists as Parents

I have come to see the difficulties described above as part of a syndrome associated with a specific type of childhood emotional neglect and invalidation (Zaslav, 2018) resulting from growing up with one or more narcissistic parents.

Narcissistic parents rarely consciously set out to undermine or ignore their children. They treat their children as they would treat others—as tools for self-enhancement.

People with narcissistic personality traits exhibit grandiosity, an excessive need for admiration, a lack of empathy, a clear sense of entitlement, an intolerance of criticism, and a tendency to manipulate others. Because of their inability to view children (or anyone else) as separate from themselves, with distinct attitudes, motivations, or feelings, narcissists are indifferent to, and unable to empathize with, the child’s developmental needs.

Related : 5 Ways Narcissists Damage Loving Relationships

Through the work of attachment theorists, we have learned the critical importance of parental attunement to healthy brain and emotional development. Through the process of interacting with a caregiver who is able to understand and reciprocally respond to the child’s behavior, the child gradually develops emotional self-regulation functions. The child identifies with and ultimately internalizes the feedback from the engaged caregiver in the context of developing a stable and positive sense of self. Parents who are preoccupied with self-enhancement are unable to provide this nurturing. The child’s need for attention and care may be perceived as interfering with the parent’s self-preoccupation, leading to boredom or resentment.

Insecure Attachment

Poor attunement and lack of parental attention impacts the developing child’s brain during the first few years of life. This can lead to anxious attachment, a condition manifested by low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression that Cathy displays well into adulthood.

The lack of early experiences that instill self-regulatory abilities can lead to behavioral or addictive problems such as eating disorders as a means of managing the underlying hunger for nurturing. Compulsive eating, drugs, or alcohol becomes a self-regulatory routine.

NarcissisticRejection

The eternal exclamation, “Mom, look at me!” echoes in playgrounds around the world, and especially early in life, children need parental attention and recognition. But for the narcissist, a child’s accomplishments tend to provoke envy or competition.

For example, in Kathy’s case, she recalled that she was a good student but received little recognition when she brought home her grades. Instead, when any school achievement was mentioned, her father would take the opportunity to reminisce about his own academic experiences, musing that the young graduates of his company today were simply “smart,” lacking his real-world brilliance. This type of invalidation continued into her adult life, leading Kathy to largely give up on trying to share her current life and professional successes with her parents.

A special kind of inadequacy arises from a family dominated by the idea of ​​parental self-gratification. The family system normalizes and enforces participation in a grandiose fantasy of parental perfection—no fault or problem can be acknowledged. A child raised in such a family begins to question the legitimacy of his or her own diametrically opposed observations and feelings. Children in this situation feel almost nonexistent. They assume that their needs must be unimportant.

Further complicating the picture, self-absorbed parents may sometimes intrusively and thoughtlessly violate boundaries, burdening the child with their own personal and private issues. The attention-seeking child may then adopt the role of the parent’s trusted guardian. In this way, the child becomes the parent, while simultaneously denying unmet childhood needs.

What Drives People to Therapy?

As is common, Kathy’s motivation for seeking therapy as an adult was the experience of having a family of her own. Like most neglected children, Kathy assumed that she had received the usual and deserved level of attention and care in her childhood. It was only when she was overwhelmed by a profound (and very natural) degree of care and attention for her children that she was overwhelmed by the lack of care she had received as a child. She had always had strong negative feelings towards her parents, avoided contact with them and felt guilty for doing so. Suddenly, she began to wonder whether her chronic psychological problems might be related to this awareness of her childhood neglect.

GettingHelp

As we can see, the adult personality of narcissistic children floats on a vague and poorly defined infantile sense of self, exacerbated by systematic invalidation during later development. These problems are quite treatable. The first step is to review exactly what happened in childhood, and to break the lifelong patterns of denial that the narcissistic family system has reinforced.

If you are a child of a narcissist, it is important that you let go of feelings of guilt or disloyalty as you review yourself. You deserve healing. You will also need to let go of any fantasies or hopes that your parents will acknowledge or accept responsibility for your problems. In my experience, if you try to do this, your family members will angrily blame you for being unappreciative and “selfish.”

Therapy can work on several fronts. With your therapist, you can review the diagnostic signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder that your parent displays. With a competent therapist who pays attention to your needs, notices patterns of emotional reactions, and provides context for them, there will be an element of reparenting. You will begin to practice self-compassion, and learn who you were and are fundamentally. Perhaps now that you are a parent, you will understand what was missing from your childhood and how to move forward in life.

I always recommend writing about your childhood, including what you remember, your feelings about what you remember, and what confuses or escapes you. You will be surprised how difficult this can be at first, but it will eventually clarify. It is also helpful to write at least a brief summary of your feelings and reactions to your current interactions with your parents. What did you notice, and how might this behavior have affected you as a child? Again, I would advise against sharing these writings with your parents.

Obviously, your issues will vary depending on your history and any underlying inherited predispositions. Evaluation by a licensed mental health professional is always key, but healing from the effects of a narcissistic parent can begin at any time.