One sign you grew up with a narcissistic parent is that you were never allowed to think something was wrong with them or their parenting. The only permitted conclusion was that something was wrong with you. Of course, children growing up with such a message inherit a heavy mix of shame, a guilt they can’t place, and an anger they learned to swallow.
As a child of narcissistic parents, you might be great at achieving things, but feel empty doing it. Relationships also feel either empty or confusing, like you’re always auditioning to be useful or are waiting to be exposed. And underneath all that, if you listen really well, you can hear the low hum of anxiety.
What a Narcissistic Parent Really Is
People throw the word “narcissist” around a lot. But, in this case, we’re talking about a specific pattern. Researchers describe it as a form of “pathological parenting” where the parent views the child as a “natural extension of themselves” (Mahoney, Rickspoone, & Hull, 2016). At their core, narcissistic parents are often deeply insecure. They have a fragile sense of self and feel background shame. They are, ironically, dependent, as they look for something outside themselves to lean on, to stabilize their own shaky worth. And that something, oftentimes and regretfully, becomes their child.
To such parents, the child is not a separate person with their own emerging world. The child is seen in one of three ways:
- as a mere extension of the parent, like an extra limb;
- as a function, there to perform and make the parent look good;
- or as a half-animate object, used to regulate the parent’s own self-esteem.
The child serves a “particular function in this made-up world,” and failing to fulfill it creates “distress in the parent, and contempt in the parent-child relationship” and makes the parent react emotionally, aggressively, or unpredictably. This setup grants “only one side with the power to make decisions”—the parent, of course (Mahoney et al., 2016).
The Rules of Narcissistic Parents
Narcissistic parents stick to the unwritten rules, which the child is expected to learn and adapt to.
- The first rule is control. The message is, “I know exactly who you should be. Now fit that picture.” For instance, a child drawn to art might be funneled solely into advanced math, their passion dismissed as a distraction from the pre-written role of “the academic.” Similarly, a child’s sadness would be labeled “too sensitive,” and their anger “disrespectful,” teaching them that their authentic feelings are flaws to be edited out.
- The second rule is shame. “If you step out of my picture, I will make you feel small and wrong for it.” This can include awkward, violating talks or creating an environment thick with judgment. This dynamic is seen in the parent ridiculing a child’s chosen outfit in front of guests, dissecting their social mistakes long after an event, or having invasive, age-inappropriate conversations about sex or family secrets.
- The third rule is that love is conditional. Affection is withdrawn as punishment, often through silence or ignoring you. They might isolate the child, criticizing their friends, so their world stays small and centered on the parents.
- The fourth rule is emotional availability on demand. They expect the child’s immediate attention when they want it, but are often absent when the child needs it. Think of the parent who demands constant contact through phone conversations, whether you can accommodate or not, or intrude on an adult life without invitation, such as going through the (adult) child’s closet.
What the Child Feels
You learn to answer parents’ questions, not your own. If someone asks you, “What do you want? What do you feel?” you might hit a wall of static. Internal beliefs form: “I am selfish if I think of myself,” and “I am responsible for how other people feel.”
When the narcissistic neglect happens over time, it might cause what experts call a “cumulative, developmental trauma” (Mahoney et al., 2016). It’s a core injury, a narcissistic wound, the message of your fundamental unimportance.
Being made to feel unnecessary by the very person responsible for them stirs in a child a profound, annihilating terror. The trauma is then cemented by chronic shame about either having their needs or their mere existence. The research notes that children in these environments can experience a “shattering of the self” and a “process of depersonalization,” which attacks their ability to experience themselves as a real person (Mahoney et al., 2016).
How the Child Adapts
To cope, children typically find a role. These are survival strategies, not conscious choices.
- The first common strategy is identification. You think, “I will become like you (“you” in this case is your parent, your partner, your friend, or your boss).” Or it becomes, “I will become exactly the person you want me to be.”
- The second strategy is submission, often called co-narcissism. Here, the child decides, “I will be your quiet background. I will agree, I will please, I will disappear. Just do not reject me.” This creates adults who are strongly oriented toward others, with a blurred sense of self. Alice Miller called this “pathological caretaking,” where the child becomes “dedicated to the prediction, and attunement to the needs of parents and others, while truncating the development and expression of one’s own feelings and needs” (as cited in Mahoney et al., 2016).
- The third strategy is rebellion. Defiant, difficult teenage years are common. But this is often just another form of hidden submission. Your entire energy is, or was, still organized around the parent, just in opposition. You were not free; you were defined by your resistance.
As adults, these adaptations harden into scripts. You find yourself in relationships where you are the useful one, the rescuer, the one who is always sorry. You fear conflict because it feels like a threat to your very existence. Or you might feel a haunting emptiness, a sense that you are faking your own life. You do not feel like yourself, but rather like an object for “consumption and gratification of others’ needs” (Mahoney et al., 2016). And you feel you need to prove you’re worth something.
Finding a Way Out
The lifelong goal for adult children of narcissists is to learn how to be themselves and how to live without adapting (i.e., without losing themselves in another person, playing the savior, or serving as a functional object). And one can’t walk this road without first undertaking self-discovery, which is necessary to reveal a true self, not one demanded or defined by a parent.
Ultimately, the goal is the “restoration of the self” (Mahoney et al., 2016), a healing from the legacy of chronic shame, lost voice, and disrupted emotions. This restoration is about finding yourself against the backdrop of parents who wanted you to be a part of them. It inevitably involves gaining the courage to feel your own anger and to admit the hurt that happened.
For some people, therapy provides the first non-narcissistic relationship of their life. For others, the path may look different, but for all, the journey away from their narcissistic parents’ rules and expectations is essential as a journey back to a self that is truly their own.