Narcissist's Child

When a toxic person can no longer control you, 

they will try to control how others see you. 

The misinformation will feel unfair, but stay above it, 

trusting that other people will eventually see the truth, 

just like you did. 

~Jill Blakeway

Growing up I had a friend I spent all my time with, and mostly at her house with her single mother. I remember a time when her mother had got home from a hard day at work, frustrated from trying events she had endured, and snapped at my friend for something that typically wasn’t an issue with her. As I waited upstairs, I overheard my friend tell her mom that it embarrassed her for it to have happened in front of me. Then something I almost couldn’t believe happened, her mother apologized. But that’s what people when they love each right? Rationally explain how an action made them feel, and when you care for someone you don’t want to be the cause of their pain. The behavior is corrected to ensure that you don’t cause any more pain to a loved one and the relationship is happily restored by mother and daughter.

That was never how it worked when you grow up with a narcissist. Naturally we all want to be in control of our own life, it’s when you try to control the lives of everyone around you, truly can’t sleep until you get your way, it’s defined as a disorder. No matter how rational and calm, literally spending hours rehearsing and practicing the perfect way to word your feelings, when you tell a narcissist that their actions hurt you, be ready for a blown out of proportion, nasty argument. Why should asking for a little consideration, and wanting to share your feeling, cause so much turmoil? I spent many years sitting my room after one of these episodes wondering what I had done wrong. What could I have said differently for that to have ended in a more tranquil discussion?

It wasn’t until adulthood I learned that there wasn’t anything I could have done differently; there was just no other outcome when dealing with narcissist. These are people who typically came from a home with the same type of dysfunctional narcissist. Deep down, they feel vulnerable and protect themselves by controlling everything in their lives, even the people in them. The need to control can be so overwhelming to the narcissist that they don’t see the stress and destruction it is causing the people around them. Being so wrapped up with anxiety, unhappiness, anger, and insecurities they can’t rationally process what they are feeling, fear of failure or exposure. Compromise is nearly impossible and negotiation is a waste of energy; they are very exhausting to live with or socialize with.

Into my adulthood I realized that when those heated arguments happened, the person felt they had to win, or they would feel exposed or vulnerable. We all lose an argument at some point in our lives, we take our defeat and grow from it. A narcissist sees that defeat as a failure and will do anything to avoid being seen as such. The stakes in these arguments take on the role of their identity, so they deploy control tactics to gain a temporary illusion and sense of worth. These tactics can manifest as threat of loss, threat of suicide, and acting as victim, which is all to gain the sympathy of the other person and end the argument before exposing their vulnerability. The favorite tactic in my childhood household was the narcissist using self-pity in the form of continuously repeating ‘I am just a horrible person’. We want our loved ones to know they are important so, naturally, we start to comfort the narcissist and argument has ended; the narcissist doesn’t have to fail this time. Once this has worked once, and proven to work, it will continue to be used as a tactic.

This is just the beginning of the roller-coaster. After one of these fights, the narcissist excepts you to go about like nothing ever happened. An apology for anything they said or did during an argument will never happen. Humility is not something they are equipped to deal with, and typically lack remorse or empathy to understand the pain they inflict on others. They see it as you are choosing to feel that way, that you could just as easily choose not to feel pain. If you apologize for any hurtful actions you made, they will forgive you and take with them a sense of reassurance that they remain in control. Once again, we are the picture-perfect family, except with a ticking time bomb that will explode again.

Being the child of a narcissist, we are often walking on egg shells, unsure as to when the rage will be unleashed. The ability to change their mood from aggressive to loving in a flash keeps us feeling unstable and clinging to them. This only boost their confidence and self-worth. Traumatically, this only teaches us to obey out of fear rather than love. No child wants to constantly be in a never winning battle, so we work hard to please the parent at all cost. Learning that you only receive love and affection from your narcissistic parent when you are obedient gives us the image that all love has conditions on it. Regretfully, that means that the child will grow up to be confused about what love looks like. They know that to receive the narcissist parent’s love they must act accordingly and please the narcissist at all cost. The moment they turn away from the narcissist all hell can seem to be breaking loose. We end up attracting narcissist as partners with the people pleasing behavior we learned to survive with; or end up growing up to be narcissist ourselves.

When we reach adulthood, we reach the time that is hardest to deal with our narcissistic parent. When we start to become independent and fully functioning adults, the narcissist still feels the entitlement to control our lives. A term that I have heard about a certain type of narcissist is “mailignant narcissist’. Having this type of narcissist as a parent means you know the meaning of punishment, you know what fear is. They must activity win and they intentionally want to see you hurt in the process for the sheer pleasure of it. They need more than the control to satisfy their inner self worth, they want to make sure you are punished in the process.

Growing up in the control of a malignant narcissist parent, is a terrifying and emotionally agonizing experience. It is often described as being rejected and denied value as a person, being exploited and used for the narcissist’s profit or advantage, terrorized by intimidation, control, coercion, and stalking, being dismissed, humiliated, manipulated, and belittled, violated by pathological envy, greed, and entitlement, being plundered, pillaged and systematically destroyed. Narcissistic abuse tears at a person’s self-worth and displays in social withdrawal, anxiety, fearfulness, depression, self-blame and self-destructive behavior. It results in feelings of guilt, shame, inadequacy and powerlessness.

Narcissist are very good at adapting and being able to choose what side they wish to show you. When they first meet someone, they can be very charming and caring. They have many sides to them and will choose which to show you depending on what their needs are. Characteristically, they will not show you the other side until they are denied what they want. Their sense of entitlement cannot fathom why they would be denied anything, but there is one thing you can guarantee, they will make you pay. They will obsess and hold resentment until they are able to deliver that punishment. It may even be years down the road, when the memory has been warped and escalated in their mind, but they will unleash punishment for denying them control. To deny control to your narcissistic mother she will feel it is her duty to exact that punishment. No matter how old her adult child is, she is still to be in control of them and have full obedience. It becomes a type of obsession, controlling the narcissist every thought and action. They will manipulate and control how others view the situation to gain support and often sympathy. 

One instance of this that happened in my household was during a family Christmas several years ago. My uncle’s wife had made a scene and stormed out of my grandmother’s home. As we all talked about the events that had just took place, my narcissistic parent made a comment to my uncle about how awful his wife was, and he shouldn’t be with a woman like that. Becoming defensive for the woman that he loved, my uncle snapped back at her “she helps me, you don’t help me”. My narcissistic parent couldn’t fathom that he would snap at her and over the next several years systematically worked to destroy him. When telling people why she was doing it, she left out the part of the story where she had made a nasty comment to him first and simply claimed ‘he snapped at me out of nowhere’. The memory of that event had become so warped in her mind that she believed herself that she was innocent of any wrong doing. It became an obsession for her, daily she would look him up on her computer just to read his background, which was only updated every 120 days. It consumed her life and became her mission to inflict punishment on him.

“Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.” Narcissistic parents rewrite what has factually happened in the past, to make themselves look righteous, and deny certain events ever occurred. The narcissist uses gaslighting to inflate situation to make the audience, or the people she is receiving sympathy from, see the child as being at fault. Often, as the child, we feel as though we are going insane as we are not able to find anyone who identifies with what we are going through.”

The most important thing for us, as the child, to remember is that although the actions of the narcissist feels cold, calculating, and meditated, the parent is unaware of the damage and trauma they are causing.  Unable to identify other’s emotions, and lacking compassion, they are simply unable to understand and feel empathy towards others. We solely exist to benefit them and are merely an extension of them. As the child of a narcissist, the parent doesn’t grasp that I am my own person that developed my own emotional requirements and manipulates so I am unable to express my own feelings. 

As we grow, we must start to heal from the emotional turmoil we have endure all our lives. Understanding that what we experienced is not our fault, and the narcissist is unable to maintain a healthy parent role, we can slowly heal and form healthy relationships in other parts of our lives. It may take a long time for use to understand the actions of a narcissist, but as we learn more about the condition the easier it becomes to heal.  Boundaries are essential if continuing a relationship with the narcissistic parent, as denying access to the emotions they need to trigger in order to control you will help the child and parent have a healthy relationship in the future. Sometimes, regretfully, maintaining a healthy relationship is not possible and knowing when to separate yourself is critical to leading a healthy life with healthy relationships.