Being raised by a narcissist is really difficult because you are pretty much being raised by a child stuck in their trauma in an adult body. Because of this, you will find yourself catering to that narcissistic parent. You are not able to form a sense of self, and you are left carrying all these unhealed wounds. You don’t get to learn things like healthy boundaries, what a healthy relationship looks like and so it can be really painful and traumatic. There are things you have to deal with that other children don’t and because of this, it causes you to have to survive from the abuse rather than grow. These are some of the effects of that abuse.
One thing you may notice about yourself is that you assume a lot when it comes to other people. Now assuming is normal, but when it comes to someone that was raised by a narcissistic parent, you felt you had to try to read their minds. So you would watch their behavior and knew when they did this certain thing the outcome would be this. This was a skill you had to take on to protect yourself and be ready for whatever happens.
You may also notice that you are very observant. You will pay attention to what other people are doing since you were always on high alert as a child. For example, you knew that if mom was stomping that meant she was going to lash out at you as that is what she has done in the past. So this can cause you to pay close attention to other people and observe before acting. You try to assume and predict people’s patterns a lot more than other people.
You are trying to create certainty/comfort, or consistency as you dealt with a lot of uncertainty and inconsistency. This will cause you to try to predict things out of your control. And because you are so used to dealing with an unhealthy parent when you make assumptions about other people it may be out of left field. If you were to bring this assumption up to them they would be confused and wonder where it is coming from. For example, a friend may not answer you one day so you assume that they’re mad and you will have to make amends when in reality they’re just busy. In your mind, it is all about trying to predict so you can create safety and you know how to protect yourself.
Something you may notice about yourself is, it is easy for you to be like a chameleon in different surroundings. It is easy for you to get along with different people in different settings. This is because that is what you had to do with your narcissistic parent. You had to be exactly who they wanted/needed to be in order to survive. You also will struggle with these feelings of never being good enough. Narcissistic parents have unrealistic expectations so you felt like you needed to catch up to be enough for them and get their approval. But it never seemed enough no matter what you did. This causes you to struggle with a sense of self because you are trying to uphold their expectations of you rather than thinking of yourself.
You also were most likely terrified to have needs. You were always made to feel like you could not have wants or needs, couldn’t have feelings, or allowed to be your own person. Being who they needed you to be is something you felt often. Also, you may notice you run on fear and guilt, so a lot of the decisions you make are on preventing you from trying to feel bad or from dealing with your anxiety. There is a lot of anxiety something negative is going to happen or that you will displease others. You don’t really make decisions based on yourself and what you actually want. The decisions you make are made around others.
Not only that but you most likely struggle with a lot of self-doubt. Your narcissistic parent instilled that self-doubt in you constantly about you and your decisions. They told you how you should or should not feel about things. This self-doubt confuses you and causes you to not trust yourself. That is why it is easier to make decisions based on how others are feeling or think as well as going based on your fear and guilt.
You are not really aware of your own wants and needs and even if you are, you are terrified to even meet those needs or don’t feel like you can. In the past, you felt helpless and like those things did not matter so you feel this sense that you don’t matter or you don’t deserve those things. You not having a sense of self or trusting yourself causes other people to take advantage of you which will cause you to wind up in more narcissistic relationships. That means friends or partners or even bosses.
Not only were you blamed for a lot of things and made to feel things were your fault, but also as a child, we crave our parent’s love and affection. We crave our parent’s acceptance. Narcissists can’t accept, love, or validate their children. This causes you to take that mindset as a young child of thinking it is your fault and you can make it better. You will think things like “If I fix this, maybe daddy will love me”. Or “If I was the type of person mommy wants then maybe she’ll be happy and I’ll be loved.” That mindset makes you feel like things are your fault as children can’t reason and understand it has nothing to do with them.
Now as an adult since you were constantly blamed for things or made to feel like things are your fault, you now have that voice in your head. You have thoughts like “If I did this, this would not have happened, it’s my fault.” This hurts you in your relationships as you will always take accountability that you may miss what other people are doing to you. Or you won’t realize the lack of accountability from others. You will constantly focus on fixing yourself and viewing yourself as the problem when you may not be the issue. Maybe you are a part but you are not 100% the issue. You will constantly take the blame and feel like things are your fault.
Guilt is a feeling where you feel you did something wrong. A little bit of guilt is normal, when you do something wrong deemed by society you will feel somewhat guilty. Growing up with a narcissist, you will deal with constantly feeling guilty. But it is not real guilt, it’s fake guilt. You feel guilt for things that a person in a healthy home wouldn’t and that have nothing to do with you or are not your fault. Even simple things like taking care of yourself can make you feel guilty.
You may notice it is very easy for you to feel guilty. Even if the person is not trying to make you feel guilty, you will still feel guilty. For instance, let’s say you don’t do something someone wants, you immediately feel like you’re doing something wrong and that is that fake guilt. It is this constant feeling like you are wrong or you’re doing something wrong.
When you have a narcissistic parent, they are very selfish and they are very self centered. They will project onto you that you can not have needs or be selfish because they think they are this selfless person. So in order to deal with the cognitive dissonance, they will then project and act like you are the selfish one.
As a kid, you may ask for simple things like something to eat and your narcissistic parent will condemn you for thinking about yourself. When you hear things like that it causes you to feel guilty and like you are doing something wrong by asking for your basic needs.
Not only that but whenever you didn’t do something they wanted, they would make you feel guilty for it. So since you constantly had to deal with this as a child, now as an adult you may notice you constantly run on guilt. You will feel guilty for things that are not wrong. Things like being a little selfish or saying no.
Now as an adult you need to learn what you feel is right and wrong as you have been taught incorrectly. Think of it this way, thinking of what is right from wrong is subjective. So you as an adult need to determine what you feel is right from wrong. But remember the one thing that is not wrong is taking care of yourself or saying no!
Our attachment styles come from our childhood which you can see more about in this post. With Insecure attachment, it can go one of 2 ways. You can be avoidant where you are very distant and you avoid people/relationships. Basically, you avoid close relationships like the plague. You are very independent, don’t feel like people are dependable, and don’t feel like you need them.
Or you will go the other way where you will be anxious. You are very needy and feel angry or anxious when you feel people are about to abandon you. When you feel that, you may shut people out and punish them or you may be demand attention. Which in turn makes you look desperate and needy.
This happens because your parent was inconsistent with taking care of you. So you didn’t know when your needs would be met so it caused you to be very afraid of the world and feel you can’t trust yourself or anyone. If you feel you can not trust your parent, then you no longer feel anyone else is safe. Your attachment style and relationships with your parents is where you understand what your outside relationships will be like.
Your body and brain have a memory of how you were treated starting at 6 months old. So you may not physically remember it with pictures but your subconscious does. And so you carry that trauma with you.
As a child you most likely heard subliminal messages making you feel like you needed their help or that you couldn’t do things yourself. Things like ” oh you probably need my help.” Or “that was dumb, that is why you need me.” So these seeds get planted in your mind and you feel like you need them.
Also from having an inconsistent parent you feel you can not trust them or others. Trust is formed in childhood through your bond with your parents. Your parent showed through their words and actions they were not trustworthy. Their actions didn’t match their words or they said things they didn’t go through with. It always felt unsafe.
This makes you feel like you can’t trust others as well because if your own parents do this, then other people must do that or worse. This then leads you to be around toxic and manipulative people because if you can’t trust yourself or others you will go towards what feels familiar. This can feel like the world is scary and everyone is like this.
Complex is different than PTSD as it starts early in your childhood, from your caretaker, and for long periods of time. If you are someone that suffers from complex you will notice you feel a lot of shame and guilt, you have chronic anxiety, and live in a state of fear and panic. You will have a hard time controlling your emotions and will feel an emptiness. That emptiness is the lack of validation from your parents and self-love. So you may notice yourself feeling empty and then filling it with drugs, sex, intimacy, work, or alcohol. It will work for a little while but you will notice it coming back.
It will keep coming back as you didn’t heal that wound. You still have that lack of validation and self-love. Also, you will feel alone like you are different than others and no one understands you. Your emotions are so intense as you were always in survival mode and you don’t know how to get out of it.
Most children who have narcissistic parents suffer from complex as you deal with abuse for long periods of time and you’re being gaslit to believe they’re caring and it’s just you. It is a cycle and it causes you to blame yourself and be angry at yourself or your abuser.
This is big if you were the scapegoat of the family. If your parent is a child stuck in abuse and you are a child yourself, someone is going to be left to need to be the parent. And guess what? It won’t be your self-centered parent!
This goes hand in hand with codependency of feeling like you need to take care of others. You’re the first person to take charge and take care of everyone. As a child, you felt like you had to grow up fast and take on responsibility. You may notice these lingering feelings of sadness since you didn’t really get to have a childhood and had to be the parent instead. You will also feel sad and resentful as you had to be the parent and take on so much responsibility.
So you may notice yourself sometimes acting childish as you weren’t able to as a child. No matter how old you are you may act out in immature manners. You didn’t get to experience these things so you may be reckless or do childish things sometimes.
Most people who were raised by a narcissistic parent feel sad about their childhood and not having the parent they longed for. It sucks. Feel like you had to grow up fast and couldn’t have that fun relaxing childhood experience. You always had to live in fear, have anxiety, have sadness, and empty feelings.
The thing that codependents and narcissists have in common is they both were not validated as children. They both were very traumatized and didn’t have their wants and needs met. And they both felt like they couldn’t be their own person.
These are usually the scapegoats. The way codependents deal with the trauma is they look for the approval of others, people-pleasing. fixing, overly helping. This is how they feel others will like and accept them. They feel validated when they do things like people please and help others. It can become really addicting as they feel like they need to do it to feel good and fill the emptiness.
These are usually the golden children. They are on the other end of the spectrum. Whereas codependents feel validated through helping others, narcissists feel validated through supply and being selfish. The supply is people’s reaction (positive or negative) and by manipulating and controlling others. They mainly think me, me, me how do I fulfill me. You could also be a codependent narcissist where you need to be needed. As well as you can have a couple of narcissistic tendencies and not be a narcissist.
It is all revolved around ego. Both the codependent and the narcissist have a wounded ego. Something you may notice is that you have a big ego to protect yourself. You will notice yourself being very defensive and obsessed with your image and how you are perceived. You can get very stuck on your image, how you’re perceived, and how others think of you. This is because your narcissistic parent cared a lot about image and instilled that in your head.
The ego is there to protect you. It is a shield from your insecurities or a lie to yourself. This is a way for you to deal with those wounds. So you don’t have to face the reality of things. It also comes from the fact that as a child you were out down, beat down, and hurt tremendously. So you put this ego up to protect yourself to fight against any criticism as it is hard to hear any criticism.
When you grow up with a narcissistic parent, they don’t allow boundaries. That is their kryptonite, they have boundaries. Boundaries are fences and they do not like to do what they want. Narcissists view their children as extensions of themselves.
So you may notice they will do things like talk about things you don’t want them to talk about. Or go through your personal stuff when you asked them not to. Or maybe get overly involved with your friendships. And they will touch you when you don’t want to be touched. Which is a big thing with narcissists is that they will touch and hug you and if you don’t want them to they will let you know they can as they’re your parent.
Because of this you now don’t know how people should treat you. You don’t know you’re allowed to say no or allowed to have boundaries. So you may tolerate a lot of unhealthy things because you think it’s normal. that is what you grew up with and that’s what your parents did.
As an adult you need to understand it is not normal and you are allowed to have boundaries and say no.
What do you guys think? Leave it all in the comments below!
