Narcissistic parents create emotional orphans

Hi everyone, this is Athena from Courage Coaching. Welcome to my channel if you are new here. If you would like to subscribe to my channel, this way you can receive notifications for any new videos that I upload. My channel mostly focuses on healing from narcissistic abuse and I offer value insights and tips on how to manage such individuals and lead a more fulfilling and healthy life. In today's video I wanted to talk about parental narcissism. The most common type of family dynamic in an abusive family home is a covert narcissistic parent that is partnered up with an overtly abusive parent and because the overtly one is usually very neglectful, the covert narcissist will end up appearing much more reasonable, much more selfless, much more easygoing and is otherwise good by comparison. However, the covert narcissist will always play the long-suffering martyr. The covert narcissist usually exerts ongoing control over the children by sporadically offering different forms of desperately craved validation. You will notice that cruelty is usually delivered as kindness and they will make excuses by saying, well I only did that because I think it's good for you, I only said that because I really care about you. However, everything that they do is harmful. They are passive-aggressive, they are guilt-tripping, they use constant gaslighting and the child's world is turned upside down. They are extremely confused because there is a constant push and pull dynamic that keeps children in the game and they keep coming back for more, hoping that they will get a little bit of affection from their parent, a little bit of love. However, the love is sadly very conditional when you have narcissistic parents. The overt narcissistic parent is usually not in the picture as much. They may be the ones that are successful businessmen that are earning all the money, that are loved by everybody and they don't spend as much time with their children and they aren't emotionally available for them. They can also be quite aggressive, they can be very neglectful and they can be very harsh and have very high expectations of their children. So they will push their children to be successful because what everybody else says is more important than the child's well-being. Overt narcissists are very much focused on what everybody else says and they don't like being embarrassed by their child. So they expect perfection, they expect the child to make them look good, they want to be proud of their child. So if the child doesn't stick to the image that they have in their head about what a good child should be like, then the child will be severely punished. The problem is that when you have narcissistic parents and they are loved by everybody in society, by their friends, by their co-workers, this makes the child suffer with a lot of cognitive dissonance because they are told by others how wonderful their parents are. However, when they are at home with their parents, they notice that they actually behave completely differently, that their parent is mean, that their parent is punishing, that their parent constantly makes them feel bad about themselves. And this cognitive dissonance is extremely confusing for a young child. Now the covert narcissistic parent uses lots of micro-aggressions, let's just say, which are concealed or cloaked as oversights or slips of the tongue, humour, so they might say something really nasty but then just say, oh, I was only joking, why are you so sensitive? Help or caring concern. So everything that they do that's nasty towards their child will be cloaked as something else. Unfortunately, when you are the child of a narcissistic parent, you are essentially motherless or fatherless or what I like to call an emotional orphan. Because you see, when a parent isn't fit to be a parent, when a parent isn't able to mirror their child, when a parent isn't able to meet their child's emotional needs, isn't able to comfort them, isn't able to love them unconditionally, isn't able to allow them to be the person that they are, to grow into a healthy teenager and then a healthy adult, if they don't validate their children's emotions, if the child grows up feeling very unsafe and completely unprepared for the world, then essentially it's like the child never had a parent. So emotional orphan is what I think is a very good description for this. So many survivors of parental narcissistic abuse go into this world as adults and they don't have a clue how to be in a relationship, they don't have a clue how to assert themselves, they don't have a clue how to ask people for what they need. They are either severely dysfunctional in the way that they relate to people, they aren't able to regulate their emotions, they have difficult problems with attachment, so they're either anxiously attached or avoidant attached or they find it hard forming relationships, children are ill-prepared to deal with employment, if the relationship with the narcissistic parent was very enmeshed or if the narcissistic parent infantilised the child, so kept the child small, kept them at home, kept telling the child that they're not able to make any decisions, that they are too stupid or that they're not smart enough, they're not capable enough. If the narcissistic parent told the child that they're not capable enough to go out into the world and work and do things that most adults are able to do, then the child will be stuck at home, they will be stuck living as a child, not as an adult and they will be ill-prepared to deal with the realities of adult life. So if a child grew up without emotional safety, if they were constantly abandoned emotionally, if they were constantly rejected, if the parent never developed that capacity to show up as an actual caregiver, if they were constantly critical of their children, controlling or demanding in unreasonable ways, then it is very, very difficult for the child to develop in a healthy way. The dysfunction will follow them around into adulthood and they will need to do a lot of work to recover from this, to feel safe, to feel loved, to feel like they love themselves, because they probably go around life feeling like they're not worth it, like they're not good enough. Because if their own parent couldn't love them, then there must be something inherently wrong with them, right? That is the belief that you carry around if you have a parent who didn't love you. If you had a parent who was cruel, who was demeaning, who was controlling and made you feel awful about yourself, it is a huge burden, a huge, huge problem for any survivors of narcissistic parental abuse. When you have such parents, you feel like nobody has your back. If you were lucky enough to maybe have other family around that was healthy, like an aunt or a grandparent, maybe you had siblings that you got on with really well, and without your siblings you wouldn't have survived your childhood, then I'm really, really unhappy for you. Good for you. You know, some of us didn't have that, some of us didn't have close family, or for some of us our parents didn't have siblings, they didn't have brothers or sisters, so we didn't have aunts and uncles that could help out. Some of us didn't even have grandparents around. We didn't have other people around to support us, which makes this experience even more isolating and which can make the CPTSD that we live with as adults very, very difficult. It can be a lot more severe, and of course you've got to remember that every journey, every single individual out there who has had parental narcissistic abuse will live with different types of difficulties in different areas, so you may struggle more with your confidence, you may struggle more with perfectionism, or you may find it really easy to work and be successful, but you may struggle with relationships instead. It is not the same for everybody. Some individuals manage to have very successful lives, you know, they manage to have healthy lives, they do a lot of work, they go to therapy, and they help themselves, but for some it's not as easy. You know, if you had two parents that were narcissistic, it is very, very tough to get away. Unfortunately, it may feel like you are very, very different when you are an adult. You don't feel like you can relate to other friends that maybe had healthy parents, and those friends that had the healthy parents will not have a deep understanding of your traumas, of your CPTSD, and of your symptoms, which is why it's really important when you are recovering, when you understand that you may be living with CPTSD, it's important to surround yourself with other individuals who also understand this journey, who have this sensitivity, and they understand the complexity of having grown up with such dysfunctional family, who have the understanding that your parents were narcissistic, who know what it feels like. I'm not saying that all people that have been through this sort of abuse will be able to be safe, that will be able to nurture you, that will be able to support you, because every single individual that lives with CPTSD will have their weaknesses, will have moments where they're not coping as well. So the best thing you can do is, you know, either get help from a licensed mental health professional, or you can find a coach that has expertise in the areas of narcissistic abuse. It is important to keep supporting yourself, and you know, when you do research on parental narcissistic abuse, there is a lot of stuff out there that may not feel right for you, and that is okay. Every single person will have different ways of coping with this sort of trauma. There are different trauma types, let's not forget. Some people are more of a fawn trauma type, other peoples are more of a fight or flight trauma type, and there's some of us who are also freeze types. Some of us may also have hybrid trauma types, so these are the ways that we cope in the world, right? And if you haven't read Pete Walker's book, From Surviving to Thriving, then please buy it. It is an absolute lifesaver. But if you struggle, if you really, really struggle in your adult life, if you find it hard having relationships, if your self-esteem is extremely low, if you constantly have this snagging feeling that you're not good enough, that you're not able to keep up with the rest of the world, with the rest of your friends, then look into it, you know, start asking those questions, and try and support yourself, try and get yourself the support and the help that you need in order to be happier in your life, and to try and lead a more fulfilling life. Recovery is a process, it's not easy, it is all over the place, sometimes it's five steps forward, ten steps back, but it is rewarding in the long run. You can have a better quality of life, and you can be your own best friend. Keep the negative people out, keep the family members away from you, go no contact if you have to. If this means that it will protect you, and it will preserve your sanity, and this will enable you to heal, then going no contact is a very, very good choice. Just because a narcissist is family, this doesn't mean that you have to continue this relationship. It is not worth it if you are constantly being harmed emotionally. So, that is the end of the video today. Thank you so much for watching and for listening. If you have any questions at all, then please feel free to email me at courageisallyouneedatgmail.com. Take care, and I will see you very soon. Bye-bye.