How Grown Children Of Narcissist Parents Can Break Free, Finally

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — “I’ve got a narcissistic mom with psychopathic traits. She’s 83, and I have to take care of her. Zero contact is not an option. It’s painful…” This was a message I received recently on social media, the story of a daughter who continues to suffer from the relationship with her mother. She’s hardly alone.

First, what constitutes a narcissistic parent?

They are parents who have always put themselves first, and made their own welfare more important than their children’s. They have little empathy to give proper, family love.

They also are unable to see their own mistakes — but will readily point out the faults of others. They use various methods of manipulation, such as gaslighting, regardless of the emotional toll on their other. They apologize repeatedly without changing their conduct.

Assuming nobody is born a narcissist, how does someone become a one? They can be the result of parents who let their children get away with the proverbial murder, or the fruit of distant, neglectful parents whose indifference creates, in time, an adult with an obsessive need for love and attention. And there are other formulae… but in any case, none can justify turning on others or making their children’s lives a misery.

Guilt and punishment

The first challenge for anyone from this type of family is perhaps to simply make it to adulthood with their self-esteem as intact as possible. Then, they must forge the healthiest social and affective ties they possibly can. Let me say for the first time here, that you are not guilty of the story that was your lot. But you are responsible for what you do with it.

Narcissistic disorders are stable structurally though with a Richter scale of intensity, and anyone can be a narcissist — your partner, boss, sister, mother or father. The closer the ties, the more difficult it is to distance yourself. That’s how it works.

Narcissistic parents use with a complex cycle of guilt and punishment. A typical interaction may be:

1. A parent wants something (manipulative phase),

2. The child is frustrated/angry (the stage is set for guilt),

3. Attempted reconciliation (guilt phase),

4. The parent’s wishes are met at their child’s expense.

In each interaction, the child’s ego takes repeated blows, and the parent wins at the expense of their child’s degraded dignity.

Fear of abandonment

There comes a moment in life when a change of course is needed. As the parents in question cannot see past the end of their noses they will scupper their children’s attempts to move away, firing the ammunition of guilt at will: “How could you do such a thing to your father/mother?” is one of the cheaper shots.

The guilt-ridden target naturally seeks to rectify or undo the initiative that sparked the rebuke, which is the punishment. Meanwhile the child’s desire, dream or will takes a back seat.

No. No is no, and there’s only one way to say it.

Take this case: “I was planning a weekend away with friends, but my mother asked me to stay home to help supervise the renovation she had arranged. I missed out on the trip: I just felt guilty.” The punishment is not doing what you wanted to win the affection of an unattainable mother.

I should point out that distant parents trigger a basic, essential, survival instinct in children. It is not just about not feeling good enough, but a sense of panic at the threat of total abandonment. In adulthood, children of narcissists may forge links with a similar “supportive” quality, and if the wound is not healed, injuries will recur.

“You’ve taken years from your mother’s life,” a narcissistic father of a very Catholic family tells his daughter who had chosen a Jewish boyfriend.

What can you do?

So what can the child of a narcissist do?

• Seek therapy to work on the guilt felt by the decision to take a distance or set limits;

• Do not expect the parents to change, even with therapy, as the narcissist is not conscious of a problem on their side;

• Find (through therapy) ways to set effective limits;

• Mourning the parent you wanted, and accepting the reality of the one you have. Refusing to see the “sad” reality may turn us into little Don Quixotes of love, going through life chasing our own, imaginary giants;

• Understand you are not a bad person, but a person facing an impossible situation. As psychiatrist José Eduardo Abadi says, it’s not that you’re invisible, just that the other person is blind.

Doctor and writer Hugo Finkelstein wrote about saying “no” in one of his poems: “No. No is no, and there’s only one way to say it. No. Without excitement, interrogations or exclamation marks. There is only one way of saying no. Briefly, swiftly, with a single, sober word. And you say it once. No. In an even tone. No. Like the scratch on a record. No. No is the last word in dignity. It is not a negation of the past but rather, a rectification of the future. The only people who can say yes, are those who can say no.”

That is the no you may need to say to a narcissistic parent, after bearing in mind that:

• You are not guilty of the story thrust upon you, but responsible for what you do with it;

• Narcissistic parents damage self-esteem, making you feel that responsibility is always outside and that you are not enough to achieve good love. That is not the case;

• The inadequacy and hurt are on the other side, which is not your fault.

So if you have to choose, choose yourself. As one man tearfully informed his angry mother; he had “chosen,” after years of belittlement, to take care of himself because he had to.

“Who will take care of me,” she asked.

“I don’t know mother, not me.”

It’s not easy setting a limit, nor is it impossible. It is an expression of self-esteem. And in many cases, like that of the 83-year-old mother, the limits may be gradual because sometimes zero contact is not possible. It will then be a matter of managing the logistics for caring for this mother, visiting her as much as possible while preserving the daughter’s mental health, beyond the mother’s desire and manipulation.

The measure of human suffering lies in the distance between the ideal and possible. I keep thinking lately about how short life is, which is merely to say we have no time to lose. And now is the time to put things in their place. You have no choice as a child, but now, as an adult, you do. And whatever you choose, I wish you the best.