The victims of narcissistic parent abuse typically feel ashamed, unimportant, and insignificant. They may also feel responsible for the abusive behaviour or believe that they deserved their treatment. There are different types of narcissistic parent abuse. It can be physical, psychological, and emotional.
Children who grow up with a narcissistic parent tend to suffer from at least some of the following as children and as adults: anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, self-doubt, self-blame, indecision, people-pleasing tendencies, difficulties with emotional intimacy, and codependent relationships.
Growing up with a narcissistic parent can be difficult. The children of a narcissist are often children who grow up to be codependent, people-pleasers, and have low self-esteem. They may never feel good enough for their parents or themselves.
PTSD from Childhood Trauma
If you have grown up with a narcissistic parent, there are many instances in which they may have traumatized you throughout your childhood. This can lead to PTSD or cPTSD in adulthood. PTSD can result from overt abuse and neglect, emotional neglect, and gaslighting.
A narcissistic parent will often abuse the normal parental role of guiding their children and being the primary decision maker in the child's life, becoming overly possessive and controlling. This possessiveness and excessive control disempowers the child; the parent sees the child simply as an extension of themselves.
The psychological effects of a narcissistic mother on her daughter can be long-lasting. The daughter may struggle with trust issues, abandonment issues, and self-esteem issues. She may also find it difficult to form healthy relationships due to the emotional manipulation she experienced from her mother.
The distorted perception of reality a narcissistic parent imposes on a child can have damaging consequences as an adult at work and home. The lack of self-esteem, obsessive thinking, minimization of abuse, excessive anxiety, and fear-based reactions are common among adult children of narcissists.
Narcissism tends to emerge as a psychological defence in response to excessive levels of parental criticism, abuse or neglect in early life. Narcissistic personalities tend to be formed by emotional injury as a result of overwhelming shame, loss or deprivation during childhood.
The aftermath of narcissistic abuse can include depression, anxiety, hypervigilance, a pervasive sense of toxic shame, emotional flashbacks that regress the victim back to the abusive incidents, and overwhelming feelings of helplessness and worthlessness.
A golden child's sense of self and their personal boundaries are erased, as their own sense of identity is replaced with the need to live up to their role. Their behaviors and beliefs reflect what their parent expects of them, and they may feel incapable of individuation even in adulthood.
At the end of a relationship, narcissists may become combative, passive-aggressive, hostile, and even more controlling. People with NPD often fail to understand other people's needs and values. They are hyper focused on their egos, but do not account for how their actions affect others.
Narcissistic parents are often emotionally abusive to their children, holding them to impossible and constantly changing expectations. Those with narcissistic personality disorder are highly sensitive and defensive. They tend to lack self-awareness and empathy for other people, including their own children.
But children who were extremely melodramatic, and who also had parents that ignored or neglected them, spoiled them constantly, or insisted on perfection, were more likely to become narcissists in adulthood.
Recent studies confirm that narcissistic parents are incapable of truly loving others, even their own children.
A narcissistic mother may feel entitled or self-important, seek admiration from others, believe she is above others, lack empathy, exploit her children, put others down, experience hypersensitivity to criticism, believe she deserves special treatment, and worst of all, maybe naïve to the damage she is causing.
According to Thomaes & Brummelman, the development of narcissism begins at around the ages of 7 or 8. This is the time when children begin to evaluate themselves according to how they perceive others.
Often, NPD will begin in the teenage years or early adulthood. Personality disorders are typically diagnosed at 18 years or older, according to Hallett.
The development of narcissistic traits is in many cases, a consequence of neglect or excessive appraisal. In some cases, this pathological self-structure arises under childhood conditions of inadequate warmth, approval and excessive idealization, where parents do not see or accept the child as they are.
Children who grow up in narcissistic family dynamic struggle with low self-esteem/confidence, indecisiveness, need external validation, experience poor relationships, especially romantic, in adulthood, and are unable to recognize and meet their own emotional needs(1).
Daughters of narcissistic fathers are prone to blaming themselves and may even struggle with self-sabotage, negative self-talk, self-blame as well as various methods of self-harm in adulthood.
The Scapegoat is usually victim of emotional and physical abuse by the narcissistic parent. The Lost Child is usually known as “the quiet one” or “the dreamer”. The Lost Child is the invisible child. They try to escape the family situation by making themselves very small and quiet.
Since the scapegoat child is only tolerated when they bear the faults of the parent with NPD, they can grow up with a distorted view of relationships and love as only conditional or transactional. Gravitating toward partners with narcissistic behaviors.