12 Common Traits of Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents

let's break down and remove the confusion associated with adult children of narcissist now we're going to go through a dozen that's right 12 various personality traits that I often see in individuals that are adult children of narcissist now we're going to cover a few specific areas we're going to look at negative self-perception emotional challenges and positive traits because if you are one of these individuals or you know these individuals you know that you've had to overcome so much first and foremost let's get into it negative self-perception so we've got first we have low self-esteem and self-d outb now what happens is is that throughout this developmental process a lot of individuals they question themselves and they don't build a lot of confidence in who they are and this often comes out of their narcissistic parent who often does not encourage their sense of autonomy instead the early development is about the glorification of the ego of the narcissist istic parent and we see that these individuals are often questioning their worth and we see it started really early in life but it continues to grow and develop as these individuals and what happens is from there it continues to develop the sense of chronic self-blame and that's our second component this chronic self-blame and we see that these individuals they take responsibility for everything and they're typically conditioned to believe this or incorporate this sense of blame because the narcissistic parent anytime something went wrong would turn it on the child it's the child's fault whether it really is or not because remember personality disorders and I talk about this in other videos as well it creates Distortion of reality this Distortion of culpability who did what who impacted what and it impairs taking responsibility and we see that the adult child of a narcissistic parent often holds this chronic blame they take blame for things that had nothing to do with them doesn't involve them or anything like that and a lot of times that chronic blame and that low self-esteem self-doubt it can continue to grow into difficulty setting boundaries and what we see is that a lot of boundaries are tenuous because early in life when they're growing up with that narcissistic parent anytime there was a boundary it was usually broken or bent to the benefit of the the narcisstic parent and if the child during their development would push back and try to reinforce that boundary they were typically punished in an intensive way and the punishment typically massively outweighed the actual incident I call it majoring in the minors which means that it's a minor issue but a major response and we see that a lot with narcissistic parents particularly if it made the narcissistic parent feel that they were perceived poorly or they incur a narcissistic wound now a narcissistic wound is when that narcisstic individual something happens and it causes them to question or feel unsafe in their narcissism narcissism is a maladaptive protective mechanism so when that's challenged with that narcissistic grve we see that parent that narcissistic parent blows out of proportion they immediately start breaking boundaries they immediately cause that child to internalize a sense of blame which then encourages that self-doubt and that low self-esteem throughout all of this a lot of adult children of narcissists and children of narcissistic parents they develop this insecure attachment style they have difficulty forming trusting and healthy relationships with others now when I look at attachment Styles in in my clients that are children of narcissist that we typically see that they fall into that category of anxious I attachment dismissing attachment or avoidant attachment now secure attachment is ideal and that's what the therapy component is it's to help them grow and develop and understand healthy relationships but this is the tricky part is that in treatment you have these internalized patterns that the narcissistic parent built into the child that encouraged those three components that we just talked about setting boundaries self-blame low self-esteem self-doubt so we see those things and it impacts that attachment and how they build relationships current relationships and that is so problematic we have to go back and revisit and this leads us to our next section which is emotional challenges now these emotional challenges for individuals that are adult children of narcissistic parents we see that they're often people pleasing they have this tendency to please others and they prioritize the needs of others over themselves and what happens is that when they continue to do this it becomes maladapted now in their early developmental period a lot of times they did this and it was adaptive it got them through dealing with that narcissistic parent however in healthy relationships we have to have a sense of self a sense of autonomy a sense of our own verbage and power associated with that verbiage for us to have that nice level relationship but those people pleasing Tendencies it's this internal dialogue pattern and belief that manifest in behaviors that they always give in so you are okay so the other person is okay and it becomes a glorification of the other and they learn this through the narcissistic parent and it manifests in a lot of different ways and what we see is that the individual then goes to our next component which is hypervigilance that they have all of this massive Red Alert sense of self always being on guard they anticipate a lot of criticism and disapproval and this becomes again goes back to that internalization from the narcissistic parent that sort of built in built in this pattern of beliefs and behaviors that are maladaptive so the child the adult child of narcissistic parent that they're always on the lookout they're always on guard what could be next what could be going on and when will I be made to feel small when will I feel unsafe when will I feel as though I'm not good enough because the narcissistic parent didn't do things consistently they didn't do things to make you feel bad on a consistent basis like Wednesdays are when we make you feel bad about yourself I mean of course not because we see that it is so variable that it becomes this intermittent reinforcer so what the child learned and what you may have learned as an adult child of narcisstic parent is that you always have to be on the lookout but remember each of these components I'm talking about they're not mutually exclusive so while you're being hypervigilant you're also people pleasing you also have low self-doubt and you're questioning yourself you also have tenuous boundaries so all of these things come into play and it makes so much uncertainty about what to do next and that can cause our next component which is emotional disregulation and this is where you struggle to manage your emotions and this can lead to anxiety depression or anger and what I find in a lot of my clients is that it tends to to build these traits that we often see in individuals along the borderline personality disorder Spectrum now what I'm not saying this has to be really clear is that if you are an adult child a narcissistic parent that equals or causes borderline personality disorder not saying that at all not even a little what I'm saying is is that research my clinical experience what I see in my client is that you start to see these traits you start to see abandonment issue rejection sensitivity and it's this internalized sense of emptiness so depression is not uncommon anxiety is not uncommon in some cases we see that there's been abuse certainly psychological abuse emotional abuse so we can also see some ptsc symptoms here as well all of this is important when you're working on these issues and understanding these issues so emotional disregulation we have that emotions going up and down up and down it's kind of like a heart monitor right we see it flying up and dropping low and back and forth and back and forth so we see that and remember these aren't mutually exclusive so we know that all of these components work together we're throwing them in the stew and then we also see that it's difficulty with trust and intimacy and this is particularly relevant to adult children of narcissistic parents because as you try to build a healthy relationship to get through and adapt it's those old maladaptive beliefs behaviors and patterns that you had to utilize to your developmental situation to what was going on in your home to your parents narcissistic whims is what I call it and that means that the narcissistic parent would change their perspective their View and how they treated you based on what their narcissism needed what made them feel grandiose important powerful recognized all of those narcissistic factors so it tends to manifest in your relationship so we see trust and intimacy is often challenged and very very difficult and what you need to do and this is why therapy is so important is that you have to go back revisit those but unpack them and understand them build insight into them because that's what the narcissistic parent typically lacks is that Insight that understanding so instead we have to because we can't do that for them we can only do that for us so we have to build our own Insight our own understanding and say you know what for me to do it differently I need to do a b c I have to look at these that I need to go back and look at the initial event whatever that trigger whatever that emotional button may be if you're not sure what emotional buttons are I'll put a little link right here in the video so you can check that out if you want to know what emotional buttons are but what those things are that set up those beliefs behaviors and patterns and then what is the consequence and typically the consequence tends to be difficulty with trust and intimacy but now remember everything is a negative adult children of narcissistic parents have something that helps them get through it and this is those components of positive traits even though they had a difficult upbringing even though in their house they learned that they had to give in or please the narcisstic parent otherwise it was just just a nightmare day in day out inconsistency all of that stuff so those create positive traits in you such as empathy and compassion what we see is that these individuals are very emotive they can identify emotions in others and pick up on those components a lot of times they have a good level of deep understanding of human emotions and pain due to their own experiences now it can become problematic if it becomes a meshed if it becomes too much too overwhelming that can lead to what we talked about earlier that emot disregulation but that empathy and compassion that's a great Foundation to work on when I see it's there in my clients that are adult children of narcissist I tap into that empathy and compassion but it typically starts out externalized what we want to do and in treatment we want to internalize it we want to help you internalize it so you have the empathy and compassion for you and that is so so critical another component is resilience and strength and what I see again in in these individuals is that we see that they have developed coping mechanisms and strength to overcome adversity they are able to tolerate to varying degrees but they're able to tolerate these inconsistencies they're able to tolerate a lot of this real sort of fluid and massive pendulum swings from one end to the other so it's this resilience and we tap into that resilience and treatment absolutely to build this sense of strength to encourage you going forward absolutely and then from there we can continue to build an independence and self-reliance what happens is you have this sense of codependency and that codependency is that I know I'm okay when they're okay that comes out of that developmental experience of making sure that your parent is okay if your parent is okay and you pet the narcissism as I've mentioned in other videos too they're narcissists are little kitties right they're not happy kitties they're little mean kitties but right is that when you pet The Narcissist all is calm so you learn that that creates this sense of codependency but inrig and what we tap into is that Independence and self-reliance because your narcissistic parent probably wasn't there when you needed them so sometimes you had to rely on yourself and a lot of these individuals are fiercely independent they may not want to rely on others or they're afraid to but that codependency is what it's an internalized need to be needed so you have this dichotomy at work it's that I'm afraid to connect because you're probably going to be erratic because you learn that right through your developmental experience and then you also have this drive to be independent so where does that fall and it's different for everybody it creates a lot of internal confusion but that's what that's the benefit of therapy is you're working to separate those things and then lastly we see that these individuals have a heightened intuition and sensitivity and they're just aware of how how other people feel about how they're reacting and their experiences has often made them they're more in touch with others emotions and needs now absolutely this can be skewed negative that goes back to what I mentioned that codependency but you can also tap into this as a really good positive and I usually frame this for a lot of my clients by saying you're good guts you got to have good guts all my clients I genuinely believe have good guts we got to listen to our gut when you meet somebody so let's say you're single right and you're meeting somebody and you're like oh hey and your gut is like don't just this is a bad move bad move but we have this little family in the head Little Chorus in her head right or if it's that BPD traits or whatever it may be you know the codependency is calling to you telling you and so it's telling you oh yeah hey this person's giving you attention hey that's really great we need to connect with this person all right you know they're making fun of you or they're teasing teasing you but they're teasing you is just being playful don't take it so serious but your gut is saying this is reminiscent of mom or dad don't don't do it don't get into that and what we do is we focus on that intuition and sensitivity and we build it and how can you use it in order to identify healthy others and not maladaptive unhealthy others you absolutely can please check out other videos as well I have one right here put for children of narcissistic parents you might like that as well and please like share and subscribe and I'll see you next time thanks a lot and bye-bye

Channel: Dr. Daniel Fox

Views: 266,013

Keywords: borderline personality disorder, bpd, daniel fox personality, daniel fox personality disorders, narcissism in relationships, narcissism video, narcissistic people, narcissistic personality, narcissistic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder relationships, npd, children of narcissistic parents, depression, ptsd, narcissist, gaslighting, manipulation, narcissism, codependency, emotional abuse, narcissistic abuse, narcissistic mother, narcissistic parents, anxiety, stress

Id: ZEGGZA33OJM

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024