Children of Narcissistic Parents

hi my name is dr fox licensed psychologist in state of texas an expert in the air personality disorders and in this video we're going to talk about children of narcissistic parents and what we're going to do is we're going to go through 16 common narcissistic parenting components okay so this is how they tend to treat kids then we're going to talk about what happens to these kids how do they grow and develop how do they tend to see themselves in their world and what are some things in treatment that i focus on when i work with folks that are kids of narcissistic parents so let's get into it please like share and subscribe that would be awesome please leave any comments that you may have if you have a narcissistic parent how do you cope effectively i think it's important that we put out positive information out there that's really good for those who read it i think that helps them quite a bit and that's really what i'm trying to do trying to create a very positive environment for folks that do have parents significant others uh even themselves that may have narcissistic or borderline or other personality disorder traits or the full disorder but this one we're going to talk about children of narcissistic parents and let's get into it okay so the 16 common narcissistic parenting components so the first one is is that you tend to only do things he or she wanted to do regardless if you wanted to or not so that means that no matter what you are going to do what that person wants to do could be going to the movies maybe your parents are separated and your narcissistic parent had to go to the office so you sit there all day but they're getting their needs met they don't worry about what you want to do what your interest is so they just drag you to without any thought as to how it may impact you your day or your interest now he or she that narcissistic parent was not present very often and seemed to get gratification away from the family so in other words they go do things outside of that family structure and they get their needs met and then they're happy and then they come into the families like oh you know all this work and all this negativity and you get this internalized building sense of a burden of being a burden okay now we'll get more to that in just a second no matter what you did another component the third right no matter what you did you were never able to impress or please him or her you're always one down so no matter if you got an a right maybe the test before you got a b plus so it's not the a that you got it's the b plus that you got last time that's brought up to you right if you get an a in history right school age right we'll just say as you're growing up so you get an a in history or a 99 in history and you get a 91 in science so you're like oh look you know i got a so it's not really an a i mean you got 99 in one class and then 91 and another i mean you're not even consistent it's like oh man i mean you know so you get hit you get hit with that too it's this internalized sense of self-doubt that comes out of that now how things looked or appeared were more important than your feelings right so you may not want to wear a particular dress or a particular outfit or anything else so you're very uncomfortable doesn't matter you have to present as pageant pretty you have to present as picture perfect you have present as happy as healthy as stable because that is that direct reflection on that narcissistic parent now you tended to have the greatest value when she or he could brag about your accomplishments or complain about your failures so you become sort of a chess piece right you become this externalized component or object that allows that narcissistic parent to then have attention put on them that attention is that you know jimmy is such a failure sally sally just won you know the the national spelling bee right so that it's great or you know malcolm he tried out for the football team but he didn't even make the cut what's that kid ever going to be right then it gives this narcissistic parent that fodder to have attention brought to them about the failures of the kids or the successes so what does that do for that kid not only is that kid at arm's length but that kid feels very empty and distant inside these are all things that that individual carries with them that sense of birdness that sense of lack of connection right that sense of detachment that they carry with them as they develop so that another one is that he or she tended to show that he or she cared through material gifts as opposed to attention or words of encouragement and love so i can just tell you an ipad doesn't doesn't mean anything right then i oh i love you i bought the latest ipad it's irrelevant right oh you you have this phone and you have this thing and you have that thing that's and it's like see i love you by those things that's what those narcissistic parents do right so that when the child right grows up and and then they hit their teens you know right when we all kind of start to push back push back a little bit assert our autonomy test those boundaries right so we're doing that normal part of development but that narcissistic parent can't handle that even one sense of dissension and then they quickly crush you make you feel very little make you feel like that burden make you feel like detachment that you're worthy of detachment then then they do and say i got you an xbox and a playstation and an ipad and all this other stuff but what that does is it confuses the child because what the child wants is emotional connection but really the only emotional connection they have is to an ipad an iphone or a if you're an android person android phone right but what whatever it is but it's not to the parental figure that they want who should be designed to keep them safe to help them feel secure about themselves to build this sense of self-concept through trials and tribulations and successes as we develop that's not how narcissistic parents work so the next one is jealousy of your achievements opportunities or looks that prompted criticism and ridicule now often you see this in same-sex parent child okay so mom narcissistic mom may be very jealous of a very attractive narcissist or daughter not a narcissistic daughter it's not what i meant right but narcissistic mom right to the daughter so we're going to get in what what happens does narcissism breed narcissism we're going to talk about that in just a sec but what i'm talking about is that narcissistic parent right maybe she sees herself as very attractive she's fitness nut right all that other stuff and then here comes this daughter who's younger right maybe she's in gymnastics i don't know but she's really attractive right others see her as attracted maybe her friends say oh your daughter is so pretty your daughter's so pretty that jealousy and insecurity breeds this contempt for that kid now remember that the core content of most narcissists is guilt shame doubt fear and inferiority and all of that gets triggered up so what do you do you put it on this safe object which is this kid who can't defend themselves so then you ridicule and shame that kid right who then already feels like a burden already has a sense of detachment and now they're shamed so they get this internalized sense of shame as they develop so another component or characteristic is that he or she tended to see himself see the parent as very important and influential and was entitled to the best even the best children so i did this for you and i made this for you and what do you do you get a c in science or i did this for you and i took you to all these games and you you should be getting a home run every time you go up to plate nobody gets a home run every time you go up to plate just saying so you know right but that's the conceptualization i did all this for you and this is how you pay me back this is how you show me that you love me and all this stuff and that kid's head is spinning confusion becomes an additional component as well right burden detached right shame right and then you have this sense of of confusion i'm confused with who i am what i should believe and how what my development is so there's great confusion because parents are supposed to be that rock that you kind of bounce up against right about what's right or wrong in the world how i should see myself we want to internalize we want to develop this introject of a positive sense of self a positive individual that's not what narcissistic parents do because narcissism is a maladaptive pattern all personality stories are maladaptive patterns that the person has has developed over years so what happens is that maladaptive pattern spills in to the child but not necessarily narcissism we're going to talk about that in just a second i do i want to finish the the list of of 16. okay so the next one is that he or she tended to take advantage of and manipulate others when it suited him or her so you see that these parents are manipulative you see that they get what they want by being underhanded by lying like cheating right by doing things that are inappropriate so then you develop the conceptualization the child develops a conceptualization so oh that's how the world works cheat steal lie right because internally what happened is that child is developing what that core content fear shame doubt emptiness abandonment right other types of issues notice right when we talked about the kid some of that core content is a little different right we'll talk about that a second okay so then they they start to develop this right but you learn these behavioral patterns and strategies that are so destructive and you learn that from the narcissistic parents another one is that others seem to like being around him or her which which is the parent right and he or she right sought out the spotlight even if it meant demeaning his or her children okay so other people like to be around you so but that spotlight the way i can get that spotlight and be recognized seeing perhaps admiration or sympathy they feed on sympathy as well is that the way that they get that is that they demean the kids see how horrible my kid is right see how terrible my kid is see how broken my kid is and they use this to pull attention because it doesn't matter you know how it hurts the kid what happens is that it's important that it feeds the narcissism of the parent and that of course becomes habitual and over and over again which becomes internalized with those components that we had already discussed so another one is he or she is highly sensitive to negative feedback or criticism and he or she would kick people out of his or her life who provided it which means that as you get older right now you're in the teen years and you start pushing back a little bit because that's normal to do that but your narcissistic parent doesn't tolerate any dissension whatsoever you have to adopt those rules values but they're all vague and inconsistent anyway so you never really know what you can count on so that goes to that inconsistency in your life which goes on top of being confused which goes on top of being a burden right which goes on top of having this detached sense okay so as you're developing and you give some feedback well how about if you love me that of course brings you back to what bought you an ipad and an eye box uh an uh xbox not an eibach you know what i mean right but it did this right all and you so any dissension is just massive payment and i'm not going to talk to you we're not talking anymore because you criticized me right and then that parent quickly internalizes and said fine we're not talking ever again and then you as the child because you have attachment why i believe that we are biologically designed and wired to attach to our early caregivers right a lot of research that supports that john bolby the father of attachment you can look him up so tons of stuff on that but that we are inherently wired right so are all animals on this planet right that we are inherently wired to connect to those caregivers to keep us safe but if they're maladaptive caregivers doesn't matter you still have that sense of attachment so regardless of the age whether it's teens 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s whatever it is is that you want to attack so that narcissistic parent they then reject you that hurts you know so then it brings up all of these early these early issues right that we talk about right being a burden right then all those other things that we just mentioned burden attached confusion right uncertainty uh now you've learned don't be assertive now you've learned be passive you could even be passive aggressive in some instances but you're more likely to be passive and internalize the hurt and pain than you are to be passive aggressive even though you've learned manipulation from that parent now next when angry that narcissistic parent showed rage and poor constraint including anger that was verbal physical or even both so here what you learn is don't upset that narcissistic parent because if you do they lose it and they get violent they get loud they go over the top because what they have to do is they have to quickly because they're not sure of themselves they're not confident so not confident means you don't have any patience so then what happens is they don't turn down that volume they ramp it up and they ramp it up in such a way that you recoil which adds to that sense of passivity as that child grows up and develops so next one is that he or she would feel threatened that narcissistic pain would feel threatened when you expressed yourself in an appropriate manner right even when you used i statements and you said you know i was really hurt when i heard it still that parent is going to go as if you were massively inappropriate because remember that parent has to turn it up because they're very insecure right that core content right fear shame doubt insecurity right inferiority and all of those things so they have to turn it up be loud be aggressive so that you quickly pull back because they're very afraid is the reality of it next one is that he or she had fantasies of success and his or her own achievements that were highly ambitious but when they did not work out it was someone else's fault so what you realize is that there's no sense of responsibility so that your parent doesn't recognize that they don't take on the r word responsibility in their life so they always deflect it so you learn to deflect it but you're very confused because as you grow and develop you don't see yourself as efficacious so the world will dictate how you behave and how you respond and you are likely that child of the narcissist is likely to gravitate towards negative because of course negative is easier than positive unless you're fortunate and you can get into a positive social group right that encourages self-esteem that encourages growth there's not a lot of those around but let's say right so typically right you go to the negativity and then when you grow to that that reinforces all the sense of burden this all the sense of being detached all this sense of loss and confusion and fear and all of these things so you go back to that so because that narcissistic parents those unrealized moments of success that they didn't reach it probably because they didn't genuinely try because they blame everybody else for holding them back so they didn't genuinely try it if they did try it was a half-hearted try and then they got some type of negative feedback or what they perceived to be negative feedback so they just were like no no no they they never gave me a chance but they didn't try and the one thing we know about success whether it's in therapy or it's in life is perseverance pays off perseverance pays off totally does so the next one is that so we got two left okay that he or she right was highly critical of others and he or she was the one who knew the true fix for any given situation so they come across as having all these answers well i know everything but they may not tell you unless you work hard enough for it and whatever that hard work may be who knows right now you know if it's if you're doing calculus and your narcissistic parent doesn't know calculus then they're going to degrade the sense of calculus but very critical right of your calculus teacher who's probably an idiot i'm not saying they aren't that's that's what the narcissistic parent would say okay and but they know how to fix all of this so sometimes what happens is that internal drive to attach to our caregivers so the child says okay look so what i'm gonna do is the way i can be functional here and survive in this environment is to believe the propaganda believe the narcissistic parent propaganda and so what happens is you believe this narcissistic parent has all the answers right if it's the attractive mom or attractive dad who competes with the son and the daughter right whatever it is then you start to say oh you know he or she gets a lot of attention or he or she you know makes all this money or he or she whatever and then you believe that you internalize that you eat the propaganda and as you eat the propaganda you engage in these behaviors that support it over time so yeah my mom or dad have all the answers right so on and so forth and you tend to believe that but holding these folks on a pedestal only lasts so long because what happens is that you know in our teens we kind of start to realize hey you know what our parents don't have all the answers and then in our 20s we start to realize you know what nobody does you know hopefully in our 20s we figure that out and then that gives us a little humility and a little drive to do things differently and see our life and take that r word that responsibility and really affect change in our life because we really can but we got to get that r word and then the last thing is the relationship you have with that narcissistic parent is more like a friendship than it is parental and the one thing you know i when when i encounter stuff like this i like to tell folks you know your kids have more than enough friends but they're only going to have one or two caregivers or parents now it depends i do know some folks that have extended family and i think that's great the more support that you have even better narcissistic parents tend to limit that contact that that child has i tend to limit that social circle tends to be very small because the more folks that are in there the greater the risk of being found out that you're not that great greater risk of being called out right all these other things that that activate that core content so how do you what do you do right so when i'm working with someone who is a child of a narcissistic parent what what do we do first and foremost narcissism does not breed narcissism narcissism right we know is a maladaptive coping strategy okay to put it simply and then what happens is that you have these kids right as we've talked about and we're going to call just my clients kids for a minute right because i don't work with kids but as adults right but you're still working with that kid inside you're working with that that internalized that introject inside that kid so that still you know feels like a burden that feels like they have no voice who feels detached who feels misunderstood who doesn't know what they believe and what you see in in my opinion is you see a lot of borderline personality disorder traits does not mean that narcissistic parents breed borderline children or children with borderline personality disorder i'm not saying that what happens is that you see this i see this in my work is that you see a lot of kids borderline personality disorder traits the good thing about that is that borderline traits often drive folks to treatment and that's good right because narcissists don't like therapy but borderline folks folks that are along that borderline spectrum like therapy they're actually treatment accepting in many cases so if i can get you in what we can do is we can start to rebuild right that interject we can work on that hurt that's in there we work on your sense of self we work on how you see yourself taking responsibility taking risk and we shut down this noise in your head that in those internal critics plural so i gotta stress the ass right there critics because it's not just one it's mom but then over time as you developed that you internalize these negatives because that reinforced that narcissistic parent that just kept beating it into your head about your negativity about your burdenness about your detachment right if you would have loved your parent enough you would be a good person but you didn't so you're broken whoa that is narcissistic parent 101 secondly that is malarkey that is not at all true because what happens is that narcissistic parent because of their own issues they're never going to feel enough love except acceptance appreciation or anything like that because that narcissism that maladapted strategy to function is so strong that they don't allow themselves right to genuinely love and care for another because what happens is there's a risk in loving and caring for others right not all relationships work but that narcissistic parent can't handle that they can't function with that because they're too driven by their core content which is fear shame doubt guilt inferiority so they create children with this internalized sense of fear shame gout inferiority but also abandonment also emptiness also low self-concept low sense of self all of all these other factors that we work on in treatment to build them so what i would say is a a good strategy is for you to challenge this idea grab on to that sense of responsibility write out the things that you want to do don't worry take those critics out of your head for a minute and say here are the things that i want to achieve these are the things that i want to do so first what do you want to achieve what do you have to do to achieve those things silence that critic because they're going to tell you you'll never do that discard that stuff and write it out and then operationally define how you go about it and then what you do is you dedicate yourself to doing it you push back on those internal critics you push back on those voices and you do it and you drive yourself and you know what you're going to get your parent that narcissistic parent is going to feel very threatened and very scared that's fine let them feel that way let them feel the way they need to feel regretfully and it's hard to say this but sometimes you have to build your interpersonal circle with people that are going to build you up and sometimes the narcissistic parent is the one that continues to suck you down that doesn't mean that you don't talk to them forever what that means is that they have to accept your drive to do what you want to do to achieve what you want to achieve and some instances there they accept they go for a long along for the ride because eventually or possibly you could break through some of that and they start to see you're doing the things they were too afraid to do right sometimes though they become passive aggressive and they try to take you down so you have to be careful of that so i mean we can't talk about all the different components here but you need to be careful but sometimes they'll get on board you know i don't believe that you have to write them off i think i i think some people do but i don't think that that ultimately you that that becomes the standard i'm never going to talk to them again i don't think you have to do that i think in some cases perhaps you do but i don't think in all cases you do and i think that that's why it's very individualized that you can do these things that you can achieve and you can do good things but get that critic out of your head get that narcissistic parent out of your head spit them out right i didn't really spit there that was an example but get them out get them out and you you do you that's the most important thing i hope you've enjoyed the video thank you very much for your time and attention this was actually a suggestion uh from someone who saw some of my other videos and asked me to do it so any other suggestions please let me know and thank you all for your time and attention fight those inner critics and like share and subscribe and thank you for your time and attention take care bye

Channel: Dr. Daniel Fox

Views: 1,656,630

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: Vjz6rTG3wao

Length: 24min 6sec (1446 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020