Moving Out with Narcissistic Parents

[Vision]

This is something I've been wanting to do not only to individuate myself, but also because I want to leave my narcissistic parents. 

From Wikipedia, Narcissistic parent:

“Typically, narcissistic parents are exclusively and possessively close to their children and are threatened by their childrens growing independence. This results in a pattern of narcissistic attachment, with the parent considering that the child exists solely to fulfill the parent's needs and wishes. A narcissistic parent will often try to control their children with threats and emotional abuse. Personal boundaries are often disregarded with the goal of molding and manipulating the child to satisfy the parent's expectations.”

"Narcissists seek to control the behavior of others, particularly that of their children whom they view as extensions of themselves."

"They may reproach their children for exhibiting weakness, being too dramatic, being selfish, or not meeting expectations."

"Children of narcissists typically do not have many memories of having felt loved or appreciated for being themselves. Instead, they associate their experience of love and appreciation with conforming to the demands of the narcissistic parent."

This exactly describes my parents.

There is so much codependency, emotional invalidation, conditional love, narcissism, manipulation, and toxicity in the way they treat me. 

To be clear, I am not demonizing my parents or anyone in my family as if they are "evil" people.

I am just describing the situation as it is. I understand why they are the way they are. In previous generations, it was common for parents in my culture to be extremely harsh and do things that would be considered abusive and illegal in today's age. My parents are just acting out the conditioning they got from their parents/my grandparents. 

 

I have about $70,000 left in savings from an online business that I used to run. This may have actually contributed a bit to some of my health problems as I was working pretty much all day, every day, it was unsustainable. I need to learn more about financial literacy as I'm not too sure what to do with this money at the moment other than fund my health treatment, invest in self-help material, and save it. But I have enough to move out. 

Here’s what's stopping me (hopefully just for now):

1. I just turned 16. I won't have full sovereignty for 2 more years. 

2. My parents are heavily against the idea. Eastern culture (or at least South Asian culture) is heavily steeped in Stage Blue. It is a HUGE stigma/taboo for men to live away from their parents. It is acceptable for women as women are expected to move into their husband's house (where the husband's parents also live) and become housewives while the husband works.

This is the case with my parents. They want to control my decision in who to marry, they expect me to live with them, and expect me to take them with me wherever I live or stay.

I've tried talking to my dad a few times about my plan on moving out when I'm old enough and he freaked out every time. 

These are some of the things he says to me (translated to English):

"I've raised you since you were a baby, and this is what you want to do!?"

"You are my son! Of course we are supposed to live together!"

"You are being influenced by western culture. In our culture, family comes first! We always stay together" - It's more like family enmeshment. It's not like living away from each other means that we can't talk to each other, but they demand more. He always talks about how depression rates are higher in western culture than in "our culture" and it seems like that fuels his confirmation bias. He has a huge bias against western culture. 

After these conversations, my dad seems to be upset with me for a day or two. Then everything seems to go back to "normal".

 

I've thought about leaving without notice when I'm old enough and completely cutting ties with my parents. 

The other idea is to try to get them to accept my decision to move out. Make them understand that relying on me to take responsibility for their lives invalidates my individuality and makes their relationship to me codependent and toxic. I've tried this before, but they just call me selfish and not the son they know. 

 

Besides trying more to make them understand me, it seems like the only other option is to cut them off completely. I'm leaning more towards the former, I still hope that we can establish a good rapport, but I lose hope the more I try. 

What can I do in this situation?

[Preety_India]

@Vision where do you come from(original ethnicity I mean)? 

 

 

Edited May 31, 2021 by Preety_India

[Snader]

I feel you my man. I went through the same stuff when I was younger. Dreamed about moving away for years.

Outgrowing your parents developmentally is kinda shit from the perspective you're at right now, but let me tell you, it's also a blessing and you will realize that later.

It's important to remember, that they are still legally responsible for you. I think it would be really hard to get them to really understand you, but of course that's possible and you can try that. Otherwise just go through the next 2 years trying to come up with coping mechanisms that give you more flexibility. I didn't have the financial capacities to move out at 16, so that's what I did.

It's not wise to go full on rebel against them. Try to overcome this obstacle with understanding. Understand, that they might have different values than you do, and that's why they act the way they do. And also know that your life must be unraveling to other direction, which means that you need to grow apart from them, but you still have 2 years to go through, and that's okay.

When I was your age, I knew nothing about development and was just so confused about everything. You're at a position to bring wisdom into how you go about it 

 

[mivafofa]

I'm actually amazed you discovered their nature at only 16 and how much you manage to gain at that age despite being pulled down throughout your childhood. Usually NPD's children have normalized the abuse so much they don't know it's abnormal parenting until someone else point it out or they come across the term randomly and make the connection. So seriously props to you for such an early first step.

2 hours ago, Vision said:

The other idea is to try to get them to accept my decision to move out. Make them understand that relying on me to take responsibility for their lives invalidates my individuality and makes their relationship to me codependent and toxic. I've tried this before, but they just call me selfish and not the son they know. 

So here I'm taking your words for it that both your parents have at least 5 traits of the 9 main characteristic of NPD. If you're parents are really narcs, then absolutely don't do this. It will never work. You're their retirement plan, a tool to be used for their benefits. Their needs comes before yours. Invalidate your individuality? Lol since when did that ever matter? Your individuality HAS to be invalidated for them to exploit you in full capacity. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but if your parents are really narcs, then that's how they work and you probably must've felt it. Clinging into hope they might change will be detrimental for your sanity, because they won't change.  They would only give you the illusion of it. 

 

2 hours ago, Vision said:

I've thought about leaving without notice when I'm old enough and completely cutting ties with my parents. 

That's your best option... Do not mention moving out and plan your escape for the next 2 years. For me, I had to lie to them that I needed to get an appartment closer to the contract work next town and that I'll return in 3 months (never). I managed to convince them thanks to their obsession about money. At first not only they didn't want me to leave, they also wanted me to pay them half of my salary from this new job for having "raised" me. I said I needed to be trained to be certified first (more bullshit). Anyway... In conclusion, do whatever that needs to be done in order to escape. If you can go no contact eventually, it's the best. 

 

You need drastic measures for your situation. Soft measures can be dealt later. Any advices that encourage you talk it through with your parents, try to ease them through it, try to understand them, comes from ignorance about the full scale of NPD. And that's your cue to look for an actual npd support group instead.

And thus my foremost suggestion to you would be to join a Children of Narcissist Parents Support groups. There are a bunch online (facebook, reddit, etc) and these crew could help you better than here because they really specialize in narcissist parental recovery. They could walk you through the process of moving out from a narcissistic parent. From my experience here, maybe few will know what you went through and know what to do, but it's just a few percentage. The majority of ppl here are privileged people who never really experienced some hardcore stage red abuse and will think they have transcended it and will give you dangerous advices inadequate for your situation. Mainly because the mind can rarely fathom what it hasn't experienced yet.

Edited May 31, 2021 by mivafofa

[Vision]

@Preety_India PMed you.

[Vision]

32 minutes ago, mivafofa said:

That's your best option... For me, I had to lie to them that I needed to get an appartment closer to the contract work next town and that I'll return in 3 months (never). I managed to convince them thanks to their obsession about money. At first not only they didn't want me to leave, they also wanted me to pay them half of my salary from this new job for having "raised" me. I said I needed to be trained to be certified first (more bullshit). Anyway... In conclusion, do whatever that needs to be done in order to escape. If you can go no contact eventually, it's the best. 

42 minutes ago, Snader said:

It's important to remember, that they are still legally responsible for you. I think it would be really hard to get them to really understand you, but of course that's possible and you can try that. Otherwise just go through the next 2 years trying to come up with coping mechanisms that give you more flexibility. I didn't have the financial capacities to move out at 16, so that's what I did.

Yeah man. My coping mechanisms have been reading, research, going to the gym, contemplating things in my head, and journaling. At the moment I've been dealing with some health conditions that have given me severe fatigue and malaise. It's made life a lot harder but I'm trying to push through. 

42 minutes ago, Snader said:

It's not wise to go full on rebel against them. Try to overcome this obstacle with understanding. Understand, that they might have different values than you do, and that's why they act the way they do. And also know that your life must be unraveling to other direction, which means that you need to grow apart from them, but you still have 2 years to go through, and that's okay.

Yes. I do indeed understand them. It's just upbringing and conditioning that they unfortunately had to bear. I don't "hate" them, but I don't want to be around them. 

32 minutes ago, mivafofa said:

I'm actually amazed you discovered their nature at only 16 and how much you manage to gain at that age despite being pulled down all your childhood. Usually NPD's children have normalized the abuse so much they don't know it's abnormal parenting until someone else point it out or they come across the term randomly and make the connection. So seriously props to you for such an early first step.

Appreciate that  You are correct that I didn't actually know it was abnormal parenting until just about half a year ago where I randomly came across a Psych2Go video on the effects of toxic parenting (something like that). Realised that what they were describing almost exactly matched my parents. Then I went down the rabbit hole of learning more about parenting, etc. 

32 minutes ago, mivafofa said:

So here I'm taking your words for it that both your parents have at least 5 traits of the 9 main characteristic of NPD. If you're parents are really narcs, then absolutely don't do this. It will never work. You're their retirement plan, a tool to be used for their benefits. Their needs comes before yours. Invalidate your individuality? Lol since when did that ever matter? Your individuality HAS to be invalidated for them to exploit you in full capacity. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but if your parents are really narcs, then that's how they work and you probably must've felt it. Clinging into hope they might change will be detrimental for your sanity, because they won't change.  They would only give you the illusion of it. 

You're right, I have been clinging to that hope. But what else can I do? They're still my legal guardians for the next 2 years, might as well keep trying. 

If they still haven't change once I turn 18, then I think it's time. 

33 minutes ago, mivafofa said:

At first not only they didn't want me to leave, they also wanted me to pay them half of my salary from this new job for having "raised" me. I said I needed to be trained to be certified first (more bullshit). Anyway... In conclusion, do whatever that needs to be done in order to escape. If you can go no contact eventually, it's the best. 

That sucks. Sorry you had to go through that. I can relate to the "do this for me because I raised you", as if it was our decision to be born???

 

32 minutes ago, mivafofa said:

Also, I'd suggest you to join Children of narcissist parents support groups. There are a bunch online (facebook, reddit, etc) and these crew could help you better than here because they really specialize in narcissist parental recovery. They could walk you through the process of moving out from a narcissistic parent. From my experience here, maybe few will know what you went through and know what to do, but it's just a few percentage. The majority of ppl here are privileged people who never really experienced some hardcore stage red abuse and will think they have transcended it and will give you dangerous advices inadequate for your situation. Mainly because the mind can rarely fathom what it hasn't experienced yet.

Thanks so much for this. Do you recommend any groups in particular? 

[mivafofa]

Yes these ones are on facebook.

All that are written "visit" instead of "join" I basically joined already lol. They have been extremely helpful.  The larger the group the better so you can have more varied feedbacks. Don't be afraid to post the same post in different groups to receive more responses.

Also do you know your role around your narc parents? (Scapegoat, golden child or lost child) Would be usually clear if you have siblings. 

[mivafofa]

And what's more about these groups is you don't need to explain to them what is a Nparent.  They know, first hand.

Also I noticed you quoted me before my edit. If you could check back i made some corrections and added more details~ thx. Good luck. 

[Preety_India]

I can understand what you are saying with regard to your ethnic background. It's good you took the decision. 

Wish you best. 

 

[Vision]

On 5/31/2021 at 8:35 PM, mivafofa said:

Yes these ones are on facebook.

All that are written "visit" instead of "join" I basically joined already lol. They have been extremely helpful.  The larger the group the better so you can have more varied feedbacks. Don't be afraid to post the same post in different groups to receive more responses.

Thanks so much! I'll definitely look into these. 

On 5/31/2021 at 8:35 PM, mivafofa said:

Also do you know your role around your narc parents? (Scapegoat, golden child or lost child) Would be usually clear if you have siblings. 

No I don't. I have heard of some of those terms but I'm not familiar with them. What do they mean?

On 5/31/2021 at 9:13 PM, Preety_India said:

I can understand what you are saying with regard to your ethnic background. It's good you took the decision. 

Wish you best. 

Thank you ?