Were you raised by narcissists too?

[meta_male]

It took me thirty years to realise this after getting out of a relationship with a narcissist. All the puzzle pieces are coming together now as I'm sinking into another dark night.

I'm wondering how you guys would approach this. I already cut contact with some of them but I'm not so sure about my parents.

Do you understand your role in the family dynamic?

If you feel like sharing your personal experiences here I'd be really interested in them.

[NoSelfSelf]

Yes what you wanna know exactly?

[meta_male]

What was your role in the family and are you still in touch with them?

[NoSelfSelf]

@meta_male A son,yes 

[Ulax]

@meta_male Ye dude I had narc parents, and then got preyed upon by a load of narcs throughout primary, secondary school and college. Shit almost killed me, and I would say dealing with narcissistic folks has been the key theme of my life so far. Coming across the reseach on narcissism and recovering from my traumas has been alike uncovering a vast conspiracy theory for me.

I think I oscillates between the scapegoat-Lost Child and golden child role.

Here are some speakers I like on the subject: Dr Ramani, Frank Yeoman, Pete Walker, and Sam Vaknin.

Speaking plainly, true narcissists (NPD) are, to my mind, much more akin to animals than most humans. They are constantly consumed by an unconscious survival strategy of maintaining  a narrative of specialness in their mind so as to avoid the abundance of shame they would feel without this narrative's maintenance. They will oscillate between vulnerable (victim) and grandiose states depending on how much 'supply' (validation of specialness) they get from the world. I believe also the NPD mind has issues with object relations, and is very developmentally arrested in this regard. Such a mind lacks object constancy, such that it doesn't fathom that once something is out of sight it still exists. Further, the NPD mind does not understand that other people are subjects (I.e. people with their own conscious experiences), and instead sees them as objects.

The issue is reality is constantly denying this specialness, i.e. having to queue, so the narcissist is almost constantly having to manage this narrative.

They will constantly project their shame onto others as well. Hence, a narc could look at an injured child on the floor and feel contempt for them. 

I take the view that narcissism is a form of post traumatic stress disorder. To my understanding they will have suffered serious abuse as a child themselves - The NPD psychic structure being a survival strategy to deal with such abuse.

Imo, if you want to avoid getting into another relationship with a narc you gotta work on your attachment style, trauma, and get psychoeducated on narc red flags.

-----------------------

Also, I'd recommend setting reasonable expectations regarding how narc people will act. I'm of the no contact where at all possible and reasonable mentality.

Edited November 17, 2022 by Ulax

[no_name]

47 minutes ago, Ulax said:

I'm of the no contact where at all possible and reasonable mentality.

Are you NC with your parents? 

[Ulax]

@no_name Almost. I'm no contact aside from they give me financial support.

 

[no_name]

4 minutes ago, Ulax said:

@no_name Almost. I'm no contact aside from they give me financial support.

 

You don’t feel bad about getting financial support from them? Or you’re just really young still? 

[Tyler Robinson]

Yea I had to deal with narcissistic abuse in relationships. 

It's a tough thing. Recognizing patterns is key to freedom. 

 

[meta_male]

@Ulax Damn bro, both parents. Sorry to hear. Must have been even more so confusing for you being all three of those roles! I gotta to do some more research into them, there seem to be several models with added characters.

In my case I knew before, but wasn't aware of what it does to me until I moved away from them. What I realised was the closer they were to me the more I was able to relate and see the world through their eyes. What I could never wrap my head around though is how you can be so ruthless with life and people in general and be able to keep putting on your act without breaking.

Always mostly attracted narcissistic friends too and one dude who showed traits of psychopathy. I was able to break free from them after school while attracting new ones into my life right after. It had a lot to do with my fear of being alone and letting others constantly overstep my boundaries.

1 hour ago, Ulax said:

Shit almost killed me, and I would say dealing with narcissistic folks has been the key theme of my life so far. Coming across the reseach on narcissism and recovering from my traumas has been alike uncovering a vast conspiracy theory for me.

This thought has crossed my mind several times already. It's like you can keep unraveling more and more layers and work out why you behave the way you do today.

I've seen some of Dr. Ramani's videos, she's fire. Definitely gotta look into the other ones you mentioned. Quite humbling to see how deep all this this goes.

Would you say you were able to forgive your parents through knowing they must have experienced deep trauma in the past?

Valuable videos btw, cheers man! This resonates. ?

[meta_male]

29 minutes ago, Tyler Robinson said:

Yea I had to deal with narcissistic abuse in relationships. 

It's a tough thing. Recognizing patterns is key to freedom. 

@Tyler Robinson It can get quite disturbing in relationships, right? Sorry to hear you had to go through this. Did you realise afterwards or still while in it?

[Tyler Robinson]

12 minutes ago, meta_male said:

@Tyler Robinson It can get quite disturbing in relationships, right? Sorry to hear you had to go through this. Did you realise afterwards or still while in it?

I was looking up online articles and I accidentally came across an article on narcissistic abuse. I kept that thing in my mind but subsequently got busy with life and forgot it. The relationship continued and when I broke up with him I had a deja vu moment. I went back to the article and realized that I was going through all that. After that I learned that the only way to deal with it is to first recognize patterns in behavior. Loads of videos on YouTube that go into depth. After recognizing you need to screen these people and filter them out. If you recognize signs early on, best to cut off as soon as possible because it only gets worse generally. I have never seen narcissists change their behavior so there is little hope. Don't think about changing them and don't wait. 

Narcissists engage in following behavior-

• Gaslighting. 
• Making you walk on eggshells 
• Demoralizing you
• Intentionally avoid you 
• Come to you only when they need something 
• Control your every move 
• Compare you to others 
• Talk about replacing you (he used to do that) 
• Emotional blackmail by saying they will leave the relationship if you don't do as they say 
• They constantly want to be praised 
• They punish you for little things 
• Zero empathy towards your suffering 
• They prioritize their goals above your needs 
• When they don't need you they lose interest and spit you out 

Also If you're constantly attracted to narcissists like I do, you might want to look into things like addiction, codependency, doormat behavior, low self esteem, mental weakness, childhood trauma, infantilization, bad parenting, lack of self respect, lack of boundaries, sexual abuse, borderline personality disorder which I have, lack of family support, suicidal tendencies, identity issues, constant need for validation and support etc. 

If you suffer from the above mentioned then you will be prone to wanting narcissists in your life. Narcissists are seducing kind of people. They like the idea of having power over someone who is dependent. So they will gladly suffocate you with all of their authority and domination if they smell that you don't fight back hard enough. They will demand that you please them or they will push you away. 

You get addicted to the validation they give and they are addicted to your lack of boundaries and weakness. They like you being weak. The weaker the better. It's a predator prey relationship. They see you as prey and that's very very attractive to them and they will be very hot and cold with you just to punish you.

You'll also be attracted to them because you can't give up your prey behavior either. 

Often times I tried to get away from narcissists. I stayed away for some time. Then I would be picked up by another narcissist. Because I wasn't feeling strong enough so I was attracted to their strength. 

It's like they are carrying the food in their hands and you are very hungry and needy. 

They can sense that neediness. I'm still attracted to narcissists big time because of my neediness. I need that pat on my head to feel better (proverbial sucking dick). They treat me like a child and I'm forever in need of a parenting figure because my childhood was neglectful and broken. 

So broken people are permanently attracted to narcissists. I don't know how to heal. It's tough. The neediness doesn't go away. I wasn't given love as a child so I seek that love in narcissistic men who babysit me and make me feel wanted. Only then I feel worthy of love. 

It's the toughest thing. They can easily sense if someone is needy and hungry for love and acceptance. Then they prey on that person. It's a weird kind of polarized magnetic relationship, somewhat like addiction.. Only when you drink you feel better even though you know drinking is bad, that sort of a thing.

Narcissists are good at creating psychological addiction in the victim 

I get weird sensations around narcissistic men. My breasts swell, I feel automatically wet and horny, my lips pucker up in submission, I go into begging mode and I begin to crave their affection and domination badly. I crave their approval. I become slavish and relish the slave role. 

I think years of child abuse made me dependent on approval from an authority figure and instilled a slave mentality in me. 

Part of it is also Stockholm Syndrome that develops after living with an abuser, you begin to love that rape and abuse and you don't see your abuser as a bad person, you even begin to love and appreciate them, sympathize with them and begin to enjoy their beatings or temper or abuse because it becomes a coping mechanism for survival. 

I developed Stockholm Syndrome at some point and began to feel empathy for abusers and if they that they wanted to rape me, I did not feel bad or angry, I became immune to it and accepted my slave role. 

Abuse is a very potent form of power. It develops psychological codependency that is very hard to get rid of. 

Anyway I'm still trying to cope with it all and learning how to mitigate future abuse. 

 

[puporing]

Both my parents, maybe more so my mother. Neither has much capacity to love and is extremely deficient in that area. I cannot have a real conversation with them, it's mostly a one-sided rant whenever I "talk to them". No safety to share about myself - "good" or "bad" news either turns into conflict and blame, envy/jealousy, and or attributing any "good results" I get to their doing/"good parenting" lol. So I became very "boring" to them to cope. I've been in the "therapist role" since a young age, dealing with all sorts of temper tantrums and fights between them. I can't be happy or successful (or upset) around them coz that'll always attract some kind of conflict my way. There's no end because they cannot seem to deal with themselves... if you don't give them attention they'll find some way to get in there, if you give them the attention they'll want more and more and take everything from you and not let you have a separate individual identity, so yeah I'm still dealing with it through careful boundaries. I don't know how it's gonna be when they get older, I can't see myself living with them again any time soon. Some kind of distance is necessary for me to not get "absorbed".

It's easier to love them from a distance. I think I've largely forgiven them and others, and understand that it's a symptom of lack of love they had received. But that doesn't mean I want to be enmeshed with them.. though part of that is also because we don't share a lot of similar interests/way of communicating.

Edited November 17, 2022 by puporing

[meta_male]

42 minutes ago, Tyler Robinson said:

It's like they are carrying the food in their hands and you are very hungry and needy.

Well said. Yeah, they like leaving breadcrumbs that will never satisfy you.

Sounds like you went through quite a bit!

 

[axiom]

narcissist /ˈnɑːsɪsɪst / noun:

One of the most dehumanising and most commonly-misused diagnoses of the past decade.

 

 

[meta_male]

@axiom It's just a label to help people make sense of why they might be suffering.

[Tyler Robinson]

36 minutes ago, meta_male said:

Well said. Yeah, they like leaving breadcrumbs that will never satisfy you.

Sounds like you went through quite a bit!

 

2 hours ago, meta_male said:

@Tyler Robinson 

A couple of suggestions. 

The very early signs of narcissism are early praise or dismissal. I'll call these bread crumbs. They test you early on to see if you Crack. They can either dismiss you badly by saying something bad about you like completely contradicting what you say and make you feel guilty. 

For example my first boyfriend blocked my path and said something like - "you don't even say a hello." But I usually don't say hello to strangers. Yet he made me feel guilty for something that wasn't a big deal. This is an example of negging. Negging is a psychologically manipulative trick in which the other person is trying to make you seek their approval indirectly. In the example, my boyfriend was making me want his approval, instead of simply being polite and saying hello, he was trying to guilt me to see if i would apologize and seek his approval. He wanted me to kinda bend to him. Negging is making that person feel awkward and in-validated so they come to you for validation. For example a guy might say something like "you look like a pig in that dress. Other girls wear sexy." This is an indirect insult which is meant to provoke that woman to test if she is submissive or rebellious. If she is the submissive type, she will cave in to the pressure and next day she will dress up like other girls. This sends him the signal that she agreed to his approval and submitted to please him. This trick often gets submissive women to give up their boundary and submit to the subtle sexual pressure created by the man. This was an example of how a narcissist uses early dismissal to draw the attention of his victim to himself and establish a power dynamic through pressuring for approval. 

Second trick - they will praise excessively out of nowhere. This is called love bombing. For example one of my exes said - "I'd rather go blind than see you walk away." He would claim that I was his soulmate, I was the only woman in the world for him, he would die for me. We were eternal soulmates. 

All of this in the early stages of the relationship. It was excessive pedestalizing and praising. And language that doesn't feel authentic or pragmatic.

Another ex boyfriend, he would sing praises to me. So one day we had an argument and I didn't want to deal with the stress of the relationship so I told him I was breaking up and he sent me 40 text messages telling me that he really loves me. It was just excessive and very pressuring. I finally said yes because I felt very pressured. 

The next boyfriend did something different. He would constantly blackmail me. Like — on the first date, I wasn't sure if I wanted the relationship and I needed time to decide, and he wasn't having a no for an answer. So his reply was - "what is this even? Is this a relationship?" pumping up the pressure. Then he would say things like "we're already one. I want a deep connection with you." but I wasn't even mentally ready yet and he was pushing so far. Just Impatient and pushy. Then he almost made it like if I didn't kiss him he would break the relationship. Everything had to be his way. One day we talked about psychedelics and I said that I wasn't interested in it. He immediately talked about breaking up. I was very exhausted. He was forcing me to comply or he would break up if I didn't. I relented at last and told him that I would do psychedelics if that's what he wanted. I was forced to be his girlfriend because I wasn't mentally ready for it but he would pull away instead of giving me time. It's like "comply with me or I'm breaking up." He wielded a lot of control and this method is emotional blackmail, "if you don't do else..." 

So above three examples were of manipulative tricks like negging/dismissal/pressure to seek approval, love bombing or inauthentic excessive praising (you can look up love bombing online), and emotional blackmail control, used by narcissists to make someone bend to their pressure and approval. 

I'll call it baiting. Learning these baiting tricks helps uncover narcissists. 

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Tyler Robinson

[axiom]

@meta_male The seeking of meaning is the suffering.

Labels like "narcissist" are a form of dehumanisation and condemnation. Pathological narcissism is very rare. Carelessly throwing this label around helps neither the apparent victim nor the apparent perpetrator (both of whom can suffer a lot)

[Kalki Avatar]

@meta_male Its alot more common and hard in third world countries. 

My parents are like big kids who try to dictate their way while being childish, immature and contradicting. 

These people mostly got kids accidentally and stayed together as a consequence. Also, a lack of love from childhood. What else can i say. Its a serious thing. My whole life misery is a consequence of them. The worst thing they have done as I can remember to break my intimate blind trust for them was forcing me to give them my phone so they could see everything they wanted or checking were I spent my money on my bank account. Not to mention their lies, mind games, hypocrisy (even as hardcore christians) and gossip. I also have some trust issues because of deep wounds that I need to heal. Im just waiting to move out next year. I only trust them as providers/protectors, but there is no intimate sharing anymore. Still, my love is so strong that I still forgive and love them, but its fcking annoying and it will fck your life from the inside out. 

If you have narcistic parents you gotta live on your own as fast as possible. They will manipulate everything they can from you and keep you a victim who attracts more victimhood shit.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClE8fXIy3hr/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Kalki Avatar

[Ulax]

10 hours ago, meta_male said:

@Ulax Damn bro, both parents. Sorry to hear. Must have been even more so confusing for you being all three of those roles! I gotta to do some more research into them, there seem to be several models with added characters.

In my case I knew before, but wasn't aware of what it does to me until I moved away from them. What I realised was the closer they were to me the more I was able to relate and see the world through their eyes. What I could never wrap my head around though is how you can be so ruthless with life and people in general and be able to keep putting on your act without breaking.

Always mostly attracted narcissistic friends too and one dude who showed traits of psychopathy. I was able to break free from them after school while attracting new ones into my life right after. It had a lot to do with my fear of being alone and letting others constantly overstep my boundaries.

This thought has crossed my mind several times already. It's like you can keep unraveling more and more layers and work out why you behave the way you do today.

I've seen some of Dr. Ramani's videos, she's fire. Definitely gotta look into the other ones you mentioned. Quite humbling to see how deep all this this goes.

Would you say you were able to forgive your parents through knowing they must have experienced deep trauma in the past?

Valuable videos btw, cheers man! This resonates. ?

@meta_male You're welcome bro.

Ye man was confusing af and still is. 

Congrats on breaking away dude. Ye I agree with your idea around unravelling too.

I'm not at the point of emotional forgiveness as of yet, no. I can intellectually understand that they behaved the way they did because of their own traumas but i would say i tend to feel numb, or ashamed about it or feel contempt towards them. I could watch my mother suffer with glee tbh.

I'm quite into David Hawkin's work re levels of consciousness and letting go atm. I think i need to work through letting go of quite a few latent lower consciousness emotions in me before real emotional forgiveness occurs, particularly shame. I resonate a lot on the level of shame i think.