Therapy for adult children of narcissists

If you were raised by a narcissist, many of these dynamics will be familiar to you. Your parent:

  • has you walking on eggshells. Whether it’s their unpredictable moods, or their casual and indirect ways of putting you down, you feel unsafe and unsettled in the connection. 

  • expects you to uphold the “happy family” image. The unspoken rule: pretend you’re ok and hide your feelings when you’re not, so outsiders don’t discover your weaknesses.

  • has one-sided conversations. You end up in the confidante role with your parent. You are drained by listening and your parent acts entitled to it, without reciprocation of interest.

  • focuses more on your outsides than insides. Your parent is appearance and achievement focused. They initiate superficial and comparison conversations where you are objectified.

  • sees you as an extension of themselves. They pressure you to share the same interests and opinions. They are dismissive or contemptuous when you express opposing points of view.

  • feels betrayed by your boundaries. When you express your truth and set limits, they blame you for being “too sensitive,” threaten to fall apart, or give you the silent treatment.

  • is antagonistic in relationships. Their lens on life is win-lose rather than collaborative. They go to war instead of accepting compromise, and become vindictive to get an advantage.

  • demands that you quickly forgive and move on. They don’t apologize or take accountability. They play the victim and cast you as the enemy, and insist that you take responsibility.

  • character assassinates. They assign bad intentions instead of seeking to understand motivations. They engage in “smear campaigns” and scapegoat you when you don’t submit to them.

  • exploits you for personal gain. They expect you to keep their secrets. They triangulate you and use you as leverage in arguments, trying to turn you against your other relatives.

  • invades your privacy. They view your private conversations as under their dominion, and they spy or gossip to get information. They are suspicious and keep tabs on everyone around them.

  • lovebombs you. They engage in excessive gift giving and lavish you with compliments when you toe the line. You feel a mix of gratitude and apprehension because strings are attached.

  • wants to keep you dependent. Your parent instills the notion that you can’t survive without them. They strive to make themselves indispensable so that they aren’t abandoned.

  • is threatened by your happiness and success. Your parent sabotages special events when they aren’t the center of attention. They are act out from jealousy to keep the focus on them.

  • gaslights you. They question your memory, judgment and sanity. To keep control over you and evade consequences, they attempt to erode your self-trust and independent thinking.

  • engages in performative empathy. They use charm and warmth to convince you that they are caring. They gain intel on your vulnerabilities to use when manipulating.

Release toxic patterns, free your true self and find peace

How this impacts you:

Even though you are an adult, you feel like a kid around your parent. You notice yourself freezing up or automatically submitting to them. This survival instinct helped you make it through childhood intact. But now you’re caught in cycles of people pleasing, perfectionism, and being triangulated in conflict.

You are so good at feeling for your parent that you don’t always notice how you feel around them. It’s like you can’t worry about them and connect to yourself at the same time. You have moments where you are surprised by your own sadness and anger. To be honest, you are intimidated by them, even though they expect you to trust them. You feel guilty that you resent them and feel burdened by their demands.

You unconsciously repeat this pattern by choosing emotionally unavailable or manipulative friends and partners. You end up isolating because of the need to avoid your parent or to distance from yet another toxic relationship.

You feel hollow and anxious inside where a confident adult should be. You blame and shame yourself for being needy and dependent on your family.

It is not your fault. You have been brainwashed to stay close, stay small, stay confused and afraid of your power. But the power is there, and therapy can help you find it. You deserve to be loved unconditionally, without sacrificing your personal autonomy.

Healing is about:

~healthy boundary setting to support your individuation and protect your psychological wellbeing

~developing self-esteem through therapeutic mirroring of your strengths and validation of your feelings

~ungaslighting yourself by stepping out of your parent’s distorted reality and claiming your personal reality 

~unfreezing your feelings to process grief and anger, and to integrate a sense of personal power

~releasing fantasies about the future and developing realistic expectations based on their behavior

~identifying your values and needs to help you make aligned choices in your relationship

~reconnecting to your intuition to guide your decision making and build self-trust

~educating your inner empath that can be taken advantage of to ally with your parent

~replacing isolation with reciprocal relationships with safe others - your chosen family and support system

How do we heal through IFS?

IFS helps you develop a strong adult Self to inner child connection. There are parts of you that never got to have a voice that deserve witnessing. They are filled with shame and distorted beliefs about their unworthiness. In being met with love, they begin to discover the love they deserve. Through learning how to comfort and soothe your inner child, you can feel more resilient and whole - so that confrontations with your parent or periods of loneliness can cause less distress. Finding your adult Self is like finding a center of gravity that can hold in any storm. 

We address the protectors you developed in childhood that lend themselves towards codependency. Overly worrying about your parent, quickly abandoning your own needs for theirs, or taking in too much of their emotions (all forms of enmeshment) are common with HSPs and empaths. You may lean into your highly sensitive strengths to preserve the connection at your own expense. There are ways to be compassionate without bleeding empathy until the boundaries between self and other are blurred. You can be fiercely loving towards yourself which sometimes means seeming more “selfish” to others. Developing compassion for your inner child helps you to discern the difference. Like a parent protects a child, you can learn how to protect and nurture yourself.

We use guided visualizations to rescue your inner child from traumatic memories when she should have been seen and protected but never was. In doing so, we re-educate your protectors to take new actions in the present. You can never go back and change the past, but you can change the way you relate to it, and shift long-standing patterns with your family members. You can learn to see them clearly, sidestep manipulation, and individuate from your caretaking role in the family.

When you get in touch with your inner adult Self, you gain a clarity and confidence about which boundaries to set. The answers are within. Like we all have parts, so do your parents. Some of their parts might be safer than others and you can approach boundaries with nuance. Some parent’s parts are abusive to an extent where low or no contact is the safest option. Therapy can help you determine the level of interaction, and the contexts of interaction, that are most beneficial for you. Your inner witch knows what’s up and how best to safeguard your wellbeing.