Parent Narcs

[wally]

Hi, do you have a minute, I,m curious about my situation

[miss piggy]

Hello Wally,

Welcome to the board.  I gather you may be a child of a narcissist?  Are you wondering if you are an N if your parent was one?

Um, I don't answer polls because of my resistance to reducing complex issues into b/w ones.  Just my own quirk.  But I did want to acknowledge your post.

But just to give you a glimpse of our world (and perhaps yours too), one does not necessarily become an N because of their N parents.  Otherwise we wouldn't have this board.  We'd all think we were OK!  It is possible to have any combination of N parents and N children/siblings. 

In my family alone, I have a raging Nfather, a enabling mother, an older brother that I just cannot label correctly other than passive aggressive, his BPD wife, my N sibling #2, and invisible me.  I sometimes wonder if I am an N because I am obsessed with learning about N and trying to cure myself by understanding everything about it.  My eyes suddenly popped open about 4 years ago (I'm well past college age  ).  It is a toss up whether I was damaged more by the neglect of my father or the abusive combo dish of attention of my Nsib and emotionallly blind mother.

Please hang around as long as you like and post more if you feel up to it.  Aloha, MP

[wally]

Thanks for responding Miss Piggy,

My mother is a classic N in all of the literature that I have read in the last few days.  I love her, but cant really stand to be around her, and my wife prefers that our children not be around her simply because all she does is gleen information from them to understand our disposition, and to fortify her controlling angle.  I have seperated enough of my life from her that my only concern now is my own N symptoms, and how to fix, heal, or atleast counter this tradition, so that my kids dont suffer through the hell that I just identified literally two days ago as NPD. 

wally

[Portia]

Weird! I posted this and it disappeared! So I’ll post it again…here goes…

Hi Wally, I read this just yesterday and thought it was pretty spot-on, from this site (thanks MP): http://www.operationdoubles.com/narc/ this is an excerpt:

Children of Narcissists
Another thing it is safe to say about the children of narcissists is that, from birth, they have had their self-esteem relentlessly assailed. Abused feelings are tender, sensitive feelings. As easily injured as burned skin. That is just a fact of life, not a moral fault.

So, the children of narcissists are quite sensitive to criticism. It causes them real pain, because it inflames old wounds. To avoid this pain, they are conscientious and try hard to be liked. Since they aim to please, so long as you respect their boundaries, you can easily get them to do anything they do not think is wrong or foolish. Yet they have been trained to feel that something's wrong with them if some intolerant person just can't stand them being the way they are, looking the way they look, feeling the way they feel, or thinking what they think. All this manifests itself as low self-esteem and marks them as sensitive.

Vicious attacks on sensitive feelings and low self-esteem draw far more blood than they would otherwise. So, the normal children of narcissists might as well go around wearing a target with the word VULNERABLE emblazoned on it. On seeing it, every bully in town thinks, "There is somebody I can really hurt" = "somebody I can be really powerful on."

…………………….
Yet another thing it is safe to say about the normal children of narcissists is that they have probably picked up bad habits in interacting with others. Outwardly, some of these bad habits appear narcissistic. Yet it is easy to tell the difference between a narcissist and a normal person. How? By simply asking him to stop it. The normal child of a narcissist will stop it. (A normal person who is not the child of a narcissist may not be so good about stopping it.) But a narcissist will do it all the more.
These behaviors persist through young adulthood. They gradually disappear after the child leaves home, as he gets used to normal people and how things work in the real world.

For example, the child of a narcissist may impolitely enter a room talking to interrupt the extant conversation. He hasn't been taught that this is bad manners. To the contrary, his (dominant) narcissistic parent did that twenty times a day. Also, he has found it so hard to get attention that he feels he must hijack it.

The difference between him and a narcissist, however, is easily demonstrated. If you ask him to stop it, he takes the message deeply to heart. In fact, you will find yourself trying to make him feel less bad about it. His behavior will change. A narcissist's never does. To contrary, if you ask a narcissist to stop doing something, he does it all the more.

Again for example, the only humor he was exposed in his unhappy home was the unfunniness of sarcasm. Life with a narcissist left even his normal parent with nothing to laugh about, except — you guessed it — sarcasm. But again, if you ask him to stop it, he takes the message deeply to heart. Again you find yourself trying to make him feel less bad about it. Again his behavior changes. Whereas a narcissist's never does.
…………….
Does this help you?

[wally]

Thanks Portia,

Your information answers many questions about myself that I feared to even ask, but for my children's sake knew it needed to be done.  It now begs to go one step further and question about the degrees of N'ism.  My mother has successfully defended her sacrificial or perhaps better put by my siblings, her martar status (single mother, worked all her life for her children, helped all of them with money for their first houses etc, and of course denied herself through her selfless journey).
     In all fairness to the newness of my knowledge about N parents, I am sure that my M's behavior pattern belongs to a traceable line of behavior.  The paradox is that I still love her, and am still defending her but I also back my wife as far as not wanting to leave ourselves or our children exposed or alone with my M.
     Also embarrassingly so, I do exhibit bursts of N behavior that are met with shame, and confusion afterward, only to be repeated again, but it is those situations that have driven me to search for that strange thing called Normal.  My wife is great at standing up for her children against anyone, myself included.  She is a wonderful grounding rod, for this whole situation.  As much as it hurts to basically have distanced our family so far from my M, I know that it is OK.  It cannot be coincidence that everytime we are around her we walk on eggshells, or we subscribe to at least two more weeks of drama.
     This woman (my M) can not be reprimanded, constructively criticized, nor can there be even any remote conversation with her that can elude to the fact that we disapprove of anything in the smallest degree.  I went through years of fighting this battle of which she had endless resources of ammunition to break down and sob, or lashout in anger of being judged, after being confronted about anything controversial, and of course no-one can judge her because they have faults to-----which has, and had nothing to do with anything------OK I'm getting worked up now but the mind bend starts her and like a mad artist that has filled up acres with twisted new forms of "art", she is relentless,----oh and can I just say that she has the victim act down to a science. 
    Wow, God bless America, sorry about the rambling.

Thanks Portia,

Wally

[miss piggy]

Hello again Wally,

Thanks for giving us a bit more info on your situation.  You have my condolences!!!     I can certainly relate to that feeling of being reduced to a piece of furniture when around an Nparent...

Many of us go through a stage of wondering how N we ourselves are.  I know I did, but then, I'm primed for self-doubt and for being the defective one.     My most N characteristic would have to be self absorption.  And, lately, (OK get ready for girl talk) menopausal hormonal upswing.  But I can blame my stage of life for the last one and most importantly, the fact that I have not flown off the handle regularly before now is a sign that I am not NPD.  In addition, the fact that I am even thinking introspectively is helpful to know that I am probably not an N.

Healthy narcissism means that you can get your needs met in an appropriate way.  Not by exploiting, coercing, or manipulating.
Healthy narcissism means you know you have the right to exist, along with everybody else.
Healthy narcissism means you are in tune with your feelings and allow others to have theirs.
etc.

Also, hoping this helps, I need to tell myself over and over that it is NOT selfish to have your own needs.  This is a biggy for me.
Kudos to you and your wife for not submitting your kids to N's mind control and invasiveness.  Oh, there's another clue: do we allow others to have their privacy or do we accuse them of keeping secrets?  Knowing where we end and others begin is key to being healthy.

Good luck Wally!