Low self-esteem
Your feelings of worthlessness didn’t come from nowhere. Although many children of narcissists don’t consciously experience these difficult feelings, they are still there, running in the background and influencing your everyday life. Your choices, your relationships and your ability to withstand stress are all affected by low self-worth.
Narcissistic parents raise their children to believe that their authentic self is somehow flawed. These parents use shame to try to control their children, forcing them to meet the parent’s needs. Anything that doesn’t coincide with the parent’s point of view is belittled or dismissed. The child is shamed for having opinions, feelings or needs of their own, resulting in an ongoing sense of inadequacy and worthlessness.
2. Powerful Inner Critic
The ever present narcissist-in-residence in your head. Do you hear your mother’s voice whenever you make a mistake, hesitate, or fail to be generally fabulous? Some people seem to have a constant harping critic inside them, commenting and criticising their every move. The problem for most of us is that the voice isn’t always recognisable, its just there as an ongoing presence, poisoning our relationship with ourselves and making life much harder.
For those of us who grew up with a narcissistic mother, the voice is normally hers, harping, criticising, judging and making us feel that we will never, ever be good enough.
3. Perfectionism
Daughters of narcissists often start projects (careers, businesses, relationships) but never finish them due to the need to make everything perfect. If we can’t perfect, we discard or distract ourselves, procrastinating until it’s too late to actually achieve anything.
The need to be perfect stops us in our tracks.
We often suffer terrible anxiety worrying that all our decisions are somehow wrong, bad or misguided. But getting anywhere in life means sometimes making mistakes or being wrong. Mistakes are part of the learning curve and without the ability to withstand our own failures and have faith in ourselves we will never achieve anything.
Daughters of narcissists can spend their lives self-sabotaging through procrastination, questioning every decision they make. The looming prospect of taking a risk often paralyses them, preventing them from pursuing their talents and succeeding in a business or a career.
4. Chronic shame
Narcissists are shame averse and will usually project their shame onto others (including their children) as a way of avoiding experiencing it themselves. A mother who is narcissistic will also put her own shame into her children through projection, eye contact and facial expressions (e.g. disgust), leaving a lifelong legacy of chronic shame.
Narcissistic mothers also use shame as a parenting strategy without making themselves available for soothing and repair. The strong emotions elicited by shame are too hard for a young child to manage on their own and can lead to the child using dissociation or other problematic ways of coping. Children are extremely sensitive to shaming and will internalise these feelings, carrying them inside themselves well into adulthood.
In her article, Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, Darlene Lancer writes about the toxic shame narcissistic parents cause their children:
“She rarely, if ever, feels accepted for just being herself. She must choose between sacrificing herself and losing her mother’s love–a pattern of self-denial and accommodation is replayed as codependency in adult relationships.
“Her real self is rejected, first by her mother, and then by herself. The consequence is internalized, toxic shame, based on the belief that her real self is unlovable.”
Most of the time, you won’t be aware of this feeling. It’s like wallpaper — invisible, but always there. The shame you experienced and now carry with you is a habit ingrained through emotionally abusive parenting. Many survivors of narcissistic parenting continue to shame themselves unconsciously when they fail to live up to the impossible standards set by their parents.
5. Sensitivity to criticism
Narcissists experience their children as an extension of themselves. In order to maintain an inflated and positive experience of self, they need their offspring to be perfect. This means that they are continuously uncomfortable with the mistakes and imperfections inherent in being human.
Narcissistic parents rarely accept failure, or mediocrity. Being ordinary is anathema. So they nitpick, criticise, judge and control. As a result of this lack of acceptance, children of narcissists are extremely sensitive to criticism. Feedback at work, criticism from a partner, even innocent comments from a neighbour can send you into a spiral of self-judgement and shame.
6. Sensitivity to rejection
Alongside the sensitivity to criticism is a connected and debilitating sensitivity to rejection. These two closely related traits stay with us from a childhood where we were often rejected, criticised and judged. Although rejection sensitivity tends to be more relationship focused, it’s part of the same problem. If our partner or friend makes an insensitive or thoughtless comment, we often catastrophise and self-blame, leading to resentment and ongoing problems in our closest relationships.
The emotional abuse of our past causes us to be pushed us back into our trauma. Rejection sensitvity makes us much more vulnerable in relationships and can stop us from taking the risks needed to find happiness. As adults it’s hard to escape this sensitivity and it can frequently get in the way of having healthy sustainable relationships.
7. Insecure attachment style
Most children of narcissistic mothers will have an insecure attachment style. Mothers who are narcissistic just aren’t emotionally available to their children. They are usually too self-focused to be sensitively attuned. This leaves us with the overwhelming sense that relationships are fragile and that we must do all the work to maintain them. We will also be anxious around our partner, never relaxing into the feeling that they will be there for us in the longterm. This in turn can cause us to need constant reassurance, which for some partners can be unwelcome and perhaps overwhelming, leading to the very thing we fear the most - rejection.
8. One sided relationships
Children of narcissistic mothers often find themselves in relationships where they are exploited and ignored. Because they have been emotionally abused and rejected by their parents, they haven’t internalised a healthy template for relationships.
They often feel they must give in to others in order to have a relationship, because that is how they were treated as children. They may be attracted to others who trigger their wounds and can sometimes get into relationships with narcissists. Drawn to the tiny crumbs of affection offered by those who may initially appear to be devoted, they are extremely vulnerable to being exploited.
9. Depression and anxiety
Depression and anxiety are the result of the deeper wounds to your sense of self. Survivors of narcissistic parenting can be left with a host of issues in adulthood, including problems with relationships. Due to a lack of agency and feelings of helplessness, children of narcissists can get depressed, feeling like there is nothing they can do to improve their lives.
The helpless rage and frustration survivors experienced as emotionally abused children can result in the sense that there is no justice and any step they take will be stymied. Narcissistic parents are often authoritarian and can dominate their children resulting in a sense that they will be punished for taking action on their own behalf. When things go wrong in life, they may be left paralysed, thinking that they are unable to make an impact.
Narcissistic parents don’t model good ways of managing negative emotions like anxiety. They spend little time helping their children learn to self-soothe. Survivors also experience anxiety due to their perfectionism, with fears around criticism and performance anxiety dominating their social interactions.
For survivors, it’s not enough to treat surface symptoms like anxiety and depression without dealing with the underlying trauma and lack of self.
10. Lack of boundaries
Children of narcissists don’t develop good boundaries growing up, because boundaries are an inconvenience to narcissists. Narcissistic families practice enmeshment and individuals in these families aren’t allowed to develop or have a healthy sense of themselves as separate and autonomous.
Because narcissists generally view their children as an extension of themselves, they discourage any attempts by the child to separate or express their individuality, including having boundaries.
As a result of this “training,” survivors often have trouble saying “no” as well as hearing it, and will be attracted to unhealthy relationships where enmeshment is the status quo.
11. Problematic relationship to anger
Narcissistic parents are often angry. They normally won’t express their anger in a healthy way. Sometimes, they will be verbally abusive, belittling and sarcastic. These passive aggressive ways of expressing anger are used to humiliate and control children.
People raised in these environments can be fearful or easily intimidated. They may be unable to express their own anger in healthy ways and are at risk of becoming bullies or alternatively “pushovers” who don’t know how to set limits.
Parents who teach children that it is not OK to be angry, create adults who are afraid of other people’s anger and their own. In these families, children are often silenced and quickly learn not to assert themselves.
12. Patterns of self-destructive behaviour
Children of narcissists often self-soothe through problematic habits. Drinking, smoking, gambling, overeating, drugs and sex addiction can provide some respite from the painful feelings leftover from childhood trauma, but the price is very high. Adult survivors can also be self-destructive and sabotage their careers or healthy relationships, because they feel they don’t deserve success or happiness.
You may find yourself embroiled in unhealthy dynamics at work or home, due to problematic communication styles, sensitivity to criticism or working models and assumptions from childhood which developed as a result of parental criticism and hostility. Being able to set boundaries, say no and ask for what we want, are essential skills for relationships.
Developing self-compassion can help us choose healthier ways of self-soothing and make better choices.
13. Depleted sense of self
Children of narcissists lack a strong sense of self. They often drift along, allowing fate or others to dominate them, as they were dominated by their parents. They often have trouble asking for what they want, because they don’t know themselves well enough to understand their own needs.
Survivors can also have problems asking for what they want in a straightforward way. They can lose themselves in relationships, allowing the other person to set the agenda.
A strong sense of self is crucial to navigating every day life. It stops us from allowing ourselves to be exploited or comparing ourselves to others. It gives us confidence in our abilities. Most importantly, it shapes a strong identity.
14. Competitiveness
Narcissistic parents have unreasonable expectations of their children. They need their children to reflect well on them. They can drive their offspring to achieve, competing and hoping to succeed in a desperate attempt to win their parent’s love.
Siblings in narcissistic families will often be pitted against one another, competing for the tiny crumbs of affection offered by their parents.
Survivors can often be left with the need to base their self-worth on their achievements, trying in vain to win the affection of their narcissistic parents.
These emotionally abused children can become extremely competitive, poisoning their relationships and making it hard for them to have close friendships or collaborative relationships at work. If they feel they cannot win, they may give up, becoming depressed, bitter or angry, envious of other’s success.
Maybe you don’t have all of these. But most daughters of narcissistic mothers will struggle with many of these issues at some time in their lives.
You’ve done all the work. You’ve been there & done that. You’ve come to know yourself and your past, but you still can’t resist those delicious grandiose men.