Narcissistic Parents: Basic Life Skills They Never Prepared You For

[CARDOZZO]

Great resource to learn what you didn't learn as a kid that is preventing you to grow up.

I don't like his framing that your parents didn't taught these skills because they are narcissists.

Sometimes, they just didn't learn it themselves. 

1. Why you were never taught to trust your own judgment—and how this keeps you seeking permission from everyone around you.
2. How your family trained you to manage emotions instead of process them.
3.  Why you were raised to believe your needs were selfish and inconvenient.
4. How boundaries in your family were either non-existent or used as weapons—leaving you with no healthy model.
5.  Why being alone triggers anxiety or abandonment instead of feeling safe and restorative.
6.  How your reality was constantly invalidated—and why you still don't trust your own perception.

[Cred]

Thanks for posting! The part with "not being able to trust you own judgement" is very true for me. Me being stubborn sometimes on this forum has kinda been my way of finally learning this skill.

[CARDOZZO]

1 hour ago, Cred said:

Thanks for posting! The part with "not being able to trust you own judgement" is very true for me. Me being stubborn sometimes on this forum has kinda been my way of finally learning this skill.

Yeah. Seeking approval is a pain in the ass. 

 

[oOo]

@CARDOZZO not towards you directly of course, that said, I feel a little suspicious about this kind of content from its creators.

Look, my parents were not exactly Sigmund Freud, and I think the majority of us probably side with a sentiment that doesn’t at least stray too far from here. However I know, even if as a child due to their own misunderstandings around how to raise a human being to avoid these struggles, I felt many of these issues that have been raised and I have consequently had to do a lot of inner work. Inner work, that has transformed me in ways though that I never could have imagined achieving, and I hope that brief note inspires others to continue on their mindful path by the way.

Our parents are human beings at the end of the day, and I know the tendency exists for people wanting something or someone to blame for at the very least some inner life circumstances. Some closure, some way to put a nail in the peg of a tent to figure out how they’re going to setup camp. That can be okay for a while, however eventually, you want to build a solid home for yourself. Strong floors, walls and a roof of protection both inwardly and outwardly for  life circumstances, and part of that is a foundation in logic not ego, psychology not victimhood, self-awareness and other awareness not blame projection. 

Telling people their lives suck because of other people is a multi-million dollar industry and telling people that it’s their parents fault is the biggest money maker of all because they can stay mad at them for an entire lifetime given their parents were most responsible for their well being from day zero which always quickly answers the question to oneself “How did I wake-up in this shitty world? Oh my parents, well how irresponsible of them to even have me. How did I wake-up with this pain in my heart? Oh my parents didn’t teach me emotional management skills”. And it just goes on and on even though the parents most often are just naive and ignorant no more than anyone else in their times. Having children was encouraged in most of western culture and brainwashing was as good as its ever been in the times that most people were born. Emotional management, self awareness skills and trusting psychology beyond the stereotypical belief that “psychology is about how Freud wanted to convince his patients that they wanted to sleep with their mother” is a very new thing which is what people don’t really get. Even if many of the techniques date back as early as the 1980’s they were not mainstream until at least 2010 or later. 

In answering the questions, it’s all 6 for me without a doubt. However my father had a bit of an Asperger’s streak while at the same time he had a massive heart inside, my mother has her own trauma growing up. These two things alone for any reasonable person forces their humanness to be considered before we tie em up for however many lashings we believe they deserve concerning from Satan himself. Moreover, it’s not even the case that for many parents you’d even be able to sit down and have an honest conversation about some of their early imprinting that at the very least didnt exactly go to plan, something that would only fuel an offspring’s own projection about their parents. Missing the fact that its not even just human nature to not want to own up to responsibility and think reflectively about potential past mistakes, rather it’s the horror as a parent to think that you may have done something wrong given how serious parenting is taken in society, extreme denial is far more likely to cover extreme shame than for them to sit one down and say “Jimmy you know what, you’re right. I didn’t build the emotional skills you needed. I didnt help you enough with your math homework. And I should have played soccer with you more growing up. I am sorry”. These were not the norms growing up, not only were so many working families so stressed from their jobs that their cortisol levels impacted their judgements at home with their children, they themselves simple we’re not equipped to think about anything else other than praying they can put food on the table for their children as opposed to dealing with the devastating shame of not being able to provide for their children. And sure theres many children from wealthier backgrounds with similar problems, however it doesn’t mean the terrain suddenly changed on the availability of information, the questioning of societal norms and the amount of denial projection that would result from undesirable consequences from simply combining those two alone.

I am not saying there are not terrible parents, I am saying that it needs to be compared to societal norms at that time not now and also with all of any aspect weighed against who the human is underneath simply being called a mom or a dad. That’s what we want them to do for us, so at the very least we can take it upon ourselves to learn all the information we can in the world to ensure we don’t make the same mistakes if not towards our own children but continuing the problems within through a lack of self education in an age where we are in knowledge overload over how to handle inward struggles like these now.

For anyone struggling, I totally get all the struggles above including wanting to judge a parent this or that way becsuse of this or that we didn’t get that we believed we deserved for the simple fact of being their child. But it’s not going to be the path towards full closure, only self education and doing the personal inner work will set a person free and not only reclaim their own sense of well being but also be able to view their parents through the same lens following their renewed sight.

I’ll inspect the resources anyhow maybe theres a little something I can learn. And for anyone struggling, you have my sympathies but please take an honest look within both yourself and your parents, then take proactive action on a small steps today in preparation for the practical step of tomorrow. Human ignorance is usually the issue first and foremost over the failure of being human, even for the most selfish of parents that shouldn’t escape accountability, unless they’re pure psychopaths theres usually a little something there to bring context to.

Thank you.

Best wishes.

Edited 8 hours ago by oOo

[Lyubov]

Be careful with this label "narcissist." It categorizes other people according to your bias because you don't like how they treated you. this person probably did make some mistakes and had some emotional imbalances. that label though keeps you from seeing the bigger picture and puts you in a victim mindset where this other person is the bad guy and you are the victim. on top of that you may see them as a "narcissist" but what about the people who saw them as a saint? placing pathologies keeps you stuck in labeling and playing victim instead of recognizing the behavior you wont tolerate in your life and simply moving on with the information you have about how a person treated you, no labels needed.  

 

[CARDOZZO]

I agree with you guys. I do not believe that all people are narcissist as he says. There is a lot of low cognitive development on the mix.