Published on The Huffington Post May 25, 2016 This is the second of a two-part series about the role of the so-called golden child in the narcissistic family. (Read Part 1.)
The Narcissist’s Idealized Mirror Image
Those familiar with narcissistic family dynamics know all too well how narcissistic parents divide and conquer by treating their children differently and pitting them against one another. Often the narcissist favors one child and places him or her on a pedestal as the family’s golden child pride and joy, serving as an enmeshed extension of the narcissist and an idealized mirror for his/her grandiosity. In contrast, the other child or children are scapegoated, blamed for the family’s problems and punished for mirroring all that the narcissist hates about him-/herself.
Jan from Tacoma, Washington, grew up with a verbally assaultive narcissist father. Her mother and two older brothers were scapegoated, while she alone was her father’s treasured golden child. She recently came across a description of the narcissistic family system, including the term “golden child.” She said, “When I read it I just froze. It was me.”
As early as Jan could remember, her father went on rage binges, spending hours and even days at a time stomping around the house violently berating her mother and brothers. “Something so innocuous would trigger it. He would find a reason to go off,” Jan said. “It was so loud you could hear it on the road. I know the neighbors could hear it. He would go on for hours and hours yelling, ranting, ‘You did this, you did that.’ I had such shame about it. At the time it was overwhelming.”
‘I Had to Be Happy All the Time’
As his assigned golden child, Jan said her father never turned his anger on her. She described having fun with him talking and exploring the surrounding woods together. She said she thought if she could make the day good everything would be okay when they got home. She was never at ease, never sure when the next explosion would come. “I had to be happy all the time. I had to be cheerful all the time… You’re playing a role. You’re not really you.”
Inevitably her father’s temper flared at the rest of her family. Sometimes he told her brothers to get out of the house. “He would make them leave. They’d be out in the rain in their socks. . . . . My mother would sit in a chair huddled over, sometimes pretending to read. She figured out not to fight because it would make it worse. Sometimes she would take us away. Once we stayed in a hotel.”
Golden Child Guilt and Isolation
Jan said about her mother and brothers, “It didn’t make any sense; they were wonderful humans. My brothers are much more talented than I am. I had very strong feelings of guilt. I watched the people I loved receive the rage. I felt like I should have been able to fix things. My mother would tell me to go to my room and be very very quiet.”
Although Jan was spared her father’s direct wrath, she was around during the worst years of his abuse. “Being the youngest, I think I might have been more affected,” she said. “My brothers are 6 and 8 years older. I think they had happier earlier years because the marriage was better then, and they had each other and left as soon as they could. I had all those years alone wanting to fix it, seeing my father’s abuse of my mother.”
Jan described her mother as loving, adventurous, and a talented painter. She turned to Christian Science for meaning in her life, but in time suffered from an untreated case of pneumonia that dragged on for years and eventually killed her in her 60s. A man Jan was involved with at the time said it was her mother’s way of committing suicide. “It was shocking to hear him say that, but the essence of it was true,” Jan said. “We were devastated when she died.”
Typical of golden children, Jan grew up feeling isolated, both from her family members and socially. She worried that her mother resented her. “I felt, ‘my god why can’t you be nice to mom like you are to me?’ You become oversensitized to those around you because your life depends on it.” Her middle brother told her jokingly, “Yeah, we just ignored you.” Jan stopped having friends over after one asked to go home because her father was yelling.
Emotional Incest
Also typical of golden children, Jan felt disturbingly engulfed by her father. She said there were no clear boundaries between them. “Sometimes he would refer to me as his ‘girlfriend.’ I didn’t like it. He felt too much for me in a way that a dad shouldn’t. It’s not like a father’s love should feel. It felt wrong, like emotional incest.”
Jan left home early and married an abusive narcissist who she had dated since she was 14, flip-flopping her role as golden child to brutalized scapegoat. She said, “He tore me down so much he literally had me on my knees.”
She was plagued with low self-esteem and health problems starting in her 20s, including a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). When Jan told her father about her MS, he replied, “People with MS like to blame other people for all their problems.” After leaving her first marriage she endured a second abusive relationship. Through years of therapy, she eventually made her way into a loving marriage.
Self-Compassion
Jan said one of her most healing experiences was in therapy when she was confronted with her feelings about herself as a child. “I realized I had extreme hatred for that little girl. The beginning of my healing was becoming compassionate to that little person who had no power. The beginning of the journey was forgiving myself for not being able to save my family.”
Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free coming December 3, 2019, from Hachette Books. Preorder your copy now.
Need support? Julie provides specialized narcissistic abuse recovery coaching to clients around the world.
Related Articles by Julie L. Hall
- The Overt Versus Covert Narcissist: Both Suck
- Maddening and Bizarre Things About Narcissists Explained
- The Hidden Trauma of Neglect in the Narcissistic Family
- The Narcissism Disease Cluster in Families and How to End the Cycle
- Why Narcissists Will Never Love You and It’s Dangerous to Love Them
- How Narcissists Torture Others and Believe They’re Right to Do It
- The Narcissist’s Disrespect, Envy, and Contempt
- Why Narcissists Play the Shame Game
- How and Why Narcissists Are Highly Skilled Abusers
- The Narcissist Parent’s Psychological Warfare: Parentifying, Idealizing, and Scapegoating
- 7 Defining Traits of the Narcissist
- Raised by a Narcissist? 11 Healing Things to Do for Yourself Right Now
- The Paradox of the Narcissist’s Unrequited Self-Love
- It’s You and Me Baby: Narcissist Head Games
- 7 Things a Narcissist Will Never Do
- The Narcissist as Human Parasite: Are You a Host?
- 4 Insidious Ways That Narcissistic Abuse Isolates the Victim
- Behind the Narcissist Mask: The Bully, Coward, Liar and Fraud
- How to Protect Your Child from Your Narcissist Spouse
- The Challenge of Setting Boundaries with Narcissist Parents
- Understanding Narcissistic Rage and Why It Is Not Your Fault
- The Strength of the Scapegoat in the Narcissistic Family
- Adult Children of Narcissists Face Trauma-Induced Health Risks
- Seven Sure Ways to Spot a Narcissist
- The Dos and Don’ts of CoParenting with a Narcissist
Featured image courtesy of Eva Rinaldi, Creative Commons.
View Comments (6)
Oh, my gosh! I know the role of the scapegoat very well, my sister who is younger than me, was the family golden child. I knew that my sister had to suffer under that somehow, but because my mother engineered us to never be close, she and I never confided in each other - we were never close and my mother made sure of that. To me, my sister's life looked like 'cloud 9' ... but Jan's experience as the 'golden child' sheds light on this for me as to what this must have been like for my sister. I can totally relate to Jan being he scapegoat in her marriage - except I was the scapegoat in my family of origin (not in a marriage.)
The thing that really hit me is how she developed MS too. So did I. I knew something was 'wrong' with me since I was a teen. Of course, there are no tests that can say you have MS - you have to have relapses to be diagnosed. From all the trauma, MS's first relapse hit me after two years of going no contact with my mother. Even though I broke ties, I knew nothing about narcissism (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). For many years afterward, I still carried the trauma and pain of the abuse - much of it I never shared with anyone because, firstly - who'd believe me? And the abuse was so 'out there' that anyone hearing this stuff would think you're making it up. Furthermore, it didn't help, that deep down, I still thought that there was something more wrong with me than her - it's like my mind was stuck on a toxic merry-go-round that I couldn't get off of - toxic thoughts all day, every day. I didn't want to believe it was 'all her' - I didn't want to be like her who often blamed me - or other people - for everything wrong in her life. I was willing to accept some of the blame, even though I couldn't figure out what I had done to warrant such awful abuse. After 10 years of no contact with my mother, I had a big blow-up with my own family of origin 6 years ago that resulted in very strict no contact with all family of origin. Two years ago, I have another MRI and FAR LESS LESIONS than what I started with. In my case, I think my MS is a direct result of abuse trauma!!! In fact, I'd almost bet money on it. I have not relapsed now in 12 years. I do not think this is coincidence!
Thank you so much for sharing this story and for Jan giving permission for you to share it. I feel more for my golden child sister now. It could not have been easy for her.
Hi Saoirse. Thank you for sharing your story. Indeed with a narcissist parent (or two), there is no escaping trauma, which does absolutely get carried in the body. My best wishes to you for continued healing.
Yea me the golden child...pretty much sucked..still does. My sister committed suicide 6yrs ago..always told me..you're gonna have to take care of mom in her old age..I can't do it. Well..exactly happening...the Grandiosity Gap is alive & well...severe untreatable depression set in-Again-now at 79yrs old. Physically, Mentally & Emotionally Crippled and death slowly knocking at the door...the response to it all.."I'll just stay here & mold"..(right-while she tries to continually manipulate me to come take care of her/move in w me..instead of making a "healthy" choice of assisted living or nursing home...it has come to be--her whole life was based on fear/exposure...Jesus Help me...I married THE SAME-Covert N! Been 5yrs in Recovery for me...Hurt yes...Healed YES!! They have Lived their choices now I shall LIVE MINE...INTENT W LOVE...as I always Had/Have. You can break a heart, break a body but never The Spirit Within...Never!
This comes from Dr Claudia Black work on alcoholic families
The book she wrote outlined the different roles.
It will never happen to me is the name of it. She is never given enough credit for the work she did with disfunctional families.
Look it up very kewl book changed my life for sure
I read it was a young adult from an alcoholic family
Thank you
From a lost child
I haven't spoken to my Golden brother for about 11 years now (his choice), since our Narc mother exposed her fragile, immature self during a rage filled meltdown. It still feels strange. I am simultaneously sorry and glad that my wife and our adult son witnessed it. Somebody who did not see it would never believe it. Although it was ugly, it was an unmistakable symptom of a serious mental problem with her (I now understand NPD).
As payback for "tearing off her mask," she had the Golden one go right around the will that had been in place for 30 years. He took the fruit of Dad's labor out of state, screwing 3 brothers in the process. Neither me nor my other remaining brother sense guilt from the Golden one. IThe best guess is that he was so enmeshed with mommy that he hates us by proxy.
Thank you, Julie. This explains something I didn't understand. I was the perfect child. At least I tried to be, and was often rewarded for my good grades, long practice hours on the piano, and doing all the things my mother loved right along with her. My sister, on the other hand, was the adventurer who went out on her bike, climbed every tree and goal post, hated studying, couldn't sit still on the piano bench, and was the gregarious people-person. My parents berated her for not being more like me. She grew up to be a drama queen, always claiming to be victimized, threw herself at inappropriate men, and told people she must have been adopted because she was never loved as a child. I always wondered where all of that came from. I had always admired her for being an extrovert and doing her owh thing and being athletic. She always had more friends than me. I hated I had spent my childhood practicing the piano while she was having a good time. Now, I think maybe I was the Golden Child and she was the Scapegoat. Funny how we each wanted to be the other. My mother wanted to live vicarously through me and groomed me to be successful so people would see her as a wonderful mother. When she was on her deathbed, one of my mother's longtime friends surprised me by admitting all my mom's cohorts had always called her "The Boss" behind her back. Good to know.