First published in Psychology Today 10/14/19 Children of narcissistic parents, particularly children who are routinely devalued or scapegoated, commonly internalize feelings of vulnerability, hopelessness, and imminent threat that create a sense of foreshortened future. Like other long-term trauma sufferers, children from narcissistic families often harbor the belief that they are fundamentally damaged and that their life is precarious, unmanageable, even doomed.
Growing up, such children experience disruptions to their sense of personal agency that make it difficult to imagine themselves becoming adults and achieving normal milestones such as having a job/career, committed relationship, home, or family. Often without consciously realizing it, they feel unworthy or incapable of those things, and they carry such beliefs into adulthood, continuing to expect that their life will be cut short or that things they hope for, if they dare to hope, are not possible for them. When other people talk of their futures, they may feel a sense of dissociation from their own and alienation from those who have confidence in having relatively full, long, and stable lives.
Destructive Family Messages
A foreshortened sense of the future in children and adult children from narcissistic homes is a symptom of complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) that results from direct or implied messages in their family, such as the following:
- Their life is unimportant or worthless.
- There is little or no support for them in the world.
- They don’t deserve good things.
- They can’t function on their own.
- They can’t do what most people can do.
- They will never be able to hold down a job.
- No one will ever want/love them.
- They aren’t as capable or deserving as their parents/siblings.
- They should not compete with or outshine their parents/siblings.
- They are part of an underclass of the undeserving.
- They are destined to screw up their life.
- Their family will undermine or destroy anything good in their life.
- Everyone in their family is a mess and they are too.
- They can never overcome their past.
Messages like these are devastating at any age, especially for young people starting out in life. Such messages typically reflect narcissistic parents’ own projected insecurities or attempts to undermine or pathologize their children to
- feel superior,
- discourage competition,
- create dependency,
- get sympathy,
- rationalize scapegoating,
- justify controlling behavior, and/or
- support the family narrative.
In adulthood, illness and financial woes, which often go hand in hand and are more common in people with CPTSD, may amplify a foreshortened-future view of life. The instability that frequently comes with health problems and money worries tends to breed more of the same and create vicious cycles of disability, unemployment, debt, hopelessness, and isolation.
Chronically doubting our survival and ability to thrive is a deeply demoralizing state of mind that adult children of narcissists may live with for years without understanding that it is a result of trauma. The experience is a fundamental loss of faith and a feeling of disconnection from oneself, others, and life itself.
But a fractured and fatalistic view of the future is not something anyone has to settle for. It is important for our own well-being and the well-being of the people who care about us, especially our kids, that we address this belief system and take steps to overcome it.
Strategies for Healing a Sense of Foreshortened Future
Here are some ways to help yourself (or someone you care about) build confidence in the future:
- Create a timeline of your major life accomplishments and keep it updated.
- Make an ongoing photo album or scrapbook of important events/highlights in your life.
- Practice visualizing yourself in the future at different ages and what you would like your life to be like.
- Write down goals you have for the future, including personal and professional goals.
- Make short- and long-term social and/or travel plans. Challenge yourself to make plans for one week from now, six months from now, and five years from now.
- Read inspirational quotes and stories about people who overcome hardship.
- Challenge yourself to do something you’ve wanted to do, such as planting a garden, building a deck on your house, or learning another language.
- Reach out to trusted friends and share your steps with them.
References
Ratcliffe, Matthew, et al. “What Is a ‘Sense of Foreshortened Future?’ A Phenomenological Study of Trauma, Trust, and Time.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 5, 17 Sept. 2014, p. 1026., doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01026.
Dryden-Edwards, Roxanne. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptoms, Causes, Treatment.” MedicineNet, September 14, 2018. https://www.medicinenet.com/posttraumatic_stress_disorder/article.htm#ptsd_facts.
Adapted from Julie L. Hall’s book The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Hachette Books.
Need support? Julie provides specialized narcissistic abuse recovery coaching to clients around the world.
Listen to Julie being interviewed about the narcissistic family on The Addicted Mind Podcast and Narcissist Apocalypse Podcast.
Related Articles by Julie L. Hall
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- Maddening and Bizarre Things About Narcissists Explained
- The Hidden Trauma of Neglect in the Narcissistic Family
- Your Brain Under the Influence of Narcissistic Parents
- 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 They Believe They’re Right to Do It
- The Narcissist’s Disrespect, Envy, and Contempt
- Why and How 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
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- 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 Narcissist Family
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Featured image courtesy of Andrew Martin, Pixabay.
11 Comments
Excellent insights. This issue has come up for me recently and is gnawing away at me.
This is so relevant. Thank you, Julie. I’ve verbalized this privately to myself, just musing on “Why is it I can’t envision a future for myself?”… I can imagine myself doing things in a theoretical way, and if you sat me down and asked me if, logically, I have a future, I’d say of course. But I don’t believe it in my bones. It doesn’t feel real. And this disbelief just makes all planning and goal-setting feel pointless. I’m going to look into this more. Thank you again.
We need to start rightfully saying/writing these articles with the correct title of: “Narcissistic Mothers” not just Narcissistic parent because in the real world this horrible emotional/physical abuse is being covertly done by Moms! Besides myself and my siblings growing up with a horrible horrible Narcissistic Mother, the many friends and relatives who also were emotionally abused was also done by their Mothers! FACT: at my therapy group for adult women who grew up emotionally abused all: 25 woman stated the abuse came only from their Narcissistic mothers. So it is time to calling this out with the correct name from the start and dealing with where exactly the abuse is from and that is unequivocally Narcissistic Mothers!!
Caroline: Narcissistic parents include at least as many if not more fathers. That fact is born out in the data that show more men than women have narcissistic personality disorder, in my research and work talking with thousands of survivors and numerous clinicians in the field, and in my personal experience.
I have to chime in here, reading this made me pour involuntary tears and involuntary shaking in my shoulders from nerves (I don’t cry like ever) Im 36, Male, divorced and have had a BIG roller coaster life of whale proportions always felt this way in general and recently two years ago I stumbled onto this blossoming understanding of the complex field of specialty psychology, and it blew me away and I was even heartbroken for a few months realizing my mom was really that way inside, and the psychiatrist I was seeing was an admitted narcissist himself and really devalued me when I needed it most by downplaying it to at times emphasizing that I should do something but had no answer. We got along before I had the realizations. Anyway. I wanted to let the author know that this was possibly the exact spark I needed to hurdle over the relentless depression and keep moving forward in life and they offered pointers on things to do to start doing, as I read through it i noticed that I had already implemented a few of the solutions on my own before reading it even to find immensely helpful and necessity. I even turned the pdf into a phone app shortcut on my phone to check hopefully daily for guidance and reassurance.
Caroline, to say that all or even most narcissistic abuse comes solely from mothers is wrong. My father, like his father before him, was a major narcissist, and their narcissistic parenting has produced several more narcissistic men in the family line. To say mothers are the only abusive, narcissistic parents is to deny the lived experiences of myself, my family, and undoubtedly millions of other adult children raised by narcissistic fathers.
I wouldn’t say that it’s only mothers who are narcissistic, however I have found that mothers are particularly susceptible to being covert narcissists and the type of psychological trauma mentioned in the article comes from them. As the above poster mentioned, even psychiatrists can be prone to dismissing the extent of damage covert narcissistic mothers are capable of. Of course, men are more likely diagnosed with NPD as Julie says but that is because it is more overt, obvious to spot, and easier to stomach/less taboo than mothers being narcissistic. It’s almost as if too uncomfortable for even clinicians, as well as the rest of society, to explore its true prevalence. It’s more probable to be a narc parent without NPD diagnosis and that is more common with mothers.
Yeah, I can vouch for that.
The article is very helpful, except the strategies. You can visualize as much as you want, but first you have to accept the limitations that you have as a result of that trauma; then you move forward from that point instead of creating a fantasy version of yourself ( the one you want to be). English is not my first language, and I’m also too tired for puntuation.
It’s really interesting to me to learn that this is common among ACoNs. You mean it isn’t just me!? I grew up being told that my life on earth would be short. My Nparents were fundamentalist Christians who believed “the Rapture” was imminent. (Jesus Christ returning to earth to whisk us true believers up to heaven before destroying everyone/everything else.)
We NEVER talked about “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. My parents (now 80) are struggling financially because they saw no need to save for a retirement that they weren’t going to be here for. They never saved for their kids to go to college, I was even afraid to discuss wanting to go to college because that would mean I didn’t believe them when they said Jesus was coming back any minute now. (And that would mean I was going to hell, which was a constant threat/fear.) Why let your kids date, or even form strong friendships, when they’re never going to get married or have kids of their own?
I never connected that w/ the narcissism before, but it gives me a lot to think about!
“Why let your kids date, or even form strong friendships, when they’re never going to get married or have kids of their own?”
Well. This certainly makes more sense than I ever thought it would.
Certainly gives them an excuse to isolate you after they’ve also done their best to ruin all your relationships.
Ironically — and certainly this could be because “the parents” may have grown up in an era where it’s near-mandatory to be paired and single people should be ostracized (that’s less & less a thing in the 21st century, I’d argue, but still feels very much like a thing) … as more and more people are waking up to the damage narcissism can do in married & other paired relationships, more and more successfully single people are thriving; but as a result people need close friendships with people they/we can rely on MORE, not less
#MakesYouGoHmmm