Children of narcissistically disordered parents experience profound violations of trust and ongoing assaults to their sense of reality, identity, and self-esteem. For this population, one of the most difficult aspects of recovery is overcoming denial about what they have experienced in their family system.

Denial is a normal part of early childhood development, and it is an essential protective mechanism in children and teenagers experiencing neglect and abuse. Denial helps us survive what we can’t change, but it must be replaced with awareness and conscious recovery work for healing to take place.

Coming Out of Denial About Your Narcissistic Parents A–Z

1. Abuse. You experienced abuse. People with narcissistic personalities are relational antagonists who use and hurt others to make themselves feel better. Beneath the surface veneer, they are controlling, competitive, exploitative, hostile, and reactionary, and they have a traumatizing effect on others, especially their children.

2. Bully. Your narcissistic parent is a bully. You may already recognize your overtly narcissistic parent’s bullying behaviors, such as monologuing, belittlement, and rage outbursts. Bullying can be harder to see in the covert type of narcissist, who uses more “passive” aggression like dismissal, withholding acknowledgment, barbs, backhanded compliments, and gossiping about you behind your back.

3. Cognitive empathy. Your narcissistic parent probably has cognitive empathy, which enables them to imagine what you’re thinking or feeling and therefore more effectively manipulate you. What they don’t have is sustained, if any, emotional empathy, which is an experience of shared emotion and compassion for another.

4. Delusional. Your narcissistic parent is delusional. Narcissists hold reality at a distance and tell themselves they are superior beings who are entitled to special privileges, justified in hurting others, and always the wronged party in conflicts.

5. Enmeshment. Narcissistic parents are often enmeshed in one or more of their children’s lives. Enmeshed parents cross their child’s boundaries by doing things like controlling their decisions, interfering in their relationships, or handling things they need to learn to do themselves.

6. Fear. You have a fear-based relationship with your narcissistic parent. Your parent’s reactivity and inability to provide an empathetic response to your dependency needs in infancy and childhood elicited a fear response (fight/flight/freeze/fawn/flop) in you that may still persist today. Children who fear the people they rely on for survival experience fundamental attachment trauma that shapes their development and future relationships.

7. Gaslighting. Your narcissistic parent has been gaslighting you (undermining your sense of reality) your whole life. Narcissistic personality disordered parents groom their children to accept their control and abuse by deliberately undermining their confidence in their own feelings and perceptions. Examples of parental gaslighting include telling kids they’re too sensitive, irrational, or weak when they question or react to unfairness or cruelty.

8. Hypervigilant. Your reactionary parent has made you hypervigilant to the moods and feelings of others. Your nervous system has been conditioned to be on high alert around other people, especially bullies, and you can easily escalate into a fight/flight/freeze/fawn/flop response.

9. Idealization. Your narcissistic parent sees people in binary black and white as either idealized/superior or devalued/inferior. This is a projection of their relationship with self, which is always split between the special grandiose persona and the repressed ashamed inner self.

10. Justification. Your parent’s lack of empathy and entitled self-beliefs allow them to justify neglecting, exploiting, and hurting you to meet their own needs.

11. and 12. Kindness vs. Love-Bombing. Your narcissistic parent may at times love-bomb you with idealized attention, praise, or gifts, but this is not kindness. Kindness is rooted in empathy, compassion, and love, and it is what children need most from their parents.

13. Mask. Most narcissists learn to mask their self-serving, cruel, and cynical view of life to get the attention and approval they crave and to avoid being socially ostracized. This is why your parent may go to great lengths to put on a winning face for people in their social circle while directing contempt and rage at you or other family members at home.

14. Nice. Most narcissists can be nice at times, perhaps even fun, interesting, or helpful. Parental abuse and neglect usually coexist with neutral or positive experiences. The fact that your parent fed and clothed you, taught you things, or made you feel special at times does not change the damaging impact of their abuse.

15. Object constancy. Your narcissistic parent never developed object constancy, which is an important psychological milestone in early childhood. This means when you do something they don’t like, they split emotionally and suddenly see you as an inferior or enemy.

16. Projection. Narcissistic personalities project constantly. That means that when they think, feel, or do something they don’t want to admit to, they project it onto you or someone else.

17. Questioning. Narcissists are threatened by questions. Questions and differing views are normal parts of human interaction, but narcissists see them as threats to their sense of control and need to be right.

18. Repressed. Beneath their superiority complex and aggression, narcissistic people have repressed feelings of shame and vulnerability that they try to keep out of conscious awareness. When a narcissist’s shame surfaces, it usually triggers a rage response or, in more extreme situations, a depressive collapse.

19. Self-referential. Your narcissistic parent is highly self-referential. This means they see situations only in terms of what it means for them or how it makes them feel.

20. Attachment Trauma. Our early bonding experiences with our parents, particularly in the first two to three years of life, become a template for our relational patterns going forward. This means that if we have had abuse and neglect normalized, we are likely to have unsafe boundaries and be drawn into similar dynamics in our future relationships.

21. Unreliable narrator. Narcissistic personalities are by nature unreliable narrators who are prone to lies and distortions, selective hearing and remembering, magical thinking, and rewriting history.

22. Vulnerability avoidant. Narcissists see vulnerability as weakness, and they armor themselves against it with denial, projection, and forms of aggression. This is why your narcissistic parent attacks your vulnerability and is incapable of real intimacy.

23. Willful denial. Your narcissistic parent knows the difference between fact and fiction, truth and lies, fair and rigged, right and wrong. When they deny the truth, they do it because it is more convenient for them.

24. EXit. Narcissistic personalities rarely change, mainly because they avoid self-reflection, refuse accountability, and tell themselves they’re perfect the way they are. This is why it becomes necessary to exit the trauma bond you have with your narcissistic parent. An adult child’s decision to limit or end contact with an abusive parent is nearly always a slow and agonizing one that becomes a matter of safety and survival.

25. Yearn. It is human to yearn for love from our parents and blame ourselves for not getting it. Many children of narcissists spend their lives seeking affirmation that never comes, without realizing that their parents are incapable of giving it.

26. Zero-sum game. Your narcissistic parent sees life as a zero-sum game in which they can only gain if someone else loses, and someone else’s gain is a loss to them. In healthy families and relationships, love, respect, inclusion, and support are renewable resources that strengthen everyone.

Words of Caution About Releasing Denial

As you work on releasing your own denial about your narcissistic parents, be patient and compassionate with yourself. These truths can feel scary, confusing, destabilizing, and painful, and they take time to process. Other people may not understand your experience or may feel threatened by hearing about it. Remember to guard yourself and be careful about whom you confide in.

Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Hachette Books.

Need support? Julie provides specialized narcissistic trauma recovery coaching to clients around the world.

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