If you are raised by a narcissist, it’s drastic effects will be reflected in your adult behaviour.
As adults, much of what we go through have their undercurrents in our childhood.
Be it our attachment problems, our issues with boundaries or our challenges with self-worth. As we grow up and feelings pile up, unresolved and pushed further down into the psyche, we experience physical, mental and psychosomatic sensations that indicate something is wrong.
Yet often, the traces of the real causes are so deep down, that we have to make a serious attempt to sit down with our pain, grief, frustration or whatever it is that is making us feel haywire and uprooted.
The above argument extends to all of us who were raised by a narcissist. It means that we were exposed to a constant stream of parental control. The kind that will balk and take offence at the slightest move towards individuation by the child.
The unfortunate thing about being born to a narcissist and then being exposed to their behavioural abuse, is that one can lose sight of what is “real”.
This piece is an attempt to throw light upon those aspects that you might feel is “natural” to you, but in reality are an outcome of your upbringing.
1. You constantly doubt yourself.
Do you find yourself second guessing on most things?
Do you take time to rely on your opinions and sometimes, even find it difficult to form one?
Do voices that don’t sound like your own almost always stop you, before you take an important call?
Self-doubt is a common feature of relationships between narcissists and their victims (which depending upon the context, could be their child, spouse, friend or colleague). As an outcome, you might feel helpless and keep wondering why it is that an opinion or action takes so much time to be manifested for you. You might hear from people that they consider you “wishy-washy” or as someone who lacks self-trust.
2. You consider winning more important than anything else.
You are perhaps someone known for their competitive streak.
When you get together with friends and play a casual game (of cards, of pool, of tennis, can be any game really), you always carry this charge in your behaviour. In that state, your relationships get muted into the background, the playfulness of the game does not matter and the importance given to camaraderie also reduces considerably.
Only one facet remains – your eagerness to win.
A similar theme might play out at work as well, where you’re constantly fired by challenges and will do whatever it takes to stay at the top. A hyper attitude towards triumph and victory in you could well be because you were born to a narcissistic parent.
Narcissists thrive on power games and are constantly relaying related messages overt or covertly to their children.
3. You don’t feel like you’re enough, no matter what you do.
If you go back to the previous point, it might seem like fullness and confidence is the birthright of anyone who gives predominance to winning.
However, when this behavioural trait is an outcome of being around a narcissistic parent and their overt or covert abuse, it’s different. In a narcissist’s power game, the victim is meant to reach out to impossible standards all the time.
In truth, this is to fulfill the grandiose dreams of achievement that the narcissist lives with and plays on. A narcissistic parent is seldom interested in fulfilling their aspirations on their own – their children are the baits they work with.
For several decades when the offspring gets messages from their parent that they always have to be bigger, stronger, richer, funnier and the list goes on, the former actually walks with a depleted sense of self.
