If you grew up in an alcoholic or addicted family, chances are it had a profound impact on you. Often, the full impact isn’t realized until many years later. The feelings, personality traits, and relationship patterns that you developed to cope with an alcoholic parent, come with you to work, romantic relationships, parenting, and friendships.
To cope and avoid confrontations, typically, family members tacitly agree to act as if everything is normal, not make waves, and not mention addiction. This all takes a heavy psychological toll, often causing trauma, especially on those most vulnerable, the children. Yet more than half are in denial that they have an addicted parent. Daughters who are raised by narcissistic mothers may face several emotional and psychological issues. While each experience is different, anxiety, depression, and self-doubt are common mental health issues for the child of a narcissist.
Signs of a Narcissistic Parent and How to Cope
- Depending on the severity of the problem, residential or inpatient treatment may be necessary.
- It seems that many people who have NPD might also have AUD, but it’s not clear why.
- If you think that you or a loved one has NPD or AUD, knowing the symptoms can help you better understand both conditions.
- Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today.
If the person does not want to enter treatment or change, there may not be hope for healing. The best thing to do at that point is to seek out individual therapy for yourself and work on setting firmer boundaries. Are you in a relationship with someone who puts themself and their drinking before others?
Because people with narcissism have a tendency to ignore boundaries, Derhally says you may need to block your parent on your phone, email, and social media accounts. While you may feel tempted to defend yourself or fight back when your parent makes upsetting accusations or statements, Derhally strongly recommends refusing to engage — often called the grey rock method. As a result, you may develop an aversion to conflict, explains Derhally. You may find you have a harder and harder time separating your own desires from theirs and do things just to please them so you can keep the peace.
Trauma Symptoms of Adult Children of Alcoholics
If you were raised by a narcissist, it will undeniably have some impact on the way you see yourself and your role in the world. This means you may have developed toxic traits or unhelpful ways of thinking about your value and sense of worthiness alcoholic narcissistic mother or purpose. Maybe you have spent years trying to please or earn the recognition, respect, and love from a narcissistic parent only to be continuously let down. The narcissistic mother is not unlike any other narcissist in that she feels entitled to have her way and endures narcissistic injury when this sense of superiority is questioned or threatened in any way.
If you want to maintain the relationship
Just as daughters of narcissistic mothers experience their mother’s envy and competition, a narcissistic mother may be jealous of her son’s girlfriends and compete with his wife. No one will be good enough, because no one will measure up to her inflated self-image and standards. She may try to control and undermine his intimate relationships, criticize or disrespect his partner, or do so subtly with innuendo and manipulation. Narcissism can appear in parents as personality traits or symptoms of a mental health condition called narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). When a parent has NPD, their behaviors can significantly affect their children’s mental health.
And when it’s a parent, their children often feel “unheard, unknown, and used by their narcissistic parent,” says Kimberly Perlin, a licensed clinical social worker in Towson, MD. It can help you desensitize and reprocess traumatic memories in ways that become more manageable. As an adult raised by a narcissist, there are many options for dealing with them and coping with unhealthy family dynamics and trauma. You can work toward diminishing the impact of early childhood trauma to reduce the negative impact on your life. If you end up alone with a narcissistic parent, you run the risk that they’ll try to manipulate you or cross boundaries that you’ve set.
There are no medications to treat NPD, but if you also experience depression or another mental health condition, a doctor may prescribe medications to treat the other condition. If you answered “yes” to most of the questions above, speaking with a therapist might be a good idea. Regardless, it’s always a good idea to look for mental health help if you’re experiencing something that causes you distress.
Due to a lack of empathy, a parent with narcissism may have difficulty validating your feelings. It’s important to learn about emotional abuse and narcissism, according to Helen. Podcasts and online resources are great, but make sure you’re getting your information from educated spaces, not just anecdotal spaces, she says. There are similarities, of course, but one person’s isn’t everyone’s’. CBT is about how to change thought patterns in ways that can help you live the life you want, including how to change the way you feel about yourself and your capabilities so you can work on your goals.
