Feeling bad about ourselves doesn’t mean we are

Most of the time, we don’t understand the reason we feel terrible is in our past. I certainly didn’t, not until well into my adulthood.

It’s not that I was completely unaware my family was somehow insane. At some level I knew it. It’s more that I did not really look at my family’s narcissistic dynamics and their consequences on me.

Instead, I focused obsessively on myself, my inadequacies, my weirdness, and how inherently bad I was. I was, in a way, replicating my parents’ strategy: focusing on the “problem kid”, to avoid staring at their own serious mental health issues.

I spent years wallowing in shame, whereas I clearly was not the one who should have. Other members of my family, on the other hand, stayed firmly in denial. To this day, they never once expressed discomfort about their parenting.

In other words, if you are currently having a hard time seeing yourself positively, or if you downright hate yourself like I did, then please take note somewhere in your mind: it probably has nothing to do with who you really are.

Even if everything in you and in your family of origin, practically screams you are stupid, bad, inadequate, ungrateful, fragile, or whatever, it still does not mean it’s true. Believe me, I’ve been down that road: we have logical reasons to believe we are terrible persons, but it still does not make it true.

The good news is that with time we can change these beliefs and considerably improve our quality of life. The bad news is that we have some serious mourning to go through to reclaim our self esteem. But it’s so worth it!

According to both Daniel Shaw and Jay Reid, this reflex to see ourselves as inherently unacceptable is nearly universal for kids raised in abusive or narcissistic families. We don’t have to feel bad about feeling bad. We believe this lie for several reasons:

1. Most children trust what their parents say, relying on them to navigate the world. If they imply everything painful happens because of us, well, that’s the way it is.
2. We needed to maintain a relationship with our parents as a survival necessity.The only way to do that is to share their beliefs rather than confronting them. We do all know about these narcissistic rages, don’t we ?
3. We needed a sense of power and agency. Believing we were the problem allowed us to believe we could change the outcomes. If we had viewed our parents as insane, we would have felt powerless and doomed.

Adults who find themselves in relationships with abusive narcissists often experience similar dynamics, driven by the same reasons. It does not help when we come from an abusive, narcissistic family. That’s the stuff complex PTSD is made from, and how it repeats itself.

So what’s the family legend ?

The official family narrative says the family is normal, save for one parent who somehow possesses some incredible qualities. Depending on the family, the quality itself can vary. In my case, my father was supposedly superiorly intelligent and competent, but it can be charisma, business sense, beauty, proximity with God, you name it.

Unfortunately, this narrative often includes a child seen as neither bright nor a good person, overly sensitive and emotional. This justifies their strange behavior (which is really a trauma reaction).

And what is the real deal ?

At least one parent is a narcissist: grandiose, entitled, emotionally (and sometimes physically or sexually) abusive, lacking empathy and the capacity to love their children – or anyone for that matter.

The other parent, the enabler, chooses to protect their relationship with the narcissist at all costs instead of protecting the child. It involves reinforcing the narcissist belief that he or she is really exceptional, turning a blind eye to the abuse, and frantically building an image of a normal family for the outside world.

These parents turn the logic of a family upside down. In healthy families, parents understand kids are by nature very needy and dependent. They see themselves as responsible to fulfill these needs, and with time teach their kids to be able to do it on their own.

In narcissistic families, parents absolutely cannot tolerate their children’s needs. They resent them, ignore them, shame them, and literally refuse to fulfill them. The family’s orbit becomes centered around satisfying the narcissistic parent’s needs instead, and kids are sort of accessories to do just that.

One of their need, unfortunately, is to dump their own terror of feeling stupid, inadequate, bad, or selfish on someone else. This someone else is often a child who is near and dependent so he or she can not really push back on the insanity.

Real life examples of narcissistic parenting :

It’s easy to spot the narcissistic grandiosity, but it’s not the most damaging trait. Sometimes it’s so obviously ridiculous that it’s almost funny.

What is really damaging is the way narcissists need to devalue at least one of their children to feel better, and how they are unable to tolerate anyone’s needs (except theirs, that is). It’s all the more toxic that we don’t perceive it for what it is. Let me give you real life examples :

Terrible gifts (or no gifts)

I recently saw a woman explaining how as a kid she instructed in writing her parents on what gifts she wanted, and specifically that she did not want clothes. The following birthday, she received….clothes.

I so relate. My whole childhood, I wanted toys. I had very few, despite no money issue in my family. But I had other things instead; interestingly for a few years between 7 and 9, I received pieces of furniture for my birthday and Christmas. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise you it’s true.

Why did my parents do this? Because they needed to furnish their house, that’s why. They could do both, mind you. But deep down, like this poor woman’s parents, they did not want to. It’s like a message almost: “we’re not here to fulfill your wants and needs.”

The weird thing is that I never really challenged their behavior until I incidentally talked about it with my therapist. He promptly labeled it “using my birthdays to buy themselves gifts”. I was stunned.

Refusing to give assistance for small or big things:

My parents never got involved with my homework despite having the necessary skills, and time (they were teachers). They did not think it was necessary to pick me up from school either: I used to walk back home on my own already when I was 6. My father routinely forgot to do stuff he promised he would do, like picking me up to drive me to a sport competition.

As for the big things, I remember being diagnosed as suffering from major depression when I was 17. None of my parent sat with me to talk about what I was going through. They did not organize things to cheer me up, cook my favorite dish, or pay attention to me. They just went on with their lives. I don’t think they knew what my favorite dish was, or what could cheer me up. Matter of factly, I don’t think I knew either.

And the whole time, in their eyes I was constantly requiring too much attention, costing a lot of money, being to fragile, and doing everything wrong. 

“We’re not here to fulfill your wants and needs”. Yes, that’s really what it is, and I got the message.

Growing up in such environments teaches us that our desires and needs are invalid or irrelevant, that we should not seek help or support, or even perceive reality as it is. Essentially, we are taught that our emotional existence is an inconvenience. That’s entitlement at its best: nothing, and nobody exists outside of the narcissistic’s ridiculously inflated ego.

What happens when we grow up in these families ?

According to Daniel Shaw, and I agree with him, there are two  possible outcomes of this painful childhood :

1/ We become depressed, with a very low self esteem, no awareness of our needs, wants and emotions, trying to do everything on our own and never ask for anything. OR:

2/ We develop an illusion of total independence and superiority, labelling needs and emotions as weak. To protect this very fragile lie, we need others to constantly prop up our self esteem, if needed by coercion. And off we go to create the next cycle.

As you can probably gather, I’ve taken up the first option. And if you have lived through a childhood similar to mine, I can say confidently you took the same.

How do I know ? Because you would not be reading this otherwise. Narcissists have to believe there is never anything wrong with them, all the while suspecting there is something awfully wrong with them. That’s a powerful incentive not to look inside.

And I know this is not who you are !

I have great news for you. We, option 1 people, are the only ones who can manage post traumatic growth: we are able to question what is happening inside ourselves, so we are able to change it. In a way, internalizing how we were abused as low self esteem is a blessing, despite looking like a curse.

Take care of yourself on this healing journey, my friend. I know it’s not easy, and I know it takes time, but healing and growing are possible for us. And I’m with you all the way.