November 27, 2022 • 47 mins
In this episode we discuss the characteristics of toxic parents and the impact they have on our development and adulthood. We dive into narcissistic parental abuse, intergenerational trauma, overcoming a toxic upbringing and how to establish boundaries.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to another episode. New listeners, old listeners. It
(00:28):
is so amazing to have you here. Thank you for
tuning in for another episode of the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we break down some of the psychology
behind the major events and situations and experiences of our twenties.
It is so great to have you here. Thank you
again for deciding to listen wherever you are in the world. Today,
(00:51):
we're going to talk about one of my most requested topics.
I get people asking me for this all the time,
and I think it is such a valuable episode to do.
And I thought, as many of our listeners in the
US had Thanksgiving this weekend and we're approaching the holiday season,
it's an important episode to do as we spend more
(01:14):
time with our families and feel obligated to extend and
to kind of engage with all of our family members
and more from the knot that means our parents. So
this is an episode for those who perhaps questioning the
adult relationship or even the childhood relationship they had with
their families, the good, the bad, the ugly. Most of
(01:36):
us we are lucky enough to have secure, healthy relationships
with our parents, but not every parental relationship is perfect.
And that's what we're discussing today, the psychology of narcissistic
and toxic parents. I will say before we get started,
this episode is primarily going to cover emotional abuse. As
(01:59):
we know, abuse can come in many forms, and each
is equally as harmful and painful as the next and
deserves their own attention. But today we're going to be
talking about instances of emotional abuse and the emotional damage
that can be inflicted by unhealthy parenting styles. And to
add to this, I do just want to make a
(02:19):
quick disclaimer before we begin and say that we are
talking about some topics, situations, concepts that can and will
be distressing for some people. So I topics concerning toxic
or even abusive family dynamics and parenting are something that
you know can cause distress or trigger you. Please just
(02:41):
take a moment to reflect on whether this episode is
something you need to hear today. I will also say
this is a highly nuanced topic and one that would
take many, many episodes to cover if we wanted to
do a comprehensive sweep and a comprehensive deep dive, but
sadly we don't have the time for that today. And
as always, my intention with these episodes to give you
(03:04):
the most important parts of the research and the psychology
behind these experiences and the realizations of our twenties. And
one of these, one that people ask me about quite
a bit, is the adult relationship we begin to have
with our parents as we gain independence and create our
own lives during this decade. Often as we enter our twenties,
(03:25):
we will see a slow or sometimes sudden shift in
the dynamics we have with our parents and our caregivers,
and a recognition perhaps of some of the mistakes they
may have made when raising us, mistakes that now impact
us as adults, and not always just mistakes, but intentional
kind of parenting styles that they may have adopted that
(03:47):
now we have the self awareness to realize may have
negatively impacted us. And this can be a really traumatic
and confusing consequential realization. As we grow into our own
verse of ourselves and think about what we may want
for our futures, whether that's kids or deciding not to
have kids, or the many other options. Our twenties are
(04:08):
obviously a period of immense self reflection, and it's often
the time where we come to terms with this understanding
that our parents, much like us, are people and they
have their own beliefs, their own pasts, their own regrets,
their own flaws. And it may also be a period
in which we recognize that our parents may be accidentally,
(04:30):
often not intentionally, have harmed us or cause certain habits
or patterns of behavior within us based on the decisions
they made when they were raising us. And this recognition
can bring about quite a bit of self reflection internally
as we address all of the things that come along
with that, some of the blames, some of the shame.
And I think one thing that's important to know and
(04:52):
consider as we approach this period is the type of
parents we may have had and their unique parenting styles. Specifically,
what are the sequences and impact that these unique styles
will and do have on our emotional and mental well being.
I think it goes without saying that our parents, our caregivers,
(05:14):
the ones that we have in childhood, they really greatly
impact on our future experiences in mental state. For the
majority of our infancy, in our childhood, and even our
early teens, we are entirely dependent on them for everything,
for safety, for food, for compassion, and for confidence. We
trust them and we really need them, and even beyond that,
(05:36):
the family that we're born into it's perhaps like the
single most important factor in determining our life trajectory, and
heaps of studies have confirmed this. There was one in
particular that I found while researching this episode. It's a
longitudinal study conducted in the US, and it followed nearly
(05:56):
eight hundred school children from the time of birth until
they were twenty five, and they found that the family
you're born into often determines your life path and where
you end up. Not just you know, your income bracket
and your education and opportunities, but also the trauma you hold,
the beliefs, the values you have in many aspects of
your long term health. If you're listening to this having
(06:20):
had or having experienced a toxic, narcissistic or abusive caregiving
environment or childhood, I do want to say it's not
all doom and glue. Whilst you know a parenting approach
adopted by our caregivers and our childhood environment is really crucial.
It is mitigated by many other important determinants, and it's
(06:42):
always we want to take a strength based approach during
these episodes. We want to see the future, see the lights,
see the opportunities that we have to grow from our experiences,
not just the ones we have in our twenties. So
there is definitely going to be a discussion at the
end of the episode about what we can do to
kind of you to navigate our adult relationship with our parents,
(07:06):
and how do we overcome perhaps an abusive or toxic
or narcissistic caregiving environment when we were children. So let's
dive in into you know, what a parent, a toxic
parenting style or a toxic caregiving environment might look like
in some of the impacts, but also how we can
move forward. So let's get straight into it. What exactly
(07:31):
is toxic parenting as opposed to healthy, secure parenting and
a healthy, secure childhood environment, a healthy secure upbringing. If
you listen to the episode on Overcoming Childhood Trauma, we
delve much deeper into this topic in that episode. But
to give those an overview who may have not had
(07:52):
the time to listen to that. Essentially, a healthy childhood
environment is one that is free of trauma, one that
is free of not necessarily struggle, but one that is supportive,
in which we feel like the people who surround us,
particularly our parents, are providing our needs and the needs
that we essentially need met. It's not necessarily one that
(08:15):
is free of trauma. It's one that is an environment
of support, whereas a toxic childhood environment might be one
in which your needs aren't met emotionally, physically, socially, mentally,
and it's often defined by some level of trauma. And
I think when we think about trauma, we often think
(08:35):
about really major events like a war or a massive accident,
or a massive injury or illness or a death. That's
not always necessarily the case. When we talk more about
toxic parenting, we'll see that even just an unstable and
negative upbringing and parental environment is enough to create PTSD
(08:57):
in long term trauma. So essential toxic parenting, it's poor
parenting in which the relationship that a parent and child
is not healthy. It's not conducive to collaboration and to
support and to unconditional love, which is I think something
every child really really needs. And it's not always the
(09:20):
parent's fault, you know, Like we'll talk about this a
lot more later. Sometimes it's because of generational trauma and
generational learnings and cultural and societal expectations, but essentially, toxic
parenting results in an inability for a child to trust
their parent. For a child to go to their parent
might be because that parent is neglecting their needs, especially
(09:43):
their emotional needs, and there might even be instances of abuse,
not just physical, but every other kind. Adults who have
toxic parents and a toxic relationship with their parents, normally
they're not even able to recognize those behaviors were inherently
wrong or miscalculated or even sometimes cruel until they're older,
(10:07):
until they're in their twenties, and often they'll end up
with psychological and behavioral issues or damage that although they
may seem like this well perfect, put together, functioning person
internally and unconsciously, that's not always the case. And that's
why this can bring along with it a cycle of
(10:28):
negative thinking, of being over critical to ourselves, of feeling
guilt and shame. A lot of the research done on
toxic and particularly narcissistic parenting came from the nineteen hundred
so last century, and obviously things have come a long
way when we think about the emergence of social media
and the internet, like, the dynamics that children have with
(10:50):
their parents now are completely changed. Children are growing up
so much quicker. Like I always see these tiktoks of
people being like, oh, you know, when I was in
middle school, when I was the team, like, this is
what I look like versus what children these days look like.
And it's obviously a massive comparison. And although there is
heaps of research into how social media is kind of
(11:12):
disrupting the dynamic that children and parents have is making
children kind of mature faster, it's still something that we
don't have many like long term studies and long term
research into. But let's dive into this early research. We
know that anecdotally different parents have different ways of parenting
and providing for their children's needs, sometimes not providing for
(11:35):
their children's needs. A parenting style it's essentially it's a
psychological construct that outlines the specific behaviors and characteristics that
define what a person and what a parent deems as
appropriate or necessary when raising a child. And these practices
(11:57):
are formed in part by by culture, by the environment
that they live in, societal expectations, and of course generational
learning and at times generational trauma. If there is one researcher,
one psychologist whose name it is important to remember from
(12:17):
this episode, it's Diana Baumer and she was basically like
the founder of parental psychology. I'm not sure if that's
a discipline, but basically research into the psychology behind why
parents and why people raise their children's their children differently.
And she observed children across many different kind of generations
(12:41):
and environments and cultures, and she found what she considers
to be the four basic elements that help shape successful parenting.
And they're kind of these contradictory ways of treating a child.
There's responsiveness versus unresponsiveness, and demanding versus demanding versus undemanding, Sorry,
(13:01):
demanding versus undemanding, and these kind of two spectrums and
four characteristics determine the type of parent that you and
I may have had. Parental responsiveness essentially, that refers to
the degree to which a parent is willing to respond
to their child's needs in a supportive and accepting manner
(13:25):
in a way that is conducive to input from their child,
and it's conducive to long term emotional support and long
term growth in a healthy, sustainable relationship built on trust
and on respect. Parental demandingness refers to the rules which
are parent places on their child, the amount of discipline
they enact, how strict they are, what they expect of
(13:48):
their child, and the repercussions that follow these rules if
they're broken. So from this, we can identify four different
styles of parenting, and I want you to listen to these.
So there's four and see if any of the traits
here are recognizable. See if you can identify your parents
in these kind of profiles. I'm not sure if this
(14:10):
is like the healthiest exercise, but it's an interesting one,
right to see where your parents and where your care
givers and where your family might sit on the spectrum.
So the four styles are authoritative and authoritarian. Yes, they're different, authoritative, authoritarian, neglectful,
and indulgent slash permissive. So the first one authoritarian. These
(14:32):
parents are quite demanding, but they're not responsive and a
lot a lot of research has been done into the
children of these parents and how a lot of them
end up becoming criminal offenders. Obviously not all of them become,
and you know, it's obviously contributed by other circumstances and
by other lifestyle factors. But often these children can turn
(14:55):
into people that aren't able to see themselves as being
loved and able to see themselves reflected or respected in society.
These parents are big believers in setting rules for their
children to follow, but not so much interested in listening
to their children, seeing their children as independent people, or
(15:17):
taking their view into consideration. They often believe that children
are best to be seen and not heard. They're not
willing to apologize for their actions or listen to their children. Often,
you know, it's that whole age old like because I
said so explanation for their decisions, and we can kind
of see that that doesn't leave much room for a
(15:38):
constructive two sided relationship. And the result is these children
often grow up to not only be quite anxious, but
often quite rebellious. Or they might find it difficult to
establish boundaries for themselves because their parents have always done
it for them. They've grown up in this really strict
(15:59):
environment they used to obeying rather than leading. It can
also result in these children growing up to be quiet.
I don't like the word undisciplined, but like rebellious, that's
not necessarily a bad thing, right, Like maybe they grow
up to be really creative or to be really free
thinking because they're pushing back against the restrictiveness of their
parental environment of their upbringing. So that was authoritarian. Now
(16:23):
let's talk about authoritative. These parents have rules and they
have consequences for the actions of their children, but they
also take their children's opinion into accounts. They validate their
children's feelings, but making it clear that we're in charge,
we are the adult, we are the parent. That's kind
of the lay of the land. So if you're listening
(16:44):
to this and thinking, oh my god, that sounds like
my parents, that's probably the case. It is the most
prominent parenting style, and it's also backed by heaps of
experts and heaps of research that it's the most developmentally
healthy and effective parenting style because these parents they put
a lot of effort into creating and maintaining a positive
(17:05):
relationship with their child, not just from this like this
position of them being in charge and the child being inferior,
Like there isn't this weird, like weird strange hierarchy if
the child will always be below them and should take
whatever they hand down to them. Right. They want communication,
they want honesty, and they want their children's input. Like
(17:26):
I said, the most healthy and effective parenting style because
children are both given the structure and safety that they need,
but also the independence and respect of their emotional needs.
Next up, we have permissive. So permissive parents. They're super loving, right,
they're super affectionate, super accepting, but they don't make many
demands of their children. They are very lenient. They don't
(17:50):
really want to interfere. They don't really want to give
their children boundaries or rules. That's totally fine as long
as you're not harming your child, but there are some
ways in which the stuff hurt them in the long
term because these parents don't want to, you know, they
tend to avoid conflict with their children. They don't tend
to set up routine rules and routine boundaries. They often
(18:13):
result in children who you know, have a bit too
much freedom there without discipline that is often needed. They
might struggle academically and struggle to understand boundaries. But it's
also a healthy parenting style in the way that they
encourage their kids to talk about issues they don't make
their children, you know, beg for love or beg for compliments,
(18:34):
or beg for affection. So that's the third type, and
the final is the one that we're going to focus
on for the remainder of this episode. It is the
toxic parenting style. It is perhaps the worst, and it's
called uninvolved And this is the final parenting style, perhaps
the most dangerous and the most linked to narcissistic parenting,
(18:54):
which we're going to talk about a little bit later.
Uninvolved parents they demand almost nothing, but they give nothing
in return. So uninvolved parents they expect their kids to
raise themselves to have like ultimate often neglectful, a neglectful
level of independence. They don't set expectations, they don't set
(19:15):
boundaries or consequences. They may also spend a lot of
time away from home. They might not even put energy
into their children's basic needs. Sometimes this isn't their fault,
like we really need to be consider it when we
talk about these different parenting styles of the circumstances and
external factors that we don't really know anything about. But
(19:36):
this is just a typical profile of what a psychologist
or a therapist or someone in the community might see
if they were looking at an uninvolved parent, it basically
kind of verges on the territory of neglect. And of
course they might have another issue at play, right, you know,
something that interferes with their ability to look after their child.
(19:58):
Maybe they have an issue where addiction or mental health problems,
a lack of education se via financial stress that they
need to kind of manage first before they can take
care of their children. But it's not a very loving environment.
The child doesn't feel cared for, They don't feel like
(20:18):
their parents invest in them. You know, they might not
ask their kids about school or sporting games or how
their days were. And we can see how detrimental and
harmful this is going to be. Not having someone who
cares about us can create a really unloving environment where
(20:39):
we don't feel, as children like we are emotionally supported,
We aren't able to trust, we don't feel like we
have someone who cares about us, Like I don't know.
When I was researching this, all I could think about was, like,
I don't know, like a tiny helpless child just wanting
someone to ask them how their day was or help
them with their homework makes my heartache, you know, so much.
(21:01):
But it does happen. It does happen. As we said,
like most parents will fall into that kind of one
of those four categories. So if that was you, I'm
really sorry if that was your experience. But we'll talk
about more. How that's, you know, not really the end
of the line. That's not really the end of our lives.
We know that these four styles are not exhaustive, you know,
(21:22):
there are so many other different styles. The slow parenting,
positive parenting, I don't know, gentle parenting, that's super popular
these days. I'm Another cute one that I learned when
I was at UNI was called dolphin parenting. I think
this is like that, it's so sweet. It's basically described
as a type of parenting that involves being almost like
a friend to one's child, super playful and social and
(21:44):
focused on independence. Like then, I always get like the
visual of like the dolphin, like mom and dad or
like parent out in the open waters and like their
little baby dolphin, like hanging out beside them, going off
doing their own thing, but always coming back right, being playful,
being like jubilant. I don't know, it's quite cute, but
there are other types not dolphin parenting that aren't so cute,
(22:08):
and then I want to focus on for the rest
of this episode. So one particular parent that has gotten
a lot of attention is the narcissistic parent. I think
this is so interesting but also can be quite disturbing.
So obviously, we all know that narcissistic people they exist
(22:29):
in society. In fact, there are studies that even suggest
like one in two hundred people have narcissism. And yeah,
it's a disorder. It's not something that people can control
or that they willingly choose to be. But the behaviors
of a narcissist, nonetheless can be incredibly harmful. So what
(22:50):
happens when these people have children? And how do we
identify if our parent might be a narcissistic parent, not
just a narcissistic person, but allow those kind of overall
attitudes bleed into how they treat their children. Let's give
a brief definition of narcissism before we get into it.
(23:10):
We have an episode on this on the psychology of
narcissism if you're interested, but if you do need a refresher. Basically,
a narcissist is a person who has an excessive interest
or admiration of themselves and isn't able to see the
point of view of others. Everyone is obviously a little
bit narcissistic. We have good days, we have bad days.
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It's part of being a human, like all traits are,
and often as adolescents we even go through a period
developmentally where we have an exaggerated sense of self. When
narcissism begins to interfere with how a person functions, though,
and how they function at home, at work, at school,
that's when it's problematic, and that's when it veers into
(23:55):
the realm of a personality disorder rather than just a trait.
So these people, they have an unreasonably high sense of
their own self importance, but in kind of conjunction with that,
and alongside that, they also have really low levels of
empathy and can often lash out when they feel that
people aren't respecting them or don't admire them, and they
(24:16):
might be disappointed when they're not given special favors, when
people don't meet their needs, and they find their relationships,
including with their children if they have them, to be
really unfulfilling because they want so much from the other person.
So let's answer that question we had before. What happens
when these people become parents. So there was two researchers
(24:40):
out of the University of Georgia in the US who
have focused on this for quite some time. They're essentially
experts in narcissism, and what they found is that when
narcissists have children, often they lose interest in their children
entirely and look for other sources of validation, often leading
to that parenting style we kind of just just discussed,
(25:02):
like the uninvolved parent, but to an added degree, others
tend to view their children as a reflection of themselves.
They become hyper involved and controlling. They see their children
as an opportunity for self advancement rather than just as
a child, as someone who was a human who was growing,
(25:23):
and as per their self seeking tendencies. They often place
a lot of value on how a child can contribute
to their status and their appearance and how people see them,
rather than the most important thing being how that child is,
how they are mentally, how they're going. I know it
sounds so basic, but like a child should be allowed
(25:46):
to be a child without the expectations of a parent,
kind of like veering down on them and creating a
toxic environment. They have really high expectations of their children.
Those are the narcissist parents who don't completely abandon them
when they get kind of bored, and they push their
kids to excel in everything. They believe that their children
(26:09):
are special and deserving of special opportunities and privileges, but
they refuse to tolerate anything less than perfection from their
own child. So this sometimes leads into what is called
narcissistic parental abuse, and this involves parents who excessively need
admiration or attention at an enormous cost to their child's
(26:29):
development and well being. They become obsessed, obsessed with what
their child can do for them, how their child's successes
and accolades, and everything else to do with them. Their
looks will reflect on them, and it may be done subconsciously.
(26:49):
The goal of narcissistic abuse isn't always known consciously to
the person who is instigating it, but essentially, when we
see a narcissistic parent who is acting in this way,
they the ultimate kind of goal. The ultimate thing that
they have in mind based on this kind of disordered
personality they have, is to be in control and is
(27:13):
to be the most important person in the room. So
they're willing to do anything to make their child comply
with how they think their lives should go, and they
kind of place themselves as the care giver at the
center of the relationship that rather than the child, and
I think we can all agree that it should be
the child in childhood. The victims of narcissistic parental abuse,
(27:37):
if you've been through this, if you've had a parent
who is so obsessed with your successes, so obsessed with
what you can do for them, but also so focused
on themselves, so focused in what other people think of
you and think and think of them and think of
your family, or perhaps they just don't care about you
at all, in favor of their own careers or in
favor of, you know, their own kind of vision and
(28:01):
external appearance. Typically what happens is people who've suffered through
this they feel ashamed, they feel unimportant, they feel insignificant,
and sometimes they feel responsible for the abusive behavior that
they kind of were subjected to, often emotionally abusive behavior.
Because narcissists are really great a twisting and narrative so
(28:24):
that they are never the villain, They are always kind
of the hero. They are always the god like person
who has all these amazing qualities and who rises above
It was your fault. You're the reason that's happened because
you failed to impress them and meet their standards. And
you know, there are different types of narcissistic parental abuse.
It can be physical, psychological, emotional, you know, including things
(28:48):
like verbal insults or gaslighting, harsh criticisms, mind games like
passive aggressiveness, silent treatment, like the list goes on and
on and on, and you know, sometimes I think there
is this weird comparison in psychology and in therapy that like,
there is this kind of spectrum of abuse and at
one end is like the things we typically really cringe
(29:10):
over it and make us really distressed and feel really uncomfortable,
which is sexual and physical abuse, and then you know
there's things down the other end, like silent treatment and
passive aggressiveness might not seem as detrimental, but oh my goodness,
I mean that is entirely false. They absolutely are because
they teach a child that they are alone, that they
(29:31):
cannot trust their parents, they are not valued, that they
are not cared for, that they're invisible, and many behaviors
that are sometimes instituted by narcissistic parents are overlooked by
teachers in general society because they look good. Narcissists are
so great at making the external appearance of their parenting
(29:53):
style look good. You know, it might seem beneficial to
be encouraging your child to achieve specific goals and to
groom your child to be seen as like the golden
pupil and the golden child, but it might also be
narcissistic parental abuse. I do just want to say, not
(30:15):
all people who are narcissists going to treat their children
as we have described, And it's really rare that this
would be or that you have experienced this type of parent.
But it doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and it doesn't
mean that when it does, it's quite harmful. Just because
perhaps your parent might fit some of these descriptions, it
doesn't mean that they were abusive narcissistic parents. I think
(30:38):
it's important to also consider a lot of other things
and to really seek professional help and the professional opinion
if you are suddenly identifying attributes of your parents in
these kind of descriptions. But once again, like this parental style,
it's so disruptive, it's so dysfunctional and it can be
(30:59):
really really harmful in the long term. I just want
to stress as well, like if this is something that
you can relate to, it's not some kind of like
death sentence, like a sign of your certificate, like that's
the end of their life. They're never going to be well,
They're never going to be well rounded or development or developed.
Probably absolutely not. Like I said at the beginning, we're
(31:21):
all about like a strength based narrative on this show
and the actions that we can take small and significant
to overcome the difficulties, the difficulties we are all going
to experience at some stage in our lives. So I
also want to talk about firstly some of the impacts
(31:42):
and ways to identify the impacts that these parenting styles
might have inflicted on us in the long term, but
also the strategies and the mechanisms that we can adopt
to kind of rise above the struggles and the harms
that come along with toxic and narcissus parenting styles. There
(32:08):
has obviously been a lot of research into the impacts
of toxic and narcissistic parenting and parents during our upbringing
on the behaviors that we bring into adulthood. It's a
huge part of social psychology to understand how our interpersonal relationships,
including those that we have with our caregivers, ultimately kind
(32:32):
of sets up our life trajectory in many ways. It
can impact everything from the partners we choose to our
career paths, our mental and emotional health in the company
we keep. Studies have found that children of narcissistic parents
have significantly higher rates of depression and lower self esteem
(32:52):
during adulthood compared to those who didn't perceive their parents
or their caregivers to be narcissistic. Often a parents like
empathy towards their child contributes to this. You know, the
child's own desires are denied, their feelings are restrained, their
emotional well being is ignored for kind of the parents
perceived higher goal and higher desire to be perceived, for
(33:17):
them to be perceived as as well liked, for them
to be perceived as successful, often using their child as
kind of a tool or a resource to get them there.
Children of narcissistic parents, they're taught to submit, they're taught
to conform, and it causes them to often lose touch
(33:37):
of themselves as individuals and deny the parts of the
individuality that they might value, and this can lead to
the child possessing as in adulthood, often few memories of
feeling appreciated or loved by them by their parents were
being themselves because they tend to associate the love and
(33:58):
appreciation they received from their parents with conformity and with success.
You may also experience, you know, chronic stress if you've
had toxic parents and other health problems, because you're used
to living in an environment in which you weren't neglected,
in which love was not a constant. You can also
(34:18):
involve self sabotaging if it's normal for you to be
surrounded by toxic people because of the lessons and the
habits you've picked up from your parents. You might struggle
setting boundaries because you know, if we think about the
authoritarian parent, like they always did that for you. We
talked about this before, right, they set up this incredibly
(34:40):
strict structure around you that you had to obey and follow.
So when you're an adult, when you live on your own,
when you go out and do your own thing, you
no longer have that kind of can you no longer
have that environment, that environment that's normal to you that
feels normal to you to go back to. So you've
(35:00):
really struggled to set boundaries within your life because someone
else has always done that for you. It has always
done that in the past. I think people with dysfunctional
relationships with their parents might also struggle with a lot
of other things right. They might struggle with trusting themselves,
with their self esteem, with their confidence, and studies have
(35:21):
even suggested that our upbringing ultimately determines the people that
we find attractive, the people that we inevitably date or
form long term partnerships with. It's important to remember that
the first example of a romantic relationship and cohabitation that
(35:41):
a children that a child will often see is that
of their parents or the couple that they live with.
This is a really crucial way that our environment as
a child and our parenting and upbringing environment will have
a major influence on some really important life decisions. What
(36:02):
we see will affect what we expect from our own relationships,
and it can influence our actions years down the line,
ages into the future. Because our experiences in our upbringing,
what we observe, what we expect, is going to influence
how we perceive romantic love and choose a partner. So
(36:24):
there are two theories around the impact of our parents
on the partners we choose. The first is that we
tend to choose partners and relationships that satisfy something we
didn't have as a child, which sounds like a good thing, right,
you know, when we're able to recognize, you know, like
I didn't have security and consistency as a child because
my parent was uninvolved or neglectful, we'll seek out a
(36:48):
partner that treats us that way. But often when what
sometimes psy psychologists and therapist see is when someone obtains that,
it's really hard for them to let that go, and
they can become hyper dependent on that person because they've
kind of given them everything they never had. The other
kind of theory is that we choose partners that mimic
(37:09):
the relationships that we have with our caregivers. So if
we had a narcissistic parent who we always had to impress,
whose love was conditional on our successes and our accolades
and the compliments and admiration we had for them, if
we have parents who required a lot of praise and
didn't have much empathy for our feelings, this might be
(37:31):
what we seek in a romantic partner, and the toxic
relationship that we have with our parents evolves into a
toxic romantic relationship in adulthood. Obviously, this is not always
the case, and it also doesn't have to be. The
long term impacts of toxic and narcissistic family and parenting
(37:51):
environments can be mitigated and can be avoided. The parents
we have are not the only determinants of the lives
that we will lead. You know the saying go as
it takes a village, and that definitely applies in this situation.
The love we receive from other family members like a
grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, from our teachers,
(38:13):
from our mentors, from our friends, their support from our community,
the validation from activities beyond our families like school or
sports or church if you attend. All of these can
mitigate and protect us against the negative consequences of growing
up with the toxic or narcissistic parent. And we also
(38:34):
have a choice in many ways in determining the habits
and the decisions that can bring us comfort and can
allow us to heal. So I want to talk through
some things that you can do if you've experienced this
kind of upbringing or you've suffered through narcissistic parental abuse.
(38:55):
To overcome this situation to kind of move past the
experiences of your childhood. Firstly, it's important to mourn what
you didn't have. Sometimes we actually need to sit in
the grief and sit in the resentment and the emotion
that we have for a little while before we can
(39:16):
move forward. If we don't take time in early adulthood
to really recognize the feelings we have towards our parents,
the resentment, to blame, the guilt even sometimes that we have,
it just ends up being suppressed. And with suppression there's
a lack of recognition. You're not able to work on
(39:36):
something or fix something that you can't acknowledge or understand yourself.
So it is important to mourn what you didn't have.
It's important to sit with the grief of the what ifs,
the grief of the other possibilities, and hopefully kind of
come to terms with the fact that this happened. This
was your experience, But it doesn't mean that you can't
(39:58):
live a really happy and qualit city life. The other
just essential essential feature of moving towards a healthy relationship
with a parent who may have treated you this way.
If that's something you want is to set boundaries. You know,
you might benefit from some distance between you and a
(40:18):
narcissistic or toxic parent. You might want to ensure that
you establish your nonnegotiables. You know, if your parent is
constantly picking on your saying things that make you uncomfortable.
You're an adult, you know, as part of it as
it is because of that controlling environment they may have
built when you're a child. You don't have to put
(40:38):
up with that. You don't have to depend on them
anymore for their support. So set up non negotiables. Things
that you won't tolerate from your family. You know, maybe
you won't tolerate them showing up unexpectedly or visiting you,
or making unsolicited comments or judgments about your life choices.
You can also ask that they don't have input into
(41:00):
your life choices that you know there's Sometimes they are
these crossroads right where we can choose whether we want
to borrow further into familial and parental control or forge
your own path. Often a narcissistic parent might attempt to
kind of keep us in their control and complying through
financial support and financial assistance. Through gifts through manipulation and
(41:23):
gas lighting. So do some of that work with a
therapist or a professional to identify what habits and what
patterns of behavior your parent often does to get you
back in, to bring you back into the fold, and
write them down, make sure you recognize them and you
identify what it is about those behaviors that A makes
(41:44):
you uncomfortable, that B is quite manipulative, and which C
can be avoided, in which you can set up boundaries
to prevent from happening, because you do have to, essentially,
and as hard as hard as it is, take some
kind of ownership to protect your own peace. The other
thing we've talked about here that definitely needs addressing is
(42:05):
the role of generational trauma that goes back decades and
centuries and generations in kind of determining how a parent
chooses to raise their child. It often doesn't even choose
to raise their child. It's something that's unconscious, right. They
don't necessarily choose to harm the children they bring into
(42:25):
the world. They don't choose to be narcissistic, they don't
choose to be neglectful or uninvolved. So sometimes we owe
it to ourselves to you know, work on ending the
cycle of intergenerational trauma and intergenerational habits and learning. Even
if we don't plan on having kids ourselves, you know,
the relationship we have with our caregivers, with our family,
(42:48):
with our parents impacts all other relationships, especially those we
may have with our own kids. And if you don't
have you know, if you don't plan on having kids
in the future, the people that we choose to nurture
and bring into our lives. So I think it's important
that once you've identified that this is a cycle that
(43:08):
you know you've kind of been brought into, you somewhat
have a duty to put a stop to it and
to address the trauma and the significant things that have
happened in your past that your parents and your care
givers may not have had the bandwidth, or the resources
or the energy to deal with. I think it's important
that if you've gone through this experience, if you can
(43:29):
identify or relate to anything we've talked about today, you
discuss that the impact of that with people that you trust,
people that love you, and you identify and relate to
what you're in a child your younger self missed out
on or would have wanted from a parent and emulate
that and how you treat the people you care about,
(43:51):
how you treat the peach the people that you nurture
in your life, create an environment, and create relationships that
make you feel safe. You know, it's all about you. Now.
You are allowed to be selfish, and you're allowed to
put yourself first, even if your parents and your family
don't see it that way. And talk to a professional
(44:12):
who can give you advice and address and give the
long term psychological and emotional harms or insecurities that this
upbringing may have caused. Finally, it might sound controversial, but
it's important, I think to forgive now. I know in
(44:35):
instances of abuse that is a lot easier said than done,
and you don't always have to do that. You know,
if this is not something for you, if you don't
think you can forgive, if it's going to take too
much mental energy, that is totally fine. You're allowed to
be selfish and you're allowed to choose what you want
to do with your life and make the decisions that
are most appropriate for you. But I think remember that
(45:00):
you're not forgiving your parents or these people as a
favor or an act of kindness to them or so
that they can live their lives guilt free. You're forgiving
these people for yourself so that you can be released
from a cycle of shame and trauma and move forward
without as much resentment and emotional baggage. So forgive, but
(45:24):
don't forget. If you related to any of this today,
I don't want to say I'm sorry, because I don't
want to make you feel like you're being pitied, But
I do want to say you're incredibly strong, and I'm
proud of you for listening to this episode and getting
to know more about some of the psychology behind Why
are you know if you've had a narcissistic or a
(45:46):
toxic parent, why they may have acted this way, why
their behavior may have been this way. And I think
it's important knowledge and an important kind of understanding to
bring into the holiday season as we feel Russia to
see our families, to reconnect, to spend time with them.
And if you've gone through the process of establishing boundaries
(46:09):
for the right reasons and for reasons that you think
are fair, make sure you stick to them right like
these parents and these people, as we've described, have many
ways of leveraging their role as our parents and their
role as kind of the mature superior person and the
relationship to their advantage. So I think it's an important
reminder around the holiday season that you're allowed to be
(46:31):
selfish and do what's best for you if you've found
yourself in this environment. I also want to say thank
you so much for listening. If you're still here, if
you're still with me, thank you for supporting the show.
Thank you for listening to another episode. It was so
great to have you along for the ride to learn
some more about this concept and experience and these feelings
(46:53):
and realizations that we have in our twenties. If you
feel called to do so, or if the episode benefited
you in any way, please feel free to leave a
five star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you're listening
right now. It really helps the show to grow and
to reach new people. And thank you, thank you again.
(47:15):
I feel so blessed to have people who want to
listen to this content and want to hear about these topics.
I think they are so important and so fascinating. So
thank you for coming on board for the ride, and
I will see you next week for another episode of
the Psychology of Your twenties,
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to another episode. New listeners, old listeners. It
(00:28):
is so amazing to have you here. Thank you for
tuning in for another episode of the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we break down some of the psychology
behind the major events and situations and experiences of our twenties.
It is so great to have you here. Thank you
again for deciding to listen wherever you are in the world. Today,
(00:51):
we're going to talk about one of my most requested topics.
I get people asking me for this all the time,
and I think it is such a valuable episode to do.
And I thought, as many of our listeners in the
US had Thanksgiving this weekend and we're approaching the holiday season,
it's an important episode to do as we spend more
(01:14):
time with our families and feel obligated to extend and
to kind of engage with all of our family members
and more from the knot that means our parents. So
this is an episode for those who perhaps questioning the
adult relationship or even the childhood relationship they had with
their families, the good, the bad, the ugly. Most of
(01:36):
us we are lucky enough to have secure, healthy relationships
with our parents, but not every parental relationship is perfect.
And that's what we're discussing today, the psychology of narcissistic
and toxic parents. I will say before we get started,
this episode is primarily going to cover emotional abuse. As
(01:59):
we know, abuse can come in many forms, and each
is equally as harmful and painful as the next and
deserves their own attention. But today we're going to be
talking about instances of emotional abuse and the emotional damage
that can be inflicted by unhealthy parenting styles. And to
add to this, I do just want to make a
(02:19):
quick disclaimer before we begin and say that we are
talking about some topics, situations, concepts that can and will
be distressing for some people. So I topics concerning toxic
or even abusive family dynamics and parenting are something that
you know can cause distress or trigger you. Please just
(02:41):
take a moment to reflect on whether this episode is
something you need to hear today. I will also say
this is a highly nuanced topic and one that would
take many, many episodes to cover if we wanted to
do a comprehensive sweep and a comprehensive deep dive, but
sadly we don't have the time for that today. And
as always, my intention with these episodes to give you
(03:04):
the most important parts of the research and the psychology
behind these experiences and the realizations of our twenties. And
one of these, one that people ask me about quite
a bit, is the adult relationship we begin to have
with our parents as we gain independence and create our
own lives during this decade. Often as we enter our twenties,
(03:25):
we will see a slow or sometimes sudden shift in
the dynamics we have with our parents and our caregivers,
and a recognition perhaps of some of the mistakes they
may have made when raising us, mistakes that now impact
us as adults, and not always just mistakes, but intentional
kind of parenting styles that they may have adopted that
(03:47):
now we have the self awareness to realize may have
negatively impacted us. And this can be a really traumatic
and confusing consequential realization. As we grow into our own
verse of ourselves and think about what we may want
for our futures, whether that's kids or deciding not to
have kids, or the many other options. Our twenties are
(04:08):
obviously a period of immense self reflection, and it's often
the time where we come to terms with this understanding
that our parents, much like us, are people and they
have their own beliefs, their own pasts, their own regrets,
their own flaws. And it may also be a period
in which we recognize that our parents may be accidentally,
(04:30):
often not intentionally, have harmed us or cause certain habits
or patterns of behavior within us based on the decisions
they made when they were raising us. And this recognition
can bring about quite a bit of self reflection internally
as we address all of the things that come along
with that, some of the blames, some of the shame.
And I think one thing that's important to know and
(04:52):
consider as we approach this period is the type of
parents we may have had and their unique parenting styles. Specifically,
what are the sequences and impact that these unique styles
will and do have on our emotional and mental well being.
I think it goes without saying that our parents, our caregivers,
(05:14):
the ones that we have in childhood, they really greatly
impact on our future experiences in mental state. For the
majority of our infancy, in our childhood, and even our
early teens, we are entirely dependent on them for everything,
for safety, for food, for compassion, and for confidence. We
trust them and we really need them, and even beyond that,
(05:36):
the family that we're born into it's perhaps like the
single most important factor in determining our life trajectory, and
heaps of studies have confirmed this. There was one in
particular that I found while researching this episode. It's a
longitudinal study conducted in the US, and it followed nearly
(05:56):
eight hundred school children from the time of birth until
they were twenty five, and they found that the family
you're born into often determines your life path and where
you end up. Not just you know, your income bracket
and your education and opportunities, but also the trauma you hold,
the beliefs, the values you have in many aspects of
your long term health. If you're listening to this having
(06:20):
had or having experienced a toxic, narcissistic or abusive caregiving
environment or childhood, I do want to say it's not
all doom and glue. Whilst you know a parenting approach
adopted by our caregivers and our childhood environment is really crucial.
It is mitigated by many other important determinants, and it's
(06:42):
always we want to take a strength based approach during
these episodes. We want to see the future, see the lights,
see the opportunities that we have to grow from our experiences,
not just the ones we have in our twenties. So
there is definitely going to be a discussion at the
end of the episode about what we can do to
kind of you to navigate our adult relationship with our parents,
(07:06):
and how do we overcome perhaps an abusive or toxic
or narcissistic caregiving environment when we were children. So let's
dive in into you know, what a parent, a toxic
parenting style or a toxic caregiving environment might look like
in some of the impacts, but also how we can
move forward. So let's get straight into it. What exactly
(07:31):
is toxic parenting as opposed to healthy, secure parenting and
a healthy, secure childhood environment, a healthy secure upbringing. If
you listen to the episode on Overcoming Childhood Trauma, we
delve much deeper into this topic in that episode. But
to give those an overview who may have not had
(07:52):
the time to listen to that. Essentially, a healthy childhood
environment is one that is free of trauma, one that
is free of not necessarily struggle, but one that is supportive,
in which we feel like the people who surround us,
particularly our parents, are providing our needs and the needs
that we essentially need met. It's not necessarily one that
(08:15):
is free of trauma. It's one that is an environment
of support, whereas a toxic childhood environment might be one
in which your needs aren't met emotionally, physically, socially, mentally,
and it's often defined by some level of trauma. And
I think when we think about trauma, we often think
(08:35):
about really major events like a war or a massive accident,
or a massive injury or illness or a death. That's
not always necessarily the case. When we talk more about
toxic parenting, we'll see that even just an unstable and
negative upbringing and parental environment is enough to create PTSD
(08:57):
in long term trauma. So essential toxic parenting, it's poor
parenting in which the relationship that a parent and child
is not healthy. It's not conducive to collaboration and to
support and to unconditional love, which is I think something
every child really really needs. And it's not always the
(09:20):
parent's fault, you know, Like we'll talk about this a
lot more later. Sometimes it's because of generational trauma and
generational learnings and cultural and societal expectations, but essentially, toxic
parenting results in an inability for a child to trust
their parent. For a child to go to their parent
might be because that parent is neglecting their needs, especially
(09:43):
their emotional needs, and there might even be instances of abuse,
not just physical, but every other kind. Adults who have
toxic parents and a toxic relationship with their parents, normally
they're not even able to recognize those behaviors were inherently
wrong or miscalculated or even sometimes cruel until they're older,
(10:07):
until they're in their twenties, and often they'll end up
with psychological and behavioral issues or damage that although they
may seem like this well perfect, put together, functioning person
internally and unconsciously, that's not always the case. And that's
why this can bring along with it a cycle of
(10:28):
negative thinking, of being over critical to ourselves, of feeling
guilt and shame. A lot of the research done on
toxic and particularly narcissistic parenting came from the nineteen hundred
so last century, and obviously things have come a long
way when we think about the emergence of social media
and the internet, like, the dynamics that children have with
(10:50):
their parents now are completely changed. Children are growing up
so much quicker. Like I always see these tiktoks of
people being like, oh, you know, when I was in
middle school, when I was the team, like, this is
what I look like versus what children these days look like.
And it's obviously a massive comparison. And although there is
heaps of research into how social media is kind of
(11:12):
disrupting the dynamic that children and parents have is making
children kind of mature faster, it's still something that we
don't have many like long term studies and long term
research into. But let's dive into this early research. We
know that anecdotally different parents have different ways of parenting
and providing for their children's needs, sometimes not providing for
(11:35):
their children's needs. A parenting style it's essentially it's a
psychological construct that outlines the specific behaviors and characteristics that
define what a person and what a parent deems as
appropriate or necessary when raising a child. And these practices
(11:57):
are formed in part by by culture, by the environment
that they live in, societal expectations, and of course generational
learning and at times generational trauma. If there is one researcher,
one psychologist whose name it is important to remember from
(12:17):
this episode, it's Diana Baumer and she was basically like
the founder of parental psychology. I'm not sure if that's
a discipline, but basically research into the psychology behind why
parents and why people raise their children's their children differently.
And she observed children across many different kind of generations
(12:41):
and environments and cultures, and she found what she considers
to be the four basic elements that help shape successful parenting.
And they're kind of these contradictory ways of treating a child.
There's responsiveness versus unresponsiveness, and demanding versus demanding versus undemanding, Sorry,
(13:01):
demanding versus undemanding, and these kind of two spectrums and
four characteristics determine the type of parent that you and
I may have had. Parental responsiveness essentially, that refers to
the degree to which a parent is willing to respond
to their child's needs in a supportive and accepting manner
(13:25):
in a way that is conducive to input from their child,
and it's conducive to long term emotional support and long
term growth in a healthy, sustainable relationship built on trust
and on respect. Parental demandingness refers to the rules which
are parent places on their child, the amount of discipline
they enact, how strict they are, what they expect of
(13:48):
their child, and the repercussions that follow these rules if
they're broken. So from this, we can identify four different
styles of parenting, and I want you to listen to these.
So there's four and see if any of the traits
here are recognizable. See if you can identify your parents
in these kind of profiles. I'm not sure if this
(14:10):
is like the healthiest exercise, but it's an interesting one,
right to see where your parents and where your care
givers and where your family might sit on the spectrum.
So the four styles are authoritative and authoritarian. Yes, they're different, authoritative, authoritarian, neglectful,
and indulgent slash permissive. So the first one authoritarian. These
(14:32):
parents are quite demanding, but they're not responsive and a
lot a lot of research has been done into the
children of these parents and how a lot of them
end up becoming criminal offenders. Obviously not all of them become,
and you know, it's obviously contributed by other circumstances and
by other lifestyle factors. But often these children can turn
(14:55):
into people that aren't able to see themselves as being
loved and able to see themselves reflected or respected in society.
These parents are big believers in setting rules for their
children to follow, but not so much interested in listening
to their children, seeing their children as independent people, or
(15:17):
taking their view into consideration. They often believe that children
are best to be seen and not heard. They're not
willing to apologize for their actions or listen to their children. Often,
you know, it's that whole age old like because I
said so explanation for their decisions, and we can kind
of see that that doesn't leave much room for a
(15:38):
constructive two sided relationship. And the result is these children
often grow up to not only be quite anxious, but
often quite rebellious. Or they might find it difficult to
establish boundaries for themselves because their parents have always done
it for them. They've grown up in this really strict
(15:59):
environment they used to obeying rather than leading. It can
also result in these children growing up to be quiet.
I don't like the word undisciplined, but like rebellious, that's
not necessarily a bad thing, right, Like maybe they grow
up to be really creative or to be really free
thinking because they're pushing back against the restrictiveness of their
parental environment of their upbringing. So that was authoritarian. Now
(16:23):
let's talk about authoritative. These parents have rules and they
have consequences for the actions of their children, but they
also take their children's opinion into accounts. They validate their
children's feelings, but making it clear that we're in charge,
we are the adult, we are the parent. That's kind
of the lay of the land. So if you're listening
(16:44):
to this and thinking, oh my god, that sounds like
my parents, that's probably the case. It is the most
prominent parenting style, and it's also backed by heaps of
experts and heaps of research that it's the most developmentally
healthy and effective parenting style because these parents they put
a lot of effort into creating and maintaining a positive
(17:05):
relationship with their child, not just from this like this
position of them being in charge and the child being inferior,
Like there isn't this weird, like weird strange hierarchy if
the child will always be below them and should take
whatever they hand down to them. Right. They want communication,
they want honesty, and they want their children's input. Like
(17:26):
I said, the most healthy and effective parenting style because
children are both given the structure and safety that they need,
but also the independence and respect of their emotional needs.
Next up, we have permissive. So permissive parents. They're super loving, right,
they're super affectionate, super accepting, but they don't make many
demands of their children. They are very lenient. They don't
(17:50):
really want to interfere. They don't really want to give
their children boundaries or rules. That's totally fine as long
as you're not harming your child, but there are some
ways in which the stuff hurt them in the long
term because these parents don't want to, you know, they
tend to avoid conflict with their children. They don't tend
to set up routine rules and routine boundaries. They often
(18:13):
result in children who you know, have a bit too
much freedom there without discipline that is often needed. They
might struggle academically and struggle to understand boundaries. But it's
also a healthy parenting style in the way that they
encourage their kids to talk about issues they don't make
their children, you know, beg for love or beg for compliments,
(18:34):
or beg for affection. So that's the third type, and
the final is the one that we're going to focus
on for the remainder of this episode. It is the
toxic parenting style. It is perhaps the worst, and it's
called uninvolved And this is the final parenting style, perhaps
the most dangerous and the most linked to narcissistic parenting,
(18:54):
which we're going to talk about a little bit later.
Uninvolved parents they demand almost nothing, but they give nothing
in return. So uninvolved parents they expect their kids to
raise themselves to have like ultimate often neglectful, a neglectful
level of independence. They don't set expectations, they don't set
(19:15):
boundaries or consequences. They may also spend a lot of
time away from home. They might not even put energy
into their children's basic needs. Sometimes this isn't their fault,
like we really need to be consider it when we
talk about these different parenting styles of the circumstances and
external factors that we don't really know anything about. But
(19:36):
this is just a typical profile of what a psychologist
or a therapist or someone in the community might see
if they were looking at an uninvolved parent, it basically
kind of verges on the territory of neglect. And of
course they might have another issue at play, right, you know,
something that interferes with their ability to look after their child.
(19:58):
Maybe they have an issue where addiction or mental health problems,
a lack of education se via financial stress that they
need to kind of manage first before they can take
care of their children. But it's not a very loving environment.
The child doesn't feel cared for, They don't feel like
(20:18):
their parents invest in them. You know, they might not
ask their kids about school or sporting games or how
their days were. And we can see how detrimental and
harmful this is going to be. Not having someone who
cares about us can create a really unloving environment where
(20:39):
we don't feel, as children like we are emotionally supported,
We aren't able to trust, we don't feel like we
have someone who cares about us, Like I don't know.
When I was researching this, all I could think about was, like,
I don't know, like a tiny helpless child just wanting
someone to ask them how their day was or help
them with their homework makes my heartache, you know, so much.
(21:01):
But it does happen. It does happen. As we said,
like most parents will fall into that kind of one
of those four categories. So if that was you, I'm
really sorry if that was your experience. But we'll talk
about more. How that's, you know, not really the end
of the line. That's not really the end of our lives.
We know that these four styles are not exhaustive, you know,
(21:22):
there are so many other different styles. The slow parenting,
positive parenting, I don't know, gentle parenting, that's super popular
these days. I'm Another cute one that I learned when
I was at UNI was called dolphin parenting. I think
this is like that, it's so sweet. It's basically described
as a type of parenting that involves being almost like
a friend to one's child, super playful and social and
(21:44):
focused on independence. Like then, I always get like the
visual of like the dolphin, like mom and dad or
like parent out in the open waters and like their
little baby dolphin, like hanging out beside them, going off
doing their own thing, but always coming back right, being playful,
being like jubilant. I don't know, it's quite cute, but
there are other types not dolphin parenting that aren't so cute,
(22:08):
and then I want to focus on for the rest
of this episode. So one particular parent that has gotten
a lot of attention is the narcissistic parent. I think
this is so interesting but also can be quite disturbing.
So obviously, we all know that narcissistic people they exist
(22:29):
in society. In fact, there are studies that even suggest
like one in two hundred people have narcissism. And yeah,
it's a disorder. It's not something that people can control
or that they willingly choose to be. But the behaviors
of a narcissist, nonetheless can be incredibly harmful. So what
(22:50):
happens when these people have children? And how do we
identify if our parent might be a narcissistic parent, not
just a narcissistic person, but allow those kind of overall
attitudes bleed into how they treat their children. Let's give
a brief definition of narcissism before we get into it.
(23:10):
We have an episode on this on the psychology of
narcissism if you're interested, but if you do need a refresher. Basically,
a narcissist is a person who has an excessive interest
or admiration of themselves and isn't able to see the
point of view of others. Everyone is obviously a little
bit narcissistic. We have good days, we have bad days.
(23:32):
It's part of being a human, like all traits are,
and often as adolescents we even go through a period
developmentally where we have an exaggerated sense of self. When
narcissism begins to interfere with how a person functions, though,
and how they function at home, at work, at school,
that's when it's problematic, and that's when it veers into
(23:55):
the realm of a personality disorder rather than just a trait.
So these people, they have an unreasonably high sense of
their own self importance, but in kind of conjunction with that,
and alongside that, they also have really low levels of
empathy and can often lash out when they feel that
people aren't respecting them or don't admire them, and they
(24:16):
might be disappointed when they're not given special favors, when
people don't meet their needs, and they find their relationships,
including with their children if they have them, to be
really unfulfilling because they want so much from the other person.
So let's answer that question we had before. What happens
when these people become parents. So there was two researchers
(24:40):
out of the University of Georgia in the US who
have focused on this for quite some time. They're essentially
experts in narcissism, and what they found is that when
narcissists have children, often they lose interest in their children
entirely and look for other sources of validation, often leading
to that parenting style we kind of just just discussed,
(25:02):
like the uninvolved parent, but to an added degree, others
tend to view their children as a reflection of themselves.
They become hyper involved and controlling. They see their children
as an opportunity for self advancement rather than just as
a child, as someone who was a human who was growing,
(25:23):
and as per their self seeking tendencies. They often place
a lot of value on how a child can contribute
to their status and their appearance and how people see them,
rather than the most important thing being how that child is,
how they are mentally, how they're going. I know it
sounds so basic, but like a child should be allowed
(25:46):
to be a child without the expectations of a parent,
kind of like veering down on them and creating a
toxic environment. They have really high expectations of their children.
Those are the narcissist parents who don't completely abandon them
when they get kind of bored, and they push their
kids to excel in everything. They believe that their children
(26:09):
are special and deserving of special opportunities and privileges, but
they refuse to tolerate anything less than perfection from their
own child. So this sometimes leads into what is called
narcissistic parental abuse, and this involves parents who excessively need
admiration or attention at an enormous cost to their child's
(26:29):
development and well being. They become obsessed, obsessed with what
their child can do for them, how their child's successes
and accolades, and everything else to do with them. Their
looks will reflect on them, and it may be done subconsciously.
(26:49):
The goal of narcissistic abuse isn't always known consciously to
the person who is instigating it, but essentially, when we
see a narcissistic parent who is acting in this way,
they the ultimate kind of goal. The ultimate thing that
they have in mind based on this kind of disordered
personality they have, is to be in control and is
(27:13):
to be the most important person in the room. So
they're willing to do anything to make their child comply
with how they think their lives should go, and they
kind of place themselves as the care giver at the
center of the relationship that rather than the child, and
I think we can all agree that it should be
the child in childhood. The victims of narcissistic parental abuse,
(27:37):
if you've been through this, if you've had a parent
who is so obsessed with your successes, so obsessed with
what you can do for them, but also so focused
on themselves, so focused in what other people think of
you and think and think of them and think of
your family, or perhaps they just don't care about you
at all, in favor of their own careers or in
favor of, you know, their own kind of vision and
(28:01):
external appearance. Typically what happens is people who've suffered through
this they feel ashamed, they feel unimportant, they feel insignificant,
and sometimes they feel responsible for the abusive behavior that
they kind of were subjected to, often emotionally abusive behavior.
Because narcissists are really great a twisting and narrative so
(28:24):
that they are never the villain, They are always kind
of the hero. They are always the god like person
who has all these amazing qualities and who rises above
It was your fault. You're the reason that's happened because
you failed to impress them and meet their standards. And
you know, there are different types of narcissistic parental abuse.
It can be physical, psychological, emotional, you know, including things
(28:48):
like verbal insults or gaslighting, harsh criticisms, mind games like
passive aggressiveness, silent treatment, like the list goes on and
on and on, and you know, sometimes I think there
is this weird comparison in psychology and in therapy that like,
there is this kind of spectrum of abuse and at
one end is like the things we typically really cringe
(29:10):
over it and make us really distressed and feel really uncomfortable,
which is sexual and physical abuse, and then you know
there's things down the other end, like silent treatment and
passive aggressiveness might not seem as detrimental, but oh my goodness,
I mean that is entirely false. They absolutely are because
they teach a child that they are alone, that they
(29:31):
cannot trust their parents, they are not valued, that they
are not cared for, that they're invisible, and many behaviors
that are sometimes instituted by narcissistic parents are overlooked by
teachers in general society because they look good. Narcissists are
so great at making the external appearance of their parenting
(29:53):
style look good. You know, it might seem beneficial to
be encouraging your child to achieve specific goals and to
groom your child to be seen as like the golden
pupil and the golden child, but it might also be
narcissistic parental abuse. I do just want to say, not
(30:15):
all people who are narcissists going to treat their children
as we have described, And it's really rare that this
would be or that you have experienced this type of parent.
But it doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and it doesn't
mean that when it does, it's quite harmful. Just because
perhaps your parent might fit some of these descriptions, it
doesn't mean that they were abusive narcissistic parents. I think
(30:38):
it's important to also consider a lot of other things
and to really seek professional help and the professional opinion
if you are suddenly identifying attributes of your parents in
these kind of descriptions. But once again, like this parental style,
it's so disruptive, it's so dysfunctional and it can be
(30:59):
really really harmful in the long term. I just want
to stress as well, like if this is something that
you can relate to, it's not some kind of like
death sentence, like a sign of your certificate, like that's
the end of their life. They're never going to be well,
They're never going to be well rounded or development or developed.
Probably absolutely not. Like I said at the beginning, we're
(31:21):
all about like a strength based narrative on this show
and the actions that we can take small and significant
to overcome the difficulties, the difficulties we are all going
to experience at some stage in our lives. So I
also want to talk about firstly some of the impacts
(31:42):
and ways to identify the impacts that these parenting styles
might have inflicted on us in the long term, but
also the strategies and the mechanisms that we can adopt
to kind of rise above the struggles and the harms
that come along with toxic and narcissus parenting styles. There
(32:08):
has obviously been a lot of research into the impacts
of toxic and narcissistic parenting and parents during our upbringing
on the behaviors that we bring into adulthood. It's a
huge part of social psychology to understand how our interpersonal relationships,
including those that we have with our caregivers, ultimately kind
(32:32):
of sets up our life trajectory in many ways. It
can impact everything from the partners we choose to our
career paths, our mental and emotional health in the company
we keep. Studies have found that children of narcissistic parents
have significantly higher rates of depression and lower self esteem
(32:52):
during adulthood compared to those who didn't perceive their parents
or their caregivers to be narcissistic. Often a parents like
empathy towards their child contributes to this. You know, the
child's own desires are denied, their feelings are restrained, their
emotional well being is ignored for kind of the parents
perceived higher goal and higher desire to be perceived, for
(33:17):
them to be perceived as as well liked, for them
to be perceived as successful, often using their child as
kind of a tool or a resource to get them there.
Children of narcissistic parents, they're taught to submit, they're taught
to conform, and it causes them to often lose touch
(33:37):
of themselves as individuals and deny the parts of the
individuality that they might value, and this can lead to
the child possessing as in adulthood, often few memories of
feeling appreciated or loved by them by their parents were
being themselves because they tend to associate the love and
(33:58):
appreciation they received from their parents with conformity and with success.
You may also experience, you know, chronic stress if you've
had toxic parents and other health problems, because you're used
to living in an environment in which you weren't neglected,
in which love was not a constant. You can also
(34:18):
involve self sabotaging if it's normal for you to be
surrounded by toxic people because of the lessons and the
habits you've picked up from your parents. You might struggle
setting boundaries because you know, if we think about the
authoritarian parent, like they always did that for you. We
talked about this before, right, they set up this incredibly
(34:40):
strict structure around you that you had to obey and follow.
So when you're an adult, when you live on your own,
when you go out and do your own thing, you
no longer have that kind of can you no longer
have that environment, that environment that's normal to you that
feels normal to you to go back to. So you've
(35:00):
really struggled to set boundaries within your life because someone
else has always done that for you. It has always
done that in the past. I think people with dysfunctional
relationships with their parents might also struggle with a lot
of other things right. They might struggle with trusting themselves,
with their self esteem, with their confidence, and studies have
(35:21):
even suggested that our upbringing ultimately determines the people that
we find attractive, the people that we inevitably date or
form long term partnerships with. It's important to remember that
the first example of a romantic relationship and cohabitation that
(35:41):
a children that a child will often see is that
of their parents or the couple that they live with.
This is a really crucial way that our environment as
a child and our parenting and upbringing environment will have
a major influence on some really important life decisions. What
(36:02):
we see will affect what we expect from our own relationships,
and it can influence our actions years down the line,
ages into the future. Because our experiences in our upbringing,
what we observe, what we expect, is going to influence
how we perceive romantic love and choose a partner. So
(36:24):
there are two theories around the impact of our parents
on the partners we choose. The first is that we
tend to choose partners and relationships that satisfy something we
didn't have as a child, which sounds like a good thing, right,
you know, when we're able to recognize, you know, like
I didn't have security and consistency as a child because
my parent was uninvolved or neglectful, we'll seek out a
(36:48):
partner that treats us that way. But often when what
sometimes psy psychologists and therapist see is when someone obtains that,
it's really hard for them to let that go, and
they can become hyper dependent on that person because they've
kind of given them everything they never had. The other
kind of theory is that we choose partners that mimic
(37:09):
the relationships that we have with our caregivers. So if
we had a narcissistic parent who we always had to impress,
whose love was conditional on our successes and our accolades
and the compliments and admiration we had for them, if
we have parents who required a lot of praise and
didn't have much empathy for our feelings, this might be
(37:31):
what we seek in a romantic partner, and the toxic
relationship that we have with our parents evolves into a
toxic romantic relationship in adulthood. Obviously, this is not always
the case, and it also doesn't have to be. The
long term impacts of toxic and narcissistic family and parenting
(37:51):
environments can be mitigated and can be avoided. The parents
we have are not the only determinants of the lives
that we will lead. You know the saying go as
it takes a village, and that definitely applies in this situation.
The love we receive from other family members like a
grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, from our teachers,
(38:13):
from our mentors, from our friends, their support from our community,
the validation from activities beyond our families like school or
sports or church if you attend. All of these can
mitigate and protect us against the negative consequences of growing
up with the toxic or narcissistic parent. And we also
(38:34):
have a choice in many ways in determining the habits
and the decisions that can bring us comfort and can
allow us to heal. So I want to talk through
some things that you can do if you've experienced this
kind of upbringing or you've suffered through narcissistic parental abuse.
(38:55):
To overcome this situation to kind of move past the
experiences of your childhood. Firstly, it's important to mourn what
you didn't have. Sometimes we actually need to sit in
the grief and sit in the resentment and the emotion
that we have for a little while before we can
(39:16):
move forward. If we don't take time in early adulthood
to really recognize the feelings we have towards our parents,
the resentment, to blame, the guilt even sometimes that we have,
it just ends up being suppressed. And with suppression there's
a lack of recognition. You're not able to work on
(39:36):
something or fix something that you can't acknowledge or understand yourself.
So it is important to mourn what you didn't have.
It's important to sit with the grief of the what ifs,
the grief of the other possibilities, and hopefully kind of
come to terms with the fact that this happened. This
was your experience, But it doesn't mean that you can't
(39:58):
live a really happy and qualit city life. The other
just essential essential feature of moving towards a healthy relationship
with a parent who may have treated you this way.
If that's something you want is to set boundaries. You know,
you might benefit from some distance between you and a
(40:18):
narcissistic or toxic parent. You might want to ensure that
you establish your nonnegotiables. You know, if your parent is
constantly picking on your saying things that make you uncomfortable.
You're an adult, you know, as part of it as
it is because of that controlling environment they may have
built when you're a child. You don't have to put
(40:38):
up with that. You don't have to depend on them
anymore for their support. So set up non negotiables. Things
that you won't tolerate from your family. You know, maybe
you won't tolerate them showing up unexpectedly or visiting you,
or making unsolicited comments or judgments about your life choices.
You can also ask that they don't have input into
(41:00):
your life choices that you know there's Sometimes they are
these crossroads right where we can choose whether we want
to borrow further into familial and parental control or forge
your own path. Often a narcissistic parent might attempt to
kind of keep us in their control and complying through
financial support and financial assistance. Through gifts through manipulation and
(41:23):
gas lighting. So do some of that work with a
therapist or a professional to identify what habits and what
patterns of behavior your parent often does to get you
back in, to bring you back into the fold, and
write them down, make sure you recognize them and you
identify what it is about those behaviors that A makes
(41:44):
you uncomfortable, that B is quite manipulative, and which C
can be avoided, in which you can set up boundaries
to prevent from happening, because you do have to, essentially,
and as hard as hard as it is, take some
kind of ownership to protect your own peace. The other
thing we've talked about here that definitely needs addressing is
(42:05):
the role of generational trauma that goes back decades and
centuries and generations in kind of determining how a parent
chooses to raise their child. It often doesn't even choose
to raise their child. It's something that's unconscious, right. They
don't necessarily choose to harm the children they bring into
(42:25):
the world. They don't choose to be narcissistic, they don't
choose to be neglectful or uninvolved. So sometimes we owe
it to ourselves to you know, work on ending the
cycle of intergenerational trauma and intergenerational habits and learning. Even
if we don't plan on having kids ourselves, you know,
the relationship we have with our caregivers, with our family,
(42:48):
with our parents impacts all other relationships, especially those we
may have with our own kids. And if you don't
have you know, if you don't plan on having kids
in the future, the people that we choose to nurture
and bring into our lives. So I think it's important
that once you've identified that this is a cycle that
(43:08):
you know you've kind of been brought into, you somewhat
have a duty to put a stop to it and
to address the trauma and the significant things that have
happened in your past that your parents and your care
givers may not have had the bandwidth, or the resources
or the energy to deal with. I think it's important
that if you've gone through this experience, if you can
(43:29):
identify or relate to anything we've talked about today, you
discuss that the impact of that with people that you trust,
people that love you, and you identify and relate to
what you're in a child your younger self missed out
on or would have wanted from a parent and emulate
that and how you treat the people you care about,
(43:51):
how you treat the peach the people that you nurture
in your life, create an environment, and create relationships that
make you feel safe. You know, it's all about you. Now.
You are allowed to be selfish, and you're allowed to
put yourself first, even if your parents and your family
don't see it that way. And talk to a professional
(44:12):
who can give you advice and address and give the
long term psychological and emotional harms or insecurities that this
upbringing may have caused. Finally, it might sound controversial, but
it's important, I think to forgive now. I know in
(44:35):
instances of abuse that is a lot easier said than done,
and you don't always have to do that. You know,
if this is not something for you, if you don't
think you can forgive, if it's going to take too
much mental energy, that is totally fine. You're allowed to
be selfish and you're allowed to choose what you want
to do with your life and make the decisions that
are most appropriate for you. But I think remember that
(45:00):
you're not forgiving your parents or these people as a
favor or an act of kindness to them or so
that they can live their lives guilt free. You're forgiving
these people for yourself so that you can be released
from a cycle of shame and trauma and move forward
without as much resentment and emotional baggage. So forgive, but
(45:24):
don't forget. If you related to any of this today,
I don't want to say I'm sorry, because I don't
want to make you feel like you're being pitied, But
I do want to say you're incredibly strong, and I'm
proud of you for listening to this episode and getting
to know more about some of the psychology behind Why
are you know if you've had a narcissistic or a
(45:46):
toxic parent, why they may have acted this way, why
their behavior may have been this way. And I think
it's important knowledge and an important kind of understanding to
bring into the holiday season as we feel Russia to
see our families, to reconnect, to spend time with them.
And if you've gone through the process of establishing boundaries
(46:09):
for the right reasons and for reasons that you think
are fair, make sure you stick to them right like
these parents and these people, as we've described, have many
ways of leveraging their role as our parents and their
role as kind of the mature superior person and the
relationship to their advantage. So I think it's an important
reminder around the holiday season that you're allowed to be
(46:31):
selfish and do what's best for you if you've found
yourself in this environment. I also want to say thank
you so much for listening. If you're still here, if
you're still with me, thank you for supporting the show.
Thank you for listening to another episode. It was so
great to have you along for the ride to learn
some more about this concept and experience and these feelings
(46:53):
and realizations that we have in our twenties. If you
feel called to do so, or if the episode benefited
you in any way, please feel free to leave a
five star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you're listening
right now. It really helps the show to grow and
to reach new people. And thank you, thank you again.
(47:15):
I feel so blessed to have people who want to
listen to this content and want to hear about these topics.
I think they are so important and so fascinating. So
thank you for coming on board for the ride, and
I will see you next week for another episode of
the Psychology of Your twenties,
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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