Parenting with a Narcissist

“Everyone thinks he’s the greatest dad in the world, because when we’re with other people he talks so sweet and kind. But they don’t see what he’s like when we’re alone.”

This hurts her. But at least it hurts her and she knows it – unlike me when I was a child who numbed herself out and grew up into a woman with tunnel vision. She does not believe this is the way it is or shoves it aside. She does not pretend this dichotomy doesn’t exist, blowing up and exaggerating the “good side” into full delusion.

Her awareness of the two faces makes it harder, but it will also make her stronger.

I soothe her pain with empathy and love.

I set up an appointment for my daughter with a therapist. First for a kids’ group and then one on one.

The reason isn’t just for the coping skills she’ll learn or realizing that she’s really not alone in facing life changes and challenges. It’s for the validation. I was told one of the things she would be learning was how to express her emotions. To me, what’s priceless is that she will be given the message that her feelings are even valid to express. That she has a right to them and that others find them important.

Being with a narcissistic parent, she has learned to show him what he wants to see.

I had asked her the other day if she gave her father any indication that she liked some of the documentaries he made her watch. She looked at my rather incredulously, almost like I was stupid, and said, “Uh…yeah. If I didn’t, he’d get mad!”

She told me not only does she have to be there when he watches these documentaries, but if she looks away or hides her eyes or covers her ears, he will get angry and threaten that she will never watch her own shows again if she doesn’t watch his.

That is so controlling, more than I thought he would be…but why wouldn’t I know this? Maybe I just thought he wouldn’t be like that, that cruel to her.

In our conversation, dd said to me, “I think what he does is child abuse.”

It is. But there are no laws that will protect her from it.

So in the face of so much discounting of what she feels, she really needs to be with others who will validate those feelings and her right to have them and to show her that anything less than that is not healthy at best and abusive at worst. The skills will be great, but the validation will be even better.

She loves to wrestle with her dad. That’s one of her favorite things to do and something by both enjoy. And she loves eating crabs and watching a good movie. That’s one of his favorite things to do.

It’s also what makes being verbally and emotionally abused so hard. Any abuse any time is difficult, but when it’s intermittent, not matter how frequently it’s like having your hope dashed over and over again. It becomes a series of “little deaths” so that eventually you find you’ve become a zombie.

Narcissism is insidious form of torture. It rips your heart apart in ways that are difficult, if not impossible to heal. Not just within the relationship but within your self.

That’s what makes me worry the most. It’s not what she has to go through day in and day out when she’s with him. It’s what it’s teaching her about love, about trust, about men.

I don’t just listen. I talk to her a lot. My main goal is to help her to become aware of what’s going on inside her, so that she can make empowering choices for herself. So she can discern and determine whether a particular dynamic is working for her or not, if she wants this in her relationship with men. Read more…

There is a lovely little story, “Little One Step” that I used to read to my daughter when she was younger. I find it to be very relevant now and a story can come in very handy when you’re not sure what to say.

You never know when a child will feel comfortable or feel the need to share their feelings. My daughter had spent the day playing with her dear friend she hadn’t seen for quite a while. They had gone to a birthday party together, and by all counts, she should have been flying high on the way home. But half way there, she brought up her father.

For the sake of creating a context, let me backtrack a bit. When I had picked her up from her father’s a few days ago, she told me that just before I arrived he suddenly brought up her reaction to a documentary he had forced her to watch. She didn’t know why. He was just talking and the next thing she knew he was talking about – no, mocking her about her reaction to this documentary three days previous. She was very upset about this. Read more…

An author stated that verbal abuse is when someone defines you. This is very significant in relation to narcissism. Narcissistic abuse often is covert. Because image and appearance is of utmost importance, most of the abuse meted out by narcissistic people will be under the radar, leaving very deep but invisible wounds.

This happens all the time to my dd. Happened to me, too, but what’s significant here is as an adult I had the ability to walk away. A child who has an abusive parent, and does not show signs of physical abuse, is pretty much stuck with that person until they are of legal age to walk away. By that time considerable damage has been done, and even if they do have the ability and desire to walk away, they take the impact of all those invalidating years with them.

I find that my most important job as the other parent is to validate my child. He invalidates. I validate. It’s a fine line to walk sometimes, but I cannot leave her to suffer at his diminishing of her and her reality with silence under the pretense of not wanting to speak badly of her father.

I don’t speak badly of her father. I speak truthfully of his bad behavior. There’s a difference. I cannot let him define her according to his convenience, insecurity or any other agenda he may have that has nothing to do with her, but everything to do with him.

Because being rendered invisible by someone who is supposed to love you is a kind of slow death. And what good parent would not want to save their child from that?