Meet the narcissistic parents
We’ve been warned to recognise the toxic traits of narcissism in our partners but what about when your parent is the culprit? Here, psychotherapists Katie McKenna and Helen Villiers talk about the red flags to look out for and the long-term damage that is caused by narcissistic mothers and fathers
Narcissists and the people they hurt have loomed large in popular culture for the past decade. Across social media, we’re taught how to identify them, deal with them and, ultimately, disentangle from them. But what happens when the narcissist isn’t a manipulative lover, toxic friend or conniving boss? What if it’s the person who knows you best? Parental narcissism is a topic not often discussed but, for psychotherapists Helen Villiers and Katie McKenna, who is Irish, it’s a very common theme in their therapy sessions. The pair host the popular podcast In Sight — Exposing Narcissism. Now, they’ve written a book on the legacy and damage caused by narcissistic and emotionally abusive parents.
Narcissism is a trait but it can also be part of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a complex mental health condition in which an inflated sense of one’s own importance masks a fragile sense of self-esteem. Narcissists have an extreme desire for attention and admiration, a sense of entitlement and often lack empathy for others.
Research suggests that NPD affects between 0.5pc and 1.6pc of the population but that’s thought to be a flawed statistic, says McKenna, given that people with NPD don’t typically request a diagnosis.
“It’s ultimately, if you have a problem with them, well then it’s your problem. So they don’t end up in therapy unless they are forced into it and, even then, it’s unlikely that they will continue with it.”
Narcissism and its behaviours, such as gaslighting (manipulating someone into questioning their perception of reality) and triangulation (bringing a third person into a two-person conflict), have become pop-psychology buzzwords in recent years. Yet while we’ve been told how to spot the red flags of narcissistic tendencies in partners and dating interests, less is said about the long-term impacts of being raised by a narcissistic parent and the damage it causes.
In You’re Not The Problem: The Impact of Narcissism and Emotional Abuse and How to Heal, Villiers and McKenna describe four types of narcissistic parent. There’s the ‘critical parent’, who is judgmental of everyone around them. “Clients tell me, ‘They’re complaining about my hair, my driving, my parenting… I just can’t do anything right,’” says nd
‘A massive red flag is when someone speaks about their parent in a very idealised way. They had the perfect childhood, the perfect parents, the perfect everything’
McKenna. Then there’s the ‘ignoring parent’: “Clients will say, ‘They’re never interested in me, they never pick up the phone to me. They couldn’t even tell you what my degree is in or what job title I have, even though I’ve told them hundreds of times.’”
The ‘engulfing parent’, on the other hand, is often “praised in society”, says McKenna, even though they cross so many boundaries in the parent-child dynamic. “This is more common with mothers and daughters. You’ll hear things like, ‘My mum is my best friend, she comes everywhere with me. I’m like her mini therapist.’ When I hear that, it’s such a red flag, typically.”
The fourth type, the ‘combination’ parent, will fit into either one of these categories with elements of the others, or may fit into all of them equally. Narcissistic mothers and fathers can differ in their behaviour, says Villiers. “Typically, the narcissistic father is a more overt type of narcissist. They’re very aggressive, grandiose, controlling — very domineering and dominant, but they can also be covert too. The reason we see that men are so much more overt is because of patriarchy. Men are allowed to be flash and domineering. Women are never allowed to be those things so they develop more covert traits to fit in with society and to camouflage.
“And because the covert expression of those traits is so insidious and so manipulative and so dressed up to look like the ‘poor me’ victim, trying to describe it to somebody who hasn’t experienced it can be difficult.”
Villiers and McKenna emphasise that, as psychotherapists, they can’t diagnose people with NPD. That’s a psychologist’s job. As mental health professionals, they’re also wary of excessive self-disclosure about their own life experiences. Asked if either of them has experience of a narcissistic parent, Villiers says, “What we never want to do is colour the work with our own experience, because otherwise people will assume a lot of stuff.”
Villiers says there are three roles for children in the narcissistic family system: the ‘invisible child’, the ‘scapegoat child’ and the ‘golden child’. When there is only one or two children, they will cycle through all three roles.
The invisible child is “horribly neglected and ignored, always forgotten and an afterthought”. As children, they tend to be daydreamers who spend hours playing on their own and making up worlds to escape into. As adults, they are often disconnected from their feelings and “hyper-independent”.
The golden child, on the other hand, is idolised by the narcissistic parent and is often forced to “collude with the parent in the abuse towards their siblings”. “I often describe the golden child as Teflon,” says Villiers — “nothing sticks.”
This isn’t to say they have it easy. “Nobody gets out of these systems unscathed,” she says, adding that golden children can struggle to form meaningful connections and relationships with others and may also develop mental health issues.
Scapegoats have their own challenges, being “constantly chipped away at and eroded, suppressed and oppressed”. But they stand their ground and demand to be “seen, heard and valued”.
“The scapegoats are the truth speakers, the cycle breakers and the ones that stand up and say they won’t accept toxicity anymore,” says Villiers. “They are the ones we are most likely to see in therapy because they are the ones who have been punished the most. They’re the ones who have experienced the most toxicity.”
McKenna, who is from Co Monaghan, says Irish people can sometimes trivialise narcissistic family dynamics. “In Ireland, what we usually see is the mother with the eldest boy — we call them mammy’s boys — and the girls are treated so differently. They’re treated as the servants and they’re trained to be in servitude to their brothers and the men, whereas the boys have no responsibilities and then they learn these behaviours.
“They grow up with this entitlement because they have never been held accountable. And often the other children in that scenario, looking at the golden boy, can be so jealous and annoyed of his role but, actually, the parent is doing them such a disservice… Typically we can see them following in the parent’s footsteps and having real narcissistic traits unless they are willing to look at their behaviour. But when a structure benefits someone like that, it’s generally very difficult or they are just unwilling to look at it.”
In many cases, the child of a narcissistic parent can feel unprotected by the ‘enabler’ parent and the wider family circle who normalise the behaviour, adds McKenna. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s just your mother, keep the peace, don’t get on the wrong side of them, just apologise.’ They put all that responsibility on the child and tell them that they have to tolerate the abuse.”
The authors say they can spot a person who has been raised by a narcissistic parent. “It’s fairly obvious, it sort of radiates,” says Villiers. McKenna agrees: “It does from their own behaviours but especially if they go on then to describe their parent.”
“Another massive red flag for me is when someone speaks about their parent in a very idealised way,” Villiers adds. “They had the perfect childhood, the perfect parents, the perfect everything. But nobody has the perfect childhood. It just doesn’t happen. There doesn’t have to be toxic wounds but there are always little ones.”
Villiers says growing up with a narcissistic parent can leave deep emotional and psychological scars. Children of narcissists often learn to neglect their own needs and are more likely to enter into unhealthy, abusive relationships.
“If you’ve grown up in these systems, you can turn to your partner to be your parent, and when you do that, you make yourself insanely vulnerable to abuse. Because the only people who want to parent their partner are abusive. To be a parent means to be controlling, to make decisions for you, to dictate what you can and can’t do with your life. If you’re healthy, you’re looking for a playmate as a partner rather than a parent. When you’re looking for a parent, you end up being very vulnerable.”
Throughout the book, the authors share coping strategies to help victims develop a sense of internal validation. There’s a chapter called ‘Killing the Hope’, in which they describe the hope a narcissistic child has that ‘this time will be different’. “It’s the hope that ‘this time they will see me and recognise me and hear me and validate me’,” says McKenna. “The hope that ‘if I do this thing this time they will acknowledge me and praise me’.
“When somebody keeps going back to that person looking for something when they are harming them, it’s actually a form of self-harm. And then a lot of people growing up in this environment will have such a toxic inner critic and will self-gaslight with ‘it wasn’t that bad’, ‘it could be worse’ and ‘they’ve had a tough time’. It’s about being able to recognise these behaviours and being able to grieve the parent not in front of you, the parent you didn’t have.”
But what about the parent? Popular psychology is fixated on identifying narcissists, but perhaps we should be offering more guidance to help people identify narcissism within themselves so they can get the help they need?
Villiers is unconvinced. “Because people with NPD have impaired self-awareness, there are two ways it is going to go. One, they will tell you, ‘Well, if you’ve got a problem with it, it’s not mine. It’s got me to where I am and I’m fine with it.’ Overt narcissists are going to see it as quite a positive characteristic, but somebody who is more covert is going to see it as a personal attack. ‘How could you say something like that to me after everything I’ve done for you!’… They can identify it and apply it to everyone else, but not themselves.
“It’s a fallacy that you can’t help a narcissist,” she adds. “You can, if they accept the diagnosis and accept it’s problematic. But those two hurdles are usually far too high for narcissists to jump over. McKenna agrees: “Even after those two hurdles, there is still a long process.”
The focus, they suggest, should be about raising awareness so victims can identify unhealthy behaviours and set boundaries. “The difference in the last three years with people talking about this on Instagram and TikTok is amazing,” says McKenna. “Typically, my clients were in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Now, we’re seeing teenagers and people in their 20s recognising this. It’s unbelievable because they are recognising from an early age that this is not OK. ‘This is not normal. This is actually abusive and, therefore, I don’t deserve this.’”
‘You’re Not The Problem: The Impact of Narcissism and Emotional Abuse and How to Heal’ by Helen Villiers
and Katie McKenna is in bookshops now