The Childhood of a Narcissist
Warning:The danger in talking about the childhood wounds of a narcissist to survivors of their abuse is that the guilt they have used to manipulate us with will come roaring back. Do not fall for it. Narcissists use pity to gain control and we must not give credence to such feelings. Thoughts like “They are wounded and if I can show them love, they will finally come around,” are nothing but a lie. Read on to find out why.
The childhood of a narcissistic abuser follows a pattern. Understanding that pattern breaks its power in our own past and also in our present, thus giving us the ability to heal. As long as abusive patterns remain unconscious, they will continue to cast a shadow over our lives. This is not about blame. Blame keeps you in the pattern. Understanding sets you free.
Why Abusers Do What They Do
Why did my parents treat their own family so badly? Why couldn’t they see what they were doing? The reason is found in something called a narcissistic wound.
Narcissistic Abuse Feels Unexplainable
The absolute hatred I felt from both my parents was so withering, I lost the will to live, yet, I was an accomplished person, successful, married, a mother etc. I did everything my parents wanted for decades. It did not matter. The message communicated to me was always the same; hatred and disgust. I would never be enough. I would never gain their approval much less their blessing. I existed only as a vessel for their emotional garbage and I damn well better continue to play the assigned role of scapegoat or they would destroy me.
None of it made any sense. The harder I tried, the more abusive they became. Nothing made them happy. There was no relationship apart from abuser to victim. I spent thousands of hours churning the puzzle over in my mind. Why? Why were they so abusive? Why was I so hated?
Asking the Right Questions
All that time, I had been asking the wrong question. It wasn’t until I changed my why to what that I began to get some answers. What had happened to them to cause such behavior and what choices had they made in life in order to cope?
The Childhood of a Narcissist
I always knew the story of my mother’s life. She told it many times while I was growing up. I just didn’t understand what I was hearing. At every holiday and many times in between, we made the trek to her childhood home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to visit my Grandmother and Step-Grandfather. To my brother and I, my grandmother’s apple orchard was a magical place filled with baby chicks and milk cows, strawberry patches and mules. The bathroom was an outhouse and our play ground the streams and creek beds on her farm. We did not notice the poverty. My grandmother was always kind if rather distant, and my parents kept us away from her husband. It wasn’t until years later I would find out why.
As our family drove home, we did not bat an eye at the stories my mother told. I can still see that far away look in her eye as she stared out the window of our Plymouth Duster.
“Sam, (my mother’s step-father) chased us through the woods with an axe. He shot into the air with a shotgun, too. The only way to get away was to run.” My mother sighed. “After that, he spent a long time in the state mental institution. I sure wish my Daddy could have lived.”
My mother’s father died when she was two and he, twenty-two of an appendicitis. Her mother remarried an illiterate farmer five years later and bore four more children. The details of the total truth are shrouded in mystery, but we think my mother was molested by Sam, then sent away to live with relatives while my grandmother along with her mentally ill and violent husband scratched out a living on the side of a mountain. My mother made it to college all on her own where she would meet my father. Both had horrific backgrounds of poverty, violence, abandonment and terrible abuse. Neither ever dealt with the past. You could use the excuse that it was a different time. That’s baloney. Both my parents continued the pattern of abuse they had inherited. In some ways they overcame, in many others, they did exceedingly worse.
Patterns in the Childhood of a Narcissist
In my last blog, I describe the behavior of a narcissist like this: “Narcissists use whatever means necessary to get what they want and what they want is not relationship. They want to be worshipped. They want to be in control and more than anything else, they want to use you to cover over their own hurt, pain, short-comings and fears. They rule the family like a dictator using threat, coercion, violence and abandonment as punishment.” Put another way, narcissism is pathological selfishness used to cope with buried feelings of overwhelming fear. Narcissistic wounds. When you look at the childhood of a narcissist, you will find five patterns of fear that drive their outrageous behavior in the present.
Childhood Abuse Patterns that Drive Fear in the Narcissist
Being exposed. Instead of seeking deep relationships and intimate sharing, narcissists want to conceal their faults. They are driven by deep insecurity and what looks like bravado is really an attempt to hide how devastatingly insecure they really are. The look of dark rage that came over my father’s face whenever someone sent the slightest jab or questioned his authority in any way was truly terrifying. I learned not to do it at an early age. His intimidation was so powerful, I still feel a lump in my stomach just writing about it. Abuse in childhood causes the narcissist to guard being exposed at all cost. Both my parent’s childhoods were filled with abuse, inescapable vulnerability, insecurity, threat, humiliation and constant attacks on their innocence.
Losing Control. Because narcissists do not have a sense of themselves, losing control is the ultimate threat—to their very existence. This need for control is so profound, anyone within their family group or friendship sphere is seen as something to be controlled as well. Their childhood is filled with out-of-control trauma, thus, they seek control as a way to cope with life. It has nothing to do with us as their children even though they will tell us it’s our fault. “You’re too stupid to make a decision so I’ll make it for you,” or other undermining behavior. It has everything to do with them.
Being Humiliated. Humiliation means being vulnerable and that is the narcissist’s worst nightmare. Driven to be perceived as special and better than others, whenever their special status is attacked they will respond with rage. My family had a strange habit I have never seen anywhere else though I’m sure it’s because I was not privy to the inner workings of other families. We gossiped and criticized other people incessantly. I mean all the time about everything. My parents painted themselves with strokes of goodness and purity, altruistic, wonderful and perfect. The very saints themselves bowed their heads in shame when looking at how righteous and insightful my parents were. It was so weird. We never did this in front of anyone else, but it constantly went on inside the family.
Being Rejected. Any kind of rejection is met with rage and narcissists perceive even the slightest criticism as such. Even worse, they perceive the personhood of their children as rejection. I was not allowed an opinion of any sort. I was seen only as an extension of them. My dreams and desires never entered into the equation. Cancelled out at every turn, it nearly destroyed my soul. I did not feel I had a right to exist. That is how deeply twisted a narcissist’s fears of rejection affect their children.
*List taken from The Narcissist In Your Life by Julie Hall, pages 27-28
Does the Narcissist Know What They Are Doing?
The answer to that depends upon your world view. Many psychologists tend to support the idea that a narcissist’s childhood is so damaging, they develop something called “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” To me, that means the woundedness is so deep, it becomes who they are. At some point in their lives, there is a point of no return.
But I think there is more to it than labeling it as a mental illness. As I walked through the decades of my own life, I came to many crossroads. One by one, layer by layer, as I was able to bear it, damage came to the surface. Each time, I knew, somewhere deep inside, I was being given a choice. I could choose to surrender to the darkness, acquiesce to the narcissists demands, give up my personhood, and even give up on life or, I could choose the horrifically difficult path of facing the pain.
Therein lies the heart of what I think really drives a narcissist. The refusal to face their own pain. And at some juncture, there really does come a point of no return. A point at which you no longer hear the truth calling to you. A point at which you are given over to your own pride. By the time I became an adult, what my parents were doing was completely lost to them. It was one of the reasons dealing with them was so maddening. They had a total lack of insight and took zero responsibility for anything.
Why Free Will Is So Important
I believe in something called free will. Free will means that every person has agency. Every single one of us has the ability to choose including the narcissist. It is that belief that enabled me to live through the healing process. What a powerful truth it is to know that the narcissist has no real power over you. That you hold the keys not them. That you don’t need to wait for them to set you free.
I will never know all the answers nor be able to see into another person’s heart. I can only know myself and choose for myself. There is no doubt that trauma has a physical component and changes the brain. Body work, meditation and therapy have all been a great help. But in the end, I see this as a struggle between good and evil. It is that serious. It is that difficult, and there really is that much at stake. Which side will you choose? The path of denial and avoidance or the side of truth?
You don’t have to know everything or even be close to perfect. All you need to be is willing. Willing to set aside your own pride and self-protection. It isn’t easy, but if you want to live in freedom, it is the path you must choose to walk. Defy trauma, embrace joy.