There are many articles on the Internet about all kinds of narcissism and the dangers of being in a relationship with someone who has these tendencies. The advice is clear: get away from the situation as quickly as possible. Anyone who is more on the codependent side of the continuum will testify that this is harder to put into practice than it sounds. However, what if the narcissist is your parent and has cloned you to be a “perfect” living version of him or her? A boy chosen to heal the broken past of his parents. It happens more than we imagine. For convenience, I have highlighted this case with father and daughter. However, this concept is not limited to that.
A parent who has developed a sense of narcissism through their own dysfunctional childhood often believes that by bringing a “perfect” child into the world and being seen as a “perfect” parent, they can heal the wounds of their own childhood. This scenario often plays out through a “chosen” child, the prince or princess who gets all the sick attention from her. Through this child, he is showing all the people who doubted his self-esteem (including himself) that he is a valuable person with real value. However, the emotional manipulation that goes along with being the chosen one creates havoc for the child, leading to extreme codependency or the next generation of narcissists.
Since a narcissistic parent will use emotional manipulation that is based on their own shame, anxiety, and self-loathing, they will trust their chosen child to feel competent and worthwhile, and the child has an ongoing responsibility to make their parent feel good about themselves. same. The child rarely develops a healthy self-identity and is seen as an extension of the parent’s ego problems. The child is assigned the endless task of “pleasing” primarily parents to the detriment of ambition and personal relationships. As this child grows older and in an attempt to emotionally deal with the demands placed on him by the father, he adapts to the narcissistic parent by becoming a compliant child. This will in turn bring praise and conditional love as long as the child continues to feed the monster. Codependency forms when a child incorporates this behavior as a habit in their search for unconditional love. Those who resist are treated harsher and are more likely to become narcissistic in later life due to being seen as a “problem child”.
In practice, the above scenario is often carried over into the child’s adulthood unchanged. Her primary task set as a girl continues, wreaking havoc on relationships, self-esteem, and the child’s own parenting style. This is a child who has been taught to think first of her narcissistic parent’s needs before her own. Her father, who is often to the outside world a loving father, a successful businessman, and a pillar of the community, is actually an ego-driven individual who has a grandiose sense of superiority over all who surround him. surround. The demands placed on those chosen to be in their inner circle are impossible to meet and are tailored only to their needs. The chosen child may at a given moment decide to resist and make decisions based on her needs, something that could be very new for a person who has been controlled all her life in her choice of career and partner. This causes classic narcissistic damage, revoking old feelings of rejection and abandonment for the narcissistic parent who responds with classic emotional manipulative tactics…emotional withdrawal, disapproval, and focus on the least chosen children in the family. This punishment is done with the knowledge that the codependent child will always come back, seeking forgiveness and apologizing for what she has “done.” The child is trapped in the psyche of the narcissistic father who sees her accomplishments as an extension of her “parenting” abilities. The father is motivated to take care of her constantly because he makes him feel good about himself.
While the child is extremely codependent with the narcissistic parent, it is often a different story with other people they become involved with. Here she resists any form of treatment that she perceives as controlling and manipulative and often plays a narcissistic role herself and becomes an emotional manipulator. Since she has learned to be accommodating and accommodating and seemingly stable, she will easily attract partners. However, she will discard any relationship that she might collide with her incessant need to please the narcissistic parent, even if in some cases she would have wanted to stay in the relationship. The worst case scenario for her is the disapproval of her partner from the narcissistic parent. This puts her in conflict between his needs and hers and, true to form, her needs are moderate.
For the chosen child, life is never easy until he can learn to put healthy limits around his own behavior and that of other people. First they have to understand what is really happening to them. They often refuse to see their narcissistic parent for who they are. The child holds them up on an irreproachable pedestal, his advice is sacred, and the child often sees the narcissistic parent as the only one who can truly understand him and provide him with the security he needs. In effect, they are just another pawn in the narcissistic parent’s need to feel good about himself. This is child abuse at the highest level.
