Were you raised by a covert narcissist?
When a person has a covert narcissist mother or father, that parent’s behaviors will influence the young person’s overall development. Here are some ways the child might be affected.
1. You are a people pleaser.
The child is likely to develop people-pleasing characteristics. They likely received passive-aggressive guilt trips and withheld affection if they failed to meet their narcissist parent’s expectations, and as such learned to fawn and pander to others in order to feel loved.
Since their self-worth depends on how much others adore them, they adapt themselves to be as perfect as possible, often to their own detriment.
2. You sufer from anxiety, depression, or both.
Since covert narcissists shift blame and rarely take responsibility for their actions, they often end up scapegoating their child—or children—as the source of anything bad that happens.
As a result, the children may develop hypervigilant anxiety and depression from constantly trying to avoid upsetting their parents, as well as from growing up believing that everything that goes wrong is their fault.
They never receive apologies for mistreatment because the parents imply it is deserved. If they hadn’t distracted the parent in the kitchen, the parent wouldn’t have dropped that plate, and thus they wouldn’t have had to be punished, and so on.
3. You have severe trust issues.
Covert narcissists make a lot of promises, but then end up finding reasons to justify why they can never fulfill them. Something else inevitably comes up and although they promise to make it up to the person they’ve hurt, they never do.
Furthermore, they’ll play injured and sulk if others actually express their disappointment about them never keeping their word. Then they might indulge in classic covert narcissist gift-giving in an attempt to cheer up the hurt child, then act injured or offended if the child doesn’t appreciate said gift enough.
As a result, children of covert narcissist parents learn early on that their caregivers can’t be trusted. This wariness may also extend to the child mistrusting and second-guessing their own emotions, and feeling as though they need to perform to others’ expectations instead of being authentic.
Furthermore, they may end up seeing any gift from another as a window to manipulation, rather than an act of love and generosity.
4. You are a perfectionist.
The child of a covert narcissist father or mother will try to be the perfect offspring in their eyes—either to earn love, or to avoid punishment and cruelty.
As a result, these young people strive for perfection in everything they do. Many develop eating disorders, while others drive themselves to exhaustion to achieve high grades or athletic awards.
In fact, they may develop similar covert narcissist behavior to the parent(s) who invalidated them and demanded perfection from them in the first place.
This perfectionism will extend to their interpersonal and work relationships in adulthood—they’ll attempt to anticipate what their partners or employers want, aim to achieve perfection in that, then punish themselves severely if they miss the mark.
5. Your self-esteem is at rock bottom.
The self-loathing and self-deprecation often exhibited by covert narcissists influence their offspring in turn.
Children learn by example, and hearing their parent constantly put themselves down to receive comfort and praise from others may encourage them to mimic that behavior.
Since they don’t understand the motivation behind this behavior, however, they may honestly believe that they’re useless, stupid, and a burden instead of merely using those phrases to manipulate others.
People with covert NPD are also sometimes referred to as “thin-skinned” narcissists. This refers to the fact that they are devastated by the slightest perceived criticism.
Since children of covert narcissist parents aren’t taught to be self-confident and to have faith in themselves, but instead to constantly put themselves down, they end up having low self-esteem.
This may be compounded by the parent’s criticism and projections toward them.
6. You struggle to develop healthy relationships.
When a child grows up knowing that they can’t trust those closest to them, having to be hypervigilant about other people’s emotions and walking on eggshells in order to avoid criticism and cruelty, they put other people’s needs and wants ahead of their own and have difficulty recognizing their own emotions.
Many children of narcissist parents end up in relationships with people who remind them of their parents. In fact, a lot of them end up dating narcissists as well. This is often referred to as “repetition compulsion.”
In simplest terms, repetition compulsion is a case of the devil you know being comfortable and familiar.
Children of narcissistic parents may unconsciously seek to re-create the family dynamics they grew up with because those are the dynamics they know best. They know how to deal with self-absorbed, manipulative people who are incapable of showing them real care and affection, so that’s who they end up befriending and dating.
They literally don’t know how to deal with or behave around those who show healthy, stable levels of care and affection.
7. You repeat behavioral patterns with others.
Children of covert narcissist parents may develop “eager-to-please” behaviors. Not only have they learned these traits from those who raised them, but they also learned early on that if they don’t do all they can to make their parent feel loved and appreciated, they’ll receive the silent treatment or passive-aggressive abuse.
Since this is the example they were raised with, they may very well repeat these behaviors themselves once they reach adulthood. This can perpetuate the cycle, as the very abuses that were heaped upon them when they were young will then be visited upon their own offspring, and so on.
8. You are more likely to engage in substance abuse and/or self-harm.
Children of covert narcissists often feel alone and unseen. Their narcissist parent is so good at convincing everyone of how benevolent and self-sacrificing they are that others can’t conceive of the idea that they may in fact be harming those closest to them.
Furthermore, if a child tries to tell other trusted adults about the abuse they’re experiencing at home, they may not be believed.
Things get even worse if those the child confided in turn around and tell the parent what’s been said. Then, not only will the child be tormented further at home, they’ll gain the reputation of being an attention-seeking liar.
Furthermore, they’ll have learned that they can’t trust anyone because those they were vulnerable with ended up betraying them.
As a result, many turn to substance abuse to help them cope with their pain. They feel so utterly alone in their suffering that going numb or blissing out through artificial means is one of the only ways they can keep going.
In some cases, the young people take part in self-harming behaviors as well. Since they learned that they can’t express their thoughts and emotions safely to anyone, they may cut or burn themselves in an attempt to release the overwhelming emotions inside them.
Others may develop eating disorders as both control and energy release (e.g. exercise bulimia). In some rare cases, especially if the child has either vulnerable narcissist or borderline personality disorder traits themselves, they may even attempt to end their lives to escape from the never-ending torment they’re enduring.
