What does it look like to be a victim of familial narcissism?

The good, the bad, and the ugly all tend to stick in development and in life. It’s great when good example or technique sets the trend for sound practice. It’s not good when bad example or technique must be unlearned. How much worse is it then when something ugly happened in our childhood? Or, in marriage.

Many people can think of times when as children, or as a partner, they were humiliated. These are either examples of the bad or the ugly—very undesirable to patently evil. And there’s nothing worse when those who humiliated us seemed distinctly satisfied.

But in other situations, it can take years for the light to shine into the darkness, such is the subtlety of a person’s actions against us, especially where innocence or trust is exploited. And the confusing subtleties continue when we regularly feel something’s not quite right, yet we have no solid claim to probe why.

The test would be that if we did probe, we may find our probe would be manifestly unwelcome. If we were to fear such an outcome, that might indicate our heart discerns something we’d rather not face, but ought to.

I must say at this point that as I talk in the first-person plural—using “we” and “us”—I’m not talking from my life’s example. I’m not a victim of this type of narcissism. But I’ve worked with plenty of people for which this is a problem, and I find writing in inclusive ways more helpful overall.

There are many examples of familial narcissism, but in broad terms it’s a form of oppressive control within the realms of childhood and beyond or of the family unit.

In childhood, the roots of control were founded early before we even realised anything was wrong. The tentacles of control are long and spindly. They stretch right back seemingly to a land before time. This is most disconcerting, because, while we know that something’s wrong, we can’t ever seem to get at the nub of it. 

It’s usually not until well into our adulthood that we realise we’ve been inculcated in a toxic learning system all along, and the first clue was the spirit of oppression. When we discover it, we feel liberated to unearth such great truth, but the irony is we’re then forced to face a crisis, for we can no longer deny it.

We felt controlled. We didn’t feel free. We felt like certain decisions were made for us. We didn’t feel we could live or choose another way. There was always some kind of string attached. We were always told how much we were loved, yet we never felt loved, and it took us years to discover that it wasn’t our fault and we needn’t any longer feel (and should never have felt) guilty about it. This often leads us to feel very angry AND confused. The subtleties of control do our minds in.

In marriage, the tentacles of control seem vast in their range. They impact not only us, but others we care about. Our children are under the control of the narcissistic partner, and when they’re hurt by their callous words and shocking actions it hurts even more than when we’re directly their target.

And they exercise this control particularly over people who would exert resistance. It’s as if the narcissist is saying by their behavior, “You have no right to come in here and tell me I can’t do as I damn well please to those who are mine. They’re mine, aren’t they?” See the toxic spirit of ownership? More than owning a person, the ownership is all about controlling the relationship, to the hijacking of people’s personhoods.

When we witness several innocent family members struggle amid such tyranny, it is soul destroying.

A narcissist takes great displeasure in anyone close to them exerting their independence. In truth, way deeper than they can see, they’re threatened to their core that someone close to them could live independently and within their own control.

A narcissistic partner is uncanny in their execution of control. They seem to have their loved ones on a string. It isn’t just that they exert control. They actually achieve it. Control is like magnetism to them. It’s like they continually weave their spell. It is doubly confounding when others cannot see this control and see the narcissist as charming, which of course is the facade they live to project. This is why we can often feel it’s hopeless to withstand the force of their control.

Can you feel how oppressive this situation is?

Abusive relationships feel controlling even when the threat is over. It never feels over. It’s like when the narcissistic person isn’t even in proximity, but there is still the feeling we’re being controlled. And this is because of the preoccupation they create in our minds.

Real love exists in a place where relationships feature a mix of freedom within responsibility. Narcissists steal others’ freedom and they bear zero real responsibility, and yet the empath—often the child or partner of the narcissist—gives freedom away and they take all responsibility. Such a situation is relationally untenable.

Photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash