Part 2: Raised by a Narcissistic Parent: When Their Needs Always Came First
Some adults come into counselling knowing their childhood was difficult. Others are much less certain. They may describe a parent who loved them, worked hard, made sacrifices, and was deeply involved in their life, while also describing a home where they learned to be careful, perform well, keep the peace, or monitor a parent’s emotions.
That is part of what can make narcissistic family dynamics so confusing. A parent does not have to be cold, cruel, or obviously neglectful for the relationship to have a lasting impact. They may be loving in some ways and still struggle to make room for the child’s separate needs, feelings, opinions, or identity.
For many adult children, the question eventually becomes less about whether the parent “meant well” and more about what the child had to become in order to stay connected to them.
Too Long to Read? Here’s What I Want You to Take Away
Growing up with a parent who has strong narcissistic traits can teach a child to focus on the parent’s emotions, expectations, or image instead of their own needs.
Children may adapt by becoming the achiever, peacekeeper, caretaker, invisible child, or the one who is blamed when something goes wrong.
These patterns can follow people into adulthood as guilt, people-pleasing, difficulty saying no, over-explaining, or feeling responsible for other people’s emotions.
Understanding your parent’s history does not mean you have to minimize how the relationship affected you.
Wondering whether your childhood is still affecting you now?
If you are starting to see connections between your family of origin and the way you handle boundaries, conflict, guilt, or relationships today, counselling can help you make sense of those patterns without reducing your parent to a label.
When the Child Learns to Take Care of the Parent
Healthy parenting gradually teaches a child that their feelings matter, that disagreement is survivable, and that love does not disappear when they become their own person. In families where a parent has strong narcissistic traits, those messages can become much less clear. A child may learn to read the parent’s mood before asking for something. They may know when not to bring up a problem, when reassurance is needed, or how much achievement is required to receive praise or approval.
Over time, this can create a kind of role reversal, where the child becomes increasingly responsible for the parent’s emotional state. A recent systematic review found that parental narcissism was associated with poorer parent-child relationship quality and child wellbeing, with vulnerable narcissism in particular linked to emotional unavailability, insecure attachment, role reversal, and maladaptive parenting patterns (Orovou et al., 2025).
From the outside, the child may look mature, responsible, helpful, or unusually sensitive to other people’s feelings. Those can become real strengths. But underneath them may be a belief learned very early: other people’s emotions are my responsibility.
A child can become very good at caring for everyone else before they ever learn how to care for themselves.
The Roles Children Learn to Play
Children in the same family do not always adapt in the same way. One child may become the achiever who brings pride to the family. Another may become the peacekeeper who avoids conflict. Another may become the caretaker who notices everyone else’s emotional needs. Another may become the child who is blamed when the family is under stress.
People often use terms such as golden child or scapegoat to describe these experiences. Those labels can be useful, but they are less important than the larger question: was the child allowed to become a separate person?
Research suggests that more antagonistic narcissistic traits in parents are associated with colder relationships, more conflict, and more negative communication between parents and children (Orovou et al., 2025). Over time, the role a child learns to play can become part of how they understand themselves.
The achiever may become an adult who feels worthless when they fail. The peacekeeper may become deeply uncomfortable when someone is angry. The caretaker may feel guilty for choosing themselves. The blamed child may enter adulthood assuming that conflict is probably their fault.
What helped you stay connected to your family as a child may not be what helps you build healthy relationships as an adult.
Why Boundaries Can Feel So Wrong
Children depend on their caregivers for safety and belonging. If a parent repeatedly struggles to respond to the child’s emotional needs, it may be easier for the child to believe something is wrong with me than to recognize my parent cannot give me what I need. That belief can stay with someone for years. As an adult, you may feel the need to explain a simple “no” repeatedly. You may feel guilty when someone is disappointed in you, apologize even when you have done nothing wrong, or spend a great deal of energy trying to manage how other people react to you.
Attachment research helps explain why these patterns can become so deeply rooted. A 2025 meta-analysis involving more than 10,000 adults found meaningful links between vulnerable narcissism and insecure attachment, particularly patterns involving fear of rejection and a strong need for reassurance (Mohay et al., 2025).
This does not mean insecure attachment causes narcissism. It means that early relationships can shape how people learn to experience closeness, conflict, rejection, and emotional safety.
Understanding Your Parent Without Excusing the Impact
Many adults eventually begin wondering what happened to their parent. Perhaps that parent also grew up with criticism, trauma, neglect, instability, or a family where emotions were not handled well. That context may be important.
Research has found an association between childhood maltreatment and later pathological narcissism, with the relationship being stronger for vulnerable narcissism than grandiose narcissism. The effects, however, were relatively small, which is important because it tells us that childhood adversity is one possible influence, not a simple cause (Gao et al., 2024).
Many people experience difficult childhoods and do not develop narcissistic patterns. Understanding where a parent’s behaviour may have come from can create empathy, but empathy does not require minimizing the impact of the relationship.
You can understand your parent’s pain and still take your own pain seriously.
For many adult children, healing means slowly learning that another person’s disappointment is not an emergency, that saying no does not make them cruel, and that having needs does not make them selfish. It may also mean learning that they no longer have to work quite so hard to earn belonging.
Books I Use as Resources with Clients
These are some of the books I often recommend or draw from when working with clients who are exploring narcissistic parents or family-of-origin patterns:
Adult Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers — Stephanie M. Kriesberg, PsyD
It’s Not You — Ramani Durvasula, PhD
Disarming the Narcissist — Wendy T. Behary, LCSW
The Gaslighting & Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Workbook — Andrei Nedelcu
Read the Rest of the Narcissism Series
If this article resonated with you, you may also find the other parts of the series helpful:
Part 1: The Different Faces of Narcissism: Why It Can Be So Hard to See
Part 3: When Your Child Shows Narcissistic Traits: What Parents Need to Know
Part 4: When Narcissism Runs in the Family: How Patterns Get Passed Down
Part 5: “I Think I Have Narcissistic Traits”: What Happens When You Recognize Yourself
Part 6: Breaking the Cycle: You Can Love Your Family Without Repeating Their Patterns
Want help making sense of what you grew up with?
If you are beginning to recognize childhood patterns that are still affecting your relationships, boundaries, or ability to trust yourself, counselling can help you understand where they came from and what you want to do differently now.
References
Gao, S., Yu, D., Assink, M., Chan, K. L., Zhang, L., & Meng, X. (2024). The association between child maltreatment and pathological narcissism: A three-level meta-analytic review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(1), 275–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380221147559
Mohay, J., Cheng, K., de la Piedad Garcia, X., & Willis, M. L. (2025). The relationship between attachment styles and narcissism: A systematic and meta-analytic review. Personality and Individual Differences, 244, 113255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2025.113255
Orovou, E., Jotautis, V., Vousoura, E., Koutelekos, I., Rigas, N., & Sarantaki, A. (2025). Impact of parental narcissistic personality disorder on parent-child relationship quality and child well-being: A systematic review. Cureus, 17(12), e100229.
