Healing After a Narcissistic Parent

Today we’re going to look at the question of how do we heal from a relationship with a parent who is a narcissist. What’s involved? What do we need to do, and how does it actually come about?

Now, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of it. How do we break free from a relationship with a parent who is a narcissist?

I’m going to be talking from clinical experience, but mostly I’m going to be talking from my own personal experience of dealing with my father, who was a definite chronic malignant narcissist. The process of extricating myself from that relationship was painful, complicated, and layered. And I want to say upfront, this isn’t a neat three-point plan. It doesn’t work like that. Relationships with parents are complicated even in the best of situations, let alone when you’re dealing with someone narcissistic.

So I’m going to take you through what I had to see, what I had to understand, and what the process actually involved.

A window into narcissistic entitlement

I could spend ten hours telling you stories about my dad. Anyone who’s had a narcissistic parent will know what I mean. But let me share one anecdote that shows the level of entitlement, grandiosity, and manipulation that comes with this.

When I was about fifteen or sixteen, my parents separated and my dad left for another woman. The day he left, he went to a hotel and basically told this woman, “I’ve left my wife and you need to be with me now. Tonight.”

This woman had five daughters, aged roughly between four and fourteen. She left them that night and never returned.

My dad expected that of her, because in his mind anyone can have kids, but not anyone can be with him. And not only did he get her to abandon those children, he then moved north to the Sunshine Coast, and eventually moved overseas, partly to get away from them. And he felt entitled to do that. He didn’t care. His needs were more important than those children’s needs.

That gives you a window into narcissistic entitlement. The expectations placed on others are enormous, while the responsibility taken by the narcissist is minimal.

My dad was manipulative, grandiose, entitled, and selfish. But he also had this skill of making you feel like when you did him a favour, somehow he was doing something for you.

The hunger for love and the trap of approval

As a child, he was generally disinterested in me. Not interested in my personality, not interested in who I was. But like most children, I still wanted the affection and care of my father. I wanted that love. And it just wasn’t there.

Then when I got into my twenties, I realised something. The way to get his approval, the little pat on the head, the sense of being a “good boy,” was to make him money. To work for him. To give him time. To stroke his ego. To tell him how great he was.

And I did that for years.

But if you’ve dealt with a narcissist, you’ll know this feeling: no matter what you give, it’s never enough. It’s like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. You might get a tiny compliment, then it’s immediately followed by “you can do better,” or “let’s see if you can keep that up,” or something that takes it away again.

So you live in this exhausting loop. I’ll give you a little love, and then I’ll remove it. And the child part of you keeps trying harder.

This is what makes narcissistic parents so complicated. The groundwork for the manipulation was laid in childhood. It gets buried in a pre-conscious place in the nervous system that says:

To be loved, I must please this person.To have value, I must meet their needs.My worth depends on them.And if I don’t comply, I’m selfish, uncaring, and I’ll be punished or abandoned.

And there’s often that threat behind it: “You don’t exist to me.”

That was the dynamic I had with my dad. My life revolved around pleasing him. And over time, without even realising it consciously, I shaped my life around that.

If you have a narcissistic parent, you’ll understand this. It might not look obvious to other people, but internally your life becomes organised around them. You’re responsible for their emotions, but they’re not responsible for yours. It’s reverse parenting. And the sense of ownership is strong. It can feel like your life isn’t yours. It belongs to them.

Step one: seeing it

One of the first, and most painful, steps is realising the parent is a narcissist. Often there’s denial, because the truth hurts. Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee it.

I do think narcissism sometimes gets overused as a label. Everyone’s ex becomes a narcissist. But also, there are a lot of narcissists out there. Parents, partners, siblings, bosses. And for a child, it’s incredibly painful to face the truth that the love you’ve been chasing might never come. That they may not be able to love you the way you need. That they don’t really love you so much as use you.

I remember reading a book about narcissism and having this moment of “Oh my god.” The criteria for malignant narcissism was basically a checklist of my dad’s personality. Once I had a framework, his behaviour made sense. It stopped being random. It became a playbook. When he says this, he means that. When he does this, I respond like that. It gave me language.

And that was the first major step.

Step two: reclaiming ownership of your life

The next step for me was asking: if I’m not responsible for how he feels, if my life belongs to me, what would I do?

A turning point came when my dad was having a double bypass surgery. I was in my early thirties. And I found myself thinking, if he died, would I keep living like this?

And my answer was no.

So what am I doing? I’m literally waiting for my dad to die so I can feel like my life is mine.

That was an epiphany. It jolted something awake in me. I couldn’t keep shaping everything around him, cutting myself off from my own power and agency. I had to reclaim: what does my life feel like when he isn’t the centre of it?

Step three: preparing for the backlash

Then comes the part people underestimate. When you start taking ownership of your life, when you start making decisions that are in your best interest instead of theirs, you will often meet an onslaught of manipulation and emotional blackmail.

This is where you need to be resourced.

I was lucky. I had a partner at the time. I had friends who supported me. Because when I began stepping back from a relationship where I’d been giving and giving and giving, and I started saying no, and I set boundaries, I was met with all sorts of reactions. How could I. How dare I. What kind of person am I. It was intense.

And in those moments you have to hold onto what you know. You have to trust the logic. You have to trust your reality. You have to keep reminding yourself: I’m entitled to my life. I’m entitled to do what’s in my best interest. I’m in my thirties. I’m not a child.

But you can’t do that easily if you’re isolated, because the old programming is deep. Unless you have support, you’ll default back to the pattern. That’s what the narcissistic system relies on.

So the process often includes:

Getting out of denial.Reclaiming ownership and agency.Becoming resourced enough to withstand manipulation.

The grief and the rebuilding

In my case, I was almost “lucky” in a strange way. Once my dad realised he wasn’t going to get anything more from me financially, he cut me off. I was dead to him. And painful as that was, it was also a gift. It created space.

Five years later, he died. I didn’t speak to him for those five years. In that time, the guilt gradually softened. At first I felt like a terrible son. I had to keep holding onto the reality that I wasn’t doing something wrong by choosing my own life.

Then came resentment. Anger. Grief. A whole grieving process. But that space allowed me to reconstitute myself. To rebuild a sense of who I was without him as the central point of my identity.

That’s what narcissistic parents do. They make you feel you owe them. They make you feel your value is in how you please them. And often it’s not conscious. You don’t wake up and think, “I’m organising my whole life around this parent.” It’s more subtle than that. It’s like your mind gets arranged around them, but you tell yourself it’s something else.

There is another side of this

Healing from a narcissistic parent is complicated. It’s layered. But it is possible.

If what I’m saying resonates, I want to encourage you to keep going. There really is another side to this, a place where you feel less dominated, less manipulated, less manoeuvred. You are entitled to be happy independent of their happiness.

That matters. You need to know that.

If you’ve got insights from your own experience, feel free to share them in the comments. And if you’d like support with this process, I’d love to help.

Info about my 30min FREE Consultation

This free consultation is a relaxed, no-pressure conversation where we can slow things down and see what’s really going on for you. It gives you a chance to share what has brought you here, ask questions about how I work, and get a sense of whether this support feels right for you. My aim is to offer some early clarity, steadiness, and a sense of direction, without any obligation to continue. It’s simply a starting point to help you decide your next step with more confidence.

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