Number 5: Conditional love.
If you were raised by a narcissist, you’ve likely had the feeling that the relationship between you and your parent was transactional; meaning that the love which must be unconditional in any family was non-existent. Instead, the love they gave you was dependent on whether you fulfilled certain criteria they had set up. If the child manages to succeed, as in, make their parents feel special, important, or good about themselves, then the child will get all the love in the world, for a time.
But as soon as that feeling of being special or important decreases, that love will decrease with it. You’d think that in a reverse situation, the child must do something wrong to get the reverse of love from their parents, but that is not necessarily the case. If they are feeling bad, for whatever reason, that love can disappear instantly.
Narcissists worship only one god, themselves. And if that god is not worshiped by others as well, it could get bad very quickly. We’ll touch on that in the next segment, but before that, we have to point out one more thing. To a narcissist, everything is about themselves. In the blink of an eye, even the thing that is supposed to be about you, like a birthday, for example, might turn into their glory hour. “Because narcissists operate in an ‘all about me’ fashion, the world revolves around them, their needs and desires. They continue to be selfish and expect others, including their children, to cater to them.
So, when their child does well, they take credit and brag about the child, and when the child struggles, they blame the child or others for it. They are controlling and they readily induce guilt in their children. They tend not to offer much by way of emotional support and validation, and the child quickly learns that the parent’s goals are important whereas their own goals are not.
This is frequently because the parent is living their own lives through the child and the child’s accomplishments.” states Dr. Amy Brunell, Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University. They took credit for everything good that you did and blamed everything bad on you. They often manufactured a conflict to draw attention to themselves and you were used as a tool during it. And they tried to compete with you and “one-up” your every achievement. If any of that sounds familiar to you, welcome to the narcissistic parents’ club.
You may also want to read this:
What Makes Narcissists Crazy Thinking about?
10 Ways To Identify A Narcissist
How to Make Narcissists Regret Losing You?
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