When you are placed in the care of a narcissist, don’t expect there to be much of it.
In fact, the most puzzling aspect of being raised by a narcissist is that often they feed, clothe and nurture your image, but they refuse to offer any emotional love, care or support.
Love is hard to find within them as they prioritize both perfection and themselves over your emotional needs.
It’s no wonder a person grows into a life damaged, with little to no self-esteem.
I’ve got 13 ways how that happens, right here.
#1 Your fear everything
Where does this fear come from? Why do I have to be like this? Why can’t I just live the life I want for myself? Why is everything so scary?
These questions you may ask yourself are normal if you have been raised by a narcissist.
This is the person who on one hand refused you any freedom while simultaneously complaining that you never did anything with your life.
You wondered why they can’t just be happy, and let you know that you’re doing a great job.
You grow to fear because you’ve been taught to not trust yourself or your own desires.
You’ve been programmed to ignore your needs, fear making mistakes, or even fear the world.
What does that do for you in the long run? I think we can agree how damaging it is.
#2 Skewed view of love
When you were raised by a narcissist, you’re taught from a very young age that love is exactly what you see, hear and witness every day.
You think it’s normal to have to earn it, and that it is based on conditional circumstances.
You believe that love means you get to blow hot and cold with people, and push them away.
Or you learn that love means being obedient, and allowing the person you’re with to tell you that you’re not good enough day to day.
This skewed view of love is unlikely to set you up in a healthy relationship in the future, unless you really study narcissism and the dynamics and admit you weren’t raised in a house of love.
#3 Old habits die hard
For some people, picking up on narcissistic habits will be the one thing that carries forward into future generations.
The idea that their children have to be perfect because you had to be perfect. Does it seem fair? No, it doesn’t at all.
It’s hard to jump out of the hoops set up by somebody else for you, but by admitting you don’t need those hoops at all, you can raise your children completely differently, breaking that generational curse.
#4 Holding onto the past
It can be a challenge to let go of everything that happened to you as a child, especially if you were raised in an abusive household.
You may hold resentment or fear, or anxieties about what your life should look like now you’re an adult.
Holding onto the past won’t make your future any better, in fact, you will just hold yourself back from your full potential.
And I get it. You feel pain from everything. If you aren’t careful, the pain from the past will never be relieved from your own sense of self-worth. Trust me when I say that it can.
#5 Sleep issues
Let’s be honest, who’s sleeping well if they’re getting tangled up in the moods and manipulation of a narcissist?
Sleep is stolen from you as you spend most of your time on guard, and that fight-or-flight is so dysregulated that you just don’t know where the off switch is.
When the time comes for sleep, you’re lying awake with your heart pounding, wondering how you can possibly relax enough to drift off.
Over time, you guessed it, lack of sleep will almost certainly affect your mental and physical health.
#6 You don’t feel you deserve anything
Somebody has taught you this to be true, but it isn’t! You’ve always been deserving, but it’s covered by a veil of darkness the moment you meet the narcissist.
You’re taught that you don’t matter, and even your opinions get tossed in the trash.
So you don’t go for your dreams, you don’t set goals, you just let life pass you by and feel saddened that nothing is happening for you.
What a vicious, painful circle.
#7 You eat your feelings
For a lot of people, emotional eating is the only way they can feel better, even if it’s just temporary.
Certain foods – and let’s be honest, it isn’t bananas and walnuts – will enter your system to replace the happiness you’re not getting from the relationship.
Over time that affects your body, as well as your mind, reinforcing your low confidence and self-esteem.
Facing your feelings and tackling them will target the root of the problem, but it takes much effort and admittance to reach that point.
#8 You overthink everything
When you spend years not knowing if you’re right or wrong, in trouble or not, it’s easy to develop the habit of overthinking.
And who can blame you when you’ve spent all that time under the control of a narcissist?
Overthinking comes from fear of uncertainty and remembering past times you’ve – in the words of a narcissist – made a mistake.
You don’t want to screw up, so you’re left with nothing but your thoughts. And they grow and grow.
#9 You find it hard to make friends
You’ve been told that your old friends aren’t good enough for you. You’ve learned to cope alone.
You don’t see people as genuine any more. You worry that you’ll be used and dropped. You don’t know how to act around others.
It’s easy to see the difficulty in making friends, and that’s often the case when you’re raised by a narcissist.
#10 The cost of therapy
As much as you hate to admit it, you need to talk to a professional. BUt it costs, right?
Healing isn’t cheap when you have so much in your mind you need to organize and understand.
Spending that money could be money spent on a deposit, or a vacation, but you have prioritized your health over it all. So missed opportunities can come from investing in therapy instead of living life.
#11 You never see yourself properly
The way you should see yourself is with all your strengths exuding from you.
What brings you joy and happiness, what makes you feel energized? What are your personality characteristics that you love about yourself?
It’s hard to find any of that when you’ve been so emotionally suppressed growing up. You want to crave an identity but how can you without the tools?
#12 Wasted energy
Wasted energy trying to fix your family, bring them closer together, and offer some kind of love or attention to the person who was a narcissist.
You look back and wonder what it was all for. Nothing you did was good enough, and you could have spent all that time applying energy to your own needs, goals or desires.
But give yourself a break. You were young and you knew no different.
Now? Now is the time for you.
#13 Getting to know yourself may never happen – unless you work to heal
Healing is sold as fun and calming, but it can also be painful and messy. That’s the beauty of it, I think. You have to make a mess and acknowledge that mess before you start to tidy it up.
People avoid healing because they consider it to be like ‘opening a can of worms.’
I personally say those worms need freeing, so you can make space for light.
