Sometimes we read a quote and feel bewildered by how profoundly someone captured what we have gone through.
Sigmund Freud once said: “The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied”.
We might think toxic parenting could only affect our conscious state, but the hidden damage narcissistic parents do to the unconscious is beyond our present life.
Here, in this article, we bring some of the most relatable narcissistic parents’ quotes to your attention. You will definitely find them helpful but uncovering the hidden damage behind is more of a catch.
- Narcissistic Parents
- Toxic Parenting: Emotional Damage & Psychological Damage
- 15 Narcissistic Parent Quotes Revealing Hidden Damage
- Healing Takeaways
Narcissistic Parents
In psychology, parenting plays the most crucial role in shaping a child’s life. From parenting figures to parenting styles, the child adapts every single behavior from the parents. Narcissistic parents are chauvinistic individuals with a highly self-absorbed personality. Narcissistic parents tend to project self-entitlement as extroverts and vulnerability as introverts.
In most cases, narcissistic parents imply a disorganized attachment style. The unavailability of emotional feedback makes the child struggle with a push-and-pull relationship with the parents. Oftentimes narcissistic parents show excessive care and availability to love-bomb the child. It depends on what tactics narcissistic parents use to cause hidden damage.
Toxic Parenting: Emotional Damage & Psychological Damage
A child’s naive mind tends to create memories that last for a lifetime. Early life interaction with a narcissistic parent and their disoriented behaviors impacts how the child reacts to the world. Narcissistic parents cause significant emotional and psychological damage to their children.
Emotional Damage
Researchers state that children of narcissistic parents face abandonment issues as adults. This happens because the narcissistic parenting style withholds emotional support from the child. Being too obsessed with themselves, their child often suffers from emotional and physical abandonment. [1]
Psychological Damage
Research work on narcissistic parents reveals that gaslighting and manipulation done by narcissistic parents lead the adult to dysfunctional intimacy in relationships. Moreover, the overall personality of the child is distorted by the mental load narcissistic parents give them from an early age. [2]
To learn more about this let’s dig deeper into the insights of narcissistic parents’ quotes.
15 Narcissistic Parent Quotes Revealing Hidden Damage
Narcissistic parents would not bat an eye at the hidden damage they’ve been doing since you were a child. Hence, it is crucial to identify the significant hidden damage they’ve done before you move to healing.
1. “The negative effects of your self-absorbed parent may lead you to perceive yourself as inadequate, inferior, ineffective, and a whole host of other self-defeating thoughts and attitudes.” ~ Nina W. Brown
Narcissistic parents may have a brilliant child but still induce self-defeating thoughts and behaviors in the child, so that he may never feel confident. They often shame their child by comparing them to other children which pushes the child deep into inferior insecurities. As an adult, you might think that never being enough for your partner and family is the aftermath of hidden damage.
2. “Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel.” ~ Dr. Susan Forward
Dr. Susan Forward, writes this eye-opening quote about the deteriorating damage narcissistic parents do to the love life of their child. Narcissistic Parents are conditional with expressing their love and attention, they will praise you for personal gains and insult to manipulate guilt. The victims of narcissistic parenting often struggle with finding balance in their love life.
3. “Dysfunctional parents do not apologize. It is one feature that the children of narcissists would instantly agree on. They will lie and justify themselves, but never accept that they did anything wrong.” ~ Diana Macey
The children of narcissistic parents do not always become victims but sometimes they adapt narcissistic personalities later in life. Diana Macey highlights how toxic parents’ lack of confrontation is mirrored by children of narcissistic parents, they use the same entitled attitude with everyone like their parents do.
4. “The hateful and stinging words of a narcissistic parent can linger in the mind of an adult child long after the adult has left home.” ~ Shannon Thomas
Trauma resides in your unconscious while childhood trauma lingers on for life. This quote on narcissistic parents by Shannon Thomas sheds light on how the demeaning and belittling remarks by parents impact the self-image of children. They don’t just feel inferior as a child but also as an adult, those hateful words jeopardize their overall personality.
5. “Narcissist parents do not know their children; they aren’t interested in what they have to say unless it affects them.” ~ Tina Fuller
There’s no concept of individuality or independence in the rule book of narcissistic parents. They think of their child as a clone of their personality rather than an individual with their own needs or wishes. Narcissistic parents are self-absorbed to the extent that they spin the interests of the child to their own demands.
6. “When you grieve toxic, abusive parents, you don’t just grieve the abuse, you grieve everything you didn’t have.” ~ Lily Hope Lucario
Dealing with narcissistic partners is an emotional and mental rollercoaster. The victims suffer so much that their childhood memories are merely based on grievances. Every time they see parents behaving positively with their kids, the child realizes why it is different with their parents. The negative memories a little mind could grasp do long-term damage.
7. “Somehow I believed it was my obligation to try to do the right thing by her because she had given birth to me.” ~ D.G. Kaye
Kaye’s quote on narcissistic parents hints towards an unseen mental load the child bears. Narcissistic parents make their child indebted to parenthood, this mentality is like a cage that puts the child through everything. They think it’s a shame to disobey their parents even if they’re wrong.
8. “The narcissist mother refuses to acknowledge her games if she is pouting, let her. If she is using guilt in an attempt to force you to do something, do not give in.” ~ Cynthia Bailey Rug
Living with narcissistic parents is about gaslighting oneself into the guilt-trips they will push you into. They play mind games by making you dependent on them financially and emotionally. Once you become prey to their control, narcissistic parents start the abuse.
9. “If you don’t do enough, you’re going to be ashamed. If you do too much, you’re going to feel guilty.” ~ Caroline Foster
Caroline Foster in her book ‘Narcissistic Mothers: How to Handle a Narcissistic Parent’, quotes that narcissistic parents create confusion and imbalance in your life. Narcissistic parents play with the sense of reward and punishment, where every act feels like an uncertain burden to the child.
10. “When I was with my mother, I sometimes thought of myself as a trophy. Something to be flaunted before friends. When out of public view, I sat on the shelf ignored and forgotten.” ~ Joan Frances
Joan Frances sheds light on a deeply traumatic feeling that is being ignored. Narcissistic parents only hold the child dear if they come with desirable qualities, otherwise, they would neglect the child. As a result of this, the child learns that my self-worth is associated only with achievements.
11. “A narcissistic parent is easily frustrated by a healthy, independent child whom they can’t control through parental emotional manipulation.” ~ Shannon Thomas
Envying and controlling are the top favorite tactics of narcissistic parents. Narcissists lack empathy and they are highly envious people, as narcissistic parents they even compete with their own children. The child is only dear to them when they’re easy to manipulate.
12. “By undermining you they make sure that if you complain about the narcissistic parent nobody will believe you, because they already have a certain negative image of you. Again, this abusive behaviour is just how narcissists live day to day. The plotting and manipulation are necessary to twist others around their false image.” ~ Diana Macey
Narcissistic parents love to malign their child’s image by conspiring the facts. They will tell other people about how they’re bearing this child which no other parent could do, how parenting is a tough job, how you’re a difficult child etc. This plotting causes further damage when you look for support but people are already siding with the narcissists.
13. “Most signs of emotional immaturity are beyond a person’s conscious control, and most emotionally immature parents have no awareness of how they’ve affected their children.” ~ Lindsay C. Gibson
The overt type of narcissistic parents are aware of the emotional toxicity they cause, while the covert narcissistic parents often project their innate insecurities onto the child. It’s their own traumatic childhood experience with a narcissist that prolongs as a vicious cycle for the next generations.
14. “They just have to make you feel bad about yourself because they have a wound within themselves. They have shame within themselves, and so to suppress that, they try to throw that shame on you.” ~ Caroline Foster
Projection and displacement of negative emotions are the two defense mechanisms that narcissistic parents use. They tend to project their inner hollowness on the children by constraining their potential. If they see you winning or performing well, narcissistic parents would intentionally create snags for you. Narcissistic parents may find healing for their wounds but the damage remains irreversible.
15. “Just because we have parents, it doesn’t mean we should have relationships with them. When we become adults, we get to choose who is a part of our lives and who is not.” ~ Caroline Foster
Facing narcissistic abuse is never a choice, but choosing to keep narcissists around is most definitely a choice. Children are incapable of breaking free from the narcissistic parents’ abuse. However, as self-aware adults, it is salient to protect your emotional and mental health from the toxicity of narcissism.
Healing Takeaways
Although you can’t travel back in time to fix your childhood yet healing is always an option. As an adult prioritize your sanity and mental peace by keeping a safe distance from your narcissistic parents. Avoid taking any kind of unnecessary favors. Keep working on yourself by processing and discarding the guilt induced by them. Lastly, set healthy boundaries, seek professional help, and keep yourself aware of narcissism and narcissistic parenting.
If you want to know more about Narcissism and Narcissists, then click here!
Zainab Jafferi is a mental health activist with a Master’s in Clinical Psychology. Being a laureate of Content Writing, she holds double Gold Medals for content writing and content creation, awarded by the University of Karachi for “Outstanding Performance in Co-Curricular Activities” in the years 2020 and 2021. She writes on mental health issues faced by our youth.
