Out and Back

As I wind down my discussion of NPD, I wanted to share a few final thoughts….

First off, I have found that part of the recovery process for anyone who has experienced this (and it is a process) necessitates shifting your focus away from all the things the narcissistic parent did to traumatize/damage you and instead focusing on understanding how you were affected by their behavior and growing from that. It sure doesn’t do me a lick of good to carry around a bunch of old resentments or re-hash all the crazy stunts my father has pulled over the years. Rather, what has helped me the most is the work I have done to a) strengthen myself, b) understand my weaknesses, and c) move toward greater self-acceptance while at the same time concentrating on self-improvement and growth.

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Yesterday, I devoted many words to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD. My dad, although never formally diagnosed, shows enough of the symptoms that I think it’s safe to say he’s got it and has had it for most of his adult life. I wrote a lot yesterday about what it was like to grow up with a parent who had NPD, and based on my own experience as well as my research into the subject, there’s no question in my mind that the damage can be pervasive. I found a quote from a psychologist (Alan Rappoport, from an article published in 2005) that I thought sums all of that up really well:

These traits will lead overly narcissistic parents to be very intrusive in some ways, and entirely neglectful in others. The children are punished if they do not respond adequately to the parents’ needs. This punishment may take a variety of forms, including physical abuse, angry outbursts, blame, attempts to instill guilt, emotional neglect, and criticism. Whatever form it takes, the purpose of the punishment is to enforce compliance with the parents’ narcissistic needs.

Rappoport really hits the nail on the head when he says that narcissistic parents can “be very intrusive in some ways and entirely neglectful in others.” From my own experience, even now that I’m an adult, my father sticks his nose into areas of my life that I would rather he stay out of, and the areas of my life that I might actually enjoy sharing with him, he takes no interest in. For a long time, this bothered me (and the inappropriate questions and general snoopiness do still annoy me to an extent) but the first rule of surviving a narcissistic parent is to let go of any hope that the parent will change, to stop wishing for revenge (karmic or not), and to begin to accept the idea that while you cannot change or control your parent, you can control two very important factors:

1. How often you are exposed to your narcissistic parent.
2. How you react to your parent’s inappropriate and/or abusive behavior.

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