Having family problems? How can you tell if you have narcissistic parents?
A word which is getting more use these days, if you are considering whether or not one of your parents has some of the typical narcissistic traits, then you’ve come to the right place.
If you are experiencing a lot o family issues, if fights between one of your family members are a recurrent thing, and has been like this over the years, then there is a chance.
Maybe you have been having some problems with your parents that have made you realize that something is not right and make you suspect they are narcissistic.
I will present you steps for you to figure out by yourself if something is really not right or if it is just something that happens normally when there is stress and some life issues.
Introspect first – then make conclusions
Instead of looking at a “narcissistic parents traits list”, I believe you need to first really check if there is indeed something wrong or not in your family and for how long it has been like that. As we can mislead ourselves into automatically assuming things when we read a list and many of the items of the list are true, but there is no context to back it up.
So first, I will help you to get a picture of your own life, before you jump into conclusions. Also, because, after reading and doing the steps below, you can realise for yourself if things are really not ok in your family. I consider it to be of extreme importance to look at your own life and introspect before you jump into conclusions based on some traits on a list that you read real quick. This is your life, it’s important to take the time.
In the next paragraphs I present to you the steps that will make you be sure if something is really wrong or not, before you then can go on to check the traits and behaviours of narcissistic parents, or narcissistic mother or father.
In the end of the post I give the link to the post to identify the traits of narcissistic parents.
“Diagnosing” your Possible Narcissistic Parents
Do you have constant issues, problems, arguments in your family? How long has it been like that, can you tell? Has it been like that your whole life? Or has it only happened lately, after the pandemic lockdowns? Has it been sporadic or a recurrent thing over years and years?
The idea here is to understand if your problems in the family have been always happening and you just didn’t realize they did, right up until something hit you and you got that “a-ha” moment. Or, if these family issues have only been happening more frequently now, but they did not happen before or weren’t always like this – as in this case, it might not be the case of this being a sign of your parents being narcissistic.
Try to identify for yourself if these family problems that are going on with your parents are indeed a recurring thing for a long time (and you just happened to get a feeling/instinct that maybe this has always been bad, you just didn’t realize it before. Or you just grew up, and now you see things more clearly) or it is just something sporadic, negative behavior that every family has to face once in a while, due to issues that happen in life, like stress, depression, global unstable situation, divorce, monetary issues, etc.
In the next steps, FOCUS on figuring out if:
- This is just happening now, or once in a while, but generally doesn’t happen.
Or
- Problems have always been happening, you just didn’t realize them before, or you don’t give much attention to it. But issues happen constantly, you just don’t consider them as “issues”, and consider them “normal”.
1st step – Search your mind, introspect
Introspect and go to your past. Take your moment to remember. Don’t just read the post. Try to remember.
Remember your life when you were a kid. Look at your family. Go back a few years and try to remember what your normal family setting was. How were your days spent? What were you doing after school? At what time did you have dinner with your family? Where were your parents after you came home after school, and did they trouble you somehow or you were quite free to be with yourself?
Did your parents constantly work, or were they always at home? Who did your meals, and who washed the dishes? Did your parents/your mother/your father pressure you somehow? Who went to the supermarket? Remember what you did when you were in 5th, 6th, 7th grades.
Did you have any traumatic experiences when you were a kid? How did they handle that with you?
Try to distance yourself from your feelings, and just analyse your memories.
How did your back then friends react to your parents? Did they have a positive reaction towards them or a weird one? When did you have your first boyfriend or girlfriend? And how did your parents react to that. Did they forbid you of things, or it was just like with all the other kids? Did you feel the need to hide your personal feelings, boyfriends, or deep issues that concerned you because of fear of their disapproval or inability to just talk over those subjects?
When you went to the doctor, when you had friends over, when you went on social places with any of your parents, were there any red flags, comments from other people? Any eyebrow lifting? Any kind of behaviour that would make these people upset in some way towards your parent’s behaviour?
How did you deal with important life situations when you got more mature, at 16, 17, 18? Who decided on your things? Were your decisions really based on your needs and wants, or you first always had to check with your parent/s to get the approval and then it so happened that you actually changed your mind and ended up accepting what they said?
Did you somehow have your own plans and they managed to change them, without you at the time realizing it happened? Do you regret not doing something because of them?
Who decided on your profession/college/future? Who decided your religion? Did you have freedom to be yourself? Did they break your privacy, not letting you have your own space and time for your things at home? Did you feel pressured and criticized at home? Could you bring your boyfriend/girlfriend to your house? How did they respond to your first romantic relationships?
Purpose of these questions
With these questions, the main point is for you to try to remember as much as possible from your daily life back in school, when you were a kid and in your teenage years, when you were completely dependent on your parents. As you try to remember your day to day past, it will be easier to have a perception of what happened before.
Remembering what happened in your past is the key to understanding yourself now, wherever you are. As we are deeply influenced by what happens in our early stages of life. That is why this is a good exercise to figure out if indeed your parents, mother or father, might be narcissistic parents or not. And if you just didn’t see it back then.
As that is normal, because when we are little we aren’t yet fully developed mentally, even in our teenage years. That is why our perceptions of reality are still not as mature to understand behaviours that have been around us for all our lives (if they did), as then it becomes a “normal” thing. And only other people outside your family can tell if something is not quite ok.
2nd step – Get real, find objects from your past
Find your old objects of the time. If you can go into your old attic and find your diary, or find your birthday presents from your friends, or postcards, or printed photos. Anything physical, or virtual, that is from that time. If you can’t get these things, go back to your old messages with your family, with your old friends. Search for your old Facebook comments and posts.
The point with this 2nd step is to find tangible and real things that can give you a better reminder of what your life was like back then, as our minds can play tricks on us, and we don’t always remember things the way they actually were. And in the case of having narcissistic parents, narcissistic mother or father, it might be that you came to believe things that weren’t really true.
With this second step, you can get to look at the things you had from that time and check if something was indeed not right.
3rd step – Get another person’s perspective
I always see articles on these topics that tell their readers to get psychological help and to take their parents with them. But most cases, that is not really possible. So, I present other alternatives for you to understand if something is wrong or not, by yourself first. And then you can figure out if you can take them to a professional or not.
The thing here is that you are trying to figure out if your feelings are true or not, and so, getting another person’s opinion will be much easier than going automatically to the doctor to do so, as your parents probably won’t be easy to convince to go there.
The idea behind this 3rd step is to get that reality check with the help of someone else outside your family, as these other people will see how your parents behave and talk. And if they are indeed narcissistic parents, narcissistic mother or narcissistic father, others will sense that in some way.
So here are practical and real examples to get another person to help you see reality.
Option 1 – Take them to Talk with Strangers for a Bit
Take your parents, mother or father, somewhere where there is another person that will be talking to you both for a set period. Preferably, a stranger, because they won’t be used to your mother or father.
Maybe take them with you to any appointment you have with your doctor. For instance, a gynaecologist or dermatologist check-up, or just for something else where there will be talking involved with a stranger. And see how these people react to your parents, what they say and how they say things. And analyse if they would be acting the same way if only you were there.
Also, try to remember how other people reacted to them in the past. If you went to doctor’s appointments together in the past, how did the doctor react to your mother or father? And now, when you go to the doctor, how do they react to you when you go alone? Do you see a pattern of behaviour when you are around them with others? Maybe other people get upset somehow. Check for any type of signal.
Option 2 – Get your close people (friend, loved one) spend many hours with your family
Find someone outside your family to enter your family setting. Get your boyfriend or girlfriend to go on a trip, on a weekend dinner or lunch at your house. Invite your friends or just one friend to your house to spend the night.
The idea is to have someone else to enter your family setting and for them to be there with you, for the maximum time possible, the more hours together the better.
(but try to do it several times, as only one time and only one opinion is generally not enough to derive conclusions)
The reason for this, is because generally, as I said earlier, if one of the parents is a narcissistic parent, narcissistic mother or narcissistic father, you are already used to their behavior, so you consider it normal. However, other people won’t be considering it normal. They will immediately sense if something is off or not quite right. Someone from the exterior will be the key to help you really understand if something is wrong.
And the reason to have your friends spend a few hours with your family, is for your mother or father to be more comfortable around your friends, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend. If it will only be a dinner lasting 1 hour, it will be so fast that they won’t be able to get comfortable enough and get into the mundane issues of life. And the conversation will only be surfacing the formal and nice topics. The idea here is to create an easy-going feeling around.
To help enable that feeling of comfort around the socialization, go all together wash the dishes. Go help with the table setting, or go for a small walk around somewhere, maybe take the trash. Go to the supermarket together to buy stuff for the dinner. Basically, go do things that are outside of the formalities of conversations. Mundane things that will make your parent open up and be their real selves.
The best option to have the best results will always be a night out, camping, a trip somewhere. Basically, a full day and night where your friends have maximum contact in everyday aspects of life, and where there won’t be any formalities in the socializing. Because it will be hard for your parents to keep their formal posture when having to make quick decisions, solving where to go, and just being in action as they normally are when doing everyday things.
Option 3 – Let your Friend, Loved one spend Days, Weeks, Months with your Family
If you are in a serious relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend, try to make them stay at your house for a couple of days. Or weeks. Or months. Try to make your close people to be there with you in your everyday life with your parent/s. Because this way, you will really get the right answers to your questions. Your loved one won’t put up with your parents’ attitude if they are indeed narcissistic parents, either narcissistic mother or narcissistic father, and so, there will be an immediate clash and realization of it all. It will be very clear.
And those will be the real ways your friends or loved one will figure out if something is wrong or not. You don’t need to tell them to analyse your parent’s behaviour. Just let them be there with you. After those hours spent together, they will just probably tell you themselves if something is wrong. And you will see their reactions to your parents.
However, if after those hours you didn’t get any feedback from them, just ask them yourself. Ask if they thought something was off, if one of your parents upset them in any way. Find the right words for your friend/s to tell you their real thoughts, without them feeling sorry for saying it. Let them know that you want them to be honest, if they are not too comfortable to share their true opinions.
Results after testing
After you do these things, you most certainly will see if in fact your mind has been tricked to think things were normal.
After you go through this process and you confirm that indeed something is up – that you have always been facing problems in your family; your parent/s has a weird behaviour; people seem to react to them in negative ways; they appear to always create problems and arguments and there is always drama. If that is true, then take a look at this post where you can figure out exactly the traits that a narcissistic parent, narcissistic mother or narcissistic father, has and learn to identify them as soon as they start using their old techniques.
Because once you get to see reality through the right glasses, after you read these traits and techniques that they use, you will become more and more immune as time goes from their attempts to control you.
It will be a process, and although it can be hard to acknowledge that your parent/s is not really well, it is still important to see reality for what it is and understand how your life has been influenced by their behaviour. As you have been raised by them, they influenced you and your life decisions.
After this introspection, if your suspicions are correct, then you will absolutely feel like a new-born person. A liberation feeling will consume you. You will be feeling like that will be the time to change your life. Look closely at your findings and embrace yourself, your decisions and your needs before they embrace them.
Leave your comments below of how your journey has been so far and let me know how it went with the steps above.
Wish you all the best! Stay healthy and curious!
Cheers!
