Growing Up With Narcissistic Parents

Did you grow up in a childhood where you spent the majority of your time taking care of your caregiver’s needs?

Instead of your parents meeting your needs, you found yourself sacrificing your needs to care for your parents.

When parents are self-involved, more focused on their own wants and desires, the child is left neglected, ignored, or even abused. This type of parenting is known as narcissistic parenting.

The Child’s Adaptation

A child who lives in a home with narcissistic parents quickly learns to adapt:

• Meeting the parent’s needs becomes a way to prevent further neglect, criticism, or abuse.
• Children learn that their needs are not allowed because they compete with the parent’s self-centred priorities.
• Approval and self-worth are gained only by taking care of the parent.

In severe cases, the child may even be put in a position to parent their own parents.

Examples of Parentification

• Parents who confide in their child about adult emotional problems.
• Parents who threaten suicide or self-harm and look to their child to “rescue” them.

In these situations, the child’s self-worth becomes tied to saving the parent or meeting their emotional needs.

This phenomenon is called parentification—where the child is programmed to be the caretaker.

The Adult Caretaker

Children raised in these environments often grow into adults who:

• Enter helping professions (nurses, counsellors, social workers, caregivers).
• Only feel worthy when they are meeting the needs of others.
• Continue the same pattern in friendships, partnerships, and parenting—meeting others’ needs at the cost of their own.

This is the setup for:

• Codependency
• Burnout
• Chronic illness

Recovery From Parentification

Recovery begins with awareness and reflection. Ask yourself:

• Are my relationships reciprocal?
• Whose needs am I meeting at the cost of myself?
• In my work, do I allow for downtime?
• Do I meet my own needs for rest, food, and exercise?
• Do I even know what my needs are?

Taking inventory of your relationships, journaling, and reflecting can help break the cycle. Healing means reclaiming the right to have your own needs met.

Resources for Healing from Narcissistic Parenting and Parentification

• Books
  • Forward, S. (1989). Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life. New York: Bantam.
  • Miller, A. (1997). The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. New York: Basic Books.
  • Gibson, L. C. (2015). Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.
  • Bradshaw, J. (1992). Healing the Shame That Binds You. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications.
• Therapeutic Approaches
  • EMDR Therapy – Effective for healing childhood trauma and reclaiming self-worth.
  • Internal Family Systems (IFS) – Helps identify and heal “parts” of self that carry parentified roles.
  • Attachment-Based Therapy – Supports building secure relationships in adulthood.
• Organizations and Online Resources
  • Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families (ACA) – 12-step support groups for survivors of family dysfunction.
  • National Association for Children of Addiction (NACoA) – Resources for those impacted by parentification and neglect.
  • Psychology Today Therapist Directory – To find trauma-informed therapists near you.

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