Life is not easy, and what makes it even harder is being raised by a narcissistic parent. While it is difficult when you are growing up with a narcissistic parent, it’s just as difficult after you’ve moved forward and grown past childhood and into adulthood.
You see, narcissistic parents tend to shape how we interact with the world into adulthood. Of course, many of the things we do as children of narcissists aren’t even likely something that you are linking to your childhood. You or others may believe that you are just quirky or weird when in reality, your behaviors are rooted in a much different place than you realize. With that said, here are 8 things people don’t realize you are doing because you grew up with narcissistic parents.
1. You say I’m sorry a lot.
When you grow up with a narcissistic parent, you become accustomed to being belittled and being made to feel like everything you do is wrong. As a result of this, it’s very likely that your knee-jerk reaction to anything you perceive as being your fault is to say ‘I’m sorry even if you did nothing wrong,
2. You tend to second-guess yourself.
Narcissistic parents will be highly critical of their children. Pretty much everything you do is looked at under a microscope. Unfortunately, this can make it difficult to trust yourself and make decisions even more difficult.
3. You are a people-pleaser.
Growing up with a narcissistic parent can make you feel like you are living your life under constant scrutiny. You will always be walking on eggshells, which can make you hyperfocus on trying to make others happy. In turn, you will likely be a people pleaser.
4. You tend to self-deprecate.
When you grow up with a narcissistic parent, you get talked down to a lot. The thing is, our inner voice is determined a lot by how our parents talk to us. Due to this, a lot of children of narcissistic parents tend to self-deprecate.
5. You hate conflict.
Narcissists are chaotic individuals, so most of them have children who grow up in the midst of constant chaos. This can result in a major avoidance of that type of drama, so children of narcissistic parents tend to fear chaos and conflict.
6. You have trust issues.
We learn to develop trust in others from our parents. When our parents aren’t trustworthy, this can make us hesitant to trust anyone,
7. You have low self-esteem.
We learn to value ourselves from our parents, and how they value us. If our parents neglect us and make us feel like less than others, we tend to internalize this, and this can result in low self-esteem.
8. You tend to bottle your emotions.
Children of narcissistic parents often have emotional regulation issues. Many children of narcissistic parents may even seem somewhat emotionally unstable, holding in certain emotions and letting others out without much warning.