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Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the last 3 years, you’ve probably heard the term “narcissist” thrown around on the internet. If you’ve really done a deep dive (or a bit of self-recovery) then you’ve probably even heard about the narcissistic family.

This is a particularly emotionally violent and abusive family system. Trapped in it for years, many victims have a hard time ever waking up to it or getting the help that they need.

Narcissistic families differ from any other form of toxic family. They have a lot of the same components, but the results are not the same. When you are raised in a narcissistic family, there are consequences that follow you for life. Defeating them requires hard choices and facing the reality and the costs.

What is narcissism, really?

To understand narcissistic family abuse, you must understand the narcissist. You have to *really* understand the narcissist. No, we’re not talking about the buzzword definition of this term, which has been bastardized by the internet. Narcissists are complex. They range across a scale from benign to malignant.

Not all narcissists are the same. Not all narcissists are even dangerous or abusive. Here, we focus on dangerous narcissists. The ones who weaponize their pain for the abuse or manipulation of others.

The self-aggrandizement the internet warns us of in narcissism means little unless it’s being used against others. That’s precisely what malignant and abusive narcissists do…especially the ones who choose to become parents.

When narcissists abuse, they do so in 3 steps. First, they form attachments through idealization. They mirror the best in their victims to lull them into a false sense of comfort. Then, they move on to the next phase — destruction. Tearing apart their victims’ self-confidence, they can more easily manipulate them.

Finally, the narcissist discards. Once the victim creates conflict or questions the narcissist, the narcissistic parent or caretaker destroys the other person. This is done to bring the person back in line. Or, if all else fails, it destroys their reputation and their ability to expose the narcissist.

What makes narcissistic families so different?

Narcissistic families are unlike any other form of toxic family out there. Marked by triangulation, toxic role-setting, and systematic destruction of family members — it’s a multilayered form of abuse that encompasses mental, emotional, and even physical and sexual abuse, manipulation, and coercion.

Layer cake of abuse

In the simple toxic family, there are generally one or two types of abuse that are aimed at members by emotionally immature parents or caretakers. It’s a common experience for many people. Raised by people who didn’t know how to emotionally regulate, they got hit and screamed at by people who didn’t realize what they were doing.

That’s not the reality of a narcissistic family, though. Things there are a lot more intense, a lot more complex…and a lot more intentional.

Narcissistic family abuse can embody several different types of abuse all at the same time. There’s hitting, there’s screaming. For the really unfortunate, there is also sexual abuse, financial abuse, and spiritual abuse too.

There is one overarching goal behind it all. Destroy, destroy, destroy.

Abusive narcissists weaponize their pain to destroy others. As parents, they desire (both subconsciously and consciously)to destroy the sense of self, purpose, confidence, and authenticity of their children and partners.

It’s done subtly, under the cover of darkness. In the public eye, the perfect family is always on stage. That’s what leads to enmeshment, pseudomutuality, and decades of gaslighting for survivors. It’s what leads them to question their own experiences for decades to come.

Impossible connections

Stable and loving connections between family members are impossible in a narcissistic family. It cannot exist without massive (and mutual) conscious work being done communally between family members. It’s a hard goal to achieve. Narcissistic parents like it this way. They desire to keep siblings, cousins, grandparents, and even other caretakers from getting in the way.

The primary way this goal is achieved is through triangulation. Narcissistic parents keep themselves at the center of power and attention by turning siblings and other family members against one another.

For example, this kind of parent may put themselves at the center of two of the siblings and talk poorly about the third to create a bullying environment that keeps the weakest (or scapegoat) sibling in check and in the position of the punching bag.

Last, the narcissistic family uses toxic role-playing to keep members under control and away from one another. This is where the casting of roles like the “golden child” and the “scapegoat” comes into play. When it comes to the other parent, you often find “enabler” as a fitting title.

Why? Why do narcissistic families rely on these roles to function? These roles automatically create resentment between family members, as well as conflict and distrust. That creates a tense environment that is easy for the narcissist to manipulate and control to their liking.

Lifelong consequences

All mental and emotional abuse comes at a cost, whether or not your family is narcissistic. It leaves us with toxic behaviors, fears, and insecurities that follow us from relationship to relationship, experience to experience. Worse, it can leave us with permanent brain damage, which affects our memory, cognitive functioning, and development.

The narcissistic family ensures members get their fair share of these horrors, but it ups the ante and takes things further.

Beyond the basic range of trauma and brain damage, narcissistic families can leave their children with permanent emotional damage. This spirals into conditions like C-PTSD, which affects the nervous system and requires lifelong management (without hope of a “cure”).

It gets worse. Those who survive and escape narcissistic families find themselves doing so with a distinct lack of healthy relationship skills. They can also have no sense of self and even chronic physical and mental illness.

There’s no escaping these consequences for those who deal with them. They are costs that survivors pay for the entirety of their lives. If they’re lucky, they’ll learn to control and engage it from a more positive perspective.

Total lack of support

Unfortunately, there is still much we don’t know about narcissistic families. There are still many out there who don’t know about them, either. How they work, or how they’re created. They exist within the fabric of society, so much of their worst behaviors are hidden behind the sheer veneer of tradition and “family values.”

The narcissistic family moves widely unseen through our society, and that leaves their survivors at a distinct disadvantage.

Because so many people are unable (or unwilling) to see the reality of this abusive family system, survivors spend most of their lives getting gaslit, ignored, and abandoned more than any other victims of abuse.

It’s sad, but the family system remains the one form of openly condoned and accepted abuse in the world. What does that mean? It means survivors grow up not being believed or validated, and they wander confused into the darkness wondering what will ever make the hurt go away.

Separated from society

The one guarantee that you get from a narcissistic family is “otherness”. Their abuse leaves you marked forever. Both subconsciously and consciously, we are set apart from others, and we feel alienated from everything that matters (including ourselves).

Years of mental and emotional abuse break the self-esteem of those who survive it. Divided from their sense of self, this person can believe that they are broken or unworthy of love. This reinforces an internal sense of “otherness” or that you are especially bad or undeserving.

There’s a social level to it, though. Society itself alienates survivors of narcissistic abuse, due in part to the complicated and turbulent family ties and the choices the survivors are forced to make.

People get spooked when you don’t behave the way they expect. They get spooked when your life looks dramatically (and perhaps morally) different from their own.

That’s very true for those who make the tough choice to cut ties with their family. When someone finds the strength to go through no contact with their family, alienation becomes even stronger. The person who cuts ties becomes an “other” because they don’t have a normal family.

It’s a lonely position to be in, but it doesn’t have to be forever. New communities and families can be built and connected with for a happy future.

Defeating our narcissistic families in ourselves.

This next part is for the survivors of narcissistic families, who are reading this in a state of despair. Don’t let the dark tidal wave overwhelm you. There is still hope and there is still the possibility of breaking the patterns and defeating your narcissistic family in yourself.

Defeating your narcissistic family asks a lot. Specifically, it will ask you to:

• Set iron-clad boundaries
• Learn to choose *you*
• Engage in emotional healing

Before you can get the safe space you need to heal, you’re going to have to learn to set boundaries with your narcissistic family. You need emotional distance to strengthen yourself and heal the emotional wounds.

Finding peace is going to mean learning how to choose *you* and that can’t happen if you’re still being pummeled into submission. Give yourself space so that you can start putting yourself first and recovering the broken inner child inside of you.

Let that be the starting point of your emotional healing. Don’t ignore the wounds. Allow yourself to heal and find safety and peace again. Grieve. Rage. Be angry. Be sad. Allow yourself to let go and rebuild however you mentally and emotionally need to.

***

The generations of narcissistic family abuse can end with us. It can end in this generation with the choices that we make for ourselves, our children, and the people we love most.

Yes, the narcissistic family is unlike any other toxic family. Yes, the damage they do can follow us for a lifetime. That doesn’t mean that improvement isn’t possible, and it certainly doesn’t mean we have to repeat the patterns of heartbreak and misdirected rage that were turned against us.

We always have the choice to change. We always have the choice to do something different, to do it better. And that starts with us, right here, and right now. What are you going to choose? More of the same? Or something better for yourself and your future? The moment to break the narcissistic family is now. Choose wisely.

Bajwa, Ruqia & Batool, Iram & Abid, Momina. (2016). Narcissistic Personality and Family Relationship among Adults: A Correlational Study. Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR). 2. 121-124.