Narcissistic Parenting: A Childhood Trauma Response

A child rejecting an affectionate bond with an emotionally available parent is tragic.

An alienating parent, pre-occupied with their own inadequacies, can lead to the formation of narcissistic personality traits seen in a child's formative years.

Below are detailed notes from a powerful lecture from Dr. Childress, licensed Clinical Paediatric Psychologist specialising in parent-child conflict, at Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

Underlying Personality Disorder

An attachment system drives the narcissists personality. Which then drives the family's dynamic. On the surface: what is going on is the inability of the family to transition from an intact family structure to a separated one.

Just because there's a divorce doesn't mean the family is disappearing. We're only transitioning from an intact family structure that's united by marriage, to a separated family structure now united by the child. The family is still there because this child serves a uniting function.

However, the narcissist is now adding conflict onto the child and targeted parent.

We would hope the parents reduce their conflict, so the child can serve the uniting function in a peaceful way. The problem that emerges is triangulation of the child by the narcissist.

Under conditions of unrelieved adversity and failure, narcissists exhibit paranoid disorders owing to their excessive use of fantasy.

Unwilling to accept sacred boundaries or accept viewpoints of loved ones or family members.

Narcissists typically isolate themselves geographically from any corrective effects of shared thinking. Fortifying their delusional beliefs. There are three sources of excessive anxiety triggered by the narcissistic parent.

Attachment Trauma

The first is the reactivation of attachment trauma.

The personality disorder activates inadequacy fears. The divorce triggers: "You are an inadequate wife, you're an inadequate person, and because of that you're being rejected".

Which triggers the second trauma.

Fear of Abandonment

The narcissistic parent misinterprets their excessive anxiety an actual threat posed by the other parent, who is the "perceived" triggering source of anxiety. The narcissist wants their child to reject the other parent.

"The child wants me. I'm the ideal all-wonderful parent, who will never be abandoned by the child."

This process induces the third trauma.

Parental Alienation

This is where the narcissist parent induces the child's rejection of the other parent. The narcissist uses the child in a role reversal relationship to regulate their own anxieties.

"It's not me that's inadequate, it's you! It's not me that's abandoned, it's you! I'm the wonderful parent who will never be abandoned."

The formation of these three narcissistic processes is the product of drama during their own childhood. We do not get narcissistic personalities without attachment trauma.

There's the (i) victimised child, (ii) the abusive parent and (iii) the protective nurturing parent. In the abusive trauma, the child psychologically splits the family network of the abusive parent and protective parent as a way of managing their own anxiety.

The narcissist was a victimised child and now their own child has symbolically become their representation of themselves, which they "have to" then protect from the abusive parent.

They begin to act out all kinds of nonsense. Rather than responding to the actual people in the current family relationship, the narcisisst parent instead re-enacts their own past childhood trauma through current relationships, with the victimised child being a key actor.

The victimised child role is central to this whole re-enactment trauma, because it defines the other two roles. The moment the child is victimised, it automatically defines the targeted parent as being abusive, and the moment the child accepts the victimised role, it automatically allows the alienating parent to be "the protective parent".

The critical feature is the narcissist is getting the child to adopt the victimised child role.

"How did everything go at your father's house? Did everything go okay?" The anxious child replies, "Yeah, everything was fine." "Really?" You two got along okay? Nothing happened?"

The parent won't accept that response. They'll keep probing, they'll keep coming on. "Tell me something, give me something. Even if it's very mild such as, "Well it was kind of boring." Okay, how mild of a criticism is that, "It was kind of boring?"

The third phase is where the alienating parent distorts and exaggerates. "Oh I can't believe your father didn't have anything planned for you to do. He only has one weekend with you, and he can't come up with anything for you guys to do together. Oh gosh, he's only thinking of himself, I can't believe that."

The response of the narcissistic parent is to exaggerate, distort and communicate to the child that there is something wrong with the other parent. The presentation offered to the child, "I'm your supportive parent. I'm the one who cares about you," is in direct contrast to the presentation of the other parent that they're abusively inadequate.

They're not bad mouthing the other parent. They're "simply being an understanding and wonderful parent" and that's the communication to the child. The child is led into a belief that they are a victim.

It never occurs to the narcissist (or family judges and therapists) that the reason the child is saying "it was kind of boring" is because they don't want the alienating parent to feel inadequate. They're already unable to relax 12 out of 14 days and have to manage a deluded, over-emotional adult.

In addition, the narcissistic parent conveys meaning to the child that the practices of the other parent are inadequate.

The parental outrage of, "Oh, they're treating you so terrible," communicates to the child that they're a victim. This process, of inducing this belief in the victimisation of the child, which the narcissistic personality processes a grandiose entitlement are eventually transferred - if not corrected.

The child may now go onto display an arrogant attitude towards the targeted parent, of contemptuous disdain for who that parent is as a person, and so the splitting. The child will see the targeted parent as the all bad parent, and the narcissistic parent as the all wonderful parent.

These are psychological fingerprints of control on the child by a narcissist. The only way the child acquires narcissistic personality disorder symptoms is from the influence of a narcissistic parent.

Many therapists don't get this. (They get how to bill though). They don't look at the set of symptoms and think they're oppositional defiant. They're not aware of personality disorders. One key area they should look at is the child's absence of empathy.

In younger children, where the child displays an excessive anxiety towards the targeted parent. It is not a grandiose judgment of them, they're terrified of being with that parent. The source of that is the narcissist who is communicating the other parent's "a threat".

When the child is away from the targeted parent and with the narcissist, their attachment system quietens down for bonding, so they have less grief response, they hurt less. Under the influence of the narcissist telling the child there's something bad about the targeted parent, the child comes to believe it.

The reason the child is hurting is because they love that parent too. They want a hug and bond with their targeted parent... and because the child wants to do that, it's why it hurts.

Under this distorting influence the child interprets this rise and fall in hurting as evidence that it's actually the other parent, because "I hurt more with you, and I hurt less without you." The child actually believes the mis-attributed grief response under the distorting influence of the narcissist.

The moment the child bonds with the targeted parent their sadness and grief goes away. Now we have a healthy family unit for the child. It's not all that complicated to treat, we just need to rebalance the child out of the distortions of the selfish narcissist.

The narcissist's own all wonderful parent could help by providing answers to the family dynamic they created?

Recored in 2014, at the California Southern University School of Behavioural Sciences.