Emotionally Immature Parents and Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
I’ve had such an incredible response to these two videos on my Youtube Channel.
A lot of you have been asking me the same questions:
How do you heal if you’ve been brought up in a family that’s toxic or you have a toxic relationship with one of your parents?
How do you heal if you’ve been raised by a narcissistic parent?
What are the steps you can take to break free from the impact emotionally immature parents have on your adult life?
I’m so glad that those videos have been helpful to so many of you.
Thank you so much for sending me your comments, telling me your stories and for creating a community in which you are helping each other because that’s been amazing.
This will be brief as I am writing off the top of my head, but I wanted to respond as soon as I can.
Emotional detachment
The first step I would suggest is to understand that you are an adult now.
Yes, you are still their child, but you are not an extension of your parent or your family.
You are an adult in your own right.
It’s time to recalibrate your relationship as adult to adult.
First, try to detach emotionally from them.
What I mean by this is try to observe them as a separate being to you.
You can love your parents, but not like everything about them or how you were brought up.
Try to separate the two.
See the wonderful things, positive traits and habits they passed down to you and hang on to those.
But observe the limiting beliefs, habits and patterns of behavior they may have passed down too and see them for what they are.
Ones that don’t serve you.
This isn’t to blame your parents.
Like you, they did the best they could at the time within the parameters of the knowledge and cultural experiences that were passed down to them.
But, negative patterns of behavior do pass down from generation to generation.
Your parent may have a damaged child inside them too.
This may help to take some of the blame out of it.
Detach and observe their behavior for what it is.
It may be childish or selfish, even narcissistic behavior that didn’t nurture your needs as a child, nor does it now you’re an adult.
But their behavior is separate from you and yours.
You are not to blame for it. Nor responsible for them.
That behavior may be unacceptable to you and that’s okay.
There is no need to feel guilty either.
Grieving
If you want to move forward as a healthy adult you may also need to grieve the loss of the parent you thought you would have, but may never be.
Sometimes to the outside world, a family may look picture-perfect but is anything but from the inside.
Life is rarely that TV version of a happy family.
A toxic, narcissistic parent might appear golden to anyone else outside.
If you are the child of a narcissistic parent or a family in which it’s very dysfunctional, then chances are you are going to have to grieve the loss of the fantasy parent.
The loving parent, who is capable of nurturing the child within you.
Not the spoilt child they themselves may be.
If they can’t nurture their own inner child, then they may be incapable of nurturing yours.
They may not know how.
Emotional boundaries
Another step is to set strong boundaries with them, especially if a parent is leaning heavily on you.
Perhaps they’re elderly and they’re leaning on you and making you responsible for absolutely everything in their life.
They may even be threatening that if you don’t look after them, they’ll cut you off.
Or comparing you negatively to your siblings.
Boundaries are really important in all relationships, not just relationships within toxic families or when dealing with emotionally immature parents.
Boundaries protect you and they tell others who how you wish to be treated and respected.
For example, say your role is to look after your parent and whenever you take them to a doctor’s appointment, instead of thanking you, they spend that time berating you.
Telling you you’re no good, you’re worthless. Or how you’re not as good as your sibling – whatever – understand that this is unacceptable.
Setting a boundary would be to explain to them:
I am happy to take you to your doctor’s appointment. But if you are going to belittle me in this way then I will not do so again.
Sadly, some of you have told me you’ve had to go no contact to restore your wellbeing and sanity.
If that is what it takes to get the separation you need to heal, then trust your gut on this.
Sometimes you’re so enmeshed with that parent it’s very difficult to heal and step into the confident adult you deserve to be without breaking contact and having time out.
The boundary might need to set is to tell them you need to break contact for a while.
This might even be forever.
Only you will know what is right for you and what you need to do in order to heal and grow.
Self-care
If you can, recalibrate your relationship with your parents as adult to adult.
If you can’t then find other adults who can nurture you, mentor you and help you grow.
Surround yourself with people who love you and care about you.
Create a new family.
You’re also going to have to become the adult to your inner child that your parent wasn’t to you themselves.
Try to nurture yourself with self-love and self-care.
Put your needs and well-being first.
Self-love is absolutely key.
Especially if your emotional needs weren’t met as a child, which leaves you feeling like you have this hole inside you.
And if you’re enmeshed with a toxic parent in a very co-dependent and unhealthy way.
If so, both of you may be damaged children who are trying to fulfil your needs by getting what you need from the other.
You can’t ever fulfil the needs and emptiness within you by looking to the outside world, not even your parent if they are emotionally immature.
You need to find this within and self-love, self-worth and nurturing yourself are the most important first steps towards healing.
Become the adult that you need and your parent wasn’t and find other healthy adults and role models that you can learn from who inspire you and can become your new family if you need them to be.
And the final thing is to forgive. If you can.
Of course, this is difficult if there has been extreme abuse or sexual violence.
If that’s the case then please go and seek help and support.
There is no shame in getting help to work through these feelings of shame, hurt and sadness.
But if you can, try to let go of blame because blame only ends up hurting yourself.
Try to detach yourself and see that parent or that family member as a damaged child themselves who never got their emotional needs fulfilled either.
They are just repeating negative patterns passed down to them.
Yes, they are adults now too and can take responsibility for themselves and their behavior, as you are trying to do.
But if they can’t and don’t, then try to let go and accept that that is who they are.
You can’t change them.
But you can make the choice over whether you want them in your life or not.
Without feeling guilty for it.
If you can see where their damage comes from and forgive them you can diminish its influence over you as well.
Recognise it’s not serving you.
It’s not nurturing you to become the person you were born to be and who you want to grow into now.
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