I Didn’t Know I Was Raised By A Narcissist Until I Saw How Other Parents Treated Their Kids
In my house, every conversation somehow circled back to my mother. My achievements were her achievements. My failures were embarrassments to her. My feelings were inconveniences that needed to be managed so they wouldn’t disrupt her mood. I thought this was normal. I thought all families worked this way.
Then I started spending time at other people’s houses. I watched my friends’ parents ask questions and actually listen to the answers. I saw them celebrate their kids’ accomplishments without immediately redirecting attention to themselves. I witnessed them apologize when they made mistakes.
That’s when I realized: the problem wasn’t me. It was never me. And everything I’d believed about family, love, and my own worth needed to be completely rewritten.
The reality I thought was universal
When you grow up in a dysfunctional household, dysfunction feels like baseline reality. You don’t know that other families operate differently because you’ve never been inside them. Your normal is the only normal you’ve ever known.
In my normal, children existed to meet parents’ needs. My job was to make my mother look good, feel good, and never challenge her version of reality. Narcissistic parenting centers the parent’s ego at the expense of the child’s development, and I was so deep inside it that I couldn’t see the water I was swimming in.
I thought all parents took credit for their children’s successes. I thought all parents sulked when attention wasn’t on them. I thought all parents reacted to their children’s emotions as attacks. I thought the constant eggshell-walking was just what childhood felt like.
Learning that other families actually supported their children’s separate identities wasn’t just surprising. It was destabilizing. Everything I’d built my self-understanding on was suddenly revealed as distortion.
The first time I saw a different kind of parent
I was probably fourteen, sleeping over at my friend Emma’s house. Her mom asked how school was going, and Emma said she was struggling in math. What happened next shocked me.
Her mom didn’t sigh in disappointment. She didn’t make it about herself. She didn’t say “well, you need to try harder” or “what will your teachers think of me?” She just said, “That sounds frustrating. Do you want help finding a tutor?”
That was it. Problem acknowledged, solution offered, no drama. Emma wasn’t made to feel stupid or burdensome. Her struggle was just a thing that happened, not a character flaw or a reflection on her mother.
I went home and told my mom I was struggling in math. She said, “Well, that’s embarrassing. I was always good at math. I don’t know where you get this from.” Then she changed the subject back to something about herself.
Healthy parenting research describes what Emma’s mom did as basic responsiveness—meeting children where they are, without judgment or ego involvement. I didn’t have words for it then. I just knew Emma’s house felt different than mine, and I wanted to stay there forever.
The comparisons that cracked everything open
Once I started noticing, I couldn’t stop. Every interaction with other families became data, and the data kept telling the same story: my family wasn’t normal.
Other parents celebrated their kids’ interests even when they didn’t share them. My mother mocked anything I liked that she didn’t understand and insisted I pursue her interests instead.
Other parents apologized when they were wrong. My mother never apologized for anything—and if confronted, she’d either deny it happened, claim I was being too sensitive, or somehow make herself the victim.
Other parents let their kids have feelings without making those feelings about them. In my house, my sadness was an accusation, my anger was disrespect, and my happiness was only valid if it involved praising her.
Narcissistic personality patterns include an inability to see others as separate people with valid inner experiences. My mother didn’t ignore my feelings because she was mean. She ignored them because, on some fundamental level, she couldn’t conceive of my feelings as real and independent of her.
The gaslighting I didn’t recognize as gaslighting
My mother had a version of our family history that bore little resemblance to what I experienced. In her telling, she was endlessly sacrificing for ungrateful children. She was the victim of our demands, our moods, our insufficiency.
When I remembered things differently—when I recalled her screaming at me, or the weeks of silent treatment, or the criticism disguised as “concern”—I was told I was misremembering. Making things up. Being dramatic. Gaslighting was so constant that I genuinely questioned my own memory and perception.
It took years to trust my own experience again. To believe that the things I remembered actually happened, and that my emotional responses to them were valid. The narcissistic parent doesn’t just hurt you—they convince you that the hurt didn’t happen, or that you caused it yourself.
I kept a journal as a teenager, and reading it as an adult was revelatory. The things I’d written down, in real time, matched my memories—not her version. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t dramatic. I was a child accurately recording a painful reality.
The role I was assigned and couldn’t escape
In narcissistic family systems, children get assigned roles. I was the scapegoat—the one blamed for family problems, the target for frustration, the proof that my mother was the victim of difficult circumstances rather than the creator of them.
My sibling was the golden child—the extension of my mother’s ego who could do no wrong. This wasn’t about our actual behavior or achievements. It was about narrative. She needed a success story and a cautionary tale, and we were cast accordingly.
Family systems theory describes these roles as functional for the dysfunctional system. They keep the narcissistic parent at the center and prevent anyone from seeing clearly. The golden child is too invested in being favored to question the system. The scapegoat is too busy surviving to challenge it.
Understanding my role helped me stop blaming myself. I wasn’t the scapegoat because I was actually worse than my sibling. I was the scapegoat because someone had to be, and I was chosen before I was old enough to understand what was happening.
The grief that came with understanding
You’d think that realizing you were raised by a narcissist would be liberating. And eventually it was. But first, there was grief—massive, complicated grief for things I couldn’t even name at first.
I grieved the mother I should have had. The one who would have celebrated my achievements without making them about herself. The one who would have comforted me when I was sad instead of being annoyed by my emotions. The one who would have seen me as a separate person worth knowing.
I grieved my childhood, which I’d spent trying to earn love that was never going to come. I grieved the relationships I’d damaged because I didn’t know how healthy ones worked. I grieved the years I’d spent thinking I was the problem.
Grief doesn’t require death. You can mourn a living person—specifically, the version of them you needed but never got. That mourning is necessary. You can’t move forward while still waiting for someone to become who they should have been.
What healing actually looks like
I’m not going to pretend I’ve figured this out completely. Healing from narcissistic parenting is ongoing. It’s not a destination; it’s a direction.
What I’ve learned is that the first step is seeing clearly. Not making excuses for my mother, not minimizing what happened, not pretending the family was normal when it wasn’t. Just acknowledging reality, which was more than I could do for most of my life.
The second step is boundaries. My mother hasn’t changed and isn’t going to. She’s still the center of her own universe, and interacting with her still requires managing her ego. I’ve learned to limit contact, keep conversations shallow, and protect myself from the expectation that she’ll ever be different.
The third step is reparenting myself. All those things I didn’t get—unconditional acceptance, emotional validation, support for my separate identity—I’m learning to give them to myself. It feels awkward and artificial at first, like learning a language as an adult. But it works.
Therapy helps. Specifically, therapy with someone who understands narcissistic family systems and won’t push you toward premature forgiveness or reconciliation. A good therapist will validate your experience before asking you to process it.
The relationship I have now with my mother
I still talk to my mother. Not everyone makes this choice, and I respect people who go no-contact. For my own reasons, I’ve maintained a relationship—but it’s not the relationship she wants or the one I used to hope for.
I don’t share vulnerable things with her anymore. I don’t expect emotional support. I don’t take her criticism personally because I understand it’s not really about me—it’s about her need to feel superior. Our conversations are surface-level, brief, and carefully managed.
This isn’t the relationship I wanted. But it’s the relationship that’s actually possible with the person she actually is. Accepting that distinction was hard but necessary.
I’ve also stopped waiting for her to acknowledge what happened. She won’t. Narcissists rarely do. My healing can’t depend on her transformation, because her transformation isn’t coming.
Realizing you were raised by a narcissist doesn’t rewrite history. The damage was done, and you carry it whether you understand its source or not. But naming what happened matters. It takes the shame off you and puts it where it belongs.
I spent decades thinking I was too sensitive, too demanding, too difficult. I wasn’t. I was a child in an impossible situation, trying to survive a parent who couldn’t see me as a person. That’s not a character flaw. That’s a tragedy.
If any of this sounds familiar, I want you to know: your memories are real. Your feelings are valid. The way you were treated wasn’t okay, and it wasn’t your fault. You deserved better, and you still do.
Understanding is the first step. What you build from here is up to you.