Karyl McBride

Substance abuse is an effective way to mask feelings.

The narcissistic family often resembles the proverbial shiny red apple with a worm inside. It looks great, until you bite into it and discover the worm. The rest of the apple may be just fine but you’ve lost your appetite.

Carmen’s father’s role as his wife’s protector is paramount. “In some ways, his needs don’t matter either. I used to worry about that, but now I see that is what keeps them together. They need each other to play out their dysfunctional roles and survive emotionally in the world. I don’t really care if that’s what works for them, but it did affect me. What about me? Do I matter?”

Daughters of narcissistic mothers seem to relate to extremes in all aspects of their lives and seem overly tolerant of aberrant and unusual behavior, which of course their mothers often exhibited.

Daughters of narcissistic mothers seem to favor opposite ends of a continuum of life patterns, either success-oriented and high-achieving or self-sabotaging

Daughters’ relationships with men tend to be either codependent or dependent.

Narcissistic families are disconnected emotionally. They may appear solid on the exterior, but authentic communication and connections between the members rarely take place because the parents in this family are focused on themselves. They expect the children to react to their needs, instead of the other way around, as in a healthy family. In this dysfunctional system, adults do not deal with real feelings, and therefore do not meet the emotional needs of the children.

In a healthy family, the parents are emotionally connected, happy with each other, in control of the family, and at the top of a hierarchy.2 Their job is to take care of the children, who look up to them for support and protection. The parents shine love down on the children and strive to meet their needs physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.

The unspoken rule in these families is that they do not discuss this dynamic and it becomes a family secret. In order to maintain the peace, the children have to keep quiet and not rock the boat. They fear abandonment, which causes them to mask their real feelings and pretend that everything is okay—a survival mechanism. In doing so, they do not learn to express or even be in touch with their feelings, and they are thus set up for many interpersonal difficulties later on in life.

Daughters who grew up in narcissistic families uniformly report a lack of confidence in their own decision making as well as difficulty with assuredness in their love relationships