I have now spent nearly seventeen years in therapy, trying to figure out my “issues,” which ranged from alcoholism (I’m now twelve years sober) to a history of relationships with abusive men (although today I’m happily married to a wonderful man). These years of therapy have been extremely helpful in many arenas of my life, particularly in managing my panic attacks, post-traumatic stress episodes, and tendencies toward addictive and other self-sabotaging behaviors. However, while therapy has had many beneficial effects, it never seemed to “fix” me. I have often felt like a lost cause, as I was simply unable to completely leave behind certain self-destructive tendencies, and also to let go of past traumas. I formerly was convinced I was unfixable, and after I moved across the country with my husband last summer, I gave up on therapy, figuring I had come as far as I could possibly go.
Following the move, I sunk into an on-again, off-again depression beginning last August. It was puzzling to me, as the move was a good one for good reasons, and I was able to finally achieve my goal of working as a freelance musician once again, leaving behind a job that made me miserable for years. The fact that I couldn’t figure out WHY I was depressed made me even MORE depressed, along with increasingly frustrated. I experienced painful days where I could barely get out of bed, let alone try to meet new people here in town. I isolated myself in my beautiful home, spending countless hours on the couch listlessly watching the television.
By the second week of January, my depression spiraled downward to the point of suicide. One particularly cold and blustery night, I went into a dissociative trance, wandering out of my house in the middle of the night in just a light shirt and a pair of sandals. I just started walking, aiming to throw myself off of a tall bridge in the middle of our town, when all of a sudden, I heard a voice tell me in my head that “you can’t do this to your husband.” That voice immediately snapped me out of my trance, and I returned home to a terrified and panicked husband who told me that I needed to get help “or else.” The next day, I spent hours researching therapists in town, along with our insurance benefits. And then I made the phone call. I was back on the couch a few days later.
At first, I felt like I was back on the hamster wheel in my sessions, rehashing old hurts yet again, not making any progress. As the weeks passed, my new therapist gave me the exercise of journaling, something I hadn’t done since my years in high school. Writing helped me to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and I found that the source of my current depression was somehow related to my family. I grew up as an only child in a relatively well-to-do family. My dad was a public school superintendent, and my mom worked in public school administration. (Funny that I identify both of them first with their jobs! Yet this is how they always self-identified...the public persona of the job was always so important to both of them, and the “status” of being a “very important person” in town was always of primary importance to my father in particular.) My parents were both very controlling and strict as I grew up. As a result, I left home at only 16 years old; I was accepted into a special program at a college across the country for high school juniors. It was my ticket out of the house.
During college, I predictably rebelled against my strict upbringing. I partied, experimented with drugs and alcohol, had way too many boyfriends, wore crazy clothes and dyed my hair funny colors, got piercings and tattoos...anything one can imagine, I tried. By the time I was 22 years old, I was a full-fledged alcoholic in an abusive relationship. When my health began to rapidly decline due to my excessive drinking, I quit. I moved across the country again for a clean start, where I met my husband shortly after.
I thought the rest was history. But it wasn’t. Things never got easier, especially with my family. Fast-forward to this past Christmas: my parents came to visit us in our new, spacious, gorgeous home. I decorated for them, bought their favorite foods, took them to do their favorite activities...and the holiday still was disastrous. When they left the day after Christmas, I felt like I had survived a war of apocalyptic proportions; I was shell-shocked, drained, and empty. My suicidal episode followed days later. It wasn’t until I started journaling that I found this connection - between my family and the depressive state that made me just want to escape in the only way I could possibly imagine...through dying.
A few weeks ago, during a session, my therapist suddenly demanded that I google “narcissistic personality disorder” via the Mayo Clinic website on my smartphone. Holy crap...this was my dad! This was my mom! The bells went off in my head. I started researching, reading everything I could find on NPD from clinical books to blogs from adult children of narcissists (ACONs). NPD was the answer. It was the missing puzzle piece I had been trying so desperately to locate all of these years, the key to explaining much of my behavior, my relationship with my family, and with others.
So, what is NPD? My therapist helpfully summarized it as the “three E’s” - lack of empathy, entitlement, and emptiness inside. People with NPD have little to no empathy for others’ feelings. They often feel entitled to special treatment, having an over-inflated self image. Nothing is ever their fault, and everything is ALWAYS about them. This is because they are empty people deeply inside, often due to some sort of trauma as a child, like neglect at the hands of their own parents. People who suffer from NPD rarely seek help (because they are perpetually in complete denial that would need any!), and as a result it is considered to be an untreatable disorder in many ways. This summary accurately pinpointed both of my parents’ behaviors. In fact, the descriptions of parents with NPD were so dead on that it was almost frightening.
Today, I’m in active recovery as an ACON. Journaling is part of my therapy, and as a result, I decided to start this blog. I don’t want or need recognition for this; in fact, all of the names here have been changed. My goal is to provide a personal account of what it was like to grow up as the child of two people with NPD in order to help other ACONs who have been in the same situation as myself. If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you may have been made to feel like YOU are always the one with the problem by that parent...since a narcissist is never at fault for anything. But let me tell you - you’re not the one with the problem.
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