“People who have narcissistic parents said they were authoritarian, controlling, tyrannical, and demanded blind obedience.”

“Superficial parents often expect children to follow their path and live up to their ideals, and this could manifest in painful patterns.”

“A narcissistic mother sees her daughter, more than her son, as a reflection and extension of herself rather than as a separate person with her own identity.”

“Typically, the daughter of a narcissistic mother will choose a spouse who cannot meet her emotional needs.”

“To the accomplishment-oriented mother, what you achieve in life is paramount. Success depends on what you do, not who you are.”

“Boys seem to have a different kind of relationship with Mother… Just about every daughter of a narcissistic mother has reported… her brother or brothers were better liked and more favored.”

“Each one of us is imbued with a deep yearning to live our own life, not our mother’s.”

“How things appear is more important to a narcissistic parent than the reality of how things really are. Feelings don’t matter—appearances do.”

“Emotional loneliness is so distressing that a child who experiences it will do whatever is necessary to make some kind of connection with the parent.”

“No child can be good enough to evoke love from a highly self-involved parent.”

“Internalizers are highly perceptive… Because of their strong need to connect, growing up with an emotionally immature parent is especially painful for them.”

“Children… when they’re criticized or shamed, they learn to feel embarrassed by their true desires. By pretending to be what their parents want, children think they’ve found the way to win their parents’ love.”

“Whatever their degree of self-control, these parents are governed by emotion… family life always revolves around their moods.”

“Emotionally immature parents fear genuine emotion and pull back from emotional closeness.”

“Based on their implicit and explicit memories of unmet childhood needs, many narcissists develop the notion that such needs will never be met later on in life.”

“These children are often criticized by one parent… or used as a surrogate spouse by the other… the child develops an approach to life characterized by ‘I will need no one,’ ‘No one is to be trusted,’ ‘I’ll take care of myself’.”

“It’s the story of a child who grew up feeling conditionally loved based on performance.”

“I will need no one is the resounding and self-affirming mantra of the narcissist, particularly for male narcissists.”

“If you’re in a relationship with a perilous narcissist, I cannot overemphasize the importance of assuring your own safety and that of children, if you have them.”

“Narcissistic people manipulate others to fulfill their own needs, never to meet yours.”

“To the narcissist, empathy is a weakness.”

“Being taken advantage of… happens to many people, whether in their families or later in life as adults… the complex PTSD of subjugation trauma is what traumatic narcissism theory is meant to address.”

“The traumatizing narcissist takes their victim’s idealization and submission and feeds on it… The TN’s relational system of subjugation is both predatory and parasitic.”

“Victims are profoundly attached to and subjugated by the traumatizing narcissist—this is the core the theory seeks to address.”

“Children who are allowed to imitate the bullying of a narcissistic parent may develop a fixated fight response to being triggered.”

“They are usually the children of at least one narcissistic parent who uses contempt to press them into service, scaring and shaming them out of developing a healthy sense of self.”

“Fight types… use contempt, a toxic amalgam of narcissistic rage and disgust, to intimidate and shame others into mirroring them and into acting as extensions of themselves.”

“That kind of lack of empathy is a sure sign of narcissism.”

“Narcissistic parents are ruthless about turning their kids into servile codependents.”

“Narcissistic parents don’t really recognize their children as people separate from them. Instead, they see their children as little extensions of themselves.”

“What the narcissistic parent lacks is the ability to imagine or care about what her children feel. A parent without empathy is like a surgeon operating with dull tools in poor lighting.”

“Childhood Emotional Neglect happens when your parents fail to respond enough to your emotional needs. And no parent fails more on that than the narcissist.”

“You end up feeling neglected because you truly have been. Yes, you are a victim of Emotional Neglect.”

“Being raised by a narcissist does make you feel you’ve been neglected your whole life.”

“Throughout childhood, Lucy’s own identity was neglected while she toiled to be the perfect child to protect her father’s vulnerable core from exposure.”

“Firm empathy is deeply caring… but to work around their fears… guarantees they’ll live a life of fear. That’s another path to narcissistic addiction.”

“The key childhood experience that pushes children too high or too low on the spectrum is always the same: insecure love.”

“What is missing above all is the framework within which the child could experience his feelings and emotions. Instead, he develops something the mother needs.”

“The mother gazes at the baby… provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations… Otherwise, the child remains without a mirror.”

“In therapy, the small and lonely child that is hidden behind her achievements wakes up and asks: ‘What would have happened if I had appeared before you sad, needy, angry, furious? Where would your love have been then?'”

“Both the depressive and the grandiose person completely deny their childhood reality… Neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past.”

“A mother cannot truly respect her child as long as she does not realize what deep shame she causes him with an ironic remark.”

“The legacy of the parents is yet another generation condemned to hide from the true self… unless they become fully conscious of the true past.”

“The methods that can be used to suppress vital spontaneity in the child are… withdrawal of love, humiliation, scorn, ridicule, and coercion.”

“Narcissists are not genuine… they enter relationships looking for ways to coerce others to do their bidding.”

“Despite their general disinterest in others’ feelings, narcissists yearn to be admired… even close associates can be fooled into assuming that all is well.”

“Only after people have ongoing exposure to the private world of a narcissist do they experience the pain such a person can cause.”

“An important difference between overt and covert incest is that… the covert victim feels idealized and privileged… yet the same trauma of rage, anger, shame and guilt lies beneath.”

“The boundary between caring and incestuous love is crossed when the relationship with the child exists to meet the needs of the parent rather than those of the child.”

“The child becomes an object to be manipulated and used so the parent can avoid the pain and reality of a troubled marriage… The child becomes the parent’s surrogate spouse.”

“In the extreme, an enmeshing mother may consciously feel entitled to use her son to fill up her own emptiness.”

“A mother‑enmeshed man is representing his mother’s interests, while his own have become secondary.”

“Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel.”

“Unhealthy families discourage individual expression. Everyone must conform to the thoughts and actions of the toxic parents.”

“Enmeshment creates almost total dependence on approval and validation from outside yourself… Lovers, bosses, friends, even strangers become the stand‑in for parents.”

“YOU ARE NOT TO BLAME… while you may have suffered the effects of toxic parenting, you can reclaim your life.”

“You may remember that the narcissist essentially experiences and understands others as if they were an extension of his own self.”

“Common feelings that will begin to emerge for you are… inadequacy, neglect, disempowerment, loneliness, alienation from family and friends.”

“As your involvement with the narcissist develops you will notice that the relationship increasingly becomes one‑way with you in the primary giving position.”

“Verbal abuse includes… discounting, threatening, name-calling, yelling and raging.”

“A child can’t very well escape from an abusive parent… we must be alert and ready to speak up for him or her.”

“A portion of empaths I’ve treated have experienced early trauma, such as emotional or physical abuse, or were raised by alcoholic, depressed, or narcissistic parents.”

“It’s crucial for sensitive children raised by narcissistic parents to learn boundaries; otherwise compassion turns into chronic depletion.”

“The key childhood experience that pushes children too high or too low… insecure love—children need to feel they can still count on the people who raise them.”

“If you avoid upsetting your child’s fears to keep the peace, you’re not really taking care of your child but yourself—and that’s another path to narcissistic addiction.”

“You may have internalized early in your life that your needs were not as important as others’ needs were. Lack of empathy from a parent or caretaker leaves that mark.”

“Your parent is not open to your thoughts, feelings, and ideas… does not relate to or care about your feelings.”

“Children of the self‑absorbed often learn an unspoken set of rules that keeps them focused on the parent’s needs and out of touch with their own.”

“Narcissistic parents may use their children as extensions of themselves.”

“Parents who learn how to connect the dots of their own journey have a heightened chance of offering loving and skillful discipline to their children.”