“One sister may internalize the message and say, ‘Okay, I will show you what I can do and how worthy I am’ and become an overachiever and a perfectionist. The other sister may internalize this message of inferiority and give up, feeling that she can’t make the grade anyway; she becomes an underachiever or engages in some kind of lifelong self-sabotage.”

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

“The gaslighting parent usually has a ‘golden child’ and a ‘scapegoat child.’ The former can do no wrong, whereas the latter can do no right. This pits siblings against each other.”

“‘Your sister doesn’t even believe you. She’s told me how crazy you are.'”

“The Golden Child: This is the term for the narcissistic parent’s favorite child. This child is idealized as perfect and special. The parent projects all the positive qualities of this golden child and brags about his or her wonderful accomplishments to anyone who will listen.”

“The Scapegoat: This child is the object of all the narcissistic parent’s negative projections. He or she is devalued and treated as an insignificant loser who is blamed for everything that goes wrong, including things that are clearly other people’s fault.”

“When the golden child hits the scapegoat, the behavior is explained away; the golden child is the real victim, protecting himself from being abused by his lesser sibling.”

“This dynamic—I call it the Gaslight Tango—occurs in all different types of relationships… between parents and children, and, between siblings. It is a form of psychological abuse.”

“Your sibling may very well have been the golden child.”

“Remember that narcissistic family systems are generally kept in place by all kinds of things like flying monkeys, enabling, triangulation, and denial.”

“If you decide to set a boundary as an adult, you can really easily be thrown into the role of being the scapegoat.”

“Your healthiest play is self-preservation.”

“It’s like the opposite of the lottery when it comes to engaging with narcissists—the only way to win is to not play.”

“Sometimes siblings will have to break away from the entire family system because of a narcissistic sibling… when you say break away, they mean no contact.”

“They may lose access to their own parents ’cause the parents will still be back in the narcissistic sibling.”

“Narcissistic siblings often triangulate in the family system—make it two against one; they band with one or both parents.”

“That dynamic you had in childhood of being scapegoated may literally play out all the way into adulthood.”

“In many cases I’ve worked with, the sibling’s only survival came from distancing themselves—some haven’t talked to their parents in 15 years.”

“Narcissists essentially train siblings and others to be more self-blaming, leading to lifelong proneness to excessive guilt and shame in the victims.”

“Victims often develop a fear of dependence on others, fear of vulnerability, and general distrust in relationships, known as avoidant attachment.”

“Narcs often smear their siblings to parents and others… They will destroy family relationships and feel no guilt for doing so.”

“Many toxic parents compare one sibling unfavorably with another… This divide-and-conquer technique is often unleashed against children who become a little too independent.”

“Perfectionist parents… put the burden of stability on the child… The child fails and becomes the scapegoat for family problems.”

“Unhealthy families discourage individual expression… They promote fusion, a blurring of personal boundaries… In their efforts to be close, they often suffocate one another’s individuality.”

“Children soak up both verbal and nonverbal messages like sponges… the things they learn at home… become universal truths engraved deeply in their minds.”

“People can forgive toxic parents, but they should do it at the conclusion—not at the beginning—of their emotional housecleaning.”

“Enmeshment creates almost total dependence on approval and validation from outside yourself… Adults… frequently become approval junkies.”

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

“Toxic parents… need to acknowledge what happened, take responsibility, and show a willingness to make amends.”

“You may even hide your caretaking behaviors from others and try to protect other family members from taking on caretaking behavior, much like child abuse victims try to protect siblings from being abused.”

“This could easily happen… if the BP/NP is a dying parent or a sibling in trouble.”

“A dysfunctional family lacks clear boundaries. Shaming and blaming occur. One family member may become a scapegoat.”

“Setting polite but clear boundaries with toxic behavior stops you from becoming a doormat.”

“As a child, relationships are put on you, but as an adult you get to choose who you want to be in relationships with and how… Even with family.”

“When the solution to the problem is ‘they need to change,’ the problem will never go away. You can only control your side of the street.”

“‘I don’t want you yelling at me anymore.’ There’s not a more ‘beautiful’ or perfect way to say that.”

“We have tricked ourselves into thinking that we’re supposed to always feel comfortable… And that’s not realistic.”

“A beautiful question to ask yourself is, Why are you in this relationship? And if the answer is ‘Because it is my sister… my brother… my mother,’ you don’t have a reason to be in the relationship.”

“The powerful gaslighter… engages in an ongoing, systematic knocking down of the other… Gradually, the gaslightee begins to question what she thought she knew.”

“Remind yourself: You have a right to your disappointment… Recognize self-blame for what it is… It keeps you stuck in the wrong relationship, with someone who needs you to bury your needs.”

“Firm empathy is deeply caring… to avoid further upset, 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.”

“When it comes to narcissism, though, nurture holds the trump card.”

“These children are often criticized by one parent… then doted on, overprotected, or used as a surrogate spouse by the other parent… In response… the child develops an approach to life… ‘I will need no one… I’ll show you.'”

“The person who has an excessive need to feel unique and special expects everyone to make them feel that way all of the time… They can be easily displeased or even angered when others do not act to make them feel unique and special.”

“These children may learn to put other people’s needs first as the price of admission to a relationship… they may take on the role of helping others.”

“No child can be good enough to evoke love from a highly self-involved parent… They think they can keep relationships by being the giver.”

“Internalizers… develop a role-self that’s overly focused on other people, along with a healing fantasy that they can change others’ feelings and behaviors toward them.”

“By pretending to be what their parents want… they lose touch with both their inner and outer reality.”

“If a sibling has been competitive, cruel, abusive, or bullying, this can have an impact on us later in life, as strong as a toxic parent’s influence.”

“Everyone has one covert narcissistic relative who holds the table hostage with a conversation in which he or she needs to be the expert and humiliate or at least ‘get one over’ on anyone who may share that expertise.”

“Instead of simply feeling loved, they felt that love came attached with conditions—love if they got good grades, behaved well, scored a goal, or kept quiet.”

“‘These are the issues in this relationship. These are the parts of those issues that I can change, and these are the parts that are not my stuff.'”

“If you come from a close-knit family and your partner has a family that’s a bit more distant… when we get that pushback we’re upset.”

“Empaths… were raised by alcoholic, depressed, or narcissistic parents… these children typically don’t feel ‘seen’ by their families.”

“With chronic talkers, we must learn to set boundaries, a basic form of self-care.”

“Once you can identify and name the Gaslight Effect, you are empowered to recognize it and heal your relationship—or change it!”

“Opt out of the power struggles; avoid the right-wrong debates; use silence instead of commenting when someone is provoking you.”

“Write down your dialogues, then take a look at them at another time; talk to a trusted friend; trust your gut—if something feels wrong, it is wrong for you!”

“In families like Fred’s, much of a child’s identity and his illusions of safety depend on feeling enmeshed… This need for enmeshment carries right into adult relationships.”

“Abused children have a caldron of rage bubbling inside them… In adulthood, that anger has to find an outlet.”

“Once you understand what love is, you may come to the realization that your parents couldn’t or didn’t know how to be loving… you open a door in your life for people who will love you the way you deserve.”

“If you have a narcissist in your life, they will react very negatively to you trying to set a boundary.”

“To successfully protect yourself you must first believe that you have the right to choose, then you need strategies and language to draw rock solid boundaries.”

“You will have to do the work to accept situations, and build patience for what is outside your control… dealing with certain problematic behaviors is a choice.”

“‘Everyone knows you’re crazy.’ ‘My entire family thinks you’re crazy.’ ‘Your family knows what you’re like. Who are they going to believe, you or me?'”

“Of all the roles children play in the narcissistic family, the favored ‘golden’ child is most likely to develop a narcissistic personality because of the toxic mix of enmeshment, neglect, and entitlement they experience.”

“For siblings, particularly girls, a narcissistic golden child brother can be a profound source of emotional and perhaps physical and sexual trauma.”

“Many estranged siblings realize over time that a brother’s or sister’s narcissistic tendencies are the underlying cause of their toxic relationship.”

“It is difficult to sustain any kind of relationship when these patterns are repeated… This places the relationship at great risk for estrangement.”