OK, so what does that mean? Let's start at the beginning...
I'm learning that inner child work is NO joke. It brings up a lot of old scars and has you pick at them so you can work through them, resolve them, learn from them, and, ultimately, grow. Today I learned something that I think I put on a shelf for later use and that time has come.
What Inner Child Work Taught Me Today
Honestly, I think this is something I'd already known but hadn't given much thought to or even worked with. I think I put it on the proverbial bookshelf saying that this knowledge is interesting and not really delving into it then, but now here I am hearing it again and this time choosing to wrestle with it (more about that in a moment). Anyhow, what I learned this morning is that my parents were using me as a pawn to live out the life they wished they themselves had.
How I Arrived at This Point
I was using some journaling prompts that asked what I thought my parents would've idealized me becoming and how I fell short of this. In doing so I thought back to the fact that they told me they weren't going to pay for any more school if I didn't go straight after college and how this made me feel. It just hit me that they were trying to live their lives through me since my father had tried college and didn't complete it and my mother never had a career.
Besides feeling like my life was meant to be an "extension" of theirs, I also feel that this is also why they raised me to be a people pleaser: so that when/if they wanted to live part of their life through me they could. They just had different ways of making it happen: My mom with physical and verbal abuse / My father with passive aggressiveness.
What The Underlying Truth Is
This is indeed something narcs do: Their children are an extensions of themselves. These parents project their likes, dislikes, desires, and dreams on their children. The fact that they lack empathy serves as a blinder that keeps them (the parents) in this tunnel vision of projection.
Narcissist abuse is especially detrimental to the daughter of a narcissistic mother. This is because the nurturing mother parent isn't present and daughters are usually more sensitive to needing the nurturer role.
How I'm Managing The Truth: I'm The Daughter of a Narcicistic Mother
Once again I'm shelving the thought that I'm the daughter of a narcicistic mother for a moment, but not before acknowledging that this is the next thing I'm going to work through. It's just that I need to work through 1 book at a time and not be sidetracked. Unfortunately, this current book is a download a friend gave me and I can't share here. However, there are a couple of books that I did dig up and plan on using.
The first is called Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse, Gaslighting, Codependency and Complex PTSD (4 Books in 1): Workbook and Guide to Overcome Trauma, Toxic Relationships, ... and Recover from Unhealthy Relationships) by Linda Hill (Author). I don't think I'd recommend this as a first read but as someone who has a background in psychology I wanted something a bit deep and with a workbook because I've recently discovered that they're very helpful for me.
The second one is Adult Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers: Quiet the Critical Voice in Your Head, Heal Self-Doubt, and Live the Life You Deserve by Stephanie M. Kriesberg. This one was recommended by my therapist and is the one that I'd recommend for a bit lighter reading on the topic.
Obviously I can't comment more than this on either of these books before using them, but I'll do my best to remember to come back and share my insights here.
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