Survival Traits Picked up in Narcissistic Households
When I think about the fact that my dad was highly narcissistic and look back on growing up in an authoritarian, abusive home, I feel guided to call it a narcissistic household because the entire home’s energy is dependent on the narcissist’s mood and energy.
From the perspective of a child growing up in this kind of home, and as a person who feels energy deeply, it feels like they are a black hole… and the black hole is a phenomenon which consumes everything around it.
It’s like this voracious appetite that keeps consuming and consuming.. it never stops.
The black hole only keeps growing, which means it needs to keep taking in more and more.
If I ever had an accomplishment, achievement, or I was proud of something, the black hole had to consume that, too. Any speck of light must be sapped out, and only submission could be left in its wake.
Any fear, resentment, sadness, or anger had to also be tempered because those were emotions that upset his mood. Those weren’t palatable to him, but he don’t want to feel them either so he just bullied them away and continued to feed on any positivity I tried to have. I think that’s why the narcissist determines the energy of the household- because people (children) who live in this home must learn to tiptoe around the black hole, avoid it completely, manipulate and lie to stay out of the wake of fury, fawn and become the pleaser…
Hence the scapegoat, the golden child, the forgotten child, etc. These kids have learned to cope and survive in ways that feel safe to their nervous system— as much as one can feel safe in this kind of environment. This is how we survive in volatile situations.
And this can change at times, too — sometimes it might be easier to run and hide, other times it might be easier to play nice and be agreeable.
Sometimes I felt like the golden child for a moment, because I was getting good grades and finishing my chores, babysitting my siblings and not getting into trouble. Sometimes it felt more like I was the forgotten child, slipping under the radar by staying in man room and reading books. Later, when I was able to formulate stronger opinions and argue my case, it was much easier for me to become the scapegoat… but none of these identities were ever actual concrete truths. They could shift and change, just as quickly as the narcissist’s mood.
That’s the central theme of it: you don’t exist as your own person. You exist relative to the narcissist. How you can meet their needs in the moment, which often feel like the tantrums of a toddler.
Whatever mood my dad was in, that’s what we would be waiting for. We would see how he acted when he got home, to know how the rest of the day was going to progress.
There were moments when my step-mom would weaponize my dad: when we would be “too much” for her that day or did things that meant big trouble, she would send us to our room and have us wait there for him to get home to deal with it. Sometimes that meant sitting on my bed for a couple of hours, then being lectured for another few hours when he got there. So of course, if he came home from a long day at work and immediately had to “deal with” children, you could guess how the rest of the day would pretty much be on eggshells.
If we had a good day with our step-mom: if we didn’t ask her too many questions, ask for too many snacks, arm interrupt her phone calls too often, then the day was pretty smooth sailing and we would just be waiting until he got home to see how it was gonna go.
Side note: “Big trouble” for my little brother meant beatings, but me and my sister mostly grew out of being hit by our pre-teen years. I remember him asking when my step-mom would yell at him, with his big innocent eyes, “Big trouble??”
If he came home and seemed pissy already, we had options, based on his actions: if he just wanted to get on his video game and work off steam that way, we knew to stay out of his way so he wouldn’t see us and be upset by something we did. If he was more “active” in his prissiness, like walking around the house looking at the mess or finding things to clean up, slamming things down on the counter, etc., then we knew to jump up and immediately start doing some kind of chore. It was almost as if he didn’t want to be the only one doing housework: if he was gonna have to clean stuff, so were we. He didn’t really like it when we sat down to play or relax. He would always ask, “Did you get your chores done?” And then go behind us to double check it was good enough.
Years later, my brother told me that he HATED it when he would sit down and play video games on the weekends and his wife would be up cleaning. He felt like he had to get off the game and help her clean. He said he really wished she would just sit down and relax too, because he felt guilty any time she was up cleaning and he wasn’t. It’s always been fascinating to me, how we pick up on these things and integrate them into our own mannerisms and triggers.
I started to notice there are many traits people could pick up, by living in these narcissistic homes.
For me, it was “normal” to know which parent was coming down the hallway — and what kind of mood they were in — by their footsteps. Literally the sound of footsteps could send my heart racing and my hands sweating in an instant. This kind of “reading the room” was my body’s way of helping me gauge the safety of a situation: to try to know what was going to happen before it happened. I had integrated the belief that, somehow, there must be something I could *do* to prevent the lashing out or the anger or annoyance of my parents.
It felt like constantly running around trying to put out fires, even though I wasn’t the one who started the fire. His moods were NOT my fault, and as a parent he was faced with many situations that were just part of raising a child and helping them learn how to function in the world. But his anger and stress always seemed to be directed at us kids and something we hadn’t done, or had done wrong. So I really believed after a while that it must mean I just wasn’t doing enough stuff right.
It often felt like us children were just not something my dad or my step-mom really wanted to be dealing with. I often felt like an inconvenience or a roadblock. And, even if I hadn’t done anything wrong, it always felt like I *could* be doing more, according tot he feedback I would get from them. This left me with a constant guard being put up, because if I DID relax, someone would be coming in there to bark at me: DID YOU GET YOUR CHORES DONE? And if I had… they weren’t done well enough.
Obviously, this person was never going to be pleased, no matter what I did. Logically. But as a child, I couldn’t see that. I couldn’t fathom that something within HIM was his problem, and that he was just taking it out on me. I did feel anger at him, and i knew that the way he treated us was not okay. It felt so unfair. But I couldn’t put my finger on WHY. It didn’t feel good to be treated that way, and i knew it wasn’t nice. But I didn’t yet have the logic to say, Okay this is actually HIS problem. I’m not the problem. So I kept trying so hard to prevent him from being upset. This led to the constant belief that no matter what I did, I would be the problem. I was doing something badly, or wrong, or I was going to get in trouble. i couldn’t relax, I always had to be cleaning, and everything had to be perfect.
I’m not sure why that happened… I think it just sunk in over time. And then you look back, and it’s this whole layer of an identity you’ve been living with, and you didn’t even notice it creeping up. Life has just been covered over with this blanket of fear.
One of the traits I picked up from living in a narcissistic household was a sense of self-centeredness that came across as selfishness, but in reality it was just a deep sense of self-analysis that was my constant attempt to not be further ostracized or disliked.
I always had this passion for figuring out how the brain works, and why people do what they do. Especially my own brain — I really wanted to deeply understand myself and have a relationship with this person who I was walking around becoming. I remember noticing at one point that, when I interacted with people, my brain would relate that situation back to myself.
For instance if I said something dumb or embarrassed myself, or just had a conversation on a random topic, I would go back over it later and question what I said, wondering how they felt about me instead of what it must have felt like to them. It’s like I was unaware that other people processed things in their own way and instead expected everyone to be using that information to judge me, to form an opinion of me, to know more about me… presumably to use it against me later. It felt very, “Me me me.”
This bothered me, because I wanted to be a kind, empathic, compassionate person. So I texted my therapist, “What does it mean when I have difficulty separating myself from other people and realizing they have feelings outside of mine? It reminds me of a toddler. Is there a word for that?” She texted back, “It’s kind of narcissistic….” (This was the same therapist who told me I ‘needed’ benzos, and from this narcissism conversation she told me it was time to get my blood checked, NOW, and told me which doctor to go to. Lots of fear, lots of urgent language being used.)
In reality, I was stuck in hyper-awareness of how I was being perceived. From the outside looking in, that can look egotistical. But it’s actually an acute, constant self-criticism — a fear lens that kept me from being able to see others’ point of view. I was so busy projecting my fears onto their perspective, because I was so certain they were mad at me or hated me. It was a survival response, not because I didn’t care about other people, but because I had constantly had to be hyper-vigilant, trying to control the outcome of my parents’ bad moods and abusive behaviors.
If I changed my voice or my facial expression too much, I could be slapped in the face for cutting my eyes at my step-mom. That doesn’t exactly teach great communication skills, or self-confidence. So of course I was constantly in fear of how others would perceive me.
Learning to be super critical of myself cast a critical lens on life: I wonder if someone is going to take this wrong. I wonder if this will be a threat to me, too. There was no sense of safety to be found for me in those moments, no action was safe. So the world began to feel unsafe.
Another trait that I picked up, which really had me questioning if i was a narcissist for a long time, was how I would get super defensive over things.
When I lived in a household that consistently taught me I was doing something wrong, no matter how hard I tried, or how good of a person I was (which was something I NEVER got mirrored back to me, but I still tried my best to believe), my value was dependent on what I was providing the narcissist or how well I had pleased them. Again, swinging wildly by the hour and how their mood was. This is a very mercurial judgment system. Because of that, my opinions and beliefs were cut down.
I would be told how wrong I was — if not in words, then in demeanor. My dad always had to step in and say something in response to my opinions: whether in smug validation (“I’ll allow that”), or in doubtful questioning (“I don’t know about all THAT…”), the things that I said out loud always had to be run past his system of approval. And a lot of times I didn’t pass. Many times it was just, “Well that’s just not true. But that’s something I had to learn over time, and you will too.” Like children were just peons, but may become someone some day, worthy of validation and respect. Nowhere near his level of wisdom.
What’s really sad is that these judgments were passed on my opinions, too…. things that can’t be “wrong.” But when you’re told you’r4e wrong all the time, you learn that’s how the world works: you are wrong until proven right. You are guilty until proven innocent. Children are not treasured and appreciated, they are bothersome and inconvenient, unless they do something really helpful or conducive to the adults’ fulfillment and happiness.
To me, it felt like my opinions and emotions were just one more thing that my dad had to micromanage and have control over.. like he had all these plates in the air, and he had to be ruling over my emotions and thoughts too, and that was even more of an inconvenience for him. I was a burden for even having them. Because his life was a lot easier when I just played and shut up and did what he said. Less to have to control that way, and he already had so much to do. So much weighing on him.
I learned that even my opinions were somehow damaging others, getting in the way of others, or exhausting others. This was a very lonely feeling, and it caused me to feel super defensive over my thoughts, my emotions, even my existence. Ay time i had a belief form, which is a normal process for children, they would form with this qualifier, “I have to prove it true, or I have to keep it to myself, because it could be wrong.”
That makes it so difficult to live al life where you’re open to the ideas or input of others… everything becomes a potential threat to your system. You’re already living in a state of confusion, where everything you believe about the world is apparently wrong. This makes your internal terrain scary, on top of the outer world being scary, and of course trusting others is scary…. So you just live your life in a constant state of fear. Like a terrified little kitten, who only knows how to hiss and swat at anything that approaches it.
Becoming an adult with this trait is crippling, because it’s nearly impossible to handle constructive criticism. You don’t know when someone is actually helping you or not. I quit so many jobs out of sheer terror and panic, because I couldn’t handle people teaching me how to do things. I constantly felt like I was stupid or a nuisance. I had NO confidence in myself at that point.
Another nuance to this is a third trait, related to the constant fear of hyper vigilance of being in a narcissistic household: the belief that people can be defined by what you observe, and then keeping them trapped in those boxes.
This is something i was always so upset that my dad did to me, keeping me trapped in these boxes of who he said I was. But then I realized that i did it to people, too. I noticed specific behaviors or traits and i catalogued them, based on “safe” or “not safe.” If a person’s words, actions, or demeanor felt like a threat to my nervous system, I placed them into the category of being a threat, and it was really hard for my brain to trust that they weren’t one.
At the same time, I would decide that i trusted people based on the role my brain believed they were supposed to be playing, like parent, teacher, romantic partner, etc., and it seemed as if logic was turned off in my mind: I would overlook harmful actions by certain people, and it was difficult for me to set boundaries and move them into the “threat” box, because I valued being a loyal person.
Fear really gives you tunnel vision sometimes, and I would believe something about someone until proven otherwise. A lot of times this was based on what my nervous system felt when I interacted with them, and my romantic relationships largely mirrored the dynamics I had experienced as a child with my parents. You can probably see where this starts to get muddled and confusing. But again, it’s the result of trying to control outcomes, so I could have the feeling of safety or at least feel like i could prevent total devastation and heartbreak.
These traits really kept me from having close, deep connections with people, because I would inadvertently judging their “safeness” based an initial reaction I had, which was often clouded by fear from prior experiences in the narcissistic home.
I think it’s also really important to talk about how this constant state of fear, having to toe the line all the time, and feeling responsible for other people’s emotions….. this can cause a person to become the same level of micromanaging and controlling that they were trying so desperately to be free from in the first place.
For me, in my quest to constantly be perfect and make sure everything was just right, I learned that I had to be aware of everything, at all times. If my dad came home and noticed something, *someone* had to pay for it. I often got, “You should know better.” And i really took that to heart. Even though none of it was true… we didn’t disappoint him. We were kids. He lived in a constant state of disappointment because he felt like HE was a disappointment. So he managed the environment around him… and I learned to do the same.
Mine was often taken out on my household, cleaning, chores, not being able to sit down and relax, but it also pervaded my life in bigger ways: nothing felt joyful to me. “I should be doing more. i haven’t done enough.” Which meant that all the things that I did do, were also never good enough.
This affected my relationships with others too: romantic partnerships, my kids… nothing ever felt good enough. So I just micromanaged it even harder. People noticed this, too, and told me in their own way: “You’re just so hard to please. You’re unapproachable. Nothing is every good enough for you.” It was this frantic feeling. It’s really worth noting here that this is often recognized as a narcissistic trait: controlling things and being in everyone’s business. But it’s also another survival tactic, rooted in fear.
