The Core Truths and Myths of Growing Up With A Narcissistic Parent’s
How weird is it naming a child after a living parent if religion or inheritance aren't factors? Imagine you’re an alien from the Andromeda galaxy, and you have flown Galactic Arrow all the way to earth to meet the humans. While you're visiting, you're invited to see a birth. A real live, human birth - the child of the Ambassador you're staying with. The Ambassador is having a son, and it's beautiful. It will be a little gross to watch; it's a tiny, squirming pink human ready to be stuffed full of calculus and episodes of the young Shelton. But then you notice the nurses holding up a form for the father to fill out. When he's asked to write in the new human’s name, the father says, ‘just copy my name into the boxes, please.’ Weird, right? Humans haven't mastered cloning, have they? No, they haven't. But the dad wants the boy to be called the same name as him. Then it gets even weirder. The father looks at the newborn and asks the doctor, ‘could you also make his genitals look like mine too? Whether it's cut or uncut for tradition or health, just make it match mine.’
The Ambassador you met isn't religious. He's not bequeathing some noble title onto his firstborn, which could only be inherited if he has the same earthly name and penis. It's just custom because whatever we haven’t accomplished in life as humans, we kind of put on our children to pick up the slack pretty much from day one. Welcome To Earth. Where narcissism is the available right to a parent. Some of our friends and our listeners give us ideas for shows and give us feedback and actual research. And I want to give a shout-out to Nikki, who helped do some writing on this and gave us some ideas. She is an entrepreneur, a real estate agent, and a good friend. Thank you, Nikki.
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Actress Leighton Meester had a narcissistic mother, allegedly. Her mother Constance stole the money Leighton was sending home from her acting gigs to the tune of $7,500 a month, which was supposed to go to her brother's medical care. But the mama used the money on her own cosmetic procedures, and when she was confronted about it, Constance threatened to sue even more if her daughter didn't raise it to 10K a month. Again, allegedly, but a judge did rule in Leighton’s favor back in 2012. Drew Barrymore's mom used her daughter's name to get too fancy nightclubs for 8 years. Matthew McConaughey couldn't tell his mother the details of his life since she made it a habit to run to the tabloids with any news he shared.
Can narcissistic parents make for well-rounded children? We know narcissists can make more narcissists; That's as old as kings having a little tyrant princess who terrorizes the village. But in today's episode, we want to ask what happens when you are born out of a ‘me, me, me’ environment? And we have three myths to get us started.
Myth One: Can the apple really fall that far from the tree? Can toxic, selfish parents create well-rounded children, or are they just better at hiding it?
Todd: We're going to dig into the dynamic between narcissistic parents and humble children and discuss which one wins in the end. But first, I want to tell Joe about the most extreme example I can find. I want to talk about one of my favorite activities, yoga. I do yoga four times a week. I'm a huge Yogi. So, our first narcissistic parent is the infamous Bikram Yoga. Have you heard of this guy?
Joe: I have not, actually. I thought you were trying to convince me to do a yoga episode honestly until we started working on this one.
Todd: There's some dispute, but what he took was very basic old, thousands of year-old yoga, and rebranded it to Bikram Yoga. It's Hot Yoga. What's different about Vikram from regular Hot Yoga is it's the same sequence of 26 positions.
Joe: So, he took something that looks super uncomfortable to begin with, realized that people were cranking the temperature up to make it more uncomfortable, and then he brought in 26 poses.
Todd: This was already established. But when he put his name on it, it got a following. He started in Beverly Hills. When he started, he didn't have anything. But as he got more popular, he got some celebrities, which really spiraled him to the top. His school starts to grow, and it is an absolute performance. It is said he made at least 75 million dollars from this. Well, the problem came once he started getting very successful. He started to be very verbally abusive to his students and his teacher students. It wasn't uncommon for him to make homophobic slurs or to call people fat disgusting pigs. This is where he started to get in real trouble. It's okay to charge whatever for your class. It's okay to franchise. What's not okay is to verbally abuse people. He just got so full of himself; he started to see himself as something other than human and that he could do whatever he wanted, including assaulting and raping women. He ended up fleeing the country to avoid the legal problems.
Joe: Holy shit. Okay…well, that's a twist. Sorry to interrupt the flow, but would it be safe at this point to call Bikram a narcissist?
Todd: thousand percent. This takes us to his daughter, Laju Choudhury. She's 26 years old today and started her own yoga practice. And even though she stays away from talking down about her father, she also doesn't say he's innocent.
Joe: So, she came right up behind that wreckage he left, and she started a business in the wreckage. That is so crazy to me. Even more, she looks so well rounded, down to earth, and put together - something that I was not expecting as a child of Bikram.
There is something to be said for seeing your parents sink a ship and then knowing to avoid the iceberg. That might be the connecting tie, that successful people have messy parents, but it's because they get to watch them sink ships and wreck their own businesses and lives – thus learning what NOT to do.
Myth Two: Narcissism in parents all look the same, right? It's just people trying to live through their kids - drunk dads at-ball games screaming at the umpire.
Anyone listening to this may ask the same question; you don't have to have a large red flag of a narcissist. You can simply have a parent who hits a couple of these markers and narcissism comes in three different flavors when it comes to parents. It is not always a Bikram screaming at people or Matthew McConaughey's mom giving secrets to the tabloids. So, we're going to go through these, and I want to remind everybody we are not doctors. We don't have ‘doctor’ in front of our names. We are reading from other people's good sources, and we really recommend you check them out.
Do you think that's what happens with these narcissistic parents? That they push the line so far with their power and their control that kids end up saying they don't want to be like them? They probably see some of their strong suits but don't want to follow the negative stuff. I wonder if you need a certain amount of insanity to make your kids scared into humble and well-rounded. Sure, parents need to be a little obsessive for the kid to get that many reps and whatever it is. They have to be a little bit, but some just take it too far, and that can drive kids to not be like that in the long run.
Now the thing that everybody kind of knows is that a narcissist is somebody who has an inflated sense of self-importance. That malignant narcissism and the danger of narcissism is knowing that you are important and having that go against reality. So, the idea that I'm the most important thing on earth and evidence to the contrary will be ignored. If somebody tells me I'm not the best, I will simply fire back with no. Keep in mind that narcissism is not a diagnosis in and of itself. You can have things that come with narcissism. You can have a narcissistic personality without having what's called NPD, which is a narcissistic personality disorder, and narcissists aren't necessarily abusive. Some narcissists are perfectly capable of living normal lives. Just mentally on the back burner, they think that everything is about themselves.
I'm going to quote an article here from The Mighty; they talk about the classification of narcissism. They say, "a narcissistic parent is someone who lacks the capacity to consistently care for and honor the dignity and well-being of the child in a way that the child requires for their adequate emotional, mental development." So, that is narcissism, and a parent to summarize that paragraph. It just means they're bad at looking at their child as an individual and giving them the growth that they need. What does that look like? It looks like a parent who is more concerned with themselves than the child and the more extreme the case of narcissism, the more likely you are to see physical abuse. It can be a parent that doesn't want to address your needs. It can be a parent that wants to take over the conversation when in reality, you really need something and they instead talk about themselves. It looks like a parent only showing love to a child if they act in a way that is pleasing. In short, it’s not a one size fits all type of thing.
Now, the obvious classic narcissistic parent is called the covert narcissistic parent. They are quiet. They are socially avoidant. They couldn't care less about money or fame. This is somebody you're not going to see like Bikram screaming at 400 people in the yoga studio. Instead, they just say that their pain is bigger than anyone else's, including their child's, and they react with anger at any suggestion that they've made mistakes. They lean on the children for emotional support and self-esteem, playing favorites among children – favoring the one who is the most supportive or giving them validation.
The next one is even more sneaky. This is called the communal narcissistic parent. And this is sort of like the most helpful parent. They are empathetic and nurturing to the people around them. They believe that they are being great to others and never stop doing good deeds. But they also believe their good deeds set them apart from everybody else and they craved to be validated in this life. To quote the article, they say: “disordered communal narcissists are apt to leave their kids feeling like the most selfish person alive if they can't recognize how generous and caring their parents are.” It is damaging but sneaky because, on the surface, they can look like the parent of the year.Myth Three: All our examples so far are narcissistic parents creating humble geniuses. So, if narcissism works, why stop?
I'm starting to believe that on occasion if you have a super narcissistic parent like Bikram, it can be a benefit for the kid. It seems like if you have a narcissistic parent, they have a little bit of genius credibility. It feels like maybe having a narcissistic parent isn't a death knell, and it doesn't mean you're going to be a wreck of a human. It means you can actually become better than them; You can take that skill and add humbleness to it to make it farther and more respectable than they did. With that being said, how do you start healing from having a narcissistic parent? I guess the first step, and we're going to take this from the same article as before, is to educate yourself, seek professional help, set boundaries, and cultivate safe relationships.
Each one of these are life steps that take months, if not years, to accomplish. But honestly, setting boundaries doesn't just mean learning boundaries. It means setting them with your parents as an adult. This can often feel like you are abandoning them, but that is exactly what a boundary is. It's healthier to consider that you don't necessarily have to cut off your parents but setting a boundary and deciding how much or how little you want a narcissistic parent in your life is vital to healing. You weren't given a choice in the matter as a kid, but as an adult, you get to decide how much of them is healthy for you to see.
It is also for the health of your children. If you eventually have them, boundaries like this can prevent your parents’ narcissistic behavior from reaching your kids. And the other part of this is to take time to assess what you want and need. So, it's not just setting boundaries for the sake of boundaries; It's also about doing this because you will have different needs as an adult than what you needed as a child. You may not have gotten the attention you needed when you were a kid, and you may not have gotten the emotional growth you needed. But you can certainly decide what you need now that you're an adult. If that is an occasional phone call to your parents, that is totally up to you.
What is the return on investment of being humble? I’m going to turn to The Washington Post for this one. They had an article back in 2016 called Leaders Are More Powerful When They're Humble, and it's all research and good statistics. Humility scientists say that this is when somebody has an accurate assessment of both their strengths and weaknesses, especially in the context of the world around them. So basically, if you can recognize your abilities and look around you and realize that you're coming up short, you're perfectly skilled for something, or you could learn a few things from your surroundings, that is where humility rises.
Humility is just recognizing your strengths and weaknesses and admitting the weakness part out loud. You don't have to hide anything. Duke University did a test with 155 participants, and during this study, they sorted people from humble to arrogant. They found that the intellectually humble took longer to read the statements; they took their time because they realized something was fishy and at the end of the experiment. They were better at identifying the statements. So, if they felt like they had gotten something wrong, they were better at shoring up that weakness. The truly humble were able to see that they had made a mistake and fix it. The arrogant skimmed while they were reading, they were less accurate in identifying statements, and they were more susceptible to fake news. The researchers also observed that the humble folks tested wanted to learn and improve. They would stop and correct themselves. They wanted to get into the ambiguity and enjoyed the new information. When the researchers followed them, they found out this carried over to everything; they were higher academic achievers, improved their semester, got better grades, etc.
It's not just saying that you'll be smarter and get better grades if you can make yourself humble after having a narcissistic parent. That is shallow as part of this study. They found out everything in their life was better. If you are humble and practice it, they're more prosocial and build better connections. They were tolerant and more sensitive. They gave away more money throughout their lifetimes and were less likely to use sex as a tool of manipulation. If you think this makes you naïve, the Journal Of Management, study 105, found humble CEOs had reduced pay disparity between themselves and their staff, and they dispersed their power. Basically, they hired more diverse teams, and they gave people the ability to lead and innovate. So humble leaders had less turnover and higher employee satisfaction. And they raised the company's performance.
Joe: Maybe we need a humble episode. It looks like humble people almost literally enjoy all of the gifts of life, like everything that you would want in a partner, CEO, or a parent. That's, that's a humble person.
Todd: We got to put that with trustworthiness. We have a long way to go, but it's two things we're trying to get better at.
Joe: Oh, no, not me. I'm going for Bentleys and running a yoga studio. I just want to tell people about how cool it is to be humble and trustworthy. I am aiming for tigers and cocaine.
Todd: Yeah, Joe didn't care about me doing yoga until he found out he could make $75M and get a Bentley. Now for some reason, he wants to go with me this Tuesday.
Joe: Let's get in our poses, Todd.
Final Thoughts
It may seem odd to compare the narcissism of parents with the humility of their children, but it seems to bear out that high achievers often come from parents who have lost sight of their narrative, their own self-worth. Behind so many successful men and women, there are dance moms and Hollywood dads, parents who desperately crave achievement and validation but can't get it for themselves. So, they lean on their kids.
If you come from a narcissistic parent, we have a message to pass on to you: you can set boundaries. Because parents have done a lot of things for us, and we allow them to do a lot of things to us. It's up to you to decide how much time and energy you want to give to a narcissistic parent, even if that's just a friendly call on birthdays and holidays. It is not your heritage to feel guilty over a parent; Respect them but decide how much contact is healthy for you.
You are not your mother. You are not your father. Everything you've accomplished in your life is your own. Surviving family trauma is an achievement in and of itself. Every trophy, plaque, and award you've gotten beyond that, it’s yours - all yours. And if you picked up the gift of humility along the way, then you represent the best of us.