Trust yourself : overcoming the invalidation and ‘collapse’ of narcissistic parenting.

One of the worst things that can happen to us when we are not truly seen, understood or mirrored or if we are put down with negative messages all round us growing up is that we lose our natural trust in ourselves and our feelings. I know looking back this is what happened to me. I learned not to value who I really was. I learned that power lay out there somewhere. I learned to seek validation externally and often I tried to change my shape in order to keep that validation. You could say that by my early 20s I was a truly lost soul. I did not ‘know’ that I was loss but I sensed it in my every move and every choice. It makes me cry just writing these words as I finally see so very clearly how lost I was.

But there is another thing about myself I do know for sure. I was always super perceptive, I could see below the surface of things. I saw others fitting to a world though that I did not really understand and I wish that I had had a far stronger belief in my own inner self that got especially lost as traumatic events accompanying my descent into addiction began to pile up. But at the time I was not fully conscious and of course even now I am not always fully conscious either but I see the work of my life and recovery does exist in becoming more conscious or as conscious as I can.

I also now know that I am a highly sensitive, connected and empathic person. I can not always have understanding of others inner worlds in their full complexity though, I am not a magician or a mind reader, I may be a little psychic in that I pick things up at times. I can get a hunch or intuitive feeling and its always best that I follow that but one thing I really wanted to write about today is this issue of trusting ourselves.

There is certainly knowledge that can be externally acquired and that is useful to inform ourselves with but there is also another kind of knowing that exists purely on an inner level and comes from being deeply connected to and intimate with our inner selves. I find lately that sitting quietly and just tuning into myself is very helpful. It helps me get into a calmer place. I have been in a situation for many years now of feeling into the sufferings of others or responding to their demands with trying to help which is all well and good but what I also need now is to trust myself more. I can get a hunch that something is not good for me to do and allow others to pressure me and then I can collapse or fold or I feel an impulse or need for another’s attention which might also not be as good for me as just giving myself the attention or validation or affirmation I need.

As someone who has dealt with a pretty voracious inner critic for many years it has been helpful this week to read Karyl McBride’s book on the influence of Narcissistic Mothers… My Mum was not a toxic narcissist, she had good attributes but since she did not understand her own feelings always very well she at times found it hard to respond to ours and I absorbed some toxic messages from my Mum of self doubt and invalidation which I have had to work hard over past year to learn to understand. In her book Dr McBride talks of the need to transform our inner dialogue and separate from the toxic parent within we internalise in the form of messages of self blame, shame and denigration.

Narcissistic parents have a hard time recognising the True Self of their children, they may be antagonistic towards certain qualities in them, they may be envious or shaming or invalidating. They may leave us a strong internalised message that ‘we are not good enough’ and come to think of it doesn’t nearly everyone in this increasingly narcissistic culture seem to struggle with this sense of not being good enough or acceptable as they are?

And as children of such parents we also struggle to feel like fully formed emotional beings. We remain emotionally stunted or unindividuated in some areas of life and somewhat childlike so it can also be hard for children of narcissistic parents to feel competent, worthwhile and necessary and it can also be hard for us to accept and identify our true needs, dreams, wishes and desires. We may instead have learned to gravitate around those of our parents or older siblings and in so doing we can easily lose not only a sense of Self but our deeper connection to and trust in our own feelings, needs, dreams, wishes and desires.

In order to feel that we can trust ourselves and fight for our right to our own needs and separate out from the stranglehold of a toxic legacy of narcissistic stunting or abuse we should be able to do the following :

Develop a capacity of experience a wide range of feelings deeply with liveliness, joy and spontaneity. (In other words we feel allowed to have our authentic feelings and don’t try to numb them… we also allow ourselves to express them.)

Develop a capacity to expect appropriate entitlements… eg, respect, lack of self doubt, feeling able to give yourself credit or praise when it is due.

Develop a capacity for self activation and self assertion, identifying dreams and desires and finding a way to go about manifesting them.

Allow acknowledgement of self esteem… a belief in our own worthiness and an ability to internally validate ourselves independent of external world approval.

Ability to soothe painful feelings and self regulate. When life is painful we can find ways to feel better and not make things worse through self flagellation, or wallowing in misery. We can seek solutions.

A capacity for creativity, fun and play.

A capacity for intimacy. Being able express ourselves fully and honestly in a close relationship with another person with minimal abandonment anxiety.

An ability to be alone. We are able to have a relationship with ourselves.

Experiencing a continuity of self… you have access to an inner core in yourself which is real and remains constant throughout the trials and tribulations of your life.

Those of us injured in childhood by lack of validation, those of us who never got to develop inner healthy supporting parents will most likely struggle in many of the above areas. Our early legacy left us with a weak or non existent core strength. And we are vulnerable to what McBride calls ‘collapses’ – when others say or do something that touches the raw spot of wounds affected by the conditioning messages of childhood which traumatised and badly affected us we feel completely deflated by the said incident and it may take us some time to recover. We may be triggered into self attacks and negative shame spirals.

We are also often given the message in narcissistic families that we are being ‘too sensitive’ when really we are just reacting due to hurts or wounds or barbs from our true feelings. In this way we are shamed again and such messages can also often be retriggered in the present and lead us to suffer self doubt and self questioning as to the legitimacy of what we TRULY DO FEEL. Getting in touch with our true feelings and validating them, preventing inner critic attacks on us is also very essential work of recovery.

Trusting ourselves and coming to know ourselves in depth is very important in recovering from wounds of narcissistic injury or poor parenting. Externalised messages of society can bolster an unnecessary sense of shame that feeds into these wounds of ‘not good enough’ that so many of us struggle with. But there is a way back to trusting ourselves and coming to know that who we are truly does have value, meaning and purpose.