A psychotherapist is concerned about the rhetoric concerning narcissistic parenting circulating online. Photo / Getty Images
A growing number of young people are diagnosing their parents as “narcissists” – egged on by ill-informed support groups.
When growing up, Charlotte* struggled to understand her father’s behaviour. If she achieved a good grade in a school assignment and returned home happy and proud, he made her feel terrible.
“He would rant at me and deteriorate my self-belief,” she says. “He’d say things like, ‘You may think you’re all that, but let me tell you, this is what people really think of you.’”
It felt as if he was in competition with her. So much so that she eventually stopped sharing good news with him for fear of the consequences.
His mood swung manically. There were periods where he was “quite wild”, the life and soul of the party, drinking and taking drugs. There were also periods of depression, during which he withdrew from family life for weeks on end. At times he was full of rage and terrifying, or he was meek and broken. Charlotte felt like she had to walk on eggshells around him.
“It was volatile,” says Charlotte, now in her early 40s. “You could do something one day like not tidy up and it wouldn’t be noticed, but another day it might be a red rag to a bull.”
His version of reality was often very different to hers and he would say things that were clearly untrue. “It’s quite scary being raised by someone who can lie and believe the lie,” she says. “It’s very disorienting for a child.”
She watched him bully and isolate her mother, destroying her confidence, just as he convinced his daughter she was “worthless” and that any proof she was good at something wasn’t real. He couldn’t tolerate being challenged.
When Charlotte was 20, her father, who ran a small business in south London, was admitted to hospital after a suicide attempt. It was then that he received a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a condition characterised by grandiosity, or a sense of superiority, a need for admiration, a lack of empathy and a sense of entitlement.
In the subsequent years, Charlotte’s relationship with her father broke down and they became estranged. He died a couple of years ago, but his behaviour continues to affect her, she says.
“It casts a serious shadow. I’ve had years of therapy.”
Now a parent herself, she is sceptical about the seemingly huge cohort of adults casting a critical look at their own childhoods – or their current relationship with a parent – and concluding their parent is a narcissist.
“I think people don’t really understand what it means, and bundle any kind of toxic behaviour under that label,” she says.
In reality, NPD is estimated to affect between 1% and 5% of the population, although precise data is hard to come by because few actual narcissists seek a diagnosis. It is said that if you’re wondering if you are one, then you are not.
Yet it appears a growing number of young adults are making apparently subjective, non-clinical diagnoses of their parents. Many are going online to call out their mother or father for narcissism.
A Reddit forum called Raised by Narcissists – a support group “for the children of abusive parents” – has almost a million members. TikTok users can scroll through reams of video content about “narc” parents, explaining the tactics, signs and behaviours, often in list form.
One TikToker discusses the harm caused by her “narc” mother’s use of phrases like, “Wait until I tell your dad”, “How do you think I feel?” and “What have you got to be sad about?” A toxic father, explains another TikToker, “demands and expects a lot from you”. He tells you what to do “instead of asking for what he wants”. They tell you over and over how much they did for you, says a third.
“You are not crazy,” one self-identifying daughter of a “covert narcissist” mother tells viewers. “Your mum gaslit you and manipulated you most of your life, most likely.” A covert narcissistic mum will be jealous of their daughter, she explains.
The more you scroll, the more it can seem like narcissistic parents are everywhere.
Self-help books on the subject have proliferated, with titles like Raised by Narcissists (published 2024), You’re not Crazy – It’s your Mother (2021), Narcissistic Mothers (2019) and Will I Ever Be Good Enough? (2023). And if you’re wondering if your own parent is a narcissist, an endless number of online quizzes are a quick Google search away.
But this explosion in content can bring its problems, some therapists warn.
“We have a tendency now, probably through social media, to oversimplify things,” says Alison Roy, a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist and a registered British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy practitioner. “We want simple explanations of ‘What is wrong with me? Who can I blame? Can someone just give me a very clear diagnostic tool that helps me understand why I’m feeling so distressed and uncomfortable?’.
“Those of us with long training and experience in mental health will say most issues are far more complicated than being explained by one clinical pathway.”
Parents may well be causing their children emotional harm, she says, and she has seen clients attribute this harm to their parents being narcissists. But it’s rarely as straightforward as saying “Just blame the parents” and applying the “narcissist” label, which the smartphone generation might be quick to do.
“Because we have access to these handheld devices, what people are doing probably is spending a lot less time sitting with their own discomfort and trying to make sense of it, and [are] looking for quick answers, and that’s my concern,” says Roy. “I do see parents who are very absorbed and can be emotionally neglectful because they’re so obsessed with their own issues, but actually that’s quite rare.”
Parents can do damage even if they care deeply about their children; they need help and support themselves, says Roy. “It’s a much more complicated picture, and if we just start labelling things with these self-diagnostic tools, we risk severing meaningful relationships.”
Severing ties with parents – or going no contact, as it’s called – is commonly discussed online, where communities of self-identifying children of narcissist parents deploy their own special jargon: NC stands for “no contact”, VLC for “very low contact”, and so on. The same words crop up repeatedly: toxic, gaslight, trauma.
Part of the booming interest in diagnosing one’s parents with a serious personality disorder stems from a heightened awareness of such conditions, therapists believe.
“Increased awareness for sure has made a big difference as it allows people to identify unhealthy and unacceptable behaviours,” says Ronia Fraser, a trauma recovery coach, and an expert on narcissistic abuse recovery. “There’s also been a change in children-parent relationships. Whereas before children would not dare to speak out against their parents, it has now become more acceptable to call people out.”
But are we at risk of over-diagnosing parents as narcissistic?
“Absolutely,” says Fraser. While calling out unacceptable behaviours is a good thing, she says, “it’s become trendy and labels are handed out freely and easily, often out of context. A parent actually parenting and their teenage child not liking it is not narcissistic abuse. Someone disagreeing with you is not gaslighting. In a time of social media pop psychology, a lot of terminology is widely overused, which unfortunately takes away from the seriousness of real narcissistic abuse.”
The go-to manual for mental disorders, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), outlines clear criteria for NPD, which is characterised by a pervasive pattern of behaviour that begins in early adulthood.
“We can hook on to some of those traits and say, ‘Oh yeah, my parent’s a narcissist,’” says Rebecca Vivash, a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy accredited psychotherapist. “They may be at the lower end of the spectrum, but [the term] can be used and abused a bit.”
A parent with NPD, like Charlotte’s, can have a profound impact on a child, causing them high anxiety, low self-esteem, depression and codependent tendencies (an unhealthy or excessive attachment to another person, such as a partner). But experiencing these things doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve been raised by a narcissist. It’s easy to blame a supposed narcissistic parent for one’s own issues, without taking responsibility for oneself.
As any good therapist knows, there are helpful and less helpful ways to approach our difficulties. For Vivash, working out where problems such as anxiety and low self-worth come from, and how to move forward, is more important than applying labels.
Roy agrees. “Understanding why they are distressed and what they can do with it is much more useful than having a diagnosis,” she says.
And a term like NPD isn’t one to flippantly bandy about, stresses Charlotte. It’s a world away from having a parent who’s just “kind of a bit toxic or annoying.” Those who misuse the word narcissist “have no clue about the severity and horror of what it really means,” she says. “It’s disrespectful for people who truly are victims of this.”
*Name has been changed
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