Many children suffer grave emotional problems from living with a self-absorbed parent. The child is disregarded and used as an extension of the parent. Often, this means the child’s physical wants and needs, points of view, and emotional needs go unmet.
The Role-Reversal Relationship
Everything revolves around the self-absorbed parent. The relationship is one-sided and directed by the parent. Such a parent enlists the child in caring for and catering to him or her. This creates a role-reversal relationship that is inappropriate for the child’s growth, development, and welfare.
Self-absorbed parents have many characteristics in the ways they relate with their children These relationship traits are well summarized by both Nina W. Brown, EdD, LPC, in Children of the Self-Absorbed and by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD. in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Such parents manipulate the child to ensure the spotlight of admiration stays on the parent. They lack empathy for the child’s emotional needs. They may show jealousy with any steps the child takes toward individuation––being his or her own person.
Children’s Emotional Responses
Children are affected by growing up with a self-focused parent. When a child is not related to as an individual, a separate person from a parent, there are many emotional and psychological consequences for the child.
When a child’s individuality is disregarded, it affects self-esteem and confidence. Low self-esteem in turn can create anxieties and depressions, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, and runaway behaviors.
There are a wide variety of consequences children suffer in growing up with a selfish parent. Are there discernible patterns to their suffering? Homer B. Martin. M.D., and I found that there are. Children respond to self-centered parents differently based on the child’s personality style. This style is created by how a child is emotionally conditioned within the family. We discovered personality styles form into two types––omnipotent and impotent. READ MORE...
- Many self-sabotaging cycles are trauma responses and patterns learned earlier in life as self-preservation.
- A fear of abandonment is really a fear of intimacy and connection.
- To change these patterns, we need to be willing to unlearn patterns of self-preservation while learning patterns of self-healing.
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Familiar and comfortable are not the same thing as healthy and safe. Yet, we are often attracted to what is familiar and comfortable because it resonates with our early conditioning. Until we begin taking a deep dive into our personal history, our repetitive patterns, and our learned conditioning, our ability to see whether we’re engaging in self-sabotaging behavior may be blurred.
We may be in denial or turn to rationalizations or projections as excuses for why we continue repeating unhealthy patterns. At the core of all self-sabotaging behavior, we typically find fears of being abandoned, not feeling "good enough," and struggles with self-identity and self-esteem. However, once we peel back these layers, we begin seeing that many self-sabotaging cycles are trauma responses and patterns learned earlier in life as self-preservation.
Why We Self-Sabotage
Unresolved trauma: If we grew up in a toxic family, we were probably handed certain implicit roles, often for survival. We may have had narcissistic or abusive parents who shamed us, physically abused us, or emotionally neglected us. Or we may have had a parent who enabled others in the family to continue cycles of self-defeating behavior, including their own.
These wounds are what get carried with us as self-sabotaging behavior. We often recreate the same patterns in our adult relationships that were modeled and conditioned for us in our childhood, including messages of not feeling worthy, fearing abandonment, or believing maladaptive mindsets that were taught as normal. Eventually, we wind up turning to more misery as “comfortable” or “familiar.” READ MORE...
Think back to the last time you went out to a restaurant of your choosing for no particular occasion. Where did you choose to go—and why did you choose to go there? For me, it was the McDonald’s drive-through. Although you can practically smell the French fries from the balcony of my apartment, there may have also been a hidden reason that you and I chose to eat where we did: our self-esteem.
Our identity has an undeniably important impact on how we view ourselves and the world around us. A concept from social psychology labeled self-verification theory finds that we prefer that others view us the same way that we view ourselves.
For example, if you view yourself as intelligent, you likely appreciate it when someone compliments you for being a smart person. However, if you view yourself as unintelligent, you may feel uncomfortable and downright awkward when someone calls you clever. In other words, we prefer when others view us similarly to how we view ourselves because it justifies our sense of self.
How we spend our money is hardly any different. When shopping, we will often perform mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that we deserve the product we want. Self-esteem plays a key role here, meaning that people with low self-esteem gravitate towards cheaper, more affordable, and more mundane options.
Even factoring in one’s income or budget and frugality as a personality trait, self-esteem can predict which product participants chose to buy. Research finds that we tend to self-verify in our buying behavior, meaning if we view ourselves as having low self-esteem, we will choose, consciously or unconsciously, to buy things that reinforce our self-view.
In one study, the researchers measured participants’ self-esteem and asked them how willing they would be to dine at two restaurants, one described as “cool” and the other described as “non-cool”. The study revealed that participants with the lowest self-esteem opted for the restaurant described as “non-cool” whereas participants with the highest self-esteem picked the “cool” restaurant. READ MORE...
