A narcissistic parent lacks healthy boundaries. This causes “carried shame” in their children. Carried shame is experienced differently by the child than “healthy shame.” The important difference between the two? Carried shame originates from the narcissistic parent. It is not your own emotion but a feeling carried from the shameless actions of your narcissistic parent.
An adult child of a narcissist (ACON), may unconsciously carry their parent’s shame well into adulthood. Carried shame can affect personal, work, and intimate relationships.
In addition, if you have a narcissistic in law, your spouse may carry shame and have some of the same reactions discussed in this article.
Carried Shame and the Narcissistic Parent
Carried shame feels overwhelming and all powerful. It towers over our psyche. We feel small, stupid, and powerless. Worse? It feels like it will never go away.
In a way, this is true.
The carried shame can’t go away until you recognize it is not yours.
That is because we can’t process our narcissistic parent’s feelings. We carry them, however, until we see where our psyche is still enmeshed with the narcissistic parent. Then, we must practice healthy emotional boundaries and sort out what feelings our truly our own versus what feelings are actually those of our narcissistic parent that we’ve carried from the past.
When we find those carried negative feelings, we need to say this is not my shame. Discover whose shame it is and give that shame back to the boundary-less person who slimed you with that feeling in the first place.
Our Own Shame: A Healthy Sense of Right and Wrong
Healthy shame, on the other hand, does not originate from a narcissistic parent, or any other external source. It is a message from our conscience that we have neglected our own value system.
What Does Healthy Shame Do For Us?
When we feel healthy shame, we are noting an awareness function that reminds us we are imperfect humans, limited, as all are all human beings and have operated out of our own sense of what is right and wrong. When appropriately felt, we don’t like it, but shame passes.
As it does so, it leaves us feeling whole and may even teach us a healthy lesson. However, if we carry the shame of someone else, like that of a narcissistic parent, it can have damaging effects on us and our relationships.
What’s an Indication I Have Carried Shame From My Narcissistic Parent?
I feel guilty all the time and I don’t know why, is one way carried shame can feel. It is toxic because it is injected from a parent’s abusive behaviors. You’ve unintentionally held onto the shame narcissistic parents should feel when they do boundary-less, harmful behavior.
A narcissistic parent does not feel healthy shame when they do violating behaviors to you. Instead, the narcissistic parent projects their shame onto you. This results in feeling inappropriate guilt. Self loathing can be triggered in you by the narcissist’s inability to feel guilt, shame, or empathy.
As children, we can’t recognize that this projected shame does not belong to us. And, once we internalize it as a child, it is hard to see these feelings don’t belong to our own psyche. Even through adulthood, we may mistake these feelings for our own. They actually belong to our narcissistic mother or father.
What Are the Effects of Carried Shame From a Narcissistic Parent?
Carrying our narcissistic parent’s shame has crippling effects. A diminished sense of worth and value can last well into adulthood.
For example, we can become hypersensitive to feedback. This is because the negative voice we carry from our parent will amplify the well meaning criticism from trustworthy others. The traumatic memories from our past activate a burning toxic shame. This toxic shame is carried from the narcissist who violated our trust in the first place.
The Narcissistic Parent’s Use of the Scapegoat Role to Place Carried Shame on Their Child
Narcissistic parents transfer their shame onto their children, particularly onto the scapegoat of the family. This happens because a narcissist does not feel that their behavior is shameful. The scapegoat child—often the truth-teller in the family, knows in his or her bones that something nameless is amiss. This child is targeted by the narcissistic parent.
Usually the chosen scapegoat in the family is highly intuitive. This child is prone to take on the pain and troubles of others. As the scapegoat matures, he or she often becomes the “truth teller” about the harmful behavior happening in the family. This can attract negative attention from siblings and parents alike. The scapegoat or truth-teller’s sense of reality may be eroded while still in the family home.
The Narcissistic Parent Let’s the Child Hold Their Own Feelings of Inadequacy
Carried shame is an intolerable feeling that gives you a sense of inadequacy and unworthiness. It makes you doubt that you deserve to happy or free.
When a child feels this way, they believe it is their own fault that their narcissistic parent treats them cruelly and doesn’t love them. Their trauma is carried with them for a long time. They carry the internalized message that they are not good enough, bad, and a defective human.
In a family with a narcissistic parent, the scapegoat is not a person, but rather an object. Narcissists tend to objectify all people.
In contrast, when the child is in the golden child role he or she is treated as the good object.
If, as a child, you were put in the scapegoat role and treated as the bad object, it can feel as if you existed solely as a container for the blame and burdens of the family. The shame that is placed on the scapegoat child would make any kid feel confused and unsure. They will wonder why they’re made to feel this way, leaving them to try to figure out what they did wrong.
How to Release Carried Shame Dumped on You By a Narcissistic Parent
Because the origins of carried shame do not belong to you as an adult and childhood may be a painful and avoided memory, it is hard to figure out how to rid ourselves of such traumatic feelings.
Adult children of narcissists have learned to overcome carried shame. They’ve released the feelings of ownership of the carried feelings in order to rid themselves of that shame. Learn to let go of the shame that is not yours. Give it back to the past. It has nothing to do with you. Let go to the carried shame and make room for new experiences and healthy people in your life.
To do this, get in touch with your feelings and what your narcissistic parent did to you when you were younger. If you were placed in the scapegoat role, you may have succumbed to the role and allowed all of the troubles and burdens of your family to be placed on your shoulders.
Now is the time to release all of that negative energy and know that what happened to you when you were younger was not your fault and that you are a worthy person.
Breaking the Chains of a Narcissistic Parent: A Comprehensive Guide to Healing
With time, self-compassion, and support, it’s possible to break free from the lingering effects of a narcissistic parent and begin building a healthier, more fulfilling future.
Arming yourself with a deep understanding of how the narcissistic parent has predisposed the way you respond to the world, the ways you shape your relationships, the way you evaluate yourself and even how you navigate your career is worth the trouble.
The term narcissistic parent can stir up deep emotional pain, confusion, and even denial for those who grew up in a narcissistic family system.
Invest in the Truth
For many, the recognition that one was raised by a narcissist is a challenging realization to confront. It is well worth it! Until you understand the narcissistic parent’s influence upon your present choices, it’s hard to make the best choices for yourself or regarding the people you choose to have closest to you.
A narcissistic parent’s way of child rearing creates patterns of behavior in you that, though even sometimes subtle, are profoundly damaging. Recognizing these patterns is a courageous and essential first step toward emotional freedom and a more peaceful life. Other adult children of narcissists have done the work before you and through their bravery, we’ve learned that narcissists are highly predictable once you understand how they operate.
This guide dives deep into identifying the characteristics of a narcissistic parent, unraveling the signs of abuse, establishing firm boundaries, and ultimately, embarking on a transformative journey toward a more fulfilling life.
What Is a Narcissistic Parent?
A narcissistic parent is one who places their emotional needs above their child’s well-being, using manipulation, conditional love, and both overt and covert control as tools to maintain dominance. Their self-centered behavior often leaves children emotionally bruised, insecure, and longing for validation that never comes. As an adult child of a narcissistic parent, you’re highly likely to these painful feelings unless you recognize how you were affected, you can’t learn how to respond in a new way to the same old nagging problems.
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