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        🎭&nbsp; What it means to have grown up with a narcissistic parent
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        <strong>Was your childhood spent managing your parent's emotions, protecting their community image, and learning that your needs always came second to their ego?</strong>
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        Does this sound familiar?
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        💎 Your parent treated you like an emotional confidant—sharing adult problems, demanding comfort, and punishing you for having needs of your own.<br><br>
        💎 You became a tiny expert at reading emotional weather patterns, knowing exactly which version of your parent you would encounter based on subtle cues others could not detect.<br><br>
        💎 You are hypervigilant about your own behavior, constantly checking to make sure you are not recreating the family patterns you have worked so hard to escape.<br><br>
        💎 Even now, wanting space from your parent triggers guilt—like you owe them their wellbeing.<br><br>
        💎 You often swing between emotional extremes with your partner: you stuff everything down to keep the peace, or finally snap when you desperately need to be seen.<br><br>
        💎 You struggle to meet partners with whom you can build healthy intimacy—both of you having only learned invasive closeness or protective distance from your parents.
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        You may have become a tiny expert at reading emotional weather patterns, knowing exactly which version of your parent you would encounter based on subtle cues others could not detect. Your achievements were either stolen and claimed as reflections of their parenting, or dismissed if they threatened to outshine your parent's own accomplishments. Privacy was a foreign concept - your diary, friendships, and personal thoughts were all subject to their scrutiny and control.
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        You may have learned to bury your authentic self so deeply that you sometimes struggle to know who you really are beneath all the adaptations. Setting boundaries feels impossibly difficult because saying "no" was treated as betrayal or rebellion. Now you find yourself attracted to relationships that recreate these familiar dynamics, or swinging to the opposite extreme and becoming emotionally unavailable to protect yourself from further enmeshment.
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        💔&nbsp; The Core Wound
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        "You learned that love is earned through service, your worth depends on how useful you are to others, and expressing your authentic self risks losing the connection you desperately need to survive."
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Tools & Learning

👑11 Ways Narcissistic Parent Trauma Affects Your Relationships

Come Here, Go Away

Going to the Opposite Extreme

Lost in Boundaries

Loving and Hating Intensely

No Playbook for Love

Same Dance, Different Partners

Sex as a Movie

The Accommodator

The Advocate

The Rescuer

The Volcano