If your parent cannot be wrong, ever, then you must be wrong whenever you feel they have hurt you, are being unfair or indifferent to you. It’s simple math, really. For a narcissist, admitting fault and expressing regret is as humiliatingly painful as conceding they are worthless and unworthy of love or respect. They live in a perilous black and white mine field of a world, zero-sum, win-lose, and see all conflict through that wary, limiting, reptilian lens.

The child never gets the chance to experience being treated fairly, since that could involve the parent, incapable of being wrong, feeling bad about something unfair, thoughtless or cruel that they did. The child never gets to be heard in any dispute, same reason. The child never learns from her parents that people can resolve disputes amicably, since all they will see in any dispute is a grim and threatening war face and the angry, unbending insistence characteristic of narcissists.

In another family the child might learn that everybody makes mistakes, and that mistakes should be acknowledged, forgiven and learned from. That an honest conversation can clear up a lot of misunderstanding and lead to real peace and growth. That feelings can be safely expressed. That one willful adult doesn’t always get the last word on everything. If you know that everyone makes mistakes, that talking things through can make everyone feel better, that sincere apology and forgiveness are real things, then you have optimism about life. You understand that change is sometimes necessary and growth is a real possibility.

If you grow up in the paranoid, adversarial world of someone who can never be wrong, all bets are off for hope and change, unless you do tremendously hard work to recover some optimism. If someone cannot be wrong they also can’t be introspective or vulnerable. A person like that has little hope for progress of any kind, only continued implacable domination of anyone they fancy weaker, or stronger, than they are.  

This video lays things out beautifully. The survivor of narcissism has a hard time grasping that basic things people not raised by narcissists take for granted, some kind of fairness, a bit of respect, the right to be listened to when troubled, are actually possible.

transcribed from the video:

I can tell you what normal is not. It is not normal to grow up hating yourself or wondering why you aren’t enough or for a child to believe that they are responsible for a parents feelings, or that a child who wants to just be seen and heard, and loved for who they are is being a needy brat.   It is not normal to be in a relationship where you walk on eggshells and feel crazy and feel that the only way to get your needs met is to give in on everything. 

It is not normal to hold back on saying something for fear of being shouted down or gaslighted.  It’s not normal to watch a parent being manipulated and devalued and broken down by your other parent. None of this is normal.  

Normal, if I were to speculate, is feeling safe, feeling that you are worth, at least, being listened to.   Normal is respect.  Normal is  empathy.  Normal is being able to say what you need and maybe the other person can’t or won’t meet it but they do not shut you down and tell you that you are selfish or greedy for wanting something basic. 

Normal is being able to have a normal disagreement, where everything is not  personalized and you are attacked for just not getting into line with the other person.  Normal is people getting along and collaborating and not just one person holding court.    But folks, normal, that’s all survivors of narcissistic relationships want and it is not grandiose to want normal.