How do you begin to reclaim your life when so much of it has been organised around someone else?

Growing up with a narcissistic parent can create a strange kind of relationship.

You may spend years wanting their approval.

Trying to make them happy.

Managing their emotions.

Trying to become the son or daughter they need you to be.

And the difficult part is that you may not even realise you’re doing it.

I didn’t.

This is something I understand both through my work as a therapist and through my own experience with my father.

For many years, I didn’t fully understand how much of my life had been organised around pleasing him. Looking back, there was a deep, largely unconscious feeling that if I gave him what he needed, perhaps I would finally receive the affection and approval I wanted from him.

But it was never quite enough.

And eventually I had to ask a much harder question:

What would my life look like if it actually belonged to me?

What do we mean by a narcissistic parent?

The term narcissistic parent gets used very freely these days.

Not every selfish, difficult or emotionally immature parent has narcissistic personality disorder.

Sometimes people use the term to describe a parent who is consistently • highly self-focused • entitled • controlling • manipulative • lacking in empathy • dependent on admiration • unable to make enough room for their child’s separate emotional world.

For me, the label became useful because it gave me a framework for understanding a relationship that had confused me for years. If you’ve found yourself thinking “my father is a narcissist” for the first time, that recognition alone can feel disorienting.

Suddenly certain patterns made sense.

But I don’t think you necessarily need a diagnosis for your parent before you’re allowed to take your own experience seriously.

The more important question may be:

What was it like being their child?

When love and approval become conditional

My father was largely uninterested in who I was as a person.

But as I got older, I discovered ways of receiving little pieces of the approval I’d wanted from him.

I could work for him.

Make him money.

Give him my time.

Admire him.

Make him feel important.

And in return, I might receive a little emotional pat on the head.

The difficulty was that it never lasted.

There was always more to do.

If you’ve grown up having a narcissistic father, you may recognise some version of this.

Perhaps you learned:

• I am loved when I perform • my value comes from what I provide • their emotions are my responsibility • saying no makes me selfish • my needs come second • if I disappoint them, I risk losing the relationship.

Nobody necessarily says those things explicitly.

They can become something much deeper.

A felt understanding of how the relationship works.

Your life can quietly become organised around them

This is one of the parts I think can be difficult for outsiders to understand.

You can be an adult.

Have your own home.

Your own relationships.

Your own career.

And still feel that, somehow, your life doesn’t completely belong to you.

Decisions are made with the parent somewhere in the background.

What will they think?

Will they be angry?

Am I being selfish?

How do I explain this so they won’t be upset?

You may become incredibly skilled at • anticipating their mood • explaining yourself • keeping them happy • avoiding conflict • taking responsibility for their feelings • abandoning your own preferences before they become a problem.

This pattern has a name: narcissistic parentification, when a child ends up carrying the emotional weight that should have belonged to the parent.

From a Gestalt perspective, I think of this partly as losing contact with ourselves in order to maintain contact with someone else.

We become so oriented towards the other person that the quieter question gets lost:

What do I want?

The painful part of seeing what is happening

For me, one of the first parts of healing was actually recognising the relationship for what it was.

That wasn’t liberating at first.

It was painful.

Because underneath the recognition was something much harder.

Perhaps the love I had spent years trying to get wasn’t going to arrive in the form I needed.

There can be enormous grief in that.

Part of us may continue hoping:

Maybe if I explain it properly.

Maybe if I’m successful enough.

Maybe if I give a little more.

Maybe this time they’ll finally see me.

Recognising the pattern can mean grieving not only what happened, but also what we kept hoping would eventually happen.

When I realised I was waiting for my father to die

There was a moment in my own life that changed something for me.

My father was having heart surgery. I was in my early thirties and found myself wondering:

If he died, would I continue living my life the way I was living it?

The answer was no.

And then came the uncomfortable realisation.

What was I doing?

Was I effectively waiting for my father to die before I gave myself permission to live my own life?

That landed heavily.

Because I could suddenly see how much power I had handed over.

The next question became:

If I’m not responsible for his happiness, what would I actually do with my life?

For me, that was the beginning of reclaiming something.

Agency.

Boundaries aren’t just about learning to say no

There’s plenty of advice online about dealing with a narcissistic father and boundaries.

“Just say no.”

“Stop explaining yourself.”

“Go no contact.”

But setting a boundary can be extraordinarily difficult when your whole relational history has taught you that saying no carries consequences.

When I began making decisions based on what was right for me rather than what my father wanted, there was pushback.

Guilt.

Accusations.

Emotional pressure.

The suggestion that I was selfish or uncaring.

And this is important.

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t knowing what boundary you need.

It’s tolerating what happens inside you after you set it.

The guilt can be enormous.

Your adult mind may know you’re entitled to make your own decisions while something much older inside you is saying:

You’re a terrible son.

You’re selfish.

Fix this.

Go back.

You may need other people around you

I don’t think I could have done this entirely alone.

At that time, I had a partner and friends who supported me.

That mattered.

Because when an old relational pattern is deeply embedded, logic alone isn’t always enough.

You can know the boundary is reasonable and still feel terrible for setting it.

Having other relationships around us can provide something to lean into while the old pattern is pulling us backwards.

That might mean • therapy • a partner • trusted friends • support groups • family members who understand • communities where your experience doesn’t need to be constantly defended.

Sometimes we need enough support around us to tolerate doing something different.

The guilt may not disappear immediately

For me, it didn’t.

When my relationship with my father eventually ended, I still felt guilty.

Part of me genuinely believed I was a bad son.

I had to live for a while with the gap between what I knew and what I felt.

Gradually, something changed.

The guilt softened.

Then there was anger.

Resentment.

Grief.

Different layers emerged.

And with enough distance, I began developing a different understanding of myself.

My father was no longer the central reference point around which everything had to be organised.

I could begin asking what my life was.

Healing doesn’t necessarily mean fixing the relationship

Sometimes relationships with parents improve.

Sometimes people establish firmer boundaries and remain connected.

Sometimes they reduce contact.

Sometimes there is no contact.

There isn’t one correct ending.

For me, the distance became important.

But I don’t believe a therapist should decide what relationship you should have with your parent.

What matters is that the choice increasingly becomes yours.

Not a decision made entirely from fear.

Not another attempt to punish or please them.

But something grounded in what you need and what kind of relationship is actually possible.

Becoming the centre of your own life

Carl Jung used the term individuation for the process of becoming more fully ourselves.

I think there’s something particularly relevant in that when we’ve grown up around a narcissistic parent.

If childhood taught us to organise ourselves around another person’s needs, adulthood can involve discovering who we are when we stop doing that.

Not:

Who does my parent need me to be?

But:

Who am I?

What do I value?

What do I want?

What relationships nourish me?

What do I no longer want to participate in?

What kind of life would I choose if I didn’t need somebody else’s permission?

Those can be surprisingly difficult questions.

They can also be freeing ones.

Recovery can become less about your parent

Early in this process, it’s understandable that the parent occupies a lot of mental space.

You may read everything about narcissism.

Replay conversations.

Become angry about things you hadn’t previously recognised.

Try to understand why they behaved the way they did.

Some of that can be important.

But I hope eventually the centre of gravity begins to move.

From:

“Why are they like this?”

towards:

“What do I want my life to become?”

Because ultimately, surviving a narcissistic father isn’t about becoming an expert on your parent’s narcissism.

It’s about gradually reclaiming the parts of your life that became organised around them.

Your boundaries.

Your relationships.

Your choices.

Your sense of worth.

Your ability to disappoint someone and survive it.

Your capacity to know what you want.

Your life.

Narcissistic Parent Recovery in Brisbane

My approach is relational, somatic and Gestalt-informed, with particular attention to shame, boundaries, attachment, self-worth and the ways these earlier relationships can still be experienced in the body.

You don’t need your parent to have a formal diagnosis.

We can begin with what the relationship has been like for you.