Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents: Why You Still Feel Like Everything’s Your Fault

Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC

Los Angeles-based anxiety, trauma, and attachment therapist who helps high-functioning adults break free from people-pleasing, perfectionism, and childhood patterns that no longer serve them

Growing Up with a Narcissistic Parent

If you grew up with a narcissistic parent who needed everything to be about them—who could turn your smallest boundary into a full-blown crisis—there’s a good chance you’re still untangling it as an adult.

Maybe you were the peacemaker. Maybe you were the golden child. Or maybe no matter what you did, it was wrong.

You learned early that your emotions weren’t safe to express. That love came with strings attached. That if you didn’t manage their reactions, you’d pay the price.

Even now, you might find yourself freezing up when someone’s upset with you. You feel the urge to justify your tone, your wording, even your existence or immediately assume you’re the one who did something wrong.

Traits of a Narcissistic Parent (And Why It Doesn’t Always Look Obvious)

Not All Narcissistic Parents Are Loud or Obvious

A narcissistic parent doesn’t have to be the loud, showy villain-type you see in movies. Sometimes they’re passive-aggressive. Sometimes they play the victim. Sometimes they’re the “cool” or “fun” parent that everyone else loves—while you’re silently dreading every phone call.

Emotional Needs Come First—Yours Didn’t

What makes someone a narcissistic parent isn’t just that they’re self-centered—it’s that they expect you to prioritize their emotional needs over your own, even as a child. You’re not allowed to have your own feelings, unless those feelings are convenient for them. You might be punished for having needs, or guilted for expressing anything that made them uncomfortable.

Real-Life Signs You Were Raised by a Narcissistic Parent

I see this in my practice all the time. Clients come in saying things like: “I feel guilty all the time.” “I’m so scared of disappointing people.” “I don’t know who I am when I’m not trying to be what everyone needs.”

Here’s what I see most often with adult children of narcissistic parents:

You were praised when you were easy, helpful, and high-achieving—but ignored or criticized when you needed support.
You were made to feel like your parent’s happiness depended on your behavior. (“Look what you’ve done to me.”)
They flipped the script so you were always the problem. You were "too sensitive," "too dramatic," "too much."
They gave you attention when it made them feel good—but withheld it when you needed comfort or connection.
They shifted blame constantly. You found yourself apologizing for things you didn’t even do.

How Narcissistic Parenting Impacts Your Nervous System (And the Way You See Yourself)

When you grow up with a narcissistic parent or ego parenting, your nervous system adapts to keep you safe in a world that was never predictable.

One day, your parent might act like you’re the best thing that ever happened to them. The next day, you’re being iced out for something you didn’t even realize you did wrong.

That unpredictability wires your system to stay on high alert—a state of chronic hypervigilance.

This can show up now, in adulthood, as what many adult children of narcissistic parents describe as “living in their head all the time” or “never feeling fully relaxed.”

How the Past Still Shows Up in the Present

You automatically assume you're in trouble when someone says, “Can we talk?”
You feel like you need a perfectly-worded excuse for something as simple as rescheduling a hangout
You say “I’m sorry” before you’ve even processed what happened.
You feel physically tense after spending time with your parent—even if nothing “bad” happened.
You crave approval but don’t actually believe it when you get it.
You leave a social interaction and spiral for hours wondering if you said something wrong.

This is more than anxiety. It’s your nervous system reenacting survival-mode logic from childhood.

These patterns aren’t stored as conscious beliefs—they live in your body. Your survival system still believes it’s your job to prevent emotional explosions, manage everyone’s perception of you, and earn your place through performance.

Anthropologically, this goes back to attachment wiring. As a child, your sense of safety depended entirely on staying close to your caregiver. If that caregiver was emotionally unpredictable or narcissistic, you learned to suppress anything that might jeopardize the connection—your needs, your anger, even your personality.

So when you feel yourself freezing up in a work conflict, apologizing to your partner for something they did, or going completely numb in conversations with authority figures—that’s not you being “too sensitive.”

That’s your body doing what it was trained to do: keep you safe by staying small.

| Struggling with the lasting effects of a narcissistic parent? Learn how somatic therapy for childhood trauma can help you reconnect to your body and your boundaries.

Why You Feel Like You’re Responsible for Everyone’s Emotions

This is emotional enmeshment. It happens when a parent turns you into their emotional regulator. You weren’t allowed to have your own experience. You were there to keep the peace.

And now?

You take on guilt when someone else is upset.
You try to fix problems before they’re even spoken.
You suppress your needs to keep the room emotionally “peaceful.”
You collapse or dissociate when you imagine taking up space.

This is the fawn response in action. Not because you’re weak—but because your body believes it’s the only safe option. And the work here isn’t just cognitive. It’s somatic. It’s relational. It’s learning how to feel safe being separate from other people without believing it makes you bad or selfish.

Why Healthy Boundaries Feel Like You’re Doing Something Wrong

Boundaries feel threatening when you grew up being punished for them. Your nervous system learned: “Connection depends on self-abandonment.”

That’s why you still:

Overexplain or try to justify every “no” like you’re preparing a book report
Apologize after asking for what you need
Ghost instead of set the boundary directly

It’s not because you’re “bad at boundaries.” It’s because your body still associates them with rejection and rupture.

Healing means practicing new behavior and building the capacity to stay present with the fear it brings up. That’s how you teach your system it’s safe now.

| If you’ve been stuck in people-pleasing or perfectionism, you might be carrying patterns from childhood. Attachment-based therapy in Los Angeles can help you break that cycle.

Grieving the Parent You Wanted (and the One You Pretended You Had)

You didn’t just lose a parent. You lost the idea of who they could’ve been. The fantasy you created to survive. The hope that if you worked harder, stayed quiet, got perfect—they’d change.

And now you’re grieving that. Not because you’re being dramatic—but because you’re finally being honest.

This kind of grief runs deep. It’s grief for the version of you who kept trying. Who was never met. Who never got to rest.

Letting go of that fantasy isn’t betrayal. It’s freedom. And you don’t need their permission to stop performing.

If You're an Adult Child of a Narcissistic Parent, Healing is Possible

This Isn’t Just About Boundaries and Self-Love

Let’s be clear—healing from a narcissistic parent isn’t just about “setting boundaries” or “learning to love yourself.” It’s about unwinding a nervous system that was trained to believe that your needs are dangerous, that your worth depends on performance, and that any disconnection means you’ve done something wrong.

This isn’t mindset work. It’s not a journal prompt. It’s nervous system repair and parts work. It’s grief. It’s giving your adult self the experiences your younger self never had—being seen, safe, and allowed to be whole.

Tangible Signs of Healing

Here’s what healing actually looks like:

You feel that familiar wave of guilt—but you don’t automatically surrender to it.
You set boundaries and your body still panics—but you don’t collapse.
You catch your protective parts mid-spiral and name them.
You stop obsessing over whether every message sounds ‘nice enough.’
You realize disappointment doesn’t equal wrongdoing.

If you’ve been parentified, scapegoated, or deeply enmeshed with a narcissistic caregiver, healing may feel unnatural at first. That’s normal. Your system’s been wired for decades to avoid rupture—and real healing involves tolerating the discomfort of no longer abandoning yourself.

| Many adult children of narcissistic parents find themselves in toxic relationship patterns. Trauma therapy in Los Angeles can help you identify and shift these unconscious dynamics.

Are You an Adult Child of a Narcissistic Parent?

If you’re still carrying the emotional weight of a narcissistic or emotionally immature parent—and it’s showing up in your relationships, your body, or your sense of self—I can help.

I work with adult children of narcissistic parents to:

Unlearn survival patterns and emotional caretaking
Rebuild nervous system safety after years of hypervigilance
Connect with parts of you that were shut down or forgotten
Feel safe setting boundaries without spiraling into shame

This work isn’t about talking about or blaming your parent all session. It’s about finally building a relationship with yourself. One that isn’t shaped by fear, guilt, or performance.

| Learn more about trauma therapy in Los Angeles or IFS therapy in Los Angeles and start feeling like you belong in your own life again.

About Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC

If you grew up having to manage your parent’s emotions while ignoring your own, you already know how Complex Trauma can live in your body. And this is the work I do.

I’m Cheryl Groskopf, a Los Angeles–based Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist & Professional Clinical Counselor specializing in anxiety, attachment wounds, and trauma. I help high-functioning adults who feel stuck in patterns like people-pleasing, perfectionism, and emotional shutdown—patterns that usually start in childhood.

Using a mix of somatic therapy, IFS, and nervous system-based trauma work, I help clients actually retrain their brain and body—not just talk in circles.

Curious what it’s like to work together? Learn more about my approach or reach out here!

Trauma Therapist Los Angeles: Healing Children of Narcissistic Parents

Find support and understanding with Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC. Start your journey to reclaim your self-worth and thrive!

Los Angeles-Based Therapy for Anxiety and Childhood Narcissistic Abuse

FAQ: Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents

What are the mental health outcomes for adult children of narcissistic parents?

Most adult children of narcissistic parents deal with chronic guilt, low self-trust, people-pleasing, emotional burnout, and PTSD-like symptoms—without knowing that’s what it is. These aren’t mindset issues. They’re survival responses wired into your nervous system. You weren’t overreacting. You were simply adapting!

How do I deal with a narcissistic parent while still living with them?

Start by protecting your peace, not trying to fix them. Use the grey rock method (boring = safe), set energetic limits, and regulate your nervous system in real time. You’re not needy for needing to shut down or space out—it’s survival mode kicking in. Your job isn’t to change them. It’s to stop abandoning yourself in the process.

Do all narcissistic parents have narcissistic personality disorder?

Not even close. Most narcissistic parents don’t have an official diagnosis. Some are emotionally immature. Some have narcissistic traits. Some just never learned how to emotionally show up. But the impact on you? Still very real. Still worth healing.

What if my parent meant well?

Intentions don’t erase impact. You can hold both: they loved you and didn’t know how to meet your needs. You don’t have to demonize them. But you do get to stop minimizing what happened just because “they did their best.”

Can therapy help even if this happened years ago?

Yes. Because your nervous system doesn’t run on calendar time. That gut-punch of guilt after a boundary? That shrinking feeling in conflict? That’s your childhood "safety map" still driving the bus. Therapy helps update that map. So you can stop overexplaining and finally feel like you’re allowed to take up space.