Separation

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

Margaret Thatcher

In most parent/child relationship there is a time of separation when the parent acknowledges that their child is growing up and the child recognizes they have their own voice and are ready to take on the world.  This is a natural healthy process that occurs through out the world in most places accept in Narcissistic parental/child relationships.  When a child is born to a narcissistic parent this isn't a new human being entering the world but an extension of themselves.  Their child becomes a part of themselves.  They give the child great powers.  The child controls their happiness, their health, their very existence is wrapped up in their child.  The child must be controlled and absorbed into the parents existence.  Seems complex and kind of weird if you look at it from a third person's point of view.  The narcissistic parent sees nothing wrong with their behavior so it is up to the child to try to figure out this distortion and extricate themselves.  Not an easy process. 

First the child must recognize that there is something different with how they are being raised.  It is kind of like asking a fish if it is wet.  How does it know when they have never felt anything else?  Next comes the realization that being born to a set of parents is not being a indentured servant for life.  I am grateful to my parents giving me life but that does not mean I am required to give them my life.  My favorite story that helped me see what was happening is the Emperor's New Clothes.  It is the child that sees the lies.  After recognizing the difference if the child of the narcissistic believes that a healthy relationship is possible there are some very rough times ahead.  The narcissistic desperately trying to cover up the lies and the adult/child trying to find the loving parent they want to have like everyone else creates an awkward exhausting dance. (Not everyone else has loving parents but it is one of the struggles.)  This is where things can get very weird.  The more desperate the narcissistic becomes the more verbally and sometime physically vicious they become.  After all, the narcissistic is fighting for their survival.  By endowing the child with so much power, if the child grows up and moves on in life, all that power goes with them.  Distorted thinking....just like in the Emperor's New Clothes.  Much like ripping a leach off their leg a grown child severing the unhealthy relationship with the narcissistic parent, there is emotional damage.  Takes time to heal.  Occasionally a low contact relationship can occur.  Sometimes the grown child's only choice is no contact.  People looking from the outside in, can't understand why the grown child is so mean to their aging parents.  The frustration of trying to explain that things are not always how they appear wears thin.  (Pun intended, I am kind of weird this way.)  In the Emperor's New Clothes the child is validated...too many times in a narcissistic parent/child relationship the child gets stoned to death.  I am fully aware that some people will think what I have written is exaggerated or over the top.  To me, I am over 50 years old and just now claiming my life as my own.  For those that have experienced this delayed separation from parents... Keep doing what you have to do to become healthy.  To parents that believe their children owe them for being born...No they don't.