What To Do If You’re Holed Up With a Narcissistic Parent
Until you can get your own place
There’s only one thing worse than living with your parents — and that’s living with a narcissistic parent. Let’s face it, nobody should have to live with their parents after they grow up. It’s only natural to want your own space so you can make avocado toast at 3:00 am. But life is complicated — many people can’t afford their own place these days. So for anyone stuck at home with a narc parent here are a few tips.
This is not a prison sentence even though it feels like it.
Taking care to monitor your boundaries while you’re living with the narcissist can make all the difference between coexistence and insanity.
All narcissists are obnoxious to deal with, but the narc parent is the worst because they know how to push your buttons since they are the ones who installed them. If you want to maintain your sanity you’ll need to be true to yourself and not allow your narc parent to overrun your boundaries.
Choose Your Battles
It’s best to pick your battles. Not every boundary needs defending, some things can just slide under the door until another crisis is over. Try to avoid heated discussions about politics and religion. These topics tend to inflame everyone’s egos and get out of control. Also, try to ignore the petty blame games like arguing over who did what or who forgot to buy something. Save your energy for you most important concerns.
What Are the Big Deals?
A Parent Who Violates Your Privacy
This could include anything from reading your diary, snooping through your purse, looking at your checking account, listening in on your phone conversations, or making you hold the bathroom door open while you use it. Each of these is an invasion of your privacy. If your parent can’t respect that you are an adult with a mind of your own and you let it slide, there will be hell to pay down the road. This might come in various dramas from information the narc gleans from your conversations to them meddling into how you manage your money, time, and relationships.
Other abuse might include a sexually abusive parent making remarks about your body or an emotionally needy parent dumping all their frustrations on you because they’re struggling with their marriage. Both of these are a type of incest coming from a parent.
If your parent touches you inappropriately — either sexually or physically hitting you, they are still abuse and most likely a continuation of what once was child abuse. Such repetitive crap will bring on huge triggers. Many times people who grew up being hit or molested don’t realize that domestic violence happens to kids too. If this is happening, you might find you need to plan a secret escape.
If you’re in physical danger,
or being sexually abused,
please call for help.
Text a friend. Call the police. Do whatever you have to do to be safe.
A Parent Who Disrespects You
Brad was only eight when his dad told his mom to stop putting his art on the fridge or he would turn into “pansy.” Brad is afraid to tell his dad he’s gay. He knows the fight that would come out of it. This is probably not the time to come out when you are relying on your family home for health security. That battle might be better won another day when you have the power to move out and be on your own and pay your own way.
If you are queer, a feminist, or just want to choose your own major in college or have a boyfriend or girlfriend that your parents dislike — every one of these things is a big deal. If you can’t live life on your own terms because a narc parent is suppressing you, it’s important to make a plan and find a better living arrangement for the future. Sometimes even knowing that you will move at the end of the summer can help you deal with the chaos around you.
No parent worth their egg or sperm has the right to dictate who you are or will become just because they donated to your existence. If these things about you are already known and your narc parent continues to put you down, you might want to leave the room and face time a friend.
If the narc parent insists on talking to you in a disrespectful way, tell them you won’t hang out with them until they treat you with respect. Sometimes Christian parents will say they can’t respect you because you make different choices than they would. We don't have to respect each other's choices, but family members should always treat each other with respect.
Go Gray Rock Whenever You Can
No one argues as much as a narcissist. They think every conversation is a zero-sum game and they want to prove they’re right. It gets exhausting. Whether you want to argue back because you know you‘re right or you wish you could be swallowed up by the carpet, you might want to go “Gray Rock.”
“Gray Rock” is a term used to describe remaining as passive as possible when you’re interrogated by the narcissist. Gray rocks do nothing but sit still and blend in and you can too. It might seem hard at first, but you will catch on to the rhythm of it. The main purpose is to show no response to what the narc says.
The success of Gray Rock depends on you not showing any emotion when the narcissist tries to get a rise out of you. They will say things they expect you to get upset over, but if you can act nonchalant, you won’t give the narc the narcissistic feed they want — which is to see you blow up like Old Faithful.
Don’t mention Gray Rock or the narc will look it up on the interwebs and catch on to what you’re doing. Remember, in the case of Gray Rock, less is always more.
Escape As Much As You Can
No matter what your physical location, you can go just about anywhere in your mind. Movies, books, music, virtual museums, travel shows, earbuds, texting friends, face-timing friends, etc. all of these are ways to escape the narcissist.
While you travel in your mind, you might even forget you’re stuck in a house with the narc. But if the narcissist keeps following you around and taunting you, slip into the bathroom to take a deep breath. Or take a shower or bubble bath while you’re in there.
In the future, you will escape the narc’s web — perhaps forever, but for now, keep focusing on your dreams and don’t allow the narc to rob you of simple joys and peaceful moments. You are worthy of respect and space and you have to right to ask for it.
Cherilyn Christen Clough broke the rules when she started writing about her family’s secrets. Some claim she sold her soul to the devil, but she prefers to think of it as gaining freedom. You can read about her strange childhood in Chasing Eden A Memoir.
