The 5 types of narcissistic parents

hi everyone it's dr romney and welcome back to this youtube channel on all kinds of things related to narcissism and narcissistic relationships i know that many of you have wanted a little bit more content on parenting and this video actually not only addresses what many people who are co-parenting with a narcissist wants to know but for any of you who had a narcissistic parent this might also give you some information that will help you sort of think through these narcissistic relationships you're in whether you grew up in one or you're trying to raise a child

now in one what i'm going to be doing together in this video is bringing together about all the information on all those different narcissistic subtypes grandiose covert malignant and talk about how those directly impact parenting both if you're co-parenting and if you grew up like this so let's take this on okay now i know and and we already have a series on this if you want to go back it's quite a long so it's like a 10 to 12 episode series i've talked about the different subtypes of narcissism on this channel grandiose covert malignant etc

etc and these different types these different narcissistic types they present in different ways in different circumstances and one of those circumstances and is probably where it's almost most profoundly felt is parenting because this pattern of narcissism can be a little bit varied for example a malignant narcissist is a very very different parenting experience for the child or a co-parent than would be a communal narcissist it can often mean that survivors of different patterns of narcissistic abuse may also be having different experiences and why maybe your story is not the same as someone else who had

a narcissistic parent so much of the content and the material on narcissism out there often really focuses on the baseline grandiose narcissist and that's fine but it misses the boat on other people's experiences and it can be quite frustrating if you are trying to co-parent with a covert narcissist or you were your parent as a covert narcissist and what you are reading doesn't fully capture your experience you're already confused enough you don't want the content to be confusing as well as you already know the core of narcissism remains the same for all of the narcissistic

types right the court of narcissism the lack of empathy the entitlement the grandiosity the inability to manage frustration or disappointment the validation seeking the arrogance and the egocentricity as well as the core insecurity of these folks but the ways that these things that these patterns are expressed and experienced can vary based on the narcissistic type now we know that parenting is a core relationship it is it's probably one of the most core relationships right it shapes the psychological development of a human being and if you are co-parenting with a narcissist knowing the specific challenges you

may encounter based on sort of the narcissistic type of your partner can help you understand what you are up against or understand perhaps as an adult what your experience was as a child with a parent and maybe continues to be with that parent as an adult so let's start at the top yes where everyone else starts so we might as well start there the grandiose narcissist you know what they are grandiose and larger than life and attention seeking and arrogant and selfish let's face it the grandiose narcissists are the ones who care a lot more

about how things look than how they actually are parenting for a grandiose narcissism when a grandiose narcissist becomes apparent it's about putting on a show right like look at us and i've got these great kids and on and on and on in public they may actually really try to look like devoted parents and talk about their kids and the pictures and the whole nine yards but in private they're actually really not interested in the day-to-day slog of being a parent they may be the proverbial disneyland parent they're there for the big days and they may

also though push children to an excessive degree to be good at something that makes the parent look good be good at sports be good at school be good at performing whatever matters to the parent and may actually disconnect from the child when the child is not succeeding as they want them to or is being the person they want them to right the child is like an extension of the narcissistic parent the grandiose narcissistic parent needs to be liked and so they will do what they need to do to be liked but they also don't tolerate

frustration well so they may get quite angry and have a short fuse with you know what is on the inherent ups and downs of parenting they may also forced a lot of the unpleasant parenting duties on the other parent so they can stay as the well-liked parent now if you had a grandiose narcissistic parent you knew then and now it was all about them all the time and to this day as an adult having been raised with that kind of parent you may still be vulnerable to pushing your own needs away and attending to the

more demanding people who are in your midst if you are co-parenting with a grandiose narcissistic parent it can be jarring and maddening to watch them make parenting all about them and they'll talk a tough game about what a terrific parent they are and how much they love their kids but actually really not be up to the drudgerist demands of what parenting really is and with a grandiose narcissist in the post-divorce period they may be into the kids when it works for them but for example when they want to start dating and want to start living

their new best life be prepared that they may view your children as a little bit of an inconvenience in their new life and will variably embrace them and put them on display based on the function the children are serving for them and you'll still find yourself having the less pleasant jobs of having to be the homework police and all of that now with the malignant narcissist this is a total different game malignant narcissists are much more menacing they can also be quite exploitative more manipulative more prone to lying and may even be almost paranoid or

even sadistic in the kinds of actions they engage in a divorce from a malignant narcissist can often be really unsettling malignant narcissists can also be quite cold as parents almost kind of scary parents and children may actually be quite a bit more anxious with them in this form of narcissism we will see that these are parents that are often more concerned with power control and dominance and will bring these expectations and these styles into parenting in fact the malignant narcissistic parent may not be that interested in being a parent but may be more apt to

attempt to use the courts and processes of custody and all this stuff to punish you by manipulating custody and financial arrangements and just keep playing games with that you know constantly adjusting and drawing you back in to sort of courtroom situations if you were raised by a malignant narcissist you may still experience symptoms that feel more in line with post-traumatic stress as an adult and you may still feel quite activated triggered and on edge and may still find it difficult to feel safe in adult relationships or have chosen adult relationships that aren't safe if you

are trying to co-parent with a malignant narcissist i can tell you right now you are exhausted you are exhausted by what was very likely a terrifying divorce process you're exhausted and fearful of leaving the children with their their co-parent since malignant narcissists can often be quite impulsive and careless so they may not lock things properly or or make things that are fully safe for the children you may be fearful of the menace and the threats that they still hold over you and you may rate you may remain concerned that because you may still have contact

with the malignant narcissist through the children how much more psychological harm they can continue to enact the covert narcissist which is a style and a subtype many of you are familiar with are characterized by a more vulnerable and victimized style they do often present as victims feeling like life never goes their way nothing they want it ever happens people are out to get them that they deserve so much more from life as parents they will often remain sullen victims and they may share this victimhood inappropriately so with children who may struggle with confusion and guilt

about how they can step in and help or rescue their parent who sort of feels like such a victim right the child doesn't understand that they just want to help the parent they want to help their their covert narcissistic parent feel better if you are raised by a covert narcissistic parent you may still vacillate between guilt and anger which makes sense because the covert narcissist is so prone to this sort of victimized identity you may have felt as a kid you often had to rescue them but also feel anger because of how much parenting was

always about them not the children about the parent and they would talk about oh parenting takes such a toll on me and nobody in this household ever appreciates me enough and everyone out there has it so much easier than me as a parent if you are co-parenting with a covert narcissist it feels like having another child like an actually having a very sullen angry adolescent child they will at times be victimized and sullen and you'll feel that you have to babysit them to prepare them for watching their children you have to get them completely ready

and they may not be able to manage the demands of children because they feel so victimized and put upon and then the covert narcissist may alternate between getting really rageful and angry at the children and then feeling sorry for themselves saying i'm doing the best that i can and nobody is supporting me that's a very common stance in the covert narcissistic parent and then in other words the kids often feel the need to rescue that parent what about the communal narcissists well communal narcissists are the folks as you now know they're the ones who derive

their validation from doing charitable deeds or good deeds these are people who often want to be viewed as humanitarians or as saviors and will often want to be on center stage or get validation via social media for all the good things they do for other people look at me i'm a rescuer and they're often looking real good while they rescue however all that charitable do-gooderness seems to fade behind closed doors when they're with their family and while they may be enraptured with helping children on the other side of the globe or children that are not

related to them through their charitable endeavors they may actually be quite disengaged from their own children they may want to put their parentness on display for a photo op which makes them look like look at me i rescue people and i am a parent but they really don't want to do the work of parenting and well they will though want to get the validation of being this really publicly involved parent your child may wonder why their parent is bringing their a game to other people and to other children and the entire family system may actually

start to burn out on hearing how lucky you are to have such a community oriented person as part of their family if you are raised by a communal narcissist you are well acquainted with the alternate universe in which you were raised a world in which everyone told you how wonderful your parent is and how much they support the community and how much good they've done and yet behind closed doors you had to endure your parents lack of empathy and disconnection there can be a lingering sense if you're raised by a communal narcissistic parent of feeling

like you're not enough or maybe even just plain confused since your parent was able to bring their best to other people if you are co-parenting with a communal narcissist it will sometimes mean working around their so-called schedule of being a great person and they may want the children on demand to help them look good at events and on camera and in pictures and in front of other people but maybe the communal narcissistic co-parent may be less engaged at times when the children aren't actually as useful to their portrayal of themselves as a savior and in

fact maybe always asking for workarounds regarding custody and all of that so they can focus on their important work for other people with the entitled expectation of the communal narcissist being that everyone should support their important world-changing work including you their ex-partner and make your schedule i mean so and then by making that make your schedule work around theirs now the neglectful narcissists are the narcissists are those are those who literally almost don't engage with people in their world unless they need something from them and in that way can feel very manipulative neglectful narcissists view

people as conveniences as a bridge to get something done and they a neglectful narcissist will sort of access other people when it works for them a person who's neglectful narcissist will often view children as a major inconvenience and as such as such the neglectful narcissistic parent may be very disengaged very disinterested and very remote this can be very challenging for a child who is often trying to garner the parent's attention and this can over time impact a child's sense of worth as the child may feel as though they are not worthy of their parents attention

because the parent is so inattentive if you were raised by a neglectful narcissistic parent it was honestly is probably destabilizing because these are often very cold distant detached remote parents with little interest in parenting or in other people unless those other people are completely aligned with what they need and what if your interest for some reason might have coincided with your neglectful narcissistic parents interests then they might actually have been interested in you for a minute but then we'll go ahead and start doing them on their own so in the best way i could portray

it is that you were the child with a baseball glove waiting forever for the parent to show up and throw the ball just like you thought parents were supposed to do and they never did this can be a difficult setup going into adulthood a sense of not enoughness a feeling that you have to jump through hoops to get the attention of other people of having to win this kind of parent over in fact you might find that you as a child you actually took on hobbies or interest but the neglectful narcissistic parent had just to

get them to spend a little time with you if you are co-parenting with a neglectful narcissist the harder work that you face as a co-parent may be in helping your children through the crisis of wondering why their parent has relatively limited interest in them in fact a neglectful narcissistic parent may just cut bait and leave you with the kids full time and you have to carefully help your child not to internalize the sense that they're not enough not to mention your healing your own healing from a marriage spent with someone you barely i'm with someone

who barely knew that you existed it's as though you were just like an unwatered plant in that marriage the self-righteous narcissists are the ones who derive their narcissistic validation and supply by sort of holding themselves up as a morally superior person and will be more focused on doing things just so rather than from a more flexible place of the heart which is what you need with kids everything can't just go off on militaristic precision self-righteous narcissists can actually be a bit confusing because they often look quite loyal they may be for example the pillars of

a religious community following the religious edicts to the letter of the law they may be really into following rules they may have a very black and white sense of right and wrong this type of narcissistic pattern we can also see these are folks who are very judgmental and they can be critical of other people criticize everything they could criticize other people's work ethic they criticized their lifestyles they criticized their jobs they criticized their houses they criticized their behaviors there's a tremendous rigidity to them and all of us feel like a 10 year old child in

the face of their scoldy judgmental and rigid ways of being for a child this is a very strict and limiting childhood in many cases self-righteous parents are often quite rigid punitive judgmental and the child is raised with a strong sense of conditionality a sense of you have to follow the rules to be loved self-righteous narcissistic parents are often quite authoritarian as well children raised like this often believe that this kind of parent values the rules of order more than they actually value the child and into adulthood that kind of rigid cold and choosing morality over

love and being there for your child can result in some self-devaluation if you had this kind of parent you had what might have felt like more of a militaristic or ridiculously strict and judgmental childhood self-righteous narcissists even when they have plenty of money can be very very cheap you know miserly and while there is some virtue i strongly believe in the virtue of developing a work ethic and a child having a small job to to make some money of their own their the cheapness of the self-righteous narcissist often meant an inefficiency that was unnecessary and

when they could could have helped family members and their own children with their goals or lighten some of the stress in that and they could have done it easily they would often wield money in a very punitive way having a parent like this can often result in lots of self-judgment going into childhood in the worst case if you have this kind of parent you might actually have been sort of infected by their rigid moral mantles and sort of keep staying to that rigidity in some cases we see extreme rebellion if you're raised by this kind

of parent to the point of harm putting yourselves in risky situations and acting out but in general having a parent like this can fuel a person with a chronic feeling of the sense of shame and judgment trailing you wherever you go if you are co-parenting with a self-righteous narcissist be prepared for financial debates about the smallest things for the entire period of having minor children they are often quite ritualized and obsessive around all kinds of details and even if they don't really enjoy the kids they will fight over the extra three hours of custody they

are entitled to because one time traffic meant you got home a few hours late from a three-day vacation despite you not holding them to the same standard so it can be maddening or self-righteous narcissist you have to do this with self-righteous narcissists they will often be quite openly judgmental about some of the rhythms of your household your children may have to adjust to going back and forth between one home that's rather rigidly regimented to a fault and then perhaps if your home is healthier to the more responsive rhythms of a healthier home we also know

that narcissism often also develops out of a cultural or generational dynamic perhaps parents who for whatever where they came from or what was happening when they were children who endured trauma or were from cultures characterized by authoritarianism very very sharply demarcated economic stratification from cultures that are very patriarchal and top-down and familial structures these patterns may also sometimes be observed in members of a family who they themselves had or have or had parents who had also endured the tremendous stress of a difficult migration experience or a difficult refugee status or war or other unrest where

they were living these are sometimes families from a cultural perspective we can also see that families in which loyalty is everything and it's almost a blind loyalty difficult family members can often get enabled because of these cultural and his family historical issues she's been through so much that's why she's difficult don't say anything that sort of kind of a sequence if you were raised by a parent with these kinds of histories behind them these really difficult histories you may have felt very hopeless and caught between two worlds the culture in which you live and the

culture of your family you may have felt stifled or silenced by these patterns but you may have also and may still also feel very guilty at pushing back knowing your family or your parents history leaving you in a permanent sense of dissonance knowing that they had gone through so much you might have had an easier path that explained some of their patterns but you're still struggling and even as an adult struggling on how to fit your family into your life if you are co-parenting with someone who has had this sort of generational or cultural issues

contributing to their narcissistic style you may have tried throughout the relationship throughout the marriage to attempt to understand their culture and the origins of these patterns and may have even justified your partner's behavior to yourself and your children because of knowing what the family that their family or in-law's family or has been through and you and that your your former partner's family may have had very different conceptions of child rearing than you do and you may also have different conceptions of child rearing than your in-laws your children may be actually quite confused by all of

this and also feel guilty if they know about their family and their cultural history of that other parent so it can also cause a tension in there as you listen to this you may think my parent was actually more than one of these types i might or i had a parent with one type and now i'm in a relationship or co-parenting with somebody who's narcissistic and it's a different type and that just means more challenges and you may be facing the varied challenges of the varied types which is actually quite taxing knowing these issues as

i've laid them out in this video actually doesn't change anything in your circumstances per se my hope is that understanding some of this can help you be better prepared for co-parenting challenges not wasting time on communication strategies that don't that won't and don't work to maintain realistic expectations and to recognize the psychological hurdles that you may face continue to face as an adult as a result of being raised within these patterns i hope this gives some clarity on how these subtypes work and how they may be differentially impacting you as a co-parent or as an

adult who has a narcissistic parent thanks again and also in the comments section here's a thought if you feel comfortable you can even share like yeah i had a malignant narcissistic parent and now i'm married to someone as a covert narcissist it may be interesting for everyone in the comment section to sort of see how that's playing out for everyone else thanks again