Grief is our response to loss, however our ‘parents’ are still alive. Growing up with narcissistic and enabling parents means you have no parents, just abusers. If or when you go ‘No Contact’ we can feel relieved, but also like we’ve lost a parent due to abuse being normalised. However, we are mourning something we never had. The pain and grief is that we will never, or never had a normal childhood with caring loving parents, even if we have previously believed that our childhood was good. We take off our ‘rose-coloured glasses’, see the truth and grieve for what could have been.
Feelings of inadequacy, not being enough, being more, and trying to fix a conditional relationship that is unable to be rectified, will dissipate as you accept that you are enough, and perfect exactly as you are. There will be no more arguments, hitting, confusion, frustration, constant criticism, gaslighting, or walking on eggshells; gauging the emotional temperature before you do or say anything.
We can feel hurt, lonely, guilty, shameful, and even envious of other children who have healthy, loving, normal parents. We are grieving the loss of childhood and the parents we never had, as they do not exist. We are also grieving loss of faith and trust in others, lost opportunities, and the fact that life just isn’t fair in the parental lottery.
As time passes after leaving the narcissistic family system, we start grieving parents we never had, even though they’re not dead, and commence rebuilding our lives and healing. You start being the parents you never had, breaking the trauma-bonded cycle and creating the type of family you were never part of.
It may be difficult initially, but slowly, you will start to feel happier and more settled in your new life as you gain psychological and emotional distance from them, realising that the issue doesn’t lie with you and that the worst has already occurred. It is giving up the hope and wish that the situation will improve with the narcissist. It never does and never will. Getting out of any denial, and accepting this fact will assist in the grieving process. Letting go through therapy, meditation, mindfulness and journalling can also help.
You will have created space in your life too to foster healthy, supportive relationships with people you can connect with and trust, and who have empathy. You will be valued for the unique individual you are, and you will see the stark difference in the way you have been treated by the narcissist in you life as compared to the unconditional love received from healthy people. The narcissist’s needs will no longer take priority over your own, previously devalued needs. Relationships will become more equal in their give and take.
Narcissistic parents will never see any problem with the way they treat you, or will deny any wrongdoing occurred, and is why your life will be far better without them in it. It is the only way you can start to heal.
