How Do You Deal With a Narcissistic Aging Parent?

Caring for a loving and grateful aging parent can be overwhelming at times. So, imagine what it’s like caring for someone who isn’t just struggling physically, but is also mean, manipulative, and highly self-involved.

Unfortunately, some people don’t need to imagine, as this is exactly what happens when you are supporting a narcissistic aging parent. Caring for someone like this requires a whole new set of approaches and ways to protect yourself.

There’s often some learning to do too. After all, if you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you will have developed coping strategies along the way. Some of those strategies may have been crucial when you were young, but they’re not helping you at all now.

The Patterns of Narcissists and Their Children

Before we talk about strategies, we need to look at the dynamics of narcissists and their children.

How Do Narcissists Treat Their Children?

While the exact patterns differ, children of narcissistic parents generally grow up with a sense that they’re unloved, even if they can’t pinpoint why this is the case. Some may recognize the destructive nature of their parent’s actions, while others may internalize instead and feel that they need to work harder to earn love.

For example, covert narcissists can appear very loving and may profess to being adoring parents – a pattern that can make the narcissism harder to spot.

• Such narcissists can have a push and pull dynamic, where they periodically give love and attention, which makes them feel like kind parents, then withdraw this at other times. The push and pull nature can make children doubt themselves and seek validation whenever possible (even if they need to jump through hoops to get it).
• Covert narcissists heavily rely on subtle forms of manipulation, including gaslighting and minimizing. These approaches have dramatic effects on the child, but they are also easily denied by the parent, who insists they are doing nothing wrong.
• Here, narcissistic abuse is both frequent and subtle. It can feel like a million little cuts to the child, which creates an awful environment that’s difficult to explain to others.

Additionally, narcissists often have a favorite and a rejected child.

• The rejected child may remind the parent of their own inadequacies and insecurities.
• This child often does their best, but finds it impossible to please the parent. No matter what they try, it simply isn’t enough, partly because the parent’s expectations change unpredictably.
• The favored child, or golden child, is in a different situation. The parent often acts like this child does nothing wrong at all – even if they’re a ‘failure’ by the world’s perspectives and heavily rely on their parent.

Often the rejected child is the one who ends up being the narcissistic parent’s caregiver, partly because they’re still seeking love and validation. Plus, this is the child that the parent typically expects to help, while the golden child can often do whatever they like.

Why Do Narcissists Reject Their Children?

In part, rejection happens because narcissists cannot handle complex relationships. They also struggle to understand other people’s perspectives. That combination of challenges makes raising children difficult, particularly children who are highly emotional. Because of this, narcissists sometimes reject their children or attempt to mold them instead.

Narcissists do love their children to some degree. However, this tends to be a conditional form of love, while non-narcissists tend to show unconditional love instead.

How Does It Affect You?

Growing up with a narcissistic parent has varied impacts.

Some children become people pleasers, as the safest way to live was to bottle up their own feelings and care for everyone else. Growing up like this can mean that you no longer recognize or trust your own emotions, which makes personal growth and boundary setting incredibly difficult.

Children who develop this way may struggle with their parents later in life – as there’s still a strong desire to please them.

Other times the opposite happens, where children of narcissists become narcissistic themselves. This is partly because the children learn values and behavioral patterns from their family and also because a lack of childhood emotional support contributes to narcissism.

What Happens as Narcissists Age?

Some research suggests that narcissistic behaviors decline with age, particularly for narcissists who were strongly invested in career- or appearance-based identities.

However, the experiences of many adult children suggest that this isn’t always the case. 

Narcissists often become worse with age too. This is partly because they’ve had plenty of time to practice their behaviors. Aging can also be scary and emotionally challenging, so some seniors will attempt to mitigate this by relying heavily on others.

Can a Narcissist Change?

In theory, narcissists can learn to recognize their impact on others, to become more self aware, and to change.

But, this isn’t hope to cling to, as such change is incredibly rare. The very nature of narcissism works against even recognizing themselves as the source of any problems, much less making steps to change.

Understanding this is crucial. Otherwise, you may always be looking and hoping for change, an approach that makes moving forward much more difficult.

What Can You Do?

Start to Heal Yourself

Expecting the narcissist to change is generally a lost cause. This means that solutions to the situation need to start and end with you.

One of the most important aspects of this is individualizing. That is, becoming an individual. Most people naturally individualize from their parents as they grow up (particularly in those rebellious teenage years), but children of narcissists often struggle to find their own feet.

To do well, you need to discover who you are and keep a whole of this, even as you’re regularly engaging with a narcissist.

Therapy can be powerful here, as it helps you to find emotional distance, untangle your childhood, and start to make the next steps. A therapist can also help you to be objective. Doing so on your own is much more difficult.

Take Space

Distance is one of the most powerful aspects of healing and finding your own feet. This doesn’t need to be a long-term thing. It could just be a matter of six months or a year. Perhaps even less, depending on the situation.

Most narcissistic parents won’t like this idea.

They may take offense, get angry, or try the classic fear-obligation-guilt practices.

But, this space is crucial for you.

This is because children often become enmeshed with narcissistic or emotionally abusive parents. After all, you’ve had their voice in your ear for most of your life.

If they’re manipulative (which is often the case), you may struggle to identify what actually matters to you, where your needs are, and what boundaries you should put into place. Having physical space gives you the chance to figure these things out in your own time.

Make Your Own Decisions

A big part of growing and healing is not allowing the narcissist to define you. This includes making your own decisions, regardless of what they think (and, let’s be honest, they’re likely to disapprove no matter what).

When you do so, there’s a temptation to try and get them to understand. Perhaps you think that if you get the explanation just right, they’ll get it and come round to your point of view. That’s not true for narcissists, as they’re always heavily defined by themselves and their experiences.

A good trick is to stop trying to justify.

You have the right to your own decisions, regardless of their opinion. So, stop trying to get them on side. Tell them what you’re doing if they need to know, but leave it at that. If they get upset, fine, that’s their prerogative, but you don’t need to take their reactions on board.

Choose How To Engage

The next aspect is figuring out how you want to engage with your parents.

Some adult children choose to completely disconnect from narcissistic parents. Sometimes this is the only way, especially if your parents are manipulative, mean, and ignore your boundaries.

Others choose to simply limit contact. This could include keeping visits with aging parents short, not talking about particular topics, or only talking over the phone.

The alternative is to stay physically close to your parents, but find ways to make emotional distance. The book Enough About You, Let’s Talk About Me highlights some ways of doing this.

Some caregivers do take this approach, sometimes even while they live with an aging narcissistic parent. But, doing so can be incredibly difficult and sometimes comes at a high cost.

This approach may mean you’re spending hours each day with someone who is messing with you emotionally, undermining you, manipulating you, and more. It’s a hard road – especially if you end up being a caregiver for years.

Which should you do?

Honestly, there’s no right and wrong. It all comes down to what’s realistic for you and what matches your values.

Disengage Where You Need To

The flip side of choosing how to engage is choosing when to disengage.

Setting boundaries is a huge part of this.

I won’t lie. Setting and sticking to boundaries with a narcissistic aging parent is tough. They will often take the idea personally. They may even use fear, obligation, and guilt to make you feel bad and try to get you to back down on your boundaries.

But, seriously, disengaging is incredibly important. You need to do this to take care of yourself.

You may also choose to take periodic breaks from your parents. Doing so helps you to reset and makes sure you don’t lose yourself in their manipulations.

Be Aware of Their Tricks

Narcissists have go-to strategies for getting people to fall in line, including the idea of fear, obligation, and guilt that we mentioned before.

For example, some parents may act like you’re being selfish or are abandoning them because you’re doing something for yourself (like going to the movies instead of visiting them or having a holiday). Some play the victim game, talking about how they are lonely and unloved.

Common approaches include:

• Making your wishes, needs, and thoughts seem less important or dismissing them entirely.
• Always focusing on how things affect them, regardless of other people.
• Gaslighting you. This can include saying that you’re over-reacting or are too emotional, or claiming that something you remember didn’t actually happen.
• Being highly critical, particularly of things that make you happy or less dependent. Some narcissists do this in a subtler way, where they don’t criticize, but refuse to encourage either.
• Emotional push and pull. This often means that the narcissist acts kind and loving some of the time, then switches to being dismissive or cruel at other points in time. The push and pull is exhausting and also keeps the victim in place, as there are just enough good times to make the relationship seem worth it.
• Silent treatment. This is a passive-aggressive technique that can feel like the withdrawal of love. The narcissist may refuse to engage again until you have ‘fixed’ whatever they see as the problem.

Those are just a few examples and there’s a ton of variation from person to person.

Understanding the specifics of how your parent operates can help you recognize their techniques for what they are. This makes it easier to keep your emotional distance and not be regularly sucked back into the ongoing drama.  

Other Important Approaches

Build a Support Network

Support networks are always valuable. They’re particularly relevant when you’re dealing with a narcissistic family member – as the experience can be exhausting and the narcissist will regularly undermine your belief in yourself.

The specific people in your support network make a huge difference.

You’re looking for people who recognize the narcissist’s behavior, will encourage you to care for yourself, and are as objective as possible.

As such, your support network may not involve friends or family of the narcissist. After all, narcissists are excellent at manipulating other people’s perceptions, so those who don’t see them regularly may not realize that there’s anything ‘off’.

Dedicated support groups and online forums can be particularly helpful. These are often filled with people in a similar situation to you, so they understand exactly what you’re going through.

Be Critically Minded

It’s also important to avoid assumptions and fixed ideas.

For example, it’s easy to get hooked into the idea that your aging parent is a narcissist – and assume that means X, Y, and Z about your relationship with them.

But, narcissists aren’t all the same. You certainly can’t predict how you family member is going to respond to every situation based on theories from a book.

They might not even be narcissistic.

Some of the same behavior patterns can have other causes. For example, some parents don’t show love in the normal ways because of a lack of understanding – rather than being self centered (such as if they’re emotionally immature).

If the issue relates to a lack of understanding rather than narcissism, then they may be willing to learn and to work with you.

This is another reason why a support network is so important. The right group of people will encourage you to think critically and ask questions.

Be Cautious with Advice

Being critical and cautious with advice matters as well. This is true for advice you get from friends and family, as well as advice from self-help books, articles, and the like.

In particular:

• No one knows your situation like you do. Some people who know your parent might even have a misconstrued view of what is happening, as narcissists are expert manipulators.
• People have strong values about caring for others, sometimes including ideas about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. However, values are simply values and yours may be different than theirs. 
• Non-caregivers often don’t realize how big and how draining caregiving can be.
• Friends and family members may not recognize your parents’ narcissism, especially if it is subtle rather than overt.
• Biases find their way into self-help books. For example, the author of Enough About You, Let’s Talk About Me makes some excellent points, but also focuses heavily on the non-narcissist bending over backwards and largely ignores the way that narcissistic relationship can be very abusive.

This is the reason that it’s important to choose your support network wisely. The best people are those who default to listening and being supportive, and only give advice when you ask for it.

Final Thoughts

So, how do you deal with a narcissistic aging parent?

The single most important thing is to become stronger in yourself. Part of this is recognizing your own wants and needs, along with starting to make boundaries.

Even more important is learning to step back emotionally from your parent.

Most narcissists won’t be able to give you the love, affirmation, or connection you’re looking for. Doing so isn’t in their makeup. Instead, they tend to love conditionally, often using manipulation and seemingly loving reactions to get what they want.

To do well, you have to be able to cope with this.

Doing so includes recognizing their limitations and not hoping for affection from them. You may need to find that type of support elsewhere instead.

Learning how to step back from your emotional responses, while holding your ground is important too. This includes ignoring the temptation to justify yourself and regularly choosing based on what you need – not what your parent wants.

Finally, remember that most narcissists are change resistant. For them to truly grow, they’d need to recognize that there are big issues with them, rather than with other people. The very nature of narcissism makes this incredibly unlikely.