Narcissism Enabling Parents

Coach Ken
3 min readJun 8, 2021

Your good parent may not be the hero.

Narcissism is an issue in itself. They’re controlling, they warp principles when it benefits them, and they can even cause serious, detrimental health affects.

But they aren’t the only sources of damage, dealing with narcissists.

Yes, narcissistic enabling parents. Parents that don’t have the backbone, don’t have the initiative, whatever it is for whatever reason, parents that allow their narcissistic and damaging spouse to further damage their child.

They feel like an absolute blessing. In fact, people with these parents often see them as a major reason they even got through their more directly damaging parent.

But rest assured, they are further administering damage in their own way. And I’ll use a personal story as an example.

When I was a kid, it was very apparent I had rampant ADHD.

My grades suffered, the other kids called me a weirdo, and even the teachers made fun of me.

I remember once, a teacher stood at the front of the room, and said

“There are twenty-eight children in this room. Twenty-seven of you should pass this test tomorrow.”

And everyone just turned around to look at me and laugh.

It was always stuff like that. And my mom was always there for me, and she helped me through a lot of it.

My dad just made it worse. In fact, he was the one I was easily the most afraid of.

He used to beat me, so bad. He took a plank of wood, put metal bolts in it to “give it weight”. And he even put a leather handle on it, so it wouldn’t fly out of his hands.

He’d beat me so bad. Not just when I’d do something I knew was wrong, I could respect that. But no, just. For things that were just genuine mistakes.

I remember one day, we’d just gotten to a new neighborhood, we’d just moved there. And one day, this kid just punched me in the face, and ran away.

So I ran to my dad, and I told him what happened. I was still crying and holding my face.

But when I told him, he put me over his knee, and spanked me as hard as he could.

When he was done, he looked me in the eyes and said

“I just became the pastor here. I can’t have them hearing my son is getting into fights.”

Getting into fights? Getting punched isn’t getting into a fight, it’s getting punched in the face. I didn’t fight back, I just ran straight home.

He didn’t comfort me, at all, he just hurt me even worse than the kid did.

But after something like that, my mom would always come in after him.

She’d hug me and told me how much she loved me, and that my dad loved me too, he just couldn’t see how badly he was hurting me.

I never considered she could’ve done anything to stop it. In the moment that never crossed my mind. But after getting older, and looking back, my mom wasn’t the hero there.

She didn’t have to sit back and watch my own dad just wind up and beat me with his hand, his belt, or a paddle.

But she did, and she sat back, content in being a complicit wife in all of it.

In the moment, it’ll feel like one parent is the hero, and the other is the villain. But if at the end of the day, the two are more than fine letting you take far more than you deserve, being beaten physically, emotionally, or mentally, it’s likely that both are the people to watch out for.

-Click Here to make a call with Coach Ken

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Coach Ken

Coach Ken has spent over 20 years studying the dynamics of toxic relationships and has helped thousands of couples. For Coaching sessions, hit DoTheyLoveMe.com!