Life of the Golden Child of a Narcissist
Growing up, I was the furthest thing from perfect. In fact, I was a straight C+ to B- student, yet I was the Golden Child to a narcissistic father and a highly obedient sensitive mother. I was treated better than my other siblings, simply because they were D and F students who voiced their opinions. As they rebelled outwardly, I smiled and kept quiet as I observed the verbal abuse that came their way by doing so. I was the youngest and unconsciously thought this was the best way to survive.
Unfortunately, my siblings took my behavior as me trying to be perfect, and my brother, who was the scapegoat of the family, brutally took his anger out on me. My mother, who didn’t want my brother to feel the wrath of my father any further, would hide my brother’s daytime abuses from my narcissistic father as a way to protect him, not fully realizing that she was abandoning me. At night my father controlled the household, but during the day, my newly nurtured narcissistic brother now ruled the roost. And in this dysfunction, distrust had been born, and none of my vulnerabilities were safe with anyone.
Every time I was angry or sad and needed to talk or voice my concerns, I just bottled it up. The words from my narcissistic father would always flash in my head like an alert sign ‘I already have enough problems with these two, I don’t need another.’ And these words would always be accompanied by the look of my highly obedient sensitive mother to echo/reinforce his words as a way to silence me. And that became my role. I didn’t cause waves. I didn’t rock the boat. I feared the consequences too much. And in the process, I became a voiceless human being who wasn’t allowed to have emotions because that’s what I needed to do to survive. And this strategy worked……..until it didn’t anymore.
When I entered adulthood, everything seemed perfectly fine. I was out of my home and felt free for the very first time, but what I didn’t realize for a very long time, was that I was anything but free or close to being an adult. My actions and reactions to work and life situations were extreme, which made it difficult to hold jobs and have healthy relationships. The Golden Child tag I was nurtured into, was my introduction into victimhood and that thought process never left me. When I trusted, I trusted the wrong people. It was like narcissists could smell me out of a crowd. My whole thought process about relationships and communication were entirely out of whack, and it wasn’t until I found myself in the same type of relationship/work cycle for the 5th time, did I finally realize that I was powerless over the Golden Child role and needed to work on deprogramming myself.
It’s been eight years since I started the retraining process and it hasn’t been easy. I’ve created new boundaries for myself, and I find that the narcissists at work try to break them down the most. Sometimes I’ll fall for their games and take two steps back, but I always dust myself off, get back up, and march five steps forward in response. I can’t change them, but I can change how I react to them, and the longer I work at expressing myself and letting my voice be heard, the stronger I become, and the harder it is for their actions and words to hurt me anymore.
And as far as relationships go, I’m still working on building my self-everything within them, but instead of putting my vulnerabilities into the hands of people who only knew how to hurt me, I’m now happy to say that I’m dating a nice boring girl who lets me be me, and handles me with care.
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Thank you Chad Boyd Chalmers for this great article!
Chad Boyd Chalmers is a narcissist abuse survivor, certified life coach, and author of the upcoming book How To Survive The Narcissist Apocalypse.
Listen to his Podcasts too! – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/how-to-survive-the-narcissist-apocalypse/id1452117002?mt=2
