The Common Denominator of the Neglected Abused Narc and the Overindulged Narc It is a source of great mystery and wonderment that neglecting or abusing a child can produce a similar effect to doing just the opposite, overindulging a child and giving them everything their way. Those parents that treat a child of 4 or 5 like an adult, give them everything their way, but also push them into activities the child would prefer not to participate in are a separate category. Please note: we are talking about extreme examples of mis-parenting and there are also strong-willed or difficult children that can overwhelm even the best intentioned parents. There are probably many other possible ways to create a narcissist, but let's focus on the concept of right and wrong, good and bad as they relate to narcissism. This will be our main topic. We will also briefly discuss trust and respect as it relates to narcissism. 1. Parenting styles that predispose children to narcissism: A. The Overindulged Narcissist: “Modern” Parenting: To understand the origins of the explosion in the number of overindulged narcissists you need to go back to a book entitled “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” written by Dr. Benjamin Spock and first published in 1946. Modern day parenting, which is permissive and advocates not injuring the child's self-esteem has it's origins in this book. This book advocated accommodating children's feelings and catering to their preferences. Previously children had been brought up to respect authority and parents taught children self-denial and delayed gratification. Now, instead the home was to become child-centered, with an emphasis on allowing the child to develop their own “freedom of expression”. The child was to be heavily praised, whether they deserved it or not, in an effort to build the child's self-esteem. The concept of positive and negative reinforcement was eliminated and there was to be only minimal correction by the parent in an effort to let the child develop unbridled from parental influence. So there was mostly praise with minimal negative feedback from the parent. This parenting philosophy grew in momentum and started becoming noticeable by the early 1960's . At that time, the people practicing this style of parenting were still in a minority and considered the exception. An episode of a 1960's sitcom, Bewitched, Episode 26, Season 4 titled “Playmates” seemed to show the folly of this method, and nearly all parents of the day were in agreement that this was no way to raise a child. But the tide turned and nowadays disciplining a child, telling them they need to do better, and teaching them the concept of absolute right and wrong is considered out-dated and to some people they even consider this child abuse. At least that is how the popular media portrays it and the evidence of this type of parenting is all around us. Thank goodness most parents aren't adhering to this concept, they simply try to incorporate portions of it into a more traditional form of parenting. The problem is, a greater and greater percentage of people are parenting by this method hard core as true believers. B. The Neglected Abused Narcissist: In Contrast, the neglected or abused narcissist got either no feedback or inappropriate or incorrect feedback for their actions. Meaning that the neglected narc frequently never got praised or even acknowledged for doing good and frequently never got the appropriate feedback for doing bad. In some warped situations the narc child may actually have received the greatest praise when they did the wrong thing, such as stealing or successfully lying to someone. So this child has literally been trained that evil is good. Can you think of anything sadder than that? C. Conclusion: No Subtlety for the Narcissist: So what is the point? What is the common denominator? Both the overindulged and the abused narcissist were never taught to understand the true meaning of right and wrong, good and bad, because these narcs never received the proper feedback from their parents. No rewards that were proportional to a good deed and no punishment that was also in proportion to a bad deed. Because of this, the narcs never developed a sense of proportionality, the subtle wrongness or rightness of an action was never pointed out to them at a crucial time in their development. In other words, the narc never learned to notice the subtleties of good and bad during their development, when they would have intuitively learned all of these differences easily and developed an intuitive understanding of right and wrong in all of its various manifestations. So the narc can't notice the subtle mixture of right and wrong, good and bad, in themselves or in others. This doesn't mean the narc doesn't understand what is right and wrong, but to the narc, a person can only be right or wrong, good or bad, with very little if any provisions for a complex mixture of the two in one person. Add to this the twisted parenting that some abused neglected narcs endure and you create a person that looks normal on the outside, but literally has no moral compass, or what morality they have is twisted or reversed. The narc soon learns this fact and understands they are not like others, so they learn to mimic correct actions on the outside to fit in. II. Traditional Parenting: Positive and Negative Feedback, Accurate Self Assessment: A. General: Let's go into more detail on the parenting issue. The traditional way of bringing up a child gives consequences for bad behavior in the form of punishment and rewards good behavior in the form of praise, or anything desirable to the child. This is known as positive and negative reinforcement. Part of the problem with today's moral relativism is the concept of there being no absolute right or wrong- it's all relative, but even the narcissist and anyone with an ounce of common sense intuitively understands there is a right and wrong, good and bad. The additional societal problems, the concept of every child having equal capabilities, every child deserving an award regardless of achievement, and the above concept of anything negative injuring the child's self-esteem will be put aside. Let's focus on the right and wrong concept. So here is what happens with traditional parenting. A child does something wrong and is made aware that they did something wrong. This gives the child accurate feedback, a way of developing a pattern of self-assessment. The wrong thing could simply be a mistake, which requires the child to be made aware of it and try to learn and do better next time, or it can be an act of willful disobedience. Every wrong act will require different degrees and types of punishment, but the feedback has to be given. The subtle ways of correcting or disciplining a child, giving negative feedback, that is, were developed over hundreds and thousands of years and refined to a point where the average family, and society in general had a good idea, a rational general consensus of how to raise a child. The presence of extended family members, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, were also reservoirs of wisdom that could always be tapped. In other words, if someone needed help in how to raise a child, there were plenty of people with the knowledge and wisdom to provide it. The modern day system simply discarded those thousands of years of child rearing wisdom and reinvented nearly everything from scratch. Getting back to tradition, praise, or any other form of positive feedback was also developed to a high, subtle art, through hundreds and thousands of years of trial and error. Excessive praise for something that did not merit it, or the opposite, not giving negative feedback , was considered incorrect and referred to as spoiling the child. The positive feedback had to be proportional to the good thing that the child did. As an aside, it should also be noted that there are times when both withholding punishment or withholding praise is the best course and sometimes tough love requires a parent to push their child, but all of this gets into the most complicated problem a person will probably ever encounter- the parenting of a child. Please don't take these remarks personally. The best thing to be said is that if a child knows unequivocally that they are loved, nothing else is more important. Let's get back to the subject of narcissists, the common denominator that creates the narcissist. B. The Common Denominator for Narcissists: The neglected or abused child that becomes a narcissist received excessive, undeserved, incorrect, and inappropriate negative feedback and minimal, or incorrect, or inappropriate positive feedback. The overindulged child got minimal if any negative feedback and got excessive, unmerited, or inappropriate positive feedback. C. Normal children have a conscience, are aware of the full spectrum of human existence and can admit to personal flaws: So here is the point to be made. A child that is properly raised is aware of right and wrong and that right behavior is good and wrong behavior is bad. They are aware that doing something wrong is bad and will have negative consequences and doing something good will be rewarded or have positive consequences. This produces a child that has a conscience and an ability to accurately assess themselves and the courage to admit they did something wrong as well as the ability to feel remorse. These children have been exposed to the full spectrum of human emotions and existence and they intuitively learn about the complexities of the people around them as well as their own complexities, since they are given a method to understand and analyze themselves, as well as those around them. These children understand it is OK to make a mistake and to do something wrong, because there are so many other aspects of a person and these negative things are only a small percentage of the overall person. So a balanced, normal person will admit their mistakes or the flaw in their character, but realizing that this is only a small portion of their persona, that normal person will have the courage to admit the mistake or flaw and endeavor to minimize or eliminate those undesirable parts of themselves. The driving force and incentive behind this self assessment and change is a healthy conscience and healthy feelings of guilt and remorse that the normal person listens to and learns from. The narc, not fully comprehending the complexities of right and wrong , never develops that all important conscience or if the narc has a conscience, they end up ignoring it and eventually the conscience gets seared and is no longer present. A similar case can be made for the narc's lack of remorse and empathy. A normal person matures over a lifetime and that person is both confident and comfortable with themselves, because that person has developed a lifestyle that is open to change, honest self assessment and continual self-improvement. The Christian has the added guidance of the Bible that serves as a constant gold standard to compare oneself to. The Christian has no illusions as to their own greatness, since they need only think about Jesus, who lived a perfect, sinless life or many of the Biblical characters that had extraordinary faith that no ordinary person could even come close to. The saying “no one is perfect” is an obvious truth, but the narcissist can never accept even the slightest imperfection in themselves, because their upbringing has prevented them from seeing the complexities of others as well as their own complexities. It is all good or all bad for the narc, nothing in between. III. The Tragic Result of Not Being able to Self-Assess and Admit Personal Flaws Is Narcissism: To put things a slightly different way, in either the neglected or overindulged narcissist, accurate positive or negative feedback was absent in their upbringing and they therefore don't have the ability to accurately assess themselves and therefore, there is the absence of a conscience, or remorse, or empathy. The lack of empathy comes from the narc's inability to understand others. These narcs haven't been parented to experience the full range of feedback that would provide a foundation and framework of a conscience. A conscience or feeling remorse can only be possible if someone can think about their own wrong actions. Again, the narc has an oversimplified concept of humanity. A person is either 100% good or 100% bad to the narcissist, and the narc will fight tooth and nail to always come out as the person who is 100% good regardless of who is to blame. The actual facts of who is right or good, or who is wrong or bad is irrelevant to the narc. The narc can tell good from evil, right from wrong, but that is not what interests the narc. The narc is only focused on the appearance of good and they will do whatever it takes to have the label of “good” for themselves and those they decide to idealize in their idealization phase of a relationship. Additionally, there will always have to be those people labeled as “bad” to contrast with those who are labeled “good”. IV. Respect and Trust for the Narcissist: Both types of narc have a problem with respect for others and trusting others. The neglected abused narcissist has a problem trusting their parents,who have let them down and this transfers to other people as well. This lack of trust causes a lack of respect for others as well. The overindulged narcissist has a lack of respect for their parents, as well as those around them and this lack of respect makes it more difficult to trust the opinions or views or motivations of other people. 5. Conclusion: In summary when you combine an inability to trust and respect others, with an inability to understand the complexity of the human condition with regards to good and bad, with a lack of conscience or remorse then you can begin to understand some of the motivations of the narcissist, why they do some of the things that they do. That can be the subject of a future video. We have spent far too long in the dark world of the narcissist. It's time to get back into the sunlight. Back to a world where good is good and evil is evil. A world where love, empathy, kindness exist. A world where people present themselves as honestly as possible to their partners and believe in the power of communication and accurate feedback to their partner. A world where people have a conscience and are committed to growth and being positive. That world does exist for many people and as a narc abuse survivor, just being away from the narc has already begun to make that a reality for the victim. Thank you for watching, peace be with you. Your comments are always welcomed.