The Unwritten Rules in a Narcissistic Family
By: Natalie Frank
Tags: Personality, Mental Health, Psychology, Narcissism, Life

The Unwritten Rules in a Narcissistic Family

While every family has rules, those in a narcissistic family are more intense, one-sided and must be followed at all costs.

Image by B2B Tech Writer

In every family, there are both spoken and unspoken rules for everyday life. Growing up, you learn these rules through the reactions you get from others in the family. Maybe you came to understand that there was no jumping on the beds, to be quiet in the mornings when mom and dad were still sleeping or not play ball in the house.

In healthy families these rules can be seen to have logical explanations. As children, even when we don’t like the rules, we can understand their purpose in our life. We make not want to go to bed when we are supposed to, but we also know that when we don’t, we are tired and unhappy the next day.

The rules in healthy families are intended to serve all the members even though some may only apply to certain people. If a child is exhausted and miserable from lack of sleep, they can make everyone else miserable as well. They also serve to help the child learn how to function in society and to grow up to be a well-adjusted adult who has their own life separate from that of their parents.

In narcissistic families, the rules are intended to serve the purpose of the narcissistic member. The rules are expected to be followed no matter what with the understanding that breaking one will lead to severe consequences such as giving the individual the silent treatment for a week or adding to the rumors that are spread about them to ensure that others view them negatively. No one in a narcissistic family is immune, all children as well as the spouse are expected to follow the rules without question or exception, even when it is impossible to do so or detrimental to the individual required to toe the line.

10 Common Unwritten Rules in a Narcissistic Family

1. No one’s perspective or desires matter besides the narcissists. This is rule numero uno and the most important one. It can also be expressed more basically as no one else matters at all. While the individual may be a consummate actor, convincing friends and family members outside the immediate family that everyone was treated equally and their views and desires respected, in reality only the narcissistic member has such benefits and if others are respected in any way it is only because it somehow serves the narcissistic person. Narcissists only see things from their own perspective and any attempt to get them to take another person’s point of view is met with refusal. In extreme cases, they may not even be able to recognize anyone else has a unique perspective that is different from their own.

2. Submission is required of all family members even a spouse. Every family member must submit to the narcissist’s authority, no matter how ignorant, arbitrary, cruel, or destructive it may be to do so.

3. Appearance is all important. Substance counts for nothing. Since the narcissist is often trying to cover up deep seated insecurities and a sense of worthlessness, everything they do is about image management. This means that their own appearance as well as that of everyone in the family, is crucial since they believe that everyone else is a reflection of them. They won’t risk anyone looking anything less than their idea of perfect, lest someone view them negatively. They may insist that even young children remain clean at all times and that their spouse should look just so even when at home. They might dress their child for school in a way they want, despite it getting the child teased or bullied and may even insist on picking out their clothes until the child moves away from home. It doesn’t matter if everyone is miserable just so long as everyone smiles for the family photo.

4. Family secrets must always be kept even when they are harmful. Narcissistic families are filled with secrets when often are in the form of lies. Again, these are aimed at maintaining the image that the narcissistic member wants to create. They are allowed to talk about family members outside the family, purposely using lies or things taken out of context to establish the picture they want of the person they are speaking about but no one else. Should the family member learn there are false things being said about them they are not allowed to correct the image even when it may hurt them or their reputation. The narcissist is quite adept at training extended family members and friends to accept any lies or inconsistencies including not sharing what they’ve heard with the person it was about.

5. Love and acceptance are conditional. Only when family members comply with the narrative created by the narcissist and does whatever the narcissist wants, accepting their share of narcissistic abuse, will they be allowed to feel like part of the family. It doesn’t mean that they will never be abused again since it is not unusual that the narcissist punishes children especially for something they could not have known about. This makes the narcissist feel they always have the upper hand and the power in the family.

6. Children are given no privacy and are expected to give information about everything in their life. The narcissist believes it is their right to find out anything they want to about the child by calling the child’s friends or enlisting them to provide information, reading diaries, contacting teachers, relatives and anyone else the child comes into contact with, and later on boyfriends or girlfriends and their parents, adult friends, bosses and landlords. They use the internet to obtain additional information about the person or have someone who does it for them, possibly the golden child. They encourage their child to join social media sites like Facebook as another means of monitoring information about them.

7. Blame is assigned for all problems big or small and sometimes problems are created to have something to blame someone for. Instead of teaching children how to solve problems, accept responsibility for them, work through them and move on and other positive problem related strategies, in a narcissistic family problems are capitalized on as a reason to blame others. Usually this is the scapegoat of the family and when there is a scapegoat it seems like there is often a malignant enjoyment that the narcissist experiences in blaming this child. They blame them for their own mistakes, the mistakes and problems of others, made up mistakes used just to attack and punish them, and to reassign appropriate blame from the golden child to the scapegoat. Whoever they blame though, the primary purpose is to deflect attention away from anything they themselves may have done wrong. They will never admit to having made a mistake, will never apologize and will never allow it is even possible they are could ever cause anyone a problem. Scapegoats quickly learn to accept the blame as the lesser evil compared to the emotional abuse that occurs should the try to fight back. They come to bear the burden for the entire families problems, anger, frustration and unhappiness and accept that the rules are just different for them. They may also grow to loath themselves due to the narcissists treatment.

8. Vulnerability is dangerous. Anything that makes a family member vulnerable such as mistakes, weaknesses such as negative emotions, or failures, even when you accept responsibility for them leads to years of persistent shaming. Sometimes it never ends. Children learn at a very young age never to approach the parent if they are upset or another child has hurt their feelings since they will always be held accountable as the reason that it happened. The narcissist will never ask for the other side of the story since they insist on controlling the entire narrative, rewriting history to meet their needs and to paint different family members the way they want to.

9. What is important is competition not cooperation. Narcissists cover their low self-efficacy and self competency by using one-upmanship, favoritism and constant comparison to create a harshly competitive environment. This undermines trust and breeds hostility and betrayal. The narcissist will even feel the need to compete with their own children from a young age, even though the child rarely views their relationship as competitive. This speaks to just how low their self-esteem is that they feel the need to crush their own child’s spirit, to feel that they have “won.” What these parents compete the most for is gaining all the attention from others, having a positive image and reputation while destroying their child’s and the regard in which everyone else holds them. They compete to be invited to places their child is not, enjoying in rubbing it in their face, but doing so in feigned ignorance that goes, “Oh, you weren’t invited? I thought for sure you would be”. The narcissist will often be the one that made sure the child wasn’t invited.

10. Denial is rampant. In order to sustain their control over the family, the narcissist uses denial or revisionist history. They promote an atmosphere where all members deny the narcissist’s emotionally abusive interaction style, the continued presence of fear that they promote, their ongoing maltreatment of the scapegoat and the regular neglect of other family members.