Begin Again Moments: Growing Up With A Narcissistic Parent

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0:36So go on, pick up a bottle of All Free Clear for your next laundry day. I was eight years old and I lived in a small town called St. Nears. And we went shopping one day in Bedford, which is nearby, maybe a 30 minute or so bus ride away. and so we went there and um and i remember it's probably one of my earliest memories as a child i can remember it so clearly because we were having a nice day and we were shopping and then i can't remember exactly what happened i think i think we just had an argument basically about something i think i said i wanted to get a drink and she said she wanted to finish what she was doing i can't remember the exact detail but then she just basically said well you can just get home on your own then can't you and she walked off and left me now at eight years old i don't know if that's normal or not right at eight years old i'm just instantly thinking okay i've got to i've got to get home you know what do i do how do i get home what what bus do i have to get we came in a car by the way so i didn't know what bus i had to get and i didn't have any money on me so of course but then no mobile phones no nothing right so it's kind of an interesting panic now you know since growing up now i've got a seven-year-old he's just about to turn eight i can't even leave him in his bedroom on his own, you know, like I like checking on him, make sure he's okay.

1:52So now I understand maybe, you know, it was technically wrong, but it didn't feel wrong to me at the time. I felt like I'd done something wrong and she was punishing me. That's what parents do when you do something wrong. So I guess kind of, this is the good thing about when people are hard on you. I learned to get home. I learned to, you know, get the money I needed, figure out the bus, get on the bus. You know, an eight year old is not a weakling. You know, I managed to learn this thing that I now carry with me. You can call it a curse or a blessing, that anything is possible. And you can just, you know, despite being dumped in a town with no money, I can survive, which is kind of an interesting revelation.

2:38It's almost a bit freeing. If you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. If you've got nothing and you can make something out of nothing, it kind of wakes you up a bit. Now, I would never do it to my child. But I also see some good in it. And I see some benefit in it. When I interview people, I could see sometimes people that have single parents or parents a bit tough on them, sometimes they have a better life long term, because they do the hard thing when they're young for the easier life later. And I think my mum also kicked me out at 15 years old, just after my father had died. And so that was also a crazy moment.

3:12I mean she literally

3:12Davina McCall:put your stuff on the street. Yeah well no she didn't even give me my stuff, she just told me to get out so I literally grabbed a bag and threw some stuff in it and she said get out of my house screaming at me, I'm going to call the police, get out of my house You never went back? Never went back. Wow 15? Yep and even now when I think about it now I feel a bit sad about it because it's I went from having a father and a mother and I've got three brothers we're all together in a house and then suddenly I'm on my own out in the real world and And I think the thing that really hit me was just how unprepared I was for the real world.

3:44Even though the eight-year-old experience, that wasn't my daily experience. That was just a one-off experience when I was younger. Actually, at 15 years old, looking like an adult. So you don't look, I didn't look 15. Me at all. I was, I looked, I was a rugby player. I looked like a grown-up. You know, most people thought I was 18, 19, 20. So, you know, 15 years old out in the street. Yeah, but I mean, the other side of it is the world I learned suddenly throwing out into the real world. I have a lot of empathy for the homeless because I was actually homeless in total for eight weeks. But the homeless people were the kindest people ever to me.

4:16Most people's experience with homeless people in this country are like someone begging you for money. I had a completely different experience. They gave me the half a sandwich they had left. They gave me the blanket that they couldn't really justify. They needed it for themselves to me. They told me how to survive in the streets. You know, like the people that I thought were the almost society's abnormal, you know, weirdos were the kindest people. And so and then I.

4:40Davina McCall:Kinder than your mother. Kinder than my mother in that moment. Yeah. I have my mum. I always feel sorry if you're still alive and she may listen to this podcast. So I'm always conscious that I don't want to hurt her. But I also must tell the truth. And she was a great mother when I was young, actually. And despite that story of where she had some moments where she just lost it and did perhaps the wrong thing. We used to play board games. She would all have fun. She was engaged mother. But I didn't know she was a narcissist. And I didn't know what a narcissist was. So I didn't understand that terminology or what it meant to me.

5:20And she would pitch me against my brothers to fight each other. She would like drama. I just thought that was normal. you know like as a kid you don't know what's normal and what's abnormal it wasn't until i left home actually that i realized it was abnormal but you know i i still struggle talking about it because i feel bad that she might be listening and i'll be hurting her feelings you know i think

5:40Davina McCall:that she's your mother so of course of course naturally instinctive that's to protect our parents right that's that's part of our responsibility as as kids as the parents get older i feel it but i also know every time i've ever tried to deal with her in my whole life yes she just it's an element of bipolar too yeah it's like you just said one one minute she's the funnest person you've ever known and next minute she'll just burn the house down and you with with it and she just there's no logic i think that you know that that i i was you know now i understand what a narcissist is but to me it's just like there's no logic sometimes it's just about destruction and I don't like destruction I like harmony and kindness and I've discovered who I am yes that took me some time to figure out who I am because when you're with someone that is like that you kind of mirror them because you want to fit in yes right so I see this you know when I was at school bullies who are hanging out with other bullies maybe some of those kids don't want to be bullies but if they don't bully as well they're going to get teased or bullied themselves exactly so it's a societal mechanism and I think in my house we're all fighting each other all the time I thought that was normal.

6:49I didn't know anything else. Teens share everything. That may include the bacteria that can cause meningococcal disease known as meningitis. Even if your teen's been vaccinated in the past, they could still be missing meningitis vaccinations. Ask your teen's doctor or visit meningitis.com today. Sponsored by GSK.

7:08Davina McCall:As well, I suppose, as talking about who is a narcissist, there's a little piece of me now that's questioning whether my mother was a narcissist. from what you're saying. Yeah. I think she was just an alcoholic. Okay. And alcoholics are selfish. They're very self-absorbed. I think it's a different, I think it feels like something a bit different. That, and this is quite a nice, maybe a reassurance that maybe not. Why did you think maybe, what had led you to think that or to be curious about it for her? About her being a narcissist? Yeah. I think because she was a bit like me, a peacock, but an extreme peacock.

7:50Davina McCall:It was walking down the street. I've talked about this before, but with a long fake fur coat on and flashing people, she was naked. But she's with me and I was 11. Little. You know, or putting me in kind of danger or taking me to a nightclub when I was 13 and then going to school weed and leaving me on my own in the DJ booth. um but and then she's like you're fine I need to go and do this like it's just thinking about herself but I wonder whether that is just an absolutely chaotic alcoholic chaotic and the selfishness of the being selfish she was in the addiction yeah yeah because I she was totally self-absorbed and never was interested I mean she did get she did get angry with me if I tried to impress her.

8:40Davina McCall:I just wanted her to be proud of me, really. That's what I was constantly seeking. Yeah. What happened when you challenged her in life? I would never challenge her. I was terrified. I mean, she'd go mental. Because feedback or challenge for a narcissist is very, very difficult because for them, it's the equivalent of you picking at the mask. Yeah. And they're thinking you stay away from that. Maybe she was a bit. So there could be something that might give you a clue in that. On the spectrum somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Because I would never even try and approach her because she'd just go lapsy apeshit.

9:15Davina McCall:We were always just trying to keep her. Keep the peace and keep it of course. But what happens and where do you put all those feelings if you weren't able to find a place to put them as a kid? It's tough. Well, I was just very lucky because I only spent my school holidays with her. But my sister, who's over there, she was with her all the time. And she had a very, very difficult life. and she protected me from quite a lot when I was over there. So I, when she came over here, but what was interesting, I thought you were talking about kids not knowing their identity. My sister lost her identity, I think.

9:52Davina McCall:But is the chronic lying something attached to anything? Oh, is it? Is it attached to that? Yeah, it was partly attached to that, which is, if we think about the spectrum. Because my sister was a compulsive liar, but we used to laugh about it in the end because I'd just go, is that a porcupine? And she'd go, yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, it was just part of our... This is loss of identity again and wanting to be accepted. So we talk about, it's Donald Winnicott's theory, who's the most amazing, he was the most amazing psychiatrist and psychotherapist. If we're born a true self, so we come into the world as a tiny baby and nothing's happened to us and whatever spirit pilot light we have is ours to own.

10:29But very quickly we realise that we need to, you know, we're keeping the peace with mum, we're worrying about what's going to kick off, etc. We start adapting. So we have an adapted self that we know we're in it a lot of the time if we've got difficult parents. It then can move out to false self. We completely start lying about what we are, who we are, what we've done in order again to be accepted in some form. I think that's exactly what she did. And the very worst is also idealised self. We think I must be idyllic in order to be accepted and loved. But if your sister got caught in false, which would have not been her fault, it's because it's the way she survived.

11:05Yeah, I knew it was a survival. Yeah. But what we say is we're quite a long way from home. And so if we can find a way to bring ourselves back to home, that's the therapeutic work that I do with my clients.

11:18Davina McCall:How hard is it to kind of untrain someone who has, like when you're talking about this journey going from someone who has literally had to change themselves to survive a narcissist, how kind of long are we? I mean, I know it's a bit hard for you to say because everybody's different. Everyone's different. But I genuinely think it can take about 18 months of concentrated work because we say that when a child doesn't feel loved, they don't stop loving their parent. They stop loving themselves. so I've got to work with them on that to start with we also quite naturally tend to defend our parents even though we know I did that of course there are clearly things that aren't right that our natural instinct is we've only got probably one or two or maybe three of the step or blended but so therefore we tend to defend them initially or we'll say look other people have had it much worse than me because let's say that parent hasn't physically been violent or sexually been difficult or abusive then we kind of feel psychologically, you know, should I be complaining at all?

12:19So there's all sorts of things that people will say initially. There's defence mechanisms and it's really clever that as a kid you've come up with that. But over time in therapy, we begin to slowly just peel it back to the point where they can get a little bit more comfortable with accepting it wasn't OK. Yeah. They did that.

12:37Davina McCall:I mean, what a wonderful realisation to realise that you were wronged. Yes. As a person. Yes. And people often say, yes, but my mum or my dad had a difficult upbringing and they might have done or they were in the grip of addiction. Yes, absolutely. But what we say is it might explain it, but it doesn't excuse it. Yes. The difference there. Wow. And so that's also the work with gently helping someone come to terms with that, because then what does that also mean for them? If their parent is alive or their parent has passed, what does that mean and what do they want to do with it? What I can't do is sort of open Pandora's box and show them and then kind of leave it there.

13:16You're leaving them right in the middle of that pain. So that's why the work takes some time, because we need to be very gentle with these inner children, if you like, to help them begin to slowly come to terms with it and accept that that is what happened. And then where can I find the compassion for myself that I went through that as a kid, if that was the story that this person's had in front of me?