Narcissistic Fathers Quotes

“The bond between the narcissistic father and their child exists, but it is unhealthy and not based on mutual respect and love, but on shame and guilt. Such a father projects his deepest fears of inadequacies, shame and rejection on their children, but they also do the same for their ambitions, unrealistic qualities, imagined authority and false sense of personal power, grandiosity and success. Based on these two they give their children the roles of the scapegoat and the golden child where the first one becomes the embodiment of the narcissistic fathers’ fears and the second one becomes the embodiment of their ideals. Neither of these are based in reality and are never a reflection of a child's real potential, skill, character or talent. The scapegoated child is the one who is ultimately the greatest threat to a narcissist's false sense of self-importance, and so that child will be the one to be discarded and rejected.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“If you were raised in a negative environment, building a negative image of yourself is natural.  Narcissistic fathers focus on flaws and fail to give praise, so that is what we embrace ourselves. When we grow up we see only the failures, the mistakes, the bad choices and how we can never measure up to the ideals we expect from ourselves. We are so used to the negativity that we forget to see the little good things. We brush off compliments. Developing positive self-talk means reversing whatever is it that your father made you believe. Accepting and enjoying compliments and your own accomplishments. Giving yourself credit for the things you did.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“While part of good parenting includes being able to prevent deviant behaviors in children and raise happy, healthy and assertive individuals, having a father who is a narcissist means purposefully taking advantage of the fatherly role and exerting extreme authoritarianism and control over the children. They are, deep down, extremely vulnerable to rejection and criticism, are resentful and have bottled a lot of shame in a very deep corner of their subconsciousness. Such a father has no empathy, no sensitivity to their child's needs, but is observant enough to spot what these needs are and use them to gain his narcissistic supply. His children are seen as possessions that belong to him, are emotionally neglected, made to be overly codependent on him for affirmation, money or appreciation even in adulthood. Their emotional scope is very narrow and infantile, so their dealings with children are colored with aging and passive-aggressiveness, rather than maturity and openness.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Narcissistic fathers poison the whole family with this competitive energy and instead of creating a safe environment for the children to grow, they turn family members against each other. The children’s mother and the scapegoated child are usually the ones to blame for all the failures, mistakes and wrongdoings, particularly for those he himself has committed. His wife is described as emotionally cold, distant, unloving, unsupportive and a sabotager of his and the family happiness or she takes the role of the flying monkey, catering to his needs, adoring him and supporting his toxic parenting, many times unconsciously.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“By not rejecting yourself and supporting your inner child and nurturing your vulnerabilities instead of discarding them, you are ultimately taking responsibility for yourself. You could not choose your childhood, but now you can choose yourself and you can become your own person of trust, someone you always needed and who was never there. Please remember that you already have what it takes to re-parent yourself, as otherwise you wouldn’t be hoping or looking for healing and you are absolutely not alone. Re-parenting includes an immense amount of self-care and self-nurturing. It also includes getting in touch with your inner child and recognizing it’s needs and understanding how it wants to express itself, which goes hand in hand with choosing yourself. Choose you, because you deserve all those beautiful things you were made to believe you are undeserving of.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Every time you feel anxious, sad or afraid, imagine yourself as a child. How would you comfort that child? By ignoring, judging, criticizing for screaming at it like your father did, or by making it feel safe, giving it consolation, and unconditional affection? Re-parenting yourself includes taking a step back from how you were raised, taking on and reversing the role of your dysfunctional father and giving yourself everything you needed from him, be it acceptance, love or kindness. This will include becoming visible to yourself, and treating yourself the way you wanted to be treated. This will not only make you feel safer in your own skin, but it will allow you to accept yourself the way you are, without imposing self-criticism and unrealistic expectations on yourself.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Your original upbringing has caused wounding, so to heal you must re-parent yourself. Re-parenting yourself means reaching your inner child, embracing it and then teaching it love instead of fear. We are afraid we are not good enough. We are afraid we are not talented, attractive or successful enough. We are afraid we are not lovable. These fears stemmed from the treatment we received as children and the roles we took in our father’s hierarchy of importance and worthiness. What can help is visualizing yourself as a child, seeing your fears, tears you have cried and how you felt. Once you can do that, the next step is treating yourself as you always wanted to be treated by your father and your family.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Ask yourself, do you do favors because you genuinely care or because deep down you want to avoid unpleasant feelings of guilt and shame? Know that there is nothing shameful about caring for yourself. It is not your responsibility to make someone else happy or miserable. They are responsible for their own wellbeing, just like you are responsible for yours. Your needs are just as valid as someone else's, no matter how bad they seem to be doing.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“To have a peaceful, joyous and quality life, and to genuinely give to others, you first need to care for yourself. Every time you feel guilty for not following your gut instinct and extending yourself beyond personal limits to be there for others, remember to take a step back and put yourself first - the person who is asking for your help, energy or favor, no matter who they are, is doing the same.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Establishing boundaries and asserting them works like a muscle. The first few times you get sore, aka you feel immensely guilty for not responding to someone and catering to their needs, but the more you do it, the better you will feel. Start small and reject invitations or requests that take your energy at the given moment. The guilt you have is coming from being ashamed of having needs because that is what your father found suitable.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“The key to healing here is reversing the focus on ourselves without feeling like we have to apologize for doing something that is good for us. You choose yourself by setting boundaries and making your own codex of behavior, the things you’ll tolerate and the things you won’t. Healthy boundaries will additionally push away the people who are selfishly using you and taking from you without giving back, and draw in healthy people who respect those boundaries because they respect you and your energy.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“To heal we first need to deal with our inability to say no without feeling guilty. Narcissistic fathers discourage acts of self-love and self-care as they need their children to cater to their narcissistic needs. This is why to break free it is important to learn to clearly recognize our own needs and then prioritize them.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Take the time and be compassionate with yourself as you would be with someone in need.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Would you like someone to call you stupid, lazy, incompetent or unattractive? You absolutely would not. Even if someone calls you these names, why would you do that to yourself? You cannot control your father or anyone else, and therefore they don’t have the power to tell you who you are and how good you are. They are not you, they are not in your body and they will never be. You have you. So be gentle to that person you see in the mirror, they have been through a lot and they don't need yet another negative comment from the person looking back from the other side of the glass.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Replacing the I am worthless, I will never make it, I am unlovable with I am worthy, I will make it and I am lovable is something that takes practice, but it is achievable. Positive self-talk is based on self-love, which develops through acts of kindness to ourselves. It is when you start to matter to yourself more than someone’s opinion, judgment or criticism does. It is about accepting yourself just the way you are because you are perfectly fine that way.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Please stop judging your real self, because that is what your father did for so long.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“Will it make me happy? Do I feel expansive when I am doing this? Do I want to feel this way? What will happen if I do what I feel called to do? Do I feel like myself when doing this? Is this really what I think or is it my father speaking through me? How will I feel if I accept/reject this offer? Why? Knowing who you are means rediscovering and finding lost pieces of yourself and putting the puzzle back together. The stronger the bond you have with your authentic self, the less power your narcissistic parent will have over you.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse

“For someone who is not in close relationship with them, a narcissist will appear very pleasant, sociable and respectable. To the outside world, they seem like great dads, who sacrifice a lot and always fight for their family, which can cause confusion in their children - Is my father really as manipulative as I believe? Maybe he is really trying to help me. Maybe the problem really is me. Am I not allowing my father to guide and protect me?  A child of a narcissist will often hear how great of a father they have, and that they should be thankful for having someone so attentive to raise them.”
― Theresa J. Covert, Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse