Raised by narcissists

Raisedbynarcissists is a subreddit, which means you have to go to reddit. I’m not providing the link because while I visit the site regularly, I have a good reason not to push them more traffic. I consulted this subreddit a lot when I was trying to construct female characters who had zero empathy for their children. Although I don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for narcissism (sorry, you want to get some on me, you’ll have find cause) I relived some moments from my childrearing days rather intensely and certain events resonate differently in recollection.

If you’ve always had a good relationship with your family, except the occasional tiresome display of illness or nerves or ‘the cranky’ then I recommend you just grab a couple of posts and start reading. Maybe you don’t care to know how bad other people have it. For me, it was revelatory, and it has since helped me understand how my children can have such deeply canyonated views on me, and how keeping families together falls on everybody in a functioning family and on people pleasers in one that is… not. Not functioning. Anyway, I recommend it, if you have a nice family it will TOTALLY REMIND YOU WHY AND if you have a terrible family you’ll get sympathy and good advice.