Goodreads Doesn't Have It, Data Migration: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
This is a helpful book. Diagnosable narcissism in a parent harming, competing, or viewing their child as competition is so horrific it isn't funny. I'm talking diagnosable narcissism doing the opposite of what needed to be done from obliterative envy towards their child. It's so unnatural it hurts. We need more analytically rigorous of research on this, but this is really good to start giving people the vocabulary for what they went through when the science isn't there yet. It's horrific. It's torture. It's 100% unnatural. This 100% looks diagnosable for how unnatural, horrific, and torturous it is. If it is envy beyond envy, envy, torture and sadism so bad you're pretty sure they would die before they admitted it, it is probably diagnosable narcissism. If people are blown away by the attempts to compete with their own literal flesh and blood child in ways that don't compare, only to project how effing embarrassing they are for that onto the child, it is probably real, diagnosable narcissism. I mean the rarest of rare cases. But if it's like that, that's probably what it is. Most people just have tendencies. It is so fucking scary and torturous to be the child of a real, diagnosable narcissist who can't accept their limitations to the point they show truly unnatural behavior to their spouse, their child, and their entire family. It is terrifying to be the child of this relatively rare disorder. I mean constant, public comments of why this man thinks they're competition when it's not even comparative, they really think they're competition, really thinks he's going to beat up his own progeny skillwise, and projects how effing embarrassing they are. How distorted projective identification can get is so effing terrifying, of how off the mark it is. Harming their own before, killing their own before anyone else. It's so unfit it's terrifying. I'm sympathetic to the subnormal thing seeing this sort of thing. I really am. It's. Not. Something. We. Can. Afford. To. Replicate. Treating your child that way. Your own, literal genetic direct progeny. Learn and accept where your child is objectively better than you. That's how it's supposed to be. Each generation is supposed to be an improvement on the last. Most parents feel pride for their children when they're healthy. That looks like diagnosable narcissism. Even on the one day it's clearly, fundamentally, and fully about the child being selected, still finds a way to ruin it and make it about them. Holy horrific to be raised by a diagnosed narcissist. This is a good place to start to get the vocabulary for it, but we need more solutions-oriented analytical precision to really stop the damage it does to the victims.