**⏺️ With:** [[Family Enmeshment|Family Enmeshment]], [[Relational Power Dynamics]], [[Understanding Traumatic Invalidation|Traumatic Invalidation]] **\#️⃣ Tags:** #Trauma #Relational > **🌱 Planted:** Sat 25 January 2025 --- ***Narcissistic family systems prioritise the needs of the parents over the children.*** ![[Narcissistic Family.png]] Families who contribute to the passing on of generational trauma seem to be widespread in our culture. We have family systems who are overt in the way in which they transmit trauma—like those in physical or alcoholic abuse, therefore making the source of trauma relatively easy to see and understand. But then we also have family systems where children suffer debilitating symptoms that often match or exceed those from physical or alcoholic abuse, yet do not come from such type of families. The term "narcissistic family" was coined by the therapists in the book [[The Narcissistic Family by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman & Robert M Pressman|The Narcissistic Family]] and was introduced to better understand and treat clients suffering with symptoms of [[Developmental Trauma]]. The term itself doesn't refer to narcissism in the pathological sense (which seems to commonly catch a lot of people offside when it comes to the topic of narcissism), rather it refers to a family system where the members have an unhealed or unresolved [[When our normal developmental needs go unmet, we are left deeply wounded|Narcissistic Wounding]]. The therapists noticed their clients were suffering with chronic and debilitating [[Trauma is not the event, it's our internal experience|Trauma]] symptoms which were often observed in adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) or outwardly physically abusive families, yet these clients did not come from such type of families. What they could see though was a pattern and common thread: **the emotional needs of the parents were consistently prioritised over the children**. Essentially what they're pointing out is covert psychological neglect and/or abuse but on a familial scale, which we've become much more well educated on nowadays, yet which often goes undetected because everything can look so normal from the outside. On top of that, the children who are raised in these type of families sadly don't know they've been raised in such low nurturance environments because that's all they've ever known... they aren't aware of any other way of relating or being. # See Also - The [[Myth of Narcissus and Echo|Myth of Narcissus and Echo]] reflects the dynamics of this system. Narcissus represents the parents which are primarily involved with meeting their own needs, whilst Echo represents the child who tries to gain love, acceptance and validation by becoming reactive to the needs of the parent. [^1]: [[The Narcissistic Family by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman & Robert M Pressman]]