"My Parents Flooded Me with Love": The Hidden Legacy of Parental Narcissism

A young woman entered psychotherapy with a seemingly simple goal: to fulfil her training requirements. She believed her childhood had been "perfect," convinced that trauma only happened to "others." What she uncovered, however, was that her belief was a pure fantasy—one that had masked a lifelong erasure of her identity. In clinical terms, what she experienced as "love" was actually a form of narcissistic parental over-investment; it was the dissolution of her boundaries as a separate human being to serve her parents' need for "perfect" mirroring.

Not All Developmental Trauma is Perceived as Trauma

When we discuss developmental trauma, we are not only referring to overt trauma experienced in childhood. We are also talking about any adverse experience that may not have been properly integrated. This includes emotional traumas such as parentification, parental dependency on the child, and a lack of generational boundaries (for example, a parent treating the child as a friend or a spouse).

“… but my parents flooded me with love.”

Furthermore, a child can experience a parental “over-flooding with love” as developmental trauma without ever being aware of it. For instance, a young woman entered treatment completely unaware of the unconscious trauma of being immersed in “parental love”—entering therapy merely to fulfil her requirements as a psychotherapy trainee. She reported a “perfect” childhood and parents who “gave her nothing but love”, only to discover it was all a “dream”. She eventually realised her parents never truly “saw” her; they were preoccupied only with their own need to be perfect and to be perceived as such by others. All the parents were really interested in was that she acknowledges that they had loved her and that she reaffirms that they had been good parents. She realised that she had been part of a falsely “perfect family” that was, in reality, a house of cards.

Only through treatment did she get in touch with the previously unconscious experience of parents who “flooded her with love” because of their own narcissistic fears of being perceived as inadequate or incompetent. They relied on their daughter to please them and expected her to show gratitude for their “love”, essentially “using” her to provide a narcissistic mirror for their own “greatness” as parents and as people.

As she became aware of her deep-seated dependency in relationships, alongside a sense of internal emptiness—all of which were masked by a pleasing exterior that stemmed from her need to gratify her parents—she could finally begin to appreciate the traumatic extent of having been parentified as a child. She realised that her parents' need for her to please and adore them was far from the authentic love she actually craved. Not only were they not able to give love; they also failed to accept the love that she gave.

How False Parental Love Creates a Sense of Inherent Unworthiness and Badness

This young woman's example vividly illustrates how early traumatic experiences—which a child may not consciously perceive as traumatic—can remain unconscious throughout life. These experiences not only cause substantial distress in adulthood but substantially impact the individual’s sense of self.

While it is commonly assumed that feelings of unworthiness and low self-esteem stem from overt childhood trauma or instances where a child is actively made to feel “bad,” this is not always the case. Clinical experience shows that a parent’s false and conditional love—coupled with an implicit expectation that the child mirrors parental perfection and an inability to accept the child's own offerings of love—causes the child to feel worthy only when they actively subjugate themselves to the needs of others.

Such experiences often underpin a pervasive sense of unworthiness, a perception of inherent “badness”, and feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness. Furthermore, they are frequently the driving force behind what is commonly termed “impostor syndrome” and lead to significant relationship issues in adult life. This often manifests as a tendency to engage in codependent dynamics or a persistent difficulty in sustaining healthy, long-term relationships.

Feelings of Emptiness, Being Unseen, and Abandonment

A sense of internal emptiness is inherent to the form of parentification where a child is over-flooded with parental “false love”. This experience arises when a child develops an identity and a sense of self structured entirely around the needs of the parent, while beneath this exterior remains an empty shell. The individual grows into an “avatar” of parental expectations.

Because the child’s authentic needs, individuality, and authenticity are denied by the parent—and because the love the child offers remains unacknowledged and unreciprocated—the child feels unseen, unheard, missed, or even non-existent (Zivkovic, 2023). While these experiences are pushed out of awareness at the time, they remain a guiding force in adult relationships, where the individual may feel misunderstood without knowing why.

For the young woman in this case, this manifested as a feeling of being misunderstood in her adult life, leading to a sense of solitude and loneliness despite an abundant social life. She described feeling “alone-together”—as though relating to others from behind a glass window that her words could not penetrate.

“How can I have issues with abandonment when I was never abandoned, but loved instead?”

Many are often surprised to find that a core fear of abandonment in their relationships is a direct residue of parental narcissistic over-involvement.

For the child, abandonment occurs when the parent expects them to fit a specific perception—when they are seen for what the parent wants them to be, rather than who they are. In these moments, the child experiences emotional estrangement and alienation from their own authenticity. In adulthood, this is often manifested in the individual’s over-preoccupation with relationships.

The experience of abandonment is perpetuated by the child’s feeling that if they do not comply with parental needs or subjugate themselves to expectations, they risk total rejection. This reinforces a constant fear of abandonment.

Whilst the child may not be aware of experiencing this as abandonment at the time—largely because the experience is pushed out of awareness due to its detrimental nature—it typically resurfaces in adult life as unexplained abandonment feelings and fears.

Relationships as a Fundamental Escape from Internal Badness, Unworthiness and Emptiness

Furthermore, such developmental trauma influences how one engages in adult romantic and social relationships. Driven by an unconscious need for connections in which they must please and care for others’ feelings, the individual often enters relationships where they end up feeling unseen, used and underappreciated. This frequently involves engaging with narcissistic individuals who—much like the young woman’s parents—require the partner to mirror their own sense of grandiosity.

As the young woman began to dig deeper in therapy, it was not only the reality of the past that struck her. It was the sobering fact that being unseen and objectified by her parents had left indelible marks on her identity. Her childhood had shaped how she experienced herself and others, how she engaged in relationships, and her overall outlook on the future.

Through the psychotherapeutic process, this young woman realised how dependent she was on her romantic relationships and how willing she was to sacrifice herself for the men she became involved with. She learned that her childhood need to please her parents had ultimately shaped her sense of identity. She depended on meeting the needs of these men and, when abandoned, was overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness, confusion and directionlessness.

She also discovered that without others to attend to—primarily the men in her romantic life—she experienced herself as fundamentally “bad”, unworthy and as someone with nothing to offer. She relied on relationships to feel adequate, accepted and worthy; for her, relationships were a form of attaining and maintaining existence.

However, they were also a source of dread. Initially, she was unaware of this, but her lack of a cohesive sense of self and psychological boundaries caused her to resent her dependency on others to feel she existed or carried worth. While she craved these connections, she simultaneously feared losing herself within them by submitting to her partners’ needs until nothing of her remained. At this point, she would typically destroy the connection and flee, only to end up feeling abandoned and repeating the cycle.

The Clinical View: When Things Fall into Place

Miller (1979) discussed “gifted” children—those with extraordinary emotional sensitivity and attunement. These children intuitively pick up on a parent’s needs, even when those needs are not expressed verbally or consciously. Such children build their sense of self and self-esteem around meeting their parents’ narcissistic requirements to the detriment of their own. In the process, they sacrifice their authenticity and individuality, often remaining dependent on others and becoming lifelong emotional servants.

When the young woman described previously sensed her mother acting as a victim—exerting anger through passive-aggression and the “silent treatment”—she felt guilty, perceiving herself as selfish and not good enough because her mother’s needs remained unmet. These feelings were later re-enacted in her adult relationships. She became involved with needy, entitled, self-absorbed, and emotionally infantile men who resented her for having her own interests or wanting time for herself. In these moments, the familiar feelings of being “selfish” and “not good enough” would resurface, coupled with intense guilt.

In Winnicott’s (1965) terms, a mother who cannot “mirror” the child’s spontaneity, but instead substitutes her own needs—expecting the child to comfort, adore, or serve her—forces the child into “compliance”. The over-flooding parent does not see the child; they see a version of themselves. This compliance creates the false self (Winnicott, 1965): an adaptation, an auxiliary identity, or an “avatar” designed to meet the needs of parents and, later, others. The individual remains unaware that they are living through this avatar while, underneath, a chasm of nothingness and confusion rests.

This performative, serving part of the self is not merely behavioural or cognitive; it is a fundamental part of the individual’s identity, where they experience themselves as potentially selfish for meeting their own needs. Consequently, this accommodating false self remains operational and outside of awareness until it is named and challenged. For this young woman, this only occurred in therapy. As she began to see the falseness of her performative parts, they started to dissolve—only for her to realise that beyond performance and the expectations of others, there was not much else left. Not yet.

Conclusion: From Being an Object to Becoming a Person

The journey from a “perfect childhood” to the reality of developmental trauma is a process of painful disillusionment. The fantasies of a perfect childhood often exist for a reason: to protect our view of our parents, our past, and our future from disintegrating into nothingness. The fantasy takes away the pain of the loveless reality and gives meaning to the child's existence.

For the young woman in this case, the realisation that her parents’ false love was actually a form of narcissistic self-involvement was the first step—not only towards her freedom, but towards her emergence as a separate person. As we have seen, when a parent uses a child as a mirror, the child is reduced to the level of an object. They exist solely to stabilise the parent’s emotional dependency, leaving them with an identity built on performance rather than authenticity. In adulthood, this manifests as a compulsive need to subjugate oneself to others simply to feel existent and worthy.

The role of psychotherapy in such cases is not merely to establish practical boundaries, “rebel” against the needs of others, or simply “choose” oneself. Nor is it merely for the individual to become aware of the performative parts of the self that exist as hostages to others’ expectations. The role of truly transformative psychotherapy is to facilitate the dissolution of these performative false selves. This allows the individual to face the reality of their childhood, their parents, and, ultimately, who they are as a person.

Such a process requires immense courage. Seeing reality for what it is causes significant pain and demands immense determination to break free from life as one has always known it. Because the process is so emotionally demanding—and, paradoxically, because it is so life-changing—only a fraction of those who endeavour upon it actually finish it.

Ales Zivkovic, MSc (TA Psych), CTA(P), TSTA(P), Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Supervisor

Ales Zivkovic is a psychotherapist, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. He holds an MSc in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy awarded by Middlesex University in London, UK. He is also a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (TSTA-P) and a Certified Transactional Analyst in the field of Psychotherapy (CTA-P). Ales gained extensive experience during his work with individuals and groups in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and his private psychotherapy, counselling, and clinical supervision practice in central London, UK. He is also a full clinical member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Ales works with individuals, couples, and groups. In clinical setting, he especially focuses on the treatment of issues of childhood trauma, personality disorders, and relationship issues. A large proportion of his practice involves online psychotherapy as he works with clients from all over the world. Ales developed a distinct psychotherapeutic approach called interpretive dynamic transactional analysis psychotherapy (IDTAP). More about Ales, as well as how to reach him, can be found here.

References:

Miller, A. (1979). Depression and grandiosity as related forms of narcissistic disturbances. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 6(1), 61–76.

Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Ego distortion in terms of true and false self (1960). In The maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development (pp. 140–152). Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429482410-12

Zivkovic, A. (2023). Dependent personality and interpersonal dependency: At the intersection of developmental, identity and interpersonal aspects. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 39(1), 212-231. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjp.12802