Many of us in this community have struggled with toxic and narcissistic relationships.
You may have wondered …
Why did you stay connected to people who hurt you, rather than pull away and be able to look after yourself? Why did you make excuses for them, trying to convince yourself and others that things would change, when they didn’t?
Please know it is because of this … you grew up with toxic family dynamics.
What is a toxic family dynamic?
It’s a way the family operates which causes a child to be stunted in their personal self-belief, power, and ability to make healthy choices in their life.
Most of us in our wonderful community have experienced toxic family dynamics; this is very common. You are not alone!
You may have suffered incredibly painful family dynamics which set you up for future toxic relationships. Maybe you have suffered narcissistic relationship as an adult even though your parents were lovely people. Toxic family dynamics can be very subtle, they aren’t necessarily overt and obvious.
In today’s article I want to explain to you what I believe are the four major signs of growing up in toxic family dynamics.
I want you to know these dynamics can be very painful. I understand them intimately because I too suffered from them. I also deeply understand because I have helped thousands of people in this Community, over the last 10 plus years, heal from them.
This is what is UNIQUE about my work – it is powerfully SOLUTION based.
So, please don’t despair if you read this information and say, “Oh NO this is ME!” because I want you to know with all of my heart there is MORE than hope for you!
You will read what this is, at the end of this email.
Okay let’s investigate these 4 toxic family dynamic signs, and what they create.
Number one – You feel unimportant and not heard
Not being able to express and live your truth comes from being INVALIDATED.
Maybe your parents were too busy providing to validate WHO you were emotionally. Or, they could have believed that “their word” was essential, as an authoritarian role. Perhaps they wanted to protect you and grant you the best life possible by running your life for you.
Parents need to guide, lead the way and implement boundaries, yet if you are not allowed and encouraged to have your own thoughts and feelings, and even choices in regard to your life, then you will feel small, unimportant and struggle to define your own values and truths, stand in them and implement them in your life.
What is likely, as an adult, is you don’t speak up about your rights and preferences. You tend to hand your power away to others, letting them decide life choices and directions for you. You may choose seemingly strong people in your life, unconsciously to run it for you, and then be devastated when your needs and feelings are run roughshod over. You don’t have a voice. Your thoughts and feelings and desires are not listened to.
The narcissist’s reaction to being invalidated as a child
The narcissist creates a False Self because the True Self has been deemed irrelevant and ineffectual to get his or her needs met. This fictitious character then creates a “version of self” who is unique, superior and beyond entitled to be noticed, heard and obeyed, and gets deeply offended and even abusive when not served adequately by others.
Number two – People mining and abusing you
Not being able to implement boundaries and leave toxic people comes from being VIOLATED.
if your parents didn’t respect your boundaries in regard to your “self” mentally, emotionally and physically, or your “stuff” or your body sexually, then you have been infiltrated and traumatised.
No matter how much you hate it when people take from you and abuse you, you will find it really hard to leave them and take care of yourself.
You may find yourself continually entering into relationships with people like this, regardless of it being so traumatising for you. You will try to explain to them how wrong this is, and try to get them to act decently. You may attempt to expose their behaviour to others hoping they will come and help you get your power back. This doesn’t work and the abuse escalates even further.
The narcissist’s reaction to being violated as a child
The True Self’s devastated feelings are pushed down and rage replaces despair. The installed False Self seeks vengeance for the violations and projects onto those who are close enough. The narcissist expects subterfuge, deeply distrusts others, and tries to keep the upper hand by controlling with deception, manipulation or force.
Number three – High expectations on yourself and from others
Feeling “never good enough” comes from receiving CONDITIONAL LOVE.
You may have felt loved only for your accomplishments or even perhaps your appearance. If when you were sad, emotional, angry or flailing and were told to just get over it, or were ignored or even punished, then the message you received was you had to be “perfect”, “good” or “always functioning” to be acceptable.
You will be incredibly hard on yourself and believe that you are only lovable if you achieve, look like, or behave as A, B, C or D. You will discover the people who enter your life do not unconditionally love and support you.
They have unreachable expectations on you, just as you do yourself, and are highly critical of you when you are not performing as expected.
You will try to do better, look better, be better, and grant incredible support and achievements in order to earn the right to be loved.
The narcissist’s reaction to receiving conditional love as a child
The true Inner Critic within the narcissist (which he or she attempts to bury) is a relentless pit of self-loathing. The narcissist frantically requires narcissistic supply (attention, acclaim or notoriety good or bad – it makes no difference) in order to feed the False Self enough significance to emotionally survive. Without narcissistic supply the narcissist suffers the shocking narcissistic injury of the crippled True Self engulfing them.
People and things only exist in the narcissist’s life for them to feed the False Self enough “food” to exist.
Number four – You “people please” and lecture and prescribe
Trying to please and change and fix others comes from being ABUSED.
You may have been assaulted mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually or sexually. This ranges from emotional and mental putdowns, betrayals and threats, to actual physical violence. Maybe you suffered inconsistencies, where you didn’t know where the boundaries lay one day to the next. You may have had depressed, sick or addictive role models who were unpredictable.
This taught you at a young age that foundational people in your life were not safe.
Because you were not able to implement your own boundaries or leave, there was no other option other than to try to read other people and behave in ways to try to stop them hurting you. You may have tried to make yourself invisible. Maybe you attempted to appease them. Possibly you left as soon as you could and then found yourself in similar situations.
It’s likely that you feel other people’s energy intensely, it makes you anxious and you try to do all that you can for them so that they will love and care for you. When this doesn’t work you try your best to explain to people how they are behaving badly, and justify yourself, explaining why you are a good person. It doesn’t work. The more you try to control what this person is or isn’t doing, the more they escalate the abuse and the more out-of-control you feel.
The narcissist’s reaction to being abused as a child
The unhealed, unmet wounds of abuse go off within the narcissist on a hair line trigger. The narcissist lashes out, and delivers brutal abuse when they are running amok in the energy of that trigger.
With the cold narcissist that can be plotted behind-the-scenes attacks such as abuse by proxy, smearing and assaults on your structures, and with a hot narcissist there can be violent verbal or physical attacks and threats.
Maybe the assaults come from both fronts.
In conclusion
I really want you to understand that unconsciousness is unconsciousness. People have to get better to do better. Many of our parents were the product of their own toxic family dynamics. Many of them were carrying the unconscious wounds that were causing them to react in certain ways with very limited under-developed resources.
This article is not about holding our parents responsible, it is about raising our consciousness to understand that the only person that we can heal is ourself.
The great news is all of the toxic dynamics can be powerfully and directly healed with my Quantum Thriver Tools. How this works is a simple and powerful process that reaches into and releases the trauma and the belief systems from these toxic relationships.
I promise you that when YOU get better, then you will do so much better, and be able to be in and generate much better relationships, as well as powerfully and decisively leave the ones that are not serving you healthily.
I would love to introduce you to my Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP) that specifically reverses these toxic family programs, not just delivering you from the patterns of them, but also the terrible unhealed symptoms and trauma you have struggled with after toxic relationships.
Myself and thousands of others are FREE from these symptoms, living our Best Thriving Abuse Free Life as a result of NARP.
Also, if you are already a NARP Member you may wish to investigate my Transforming Family of Origin Wounds Mini-Course which is an add-on powerful cleansing and reprogramming for childhood trauma.
I highly suggest it to NARPers who resonated deeply with this article – this specific inner work will take you to the next level of Thriver relationships in every area of your life.
I hope that this information has helped you understand how common toxic relationship patterns are, and granted you the inspiration that you can live free of them – once and for all.
Oh my…as I read this I see myself. I was the youngest of 7 and felt all 4 signs. The dynamics is my Father left my Mother while she was pregnant with me…so the rest of the children got me and lost their Dad….apparently I was not a good replacement!!! I often heard of the fun that was had….before I was born. In my childhood mind I built a life when I was with “my other Mother” as I certainly did not feel part of the family I was in. As my life went on I became a people pleaser, I was belittled because I was not as smart as the other children…or so I was told. Being smart earned you big praise in my family…I received none. With your help Melanie I have begun to recognize the untruths that my inner child believed. I thank you with all my heart. Much Love
Hi Meg,
I’m so pleased this brought you clarity and please know how welcome you are!
Love and blessings to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Meg ~ Perhaps we all have trauma from our family of origin… not sure – However, I too was traumatized and just when I was really waking up and still very young, my dad died – suddenly. So I had no closure and had to rely upon my OWN self to make closure, and I turned to God, Whom I was just getting to know, and then healed my self by working on ME, and doing the steps I needed and like (is it?) Dr Phil has said, You tell your own Self what you need to hear, and never heard, from your parent(s) and so that is what I did. I learned all I could about my self and still do that work now, and then I told my self who I REALLY WAS. and I still do that too. I hope a bit of this helps!! We here are all in this Journey together!!! Be kind to yourself. Take time to heal. It WILL come. Now back to my issues with to-day!!! Love & Hugs! ~ Maria
I don’t believe we handed over our power to other people when we were kids. It was either taken away from us or not allowed to have it in the first place. Kids had no choice in the matter of their power. It was dictated by adults. Otherwise, I agreed with the article.
Hi Gunther,
I absolutely agree.
As children, we could not lay boundaries or leave, and we did not have the resources to heal ourselves.
As adults we can.
Much Love
Mel 🙏💕💚
As kids, we certainly didn’t have the financial resources to leave our family. If we did, many parents would find themselves wondering what to do with themselves now that their house is empty, and they have no one to pick on.
Gunther and Mel I agree with you both sadly. As an adult I find it ironic because as a child I didn’t even know power existed. As an adult I can take responsibility to fix family trauma in me.
My twin and I were born into chaos. It turned me into a super sensitive empath and it turned my twin into an abusive, hateful overt narcissist who took out all her frustrations on me physically, emotionally and mentally. To make matters worse we were poor and I could never get away from the abuse because we had to share a room. At school I couldn’t get away from her abuse so I lived in survival mode until she married and moved out at 18 years old.
Needless to say, I married a covert narcissist who love bombed me and I fell for it and was treated badly, triangulated, never good enough. I now understand why I married this but it’s been 40 years and I feel the best part of my life is over. Thank you for getting the word out so other’s may save themselves at a younger age😓
Wow, Right on Melanie! I Will investigate the Transforming Family of Origin Wounds Mini Course.
With Gratitude 🙏
💗
Kondwani.
That’s awesome Kondawani,
you will love it!
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Ruth,
Please know that it is never too late to heal and there are Thrivers in our community who are in their 70’s and 80’s who are Thriving and glowing in their True Lives after decades of previous abuse.
Your soul is ageless and patiently awaits you to let go of the trauma to unlock your joy and truth.
Sending you hope and love
Mel 🙏💕💚
I agree Mel. Never stop believing that it will get better.
Ruth you go girl,let your power and your light shine.It is never to late,…your life is only beginning…take 💖.
Diane
The kingdom of God is within.Start to decree blessings over your life and hers.See what happens
As the Holy Spirit continues to fill you.Your Power will move mountains.Jesus says, Without Faith.you cannot be saved.This is why people don’t heal.Because they lack faith.Melanie is great she is a signpost.But You are the real healer.In Jesus name.❤️
Ruth, I am so sorry that you have had to live such an unfulfilling and abusive life. As if being born to abusive parents wasn’t enough, you had to endure it from your sister, who should’ve been your rock/support. I too know how it feels to literally never have been loved. I was born to a teenage mother on welfare, I never met/knew my father and I ended up the oldest of four children with three different fathers, raising my brothers/sisters, picking my mother up every time a husband/boyfriend left, which I was not only abused by her but by her husbands and boyfriends while she dis nothing about it, I ended up a teenage mother myself and married young and my husband left me for someone else. I am remarried now to an abusive narcissist who zeroed in on me big time. He must’ve felt my vulnerability…I am constantly trying to please him to ultimately get him to love me…to no avail of course… I have read and have done meditations on self-love, trying to realize that I need to love myself first before I can accept love from anyone else, but how can I? When literally since before I was born, I have had people not thinking I was important enough to stick around for? The abandonment/feeling unloveable combination has me thinking that nobody can/will ever love me.
I too, feel as though so many years of my life have been wasted and it’s disheartening to think that this is all that life has to offer. Melanie, what you are doing is truly Gods work. I, too, hope you can reach younger women and help them to recognize what real love is and feels like because I honestly have never felt it a day in my life from anyone. And I would never ever ever want anyone to feel what I have felt for the last 40 years.
I feel this way too. My first marriage to a narcissist lasted 22 years. Then I almost immediately found another one which I just got out of after 8 years. 30 years of my life gone. I am working on me and learning all I can not to choose another one. I think if I was financially safe I would just stay alone and get a pool boy
My daughter in law is a narcissist. I put up with her because I wanted a relationship with our son and grandchildren. She constantly put me down for just being me. She targeted me and used and abused me mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I finally even though it is hard I don’t see my grands said enough! God is helping me to heal and realize I can’t be used and abused just for my grands. I am heart broken but feel a sense of freedom from the bondage I was in with her. He who Jesus sets free is free indeed!
Hi Diane,
I am so pleased you detached for you to heal.
I pray for you that when the time is right you will reunite with your grandchildren.
So much love to you and yours
Mel 🙏💕💚
I am 1.5 years out from being left by a malignant narcissist. I grew up in a toxic family myself & the narcissist grew up in a “supersized” toxic family. For my on sake I want to learn to forgive this man who devastated my life then abandoned me. This blog really helps me understand more about myself & especially him & helps me to better understand his actions so I don’t take it so personally which I hope will lead me to be able to forgive him so I can go on with my life without continuing to drag that “ball & chain” of resentment.
Hi Anne,
That’s wonderful that this community and information has been helping you.
I’d love you to experience the Qunatum way of letting go of toxic and painful abuse and feelings.
It is so much more powerful than trying to heal contemporarily.
Please come into my free workshop, where you can experience relief, hope and a return of your sanity and soul.
http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/freewebinar
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Blessings to you ❤️
Omg…I have every single one of these…not 3 or 4 but ALL very clearly from the first few sentences
However after years of not only family not validating my feelings or being heard, my own grown children don’t either. Even tho I listen, nd and praise and validate them. I’m just dirt to kick aside.
People think I’m crazy, families don’t do this unless “you’ve done something wrong” or looking for drama.
I’ve tried reaching out and all I get is talk to a counselor, which I have soooo many times. But they or the ones I’ve found don’t get it either.
Hi Shelley,
my heart goes out to you!
Please know this is so usual for those of us who have experienced narcissistic abuse.
I’d love to help grant you hope that there is a way to heal and recover from all of this.
NARP is the best and most powerful way I know of – http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp and to learn more about NARP and experience transformative healing with Quanta Freedom Healing please come into my free 3 keys workshop – http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/freewebinar
I so hope that this can help
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Melanie, Thanks So Much for this Article! So many of these points relate to Me!! Your Articles have always, and still continue to help me. 😇💜💜💜💜
Hi Stephanie,
it’s my pleasure!
I love that I can help!
Much Love
Mel 🙏💕💚
Just got out of a toxic narcissistic relationship with someone I’ve known for eleven years.ive had to gather the courage to walk away after telling him off as his bad habits were getting on my last nerve.im now on my journey to recovery and reinvestment in my life without that person.God took me out of that toxic situation.
Hi Wanjiku,
well done, you should be so proud of you!
Sending you strength, blessings and healing
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Mel
Wow another great post I came from dysfunctional dynamics that left me open to abuse later down the track. My mother was mentally ill and narcissistic in nature and later in life developed severe borderline helplessness after 50 and became totally dependant on me. I had a antisocial disordered sister who my mother idolised and I was the scapegoat young. I am now 44 and have mental illness and ptsd etc have had abuse from two sociopaths and have nothing left and really no family except my younger sister who is very much a kid herself and like me messed up. I remember when my mother died a few years ago I did not feel too much grief rather relief and grateful she was gone and now I think I may be disordered? Seeing a psychologist who does emdr but its a long road I think.
Hi Nikki,
that is so great that you are seeking to heal you.
I truly, truly believe and have seen and experienced personally the ability we have to reset to wellbeing once the trauma is released and Source enters.
Have you tried my Quanta Freedom Healing yet?
If not, I would love you to come into my free 3 Keys Workshop to experience it, and feel in your Inner Being what can be possible for you.
http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/freewebinar
Sending you love, healing and breakthroughs
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Mel,
I have just started your NARP and after only a few modules, I’m already feeling relief from the pain. I was discarded a year ago (for the second time). I was suffering from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia. When he walked out, I was at my lowest point in life. His cruel and swift exit, sent me on my healing journey through my childhood. I was forced to look at the physical, sexual, mental and emotional abuse and see how it made me attract narcissistic abusers my entire life. Cognitively, I understood the link but it wasn’t until I started your program that I felt my pain ease. The energetic release you provide is incredible. Thank you for everything you do.
Hi Leah,
that is awesome!
It’s beautiful that NARP is helping you so much – http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp
Sending continued blessings and breakthroughs to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Mel, this makes a lot of sense – the first three are similar to what I experienced in childhood, not at extreme levels, but enough to create some problems. I’m now trying to make sense of them as I go about my healing journey.
Most honored to have known you Melanie Tania Evans 🙏🌎. These understandings you post are helping me bring clarity understanding and a feeling of being positively connected with myself and life. My birthright. Thank you 🌎🙏.
Hi William,
You are SO welcome!
Bless you!
Mel 🙏💕💚
Thanks Melanie for the great information.
I am happy for those who have gone out of manipulative bondage. I am appreciating every kind of step your words are adding to me. soon I will be happy with myself again though i find it difficult.
Patience
Hi Patience,
it’s my pleasure.
I’d love to help you anchor more powerfully into your shedding and reprogramming of trauma – because that is where the real relief is.
Would you like to learn more about this and how you can fast-track and get even more guidance with your healing?
If so – please come into my free webinar http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/freewebinar
This will help give you hope.
Much Love
Mel 🙏💕💚
I also lived in a dysfunctional family. My father was an alcoholic and my mom, thank God was there for all 7 of us.
I married a man that I ended up leaving after 23 years of a very unhappy marriage.
Then Mr. Wonderful came into my life…he was perfect everything I wanted. After 5 years dating ,he decided we should get married.
He would take care of me and I would never have to worry. He had a great job and made money.
After 16 years of marriage and walking on eggshells I had to leave. He was a narcissist. And manipulater and I couldn’t take it anymore. I left for 9 months and ended up going back as he said he would change and again promised me the moon.
I stayed for 2 more years and one day I said to him I can’t do this. I am a cancer survivor and the stress I was under was terrible. I told him if I stayed with him my cancer would return.
He went crazy…
I left and have started a new life ! But I am always waiting to see him stocking me if I get a no Id phone call I panic and freeze.
I am doing better each day and I have a family with great
support…And I am so happy to finally be a way from all the drama .
Hi Susan,
Congratulations for having the self-honouring courage to leave.
Sending you strength and healing through this stage of your recovery, and I hope that you find support and healing in this wonderful community.
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Even though I know the answer, I still find myself asking if these people are really, really like this? I’ve been surrounded by them my entire 50 years and it seems so obvious to me now that something wasn’t quite right but at the same time very difficult to accept that I’ve been so blind to this, even though I was a psychology major. Not that I’m in denial–its just hard to wrap my mind around. It’s been 3 1/2 years since I had my epiphany when I stumbled across narcisstic abuse and read my life story spoken by others. I think this is just a stage I’m going through, having met yet another one in a very long list of them and am now wondering how many more do I have to deal with in this lifetime, healed or unhealed? I go through periods where I can’t stand them to periods of feeling bad for what they’ve been through all the while despising myself for taking the bait and actually giving a shit. It also makes me a little paranoid, wondering if there are some whom I still haven’t identified as narcs and whom I’m close to. After losing my best friend after discovering she’s got the traits a plenty 3 years ago, I don’t ever want to go through that again. It’s like the scariest and most mentally damaging horror film, except that this horror film is your life. I kick my soul every day for even wanting to endure this. Like, couldn’t we have passed this golden opportunity up and been ok? I mean, seriously. This sucks bad. I’d like to think I’ve been through the worst of it but who knows? Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water……
This really struck home for me: ….”when your needs and feelings are run roughshod over. You don’t have a voice.” Invalidation 101. Thanks mom. Thanks dad. You can both fuck off now. Oh wait. My dad already did by putting a bullet in his brain. Nice cop out. Anyway, Melanie’s words always are 100% spot on for me so much that I wonder why I even question if this is real or not. I’m sure I’ll be past this wanting to be in denial soon. I can’t stand giving up on people and this conditioning of making everyone else more important than me has really gotten me stuck to the point that I’m really not sure if I’m even able to make this change because what if I can’t? What happens then? More fuel to add to my current self hatred for not being able to do anything right? If I get frustrated to the point of quitting, I’ll never return. That’s my concern and it might seem lame to others but it’s very legit to me. So, I’m stuck fearing the unknown since I don’t know how I’ll cope with that huge of a failure. I know how I’ve dealt with other failures and it’s not good, believe me.
Hi Mel,
My family was a psychiatric train wreck, and I WAS the caboose. As I became clearer about the madness, I was able to unhook myself. My father was a psychopath, my mom was a basket case, and my sister is simply crazy. My parents both died 5 years ago; I didn’t shed a tear. And I I haven’t seen my sister since 1991 and have no contact with her in any way. For many decades I hoped they would all change for the better, but it was hopeless hope. So I move through life, only letting those who want to grow and heal in my circle. None of us are perfect but we all care, love and respect one another. That is what really counts. Just because people are family doesn’t mean you have to entertain their toxicity. It pays to get out and do your own healing, however that may look. Self-respect and self-care is SO important to living a thriving life. Carry on with teaching all of us who WANT to heal and grow. The others are on their own in their suffering…
Dear Melanie, this article is so much to the point. Thank you VERY much for explaining myself to me in such few but perfectly fitting words. Oh wow. Time to heal!
With your Quanta Freedom Healing, luckily we can heal whenever we are ready… What a blessing you are for so many of us. Thank you from all my heart!
Catherine
Hi Catherine,
thank you for your lovely words, and I am so pleased that my healing system is helping you so much!
Much Love
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Oh wow!!!!! I don’t know which course to do first. This article has described my childhood to a tee and have just left my husband for a second and last time. I am now getting the intense cold shoulder which I welcome actually as it tells me I’ve messed up his game! By being with this person made me realise my reaction to him was based around my childhood experiences so I desperately want to address my past and my current exposure to these evil humans. I even question if I have taken on these traits, I have been horrible to past partners as if I’m the narcissist in those stories without realising what I was doing. Please help
Hi Kelly,
my greatest suggestion for you is to write into [email protected] and one of my lovely team will be able to help answer and work out with you what would be your best direction to take.
I hope that this can help you
Mel 🙏💞🦋