What Self-Abandonment in Relationships With Parents Looks Like
Self-abandonment in relationships with parents as an adult shows up in many ways, some may be surprising and others may be obvious. In this article, I’m going to show you what self-abandonment looks like using the main survival patterns I coach and teach with in my workbook Still Stuck. I’ll break down what each piece of these narcissistic parent relationships can look like in your experience when you were a child and now as an adult, how it shows up in the parental relationship, and how your adult self is carrying the long-term effects of them.
1. You People-Pleased Your Way Through It
(Pattern: Fawning)
Your moment:
This is the version of you that said yes before you knew what was being asked. The child who laughed at jokes that weren’t funny, and may have even been about you. At some point in life, you became comfortable with being whatever version of yourself seemed safest in that moment.
What it looked like in the parent relationship:
Early on you learned that keeping your parents happy was the most important job. Some may have even guilted you directly because “They’ve given up everything for you”, and others may have made you uncomfortable if you weren’t thinking of them first. When you chose not to people-please them, it looked like the air changing in the room, receiving the silent treatment, or a parent treating your sibling obviously more kindly than you. This can continue in adulthood with digital silence, being available for your siblings but not you, and other emotionally immature behaviors.
You prevent things from exploding by being agreeable, easy, and making yourself small.
Why it’s self-abandonment:
Every time you performed ease, you didn’t feel it.
Abandoning the part of you that had a real reaction and wanted to feel the injustice happening to you is not going to take the feeling away. This can’t really take away your spirit all in one go, but you lose her each time you said, “no worries” and didn’t mean it, or swallowed your feelings because you didn’t want to have to face a parent being mean or manipulative.
Common Language:
People-pleasing, also known as fawning, is a trauma response where you keep dangerous or abusive people calm by making yourself fit whatever version of you they need.
2. You Stayed One Step Ahead of Their Moods
(Pattern: Hypervigilance)
Your moment:
You could tell what kind of mood they are in by the sound of their footsteps, how their text messages change, the way the refrigerator door closes, or the subtle change in tone when speaking to someone on the phone. You knew their mood before physically seeing them, and still do.
This is because your body feels anxiety from the instability in their conduct, so you attempt to stay ahead of their mood and avoid an explosion. This is likely the only form of control you have experienced, and still, it isn’t successful every time.
What it looked like in the parent relationship:
This skill practically gave you a degree in other people’s emotional weather. Feeling the shift helps you preemptively adjust, create space, or get ahead of your words before they’re twisted on you. You knew when to stay out of your parents’ way, you could tell if your parents were going to argue before they actually did, and it also helped you pick the best time to tell them good and bad news.
Why it’s self-abandonment:
When all your energy goes toward reading them, nothing is left for reading yourself. You stopped knowing what you felt because your nervous system was permanently occupied tracking what they felt. You lost track of who you are while making sure everyone else was at a safe distance.
Common Language:
If you’re always feeling anxious or on edge, the clinical term is hypervigilance — your nervous system stays on high alert because growing up, the danger was unpredictable, and it has remained at ready and prepared for the next alarm.
3. You Over-Explained Everything to Stay Safe
(Pattern: Over-Explaining)
Your moment:
After you had a conversation with a friend or family member, went to a birthday party, or spent the day by yourself, you gave all the information you had. Every bit of context, necessary and unnecessary, the whole backstory. This is the preemptive defense. By giving more details, you’re protecting yourself from being accused of something you didn’t do.
After giving more details than they needed, and it still wasn’t enough, you learned that being misunderstood wasn’t just uncomfortable but it had dire consequences. So you started explaining yourself before anyone asked.
What it looked like in the parent relationship:
You didn’t just answer questions, but you anticipated them, which helped you justify decisions your parent might challenge. After giving unnecessary details and always telling the long version of a story, you thought you would protect yourself from scrutiny. But when you’d give too much information to your narcissistic parent, and they were low on supply, they would create a problem that wasn’t there with the extra information.
Giving too much information meant getting in trouble, and giving too little information meant a “You don’t trust me” guilt trip and also getting in trouble.
Why it’s self-abandonment:
You abandoned your right to simply exist without a defense. Which means your body never learned “I am allowed to be here,” and instead believes, “let me prove why I should be.” The exhaustion of that is profound and most people carry it for decades without naming it or healing it. This is one of the longest-running survival patterns I’ve seen in my clients.
Common Language:
What I refer to here is a form of rejection sensitivity, where you continue justifying everything. I coach on this pattern and call it over-explaining, a fear of being misunderstood so deep it rewires how you communicate.
4. You Never Trusted the Good Moments
(Pattern: Chaos as Comfort)
Your moment:
Something good happened! Hurray? Things are calm. Oh no…
Instead of resting in it, you braced for impact; the next awful thing was coming. You scanned for the catch, waited for the other shoe to drop, and because of your experience, a calm parent was always a setup.
What it looked like in the parent relationship:
Good days weren’t safe because you never knew when they’d end. So you remained in the bracing position even during good times. You learned that a happy or peaceful parent was temporary and the mood-changing was certain. Eventually, you’d make a mistake your parent would unload on you for, or you’d be compared to your sibling and be withheld the love you deserved. Then you’d be grounded (this is often used as an isolation method in narcissistic homes) on top of all of it. Good grades weren’t enough. Winning the game wasn’t enough. A clean room wasn’t enough. In their eyes, you always failed somewhere, and the proud moment would end quickly. This continues into adulthood as your parenting not being good enough, your life decisions not being smart enough, and your spouse never reaching their standards.
Why it’s self-abandonment:
You abandoned your right to joy and rest. The ability to let a good thing just be a good thing jumped out of the window, and you got so good at surviving the bad that you forgot or never even learned how to live in the good. This follows you into every relationship, every win, every moment that should feel like relief. You view accomplishment as the setup for eventual disappointment.
Common language:
Foreboding joy, can’t relax when things are good. The pattern in my workbook is chaos as comfort, this is when your nervous system learned that calm was dangerous, and peace stopped (or never did) feel like safety.
What self-abandonment in relationships with parents looks like:
Self-abandonment didn’t become a pattern in your life because you chose it, but it’s there because you learned it was the only thing that worked to keep you safe from a volatile, abusive, or neglectful parent. And for a long time, it did keep you safe, or at least it felt like it. However, safe and truly living aren’t the same thing. You already know that, or you wouldn’t be reading this article. The woman who has been stuffed down while you did what you had to do to be safe is still in you; she has been the whole time. And it’s not too late to go back for her.
If you read through all four of these and recognized yourself, it’s not a coincidence. These are the patterns inside Still Stuck — my $37 digital workbook that walks you through exactly where each one started and how to interrupt it. This is where the work begins.
Until next time,
Audye
Are You Still Stuck?
If you are a woman who suffered narcissistic abuse or are in narcissistic abuse recovery but are stuck in the survival mode patterns you learned, get the 26-page digital workbook that helps you break those cycles for good.
