Daddy Issues: How Daughters of Narcissistic Fathers Can Cope/ Shahida Arabi

By Shahida Arabi, Bestselling Author 
~ 4 min read

Those who have had a narcissistic parent can testify how damaging it can be to one’s psyche. Narcissistic parents lack empathy, show a severe sense of entitlement to micromanage the lives of their children, and may even subject their children to neglect, as well as emotional and/or physical abuse.

Daughters of narcissistic fathers face all the common challenges of having an unempathic, cruel and abusive parent, but along with these they may also encounter unique triggers and obstacles on the path to their healing journey. Here are five common challenges daughters of narcissistic fathers experience and tips on how to overcome them on the healing journey. Sons of narcissistic fathers may also be able to relate to these.

(1) The grandiose self-image and reputation of their fathers rarely matched the coldness and indifference behind closed doors, habituating their children to accept interpersonal danger as the norm.  Narcissists are masters of impression management and the charismatic narcissistic father is no different. As the daughter of a narcissistic father, you may have noticed that your father prioritized his reputation in the community above the happiness or wellbeing of you and your family members (Banschick, 2013).

Your father was most likely known as generous, friendly and exceptionally charming to all those who knew him in public; yet behind closed doors, he was verbally, emotionally and/or physically abusive to his spouse and children. This is not uncommon in households with a narcissistic parent; their ‘false self’ is rarely a match for the true self within the realm of the family unit.

As a result, daughters of narcissistic fathers are likely to have been silenced should they ever have attempted to speak out against the abuse or speak ill of the father within the household or in public.

Combined with gender roles and expectations for young women to be quiet, demure and polite, daughters of narcissistic fathers may have been conditioned to adapt to danger rather than to protect themselves from it.

That is why dangerous situations and people with a Jekyll and Hyde personality – people who are rarely consistent in their character or integrity – feel like an oddly familiar unsafe comfort zone to daughters of narcissistic fathers in adulthood.

What to do:

Validate and acknowledge the experiences you had with your narcissistic parent and don’t allow the opinions of others detract from the reality of the abuse you experienced. It is common for survivors of any form of abuse to doubt and question themselves about the horrific violations they experienced.

This is especially true when their abuser is a loved figure in the community or projects a charitable and loving image to the world.

They may have also experienced an enormous amount of gaslighting from their abusers or enabling family members or friends of the family (Canonville, 2015). Survivors of narcissistic abuse tend to ‘gaslight’ themselves into believing their experiences were not valid, due to the reputation of their abusers.

If the abuse is taking a severe toll on your mental health and well-being, consider limiting contact with your narcissistic parent to only holidays and special occasions. Limited contact enables you to take your power back, as you can control the frequency with which you interact with the parent and walk away from potentially threatening situations before they escalate.

Some survivors find that their particular situation warrants going No Contact with their abusive parents; if that is the case, know that you do not have to feel guilty or ashamed. You have every right to protect yourself from dangerous people, even if they share your DNA. 

Learn constructive ways to self-validate. Journal or speak with a counselor about the abuse you endured to reconnect with its reality. Confer with validating family members or friends who were also recipients of the abuse and do not minimize it. Honor what you experienced and recognize that you did not deserve it, in any shape, way or form.

Find ways to give yourself the emotional nourishment you needed but didn’t receive in childhood. ‘Re-parent’ yourself with the soothing words, actions as well as acts of radical self-care that can combat some of the destructive conditioning you may have faced in your childhood (Cooney, 2017; Markham, 2014). Connect with your inner child through visualization, meditation and self-soothing whenever you’re in emotional distress (Jenner, 2016). We will talk more about specific healing modalities in Part 3 of this series.

Identify and consider limiting contact with any people you currently have in your life who also have a ‘false self’ that do not align with their true ones.

Often when we’ve been raised by a father figure like this, we tend to gravitate towards people who feed us empty words and false promises, or who are also emotionally unavailable. No wonder: our early role models for relationships also lacked emotional depth and an inability to connect with us emotionally.

We can become ‘tone-deaf’ to verbal and emotional abuse as well (Streep, 2016). That is why it is important to recognize any toxic patterns of communication we may also be tolerating from our other family members, friends, acquaintances and dating partners and to set firmer boundaries that honor how we deserve to be treated.

Finally, ensure that you’re in touch with your authentic self – honor all of the facets of your identity that make you who you are. Know that you don’t need to hide your true self from others and that you don’t have to follow in your narcissistic father’s footsteps in excessively depending on external validation.

Self-validation and connecting with your true self is key on the healing journey. We may not be able to change the narcissistic parent, but we can take steps to ensure that we ourselves are living authentic lives and not modeling the parent’s destructive ways of behaving and relating to the world.

Soulshaping Humanifest/Jeff Brown

Soulshaping Humanifest

At the heart of the SOULSHAPING philosophy is the belief that every individual came into this life with divine purpose, however humble it may outwardly appear. We are not random concentrations of stardust, nor are we accidental tourists. We are divinely inspired, purposeful, and essential to the dance of sacred imagination that is this life. Satisfying our purpose is entirely dependent on our ability to recognize and honor our soul-scriptures for this lifetime. Our soul-scriptures are the unique combination of experiences, callings and archetypal pathways that live at the heart of our transformation. They are the lessons we came here to learn, the soulshape we are here to grow into. When we embody our scriptures, we expand our soul one step closer to wholeness.

We made it through because we are needed here. We are each here to participate in this sacred dance, stepping on each other’s toes and turning each other toward God one clumsy step after another. Although the ultimate romance is with your own soul, it is our experiences together that give birth to the essential lessons. Every soul-scripture is a buried treasure, essential to the advancement of the collective soul. If we get off the dance floor, we postpone others’ lessons too.

Through this lens, we endeavour to make the presumption of essence in those we encounter. We look beyond the disguises and defenses, and honor the precious being living at the core. Rather than judging our seeming differences, we celebrate them as archetypal way-stations, unique and essential learning posts on the path to wholeness. There is a place for everyone on the trailways of transformation, in every soulshape, at every stage of karmic expansion.

Standing in our way are many factors that blind us to who we really are. They include our adaptations and disguises, unresolved emotions, misguided self-concepts, patterns of self-distraction. They also include external influences: an over-stimulating culture, economic reality, others’ opinions, the weight of the world. There can be a lot in the way. We have to be realistic about this, otherwise our spirituality will be ungrounded and our moments of ascension soon followed by a harsh thud on Mother Earth. We need to ascend with both feet on the ground, with one eye on the sky and another on the earth. From sole to soul.

It is my mission to help others identify and clear the obstructions in their way. It is my mission to remind others of their inherent magnificence and encourage them in the direction of their true-path. It is my mission to invite others to trust their truth-aches, excavate their soul-scriptures, answer the soulular phone whenever it rings. It is my mission to use my gifts as fodder for the mill of human expansion, to provide karmic nourishment to those who have momentarily forgotten their significance.

If my time at the School of Heart Knocks (the school of life) has taught me one thing, it is that we are so much more than we know. How small we sometimes imagine ourselves, how quickly we hide our light under a bushel of shame. Yet beyond the echo of our egoic distortions lives a bounty of wonder. We are each so brilliant, so gifted, libraries of unlimited possibility, soul-scriptures waiting for us on every inner shelf. Our divine purpose may be hidden from view, it may be covered in dust, but its’ still in there, sparkling with infinite possibility. We may have to work hard to bring it to light (divine perspiration!), but we must never lose faith in our brilliance, no matter what the world sends our way. When you are ready, look inside and your magnificence will rise to the surface on the wings of the inner dove. I tell you, it’s that close…After years spent traveling on the pathways of self-avoidance, I am delighted to be embodying and humanifesting my divine purpose. If my work can help to remind you of your own, then I have lived well. I am grateful for the opportunity.

Jeff Brown's Bio:

http://soulshaping.com/jeffs-bio/

Trump Gets Lost Walking to His Limo / OD NEWS

Senility is not funny. We have all experienced the pain of watching a loved one struggle with the loss of faculties from age, and the luckiest among us will confront those challenges sooner or later.

Because we have all seen it, we should also all agree that people in the midst of this struggle should not control the world’s most powerful military or largest nuclear arsenal. As today’s otherwise innocuous video (below) indicates, that is exactly the frightening situation that voters in 30 states put us in and 218 Members of Congress keep us in.

Again, dementia is not a target for judgment, and this is not Trump-bashing. Team MAGA should agree with us on this point — just as I can love my grandfather and not want him anywhere near the wheel of a car.

In fact, were it not for Trump’s long history of cheating, lying, and race-baiting, dementia would be the most acceptable excuse for his erratic behavior, gold fish-like attention span, and apparent disinterest in his job.

Of course, Trump’s despicable behavior is far from new, and even as he appears to be suffering the effects of age combined with poor diet and no exercise, he remains a singularly unsympathetic figure.

Like him or hate him, we should all be able to agree that a man who gets lost on the way to the car — while standing at the car — should not be Commander-in-Chief.

That goes for Donald Trump and my grandpa.

Why You Should Know Your Daughter-in-Law's or Son-in-Law's Family History ~

The family history of the daughter or son-in- law is hugely important. This is because, whatever their issues they have with their own parents, there's a good chance that they're going to have them with you.

If they felt over-controlled by their own parents, there's a good chance they're going to view you as being overly controlling. If they felt rejected, devalued, and abandoned by their parents they may view you as that way, completely react to something that you do or say, and convince your child that you as parents are much more critical and rejecting than your child realizes.

If estranged from their own parents, they're much more likely to push your child in that direction. When your kid marries somebody they're not only marrying that particular person; They're also marrying the psychology of that person and the family relationships that have been built up over the years in that person's unconscious.

They're marrying their relationship to other people and the world. They're marrying that person's sensitivities, vulnerabilities, and the ways that they're immature, unresolved, undeveloped, problematic or even unfortunately, as many of you know, psychologically disturbed.

The more that parents understand these things, the better we're able to navigate the often treacherous terrain of having to deal with somebody who sometimes has a knife to our kid's throat, saying, "Choose between your parents or me. You don't get to have both."

~ Joshua Coleman, PdD 

Adele, a magical voice.....

A while ago, I was introduced to Adele by a musician. I say musician, because without his technical comments I am not sure I would appreciate Adele's voice to the maximum degree. I love her Brit accent;  her exquisite timing; and the thrilling and nearly palpable ease with rolling scales, and musical acrobatics. What hearing her evokes in me , and the constant chills that I feel with any of her songs make her my favorite artist. Below says it all better than I ever could.

Adele

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other people named Adele, see Adele (given name). For other uses, see Adele (disambiguation).

Adele MBE
Adele at her Adele Live 2016 concert tour, March 2016
Born	Adele Laurie Blue Adkins[1] 5 May 1988 (age 29) Tottenham, London, England
Alma mater	BRIT School
Occupation	Singer songwriter
Spouse(s)	Simon Konecki (m. 2017)
Children	1
Website	adele.com
Musical career
Genres	Soul pop blue-eyed soul[2] R&B[3]
Instruments	Vocals guitar drums bass
Years active	2006–present
Labels	XL Columbia
Signature
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins MBE (/əˈdɛl/; born 5 May 1988) is an English singer-songwriter. After graduating from the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in 2006, Adele was given a recording contract by XL Recordings after a friend posted her demo on Myspace the same year. In 2007, she received the Brit Awards "Critics' Choice" award and won the BBC Sound of 2008 poll. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 to commercial and critical success. It is certified seven times platinum in the UK, and three times platinum in the US. The album contains her first song, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16, which is based on her home suburb of West Norwood in London. An appearance she made on Saturday Night Live in late 2008 boosted her career in the US. At the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009, Adele received the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

She released her second studio album, 21, in early 2011. The album was critically well received and surpassed the success of her debut, earning the singer numerous awards in 2012, among them a record-tying six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year; two Brit Awards, including British Album of the Year, and three American Music Awards. The album has been certified 16 times platinum in the UK, and is the Adele possesses a contralto vocal range.^[180] Rolling Stone reported that following throat surgery her voice had become "palpably bigger and purer-toned", and that she had added a further four notes to the top of her range.^[179] Initially, critics suggested that her vocals were more developed and intriguing than her songwriting, a sentiment with which Adele agreed.^[181] She has stated: "I taught myself how to sing by listening to Ella Fitzgerald for acrobatics and scales, Etta James for passion and Roberta Flack for control."^[182] Her voice has received acclaim from critics. In a review of 19, The Observer said, "The way she stretched the vowels, her wonderful soulful phrasing, the sheer unadulterated pleasure of her voice, stood out all the more; little doubt that she's a rare singer".^[183] BBC Music wrote, "Her melodies exude warmth, her singing is occasionally stunning and, ...she has tracks that make Lily Allen and Kate Nash sound every bit as ordinary as they are."^[184]For their reviews of 21, The New York Times' chief music critic Jon Pareles commended the singer's emotive timbre, comparing her to Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, and Annie Lennox: "[Adele] can seethe, sob, rasp, swoop, lilt and belt, in ways that draw more attention to the song than to the singer".^[185] Ryan Reed of Paste magazine regarded her voice as "a raspy, aged-beyond-its-years thing of full-blooded beauty",^[186] while MSN Music's Tom Townshend declared her "the finest singer of [our] generation".^[187]

 In the US, it has held the top position longer than any album since 1985, and is certified diamond. The album has sold over 31 million copies worldwide. The success of 21 earned Adele numerous mentions in the Guinness Book of World Records. She is the first woman in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to have three simultaneous top 10 singles as a lead artist, and the first female artist to simultaneously have two albums in the top five of the Billboard 200 and two singles in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100. 21 is the longest-running number one album by a female solo artist in the history of the UK and US Album Charts.

In 2012, Adele released "Skyfall", which she co-wrote and recorded for the James Bond film of the same name. The song won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, as well as the Brit Award for British Single of the Year. After taking a three-year break, Adele released her third studio album, 25, in 2015. It became the year's best-selling album and broke first week sales records in the UK and US. 25 was her second album to be certified diamond in the US and earned her five Grammy Awards, including her second Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and four Brit Awards. The lead single, "Hello", became the first song in the US to sell over one million digital copies within a week of its release. Her third concert tour, Adele Live 2016, visited Europe, North America and Oceania, and will conclude with four finale concerts at Wembley Stadium in mid-2017.

In 2011, 2012 and 2016, Billboard named Adele Artist of the Year. In 2012, she was listed at number five on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Music. Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2016. With sales of more than 100 million records, Adele is one of the best-selling recording artists in the world.^[4]

Adele possesses a contralto vocal range.^[180] Rolling Stone reported that following throat surgery her voice had become "palpably bigger and purer-toned", and that she had added a further four notes to the top of her range.^[179] Initially, critics suggested that her vocals were more developed and intriguing than her songwriting, a sentiment with which Adele agreed.^[181] She has stated: "I taught myself how to sing by listening to Ella Fitzgerald for acrobatics and scales, Etta James for passion and Roberta Flack for control."^[182] Her voice has received acclaim from critics. In a review of 19, The Observer said, "The way she stretched the vowels, her wonderful soulful phrasing, the sheer unadulterated pleasure of her voice, stood out all the more; little doubt that she's a rare singer".^[183] BBC Music wrote, "Her melodies exude warmth, her singing is occasionally stunning and, ...she has tracks that make Lily Allen and Kate Nash sound every bit as ordinary as they are."^[184]For their reviews of 21, The New York Times' chief music critic Jon Pareles commended the singer's emotive timbre, comparing her to Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, and Annie Lennox: "[Adele] can seethe, sob, rasp, swoop, lilt and belt, in ways that draw more attention to the song than to the singer".^[185] Ryan Reed of Paste magazine regarded her voice as "a raspy, aged-beyond-its-years thing of full-blooded beauty",^[186] while MSN Music's Tom Townshend declared her "the finest singer of [our] generation".^[187]

Happy Fathers' Day for Estranged Dads Everywhere by Joshua Coleman

I work with one of the most heartbroken groups of people in the world: fathers whose adult children want nothing to do with them. While every day has its challenges, Father's Day-with its parade of families and feel-good ads-makes it especially difficult for these Dads to avoid the feelings of shame, guilt and regret always lurking just beyond the reach of that well-practiced compartmentalization. Like birthdays, and other holidays, Father's Day creates the wish, hope, or prayer that maybe today, please today, let me hear something, anything from my kid.

Many of these men are not only fathers but grandfathers who were once an intimate part of their grandchildren's lives. Or, more tragically, they discovered they were grandfathers through a Facebook page, if they hadn't yet been blocked. Or, they learn from an unwitting relative bearing excited congratulations, now surprised by the look of grief and shock that greets the newly announced grandfather. Hmm, what did I do with those cigars I put aside for this occasion?

And it's not just being involved as a grandfather that gets denied. The estrangement may foreclose the opportunity to celebrate other developmental milestones he always assumed he'd attend, such as college graduations, engagement parties, or weddings. Maybe he was invited to the wedding but told he wouldn't get to walk his daughter down the aisle because that privilege was being reserved for her father-in-law whom she's decided is a much better father than he ever was.

Most people assume that a Dad would have to do something pretty terrible to make an adult child not want to have contact. My clinical experience working with estranged parents doesn't bear this out. While those cases clearly exist, many parents get cut out as a result of the child needing to feel more independent and less enmeshed with the parent or parents. A not insignificant number of estrangements are influenced by a troubled or compelling son-in-law or daughter-in-law. Sometimes a parent's divorce creates the opportunity for one parent to negatively influence the child against the other parent, or introduce people who compete for the parent's love, attention or resources. 

In a highly individualistic culture such as ours, divorce may cause the child to view a parent more as an individual with relative strengths and weaknesses rather than a family unit of which they're a part.

Little binds adult children to their parents today beyond whether or not the adult child wants that relationship. And a not insignificant number decide that they don't.

While my clinical work hasn't shown fathers to be more vulnerable to estrangement than mothers, they do seem to be more at risk of a lower level of investment from their adult children. 

So, yes, let's take a moment to celebrate fathers everywhere. And another to feel empathy for those Dads who won't have any contact with their child on Father's Day.

Or any other day.

The Art of Buddhist Inquiry - by Jack Elias, CHT

Jack Elias, CHT is a longtime Buddhist practitioner, author, and certified NLP practitioner. Jack is founder and director of the Institute for Therapeutic Learning. He was an early Western student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He writes Finding True Magic, the blog.

Recently, while reading Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s blog entitled “Is Buddhism a Religion?” I was surprised by the number of comments below the blog post that seemed to have a strident or combative tone. I was reminded of what my Buddhist teachers taught about how to relate to questions and the art of inquiry.

There are many perspectives you can take on the question, “Is Buddhism a religion?” A good Buddhist response to the question might be, “So what if it is? So what if it isn’t?” Once when asked “What is Zen?” my teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi answered, “Whatever you say, that is Zen. Whatever you say, that is not Zen.” Then, Roshi would say, “Do you understand?” Our blank stares gave the answer.

With a mischievous chuckle, Roshi would begin to explain that words can’t contain the whole truth. When we use words to talk about the truth, it’s like pointing a finger at the moon. So becoming attached to a particular answer to a question is like thinking that only your finger – and no one else’s – can point at the moon. If two people think this way, they end up fighting about their fingers, and forget all about the moon.

In the stream of comments on Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s blog post, there was more than one instance of furious finger-fighting. (Oh my god. I hope I’m not finger-fighting right now.)

An important element in a Buddhist approach to this or any question is to be mindful of the effect the question has on you. How and where does your mind move when you hear it and consider it? In what way are you invested in getting an answer to this question?

When I think of the question, “Is Buddhism a religion?” I see how answering either “yes” and “no” would leave out important aspects of Buddhism that are extremely rich, aspects I wouldn’t want to lose. As long as I keep in mind that yes is not a jail and no is not a jail, I’m free to appreciate that the answer is both yes and no. Yes and no are each a valid entryway into what Buddhism has to offer.

One person may hear a statement like ‘Buddhism is a religion’ and feel very comfortable, while another may hear it and “go ‘round the bend.” If you remember that words only have the meaning we give to them, then you can appreciate any question (or statement) as a mirror that you look into, to see how your mind is working.

If you try to settle a question with a final answer, or start defending a particular statement, you destroy the mirror. You miss the opportunity to see more deeply into the workings of your mind.

A while back, one of my hypnotherapy students became extremely angry at her fellow students for their lack of punctuality in coming to class. When she couldn’t take it another minute, she began voicing her frustration with them, defending her position with ideas of right and wrong, rude and polite, considerate and inconsiderate, and so on. Everyone in class became annoyed with her for making a mountain out of a molehill.

Because it’s an experiential class, I asked her to focus on her anger and look into it, to see if the anger might have a deeper cause than being offended by others’ rudeness. With a little help, she soon remembered being a little girl in Germany during World War II. She had been visiting her grandparents in the country and had missed the train home. Back in the city, much later than usual, she arrived to find that her home had been destroyed by Allied bombs and her parents killed. If only she had been on time! Maybe she could have had those last precious moments with her parents. She broke into sobs.

When her classmates heard this story and witnessed her grief, their irritation with her dissolved. And because she had discovered the real reason for her irritation with them — the real answer to the real question — she was released from her desperate obsession with being on time.

Everyone in the class now changed their attitude about being on time. Punctuality stopped being a rule to be enforced by some and selfishly ignored, or rebelled against, by others. Classmates stopped seeing each other as being right or wrong, or good or bad depending upon their choice to be on time or to be late to class. Because choosing to make the effort to be punctual was no longer a point of contention, it became an opportunity to support each other with compassion.

If you think of questions as a way to greater clarity and freedom, it changes the way you relate to them. Instead of trying to defend one right answer (for example, “punctuality” being the answer to “lateness”) you contemplate. You ask yourself, “Is this my real question? Is this the real answer?” In this inquiry, your questions and answers become stepping stones to a more profound Q & A.

Questions and answers in Buddhism are not meant to settle any matter. Their purpose is to sharpen the intellect and to awaken the best in the human heart/mind by removing confused thinking. When you use Q&A in this way, you find both healing and liberation.

So . . . Is Buddhism a religion? Is it important to be on time? Is reality for or against you?

May you discover why you care about the questions and answers you really care about. May you go beyond enforcing, ignoring, and rebelling against rules and doctrines. May your questions and answers become contemplations that bring you healing and freedom.

DAVID GRAY ...Disappearing World.... with Lyrics