Steps to Heal from Narcissistic Parenting 

Accept and Acknowledge the Abuse Occurred

People often minimize the extent of the abuse by saying things like, “It wasn’t that bad. They never hit me.” They may make excuses for the parents. Many blame themselves for it. Healing requires recognizing the extent of the damage and that you aren’t to blame for any of it. 

When doing a client assessment, I often ask my clients, “Do you feel like you got your childhood needs met?” Most will look at me blankly and ask, “What needs?” Some weren’t really allowed to have any needs, and many are clueless about what their needs are. Most of my clients have been using food for years to meet all kinds of needs that are completely unrelated to food. 

That’s a big part of the work I do with clients: teaching them to recognize what their needs are and finding ways to meet them in a healthy manner.

Establish Clear Boundaries with Your Parents

To protect yourself from further harm, you must set clear boundaries with your parents. It’s best to limit your time with them. If they continue to disrespect your boundaries, it may be best to walk away from the relationship. 

It’s also best to avoid confrontations with these people as most will never change or accept responsibility for what has occurred. If you confront them, it will be met with denial, anger, minimization, gaslighting or thrown back on you. “It's your fault. You made me do it.”

People who are tied up with emotional eating often have poor boundaries. I  teach my clients how to set and enforce boundaries. I also give them energy techniques to protect their energy and clear the negative energies that other people dump on them. 

Seek Professional Help

A therapist is a great place to start, especially a therapist who is well-versed in the dynamics of narcissism and does trauma-informed therapy. If it’s too costly, there are plenty of free resources out there. I especially enjoy Dr. Ramani’s YouTube videos on healing from narcissistic abuse. She’s a clinical psychologist and retired psychology professor from UCLA. 

Develop a Supportive Network

There are also coaches who specialize in recovery from narcissistic abuse, and there are a lot of support groups out there. You don’t have to suffer alone. If you have a food issue that originates from a narcissistic family, then I can help you with that. What I teach you will strengthen your sense of self, and will also benefit your recovery from narcissistic parenting.

Many of my clients tell me I’m the first person they have ever told about what has occurred in their family of origin. I feel honored to be trusted in this manner. Everyone needs to be heard. It’s often in the telling of our stories that we realize what occurred has been far more damaging than we ever thought. 

This is often the time when my clients start to connect the dots between their overeating issues and their childhood experience.  We all need our feelings validated, and this is absent in a narcissistic family. 

Strengthen Your Sense of Self

People who come from narcissistic families often have a weak sense of self and are experts at emotional and physical neglect. We tend to treat ourselves in the way our parents treated us, so if we’ve been neglected, we will neglect ourselves. Many use food and other substances to fill the emptiness that they feel within. 

I encourage my clients to start a process of going within regularly and noting how they’re feeling. I teach them how to recognize and process their emotions. Journaling is great for this. 

I also encourage my clients to develop gratifying hobbies and interests outside of work and food. Most of them are seriously pleasure-deprived and need to find better sources of pleasure besides food. Many were not encouraged to develop interests outside of their family and have very limited interests.  I also encourage them to define their values and affirm their strengths. 

Practice Self-Care

People who come from narcissistic families and emotional eaters often lack self-soothing skills. Because their feelings were never validated, they have trouble recognizing and regulating their emotions. It’s important to learn different ways to soothe yourself when stressed or upset. 

Learning various relaxation techniques can help calm you during stressful times. Also making physical exercise a priority can help manage stress, regulate moods, and keep you from turning to food.

Inner Child Work 

I always give my clients some inner child exercises. This is because they are often out of touch with this part of themselves. They’ve lost the ability to be lighthearted, joyful, and playful, often because it was never allowed in their families.

To me, a big part of emotional eating and narcissistic recovery is reparenting yourself and becoming the loving, nurturing parent to yourself that you never had. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!

Overcome People Pleasing and Perfectionism 

Children from narcissistic families are often people pleasers and perfectionists. People pleasing has often been a survival mechanism and as the person grows older, it becomes hard for them to say no, and their kindness is often taken advantage of. They become over-responsible, resentful, angry door mats who can’t say no and then turn to food to cope. 

In childhood, many decide, “If I’m perfect enough, Mommy and Daddy will finally love me.” Perfectionism becomes a way to survive and to avoid feelings of shame. 

The majority of my emotional eating clients are perfectionists. This keeps them trapped in self-defeating behaviors. To overcome perfectionism, one must become happy with being “good enough.” Self-acceptance and compassion are the antidotes for these behaviors. This is why the foundation of my work revolves around this.

Self-Forgiveness

People who have survived narcissistic families need to learn to forgive themselves for what they went through and what they had to become to survive the family system.

Addiction, depression, codependency, eating disorders, self-harming, anxiety, overeating, overachieving, self-neglect, workaholism, self-loathing, people pleasing, perfectionism, black and white thinking, and a need for excessive validation and approval are often legacies of this style of parenting. When you take the steps of actively healing and freeing yourself from these behaviors, you are breaking a generational cycle of dysfunction that goes back decades. 

There can be great comfort in knowing that you are stopping this generational curse and that by healing, you are changing your life story from one of surviving to thriving, from being a victim to becoming an authentically empowered person, finally becoming the person you were always meant to be. The good news is it’s never too late to start the journey.

If you'd like to see me do a workshop on this topic, reply back and let me know!

© 2025. Catherine L. Taylor. All Rights Reserved. No part of this article can be reprinted without the express permission of the author.