59: The Mailbox: When Both Your Parents Are Narcissists

Welcome to another episode of The Good Mood Clinic Podcast!

We are doing a mailbox episode today! 

Someone we will call Sam sent in a thoughtful and vulnerable email after listening to and resonating with something we mentioned in our episode on narcissistic mothers.

Sam is an overseas listener who grew up with two narcissistic parents. He has a brother and a younger sister who he describes as his mother’s narcissistic “mini-me”. 

In the podcast, we mentioned that being parented by a narcissist could squash your natural light, and someone with that psychological history might not even know who they truly are. Sam resonated with something similar when he first learned about the inner child and heard of the chronic emptiness felt by those who have had to assume inauthentic selves in early childhood as a result of conditional love. He has been living with a similar ache which is sometimes debilitating- even with medication and a healthy lifestyle. So he asked if we could do an episode on recovering that squashed light and share some advice on how people with chronic depression can regain their vitality.

Books mentioned in the podcast:  Books by John Bradshaw