Therapy for Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents
You grew up managing someone else's feelings
You learned early to read a room before you entered it. To anticipate the mood, soften the delivery, apologize preemptively. Maybe you were the one who kept things calm, or the one who could never get it right no matter which version of yourself you offered.
That skill kept you safe as a child. As an adult, it is exhausting, and it is often invisible, because it just feels like who you are.
What parental narcissistic abuse looks like.
It rarely resembles the version people picture.
More often it is:
Love that arrived conditionally, and withdrew without warning
Your achievements treated as theirs, your struggles treated as an inconvenience
Being cast in a role, the responsible one, the difficult one, the golden one, and punished for stepping out of it
Having your memory of events corrected until you stopped trusting it
Being made responsible for a parent's emotions long before you could manage your own
You may still not be sure it counts. That uncertainty is one of the most reliable effects of growing up this way.
The long-term effects
What was adaptive in childhood tends to persist:
Difficulty knowing what you want, separate from what is expected
Guilt that arrives whenever you set a boundary, including guilt about being in therapy at all
Perfectionism, or a harsh internal voice that sounds like someone specific
Choosing partners or workplaces that recreate the same dynamic
Chronic exhaustion, tension, and physical symptoms that have no clear medical explanation
That last one matters. Sustained childhood stress shapes the nervous system, and the body often carries the record long after the mind has filed the childhood as "fine, actually."
This is developmental trauma
Harm that happens repeatedly, over years, inside the relationship you depended on for survival, is what is often described as complex or developmental trauma. It is different from a single overwhelming event, and it usually responds to a different kind of therapy.
We do not need a diagnosis for your parent. I do not diagnose people who are not my clients, and the work does not depend on a label. What matters is what happened, and what it left you carrying.
How I work
I hold a Master's degree in Counselling Psychology and bring more than 20 years of both lived and professional experience to this work. I have done my own healing, and it shapes how I sit with people: I know recovery is not linear, and that being met without judgment matters more than being fixed quickly.
We work at your pace. I will not push you toward any decision about contact with your family, whether you are close, estranged, or somewhere complicated in between.
Sessions are 50 minutes, in person in Victoria and online across British Columbia.
Common questions
What is parental narcissistic abuse? A pattern where a parent's needs, for admiration, control, or emotional regulation, consistently take priority over the child's, often through conditional love, blame-shifting, and the erosion of the child's sense of their own perception. It is a description of a pattern, not a diagnosis of the parent.
Can I do this work if my parent is still in my life? Yes. Most people I see are still in contact, often complicatedly so. Therapy is not conditional on going no-contact, and I will not push you in either direction.
Do you offer group therapy for adult children of narcissistic parents? Yes, I offer individual sessions as well as group therapy depending on interest.
Why do I feel guilty for even calling it abuse? Because you were likely taught that naming it was disloyal. The guilt is not evidence you're wrong; it is usually evidence of how effectively the loyalty was enforced.
Is it too late if my parent has died, or if this was decades ago? No. The relationship ends; the adaptations do not. Plenty of people begin this work in their forties, fifties, and beyond.
Do you offer online sessions? Yes, online across British Columbia, and in person in Victoria.
If you are not safe right now
If you're in immediate danger, therapy is not the first call. VictimLink BC at 1-800-563-0808 /local transition house / 911.