Growing up with narcissistic parents, you learn early in life to be invisible. Stay out of everyone’s way. Don’t bother anyone with your “petty” needs or problems. After all, your parents are the important ones, not you. You are there to attend to their needs, not them to yours. They have drilled these so-called facts into your head from birth, so you know them well.
Being invisible is not only a way of life, but a handy survival tool in that type of environment. The less your narcissistic parents notice you, the less likely they’ll use or abuse you. Staying quiet & out of their way can make your childhood somewhat easier.
While being invisible can serve you well while in such a toxic environment, it is no longer necessary once you are out of it. In fact, it won’t help you at all & may hurt you instead.
If you continue to remain invisible, people may not necessarily abuse you, but they also will not be there for you or love you as you need, because they will not notice you. Or, if they do notice you, your needs won’t be very important to them because they don’t appear important to you. Not discussing your needs makes people not even realize you have them.
Dear Reader, if this is you, it’s your time to become visible! Let people know you exist. It is perfectly OK to have needs & wants, & to let those be known among those close to you. In fact, it’s healthy to do so. In normal, healthy relationships, both parties have needs & let each other know what they are with the expectation that when possible, the other person will fulfill them. God has created people to need one another, after all. He obviously knows best, so why not try living life His way?
Cynthia Bailey-Rug, Christian Author 
Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
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My parents deemed me “the mistake”, leaving me in isolation where I simply existed. Only after a near lifetime of traveling a horrendous path have I come to be me. And, I’m not half-bad.
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Good for you! The mistake.. omgosh.. the mistake was them treating you that way!
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I agree, but I made it through okay.
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I love this ” if they do notice you, your needs won’t be very important to them because they don’t appear important to you” and the positive encouragement of taking power back by stating what we need in your message. I also think there is huge power in owning our needs by expressing them in terms of no longer seeing OURSELVES as invisible. Once we start doing this, I really believe that the chains start to break. What we once believed (because this is what we were taught by our parents) ‘I don’t matter’ shifts to ‘I bloody well do matter, and I am fully at peace with claiming it’. So freeing, so empowering 🙂 The funny thing is once we start doing this, we realise that those we are in healthy relationships with, actually expect us to express our needs…maybe those we are in narcissistic relationships don’t, but hey, what a great filter in finding out who matters and who doesn’t to us!
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Yes!!! To all you said. 🙂
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