4 Telltale Signs You Were Raised By a Narcissist
How these signs can affect your autonomy and happiness.
For anyone with a history of attachment or developmental trauma, these become two of the biggest predictors of a diagnosis of adult anxiety or depression. Attachment and developmental trauma(s) have many overlaps, including invalidating and abusive environments. However, attachment trauma is more specific to a fear of, rejection by, or neglect from, a primary caregiver during a child’s formative years. If your caregiver was inconsistent, unpredictable, or neglectful, these can influence how your attachment style may have developed.
On the flipside, developmental trauma can be anything environmental such as violence in the home, addiction, poverty, divorce, a history of family mental illness, or having a narcissistic caregiver. These can also influence how you emotionally and psychologically develop, including what you may have learned as “normal” within your relationships.
Because of the damage that a narcissistic caregiver can cause, their behavior will typically affect both how you attach to them (and to others in your life), and how your overall emotional development was formed. In other words, narcissistic environments typically include both attachment trauma and developmental trauma.
