Children of the Self-absorbed: A Grown-up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents [Paperback]

Really not at all a good book to be diving into if you have suffered from the effects of being raised by narcissistic parents. It starts off pretty well and sucks you into a false sense of security as it outlines the basics of narcissism sufficiently. However as the book progresses the author adopts a blame attitude and assumes immediately that all readers, having been raised by narcissists, will also be narcissists themselves. This is very triggering if you have low self esteem which most children of narcissists will have. Statistically few children of narcissists turn into narcissists themselves so I really don't know what Brown thinks she's playing at. This book is really only suitable for those who feel they may be narcissists but if you do I doubt you'll be reading it so in one word bordering on a waste of time! She also has an utterly bizarre idea of what empathy is. If you are in a good place emotionally it might make for interesting reading but stay well way if you aren't. Way too dangerous.

I had a lot of problems with this book. First of all- there are virtually no REAL LIFE examples.The Narcissistic Family by Stephanie Donaldson is more useful because it's packed with real life scenarios to help illustrate the ideas. Sometimes the best help you can give to people recovering from abuse is not to be told what to do but to just see other people going through the same thing, having things make sense and knowing you're not alone.This book just contains endless paragraph after paragraph of lists and concepts which after awhile becomes tiring and tedious to trawl through. Not to mention all the exercises. At first they are useful but as you go through it every other page becomes an excercise. Additionally the tone is condescending in parts as opposed to empathetic. It feels like the authors are talking "down" to you. Like where they give you a list of why it's important to have meaning and purpose in your life. I'm sure we understand the importance of having meaning and purpose in our lives otherwise we won't have picked up this book to try change our situation, would we? I also think the authors miss their target audience. They focus in parts on ways in which the children of narcissistic parents have become absorbed themselves because of a feeling of entitlement from not learning proper boundaries. They give the examples of cutting queues,lacking empathy, taking advantage of people, monopolizing conversations etc. These are people with narcissistic personality disorder they are talking about and I doubt very much whether they would pick up a book to try change themselves and be "less absorbed" (and they even have solutions for this- like "trying to listen more when other people talk"). That's the whole idea of narcissistic disorder and I think it's quite unrealistic of the authors to think narcissists want to change, especially if the authors come from a Psychology background.It's the people around them who are likely to be reading this book to change and understand their experience. So you fall into the other categories they mention- like low self-esteem, under achieving, distancing, anxiety etc. So a lot of it doesn't apply to you as you read it and you're made to feel quite bad. I don't feel they went into enough detail about some of the toxic behaviours of the self-absorbed parent. Overall, it is quite a solid effort on the part of the authors. I would have given it 3 stars because it contains some "light bulb" moments for me- like where they confirm some of the less obvious dysfunctional things my mother does which I suspected were wrong. For example, attacking you by constantly undermining you even when they're smiling and being nice as a way of projecting repressed anger. This book would have been better if it were simpler and more concise-focusing on specific areas as opposed to trying to cover EVERYTHING. I got 3 quarters through and couldn't finish it.

This book started off well and there was alot i could relate to regarding the narcissistic parents behavior.However the author later seems to take the stance that children raised this way will become narcissistic themselves.This may be so for a golden child but not the scapegoat of the family ,who mostly bears the brunt of such treatment and therefore lacks self esteem ,security,a caring enviroment but knows how to empathize.It does not cover the dynamics of such a family,so overall disappointed.