Baby Steps for Healing From Narcissistic Parents
Let’s be honest—“baby steps” gets a bad rap in trauma recovery circles. It sounds too soft, too slow, too beginner-level, right?
But when it comes to healing from narcissistic parents, baby steps aren’t a compromise—they’re the only viable starting point.
Not because survivors aren’t capable of big moves, but because their entire system—emotional, neurological, relational—was trained to collapse under pressure or fawn for safety.
I’ve seen clients try to take giant, heroic leaps—going no contact overnight, confronting a parent with a letter—and then spiral into guilt, panic, or deep shame because their nervous system wasn’t prepped for that kind of rupture. That’s not failure. That’s a trauma-informed clue.
Baby steps aren’t small.
They’re strategic.
They work with how trauma actually heals—through repetition, nervous system regulation, and reclaiming tiny pockets of agency. When we dismiss them, we risk reenacting the very perfectionism and invalidation narcissistic parents taught in the first place.
The deep inner shifts you can’t see from the outside
Challenging the wiring, not just the wounds
Let’s talk about the stuff that doesn’t look impressive on paper—the changes that don’t show up in a support group share or on a therapist’s progress chart. I’m talking about the internal, invisible work that’s often the real engine of healing. These shifts aren’t just emotional—they’re neurological, cognitive, and existential. And frankly, they’re where most of the heavy lifting happens.
When you grow up with narcissistic parents, your baseline for “normal” is distorted. You’ve likely spent decades with internalized narratives like:
- “My needs are too much.”
- “If I speak up, I’ll be punished or abandoned.”
- “Keeping the peace is my job.”
So healing isn’t just about feeling better. It’s about unlearning entire belief systems that have been wired into your identity. That takes time, repetition, and a hell of a lot of patience.
Rewriting the inner voice
One of the most striking things I notice in survivors is how their internal monologue sounds suspiciously like their parent. It’s sarcastic, dismissive, often cruel. And it always doubts their reality.
Rebuilding that inner voice isn’t as simple as inserting affirmations or “being kinder to yourself.” That’s a start, sure. But the real work is building an internal protector—a part of the psyche that doesn’t just soothe but advocates.
Here’s a quick example. A client I worked with once said, “I always hear my mom’s voice telling me I’m selfish whenever I say no.” Over time, instead of trying to silence that voice, we worked on installing a new one: “Of course you feel guilty. That voice kept you safe when you were little. But you’re allowed to choose yourself now.”
That shift—from inner critic to inner advocate—is subtle. But it’s massive. It changes how survivors approach relationships, work, even parenting their own kids.
Trauma is slow because it’s smart
Let’s bring in a bit of neurobiology here. When we’re talking about trauma, we’re talking about a dysregulated nervous system—one that’s been stuck in chronic fawn, freeze, or fight for years.
This is why even minor steps—like saying “I can’t talk right now” to a parent—can trigger a full-body panic response. The brain registers it as threat, not growth. And that’s not irrational—it’s adaptive. This system worked when they were five, ten, fifteen.
So when someone feels like they’re “regressing” because they can’t hold a boundary yet, I remind them: your nervous system isn’t sabotaging you. It’s protecting you using outdated data.
And this is where baby steps come back in. Each one updates the system. Each one sends a new signal: “You survived that boundary. You’re safe now.” That’s how real, embodied healing happens—not in leaps, but in tiny updates to an old survival code.
The false urgency of performance healing
There’s a hidden trap I see in many high-functioning survivors: they treat healing like a performance review. Every setback feels like failure. Every quiet week without “progress” feels like stagnation. And honestly? That mindset often echoes their narcissistic parent’s perfectionism.
One woman I worked with—successful, brilliant, insightful—told me, “If I’m not growing, I’m wasting time.” It turned out, that belief came directly from her father, who used to say, “You’re either winning or you’re irrelevant.”
We reframed healing not as a ladder to climb, but as a loop to soften into. Some weeks your progress is invisible. Some months it’s just holding the line and not texting back. But all of it matters. All of it counts.
Safety before insight
Let me say this clearly: Insight is overrated if the body doesn’t feel safe.
I’ve had clients who could articulate every nuance of narcissistic abuse—trauma timelines, CPTSD symptoms, attachment theory—but still felt frozen in real life. That’s because knowing something intellectually doesn’t override what the body believes.
This is where somatic work becomes essential. Things like:
- Tracking breath patterns during family conversations
- Noticing muscle tension around certain names
- Journaling with the non-dominant hand to bypass cognitive defenses
When survivors learn to trust their body’s signals (instead of overriding them like they were taught), they start making choices that align with now, not with the trauma script.
Here’s the big idea: These internal realignments may not be flashy, but they are the soil in which every external boundary, every confrontation, every empowered decision is rooted. If we don’t honor them as legitimate steps in healing, we’re just recreating the narcissistic demand for performance—this time, in the name of recovery. And we can do better than that.
Small actions that change everything
Here’s something I say often to clients and colleagues alike: what looks small on the outside often feels huge on the inside when you’ve grown up with narcissistic parents. It’s easy for us—especially those of us deep in the work—to forget just how much effort it takes to do something that seems “simple.” Things like saying no, leaving a call early, or even acknowledging a toxic pattern can feel like betrayal, danger, or collapse for someone whose nervous system has been conditioned to associate autonomy with punishment.
So instead of pushing people to “take the big leap,” I encourage low-stakes, high-impact steps—the kind that don’t require full nervous system override, but still signal to the body: you’re allowed to choose yourself now.
Let’s break down some of these deceptively simple, but deeply transformative baby steps.
Say “no” without explaining
This one is a heavy hitter. Most survivors of narcissistic parenting are over-explainers. Why? Because saying “no” wasn’t allowed—it had to be justified, defended, or bargained. So the nervous system doesn’t just register “no” as risky, it also believes it must be accompanied by a performance.
A baby step here is simply saying: “No, I can’t do that”—and then stopping. No follow-up text. No three-paragraph apology. Just… no.
One client practiced this by saying no to a friend about a lunch date. It wasn’t even about her parent. But that felt sense of choosing herself and surviving it? Game-changing. She later applied that same tool with her mother when her mom tried to guilt-trip her into a family event.
End conversations early
This is huge for those stuck in fawn responses. Narcissistic parents are experts at baiting—turning a normal conversation into a guilt trip, a competition, or a subtle devaluation. Survivors often endure these conversations to “be the bigger person” or to avoid escalation.
Here’s a powerful baby step: end the call when your body says we’re done here. Not when the conversation is tidy. Not when the parent has hung up. When you feel done.
You can even try: “Hey, I need to go. We’ll talk later.” And then… actually hang up.
You’ll feel the guilt. That’s expected. But you’ll also start to feel your own boundaries returning to you, not as theory but as embodied permission.
Skip the performance of being “the good one”
Let’s talk about role scripts. In narcissistic family systems, kids get assigned jobs: the golden child, the scapegoat, the fixer, the invisible one. Most survivors overfunction in their “good child” identity—polite, reliable, self-sacrificing. It was the only way to survive.
A real, radical baby step is to break that script, even once.
For example, don’t check in this week. Don’t send the “Happy Anniversary” card. Don’t apologize for missing the group call. And then—don’t explain yourself. Watch what happens in your body. That discomfort? It’s your nervous system detoxing the identity it was forced to wear.
Name it—at least to yourself
This one’s quiet but powerful: call a narcissistic behavior what it is, even if you only do it in your journal. Survivors are often stuck in a fog of minimization. They say things like, “Maybe she meant well,” or “It’s just her personality.”
No more. Try writing this sentence: “That was emotional manipulation.” Or: “That was a narcissistic injury reacting to my boundary.” Or even just: “That was gaslighting.”
Labeling something accurately can pull you out of the old enmeshment trance and remind you that you’re seeing clearly now.
Let grief be incomplete
This one’s tender. There’s often a deep wish that healing will bring closure—that one day, the parent will apologize, or at least change. Most of the time, they don’t. And when that moment lands, grief floods in.
But here’s a critical baby step: allow yourself to grieve without a perfect resolution. That includes rage, sorrow, numbness, even moments of missing the parent. All of it is valid.
One client told me, “I feel crazy because some days I miss my dad, even though I know he was cruel.” That’s not crazy. That’s complex attachment mourning—grieving what you had, what you needed, and what you’ll never get, all at once.
That grief doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to move.
Build new support systems, slowly
You don’t need a 10-person trauma support squad overnight. But one tiny shift—telling a friend the truth about your family, or reaching out to a trauma-informed therapist—can create a whole new dimension of care.
Start small. Choose one safe person. Let yourself be seen without filtering. That’s how you rewire the old script that says, “No one can handle the truth of what I’ve been through.”
Every one of these steps is an act of reclaiming power. You might not get applause for them. Your parent might never notice. But your nervous system will. And it’ll thank you for it—not with fireworks, but with something even better: a little more calm, a little less collapse, and a growing sense that you’re allowed to exist just as you are.
When healing itself feels unsafe
Here’s the paradox that doesn’t get talked about enough: sometimes, healing doesn’t feel like healing at all—it feels terrifying, wrong, or even like betrayal. Especially when your trauma includes enmeshment with a narcissistic parent, those first few steps toward independence or authenticity can activate intense internal alarms.
This is the part where many people backtrack—not because they don’t want to heal, but because their system reads safety as danger and danger as normal.
Let’s unpack why that happens and what to do about it.
Autonomy equals abandonment
For many survivors, asserting boundaries or taking space from a narcissistic parent lights up a primal fear: What if they leave me? What if I’m alone?
It doesn’t matter that the relationship is toxic. The fear isn’t about logic. It’s about early attachment—where love was often conditional, performative, or weaponized.
So when someone says, “I feel guilty for going low contact,” what they often mean is: “I feel like I’m severing my lifeline.”
In that moment, it’s crucial to name what’s actually happening: this is the trauma bond flaring up, not your truth speaking.
And naming that doesn’t erase the pain—but it helps anchor you in reality.
Safety feels boring—or suspicious
I’ve seen this time and time again: a survivor meets a genuinely safe, emotionally available person—and they feel nothing. Or worse, they feel restless, annoyed, or deeply unsafe.
Why? Because safety is unfamiliar. Their nervous system was trained to equate intensity, chaos, or inconsistency with love.
A former client once said, “This new partner is kind and gentle… but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I almost miss the drama.”
That’s not a moral failure. That’s trauma pattern recognition. The body is saying, “This is different. Different is dangerous.” The work here isn’t to override it, but to stay present long enough for the body to learn new associations.
Safety, over time, becomes not just tolerable—but desirable.
Grief masks as anxiety
When people start healing, especially after decades of self-abandonment, an unexpected grief often surfaces. It’s the grief of realizing how much you missed out on—real nurturance, unconditional love, the feeling of being wanted just for existing.
But that grief often shows up as anxiety, hypervigilance, or shame. Because again, the system says: Big feelings = unsafe.
A client once described this beautifully: “Every time I do something kind for myself, I feel like I’m stealing. Like I’m doing something wrong.”
She wasn’t stealing. She was experiencing joy in a system that had only known deprivation. And her nervous system didn’t trust it yet.
So we didn’t push. We sat with the anxiety. We named it. We welcomed it as a sign that something was shifting.
Betrayal conditioning runs deep
One of the cruelest dynamics of narcissistic parenting is how it conditions loyalty. You’re taught that protecting the parent—emotionally, reputationally—is your job. Speaking out feels like betrayal. Even feeling angry can feel wrong.
So when you start setting boundaries or talking honestly about your experience, guilt floods in. You might even hear their voice in your head: “How could you do this to me?”
Here’s the truth: you’re not betraying them. You’re choosing you. That’s not a betrayal. That’s a correction.
Still, that internal pushback is real. Which is why we need to treat it with the same care we’d give any trauma response—not with shame, but with deep, unwavering gentleness.
Practice doesn’t make perfect—it makes possible
When healing feels unsafe, the goal isn’t to push through or “get over it.” The goal is to create enough safety to stay with it.
Sometimes that looks like:
- Pausing when the guilt hits, and breathing instead of apologizing
- Noticing when the urge to self-abandon creeps in, and choosing a micro-boundary instead
- Letting yourself cry even when the old voices say you’re being dramatic
Each of those moments is an opportunity to show your system: We’re not in that house anymore. We’re not five years old. We’re allowed to live differently now.
That’s what healing is. Not clean. Not linear. But alive, honest, and gradually more free.
Final Thoughts
Healing from narcissistic parents isn’t a straight road—it’s a winding, often messy walk through grief, anger, clarity, and eventually, real self-trust. And those “baby steps” we’re so quick to dismiss?
They’re not the warm-up. They’re the work. Each one reshapes the nervous system, untangles the lies, and reclaims a piece of truth.
You won’t always feel brave doing them. Sometimes they’ll feel like nothing. But over time, you’ll look back and realize: every one of those small steps was a revolution. One breath, one “no,” one truth at a time.
