KEY POINTS

• Narcissistic parents try to fill their emotional void through their children.
• Being raised by a narcissist can lead to a variety of negative feelings and a compromised sense of self in adulthood.
• Adult children of narcissists must grieve the loss of the "good enough" parenting that they never had.
• Ambiguous losses are notable for the conflicting emotions they fuel.

Bowlby and Parke developed a four-stage model of grief that focused on the aspect of attachment to the person who is gone. The stages include shock and numbness, yearning and searching, despair and disorganization, and reorganization and recovery. Bowlby’s research into attachment focused on the ...