Dear Paradoxy,

Can u explain how I can go against the idea that my parents paid for everything and took care of my physical needs and etc? Cause until I get a real job with decent money, I will still have to follow my parents’ rules. Like the worker at a company. The worker may not be the company’s property, but they still have to follow company rules unless they choose to change company.

A worker makes a contract with the company. Have you made a contract with your parents when you were a baby? Have you asked to be born, in exchange for them raising you? Where is that contract, and have you signed it willingly?

You were born to your parents, and their obligation as parents is to take care of you. It’s a minimum to provide for the child’s physical needs, put them through school etc. If the parents fail to do that, the child is taken away from them by the social services.

This whole idea that you need to repay their “investment” in you is upside down. Good, loving parents have children not because they expect the child to return their investment and bring them profit down the line, but because they love the child as a unique and precious human being, whom they help raise to be a happy and healthy individual, with their own goals, dreams and aspirations. Good, loving parents don’t raise workers or slaves who will obey their commands, but free people, who can freely decide on their own destiny.

So this whole idea is upside down. And it is often used by narcissistic parents, who treat their child as their property and their extension, with no regard for the child’s needs and desires. The child (and later adolescent) is not seen as an individual, with the freedom to have their own goals and dreams, but as someone to fulfill the wishes of their parents.

I don’t want to expand on this further, because you may reject this whole notion and say that I am disrespecting your parents. I don’t want to prove anything to you – if you are not open to it. But if you are, there is a plenty of videos on youtube that describe a family dynamic very similar to yours (and I can point you at some of those videos).

Unfortunately it’s a very tough family dynamic, in which the child is the victim. Many problems that you display: self-blame, believing that you are a bad person and a burden to everyone, lack of self-compassion, as well as being susceptible to a narcissistic partner – can all stem from having a narcissistic parent.

But I don’t want to push this idea on you, if you don’t feel it is true and don’t want to consider it. So let me know if you want to talk about it more.