David McElroy

As I started coming to terms with the damage that my father’s narcissism had done to me, I also had to ask myself disturbing questions.

Had I become something like him? Had growing up with him taught me to be a narcissist? Was I going to become the abuser he had become?

Many people who are raised by narcissists turn into narcissistic abusers, too. I had to re-evaluate myself — my inner shame and some of my outer behaviors — in light of what I learned about him. These were not pleasant questions to ask myself.

This is the first installment of the thoughts I’m having as I finally write my book about having been raised by a narcissist. The YouTube site is here. (Please subscribe if you’d like to keep up with this project.) Or you can watch the embedded video below.

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For many years, I’ve intended to write a book about what it’s like to be raised by a narcissistic parent — and about my struggles to understand what happened to me. I’m finally writing that book, which is called, “The Truth About My Father.”

As a side project, I’ve set up a new YouTube channel on which I’m going to be posting videos about some of the thoughts that come up for me as I write the book. I realize this isn’t for most people, but if you have some personal experience with narcissism in someone around you, it might interest you.

I don’t know how often I’ll publish new videos, but if you’d like to know more as they come out, just subscribe to the channel and click on the choice to be notified when new videos are published.

For now, you can see the five-minute introduction to the channel below:

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I wasn’t prepared for what Catherine was about to tell me.

“I’m going to try to get pregnant next week,” she blurted out without any context.

Catherine just turned 19 years old. She still lives at home with a controlling mother. Her father killed himself when she was young. She doesn’t yet know how to drive and has to beg for rides to and from a menial job. She’s never had any romantic relationships, but she’s recently started slipping away from home to meet men for sex.

Just last week, she told me about how one such man — who she met online — picked her up and took her to a camper about an hour away from her. (She told her mother she was at a friend’s house.) They had sex for a couple of days, then he abruptly brought her back home — and then he disappeared from her life.

Now, she’s met another man online and she plans to meet him Sunday night. She’s never seen him in real life, but she’s planning to make sure he gets her pregnant. And she looked shocked when I told her that this plan was stupid and selfish.

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