I couldn’t get the attention and approval that I needed from my narcissistic father. I craved his attention and approval when I was a child — and I kept craving those things from him as an adult. If someone had suggested this to me 15 years ago, I would have denied it. I just wouldn’t have been able to accept that I still needed the approval that I never got when I was young.
When I was growing up, I received a lot of attention and praise from other people. I was a very high achiever as a child. I did receive attention and approval from many other people over the years for the things I did, but I felt like a fraud — as though I didn’t deserve it — all because he would not give me the approval I was seeking.
Every time I got recognition or praise or awards, I had one eye on him — and I was silently asking whether this one would finally be good enough for him.
This is the next in a series of videos dealing with issues that come up for me to think about as I write a book about my childhood experience of growing up with a narcissistic father. You can visit that YouTube channel to subscribe to future videos. (Liking and subscribing help me quite a bit in reaching others with the videos.) Or you can watch the most recent video below.

The more I understand humans, the less I really comprehend us
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Identity politics is the cancer behind Elizabeth Warren’s lie about ancestry
Does your life feel wasted so far? Maybe your best is yet to come
My ego threatens to take over when I whisper, ‘I deserve better’
Playing it safe isn’t good enough; I have to do things that might fail
How miserable does someone have to be to ‘troll’ a cute dog picture?