When a narcissist faces a major collapse—perhaps when you leave, their career crumbles, or their mask is publicly ripped off—they do not go to a therapist, do they? They do not seek the counsel of a wise friend who will hold them accountable. Instead, they retreat. They go back to the source. They run straight back to the person who instilled the software of their disorder in the first place: the enabling parent. This is the most paradoxical move they make because, often, this parent was their original abuser or the architect of their trauma. However, they do not run there for love. They run there to be reset to factory settings. They return to the one environment on Earth where the laws of reality do not apply, and where their delusion is treated as an absolute fact. They go home to the person who taught them that they are special, that the world is cruel, and that accountability is for other people. They are running back to the only mirror that is permanently fixed to show them a reflection they can tolerate.
Today, we are going to look behind the curtain at the first person a narcissist runs to after their major collapse. To understand why they run back, you have to understand what a collapse actually feels like to a narcissist. In the real world, the world where you and I live, actions have consequences. If you treat people poorly, they leave. If you lie, you get caught. For a narcissist, the real world is a hostile environment because it constantly threatens to expose their false self. When that exposure happens—perhaps when you finally stand up to them or file for divorce—they feel like they have been skinned alive. They’re raw and terrified, not ashamed. They cannot soothe themselves, can they? They have no internal mechanism to say, “I made a huge mistake. I’ll fix it.” So, they need an external regulator. They need a place where the rules of the real world are suspended. They need to go back to the factory.
This is a dynamic I know intimately, not just from my professional work, but from the front lines of my own life. I watched this play out in my own home for years, like a scripted play that never changed its ending. I observed my father, a man who demanded absolute control and respect, revert to a helpless child the moment his authority was challenged. I remember the pattern very vividly. Whenever there was a major fight at home—especially when I began to find my voice and stood up against him—the atmosphere would shift. It usually happened on weekends or evenings, times when families are supposed to connect. But for us, that’s when the war would start.
I would push back. I would refuse to accept the gaslighting. I would hold a mirror up to his behavior, and you could see the injury in his eyes. It wasn’t the injury of a father whose heart was broken; it was the injury of a king whose subject had refused to bow. In those moments, he would not reflect. He wouldn’t take a walk to cool off and think about how to repair the relationship. Absolutely not. He would grab his keys and run. And he would always run to the same place: his father.
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