Can You Co-Parent with a Narcissist?

Trauma & Narcissism Redefined

Caroline Strawson

Narcissisticabuse, Health & Fitness, Narcissist, Self-improvement, Education, Recovery, Mental Health, Trauma

4.8 • 701 Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We hear pretty often that co-parenting is the best thing we can do for our children. However, those coming from an abusive relationship might find it almost impossible to be friendly with their abuser. In today's episode, we will talk about co-parenting with a narcissist, the challenges we'll find there and why it can be so triggering, and we’ll also explore an alternative to co-parenting - parallel parenting.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

- Why co-parenting is not always a better choice for our family situation

- What the communication challenges are that make co-parenting so hard

- What parallel parenting is and how to do it properly

- Some of the mistakes I made in co-parenting that you can avoid

- Why parallel parenting is so effective in helping us keep our sanity

We need to stop punishing ourselves for not being able to co-parent with the narcissist. We are not less of a parent if we can't co-parent. We've been in an abusive relationship and our focus must be on getting better, not on making sure the abuser is feeling better. The best thing we can give our kids is a mentally stable parent, and that’s where parallel parenting can help us.

Resources:

- Our Family Wizard website: https://www.ourfamilywizard.com/

- Join my Narcissistic Trauma Recovery Programme™ https://go.carolinestrawson.com/heal-the-trauma-of-narcissistic-abuse

- Join my Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/thriveafternarcissisticabuse

- Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinestrawson/

- My website: https://www.carolinestrawson.com/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the narcissistic trauma recovery podcast. I'm Caroline Strawson and I'll be sharing with you
0:09.5	awareness, understanding and education about the devastating effects of narcissistic abuse to help you thrive.
0:16.4	I want you to know that I've been exactly where you are and I believe you.
0:21.3	And this show is all about taking you from trauma to transformation.
0:30.1	So in today's episode, I want to talk to you about something I get so many messages about
0:35.2	and that's parenting with the narcissist.
0:41.5	We hear in our society today that we must go parent.
0:45.3	We must go parent and look each other in the eye at handovers.
0:49.6	And we need to be nice to each other because that's best for the children.
0:59.3	Well, I'm here to tell you what is best for your children is a happy, healthy, mentally and emotionally strong adult.
1:02.2	It is not about the fact that you need to co-parent.
1:14.1	And as you can probably tell, I feel very strongly about this, really strongly, because I feel like as a society, we really demonise parents who are unable to co-parent and they are suddenly seen as a lesser, not as good a parent because they can't co-parent.
1:20.8	And literally every single person I work with either on a one-to-one basis or in my community
1:26.6	or in my healing program,
1:28.2	the narcissistic trauma recovery program, I have never, ever come across a parent yet who has
1:35.3	been victimized by a narcissist that wouldn't have tried to co-parent, but it's impossible to co-parent
1:42.2	with someone who just literally counter parents at every single
1:45.4	stage. And I think as a society, really for me, and this is something I really want to sort of
1:52.5	move towards and facilitate change in this area, that we shouldn't have the starting point
1:58.7	that it should be co-parenting, that every divorce or every
2:02.1	relationship breakdown where you have children, you have to co-parent because that just isn't the
2:07.4	case. If you've been in an abusive relationship, why should you be forced to be friendly with
	...

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