When Family Blocks Your Healing: The Enabler’s Role in a Narcissistic System
When you grow up in a narcissistic family, the pain doesn’t always come from the obvious abuser.
Sometimes, it comes from the parent who seems kind, caring, and even supportive — the one who quietly stands by, smoothing things over, saying they only want peace.
This post isn’t about the narcissist.
It’s about the enabler — and why, painfully, they often don’t want you to get better.
The Narcissist and the Enabler: Two Roles, One System
In my family, my father was the narcissist – I would describe him as malignant.
My mother was the enabler.
For a long time, I couldn’t make sense of it. I understood why my father didn’t want me to grow stronger, I was his source of narcissistic supply. But why my mother, the one who seemed gentle and supportive, also resisted my healing… that was much harder to accept.
It took me years (and a lot of journaling and therapy) to see the pattern clearly.
Why the Narcissist Doesn’t Want You to Get Better
This part is easier to understand.
A narcissist depends on control and emotional energy from others to maintain their inflated sense of self. Your distress, your confusion, your guilt — these feed them.
If you start healing, setting boundaries, and detaching, they lose their fuel. So of course they don’t cheer for your progress. They want things to stay exactly as they are.
Your pain keeps their system running. You already know that part.
Why the Enabler Doesn’t Want You to Get Better
This is where things get confusing and heartbreaking. The enabler often appears to support you. They might tell you to see a therapist, or encourage you to take care of yourself.
But deep down, they want two conflicting things:
- For you to get better — as long as it doesn’t threaten the family system.
- For everything to stay the same — so they don’t have to face the truth.
The enabler’s loyalty isn’t to you. It’s to the system. And the system revolves around the narcissist.
The Moment the Shift Happens
In my case, I once told my mother how deeply my father’s behavior had affected me. She listened at first. Then, something shifted.
Her tone changed. Her body language tightened. Suddenly, everything I said was invalidated, not always with words, but through silence, blankness, or quick changes of topic.
It was like the air in the room got heavy. My body felt it before my mind caught up. At first, I was devastated. It felt like losing my mother while she was still sitting in front of me.
Later, I realized what was happening. She wasn’t trying to hurt me — she was protecting herself. Her nervous system couldn’t handle the truth.
The Enabler’s Protective Mechanisms
When I finally understood that my mother was also a victim of narcissistic abuse, things started to make sense. She had developed her own survival strategies: denial, minimization, and emotional numbing.
These mechanisms kept her safe under my father’s control. But they also kept her trapped — unable to see reality clearly.
To her, acknowledging my pain would mean facing her own. It would mean admitting that she failed to protect me. And that’s a truth she simply can’t bear.
So her system shuts down. Her mind rewrites the story. And I become the problem — not the victim.
“It’s Your Fault You Wanted to Be Close to Him”
I’ll never forget one particular conversation. I told my mother that what happened to me in childhood wasn’t normal — that I didn’t deserve the harsh punishments or emotional cruelty from my father.
Her response?
“It’s your fault. You wanted to be close to him.”
For months, I couldn’t digest that sentence. Every child wants to be close to their parents. That’s basic biology. It’s love, not fault. But this is what the enabler does: they distort reality to avoid pain.
If they admitted the truth, that the narcissist was abusive and they didn’t stop it, their entire worldview would collapse. So they rewrite the story: you’re exaggerating, you’re too sensitive, you wanted it.
The Enabler’s Mission: Keep the Peace at All Costs
Enablers are often broken by the narcissist. They live in chronic fear: fear of conflict, of rejection, of facing what they’ve ignored for years. Their mission is simple: keep the peace. Maintain the image.
If you start therapy and begin confronting reality, you become a threat to that peace. Healing disturbs the family balance. Your new clarity exposes what they’ve been pretending not to see.
So even if they smiled when you booked your first therapy session, that smile fades the moment your healing starts touching the family truth.
“You’ve Been in Therapy Long Enough”
When I began therapy, my mother was supportive, at least on the surface. She said it was good I was getting help. But a few months later, when I began connecting dots and finding words for what had happened, her tone changed.
“You’ve been in therapy three months now. That should be enough. You should just get a job now.”
Later, she suggested I switch therapists. Then, she went silent altogether whenever I mentioned healing or trauma. I learned to stop sharing. Not because I didn’t want connection — but because I realized I would never get it there.
What the Enabler Really Fears
It’s not your healing they fear.
It’s what your healing reveals.
If you’re the scapegoat in a narcissistic family, your healing threatens the entire family myth, the illusion that everything is fine. You’re the one who names what everyone else has buried.
And once you name it, they can’t un-hear it. So they attack, dismiss, or ghost you — anything to make the truth disappear.
What Healing Looks Like for the Scapegoat
The painful reality is this: in a narcissistic family, the scapegoat is alone. No one will hand you validation. You have to build it from the inside out.
Here’s what that process has looked like for me — and maybe it will resonate with you too:
- Stop expecting understanding from those who are invested in denial.
Their nervous systems are protecting them from the truth, and you can’t undo that for them.
- Validate yourself first.
Journaling has been my lifeline — a place where I can tell the truth without being interrupted, minimized, or rewritten.
- Recognize the pattern.
Every time you feel that subtle invalidation — the silence, the blank stare, the quick subject change — name it for what it is: a defense, not a reflection of your worth.
- Create distance.
Healing requires safety, and you can’t heal in the same environment that made you sick.
- Find your real allies.
Whether that’s a trauma-informed therapist, a trusted friend, or an online community — surround yourself with people who see you clearly.
The Hardest Part — and the Hope
One of the hardest truths I’ve learned is that my mother may never understand. Her defenses are too strong, and her fear of facing the past too deep. But I also learned something else: My healing doesn’t need her permission.
The moment I stopped trying to convince her, my energy began to return. I could finally focus on my own nervous system instead of managing hers.
Healing from a narcissistic family system is not about getting everyone to see the truth. It’s about learning to live in your truth, even if you’re the only one who does.
Closing Reflection on the Enabler
If this article resonated with you, you might want to read my earlier pieces on
👉 Fawning: When Your Nervous System Takes Over Your Behavior
and
👉 Red Flags of a Narcissistic Dynamic: What Your Body Knows Before Your Mind Does.
Together, these posts form a map — from recognizing unsafe dynamics, to understanding your body’s signals, to breaking free from the family system that trained you to suppress them.
You can’t change how your family responds.
But you can learn to listen to your body, honor your truth, and finally start living as if your healing matters — because it does.
