A father is the first man a daughter ever loves. It’s the sacred divine love for her father…the kind that sees him as larger than life. To her, he is strength. He is safety. He is a protector, a provider, a hero.
In the eyes of a little girl, her father is God-like. And that love becomes the blueprint. It sets the tone for how she will expect to be treated by men in the future—what she will accept, what she will long for, and what she will believe she deserves.
Every word, every touch, every absence…it all paints the canvas. And every man who comes after him will be held against that first imprint.
If her father starts to beat her, she will assume that being beaten is okay and is in fact a sign of love.
And if the love is distant and emotionally unavailable, she will try anything to get his attention.
Looking for love and attention doesn’t stop, but it may change the child from an authentic self to a performance for love.
If you had a father who had narcissistic characteristics, there is so much you need to know. Let’s get into it.
Creation of the Love “Blueprint”
Hello and welcome back to the Transform into Wisdom Podcast, where we explore healing from narcissistic relationships and dysfunctional families — going beyond traditional therapy to transform deep emotional wounds into wisdom, self-trust, emotional mastery, and lasting empowerment.
My name is Mariam. We are continuing to deep dive into this series of dysfunctional families. If you’re just joining us, make sure to go back to our earliest episodes in this series for incremental learning.
Today we are deep diving into what daughters of narcissistic fathers need to know.
Why is this important?
Because after a narcissistic relationship, I retraced the steps to find the source of where it all started.
Why?
Because it didn’t start with you, and it didn’t start with me.
In other words, you are not the source of your wounding. You didn’t do this to yourself. And by going back to where it all started, examining and acknowledging what happened and what didn’t happen, you can chart your path forward to healing and lasting emotional freedom.
So, let’s start from the very beginning.
A father is the first male figure that a daughter loves. It’s the divine love for her father. This love creates a blueprint for how future men treat her.
This is the canvas that all other love by a male figure will be compared to. Because in the mind of the child, the father is like a god. Strong, loving, supportive, protective, a hero.
And every man will be unconsciously compared with the father to look for matching characteristics or things that remind her of the times she had with her father.
If her father starts to beat her, she will assume that being beaten is okay and is, in fact, a sign of love. If her father is unavailable, she will make some meaning from it. “My father works very hard.” She will start to look for any small signs of love from her father.
And if the love is distant and emotionally unavailable, she will try anything to get his attention. And if she gets that attention, she will record what led to that encounter and do more of that to get that attention. If it stops working, she will try something else. This is all happening unconsciously, of course.
Looking for love and attention doesn’t stop, but it may change the child from an authentic self to a performance for love.
This leaves a gaping hole in the child that defines the beginning of the unconscious journey of looking for love in all the wrong places.
The Many Faces of a Narcissistic Father
If you had a father who had narcissistic characteristics, you need to know that your father has many faces. There is the relationship with:
- you,
- your siblings (sons vs daughters),
- your mom,
- your extended family of relatives,
- strangers and objects of interest, i.e., people who bring the narcissist value, like money, social standing, etc.
All these relationships are different, with some common threads tying them together, of course. And you may have witnessed switching from one personality to another because someone else stepped into the frame.
I have always loved both my parents dearly. When I was around 16, for about 2 years, I was coerced into working with my father, helping him with his businesses.
I loved my parents dearly, and I was afraid that if I said no to their request, I wouldn’t have a place to live, and I wouldn’t have anyone supporting me through college.
College was the only way out for me to become fully independent, and so, against my wishes, I did what I needed to do to make sure my future was not in jeopardy.
Why was it coerced? Because I loved my father, and I feared him at the same time.
One morning after we had arrived at work, I was working with my father, and he seemed very upset with something that had nothing to do with me and then seemed to talk himself into being positive while berating me on something miniscule that didn’t warrant any attention.
And I could see all these moods shifting in real time. I didn’t understand what was happening. Those kinds of quick mood shifts are not something I had experienced internally. I had not seen my mother have those same quick changes in mood. And my father was never close to any of us emotionally.
He was someone we used to see every day for a few minutes, but he was always hiding who he was. We never played with him, so he was never a fun dad; he was always this serious, strict person, and you had to keep your distance for your own emotional safety.
While working with him, this was up close and new to me. Think about switching from 0 to 1 and back to 0 and to 1 in the same conversation. Before the conversation was over, a client entered the office, and my dad shifted to a completely different person, excited to see the client.
This was a big business client, and by the time we were complete with the client and ready to deliver his shipment, my dad had completely changed, in a different mood altogether. And I thought, “I am glad that he has become this cheerful guy, but I have no idea what is happening or what just happened.”
Now imagine having small interactions like these at home that just felt weird but not really being able to understand what this was or being able to see a complete picture of what I was witnessing.
There were all these different fragments, but it wasn’t until I was doing my inner work that all the pieces seemed to fall into place, and I would really see the design.
You probably have memories of things you didn’t understand from your childhood, and you are piecing them together now as an adult on your healing journey.
Like I said, your father has many faces. There is the relationship with:
- you,
- your siblings (sons vs daughters),
- your mom,
- your extended family of relatives,
- strangers and objects of interest, i.e., people who bring the narcissist value, like money, social standing, etc.
I want to start with the relationship with YOU because you are the most important person in this journey of healing and self-discovery.
I want to break this down into categories: what you got and what you didn’t get.
Let’s start with what YOU got.
The Active & Passive Harm from a Narcissistic Father
Depending on your family, a narcissistic father harmed you through:
1. Physical violence
Here I share a personal story only available on audio
What was strange to me in all this was that even when I was so young, I saw that people who claimed to love me could also harm me. Forget the strangers in school; home is supposed to be a sanctuary of emotional and physical safety.
This was the dysfunctional society that I was raised in, where physical violence and emotional distress are normalized at home and in school. Children from such cultures have no safe place for emotional landing. And I was no different. Thankfully, this is not the story of most American children today.
Even though a lot of my listeners in the United States may not have been recipients of this cruelty, there are some people from other countries who would relate to this story.
And I know my listeners have empathy for our global friends who had the misfortune of growing up in such places.
You may have been just as unlucky to see violence in school and to be beaten at home. But there is another piece to this. And that is the pain of seeing your father beat your mother. I will come back to this in an upcoming episode so that I can spend time on the impact of witnessing this type of violence.
What happens when an entire society comes together and violates the sacred safety of children? Where are the children supposed to turn to? This is what Alice Miller was talking about when she coined the phrase “poisonous pedagogy.”
And because we are unapologetically truthful here at Transform into Wisdom, if any child around the world is still experiencing this harm, all of us are standing up and acknowledging that it is not okay.
This is how dysfunction is created when every fabric of society conspires and collaborates to chip away at the inner value and worth of the child in the name of discipline. It goes without saying that this behavior causes deep, lasting psychological harm to the child.
Every child deserves a loving home, without any fear of physical violence or harm. And this is the future that all people around the world should aspire to, because if we want to raise children of high-vibration consciousness, we should be able to teach them by the clarity of our examples.
What Happens in the Pysche in Those Early Formative Years?
Because it’s not just about what happens during the beatings in childhood. It’s about what happens after. The silence. The rationalization. The normalization of violence.
It’s when a girl grows up believing that being hit is a part of love—because her father did it and still called it discipline. It’s when a boy internalizes that harming women is acceptable—because he saw it modeled at home without consequence.
This is where the seed is planted:
the belief that someone who loves you has the right to dominate you.
That pain and control can coexist with love.
That obedience equals worthiness.
It’s the beginning of a power dynamic so deeply embedded, it feels invisible—until it shows up again in adult relationships, in who we choose, and what we tolerate.
And for many daughters, the real wound is not just the bruises. It’s the shame she carries—thinking she must have been a bad child, that she somehow deserved it. This is how guilt becomes her compass, and silence becomes her protector.
The ripple effect doesn’t start in the world. It starts at home. And it echoes across generations—until someone is brave enough to name it, feel it, and end it.
And if you experienced this kind of personal violence… I want you to hear me clearly. I am so sorry. What happened to you was not okay. You didn’t deserve it. You were never too much, too difficult, or too broken to be loved gently.
You can’t go back and rewrite what happened—but you can reclaim your story. You have the power to become a cycle-breaker. Not just for your own healing, but for the future children who deserve to grow up in homes where love doesn’t hurt.
So, I invite you to sit with this—not to relive the pain, but to understand how it might still be living in you:
When was the first time you witnessed physical violence?
And what did that moment teach you—about love, about safety, about yourself?
Let the question linger. Because your honest answer holds the key to the healing you’re ready for.
This is a good place to stop for now. Part 2 is coming right up. I break these up so that I am not overwhelmed, and you are not overwhelmed when listening.
I’ll see you in the next one, Part 2 of What Daughters of Narcissistic Fathers Need to Know.