We do not have the freedom to choose our parents, and yet we hold them dear to our hearts. But what if you were raised by narcissistic parents who gave you quite a hard time growing up? Timothy J. Hayes, Psy.D chats with Agatha Peters, founder of Beautiful Sunshine Therapy and author of Trapped in Their Script: Reclaim Your Life from Narcissistic Parents & Cultural Expectations. She explains how you can heal from the unseen wounds of a harsh upbringing and start protecting yourself – all while honoring your heritage and culture. Agatha also explores how cultural biases can be weaponized, how to process your emotions during your healing, and how to create a loving and respectful life for yourself.
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Agatha Peters – Author Of The Book: Trapped In Their Script: Reclaim Your Life From Narcissistic Parents And Cultural Expectations
Agatha Peters is a Nigerian-American psychotherapist, the founder of Beautiful Sunshine Therapy, and the author of Trapped in Their Script: Reclaim Your Life from Narcissistic Parents and Cultural Expectations. She is dedicated to helping adult children of narcissistic parents, especially those from collectivist cultures where family loyalty often overshadows individual well-being. Having experienced the healing power of therapy herself, she is passionate about helping others discover the same transformation and offers guidance on embracing one’s identity while respecting cultural ties.
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Agatha, thank you so much for joining me. It’s delightful to see you.
It’s nice to see you and meet you again, Dr. Timothy.
Agatha Peters Of Beautiful Sunshine Therapy
I was hoping you could get us started by telling us a little bit about how you got into the work you do, what drives your passion for it, and what you want people to take from your book.
I got into the work because I am Nigerian-American. Originally, I came from Nigeria, where trauma is seen as part of the culture and not really talked about. I grew up in an environment with a narcissist. Coming here opened my eyes when I started college, to start to understand that perhaps what I was experiencing at home was not normal. During college, a professor had told me that it is important to check yourself first before you can actually sit on a couch and help others.
I truly believe in that, by the way. All therapists need to see a therapist as well. I did. I went. That was a clarity for me and also validation from my therapist that I had a parent who was a narc. I still wasn’t okay with that. Still, for me, it meant, what do I do with that? It’s not like depression or anxiety that I can treat. We’re in the profession to help others. I was not okay with that.
It took me at least 30-something years of my life to start to realize this is true. If it is true, what do we do about it? Every narcissistic book that was out there was from a Western lens. It didn’t speak to me, quite honestly. It didn’t speak to my clients. I had to find other formulas. I had to find other ways to help people be able to live within this in a collective cultural lens. That’s why I wrote my book. That is also why I became a therapist.
As we were talking about earlier, it’s difficult enough to deal with somebody who is so wounded that they can’t take your needs into consideration. It’s a very difficult thing to deal with somebody. That’s if you’re an adult dealing with another adult. If you’re a child dealing with an adult who’s so wounded that they can’t take your needs into account, it’s a sticky wicket, as they say. It’s a big mess. When you layer on top of that these cultural allowances for or expectations of abuse, that’s so complex. I’m thrilled that you wrote the book to try and help people understand how they can start to deal with that.
In our cultural heritage, we have a huge obligation to honor our culture. If we’re told this is the right way, and this is how we do things, we have to obey that. Beating extremely is, and perhaps that’s how they learn in that community, because there are also no resources available and things like that. When you come from communities where there’s so much drama, and we think of the hierarchy of needs, those needs are not there. First, it’s just survival. You haven’t gotten to the point of being able to feel safe enough to start to regulate yourself, to try to regulate your children or your child.
There’s a lack of resources and a lot of survival. In my community, there is a great deal of success, like YouTube. When you think of poverty, you want to get out of that poverty. What is important is your initials after the signature. That’s what is important. That’s what we look at as success. When you then put a narcissist in a place where that means that the child needs to be perfect, you need to meet that cultural expectation.
It doesn’t matter what you want to do. It is what they want you to do. You’re punished for not meeting that expectations, no matter what. For us doctors and engineers, that is a huge thing for Nigerian culture. It’s because no one wants to be poor. Therefore, we try to find ways to survive. For a narcissist, that is a feeding ground for them. Grandiosity makes me look good. You can’t bring shame to my community or to our community. All the elders and the leaders, you’re going to see that as, “That’s what it should be.”
For a lot of kids, there’s no way. That might also be brutal punishment for how you can get your A’s and how you can do good. That’s part of it there within those cultural expectations. There’s a lot in other cultures, too, that I see all the time in therapy. How do we differentiate? Is it narcissism, or is this just generational trauma, too? Is this mental health, or other parts of mental health, not across the B personality disorder? Helping differentiate that for people, they get this a-ha moment.
Making The Most Of The Tools Available To You
How do you help somebody choose to get healthier themselves when that very process of getting healthier themselves is going to isolate them or separate them from their family or their culture? How do you help them?
A lot of folks, when they come to see me, are already in that way. There are two people I got. There is one person who comes in and might be in such denial. “No, I’m good. I don’t have any problems. I’m just here to talk to someone. I was told to come,” complete in denial. I have the one that comes in, and there’s anger and resentment for the culture or for the parent. There’s all of that that they come in carrying. There’s a lot of meeting them where they’re at and then starting with trust and, “I’m here until we’re ready.”
In my culture, too, they’re also okay with directness, which, for a lot of Western therapists, it’s hard to get there. They struggle with that directness. I always say, “How do you want me to help with this? I can tell you as it is, or we can have you drive into it.” Oftentimes, I want to just write that in there. You still need to come at it in a place of care and compassion for that person who comes in, who might have anger and resentment with family, or maybe what they’re going through.
That’s almost like the process of grief, where we have to get through it and get to sadness and all the things that come with it. It’s to help them realize, “From where you came from, a lot of these parents are handed tools.” We all get different tools when we become parents based on our parents and all the struggles that they went through. Those tools are handed to us. Some of the tools are rusty and broken. They don’t work, but they don’t see that yet. It takes a lot of effort to be able to recognize that your tools need work.
Narcissistic Parents: Some parents struggle with the tools they have, which may all be rusty and broken.
Your tools might be producing results that you don’t like, but you’re busy because you’ve been trained to do this. You’re busy blaming other people and situations for the results, but the results are what you’re getting because of the tool you’re using.
The empathy there is recognizing that they didn’t have much to work on to begin with. Even sometimes, even as hard as it is to have compassion for the narcissist, I have had to at some point.
The narcissist started as a sperm and an egg. They had parents who had more power over them. They had bullies. They’re just people.
Sometimes, when we’re not there to hear that they’re just people, we want to sit with that anger. That’s an example of how tools are easy to help people relate to. When you get those tools, whatever you use, you use to raise the next generation. Unless they’re able to work on those tools, they don’t know any better. You’re here because you’re seeing that my tools are not working.
Sometimes, I get the parents that just become new parents. They are sick of it. They see themselves become their mother or their father. They don’t want that anymore. They’ve taken a good look at the tool, and it’s not working. Perhaps, too, it triggers all the stuff that they don’t want to expose your children to that behavior. It’s helping them recognize that. Oftentimes, your guards get brought down. It is how we could start doing some of that work.
How Parents Weaponize Cultural Biases
I remember near the beginning of the book. You had a story about a woman whose mother was using the cultural bias towards honoring the parents, etc. She was using it as a weapon against her own daughter.
That was trauma.
The daughter was trying to protect her children from the hurtful things that their grandmother was doing. Talk a little bit about that. How do you help somebody in a situation like that where their parent is enlisting the village to be on their side and promote something detrimental to the children?
When you think about parents, even in Western lands, we go as much as we’re a very independent culture. We go to the hospital. I worked in the ER as I’ve seen this often. You put a child and the parent in a room. The first thing that the doctor is going to ask is, “What’s wrong with your child?” Why would they ask that? It is because they believe that the parent wants the best for their kid. That is what we are raised to believe. That’s part of humanity. That’s who we are. That parent, when you have a narcissist, that’s not how it is. They don’t care. They couldn’t care less.
They can give lip service to it, but the bottom line is they’re in self-protection mode all the time.
They could even be causing the harm that you’re asking what happened to. I’ve seen it over and over. You sit there. In communities like that, it’s the same thing. Your parents are there to protect you. They believe whatever it is that the parent tells them because they’re your parent. You have no way of winning. That child has no way of winning, whether it’s lies being spread on you, or whether it’s the truth that they turn into something terrible and use it against you. They’re going to try to find whatever it is for them to be the center of attention.
People would believe it because why wouldn’t you believe the word of a parent when it comes to being a child? It’s so difficult for any child to have to deal with that. They almost don’t turn the community against you. Oftentimes, kids are left with PTSD, depression, and all of these things. The word narcissist is thrown out so much, which leaves no room for folks like me and other people who have actually experienced these bad fears. They’re sick because of these human beings. A narcissist is not someone who was mean to me yesterday. That’s not, “This person is doing mean things.” No. You feel in prison in your own home.
When you have narcissistic parents, you feel like a prisoner in your own home. Share on XThere is almost a complete lack of safety.
They have no care. They have no ability to care. Oftentimes, when I would see that in the hospital setting, it’s almost triggering to me depending on the situation. I’ve even seen a narcissist refuse to give medical attention that was warranted and needed for this child’s safety. I had to put in my hat. “No, CPS will be called.” That was two parents. They were also using cultural, spiritual, and all of the forces together.
How do you deal with that? When you’re in therapy on your own and you have these cultural and spiritual references that are being used to justify what you know is not healthy for the child, how do you get in there? What interventions have you found can be useful?
First, that child needs to be examined differently from anyone else in the room. I find that it can be helpful for therapists. If you work with children, you need to talk to the child first or a second, but talk to the parents and talk to the child, and then talk to all parties together. That helps you understand the family dynamic to begin with, and also having the trust. For me, when I think about my experience as a child, therapy was just the place to go to be safe for an hour a week. That’s what it provided.
Around what age are you referring to yourself there?
It was teens. It would just be a place to go in and have safety. If clinicians can just offer that, it might feel like you’re doing nothing because you are too much. You go back to that same environment. It would be the circle of abuse where the abuser is not always bad. They might be good moments here and there, but having a therapist who stays with that understands where that child is coming from, sometimes, the therapist might be able to see the true colors. The snark might show. Sometimes, that’s what it takes for them to truly know. “This child is going through bad stuff.”
What I would tell people on a regular basis is just imagine if this is the way they’re acting in my office in front of me, a mandated reporter and licensed clinical psychologist, if they’re making nasty comments to their children in front of a therapist, imagine what happens at home when there’s no governance.
They play God. That’s what they do. They get high and mighty.
How do you intervene in a system like that? Have you found anything that works at the parental level, or is all of your work supporting the client or the child?
For me right now, I mostly don’t work with kids on that magnitude as much. I will help the adult child when they become adults and find me, which I hope so much. With the kids, it’s just letting them know that you get it in a way. You have to just sit there and accept that the truth of the matter is that what they are experiencing is true for them. A lot of kids don’t have that in a community that is constantly telling you that you are not.
“You’re not being abused. There’s nothing wrong. Your parents love you.”
They’ve had it worse. All the things they might be saying, you’re getting whooped with, “I was being beaten by cables and those kinds of stuff.” People compare abuse. It silences the victims in that case. It’s like, “What do I do?”
When people compare abuse, it silences the abuser. Share on XYou’re being told that you can’t trust your own perception.
It is having someone else acknowledge and say, “This is not okay. Safety comes after eighteen. Just hang in there.” It’s a lot of hanging in there and hoping for kids like that. There are a lot of safety plan that needs to go into place, safety plans that sometimes parents do not need to be aware of a lot, because that then becomes different.
If you let the people know that they’re being viewed as a problem, they usually run for the door. They take their child out of the therapy. You’ve lost all connection and all possibility of making a decent intervention in the family.
There are cases where the parents would just bring the community members to see. “Told you they were crazy. They’re in the mental institute.” There is even more shame, harassment, and all of that. “Your poor parent, look at them.” It is those kinds of stuff. I know a lot of times it’s allowed because that’s the parent who is coming to see the child. They might be saying things in the language that doctors and nurses have no idea. Once they walk out, they smile and say, “I brought them food and all of that.”
Importance Of Support Networks On Lived Experiences
What resources do you find that are available for the people you work with, or what resources are you thinking we most need in the field?
In these communities, when I work with clients, we have to almost find our resources within the community. We can give the resources we have out there. Sometimes, I’ve referred people to NAMI because they have families and groups like that. What is available is so westernized. I encourage that within these communities, we tend to find people who are going through the same thing as you are. Form a network with people who just get you. There’s solidity in that having a space to go to that you don’t have to.
This very same thing was a topic. I was interviewing Cooper Davis from the Inner Compass Initiative. He was talking about their peer support program. Parallel, he said, “It would be really good to develop a twelve-step model, the same way they do for alcoholics, drug abuse, overeating, gambling, or whatever, but to develop one that’s for generic mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, the abuse at home, the narcissistic parent, etc.”
There’s a real need, in my opinion, in our culture for more lived experience support networks. They are people who’ve been through the same thing and found some good solutions or good professionals who help them develop the tools that help them change their lives. When they’re sharing that in a peer support group, it does things that you can’t get in a one-on-one therapy with a professional.
With someone who gets you in that way, it changes a lot of things for people. It is also about finding out from them their means of survival. It is important. That’s why I encourage it in this community, finding people just like you. When I wrote my book, there were so many who also reached out to me who could not do it in person because there is so much shame that no one else is going to get this. No one else is living in this. They were okay sending me a private message like, “Thank you for this. This speaks to me in this way.” There are so many people who can relate to those experiences within that community more than we think.
It’s a great resource. If we can get people to start talking about what worked for you, what didn’t work for you, or what worked for me, this is how they build new solutions that are creative and alive. They change with the times. That’s another benefit of those peer-run support groups.
Another resource, which I talk about in the book as well, is a lot of these communities and cultures. Even while living in the US, you still live with your parent. While being an adult, you still live with your parents. You still might live with your in-laws. You might live with all of them. There’s a narcissist in that environment.
You’re living in a little microcosm of the culture you came from, over here in the Western culture.
Where most Western therapists would say, “Cut them off,” it doesn’t work. How do you want me to leave my husband, leave my home, or leave my kid? It’s everything.
Sometimes, to somebody who is in a strange culture, in a strange country, there are all levels of dependence that you have to take into account.
It’s trying to figure out how to live with that narcissist in the home. I talk about wearing armor in a way where you can’t share so much about yourself, which is hard. It’s hard because in a parent-child dynamic, and this is where it’s very difficult for a lot of my clients who live with that parent, they want to share things. They want to develop that bond. Think of a circle of abuse. That person is not always terrible. There are times when they’re friendly. We get sucked into that. We want that so much. We want to keep that.
You want to keep it for safety. Dr. Ingrid Clayton, in her book Fawning, talks about how people look down on fawning as though it’s a pathology or a problem, but it’s really a very adaptive coping mechanism for safety. It’s always done because the person is triggered to a belief that they’re not safe unless they win the approval of whoever is out in front of them.
Identifying And Dealing With A Narcissist
That is very true. There’s a lot of indication around what narcissism is, where they cannot give you what it is that you’re seeking. The safety doesn’t last. There is not much safety if someone is tormenting you.
Essentially, there is no safety to be had around someone who is inwardly tortured. They will often show up in your world as a narcissist. It looks like they’re torturing you. The fact of the matter is, no happy person goes around torturing other people.
They can’t be happy no matter what you do. Oftentimes, with these parental relationships, you want to make your parent happy. That’s how you gain that approval. That’s what they feel.
Approval here is connected to surviving. When you’ve got somebody who can rage like that, ignore you so completely, or give you the silent treatment for days, and you’re just a child, it feels like, “I won’t survive this.”
Oftentimes, you don’t, regardless. That’s why there’s suicide. I’ve had clients in that, where you get so pulled in. How do I continuously please this person? When they learn the techniques of how to set, you can still live in the home. You can still wear this armor. You can see this person for who they are. You have to be able to see a narcissist for who they are. They cannot develop a care in the world for you. It’s about that. They could. You would not be where you were.
You have to see narcissists for who they are. They must never be where you are. Share on XIt’s something that was taken away from them when they were little. Their capacity to connect, be empathic, and be compassionate was taken away from them through either a similar situation to what they’re replicating with their children or much worse.
It’s extreme.
What I try and talk to people about with this is the analogy of the alligator. The alligator is a marvel of life. It’s prehistoric in nature. It’s like a dinosaur in real life. It’s a magnificent creature. I don’t want to be anywhere near it. I don’t want my kids anywhere near it with raw chicken meat on their hands. Just because I know the alligator could be dangerous to me or my offspring doesn’t mean I have to go torture the alligator, kill it, or hate it, or everywhere I am, think about it and think, “Those darn alligators.” I do want to treat it with the respect that is due for an animal that’s that powerful, that will always just do what its nature dictates.
That’s the way I try and teach people to relate to their parents, who were so wounded that they were either narcissistic, they were depressive, or they were obsessive-compulsive in their own right. Because of those difficulties the parents struggled with, the parents were not available to give the child what would help the child develop a strong inner core of love and self-respect. You don’t have to hate the person who was your tormentor. You can take a step back later in life and recognize, “Everybody is doing the best they can with whatever resources they have. My parents didn’t have very good resources for parenting me.”
It takes a lot to get there where you have that. It’s a shift, too, because we can fall into, “If they’re so sad and need help, maybe I can help solve this for them.”
There’s no helping. Everybody has to pull their own weight.
I would say even the depressed parents and all the other folks can reach that sense of, “Maybe I do the work. I can be on medications, maybe. I can do therapy.” I’ve seen lots of clients that I’ve worked with who have been able to impact their parents in that way based on how therapy impacted them. Maybe before they even started therapy, their parents would say, “No, absolutely not.”
Eventually, when they see the work that the child has done and how that has changed their lives, the parents are able to say, “Yes, I will seek help because I have them seek their own therapy. They’re able to do that work.” That might be someone who is depressed or all those things. A narcissist says, “Good luck with that. It’s not happening.” It is because they don’t have a problem to begin with. You have the problem.
The wound is so deep and so old that it prevents them from seeing that they’re that wounded. Their defenses are up all the time and in force so thoroughly that they don’t allow themselves to see their role in whatever upset is in their life.
It takes a lot. I have seen narcissists come to therapy just to become better narcissists.
Recognizing The Good And The Bad In Every Culture
If you would get centered here and just take a breath or two and think, what have we talked about so far? What’s something that I haven’t even asked you about, yet you want to make sure to put in here, or something that we’ve talked about that you want to go back and highlight? Your book is titled Trapped in Their Script: Reclaim Your Life from Narcissistic Parents and Cultural Expectations. Is there an aspect of that that we haven’t even touched on yet, or something you want to go back and highlight from your book?
The main thing there is recognizing. In a lot of these cultures, we’re so proud of our cultures. We have seen Americans. We wear it like a uniform, too. We’re so proud of who we are. It is recognizing that there are good and there are bad in every culture. There is no perfect culture. It is leading with what is good about it and letting go of some of those bad things. Perhaps some of the bad things are what you were raised with. I’m fortunate in a way that I can do both, even in this culture, and how I pass that on to my children. That’s a message for people to recognize. We’re not saying your culture is terrible and this Western culture is great. It’s just the fact that with the issues that we have, how do we make you feel empowered?
Give you some tools. Give you a roadmap for creating a more loving, respectful life for yourself.
It’s culture. It’s everything for people.
You mentioned earlier that if you’re a Western therapist and you see somebody from a different culture, you’re likely going to say to them things like, “Set a boundary. Just cut that person out of your life.” That’s probably not going to happen.
It doesn’t work. They probably already knew that, but it hasn’t worked for them.
Narcissistic Parents: We do not have to continuously have our guard up to defend ourselves.
You might learn how to set some boundaries with other relationships in your life. You might learn how to have respect for yourself. You might learn how to craft assertive communications that you would put out there in places other than your family of origin, where they would just bring on abuse. If they haven’t learned it in their family of origin, in their community, in their home, they need to be taught how to have respect for themselves, how to craft an assertive communication that’s not submissive or dominant, and how to communicate effectively while taking full responsibility for whatever emotions they’re experiencing. Those are all skills that we aren’t born knowing.
We do not have to continuously have our guard up to defend ourselves.You’re right. There are some cultures where anger is a main emotion that we tap into. It is rage, anger, and things like that. For cultures that are male-dominant, it feels less shameful to show anger, hitting the wall, doing those things, and hitting things. You’re not a wimp or whatever that might be seen as. You’re strong. In this culture, it doesn’t work that way because if you do that, you’ll end up in jail. It takes so much when I work with men of color to get to that level where we don’t have to continuously wear this and have our guard up in a way of defending ourselves constantly. How do we get to that emotional piece that we’ve never actually been able to tap into, that we haven’t cried to for 40 years?
It’s not sustainable. It leaves you also in a place where if you can’t understand and process your own emotions, you can’t really connect deeply with another person. It leaves people feeling even more hollow and shallow inside. They don’t know the source of it. The source of it is your lack of connection, first with yourself and your emotional life internally, and then with the people around you.
How they connect is just to connect with a bottle. That’s the addiction that comes into play and things like that. You’re right.
Trapped in Their Script: Reclaim Your Life from Narcissistic Parents & Cultural Expectations
Get In Touch With Agatha
I greatly appreciate your being willing to spend the time with us. The book, the title is Trapped in Their Script: Reclaim Your Life from Narcissistic Parents and Cultural Expectations by Agatha Peters. I’m very grateful to have come across the book. I look forward to finishing it and am thrilled that you were willing to share it with us.
It was a pleasure speaking with you, Dr. Timothy. Thanks for having me.
Please put me on your list to receive notification of your next book when it’s published.
I will be working on that. I plan on doing some more work.
Thank you so much for taking the time. It’s been a pleasure.
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Agatha Peters is a Nigerian-American psychotherapist, the founder of Beautiful Sunshine Therapy, and the author of Trapped in Their Script: Reclaim Your Life from Narcissistic Parents and Cultural Expectations. She is dedicated to helping adult children of narcissistic parents, especially those from collectivist cultures where family loyalty often overshadows individual well-being. Having experienced the healing power of therapy herself, she is passionate about helping others discover the same transformation and offers guidance on embracing one’s identity while respecting cultural ties.
Important Links
- Beautiful Sunshine Therapy
- Trapped in Their Script: Reclaim Your Life from Narcissistic Parents and Cultural Expectations
- Agatha Peters on LinkedIn
- Cooper Davis – Executive Director Of Inner Compass Initiative
- Fawning
- Beautiful Sunshine Therapy on Facebook
- Beautiful Sunshine Therapy on Instagram
About Agatha Peters
A Nigerian-American psychotherapist, Agatha Peters is the founder of Beautiful Sunshine Therapy and the author of Trapped in Their Script: Reclaim Your Life from Narcissistic Parents & Cultural Expectations. She is dedicated to helping adult children of narcissistic parents, especially those from collectivist cultures, where family loyalty often overshadows individual well-being. Having experienced the healing power of therapy herself, she is passionate about helping others discover the same transformation and offers guidance on embracing one’s identity while respecting cultural ties.
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