Are most FAs children of narcisistic parents?

^^^^^^^ Same. I've encountered `mild FA' behaviour in adult children of narc parents. I have narc mother and I swing FA when I lose trust in a person due to abuse. Most of the time I attach securely, if a person presents securely to me.

The FA's we often talk about here swing FA because of intimacy and closeness (not just abuse). In my own experiences they have been victims of childhood trauma and physical abuse.

It my own family, attachment style (and the tendency to adopt narc behaviours) depended a lot on personal level of empathy, the `role' assigned to them by the narc parent, and capacity for seeking therapy.

Usually the child dubbed as `the golden child' is more likely to develop narcissism. They will be the one with the most superficially `perfect' traits. But I do know `golden' children who naturally possess a huge dose of empathy, who are not narcissists.

Other roles include `scapegoats' `the parentified child' and `the lost child'. Two of my sisters were `lost children', grew up extremely AP. My role was part scapegoat, part parentified child. Therapists guided me to choose secure partners when I was young, and that resulted in secure attachments for me. My little bro is the `full scapegoat'. He has sought help and healing for most his life and attaches securely, as far as i can tell. His marriage to very nurturing and bright woman has been secure for 20 years. They are both professional healers.

My youngest brother is the full Narc. He possesses very little empathy, was the golden child because of looks, is mean and treats women like garbage. (ie. DA on steroids)

dhali, not specifically. I've read so so much, I wouldn't be able to find which research this was from at this point :/

I lost my dad at 2. Maybe it's the cause or maybe just a contribution. Let's think about it this way. You are securely attached to your parents. Health problems suddenly arise and your father dies. You love someone who disappears and will never be back. You crave for your father's affection as you already experienced it but he's gone. Anxiety kicks in. Maybe it's not THE CAUSE, but I think it plays a major role. Relationships with peers at school may also reinforce your attachment disorder. Think about people who are bullied at 12, they may be secure but the constant exposition to verbal abuse by peers may affect your relationship with others in some way, usually by increasing your anxiety or your avoidance.

The sudden death of a parent (or any close family member, such as a sibling), especially before you've got the emotional tools to process it, is absolutely a major emotional trauma.

And while attachment styles are usually already set before you're 12 years old (though they can shift), peer abuse doesn't help -- especially if you've got an insecure attachment to start. My FA ex was unfortunately heavily bullied in school for reasons that had nothing to do with him, and that absolutely didn't help. It just provided him with concrete examples that reinforced that he couldn't trust anyone. Then, he grew up to be really attractive, and suddenly peer strangers switched to being really nice to him. Which made him even more distrustful. Again, not the source of his FA, but strongly reinforced it.

A lot of different things can cause some desorganised attatchment style.
But again it is on a spectrum.

Some examples that can give you some desorganised attatchment style:

Mother and / or father or possibly siblings or other close family members have been overwhelming, painful, scary or
mother and father's relationship has been. What has happened, has not made any sense to the child at all. The parents have signaled: "Come here and stay away!" Or have switched between extreme conditions without regard to the child's signals.
It happens, for example, if the adults are toxicated. For children it is very scary with a alcoholic parent!

Parents may have put the child in situations, where the child had to chose, regardless of what it chose - would feel wrong. For example, one could choose between taking care of her mother, making her happy while ignoring herself and her well-being.
Or another example: That mother threatened suicide, or went away and maybe gone for several hours.
Or a third example: to choose between mother and father and similar bad situations!
Or there has been an abuse in the family, either something you've been exposed to, or something you've witnessed.

The child may suffer exposure to:

Loud voices
Explosive behavior
Emotional abuse
Physical abuse
Sexual abuse


Fights between parents can be done very quietly, the mood is still recorded by the children 

As an adult, love is therefore scary, while you need it. It shows up in the instinktive level of the brain/nerveussystem. It´s trauma. This is a level that lies deeper than both feelings and thoughts.

Even parents who are heavily stressed can cause some desorganised attatchment style

The parents themselves may be afraid, just generating “emergency room energy” from their own unresolved trauma in their past.
They may not actually be doing something scary like yelling or hitting or being abusive, but they might also have those behaviors, so you have to look at what was the situation; in either case you get a strong overcoupling, a strong tangling-up of the attachment system trying to attach, and at the very same time, the survival system locking in, trying to get to safety and get away. So it creates a lot of internal physical, psychological, and emotional confusion, which then gets transferred into adult relationships;
and because so much of it is pre-verbal, sub-psychological and unconscious, you might attain a certain level of intimacy with your partner, and then – without having any clue why – just hit this terror, hit this disorganization and feel this strong need to get away. It’s really hard on adult relationships, because you or your partner do not really know why it’s happening. It was so deeply patterned in your internal relationship template before awareness was available to make sense of it – a conditioned, “reflexive” relationship pattern wrecking havoc years later, uninvited, into your intimate dyadic relationship.


Emotionally difficult situations in childhood such as bullying, drama ect.

  Fights between parents can be done very quietly, the mood is still recorded by the children 


There are other situations that can give trauma/push you into desorganized attatchment style (operations, bullying, accident, bad relationsships, a death early in life ect)

What happens to you expecially in these periods in your life can be important:

Important critical periods in life:

0-2 years old, teenager, when you move from your parents, your first love/partner with whom you have lived with, loosing important relationships later in life (parents/grandparents who died, loss of job, loosing people/friends/partners who were important ect)