My grandmother was a terrible narcissist. I loved her dearly and she had a lot of wonderful qualities, but The quality that stood out the most, sadly, was narcissism.
My mother was also a narcissist to a somewhat lesser degree. It didn't occur to me that I too was a narcissist until I was about 35 years old. It took waking up in the corner of the living room in my friends one bedroom apartment Early one morning to see it.
I had pushed away my wife and kids because in my mind all of my problems were their fault. I had blamed others for every thing that had ever happened to me or every feeling that I had felt. And in that moment I realized:
It's ME.
Everything changed in that instant. It was no longer just about me anymore. I stopped seeing the people closest to me as opponents and started seeing them as what they were, family. My support system. The love of my life.
As the years have gone by since then I have seen more of my past through that light and things have become so much more clear.
Understanding that my grandmother was a very damaged person who turned a narcissist to deal with it, then raise my mother similarly, help me understand two things. The first was that the things I blamed myself for in the past weren't my fault. Secondly, it helped me forgive them for some of the awful things that happened. I'm not saying it's okay to be a narcissist. But recognizing that their narcissism affected my life, and it was something that I could shed in my own personality was a serious life changer. And the funny part is that after I realized all of this, my debilitating depression essentially went away. And that was a big deal.
I also learned not even 2 years ago that I have ADHD which was like a light bulb moment for me as well because it explained so much of my life.