Family-of-origin therapy — when the role you were assigned still runs the show.

Adult children of narcissistic, borderline, or antisocial parents carry specific, nameable damage — chronic self-doubt, hypervigilance, a punishing inner critic, difficulty trusting their own perception, and roles assigned in childhood (golden child, scapegoat) that still run in adulthood. Most people do not realize their parent was the problem until the patterns get named out loud. This is treatable with structured clinical work — not just "processing." Matthew Sexton, LCSW provides telehealth therapy for adult children of personality-disordered parents in New York, Maine, Delaware, and Florida.

Matthew Sexton, LCSW, NATC is a licensed clinical social worker in New York, Maine, Delaware, and Florida, and a credentialed Narcissistic Abuse Treatment Clinician. He has spent fourteen years in clinical practice and healthcare systems, and writes for the people who hold everyone else together.

In crisis right now? Call or text 988 — this page can wait.

• What is therapy for adult children of personality-disordered parents?

  It is structured clinical work for adults who grew up with a parent whose patterns fit a personality disorder — narcissistic, borderline, or antisocial. The damage is specific and nameable: chronic self-doubt, hypervigilance, a punishing inner critic, and a role you were handed in childhood that still runs your adult life. The work names that family system, maps how it shaped you, and rebuilds what it eroded — reality-testing, self-trust, and the ability to want things for yourself.

• How do I know if my parent had a personality disorder?

  The clinical work is not about diagnosing your parent — that is not something a therapist can do for someone who was never in the room. What matters is mapping the specific patterns that caused the damage: the rage cycles, the engulfment or abandonment, the rewriting of reality, love arriving as control. Narcissistic, borderline, and antisocial parents leave different fingerprints, and so do the roles they hand out — golden child, scapegoat, lost child, parentified caretaker. We map the pattern, not a label.

• What does this kind of therapy actually involve?

  Naming the family system structurally — what role you were assigned and why your normal felt normal. Internal Family Systems (IFS) parts work for the roles you carried, so the protectors built in that house can stand down. Attachment repair — a reference experience for what safe, non-conditional relationship feels like. And rebuilding reality-testing and self-trust, because the most durable damage from a personality-disordered parent is learning to distrust your own perception. Telehealth in NY, ME, DE, FL; out-of-network only; superbills provided.