Children raised by narcissists are characterized by an inner vacuum of unrequited instinctuality.
This happens due to the narcissistic parent or parents being incapable of requiting their child’s innate instincts to depend on them in almost every way.
Narcissistic parents are an extreme example of unrequited childhood instincts. My guess is all people have some version of unrequited childhood instincts with ramifications still present in the grown-up child, now an adult.
Since this condition is so common, all cultures deal with it one way or another, most commonly through some sort of authoritarian model for everyone, Confucianism, Catholicism, bougie values, woke, etc.
All cultures are lowest-common-denominator congregations with specific applications limited to specific situations.
One way to go beyond these limitations is use your vacuum of unrequited childhood (and beyond) instincts to leverage a deeper understanding of your mind.
To be clear, we are largely talking about wholesome instincts for communication, bonding, safety, affection, creativity, etc.
When these unrequited instincts leave a vacuum in you—a sense of deep emptiness—leverage it by resting in it completely.
No words, no images, just the vacuous state of pure emptiness you may remember from early childhood.
That is an important conscious state.
It too is you. It too is an instinct.
Stated negatively it is and was a child’s act of ‘all that’s left’, ‘nothing you can do’, ‘that’s how it was and still is’.
Stated positively, that state, all by its lonesome, is a samadhi state or right next door to one.
With a wholesome dispassionate mind, study that state.
Receive the reward life offers all of us — natural instinctual samadhi, the ‘one taste’ of all things.
American Buddhist Net 