How do you continue to be a caregiver when your parent has always had some form of mental illness...in my case Narcissitic Personality Disorder. My mother has always suffered from this and now trying to be a more closely caretaker is bringing me down. No one is realizing I cannot take care of her by myself. She is crafty and her aging just makes is all much worse. More and more calls from neighbors to the police or paramedics with her stunts. They say she cannot be alone but I cannot tolerate to be around her. She refuses to go to a nursing home, so now trying to find someone who will at least come and check on her a couple times a day at least to give her her psych meds. There is no one to help me. I have been of work for almost a month on FMLA and it seems to be a waste of my time, since she can do many things by herself...(she just tore apart the patio cleaning it ...an 85 year old pushing and pulling couches and vacumns...) mental illness in an aging parent..HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I did go to see Mom today and she was doing better...still confused, but happy at least. She can be so sweet and loving when she is like that. I don't know if the new meds they have her on are working to improve her mood or this is just the up and down cycles she's been having (that I'm assuming are due to her bipolar). Like I said, she is still confused but I could manage her if she was this way all the time (I think). Of course, she could be putting on act, just to get to come home sooner. She does that sort of thing too. She doesn't yet know she'll be at least temporarily going to an assisted living center and I really dread telling her.
Wow! You have so much on your plate. I'm not sure who has the better situation here on this site. It's a tie. You get some rest girlfriends. :)
I was writing my post while you were posting your's, so am responding after the fact. I am amazed at what you've gone through. (Any of us, really.) How in the world did we survive all that stuff? As you write, my jaw dropped. Just reading about this brings so much emotion. What a sorry mess to deal with, for many here on this thread. Ever wonder how many more out there dealing with it?
Anyone else get told, "Children should be seen and not heard." Or the famous saying: "Dont talk. Don't trust. Don't feel." Those were the rules in my family. As a teen I added, "If it feels good, do it. If it feels bad, grit your teeth." What an awful creed to live by. Wonder where I learned that one? Mommy dearest.
I'm hoping too, but not holding my breath. Mom was a raving mental case today. Don't mean to sound disrespectful, but can't find adequate words to describe it. And it puts me into a state of confusion. I'm only just now (6 hours later) feeling the cloud of condemnation lift. Mental illness is very serious, and I've never encountered it like this before. Her's is escalating. The home health lady I contracted to do the transport for mom's appointments told me it will snowball and get worse, reinforcing the prediction I'd already received from the 1st clinic visit.
You know, I don't know this Psychiatrist, and don't know anyone who does. I have encountered so many physicians who didn't help or provide answers or resources, that I'm skeptical. The appointment is Monday. What do I have to lose? Time and $$$$ I will learn whether or not they can "help" or not, but there is no cure, correct?
I think I know why mom is fighting me. I think it's because she's trying to run from the past, and I know it, full of abuse, and she wants me out of the picture thinking no one else will know. Or she thinks I'm trying to have her committed, and am lying to do so. She says she's fine, and doesn't need a Guardian. They say she does, but I've yet to see it in writing by a Physician. That would help if we end up back in court. All I can do is pray that someone PLEASE help me deal with mom. I feel like I was drowning today. I start second guessing myself. I just want someone to put it in writing, so I can see with my eyes that this is real, serious, and where to go from here. I'm tired of people defending her, and not believing me.
And I'm tired of people (including my husband) telling me to "just get another Guardian." He knows how hard I've worked to alert them to her addictions, and finally get her off narcotic pain meds. And she's doing better (meaning no pain). So her addiction was driving the "need" for them. She kept finding doctors to write scripts. That makes me angry. But I'm thankful I found enough to believe me, and discontinue them. And she "couldn't breath" while 200 miles away in her home, wearing herself out trying to maintain it. Since moving her, she's off oxygen, and no more headaches. She's also found a social niche in the apartment building, no longer isolated in a huge subdivision.
It was a harrowing day. I wish they could have done more.
Then the phone rang. It was the nursing home. They found my dad sitting on the floor. No fall, no problems, but he couldn't communicate so they understood him. We drove over. He was fine, but not fine. He's blank. No recognition on the screen. No smile, no talking, and definite decline. Nothing marked, but noticeable. Just what I need; more drama. He was fine, but who likes getting those calls at 10:00 at night?
Some of mom's rantings today concerned him. She bitterly complains that she moved up here to see him, and no one will let her. (She isn't nice, and has been abusive in the past) She's on restriction, and doesn't like that she can "only go with..." me, but that I can go anytime I want.
She doesn't like that I've been doing her meds, won't give her all the $$$ her heart desires, won't run every time she calls, buy off brand food, and that I make the decisions about how her money is spent, etc. She bitterly rants: "So many things have been taken away from me; my car, my driver's license, my dog, my meds," etc. It's true, and it's sad, but it's also necessary. She's incapacitated, due to cognitive decline, but she wants them to see me as having the problem. And it makes her angry that it's her instead of me. I truly believe she would be pleased to see me destroyed mentally. And she's working on it. I thank the Lord for his grace and mercy, and the power of prayer and loving friends. Otherwise, this nightmare would swallow me up. I hate Alzheimer's, and I hate mental illness. Where's the grace and mercy in that???
I started cleaning the house when i was about 11 years old. Because she was to tired.
I learned to live with any choice i made, because she had no sympathy for me. it didn't matter what it was. i can remember sitting at the table in the dark choking down cold lima beans or whatever because "you dished it out now you eat it".
Hearing her bitterly complain about someone and than later watching her smile and laugh with them and act like she just loves them.
Of course there was the hysteric's too if i ever said anything against her. In her world she is perfect.
And controlling with fear. There were things that i never asked for because i just knew better. That was a given, and you know when it dawned on me as an adult, i was amazed, because as a kid i never reasoned it; that was normal, but as an adult, i realized, that isn't normal.
Like i said before, when i moved my mom into my house about two yrs ago, i started to have memories of my childhood that i had strangely forgotten. i realize now that it is a survival mechanism. But i still wonder exactly what she did to me to make me so afraid of making her angry. i still bend over backwards to not make her angry.
My brother, the oldest, is her favorite. My sister and i just "knew" that and never questioned it. That's just how it was.
We learned early not to tattle on him because we got the worst of it. If he broke one of our toys, " well what did you do to him to make him so angry". He is still her golden boy,a disgusting momma's boy, at 60 yrs of age.
Oh my, i had best stop this, i think i could go on for a very long time but to who's benefit. I am so thankful for you wonderful fellow suffer'ers of mama drama trauma. Peace
My mom isn't fighting the meds but she is not so good at taking them, no matter what system I devised. Today I called over there around 11:00 because the visiting pyschotherapist wanted to visit her. Well the phone was busy, but it stayed that way. He called me when he was at her doorstep at 2:30 and no matter how many times he rang the door bell no answer. So oh Shit, gotta go over there. So I went over there, and the key I had for the front door wouldn't work all of a sudden. I tried to get into the back gate and I guess she heard the commotion and let me in. The phone was off the hook due to the tangled up cord laid over the receiver so it did not hang up properly. I asked her didn't you hear the door bell? She was sleeping in the patio and did not hear it. Oy Vey! I noticed she did not take her dinnertime meds for Monday nor Tuesday...didnt the friggin homecare worker notice that? She notates every thing else so busily on a note pad but always misses that. Guess I have to send another email to her supervisor about that. I guess she only concentrated on the meds for the day she was there. My mom seems to be slowing down a lot, but it may be the meds keeping her that way.
Secret Sis, the trick for you now...who is going to make sure she takes those meds....that was my biggest dilema and still is.
Linda
It was so difficult, and extremely emotionally painful for me to have all that vengeance directed toward me. The Pharmacist told me she felt sorry for me. She said, "Good luck." I felt so dejected, not knowing what to expect, but hoping for so much more. I felt relieved that I was driving home, alone, and her with hired transport. An uglier scene I have not seen. Not looking forward to the appointment with the unknown Psychiatrist on Monday. I feel like crying, but can't. The relief is just not coming. I feel like I'm hemmorraghing inside. How can one be so vindictively evil toward their own child?
I just hope for a professional to listen to our whole lifelong struggle, and offer some type of hope and help. So far, I have only disclosed a portion, but if they only knew...
Please folks read the post about forgiveness that I posted. Don't let what society dictates what is politically correct or religions dictate what you must do for yourself. You do what is right for you. So much has been taken away or for granted about your life, it's time that you get to be the phoenix and rise from the ashes.
Many of this I feel is because of the heavy 'quilt complex' these types of parents but on us, or what society pressures to put on us due they are parents, but abusers in the eyes of society will always be abusers don't loose sight of that.
You say that "We need to understand in order to be satisfied with it, and move on."
I must confess that I still don't understand it after 50+ years of trying. The only thing I do understand is that I had a childhood worth forgetting and a lot of emotional scars that haunted me throughout my life. What helped me most--especially during my mother and father's final years was taking that first step:"Admitting that I was powerless over the effects of alcoholism and family dysfunction and that my life had become unmanageable" Then I was ready to turn it over and that is when I really began to recover and get healthy. Before that point I had tried everything, short of self-destruction, to find peace. This included all manor of forced solutions like trying to please at the cost of my own identity, being the perfect son etc. Agreeing with neighbors and relatives when they told me what a wonderful person my father was and how good of him to take care of my mother. Then I did nothing as he verbally abused my mother when she was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. Yes I understood it. Yes I understood that it was a crazy and unhealthy environment. And being raised Catholic, I tried to reconcile all this with the Commandment "Honor thy father and thy mother" which locked me into inaction. I did not want to piss off God and my parents at the same time. (Yes that is how I "understood" the commandment. Then someone sent by God explained to me that we honor our parents simply by admitting that they gave us life--nothing else is required. Wow--did that unlock a large portion of my personality!) My wife-who comes from a similar background--said to me as we were going to my father's wake: "It is going to be hard hearing all his friends and neighbors telling you how wonderful he was...don't you wish just one person would say 'He was a mean ol SOB, but were probably going to miss him'" That got me through it because I knew I had at least one person in this world who knew the truth. And I said before in this forum that although I may never understand it, I can honor my father because he gave me life and I can forgive him because he really did do the best he could with what he had.
well said and thats the spirit you can do it I can do it an so can everyone else that has had to deal with this kind of parent/parents. It is ot our responsibility to do their bidding 24/7 and I am sorry but every one gets old and dies I have a great life it can be better, it is going to get better and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. These are the good old days so don't waste them on someone who won't even admit they have PROBLEM And think you can fix everything in there life that didn't go according to their wishes. If mine tells me one more time what a great mother she was she may leave this world sooner than she thinks NOT but oh how I wish sometimes God forgive me.
Sis, Talk to your son. He has eyes and ears and he knows what is going on. Let him comfort you. Now is a good time for him to learn how to comfort when there is nothing he can do.
Let him know that you are befuddled and worried. tell him that one of the things that worries you the most is that you feel that you may be neglecting him. Leave no word unsaid, do not assume that he will figure this out, or that he will come to you. Tell him that you are distracted and that it is his job right now to let you know when he needs to share a hug, or would like to spend some time making cookies, or talking about a movie or a book. My son was your son's age when my parental cave in happened. He figured out a lot. But the explosion took place when I saw it start to happen to my son, "This is your fault..." WHAT!!! I stopped her in her tracks.
The hard part for me is not to protect my son too much. I have a tendency to look everyone in the eye, trust no one..., I do not want to be a hover mother, and I do not want to make him distrustful of everyone, but he needs to know that not everyone out there is a good person. But I do not want to make him believe that there isn't good .
Talk to you son honestly. He has a better understanding of what is going on than you think he does. Then do what it did, get caller I.D and assume that if something is REALLY wrong, she won't waste time annoying you, she'll call 911.
Neon, whenI read that article I was really surprised that someone was able to write it so well. Some things my mother never was, others to the letter. I never understood why she was able to be so caring to others and cry at their pain, while she let me become damaged by flus and infections, not even a tissue. I look back at me as a little kid and wonder how anyone could not want to help. The school would send me to the emergency room, and then she would get mad at me for making her look like a bad mother. I never figured that one out. Now I understand.
The one thing we all need to get from these discoveries, is that we did not deserve it. Children are children. When my mom told my three year old that he was immature, I freaked. I had heard that from the womb. What did she really believe she was giving birth too?
Ezcare, absolutely. I understand your subtle point, let us focus on making ourselves stronger adults and better parents. But you also have to understand that we came from some really bad stuff. We need to understand in order to be satisfied with it, and move on. I think all of us have made profound strides in that direction in a very short while.
The hardest part is the giving up. In order to care for our parents as well as we can, then we need to give up. Give up fear, anger, hope for change, and the hardest is to give up the buttons. The lamp analogy is good. Don't plug into the socket and the buttons won't work. BUT let's face it, we are hard wired. We have been in this relationship from conception, if it had been an easy thing to do, we would have done it by now.
I want a loving mother. I want a kind friendly father -there with a joke and a kind word.
Sis, your sister still wants that too. We delude ourselves everyday. The longer we are away from something, it doesn't feel so bad. it wasn't that bad. It can be better, we will try harder and then everything will be okay. She wants a mom too. ..but she is smart enough to know she wants you to break the wild horse first.
I am getting it. it is sinking in. I still wake up, but I wake up with less dispare each night. I did not expect for this to help so quickly. Knowing that identical things have happened to others, brothers and sisters... I am not crazy. I am not to blame, and I am setting that old thinking on the curb to be hauled away.
No wonder we all struggle so much with our own well being. I feel this deeply, and can't even find words to express the turmoil this is causing, even still. My heart and mind are full of images and remembrances of all that has transpired in my life. I numbly wonder about the future, as we have a long road to go. This makes me feel incredibly tired.
The Destructive Narcissistic Parent creates a child that only exists to be an extension of her self. It's about secret things. It's about body language. It's about disapproving glances. It's about vocal tone. It's very intimate. And it's very powerful. It's part of who the child is.
-Chris
Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers
1. Everything she does is deniable. There is always a facile excuse or an explanation. Cruelties are couched in loving terms. Aggressive and hostile acts are paraded as thoughtfulness. Selfish manipulations are presented as gifts. Criticism and slander is slyly disguised as concern. She only wants what is best for you. She only wants to help you.
She rarely says right out that she thinks you’re inadequate. Instead, any time that you tell her you’ve done something good, she counters with something your sibling did that was better or she simply ignores you or she hears you out without saying anything, then in a short time does something cruel to you so you understand not to get above yourself. She will carefully separate cause (your joy in your accomplishment) from effect (refusing to let you borrow the car to go to the awards ceremony) by enough time that someone who didn’t live through her abuse would never believe the connection.
Many of her putdowns are simply by comparison. She’ll talk about how wonderful someone else is or what a wonderful job they did on something you’ve also done or how highly she thinks of them. The contrast is left up to you. She has let you know that you’re no good without saying a word. She’ll spoil your pleasure in something by simply congratulating you for it in an angry, envious voice that conveys how unhappy she is, again, completely deniably. It is impossible to confront someone over their tone of voice, their demeanor or they way they look at you, but once your narcissistic mother has you trained, she can promise terrible punishment without a word. As a result, you’re always afraid, always in the wrong, and can never exactly put your finger on why.
Because her abusiveness is part of a lifelong campaign of control and because she is careful to rationalize her abuse, it is extremely difficult to explain to other people what is so bad about her. She’s also careful about when and how she engages in her abuses. She’s very secretive, a characteristic of almost all abusers (“Don’t wash our dirty laundry in public!”) and will punish you for telling anyone else what she’s done. The times and locations of her worst abuses are carefully chosen so that no one who might intervene will hear or see her bad behavior, and she will seem like a completely different person in public. She’ll slam you to other people, but will always embed her devaluing nuggets of snide gossip in protestations of concern, love and understanding (“I feel so sorry for poor Cynthia. She always seems to have such a hard time, but I just don’t know what I can do for her!”) As a consequence the children of narcissists universally report that no one believes them (“I have to tell you that she always talks about YOU in the most caring way!). Unfortunately therapists, given the deniable actions of the narcissist and eager to defend a fellow parent, will often jump to the narcissist’s defense as well, reinforcing your sense of isolation and helplessness (“I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that!”)
2. She violates your boundaries. You feel like an extension of her. Your property is given away without your consent, sometimes in front of you. Your food is eaten off your plate or given to others off your plate. Your property may be repossessed and no reason given other than that it was never yours. Your time is committed without consulting you, and opinions purported to be yours are expressed for you. (She LOVES going to the fair! He would never want anything like that. She wouldn’t like kumquats.) You are discussed in your presence as though you are not there. She keeps tabs on your bodily functions and humiliates you by divulging the information she gleans, especially when it can be used to demonstrate her devotion and highlight her martyrdom to your needs (“Mike had that problem with frequent urination too, only his was much worse. I was so worried about him!”) You have never known what it is like to have privacy in the bathroom or in your bedroom, and she goes through your things regularly. She asks nosy questions, snoops into your email/letters/diary/conversations. She will want to dig into your feelings, particularly painful ones and is always looking for negative information on you which can be used against you. She does things against your expressed wishes frequently. All of this is done without seeming embarrassment or thought.
Any attempt at autonomy on your part is strongly resisted. Normal rites of passage (learning to shave, wearing makeup, dating) are grudgingly allowed only if you insist, and you’re punished for your insistence (“Since you’re old enough to date, I think you’re old enough to pay for your own clothes!”) If you demand age-appropriate clothing, grooming, control over your own life, or rights, you are difficult and she ridicules your “independence.”
3. She favoritizes. Narcissistic mothers commonly choose one (sometimes more) child to be the golden child and one (sometimes more) to be the scapegoat. The narcissist identifies with the golden child and provides privileges to him or her as long as the golden child does just as she wants. The golden child has to be cared for assiduously by everyone in the family. The scapegoat has no needs and instead gets to do the caring. The golden child can do nothing wrong. The scapegoat is always at fault. This creates divisions between the children, one of whom has a large investment in the mother being wise and wonderful, and the other(s) who hate her. That division will be fostered by the narcissist with lies and with blatantly unfair and favoritizing behavior. The golden child will defend the mother and indirectly perpetuate the abuse by finding reasons to blame the scapegoat for the mother’s actions. The golden child may also directly take on the narcissistic mother’s tasks by physically abusing the scapegoat so the narcissistic mother doesn’t have to do that herself.
4. She undermines. Your accomplishments are acknowledged only to the extent that she can take credit for them. Any success or accomplishment for which she cannot take credit is ignored or diminished. Any time you are to be center stage and there is no opportunity for her to be the center of attention, she will try to prevent the occasion altogether, or she doesn’t come, or she leaves early, or she acts like it’s no big deal, or she steals the spotlight or she slips in little wounding comments about how much better someone else did or how what you did wasn’t as much as you could have done or as you think it is. She undermines you by picking fights with you or being especially unpleasant just before you have to make a major effort. She acts put out if she has to do anything to support your opportunities or will outright refuse to do even small things in support of you. She will be nasty to you about things that are peripherally connected with your successes so that you find your joy in what you’ve done is tarnished, without her ever saying anything directly about it. No matter what your success, she has to take you down a peg about it.
5. She demeans, criticizes and denigrates. She lets you know in all sorts of little ways that she thinks less of you than she does of your siblings or of other people in general. If you complain about mistreatment by someone else, she will take that person’s side even if she doesn’t know them at all. She doesn’t care about those people or the justice of your complaints. She just wants to let you know that you’re never right.
She will deliver generalized barbs that are almost impossible to rebut (always in a loving, caring tone): “You were always difficult” “You can be very difficult to love” “You never seemed to be able to finish anything” “You were very hard to live with” “You’re always causing trouble” “No one could put up with the things you do.” She will deliver slams in a sidelong way - for example she’ll complain about how “no one” loves her, does anything for her, or cares about her, or she’ll complain that “everyone” is so selfish, when you’re the only person in the room. As always, this combines criticism with deniability.
She will slip little comments into conversation that she really enjoyed something she did with someone else - something she did with you too, but didn’t like as much. She’ll let you know that her relationship with some other person you both know is wonderful in a way your relationship with her isn’t - the carefully unspoken message being that you don’t matter much to her.
She minimizes, discounts or ignores your opinions and experiences. Your insights are met with condescension, denials and accusations (“I think you read too much!”) and she will brush off your information even on subjects on which you are an acknowledged expert. Whatever you say is met with smirks and amused sounding or exaggerated exclamations (“Uh hunh!” “You don’t say!” “Really!”). She’ll then make it clear that she didn’t listen to a word you said.
6. She makes you look crazy. If you try to confront her about something she’s done, she’ll tell you that you have “a very vivid imagination” (this is a phrase commonly used by abusers of all sorts to invalidate your experience of their abuse) that you don’t know what you’re talking about, or that she has no idea what you’re talking about. She will claim not to remember even very memorable events, flatly denying they ever happened, nor will she ever acknowledge any possibility that she might have forgotten. This is an extremely aggressive and exceptionally infuriating tactic called “gaslighting,” common to abusers of all kinds. Your perceptions of reality are continually undermined so that you end up without any confidence in your intuition, your memory or your powers of reasoning. This makes you a much better victim for the abuser.
Narcissists gaslight routinely. The narcissist will either insinuate or will tell you outright that you’re unstable, otherwise you wouldn’t believe such ridiculous things or be so uncooperative. You’re oversensitive. You’re imagining things. You’re hysterical. You’re completely unreasonable. You’re over-reacting, like you always do. She’ll talk to you when you’ve calmed down and aren’t so irrational. She may even characterize you as being neurotic or psychotic.
Once she’s constructed these fantasies of your emotional pathologies, she’ll tell others about them, as always, presenting her smears as expressions of concern and declaring her own helpless victimhood. She didn’t do anything. She has no idea why you’re so irrationally angry with her. You’ve hurt her terribly. She thinks you may need psychotherapy. She loves you very much and would do anything to make you happy, but she just doesn’t know what to do. You keep pushing her away when all she wants to do is help you.
She has simultaneously absolved herself of any responsibility for your obvious antipathy towards her, implied that it’s something fundamentally wrong with you that makes you angry with her, and undermined your credibility with her listeners. She plays the role of the doting mother so perfectly that no one will believe you.
7. She’s envious. Any time you get something nice she’s angry and envious and her envy will be apparent when she admires whatever it is. She’ll try to get it from you, spoil it for you, or get the same or better for herself. She’s always working on ways to get what other people have. The envy of narcissistic mothers often includes competing sexually with their daughters or daughters-in-law. They’ll attempt to forbid their daughters to wear makeup, to groom themselves in an age-appropriate way or to date. They will criticize the appearance of their daughters and daughters-in-law. This envy extends to relationships. Narcissistic mothers infamously attempt to damage their children’s marriages and interfere in the upbringing of their grandchildren.
8. She’s a liar in too many ways to count. Any time she talks about something that has emotional significance for her, it’s a fair bet that she’s lying. Lying is one way that she creates conflict in the relationships and lives of those around her - she’ll lie to them about what other people have said, what they’ve done, or how they feel. She’ll lie about her relationship with them, about your behavior or about your situation in order to inflate herself and to undermine your credibility.
The narcissist is very careful about how she lies. To outsiders she’ll lie thoughtfully and deliberately, always in a way that can be covered up if she’s confronted with her lie. She spins what you said rather than makes something up wholesale. She puts dishonest interpretations on things you actually did. If she’s recently done something particularly egregious she may engage in preventative lying: she lies in advance to discount what you might say before you even say it. Then when you talk about what she did you’ll be cut off with “I already know all about it…your mother told me... (self-justifications and lies).” Because she is so careful about her deniability, it may be very hard to catch her in her lies and the more gullible of her friends may never realize how dishonest she is.
To you, she’ll lie blatantly. She will claim to be unable to remember bad things she has done, even if she did one of them recently and even if it was something very memorable. Of course, if you try to jog her memory by recounting the circumstances “You have a very vivid imagination” or “That was so long ago. Why do you have to dredge up your old grudges?” Your conversations with her are full of casual brush-offs and diversionary lies and she doesn’t respect you enough to bother making it sound good. For example she’ll start with a self-serving lie: “If I don’t take you as a dependent on my taxes I’ll lose three thousand dollars!” You refute her lie with an obvious truth: “No, three thousand dollars is the amount of the dependent exemption. You’ll only lose about eight hundred dollars.” Her response: “Isn’t that what I said?” You are now in a game with only one rule: You can’t win.
On the rare occasions she is forced to acknowledge some bad behavior, she will couch the admission deniably. She “guesses” that “maybe” she “might have” done something wrong. The wrongdoing is always heavily spun and trimmed to make it sound better. The words “I guess,” “maybe,” and “might have” are in and of themselves lies because she knows exactly what she did - no guessing, no might haves, no maybes.
9. She has to be the center of attention all the time. This need is a defining trait of narcissists and particularly of narcissistic mothers for whom their children exist to be sources of attention and adoration. Narcissistic mothers love to be waited on and often pepper their children with little requests. “While you’re up…” or its equivalent is one of their favorite phrases. You couldn’t just be assigned a chore at the beginning of the week or of the day, instead, you had to do it on demand, preferably at a time that was inconvenient for you, or you had to “help” her do it, fetching and carrying for her while she made up to herself for the menial work she had to do as your mother by glorying in your attentions.
A narcissistic mother may create odd occasions at which she can be the center of attention, such as memorials for someone close to her who died long ago, or major celebrations of small personal milestones. She may love to entertain so she can be the life of her own party. She will try to steal the spotlight or will try to spoil any occasion where someone else is the center of attention, particularly the child she has cast as the scapegoat. She often invites herself along where she isn’t welcome. If she visits you or you visit her, you are required to spend all your time with her. Entertaining herself is unthinkable. She has always pouted, manipulated or raged if you tried to do anything without her, didn’t want to entertain her, refused to wait on her, stymied her plans for a drama or otherwise deprived her of attention.
Older narcissistic mothers often use the natural limitations of aging to manipulate dramas, often by neglecting their health or by doing things they know will make them ill. This gives them the opportunity to cash in on the investment they made when they trained you to wait on them as a child. Then they call you (or better still, get the neighbor or the nursing home administrator to call you) demanding your immediate attendance. You are to rush to her side, pat her hand, weep over her pain and listen sympathetically to her unending complaints about how hard and awful it is. (“Never get old!”) It’s almost never the case that you can actually do anything useful, and the causes of her disability may have been completely avoidable, but you’ve been put in an extremely difficult position. If you don’t provide the audience and attention she’s manipulating to get, you look extremely bad to everyone else and may even have legal culpability. (Narcissistic behaviors commonly accompany Alzheimer’s disease, so this behavior may also occur in perfectly normal mothers as they age.)
10. She manipulates your emotions in order to feed on your pain. This exceptionally sick and bizarre behavior is so common among narcissistic mothers that their children often call them “emotional vampires.” Some of this emotional feeding comes in the form of pure sadism. She does and says things just to be wounding or she engages in tormenting teasing or she needles you about things you’re sensitive about, all the while a smile plays over her lips. She may have taken you to scary movies or told you horrifying stories, then mocked you for being a baby when you cried. She will slip a wounding comment into conversation and smile delightedly into your hurt face. You can hear the laughter in her voice as she pressures you or says distressing things to you. Later she’ll gloat over how much she upset you, gaily telling other people that you’re so much fun to tease, and recruiting others to share in her amusement. . She enjoys her cruelties and makes no effort to disguise that. She wants you to know that your pain entertains her. She may also bring up subjects that are painful for you and probe you about them, all the while watching you carefully. This is emotional vampirism in its purest form. She’s feeding emotionally off your pain.
A peculiar form of this emotional vampirism combines attention-seeking behavior with a demand that the audience suffer. Since narcissistic mothers often play the martyr this may take the form of wrenching, self-pitying dramas which she carefully produces, and in which she is the star performer. She sobs and wails that no one loves her and everyone is so selfish, and she doesn’t want to live, she wants to die! She wants to die! She will not seem to care how much the manipulation of their emotions and the self-pity repels other people. One weird behavior that is very common to narcissists: her dramas may also center around the tragedies of other people, often relating how much she suffered by association as she cries over the horrible murder of someone she wouldn’t recognize if they had passed her on the street.
11. She’s selfish and willful. She always makes sure she has the best of everything. She insists on having her own way all the time and she will ruthlessly, manipulatively pursue it, even if what she wants isn’t worth all the effort she’s putting into it and even if that effort goes far beyond normal behavior. She will make a huge effort to get something you denied her, even if it was entirely your right to do so and even if her demand was selfish and unreasonable. If you tell her she cannot bring her friends to your party she will show up with them anyway, and she will have told them that they were invited so that you either have to give in, or be the bad guy to these poor dupes on your doorstep. If you tell her she can’t come over to your house tonight she’ll call your spouse and try get him or her to agree that she can, and to not say anything to you about it because it’s a “surprise.” She has to show you that you can’t tell her “no.”
One near-universal characteristic of narcissists: because they are so selfish and self-centered, they are very bad gift givers. They’ll give you hand-me-downs or market things for themselves as gifts for you (“I thought I’d give you my old bicycle and buy myself a new one!” “I know how much you love Italian food, so I’m going to take you to my favorite restaurant for your birthday!”) New gifts are often obviously cheap and are usually things that don’t suit you or that you can’t use or are a quid pro quo: if you buy her the gift she wants, she will buy you an item of your choice. She’ll make it clear that it pains her to give you anything. She may buy you a gift and get the identical item for herself, or take you shopping for a gift and get herself something nice at the same time to make herself feel better.
12. She’s self-absorbed. Her feelings, needs and wants are very important; yours are insignificant to the point that her least whim takes precedence over your most basic needs. Her problems deserve your immediate and full attention; yours are brushed aside. Her wishes always take precedence; if she does something for you, she reminds you constantly of her munificence in doing so and will often try to extract some sort of payment. She will complain constantly, even though your situation may be much worse than hers. If you point that out, she will effortlessly, thoughtlessly brush it aside as of no importance (It’s easy for you…/It’s different for you…).
13. She is insanely defensive and is extremely sensitive to any criticism. If you criticize her or defy her she will explode with fury, threaten, storm, rage, destroy and may become violent, beating, confining, putting her child outdoors in bad weather or otherwise engaging in classic physical abuse. It’s easy to provoke her wrath because she takes everything personally and any attitude short of constant emotional and physical availability is perceived as a slight. If you’re short with her because you’re exhausted and depressed, she has to have it out with you over your “hostility.” If a toddler shouts “I hate you” at her she gets angry and punitive. If you refuse her nosy request to let her read the letter you got she shouts about how unappreciative you are and how hard she has it. She has no sense of perspective or separation and she can’t let anything go. Because the narcissistic mother is so extremely defensive she is completely resistant to change. Narcissists infamously cannot be helped and if anything, change for the worse.
14. She terrorized. All abusers use fear to control their victims, and your narcissistic mother used it ruthlessly to train you. Narcissists teach you to beware their wrath even when they aren’t present. The only alternative is constant placation. If you give her everything she wants all the time, you might be spared. If you don’t, the punishments will come. Even adult children of narcissists still feel that carefully inculcated fear. Your narcissistic mother can turn it on with a silence or a look that tells the child in you she’s thinking about how she’s going to get even.
Not all narcissists abuse physically, but most do, often in subtle, deniable ways. It allows them to vent their rage at your failure to be the solution to their internal havoc and simultaneously to teach you to fear them. You may not have been beaten, but you were almost certainly left to endure physical pain when a normal mother would have made an effort to relieve your misery. This deniable form of battery allows her to store up her rage and dole out the punishment at a later time when she’s worked out an airtight rationale for her abuse, so she never risks exposure. You were left hungry because “you eat too much.” (Someone asked her if she was pregnant. She isn’t). You always went to school with stomach flu because “you don’t have a fever. You’re just trying to get out of school.” (She resents having to take care of you. You have a lot of nerve getting sick and adding to her burdens.) She refuses to look at your bloody heels and instead the shoes that wore those blisters on your heels are put back on your feet and you’re sent to the store in them because “You wanted those shoes. Now you can wear them.” (You said the ones she wanted to get you were ugly. She liked them because they were just like what she wore 30 years ago). The dentist was told not to give you Novocaine when he drilled your tooth because “he has to learn to take better care of his teeth.” (She has to pay for a filling and she’s furious at having to spend money on you.) Unlike psychopaths, narcissists do understand right, wrong, and consequences, so they are not ordinarily criminal. She beat you, but not to the point where you went to the hospital. She left you standing out in the cold until you were miserable, but not until you had hypothermia. She put you in the basement in the dark with no clothes on, but she only left you there for two hours.
Narcissistic mothers also abuse by loosing others on you or by failing to protect you when a normal mother would have. Sometimes the narcissist’s golden child will be encouraged to abuse the scapegoat. Narcissists also abuse by exposing you to violence. If one of your siblings got beaten, she made sure you saw. She effortlessly put the fear of Mom into you, without even touching you.
15. She’s infantile and petty. Narcissistic mothers are often simply childish. If you refuse to let her manipulate you into doing something, she will cry that you don’t love her because if you loved her you would do as she wanted. If you hurt her feelings she will aggressively whine to you that you’ll be sorry when she’s dead that you didn’t treat her better. Anytime she feels hard-done-by, she pouts, whines and gives the silent treatment. When you were a child, she would justify things she did to you by pointing out something that you did that she felt was comparable, as though the childish behavior of a child was justification for the childish behavior of an adult. “Getting even” is a large part of her dealings with you. Anytime you fail to give her the deference, attention or service she feels she deserves, or you thwart her wishes, she has to show you.
16. She’s aggressive and shameless. She doesn’t ask. She demands. She makes outrageous requests and she’ll take anything she wants if she thinks she can get away with it. Her demands of her children are posed in a very aggressive way, as are her criticisms. She won’t take no for an answer, pushing and arm-twisting and manipulating to get you to give in.
17. She “parentifies.” She shed her responsibilities to you as soon as she was able, leaving you to take care of yourself as best you could. She denied you medical care, adequate clothing, necessary transportation or basic comforts that she would never have considered giving up herself. She never gave you a birthday party or let you have sleepovers. Your friends were never welcome in her house. She didn’t like to drive you anywhere, so you turned down invitations because you had no way to get there. She wouldn’t buy your school pictures even if she could easily have afforded it. You had a niggardly clothing allowance or she bought you the cheapest clothing she could without embarrassing herself. As soon as you got a job, every request for school supplies, clothing or toiletries was met with “Now that you’re making money, why don’t you pay for that yourself?”
She also gave you tasks that were rightfully hers and should not have been placed on a child. You may have been a primary caregiver for young siblings or an incapacitated parent. You may have had responsibility for excessive household tasks. Above all, you were always her emotional caregiver which is one reason any defection from that role caused such enormous eruptions of rage. You were never allowed to be needy or have bad feelings or problems. Those experiences were only for her, and you were responsible for making it right for her. From the time you were very young she would randomly lash out at you any time she was stressed or angry with your father or felt that life was unfair to her, because it made her feel better to hurt you. You were often punished out of the blue, for manufactured offenses. As you got older she directly placed responsibility for her welfare and her emotions on you, weeping on your shoulder and unloading on you any time something went awry for her.
18. She’s exploitative. She will manipulate to get work, money, or objects she envies out of other people for nothing. This includes her children, of course. If she set up a bank account for you, she was trustee on the account with the right to withdraw money. As you put money into it, she took it out. She may have stolen your identity. She took you as a dependent on her income taxes so you couldn’t file independently without exposing her to criminal penalties. If she made an agreement with you, it was violated the minute it no longer served her needs. If you brought it up demanding she adhere to the agreement, she brushed you off and later punished you so you would know not to defy her again.
Sometimes the narcissist will exploit a child to absorb punishment that would have been hers from an abusive partner. The husband comes home in a drunken rage, and the mother immediately complains about the child’s bad behavior so the rage is vented on to the child. Sometimes the narcissistic mother simply uses the child to keep a sick marriage intact because the alternative is being divorced or having to go to work. The child is sexually molested but the mother never notices, or worse, calls the child a liar when she tells the mother about the molestation.
19. She projects. This sounds a little like psycho-babble, but it is something that narcissists all do. Projection means that she will put her own bad behavior, character and traits on you so she can deny them in herself and punish you. This can be very difficult to see if you have traits that she can project on to. An eating-disordered woman who obsesses over her daughter’s weight is projecting. The daughter may not realize it because she has probably internalized an absurdly thin vision of women’s weight and so accepts her mother’s projection. When the narcissist tells the daughter that she eats too much, needs to exercise more, or has to wear extra-large size clothes, the daughter believes it, even if it isn’t true. However, she will sometimes project even though it makes no sense at all. This happens when she feels shamed and needs to put it on her scapegoat child and the projection therefore comes across as being an attack out of the blue. For example: She makes an outrageous request, and you casually refuse to let her have her way. She’s enraged by your refusal and snarls at you that you’ll talk about it when you’ve calmed down and are no longer hysterical.
You aren’t hysterical at all; she is, but your refusal has made her feel the shame that should have stopped her from making shameless demands in the first place. That’s intolerable. She can transfer that shame to you and rationalize away your response: you only refused her because you’re so unreasonable. Having done that she can reassert her shamelessness and indulge her childish willfulness by turning an unequivocal refusal into a subject for further discussion. You’ll talk about it again “later” - probably when she’s worn you down with histrionics, pouting and the silent treatment so you’re more inclined to do what she wants.
20. She is never wrong about anything. No matter what she’s done, she won’t ever genuinely apologize for anything. Instead, any time she feels she is being made to apologize she will sulk and pout, issue an insulting apology or negate the apology she has just made with justifications, qualifications or self pity: “I’m sorry you felt that I humiliated you” “I’m sorry if I made you feel bad” “If I did that it was wrong” “I’m sorry, but I there’s nothing I can do about it” “I’m sorry I made you feel clumsy, stupid and disgusting” “I’m sorry but it was just a joke. You’re so over-sensitive” “I’m sorry that my own child feels she has to upset me and make me feel bad.” The last insulting apology is also an example of projection.
21. Sometimes she seems to have no awareness that other people even have feelings, and yet she is brilliantly sensitive to other people’s emotions. Every child of a narcissist recognizes this contradiction because narcissistic mothers do possess the ability to exercise empathy, and in abundance. Sometimes this ability also leads them to identify emotionally with people who are suffering and to express caring for them. When caring about another’s suffering interferes with something the narcissist wants, though, the caring vanishes. When a narcissistic mother wants validation, when she feels like eliciting some emotional pain, when something she wants hurts someone else, the empathy is turned off as though it never existed.
From the perspective of ability, narcissists are extremely empathetic; indeed they have a gift of telling what other people are feeling and thinking. Their skill at discerning and guiding the emotions of other people is the basis of many characteristically narcissistic interactions. Narcissists are very socially adept which is why no one ever believes their children when they complain of their mothers. They know just how to make everyone think that they’re delightful. Narcissistic mothers are exceptional manipulators, and manipulators must be extremely aware, on a moment-by-moment basis, of the emotions of their targets. If you don’t know what people are feeling, you can’t push their buttons. Their exceptional sensitivity to the feelings of others is also the wellspring of their pleasure in inflicting emotional pain through dramas and no-win scenarios. Narcissistic mothers enjoy inflicting emotional pain and they do it very well because they know just what their target children are feeling. That exquisite sensitivity is the reason they don’t need to batter. They can inflict agony without lifting a finger, so why risk exposure and waste effort with beatings when they can elicit the same emotions with words alone?
What narcissistic mothers lack is concern for the consequences of their actions, a behavior that seems rooted in profound selfishness, rather than in the absence of empathy. Mothers with NPD are certainly capable of feeling for others: they’re always feeling for the people with whom their scapegoat has conflicts. They feel for their fellow narcissists. They feel for people who have validated and praised them. They even feel for their child when it doesn’t cost them anything to do so. They just don’t feel for their child when they’re abusing him. They don’t feel anything that interferes with their absorption in their own wants and needs. Because they scour their environment for validation of their own abusiveness, they defend their fellow abusers, so they don’t have any empathy for the victims of those abusers, as the following story shows:
A four-year-old had come to school with a hand print on her face, which had been inflicted as the result of a slap by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. As a mandated reporter my mother had called the authorities, but she told me that she could understand why the boyfriend had hit the child: she was so annoying. Then she said in a dramatic tone dripping with sympathy “You should have seen the parents. They were so ashamed!” In outrage I said “What difference does that make to the child?” Her mouth dropped open and I realized she not only didn’t care at all about that poor little girl…it would never have occurred to her to care.
-Chris
This story shows the misplaced empathy of the abuser for other abusers. There was no empathy in Chris’s mother for the actual victim. Instead it was reserved for the woman who let her boyfriend batter her child. Chris’s mother identified with the abuser, a mother like herself, afflicted with a child who didn’t meet her needs. Her empathy actually attributed virtues to her fellow abuser and faults to the victim that weren’t merited in reality. Someone who hits a small child hard enough to leave a handprint, then sends them to school, isn’t ashamed, and the personality of a four-year-old is not the fault of the child!
The selfish empathy demonstrated by narcissistic mothers contrasts with the genuine empathy shown by normal people. Sometimes a normal person will give up something they really want for themselves because they come to recognize that it will hurt another person. A narcissistic mother will relentlessly go after something she wants even if it isn’t worth the pain she has to inflict to get it.
22. She engineers “no-win” situations that leave you violated and angry and not sure why you feel that way. In the classic “no-win” scenario, the narcissist’s child is subtly manipulated into a corner and then presented with a demand that the child do something degrading, humiliating or painful in order to please the narcissist. Any response other than compliance triggers retaliation.
These sadistic scenes are a defining characteristic of the narcissist. As so often with narcissistic behavior, the payoff for your mother is the elicitation of painful emotions. Whether you subject yourself to her degradation or you fight back and provoke punishment from the narcissist, you will experience a sense of entrapment and fear, and those emotions are very satisfying to her. Her pleasure is augmented by the pain she elicits by undermining, insulting and demeaning you and, as the scene winds down, by blaming you for the entire event.
These scenes are set up very stealthily; so much so that the children of narcissists rarely realize that a trap has been laid before it’s sprung. As always, the narcissist maintains deniability, but the consistencies between scenes betray their deliberate nature. Although the narcissist plays the scene as though it was spontaneous, it never is. It is scripted and premeditated and the stage is set well in advance. If a scene plays out away from home, you can be sure that the mother is in charge of transportation so that the child doesn’t have the option of walking away. If the scene is staged at home, it’s almost always in the mother’s home, not the child’s home, and engineered so that once again, it’s extremely difficult for the child to walk away. The narcissist commonly arranges things so she is alone with her victim, but she may also use the presence of a young child or complicit spouse to ensure that her target doesn’t react angrily.
Often the worst part of these scenes for the child is the awareness of how much his mother enjoys his distress; the children of narcissistic mothers often describe their mother’s “little smile” and air of pleasure as she plays out the no-win scenario. When confronted, some narcissistic mothers will even defend their behavior by saying they were “just having fun.” There is no betrayal more wounding than knowing your own mother is reveling in the pain she purposely caused, nor any emotion more delicious to your narcissistic mother than your sense of shock and misery at your knowledge that she is hurting you deliberately and for fun.
In the following story, an adult daughter is manipulated into a no-win situation. If she does not want to provoke retaliation from her narcissistic mother, she must accept and express gratitude for a gift that was clearly meant as an insult:
A few days before Christmas, my mother walked into the room where I was sitting carrying a pair of old, worn tennis shoes - the kind with the rubber soles and canvas uppers. She said “I know you asked for a pair of running shoes for Christmas. I thought I could give you these and get myself a new pair instead.” My mother was a clothes horse, and always had many pairs of new running shoes in her closet. What’s more, her feet are bigger and narrower than mine, so there’s no way her shoes would have fit me, but I was too shocked and angry to think of that. I said “I don’t want your cast-offs!” and she looked very satisfied and pleased and said “Fine” and walked away. That year I got no gift for Christmas, even though I had bought her something from her wish list, and even though my brother and sister got gifts from her.
I did get a letter after I got home that started “I’m sorry you felt that I offered you “cast-offs” and went on to describe how good her intentions were, how she thought I would be happy to let her do something nice for herself, and how hard she had it as the mother of an “unappreciative” child like me. This wasn’t the first time either. The preceding year she had tried to give me an old, rusty bicycle for Christmas with the stipulation that she would then get herself a new one.
- Chris
This story illustrates an absolutely classic no-win scenario. Although Chris did not realize it at the time, her mother had manipulated her into a corner. Chris had traveled to her mother’s house for Christmas and it was late at night. As a graduate student, Chris was perpetually short on funds, and going to a hotel, even if she could find one at that hour, was out of the question. None of the rest of the family was there yet, so Chris and her mother were alone in the house. There had been no argument or tension, and the attack by her mother came out of the blue.
Chris’s mother proposed something very insulting: she would give Chris her own worn shoes, which didn’t fit Chris and, for which gift Chris was to be “appreciative.” You would have to be very aware and self-possessed to respond calmly to such a demeaning suggestion, and Chris, tired, shocked, and angry, blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Chris’s mother got exactly what she wanted: a good feed on Chris’s hurt and anger, and an excuse to punish Chris with exclusion and withholding and later with a letter filled with guilt-inducing remonstrations.
In reality Chris’s mother never planned on giving Chris a Christmas gift. She was angry that Chris had made herself unavailable for abuse by going to graduate school in another state, and she wanted to punish Chris for her defection. So she manipulated a no-win scenario in which she could simultaneously insult Chris and turn Chris’s predictably angry response into an opportunity for punishment and narcissistic venting. In her letter, she projected her own hostility and selfishness on to Chris, blamed Chris for her own bad behavior, and depicted herself as a martyr, all the while maintaining complete deniability about the deliberate nature of the original interaction.
23. She blames. She’ll blame you for everything that isn’t right in her life or for what other people do or for whatever has happened. Always, she’ll blame you for her abuse. You made her do it. If only you weren’t so difficult. You upset her so much that she can’t think straight. Things were hard for her and your backtalk pushed her over the brink. This blaming is often so subtle that all you know is that you thought you were wronged and now you feel guilty. Your brother beats you and her response is to bemoan how uncivilized children are. Your boyfriend dumped you, but she can understand - after all, she herself has seen how difficult you are to love. She’ll do something egregiously exploitative to you, and when confronted will screech at you that she can’t believe you were so selfish as to upset her over such a trivial thing. She’ll also blame you for your reaction to her selfish, cruel and exploitative behavior. She can’t believe you are so petty, so small, and so childish as to object to her giving your favorite dress to her friend. She thought you would be happy to let her do something nice for someone else.
Narcissists are masters of multitasking as this example shows. Simultaneously your narcissistic mother is 1) Lying. She knows what she did was wrong and she knows your reaction is reasonable. 2) Manipulating. She’s making you look like the bad guy for objecting to her cruelties. 3) Being selfish. She doesn’t mind making you feel horrible as long as she gets her own way. 4) Blaming. She did something wrong, but it’s all your fault. 5) Projecting. Her petty, small and childish behavior has become yours. 6) Putting on a self-pitying drama. She’s a martyr who believed the best of you, and you’ve let her down. 7) Parentifying. You’re responsible for her feelings, she has no responsibility for yours.
24. She destroys your relationships. Narcissistic mothers are like tornadoes: wherever they touch down families are torn apart and wounds are inflicted. Unless the father has control over the narcissist and holds the family together, adult siblings in families with narcissistic mothers characteristically have painful relationships. Typically all communication between siblings is superficial and driven by duty, or they may never talk to each other at all. In part, these women foster dissension between their children because they enjoy the control it gives them. If those children don’t communicate except through the mother, she can decide what everyone hears. Narcissists also love the excitement and drama they create by interfering in their children’s lives. Watching people’s lives explode is better than soap operas, especially when you don’t have any empathy for their misery.
The narcissist nurtures anger, contempt and envy - the most corrosive emotions - to drive her children apart. While her children are still living at home, any child who stands up to the narcissist guarantees punishment for the rest. In her zest for revenge, the narcissist purposefully turns the siblings’ anger on the dissenter by including everyone in her retaliation. (“I can see that nobody here loves me! Well I’ll just take these Christmas presents back to the store. None of you would want anything I got you anyway!”) The other children, long trained by the narcissist to give in, are furious with the troublemaking child, instead of with the narcissist who actually deserves their anger.
The narcissist also uses favoritism and gossip to poison her childrens’ relationships. The scapegoat sees the mother as a creature of caprice and cruelty. As is typical of the privileged, the other children don’t see her unfairness and they excuse her abuses. Indeed, they are often recruited by the narcissist to adopt her contemptuous and entitled attitude towards the scapegoat and with her tacit or explicit permission, will inflict further abuse. The scapegoat predictably responds with fury and equal contempt. After her children move on with adult lives, the narcissist makes sure to keep each apprised of the doings of the others, passing on the most discreditable and juicy gossip (as always, disguised as “concern”) about the other children, again, in a way that engenders contempt rather than compassion.
Having been raised by a narcissist, her children are predisposed to be envious, and she takes full advantage of the opportunity that presents. She may never praise you to your face, but she will likely crow about your victories to the very sibling who is not doing well. She’ll tell you about the generosity she displayed towards that child, leaving you wondering why you got left out and irrationally angry at the favored child rather than at the narcissist who told you about it.
The end result is a family in which almost all communication is triangular. The narcissist, the spider in the middle of the family web, sensitively monitors all the children for information she can use to retain her unchallenged control over the family. She then passes that on to the others, creating the resentments that prevent them from communicating directly and freely with each other. The result is that the only communication between the children is through the narcissist, exactly the way she wants it.
25. As a last resort she goes pathetic. When she’s confronted with unavoidable consequences for her own bad behavior, including your anger, she will melt into a soggy puddle of weepy helplessness. It’s all her fault. She can’t do anything right. She feels so bad. What she doesn’t do: own the responsibility for her bad conduct and make it right. Instead, as always, it’s all about her, and her helpless self-pitying weepiness dumps the responsibility for her consequences AND for her unhappiness about it on you. As so often with narcissists, it is also a manipulative behavior. If you fail to excuse her bad behavior and make her feel better, YOU are the bad person for being cold, heartless and unfeeling when your poor mother feels so awful.
© 2007 All rights reserved
I toss and turn a lot at night. My mind won't let me rest. Much to do, and much at stake. And today's a follow up with the Geriatric Assessment Clinic, who originally recently diagnosed my mom's personality disorder. While I'm grateful for this, as I've been searching for help, it has opened up new concerns, etc. I've been reviewing the past, it's impact on me, and wondering where to go from here.
It seems, as Guardian, I've taken on a huge responsibility, for which I am little prepared. As much as I'd like to believe I'm doing well, I'm starting to see some areas where I have "unfinished business," and probably need some help navigating through the rough waters.
With mom's complaints and accusations against me, I'm on the defensive, and that is not a comfortable position. I'm praying that others can see the big picture, and guide us.
Last night, I realized, again, that my son is losing out by his distracted mommy. Sometimes I've seen my husband be distracted, and not paying attention to him as well. Having mom as my legal ward is much more difficult that I could have imagined. I am praying that someone can help us assess these difficulties, and offer solutions. Today, my mind is going in several different directions, and looking for relief. I desperately need to find peace from the turmoil, and a place of strength. I don't want to live from the angry, "brave girl," "I-can-get-through this-no-matter-what" position, but from a quite assurance that all will be well. It's not at present, and I don't know how to get there. The struggle is very tiring. Why does it seem at times like mom's disease is winning?
My only other sibling lives nine hours away. Yesterday, she suggested I spend time with mom, watching a movie, and building bridges. She won't even let mom come to her house, saying she'll have a headache that day. She keeps sending fluffy cards to the one who once abused her unmercifully. The last time sis saw mom, was to pack and move her up here from mom's home, 200 miles away. Mom hit her in the face, knocking off her glasses. That girl wants me to build bridges with a mom who enlisting others to file charges against me for so-called "abuse." I find much wrong with this picture.
We have transport taking mom to this nearby city for her appointment today. It's a strange feeling to relegate her to others, like I'm rejecting her. In a way, I am, due to her ill treatment of me. It's for my emotional protection, as well.
With mom's diagnosis, and the realization of how it has and will impact me, and with dad in a nursing home with Alzheimer's accousting every female he can, I am feeling incredible sadness and grief. I miss my quiet little life with my husband and son, in my quiet little town. Now I have to face the consequences of moving my parents here, out of concern, and losing my quiet life in the process. I feel like I'm in prison, waiting for the inevitable.
I long to regain the quiet and peace I once took for granted.
I am glad that I started this posting on this website, this is the most responses I have ever gotten on this type of subject anywhere, and I hope I have helped you all.
Peace and good night....sailing westward bound!
Nope. She does not seem like a pie rat. I agree. You, gvergrl, have a sense of humor. Take care, all.
Have you ever prayed for something with the grounded knowlege that it was hopeless, but, what do you have to lose?
I think you are a very healthy path to what I have been needing. God works in mysterious ways. I have read both the sites you sent us to. I will be digging deeper into the Luke 17 one.
Thank you. You don't seem like a pie rat at all.
There was a young girl crying out for help on another website I had visited...I was the only one that was trying to help her in depth because I knew full well of what she was going through. She sounded like a little lost kitten feeling she had no strength to combat them and their controlling ways. This gal is only 20. I told her to get all the education she can and get a good job and leave them behind her. If she does not get away she will be more and more sucked in. I hope she is doing okay because her posts stopped. She felt like checking herself into the hospital she was in such a frazzled state.
I am so happy to hear that folks here love their children immensely. I know I yearned for love so much when I was a child, but I thought that would come by 'Prince Charming'...well he never came...LOL! But I know how to love and be a loving person. I hope one day to foster a child or adopt an older child...I sure would love to teach a child all the things I know from cooking to crafting to gardening to science and education. But most of all being there when someone needs it. My mom would put housework before playing with me...hence....she never hardly played with me. I learned to play by myself or the other kids on the street. It did teach me to be an independent person, because that's all I had.
I remember when I started to go to Jr. College and I wanted to take 'guitar' -heck I was going to buy the guitar myself...my mother berated me and said 'what you are going to take guitar at this age", she made me feel so small that I never took it. In Jr. College I did finally take all the art classes I could. My father would not let me take any in high-school..TAKE TYPING......ART IS NOT A JOB....when I was a small child that is what I wanted to be when I grew up - an Artist. He crapped all over that - so I never got to fullfill my dreams - he shattered them. I had always been very artistic and crafty and still to this day my arts and crafts are still very alive in me, but I wish I had a job related field of something creative to this day. Perhaps when I retire my second job will be in the Art world of some sort. I realized in my mid-20's that I would have loved to gone into Advertising and Design - that may have happened if I had supportive/loving parents.
Some where between having my child and bringing him home form the hospital was the awful realization that i had not a single clue how to be a mother. I wasn't going to do it their way. It didn't seem fair to the little guy, but what else did I know? I might be messing him up just as badly, but I know it will at least be with words of praise and love in his ears. I gave him everything 'I' needed so badly. I held him. I talked to him. I looked him in the eyes and marveled at him. I played on the floor and put all of my chores behind me. Guess what, there is still laundry,maybe even some of the same laundry, but my little baby is a young man. I squeezed as much joy out of that kid as is humanly possible.
Your dad did not have the tools to work with either, and maybe you were a better father for knowing you needed to go get some parenting tools.
I know full well that life could have been much worse. But when you stand across the street from my childhood family now and look at the mess, It is still tragic. Why did I learn from my up bringing and he did not learn from his? Maybe each generation is better than the last, but maybe we are mending by taking it out on the key board and not on our children. If you feel mentally healthy, and you are contented with your life, and the dreams do not eat you alive, thank God for that. maybe if your dad had had a goo club he wouldn't have been so mean. I guess we all just want to be understood. I need validation so much less today than i did three days ago. I think i can let the need for parental love and acceptance go. As my husband pointed out, it isn't like they withheld it just from me. They gave it to no one, not even each other. It feels like a book on the shelf now, not even as real . But, the next phone call cursing us to China and back will be tha acid test. If the heart doesn't race and the hands don't shake and I can just think to myself, 'poor ill person,' then I will know I am done with it.
My best wishes to you.
Piratess, thank you so very much for the Christian link. That is a beautiful site, and I will be spending much time there. That was very thoughtful of you to post it, and it looks like some healing to be had from some of their material. Thanks for looking out for us, and sharing some of the research listings you think would minister to us. How very kind of you! We could call you "helping sister." Thank you.
I'm thinking Goo Club sounds beneath us. How about something more mature? As we are growing by leaps and bounds with all this information and nurturing. Maybe we can be the Caregivers Comfort Club (CCC) or something. Don't forget the chocolate!
This sounds like a pretty good day for many here. So nice to be a part of something so vibrant and alive. Just to know we're not alone, and someone cares is something we didn't always have growing up. It's nice to learn there's people who understand our struggles, and are willing to walk along the path with us, and help us when we're down. I am so grateful for all of you. Thank you.
In the book " If You Had Controlling Parents ", it goes through the facts that most parents who are like this had childhood trauma, such as the Depression, World War, losses in childhood of a family member either by death or divorce or abandonment, or their own parents who deprived them of love (so the trend can pass through many generations, if one does not stop it by realization and psychologically strong enough - some go on to be NPD's as well)
For those of you who are Christian (or others )
http://www.luke173ministries.org/templates/System/default.asp?id=39548
LUKE 17:3 Ministries
for adult daughters
of controlling or abusive birth-families