Dear Tee:

It just occurred to me for the first time in my life (!) following my post above, that she wanted to actualize her real, or true nature, that of being selfish and dishonestly manipulative of people for material gain, but was too constrained by her own body shame and by her PR, so she advocated for me to become that which she couldn’t be openly. She repeatedly told me that- with other people- I was uncaring, unloving.. but she said it in an approving way, and I of course wanted to please her.. so, I was as uncaring and unloving as I could, so to please her.

And we talked about the admiration she expressed for female characters in movies who dishonestly manipulated men for material gain.. Well, in very pathetic and unsuccessful ways, I TRIED to do just that but was inhibited by my body shame and tic related shame.

.. She sent me to do her dirty work.. hmm.

To your recent post, Tee:

You are indeed a champion for the truth, hence my hero. I see this as what you stand up for more than anything- throughout your participation in tiny buddha.. from the beginning and throughout.

I am now a champion for the truth too!”

“Truth is important to me. And I’m glad you too are becoming a champion for the truth! 😊 ❤️”-

I know! And thank you 😊 ❤️

“This is such a profound realization! If she had accepted your help, or your gifts, her ‘Poor me’ act would have been endangered. She wouldn’t have been able to maintain the position that she is the greatest victim there is, the greatest martyr. And this was how she maintained her position of superiority: by portraying herself as the greatest victim (if not in the entire world, then for sure greater than you, who in her opinion had it easy).”-

She portrayed herself as the greatest victim in the entire world except for the Jewish victims in Nazi concentration camps. But in regard to those who survived, she was very envious of their financial advantage as they received a monthly allowance from the German government while “Poor me” had to work hard for money. They, the holocaust survivals were the fortunate ones and she.. the Eternally Unfortunate.

“And yes, she didn’t want to accept your help or your gifts because she wanted to see you as eternally indebted to her – which put her in a superior position and gave her the justification to blame you and criticize you.

“So yes, you’re seeing it very well: she didn’t want to accept any help from you because it would have diminished her narrative that she is the greatest victim and that you’re ungrateful and that you can never repay her for the sacrifices she made.”-

It was a very painful way to live for me, a painful narrative, excruciating, really.

“Perhaps ‘enjoy’ is not the best expression to use for a covert narcissist, because they don’t really enjoy anything. But yes, the pleasure, the satisfaction of being the greatest martyr, and thus being morally superior to others.”-

I hear your bitterness, Tee, in “they don’t really enjoy anything”..

“It occurs to me that grandiose narcissists brag about their skills and achievements, while covert narcissists ‘brag’ about being the greatest victim. So there is a sense of superiority, but in a twisted way, where the more they suffer, the more superior to others they feel.”-

My goodness, what an insight! I want to return to this later!!!

“Thanks Copilot for the summary 🙂 I haven’t read the book either, but found a book review online, and it basically says the same. Yeah, it basically describes narcissistic people. I don’t know if the author says it explicitly in the book, but the description fits narcissistic people perfectly..”-

I just asked Copilot if the author (Peck) used the term narcissism or NPD. Answer: “Yes. In People of the Lie (1983), M. Scott Peck discusses narcissism extensively, though he does not use the formal DSM label “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” Instead, he frames it as malignant narcissism and connects it to his broader exploration of human evil.. Peck describes certain individuals as ‘malignant narcissists,’ meaning their self-centeredness is so extreme that it becomes destructive to others… While the DSM-III (published in 1980) had already defined Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Peck preferred to use descriptive, moral-psychological language rather than clinical diagnostic terms.”

Copilot would have said thank you for your compliment.. if I asked him-it 🙂

“Yes, that’s a good way to do it. Don’t start blaming yourself or thinking you should have done something about it, or that you are in any way responsible for it. Just feel it, put yourself in a position of someone who lost all of their hair at a young age. It is traumatizing…

“So you can have empathy for her, but that’s it. As you said: ‘acknowledge it and exit it. Move on to something else’. Yes, exactly!”- thank you, Tee!

“Oh good! That’s a nice coincidence to meet a namesake psychologist who is able to discuss the Tourette’s syndrome with you and possibly even help you. That sounds promising! 🤞”- 🙏, I will let you know.

“As for what Alessa said, yes, it wasn’t easy for your mother being a single mother with 2 small children, and having a history of abuse and neglect, and perhaps even being looked down socially. Perhaps some of her obsessions – such as her preference for fair-skinned people – stem from feeling disadvantaged due to her skin color.

“However, I wouldn’t agree that she ‘took care of you when you were sick’, because she disregarded your tics. A mother who has any semblance of empathy or concern for her child wouldn’t disregard such serious symptoms. She would have stopped and consulted somebody, preferably have taken you to a doctor. Or at least she would have stopped her verbal attacks on you when she noticed you were twitching.

I totally understand Alessa’s perspective, and that being a parent, especially a single parent, is very hard. However, I don’t think that she provided for you what she herself wanted as a child. Because I’m sure she would have wanted someone to pay attention to the fungus infection of her scalp – which sadly no one did. And to me, it’s similar to her not paying attention to your tics.”-

Last night (it was very late at night), I didn’t read all of Alessa’s post, but now rereading it, I see what you’re referring to, Tee, and thank you for bringing this up!

I am referring both to you, Tee, and to Alessa in this part:

Alessa, you wrote: “She would have had very little time to herself”- she would have time to herself if she took it. Truly, she didn’t leave me with time for myself, constantly venting to me (and to others on the phone, which I couldn’t unhear.. although I tried).

“In her mind, she was a good mother.”- no, that was her PR. She told me once (and once was enough): “You think I don’t know I am wrong (as a mother, the way she treated me)? I know, but what are you going to do about it? You have nowhere to go”.

“She checked boxes for herself what she would have wanted as a child. Didn’t orphan you (in her mind the biggest crime).”- well, she repeatedly, for more than 30 years (!) threatened to commit suicide.. threatened to.. orphan me, using your words, Alessa.

“Fed you, making sure you didn’t have the same ED as her”- actually, she did, with a twist. She didn’t ask me to induce vomiting. Instead she introduced strong laxatives to me from an early age, a habit I carried on into adulthood. For 20+ years I wasn’t able to naturally go to the bathroom. It is only in the last few years- following 10+ years complete abstinence from laxatives, that I’ve been able to go to the bathroom naturally.

“Took care of you when you were sick. Made sure you had items you needed… Took care of you when you were sick. Made sure you had items you needed. “- My goodness, Alessa, you almost sound like her apologist.

“Nothing can excuse the trauma you experienced at her hands. Not her trauma. Not even the ways that she tried. Nor should it. Your pain MATTERS. Your feelings MATTER. You are IMPORTANT.❤️”- Thank you for this part, Alessa, the part I read and focused on when I replied last night ❤️.

Back to your words, Tee:

“She paid attention to ‘cleaning you properly’, which resulted in inappropriate touching and covert sexual abuse. But she didn’t pay attention to your tics. Which is gross neglect, if you ask me.”-

Actually she did take me eventually to a neurologist who x-rayed my head and found “nothing” and that was the end of it. I am guessing that someone suggested that she should take me to a doctor, so she did that one time. I remember she was exceptionally nice to me that night, staying up with me (I was supposed to not sleep before the X-ray or whatever it was. She was really nice and it puzzled me at the time. I wished she was always like that with me.

“Dear Alessa, I know you’re coming from the perspective of a caring mother, but I don’t think that Anita’s mother was simply a tired, stressed, overworked mother who did the best she could. Even if we disregard for a moment the verbal and physical abuse, she didn’t pay attention to her daughter’s tics. She didn’t pay attention to what the neighbor said that dressing and washing an adolescent is not good for their mental health. She didn’t stop to think “wait, maybe Rosie is right”, but she replied, with self-confidence, that her daughter likes it.”-

This is Tee the Truth Champion, standing up for the truth unapologetically 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏

“So unfortunately, I think that in those aspects, she didn’t seek to spare her children from a similar type of suffering that she herself went through. Rather, I’d say that she actually wanted to punish her children for the suffering she went through as a child. And that’s what made her very abusive. And very resistant to any kind of external input that she might be doing things wrong.

“Perhaps a part of her abuse can be excused by social norms at the time (it was more acceptable to hit children and verbally abuse them in those times). But a part is certainly the result of her unique personality and the way she chose to deal with her trauma: by denying that she has trauma, and then acting out by abusing and punishing her own children.

“This of course doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve empathy for the real and undeniable struggles she’s been through as a child and beyond. However, there is a part where she actively refused responsibility for her own actions (and her own trauma) and put the blame on her children, which isn’t something to empathize with. ❤️ 🙏 🫶 🙏 ❤️”-

I couldn’t have said any of it any better.. No one could say it any better. As I said before, I am eternally grateful to you, Tee ❤️ 🫶 ❤️

Thank you both, Tee and Alessa, for your input. No worries, Alessa- I appreciate you caring enough to try and be helpful, and in some special ways, you have been helpful ❤️ 🙏 🙏 🙏 ❤️

Anita

Dear Tee:

First, to your post from yesterday:

“I’m happy that you’re slowly realizing that your mother was a different person that what you’ve thought her to be.”-

Yes she is. Part of me knew all along, but another part resisted the truth, rejected it, and therefore I remained conflicted and well.. sick.

“And yes, covert narcissism is very tricky because the person seems humble and generous, as you said, when in fact that’s all a pretense, that’s all PR to maintain a certain public image.”-

Perfectly said.  PR= Generous, real nature= Unwilling to share but feeling compelled to. This is why she complained to me about guests taking advantage of her right after they left, presenting them to me negatively (as bad people) while to their faces complimenting them, presenting them as good people. And by the way, when a guest declined an offer of food or gift, she pressured the guest to accept her offer until he/ she accepted it.

PR= selfless, RL (Real Nature) = selfish; PR= warm, kind, friendly, RN= cold, rude, hostile; PR=shy, humble; RN=crude, bold, arrogant.

“Yes, I agree with you that it (covert narcissism) is actually more toxic than overt narcissism because the person appears as if having low self-esteem, as if they were insecure, self-deprecating and needing help and reassurance. But then it turns out that if you want to help them, they actually reject it or dismiss it, and keep playing the victim.”-

She complained a lot about having to clean after me/ others, but every time I cleaned she criticized me for not doing a thorough job, or for cleaning too soon after she did (as in.. insulting her cleaning), and she actually said that my efforts to clean are causing her more work because she had to redo my poor quality work. And then, she’d complain about how unfortunate she (best mother) was to have an inadequate daughter like me, while other mothers (bad mothers or far less good than her) were fortunate enough to have good, hard working, helpful daughters.

She portrayed me as someone lazy who prefers to not extend myself physically, someone selfish and uncaring..  while also suggesting that my alleged selfishness and laziness  were a sign of future material success, saying  I’ll end up having maids who’ll do the cleaning for me. Coming to think about it, she repeatedly encouraged me to be different from her PR (selfless, very, very generous) and more in line with her RN (selfish, stingy).

Currently, Tee, I am known to be a very hard working person (in regard to doing physical work). Someone said some time ago (and it stuck in my mind): “I never met anyone more hard working than Anita”. This point was expressed to me many times by multiple people in regard to my volunteer work in the last 4 years.. I was clearly hard working before that.

“And with that, they manipulate and guilt-trip the people around them (those who love them and want them to be happy). And of course, the greatest victims are their children, because they truly want to see their parents happy, which with covert narcissists is mission impossible. 🙁”-

Mission impossible. I like how you say things, Tee. Mission Impossible could be a catchy  title of a book on covert narcissistic mothers and their daughters. I know that this is what you experienced as well 🙁

“Yeah, that’s pretty extraordinary. But you’ve explained how it got to that point: you needed to normalize your mother’s abuse, so to make it more bearable, so that you would be able to stay bonded to her (which was your survival need).

“Lots of times children do it also because they don’t have a different reference point, they only know their own parents and their own family. They don’t know it’s not normal if the parent hits them or yells at them all the time.. they don’t know that abuse isn’t normal. And they also don’t know that they didn’t deserve it..”-

This reminds me that when I tried to communicate with my sister in regard to being beaten by the mother, she told me: “You don’t know how bad (her friends’) mothers beat them”.. making it sound like our mother was good in comparison.

“It’s a pity you couldn’t speak to your sister about it, but it’s also true that she was 6 years younger, so you wouldn’t even have been able to confide in her for quite a long time (because she was simply too small to understand), even if you wanted to. So you were in it alone, thinking it was normal 🙁”-

I read this part after I wrote the above. The conversation I referred to above happened when she was a teenager or very young adult, I don’t remember.

Another thing to remember, Tee, is that I didn’t feel like an older/ guiding  sister to her growing up. I had tics, felt like a freak, was socially isolated, lonely, while she was tic-less, very social and.. well, she definitely didn’t look up to me.

“You describe it very well: her ‘kind and loving’ side was an act, and who you loved was an act. That wasn’t her true self, but her fake persona.

“Her ‘love and kindness’ quickly disappeared when the guests left – that’s when she returned to her normal, abusive self, in which there was no concern for you and your needs: it was all about her and her needs. Me, me, me, as you said.. which is a typical narcissistic feature.”- Yes, I see this clearly now 🙏

“I’m glad that you’re seeing it so clearly now, Anita, although it was somewhat of a rude awakening, realizing some pretty painful things about your mother. But that’s what’s necessary for our healing: we cannot heal while not knowing the truth, or knowing the truth half way. We need to know it all, so we can process it learn from it..

“You’re doing a great job, Anita, I’m impressed by your realizations and connecting the dots very quickly! ❤️ ❤️”- I am finding myself smiling for the second time today, a big smile of contentment reading these words of encouragement (the first smile was at your phrasing of “Mission Impossible”, a phrasing I appreciated very much).

I will reply to your recent post next.

❤️ 🙏 ❤️ 🙏 Anita

WOW, Alessa! I don’t remember a more.. what’s the word.. more significant, meaningful, impactful message from you to me 🙏 🙏 🙏

You wrote that she “Made sure you weren’t dark like her”- exactly! She “elevated” me by getting together with a Romanian (Eastern European) man so to elevate me from dark North African (Moroccan) thing to lighter skin European.

My sister turned out looking European, small nose, light skin.. I look more like my mother: bigger nose, darker skin.

“You were basically guaranteed to develop PTSD. ❤️”- yes, I was, no doubt. Thank you, Alessa!

“Your pain MATTERS. Your feelings MATTER. You are IMPORTANT. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️”- Wow, Alessa.. Wow, Alessa. Thank you so much. I’ll reply further in the morning.

🤍 Anita