Dear sossi,

I’ve been following parts of your discussion with anita, and she offered you a great perspective and a very likely explanation for the troubles you are experiencing in your life: your narcissistic mother. You asked anita:

So you think that everything i do and all the experiences i have now are basically stemming from the difficult relationship with my mother? I see the point. Maybe..its hard to correlate for me but i can see what you mean.

I too believe your experiences in your adult life are reflecting your experiences with your mother, both in your childhood and still on-going. Anita described it well on page 2, post No 387571.

Here are some false beliefs, that you concluded about yourself and other people, based on your unhealthy relationship with your mother:

I just feel like men are out to get you, like other women eventually all turn jealous and everything just goes sour. I want healthy relationships but it seems like im asking for the moon.

I worry that if i try to meet someone, i dont have really all that much to offer..no amazing social circle of happy people, no kids and no fun career.

You believe that all men are out to get you, that all women will eventually turn jealous, and that you don’t have much to offer. This is a direct consequence of growing up with a narcissistic mother. A person with a narcissistic parent has a very low self-esteem. They feel they don’t have much to offer because they were always ridiculed and put down. They’ve never received praise and validation because their parent always competed with them.

A narcissistic parent feels threatened by his/her children’s talents and successes, because it endangers their fragile self-esteem. That’s why they need to put their children down and ridicule them, so they would feel better about themselves. The child just never receives any appreciation or validation.

Someone asked me today what i dreamed of doing and i just couldnt think of it. I have feelings about what i like..im driven, hardworking , i like to make money…but passions? i feel a bit lost in the money making process…

Perhaps what was important to your mother was money and social status (including an “amazing social circle of happy people”, with your mother at the center of the circle, charming and dazzling them all, being the center of attention). You have been  striving to achieve what she finds important, never stopping to ask yourself “what is important to me, what are my values, what would I like?”

It’s no wonder, because your mother never stopped to ask you those things – it was only about what she wants. You didn’t matter, you weren’t seen as a unique individual but as a function of hers. You were there to make her happy, and it didn’t matter if it wasn’t what you wanted.

I am not writing this based on the exact things and vignettes from your life, because I haven’t read everything, but it’s what happens typically with children of narcissistic parents. It’s all about the parent, and never about the child. That’s why I believe you feel you don’t have much to offer, and you don’t know what your passions are, what you would really like, but you just follow what your mother expects from you.

I think it would be important to really become aware of how much you were programmed by your mother’s upbringing, and to start separating yourself from her world view and her wants and desires, and to start discovering your own…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Tee.

Dear canary,

Yes, I feel less of a human because of my anxiety. Because I see everyone, like my peers and family not feeling the same anxiety I feel. … So that’s why I don’t feel normal sometimes, especially in public when I feel an episode coming. I micro analyze everyone’s behaviour and they all seem so nonchalant, but I’m the only one in the room bouncing my legs, feeling uncomfortable and changing positions, so I feel like everyone is watching me, even though I know no one is.

I know the feeling. I suffered from toxic shame, and it got particularly strong in secondary school. I would often blush intensely for no reason, sometimes simply sitting in class, listening to the teacher. I would start blushing on my my way to school and was constantly cooling my cheeks with my hands, because they were burning! I felt like a freak, and really so different than others, because everyone seemed to be relaxed and normal, while I was battling this demon. And I couldn’t talk about it to anyone because I had no close friends in secondary school, so I just suffered in silence.

Toxic shame for me was like anxiety for you – debilitating and something that isolated me from people. But what caused toxic shame wasn’t my blushing cheeks. Rather, it was the belief that I was to be ashamed of myself – a belief that my mother planted in me. I felt like a freak because of her constant criticism, and having blushing cheeks just “confirmed” in my mind that I indeed was a freak, abnormal and that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Which is similar to feeling “less than human”, like you do.

I am trying to point out that you most probably don’t feel less than human because of your anxiety – you feel it because you were severely criticized by your father when you were a child:

he would constantly criticize me about little things that eventually became my insecurities. For example, he’d comment on my weight (I was very skinny), he’d comment on my height, my posture (I slouch), and little things like that. It made me insecure.

Constant criticism makes the child feel like a freak, abnormal, and less than human.

Basically, in my childhood he would tell me to focus solely on my studies, not talk to people about my personal issues (he even told me not to make friends), he would criticize me… and he did that because that was his way of raising me. He wanted me to grow up to be strong, so he would tell me things that he wished he was told as a child (focusing on studies, appearing confident, etc).

How can a child grow up to be strong if they are constantly criticized? He was like a drill sergeant and you were in a boot camp – he was beating you up metaphorically with his words, yelling at you, and this was supposed to toughen you up and make you strong. He was crushing you and your self-confidence, while believing this would help you. That’s really bad parenting!

You were supposed to appear strong and invincible, while inside you were falling apart. You were afraid, you didn’t know what to do, and you weren’t supposed to talk to anyone about it. Only to your mother. But she too told you to keep a front and pretend that everything is fine:

This is because he told me that I can’t trust anyone (same with my mother, she told me that as well), that I shouldn’t share personal information with others except my family.

Maybe she didn’t want to go to school to talk to your teachers when you were bullied because she considered it shameful that you’d have problems with it? Were their concerns along the lines of “what would the people say, how would our family look in the eyes of other people? In the eyes of the teachers?”

If so, you had the additional burden of keeping it hidden from others, pretending you were fine, while inside you were falling apart.

This is my summary based on what you’ve shared so far: first your father breaks you, makes you feel weak and insecure, and then he demands you to be strong.  While you mother demands from you to only pretend to be strong and not talk to anyone about your weaknesses. A perfect recipe for a mental breakdown, if you ask me.

You say your father has changed a lot in the meanwhile:

For example, he knows how I lack confidence and he tells me that I’ve been acting confident lately and that he’s glad I am.

The only problem is that you aren’t more confident, you are still anxious. But when you tell him that, he doesn’t acknowledge it:

When they ask me how I’m doing I say horrible, they say, “but you look better! You’re doing better.” but im not! even if I’m not hysterically crying doesn’t mean I’m not doing better. I’m just as sad and anxious as i was yesterday.

This kind of attitude – denying your reality, minimizing your struggle – isn’t really helpful. What would be helpful is if they paid for your counseling. So that you don’t have to rely on school counseling but have a real, quality support.

He tells me that I’m strong, I’m able to get through anything, he tells me not to worry (especially about school), he is literally telling me the opposite of everything he told me in my childhood.

It’s good he is telling you this now, but the damage is already done. You’d need to heal your childhood wounds, specially your lack of self-esteem. And you might need professional help for that – it’s not enough if your father tells you you are strong, while at the same time denying or minimizing your suffering. He had his chance to cheer you on, but he blew it. Now you need someone else to help you heal the damage he’s caused.

I don’t feel supported sometimes. I talk to my family about it and they do boost my confidence and support me but I’m looking for someone to understand my anxiety because that’s the main thing I’m dealing with.

Your family was involved in creating the damage, so now they can help you only partially. As I said, I think the best way they could help you is to pay for your counseling.

Also, have you thought about taking a break from school for maybe half a year, while working on your mental health? Because it seems you feel a great pressure to perform well in your studies, but find yourself unable to do it. This then becomes another way of beating yourself up for not being good enough, for underperforming and disappointing your father (not the current, more relaxed version of him, but his old self, who stressed the importance of school so much).

Dear moonlight,

I am so sorry you had to go through all that pain and torture at the hands of your own mother. She was a sadist and deserved to be prosecuted for child abuse, but unfortunately she got away with it. Did anyone in your family know about your abuse? Have your teachers noticed anything? I assume she threatened to beat you up even more if you dared to tell anybody?

I told her why I had to cut our mother out of my life but she gave me an ultimatum, either I maintain a relationship with our mother or she will no longer keep in touch with me. I decided that my mental health and the health of my baby was more important than catering to my mother’s every need.

If you’ve explained to your sister why you’ve cut contact with your mother, and she didn’t see it as a legitimate reason, but gave you an ultimatum, then your sister doesn’t have any compassion for you and was probably brainwashed and manipulated by your mother. Maybe she even thinks that you are lying about having been abused? How was your mother towards her other two children? Perhaps she tortured only you, while pretended to be a good mother to them?

In any case, if your sister isn’t supportive and doesn’t trust you, you should accept that and not agree to her terms. Don’t go back to talking to your mother by any means! Stay firm in protecting your own mental health and the health of your unborn son, even if it means letting go of your sister, at least for the time being.

You are doing great btw – you have a happy marriage and are soon to become a mother – so it seems you’ve come a long way and went through some serious healing in the meanwhile…

Dear Anna,

you said earlier about him:

Honestly, I couldn’t wish for a better partner when he is at his ups. The way I want to be loved and seen, he is like this.

It could be that your weren’t loved and seen by your parents, and he fulfilled that need?

Dear Anna,

it’s good you decided to distance himself from him and take a break. And also, that you’ve realized he has a tendency to be unhappy, even though he would have all the reasons to be happy. But there is always something preventing him to be happy… and until he deals with his deeper issue(s), he won’t be capable of a healthy relationship.

It’s great to read that apart from problems with him, you have a great life, great successes and a promising future. But like anita noticed, you still didn’t perceive it like that, but felt that without him, your life was a wreck. In spite of your personal successes and the fact that you “totally enjoy yourself physically and mentally”, you still couldn’t imagine your life without him.

Like anita said, this could be related to your childhood and the inability to be truly happy if one of your parents isn’t happy. This same dynamic is now playing out not with your parent(s), but with your boyfriend. If you have a hard time letting him go, it could be a sign that there is a wound still active in you, where you seek love from an unavailable parent/partner. Does this seem plausible to you?

Hi Murtaza,

I posted a while ago, but the  post is “awaiting moderation” because it contains a link to your previous thread (a shout-out to TinyBuddha moderators: perhaps links to tinybuddha’s own content shouldn’t be moderated!). Anyway, I am posting it here again:

There is no hope is there?

It is what you are telling yourself. Because you say “it’s my way or no way”. And your way isn’t working for you… so you’re clinging to something that’s not working.

why the only love i can get is from my own mind,

Your mind is both good and bad for you. I’ve already explained it in your “It’s funny how life works” thread, page 2, post No 384611.

You don’t blame or condemn yourself, you harbor no shame, so from that point of view, you love yourself. But at the same time, your view of life is very destructive, and as I said, it blocks you from having loving relationships. So you became a prisoner of your own mind, of your own philosophy, because it leaves you bitter and hating your life.

BTW, I love Peter’s metaphor of the sparrow trapped in the silo. I hope you too find it helpful!

P.S. A small correction in the last but one sentence:

It seems to me you are still living with that same wound of 1) feeling unsupported and 2) feeling “damaged” due to your anxiety.

Hi Murtaza,

You misunderstand my post, i didn’t come “back”, i was never in in the first place, i have no place here.

I didn’t think you came back, or changed your attitude, nor did I suggest it in my reply to you. When I said “You don’t need to give up trying to connect with people, though you’d need to do it from a different mindset.”, it’s clear to me that with your current mindset, you don’t want to connect with people.

I am still glad you apologized, it felt nice.

And I wish you well, Murtaza.