Dear sossi:

I have the time this morning, and a recent interest in exploring a term I used to dislike (because it is overly used and misused online): narcissism, specifically Narcissistic Personality Disorder as it relates to mothers who suffer from this disorder or from strong features of it..  aka narcissistic mothers. It is you who repeatedly brought up this term in regard to your mother.

You may not at all be in the mood to read this post, and not wish to read it- it’s fine with me: you are welcome to read or not, respond or not, however you feel. I will be developing my thoughts after quoting you, in what I expect to be a long post. My goal:  to help myself and anyone who may be reading this post, in this public forum. I will be focusing on your mother (and not on your father or your sister) because my post is about narcissistic mothers (one of which is my own), and how they affect their daughters’ lives from childhood into and through adulthood.

Only yesterday, Oct 26, 2021, you wrote: “I don’t think there are many interactions in my life that have been easy… I trust the person I’m with and then they throw a curve ball and I feel intensely betrayed. It happens with every person“, and in regard to your ex-boyfriend: The push and pull of the erratic behaviour,  there could be weeks of very sweet and loving behaviour, next, telling you that you’re the worst at this or just complete rage out of nowhere and its over“.

Almost 5 months ago, on May 2, 2021, you wrote: “My ex reminded me of my mother a lot. They were very similar in character…easygoing and playful and then able to be sharply unfair or unkind“. A month later, in June 7, you wrote about your mother: “I think I mentioned I thought she fit a narcissist profile, that I gathered this opinion over the last 4 or 5 years, and that this was probably why I put up with my ex’s behaviour as he was similar to her in behaviour. Loving, building up and then tearing down and insulting“.

– an article in Psychology today, “Why your partner may be like your parents, Is your childhood wrecking your romantic life?“, reads in part: “A body of psychological research suggests that our earliest relationships, especially with our mother, not only can influence how we are able to connect to others as adults—in romantic and other contexts—but also create internalized scripts or working models of how relationships work.. As human beings, we are drawn, on an unconscious level, toward the familiar… we do tend to choose a romantic partner who is similar to our opposite-sex parent… How do we end up marrying Mom if she’s been critical, unavailable or unloving?”

April 2021: “only a few years ago, I achieved something amazing, my first home and renovation..my mother never wanted to come and see it. When she did finally, she seemed sulky and attributed the success to her suggestions.. I felt completely deflated”, May 2021: “my mother was depressive and certainly in my teens I remember spending hours sorting out her problems with her…  a very complicated and demanding person..  the teasing that my mom liked to do. For example it was usual that when I had a boyfriend over and I was making something in the kitchen my mom would tease me and the boyfriend (as it happened with more than one boyfriend) would join in… This would be seen as a sort of bonding experience for them at my expense…  she had a lack of understanding, empathy and seemingly would turn any event back to focus on her own life and problems. You could start talking about something that was bothering you …and find yourself once again, going over her childhood issues with this friend she used to know… I have doubts sometimes about my mothers honest intentions and behaviours. Can it be a strange jealousy of her own daughters? This competitiveness and need to control that reveals itself in fights where she suddenly asserts, ‘this is MY home, MY car, MY etc.,… if suddenly.. I met some guy and we had more than (parents)… mother might end up sulking and/or crying in the bedroom because its not her spotlight.. when my parents met my ex´s parents.. My mom did something really weird though. They were sitting around a table and talking and she suddenly, like a young girl, got up and sat on my dad´s knee as she talked to them and laughed girlishly. As I was there, I thought it was highly bizarre behaviour”.

June 2021: “In the last few years I also came to see some awful jealous behaviour in (mother) regarding what little successes I had.. And for some reason I would always want her opinion when I should know better. It seems she also has a need to be more knowledgeable than me on subjects I have more experience in..my work mainly. These toxic exchanges are so common to me really that I don’t even think of it. But I know this is part of the problems I have. My mothers relationship with my father is also toxic. He never contradicts, he is subservient and feeds her need to bully…I used to get very angry about my dad´s lack of interest to protect his kids when she was unreasonable, he wont do anything to fix it. He allows her to continue behaving like a child. He would say and still would, that we need to appreciate our mother’s point of view…even when it was clear to a teenager or a young adult, that she was behaving selfishly and her temper tantrums were clearly encouraged when he helped her this way. I’ve pleaded with him to take her to a councellor as he in particular suffers the constant barrage of her thoughts himself , and sometimes her verbal abuse.. I guess even though I hate it, I take after him… I struggle to define my mother as purely narcissistic or selfish. As the children, we don’t want to believe that our parents can mean to hurt us. although her main behaviour has shown her selfish tendencies… I never thought about it when I was younger but in our family we don´t really hug or anything like that…. I learnt from a young age to rely on my own company, my own strength and my own council, which of course doesnt always work and sometimes feels like I need superhuman strength to get by”.

September 2021: “My mom seems furious with me  out of the blue and has called me selfish and ungrateful in a fit of rage over texts that escalated so fast so I switched my phone off. This happens once in a blue moon but when it does, is when I know I’m seeing the worst of my narcissistic mother and her selfish behaviour… I haven’t told my mom this story.. most likely she would not be sympathetic… she takes her anger out on her family. So the latest messages are in CAPS and says I’m the most ungrateful person she has ever met! There are more messages but I switched my phone off because its abuse…Her last message is that I should look up narcissism and empathy, its really evil and nasty…from my mother! ..when i was a young woman I tried to sympathise, to understand, to fix..my mother but I couldn’t.. I learned that no one had my back… my mother IS a narcissist.. She is currently not talking to me for an unknown reason. Its hurtful, its cruel and a mother should take the high road but my mom was never much like others”

October 2021: “if you recall I have had no contact with my parents for about a month, since my mom had a tantrum and got mad at me. She was maybe feeling left out or bored or who knows. And i was complaining a lot about my work.. But my mom doesnt understand…I can’t just quit my job as she says, and ‘do something else’ when i have nowhere to go”.

My thoughts (whatever comes to my mind this afternoon, to be added to tomorrow morning, in a second post): if there is a believably narcissistic mother out there- it’s clearly your mother: selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed: it’s ALL about her, and NOTHING about anyone else. She is Everything, everyone else is Nothing. She is stuck in a mental age fitting a young child, where she is the center, and everyone’s actions are perceived to be reactions to her.

There is nothing wrong or abnormal to be in this stage when one is an irl child, but when one is a Mother being in charge of an in-real-life child- it’s a disaster for the irl child. The irl child normally and naturally sees the actions of her mother as reactions to who (the irl child) is, and the reactions the irl child receives.. are are disastrous to the irl child’s self-image and self-esteem  (to how she sees and values herself).

This was my mother, her message: I am ALL there is, you are NONE. I exist.. you don’t. And so, I led my life as if I was None, a Nothing, and she was All, an Everything.

Very often in your posts, you focused on other people in your adult life (not on your mother): You focused for a while on the ex-boyfriend, you focused many times on work colleagues and even on strangers. In June 2021,  you wrote about people in general, people in your adult life:  “Someone is always enviously eyeing whatever I have and taking it away…it’s a repeat pattern… I think from an early age I learned that, if I had gained something, others were jealous and that always made me feel bad… Why am I attracted to witty and entertaining people only to find them mocking me and making fun that turns into hurtful cruelty?“- you are seeing your mother in every other person. I understand: there are other narcissistic people in the world, other than your mother, and there are some industries (like politics, and perhaps the real-estate industry) that attract narcissistic people more than other industries, but it cannot possibly be that .. everyone is your mother. Thing is, the Mother is so Powerful when she is narcissistic, that we see her in every person that we come across in adult life.

More tomorrow (in about 16 hours from now).

anita