Dear sossi:

Being self-centered and egocentric (thinking only of oneself, without regard for the feelings or desires of others) is a typical, healthy child development phase referred to as the Narcissistic phase of childhood and it occurs at about the ages of 2- 3 or 4. At this phase, the child says with authority mine!!, and “me!“, and relates to the whole world as being about them. In a sense it is all about them in this phase.

But when a child gets stuck in the Narcissistic phase of childhood and never grows out of it, we end up with a mother who is about me! and my!: “she suddenly asserts, ‘this is MY home, MY car, MY etc.”.

If it’s not about her, she is disinterested and sulky until she makes it about her: “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“, “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… This would be seen as a sort of bonding experience for them“.

A child in the Narcissistic phase of childhood must develop a strong sense of self before he/she can relax that sense of ‘I’/Me/Mine so to be less demanding and to be okay with being fallible (capable of making mistakes or being wrong). This self- centeredness must change to pave the way to mental health in adulthood. To grow up able to function well in families and society, children must gradually gain both the ability to see other people’s viewpoints and feel empathy for other people’s suffering. But when a child does not grow out of this phase, you get a mother who displays “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“.

You asked: “Can it be a strange jealousy of her own daughters?”- yes, she is mentally still a 2-4 year old child, jealous at.. her own children. You wrote: “I have doubts sometimes about my mothers honest intentions”- her intentions: me/my/mine!, I am never wrong! and if you disagree with me, then you are wrong and I will punish you for it!

“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”- mentally, she is a 3 or 4 year old child, stuck in the Narcissistic phase of childhood: she must have the spotlight or else she sulks, feeling depressed.

“My mom seems furious with me out of the blue”- you must have taken the spotlight away from her, you must have made reference to your own life, to something that is yours. You said so yourself: “She was maybe feeling left out“.

Your father “never contradicts” her because he learned that contradicting her, that is, suggesting that she is wrong about anything, is followed by her punishing and abusing him: “He allows her to continue behaving like a child.. (throwing) temper tantrums.. and sometimes her verbal abuse”.

Mentally she is a child, but not nice child: she is a perpetual nasty child: a me/my/mine/ I-am-always-right/ you-are-always-wrong-and-I-will-punish-you-for-it! kind of a child. A 2-4 year old in an adult body and in the adult role of a mother and a wife.

“As the children, we don’t want to believe that our parents can mean to hurt us”- but when one parent is mentally a nasty child, she means to hurt you if you take away her spotlight or if you tell her that she is wrong. And when the other parent submits.. there are no adults in the house.

“I learnt from a young age to rely on my own company, my own strength and my own council”- because there are no adults in the house!

Growing up with a narcissistic mother and her submissive husband meant that you were not allowed your own spotlight in your own life, that your life had to be all about her and none about you. It also means that as an adult, every time you interact with her, you reinforce what she ingrained in you: that your life is not about you. She is still keeping you outside your own life, preventing you from taking ownership of your own mind, heart and life. And then, on top of it, you imagine that everyone is your mother: “Someone is always enviously eyeing whatever I have and taking it away…it’s a repeat pattern“.

It so happens that your work environment is similar to the home environment in which you grew up, but in addition to the objective similarity, you (inaccurately) project your home-life experience into it: “I’ve been working extremely hard and finding it tough, in property sales with lots of highly demanding and very entitled clients, working late, unable to manage everything i need to get done because I’m just on my own. Usually I can deal with the demands, the snobbery and the dismissive behaviours without commenting.. my boss doesnt respect anything i do and honestly seems either jealous or angry with me for I don’t know what.” (Sept 2021)- you are still trying to survive your home life by proxy, in the context of your work life:  working very hard to please your highly demanding, very entitled, dismissive, disrespectful,  jealous and angry aka narcissistic mother.

*I figure that your work colleagues are indeed competitive and maybe practicing unfair work ethics, but you add to it your experience with your mother, seeing disrespect, dismissiveness, jealousy and anger at times when it is not there, and therefore, you experience your work life as worse than it is or could be.

I don’t see a way for you- or for any adult child- to continue to interact with a narcissistic mother and be truly okay with it. You always end up paying a heavy price for interacting with her, and the price is: continuing to give her the ownership of your mind, your heart and your life, ownership that is not hers to have.

Think of your father: the price he pays to remain married to her is to accommodate her narcissistic behaviors, that is, to continue to give her the ownership of his mind, heart and life. It is not that he has the option to own his mind, heart and lie and live with her. It is either or: either he submits and continues to give up ownership of his mind-heart-life  or he moves out.  There is no educating your mother, no getting her to see the light. There is no way to .. train her to behave differently (she will find new way to continue her narcissistic ways).

You too do not have the option of changing her. To stop paying the heavy price you are still paying, you have to (1) no longer be exposed to her. In other words, to not have any contact with her, and (2) to then start the process of reclaiming ownership of your mind, heart and life.

anita