Continued:

I never paid much attention to the word narcissistic (and to the diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, NPD) because it’s so commonly used online and elsewhere as name calling. It is only recently, that I am taking the term/ diagnosis seriously when it comes to my mother. I accepted long ago, that she is/ has been a mix of these personality disorders: Borderline, Histrionic, Paranoid, and Obsessive Compulsive, showing strong evidence for each part of this 4-part combo.

Understanding myself requires that I understand her because of the very, very long-term fusion- in my mind- between who I am, and who she is. Recently, I see that I cannot understand her without adding a 5th part of the 4-part combo above, a 5th part that is the basis for the other 4: her NPD, the covert type.

It explains her “highly developed compensatory false self” (quotes are from online sources about NPD) which created great confusion and self-doubt on my part: for how can such a nice, friendly, empathetic, good person- with others-  be the bad mother that I personally, and privately experienced?

It explains why she didn’t see me as a person (entitled to my own thoughts and feelings, such that are not always identical to hers), how she was not about relating to me, but about dominating me, and using me to feel better; how she placed herself in the center of attention with me and in every social occasion, if it was possible for her to do so. It explains how I was not allowed to be a center of attention (except as a thing to be cleaned, dressed, fed, and brought back to health when I was sick with fever).

To her, I did not exist as a  person, I was a thing that she expected to .. be her/ an extension of her who thinks her thoughts, feels her feelings at all times. It explains her RAGE, her narcissistic rage: “unreasonable, disproportional and cuttingly aggressive… intentionally trying to inflict pain.., on others“. It explains how in her mind, the problem was always someone else, always my fault. It explains why she never took in any of what I tried to educate her with (as a teenager, reading about psychology in books, trying to help her).

It explains to me that really, there was nothing I could have been differently or done differently to have anything but a troubled relationship with her. A healthy relationship was simply not possible: not because of who I was, but because of who she was/ is.

There are things I understand most recently that I never understood before: before, I thought that she was the only good person in the world, and everyone else was bad and taking advantage of her (that was her histrionic theme). Most recently, a thought occurred to me for the first time: if she was the only good person in the world, the only person in the world who is being taken advantage of (because she is good), who do all the many millions of bad people in the world taking advantage of? They can’t all be taking advantage of my mother..?

In other words, if (according to her theme), she is and has been the only victim in the world, and everyone else (including myself) are her victimizers/ the perpetrators.. who are all the many millions of perpetrators victimizing? Surely, my mother is not available to be victimized in every town, city, country, continent, every moment of every day and night?

Surely, my mother is not omnipresent, except in her own narcissistic mind where she is everywhere and there’s no one there but her.

* I am still not angry at her, still no-longer angry after a lifetime of angry..

anita