- I was originally going to call this post "Just get over it", because I have lost count of how many times people have said that to me. Recently, even my own sister basically told me to "get over it", which is absolutely flabbergasting, when she is even more damaged than I am. But then she continues to live with Denial, because although it's a lot less comfortable than acceptance, it is easier. She's become accustomed to the discomfort of Denial, so the emancipation of acceptance seems too daunting. I get that. I really do.
While I have been able to accept that my mother's appalling treatment of me is due to the fact she is profoundly mentally sick and disordered, I cannot explain away my sister's treatment of me in quite the same terms. She is not a narcissist, and I do not think she is in danger of ever becoming one - although she is entirely self-absorbed, that self-absorption is based on self-destruction rather than pathological selfishness. Years ago, she and I had a good relationship. We grew up in solidarity and relative harmony with each other. I adored her, and I still do. I always will. Her betrayal - because that is what it is, aided and abetted by our mother, of course - has ripped the heart out of me. Things started going wrong between us when she discovered a predilection for alcohol, back in the late 1990s. When drunk, my sister can be an extremely nasty person - upfront-and-loud nasty, not insidious, 'under-the-radar' nasty like our mother. Escaping into alcoholic oblivion has been her coping mechanism. Every child of a narcissist needs something to help them cope or deny (usually the two are effectively the same).
My sister was very close to our dad - even closer than I was, because as much as I like the occasional drink, I find it impossible to consume the vast quantities that my dad and sister could. (Indeed, for me, it would be lethal.) After his death in 2007, my sister (who I shall refer to as Jenny) spiralled into an abyss of despair, and when her husband died three years later after a protracted and horrendously cruel illness, I think she must have reached her "maximum pain" threshold, because ever since, she has been a total stranger to me. I literally know nothing about her any more - nothing. She has chosen to stonewall me, and for every attempt I have made with her to establish contact (even after her betrayal), she has ignored me. Worse, she has ignored my children, her nephews. She had a baby herself last year, and the fact I will probably never get to know my beautiful niece is a crippling concern that haunts me every day.Should I accept some of the blame for this? Well, possibly. While I am big on communication, having been raised by a deranged, loveless woman for whom honesty and reality are anathema, perhaps I tend to gloss over the issues that really matter. At least, I used to. "The elephant in the room" was habitually ignored in our house; we merely tiptoed around it, pretending it wasn't there. The weight and breadth of the elephant increased daily, with every violent admonishment, every insult, every dismissal, every subtle dig, every narcissistic outrage. I am uncomfortable with conflict and confrontation. It deeply upsets and disturbs me, and Jenny has always been the same (although when intoxicated, she usually has no problem expressing and misdirecting her anger). Since finding out about NPD, however, I have been singing like a crazed canary, and for every person that tells me to "just get over it", I will sing a little louder. I am out of my cage now, and singing my heart out, and nothing but NOTHING will shut me up. I no longer care who I offend or upset with my honesty. I certainly don't care if I bore or irritate anyone who dares to assume that parental narcissism is "not that bad". And I absolutely don't give a flying fuck if my new-found propensity to be honest and open makes a few people feel awkward. I WILL NOT SHUT UP AND I WILL NOT GO AWAY.
There is a massive fucking great elephant in the room, and it is called PARENTAL NARCISSISM. That colossal pregnant elephant gave birth to big bouncing babies, which shat all over the place and destroyed everything in their path, and those babies were called Morbid Alcoholism, Domestic Violence, Emotional Abandonment, Self-harming, Drug Abuse, Suicide, Schizophrenia, Brainwashing, Depression, Delusion, Sadism, Projection, Denial, Anxiety and Complex-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. THEY ALL LIVED THERE WITH US. And we continued ignoring all of them, all the time.
Complex- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which I affectionately call 'C-PTSD' (more about that later), and his little sister, Anxiety, are two elephantine gifts my mother allowed me to keep with me, always, throughout my adult life. They have trampled on just about every aspect of my existence. Drug Abuse stayed with me for a while (I actually quite enjoyed his company; he's good fun but only because I do not, mercifully, have an addictive personality); while Denial taps at my window most nights, although I will never let him in again.
Recently, I tried reaching out to Jenny, for the first time in a few months (I had promised her, and myself, that I would stay away, but I love her, goddammit, and I want to 'save her'). To my astonishment, she responded (redacted as necessary):- "...As for this lack of contact thing.. Quite honestly, the reason I haven't stayed in touch is because I'm just at a complete loss as to what to say. I find it all so exasperating. Rest assured I'm not in mum's 'manipulative grasp' or anything.. my relationship with her is just as difficult and dysfunctional as it ever was and ever will be, believe me. I keep minimal contact with her. She just sends me endless emails which I tend not to read. When I do see her she tries to pass on much unwanted parenting 'advice' of which I either completely ignore or go out of my way to do completely the opposite (if she's taught me nothing else it's how NOT to be a mother)... And she goes on and on and on about the situation with you. It's all so very sad and tiresome... I just want some peace and bloody quiet. I want to heal properly from the last 8 years, raise my little girl and hopefully be the kind of mother I always yearned to have.You and me are just on completely different pages in our mother-coping strategies and I don't appreciate you trying to bludgeon me with this stuff. You've let it consume you so utterly. Just let it go and start enjoying your life ffs!"
- My response (which she has read, but will not, I have no doubt, respond to):
"We are on different pages in everything, Jenny. In everything. I have not let it consume me - I DID let it consume me, for YEARS, and it damn near killed me. But now I am being open and honest about it. I am HEALING. Recovering. Slowly. Very slowly. I AM enjoying my life, because SHE IS NO LONGER IN IT. You say you want to heal from the last 8 years? It's longer than that sis.... much, much longer. It goes back to the early 1980s. I worry about you. I don't care that you don't need me to worry, I don't care that you think I am 'bludgeoning' you with stuff. That's not true anyway. I have kept my distance, in fact I couldn't really be more distant. WTF happened? To us? Don't pin all the blame on me, you know that's not true. Peace and quiet... yes, we all deserve peace and quiet. Don't tell me I've "let it consume me so utterly", as if somehow you are not consumed by it. We are both consumed by it. Both of us. Like Elle was. Like dad was. Don't live in denial. I am glad you are keeping contact to a minimum. I do not hate her, and I could never hate her. I love her deeply but I am so scarred by the past that I don't think I will ever feel like a complete human being. This isn't self-pity, it's honesty. I am doing the same: being the best mum I can be by doing the exact fucking opposite of what she did with us. Yes, being the "kind of mother I always yearned to have". ****** and ****** are vibrant, happy boys, and I dote on them. I hope one day they will get to meet their cousin. I love you Jenny. xx"
Friday, 20 May 2016
Sunday, 15 May 2016
Will I Ever Be Good Enough? by Dr Karyl McBride
I have recently finished reading this book for the second time and will provide here a brief overview and review, including extracts and quotes that I particularly identified with.
The book has been described in glowing terms by many reviewers: "...it truly helps the reader to reflect on her pain, as well as relish the hope that she can end the legacy of narcissism..."
"... an amazing journey out of pain."
"The recovery section offers a rich variety of ideas and techniques to use in everyday life."
"...A guide to halting this insidious form of mental abuse and neglect." (The word 'insidious' is so applicable to the nature of narcissistic abuse that I have been tempted to use it in just about every one of my blog posts, and Karyl McBride uses it herself several times in the book (e.g. page 6, "...aspects of maternal narcissism tend to damage daughters in particularly insidious ways")
In the video below, Dr McBride is asked:"What is maternal narcissism?"
She replies: "In simple terms, it is a mother who is incapable of unconditional love and empathy."
If you are reading this blog and wondering whether or not you have a narcissistic mother, the answer will be revealed EVERY TIME you need love, compassion, respect, validation, recognition, moral or emotional support from her. A narcissist will FAIL to do this EACH AND EVERY TIME, even if you explicitly ask her for it, or will begrudgingly do so only on her own terms, with judgement and conditions as standard. For example, if your mother helps you and then later on uses this as a stick to beat you with ("I did this for you, therefore you owe me"), she might not have full-blown NPD but she sure as hell has some severely unpleasant narcissistic traits.
The above video introduction to Karyl McBride's best-selling book explains how narcissism exists on a spectrum, with extreme NPD/malignant narcissism at one end of the spectrum, and people with one or two (normal, healthy) narcissistic traits at the other end (where the majority of people reside). In between these two extremes exist many millions of mothers (and fathers, and others), all over the world, and naturally the further towards the 'extreme' end of the spectrum they are, the more damage they cause and the more suffering they inflict.
As Dr McBride goes on to describe, a narcissistic mother is one who "has her own deep wounds that create barriers so that she can't tune into the emotional world of her children, and it leaves the daughters with this... emptiness".
She then touches on a very important point: the sanctity of motherhood, and the taboo subject of the 'unloving mother':
"Good girls don't hate their mothers. Good girls don't talk bad about their mothers."
Indeed. But while acknowledging the absurdity of 'not being allowed' to feel NATURAL rage against an abusive woman who shows us nothing but hatred, disrespect and contempt, and the fact that this rage is disallowed (and thus repressed) just because that abusive woman happens to be the one who gave birth to us, Dr McBride then states: "This is not a book about anger, rage, resentment or blame." (This assertion is also made on page 6 of the book: "Healing comes from understanding and love, not blame.")
While I uphold the admirable virtuousness of the sentiment, I want to talk about this somewhat 'touchy-feely' aspect of the book before anything else, because it's my main problem with what was otherwise an extremely validating and intelligent read. In the acknowledgements section, Karyl McBride thanks her parents (note: the plural) "for teaching me about perseverance, good work ethic and fighting for what you believe in". All well and good. I could probably think of one or two things to thank my mother for too, apart from giving birth to me, although they would be incidental things, like 'resilience' (I HAD TO BE bloody resilient to survive my childhood), 'bloody-minded determination' (ditto) and 'the ability to enjoy my own company' (ditto). But then, in the introduction, Dr McBride speaks affectionately of her mother when she recounts telling her, with some trepidation, about writing her book: "My mother, bless her heart, said 'Why don't you write a book about fathers?' And of course, she was worried about being a bad mother, which would be expected."
I can only assume from this that Karyl McBride's mother is/was NOT a malignant narcissist. A malignant narcissist would categorically NOT GIVE A SHIT about "being a bad mother", and even faced with hard evidence would DENY to her dying breath having been a bad mother anyway; which is precisely why they manage to be the worst mothers on the planet.
I, personally, would never be able to insert the incongruous endearment 'bless her heart' when recalling ANYTHING my own mother has said or done to me. Not because I am a less forgiving person than Dr McBride - I suspect I'm too forgiving for my own good, in fact. But I do not - yet - forgive my mother. I think I will, and I hope I will, but that is not actually my ultimate goal. My ultimate goal is not to even understand my mother - I will NEVER understand her. I do love her, and I could certainly never hate her, but that's beside the point when you're dealing with a malignant narcissist anyway. Yes, I want to recover and heal, all casualties of narcissistic abuse DESPERATELY want to recover and heal, but I don't like the assumption that anger will 'get in the way' of the recovery process. I disagree. Anger is a CRUCIAL part of the recovery process, and not just to "work through it" (i.e. get rid of it). I will always feel angry, and although the anger is diminishing by the day, it will NEVER diminish to nothing, and I do not WANT it to diminish to nothing. I embrace that anger. I have fucking EARNED that anger, every last blazing particle of it. That healthy, NORMAL and inextinguishable spark of anger means I will NEVER get fucked over by a narcissist again - oh, and that's something else to 'thank' my mother for, I guess.
Dr McBride says herself that "you cannot completely 'cure' the scars of a childhood trauma". You can only work through them, to make them more bearable.
She labours the point slightly that "no person is all good or bad" (page 201). "Whether your mother has narcissistic traits or full-blown NPD, she has some goodness in her. She likely passed along talents, passions, interests and knowledge to you. Remind yourself of the gifts she has given you."
This 'every cloud has a silver lining' mentality does jar with me slightly. I am not so seething with irrational resentment that I am unable to grasp the concept that even the most twisted and hard-hearted person is capable of doing good things, and of bestowing positive feelings. I do not even consider my mother to be a particularly twisted and hard-hearted person - I am perfectly capable of acknowledging her achievements and virtues. The problem is, I just have no way of knowing whether they are 'real' or not, because she is such a mental, monumental FAKE.
Early on, the book asserts that "the complexity of the mother-daughter connection" means it is often "rife with conflict and ambivalence" (even the best mother-daughter relationships have their ups and downs), and yet, echoing the thoughts of every daughter (or son) of a narcissistic mother, Dr McBride describes how she "felt something different - a void, a lack of empathy and interest, a lack of feeling loved."
This is the very essence of maternal narcissism. Also: "Like a good girl, I tried to make excuses and take all the blame." (There's that reference to 'good girls' again.)
The most enduring and helpful message I got from this book is that empathy, being the "cornerstone for love" is the one thing that unites ALL narcissistic mothers by its ABSENCE. I could probably easily have forgiven my mother for everything she has done to me IF she had only displayed some genuine empathy for me from time to time, just occasionally "felt what I was feeling". I would probably be no less damaged or pissed off, but at least I might be permitted the precious illusion that a small part of her does have some vestigial love in her heart for me.
Pages 145-6 look at the Stages of Grief, and I will examine this important topic in another blog post, because I think those stages that Karyl McBride mentions, as proposed by Dr Elisabeth KΓΌgler-Ross in her acclaimed 1969 book "On Death and Dying" (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), are really not applicable to the unique grief process we go through as daughters of narcissistic mothers.
Page 208 looks at 'accountability' (my emphases): "Being accountable for your own feelings and behaviour is vital to your mental health and peace of mind. As daughters of narcissistic mothers, what we saw most of the time was the 'blame game' in action. Mother was typically not accountable for her behaviour or feelings and projected them constantly onto others - and particularly onto us."
YES - a resounding YES to this. This seems to support the theory that there is a fine, blurred line between NPD and mental illness.
I didn't gain a huge amount of insight from the middle section of the book - some of the recovery tips are helpful and some of them are downright weird (e.g. 'doll therapy', p.151), but this book is clearly not intended for EVERY daughter of EVERY narcissistic mother. (Such a book is an impossibility.) It's pitched for slightly to severely damaged, hurt and confused daughters of mildly to moderately narcissistic mothers.
If you are profoundly traumatised in many ways - physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually - by a tyrannical malignant narcissist mother who terrorised you to the edge of insanity for most or all of your life, it will probably barely scratch the surface.
Thursday, 12 May 2016
The abuser plays the victim
One of the most infuriating aspects of having a narcissistic mother is that her need, her compulsion to 'play the victim' - the admirable heroine struggling against endless adversity in her own fanciful fairytale - is so all-consuming, that it becomes difficult for the people around her to separate fact from fiction. This is all part of the powerful comprehensive gaslighting repertoire through which the narcissistic mother weaves her fantasy world.
I have finally stopped keeping silent about my mother's abuse. After thirty years of feeling ripped apart by hurt, guilt, confusion and misplaced loyalty, shouldering ALL the blame, and jeopardising my own mental health, I will now never shut up about what that woman made me suffer. I am now my mother's worst fucking enemy, and I have never felt so energised or proud of myself. One or two of my mother's enablers, who must SURELY at least have their suspicions that she is, to say the least, "not all there", have listened to my side of the story, and they have chosen to reject it. They have chosen instead to believe HER. Part of the reason for this is that it is natural for all of us to make unfair and biased assumptions about someone we don't personally know very well - someone we have heard (via a third party who we do know, and trust) is perhaps a little bit unbalanced and not very kind. If that third party happens to be the MOTHER of the person we don't personally know very well... now why would anyone doubt the words of a mother?
Dear Christ, what kind of heartless bitch cuts off her own MOTHER?!
As I stated in my blog post The narcissist: an emotionless facsimile, my mother is a 'victimised narcissist'. To elaborate further: She is a victimised covert malignant narcissist. She's certainly not the WORST malignant narcissist or psychopathic megalomaniac (extreme individuals such as Hitler, Diane Downs, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson can rightfully claim that dubious mantle, along with thousands of other twisted freaks both past and present), but her worst atrocities occur 'under the radar' (hence 'covert'), secreted away from the senses and sensitivities of those people she leans on for supply - i.e. the enablers who think nothing of calling me a liar. So while I do not believe she is in the least bit capable of literal murder, I do know for a fact (as I have witnessed it) she can shred a person's self-worth and soul like a ravenous lioness can efficiently dispense with a wounded gazelle. It's just that, unlike the lioness, who at least kills quickly and then has the decency to consume the victim of her attack and share the spoils with the rest of the pride, the victimised covert malignant narcissist mother destroys S-L-O-W-L-Y, calculating each incremental chipping-away with the kind of detached sadism you thought could never exist in real life. And what compels her to do this? It's the psychological equivalent of bloodlust. She simply enjoys doing it. It makes her feel better. It gives her purpose. It temporarily fills the unfillable void. And as she's doing it, she claims that the person she is destroying with absolute cold-blooded intent is, in fact, DESTROYING HER. ("All of my daughters have been so challenging", I once overheard her complain to one of her credulous comrades, making sure to miss out the bit about having rejected, neglected, manipulated and abused all three of us. As for 'challenging'... well, that is a somewhat unfair accusation that I now have every intention of finally living up to. Just watch me.)
Fuck knows how she does it and gets away with it. Fuck knows how and why people believe her. I've stopped even trying to understand.
Diane Downs: when a murderer plays the victim
I mentioned Diane Downs above as an example of extreme malignant narcissism - the ultimate sociopathic/ psychopathic 'mother' who, even after having attempted to murder all three of her kids (one of whom successfully), she still, through smirks and fake tears (see the second of the two videos below), claimed victimhood. Diane says, "Everybody says 'you sure were lucky'... well, I don't feel very lucky. I couldn't tie my damn shoes for about two months.... I think my kids were lucky." She makes this breathtakingly inappropriate statement, with belligerence and levity in equal measure, in the knowledge that one of her children is dead and the other two remain grievously injured in hospital.
The psychiatrist in the first video below explains how there are 'levels' of sociopathy/ psychopathy (which I understand to be, in essence, the most severe malignant narcissism), and that Diane Downs "lives at the deep end" of this spectrum. My own mother has been paddling away at the shallow end of the spectrum for most of her life, and I don't think she will venture any deeper. She certainly won't ever shoot anyone in cold blood (not even me) and then blame a fictitious bushy-haired stranger, not even if it means garnering temporary interest and attention from a captivated audience.
Diane Downs, who is now 60 years old and has already served over 30 years of her life sentence, serves as a stark and sobering example of just how disturbed and 'devoid of emotion' a woman can be. The fact that the true extent of her evil was only revealed in all its unspeakable horror to her own children is something I can only too easily believe.
Dr Barbara Ziv: Why did Diane Downs plot to kill her children?
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| Diane Downs was convicted in 1984 of the murder of her eldest child Cheryl and the attempted murder of her son and other daughter. She gave birth to her fourth child while in custody (see second link below). She has always maintained her innocence. |
Below is some of the most chilling footage of Diane Downs, who is (in my opinion) one of the most pathologically narcissistic and evil 'mothers' this world has ever seen, along with some details and analyses of her crime, committed 33 years ago, in May 1983. It's really quite astonishing:
Resources and further reading:
If I had NPD, would I know it? Not only would I probably not know, I’d probably be very adamant that I didn’t have NPD. Chances are I might even be very certain that everyone except me was a Narcissist, and I might even blog about it. I might even consider myself to be an expert on NPD… if I was a Narcissist there would be no ‘might’ about it, no doubt, Narcissists do not know how to doubt themselves, they don’t self-reflect they self-project...
Sunday, 8 May 2016
Don't defy your mother, deify her
Today is Mother's Day. Until my early thirties, I used to send my mother flowers (or at least a pleasant, cheerful card) every Mother's Day, without fail. It was just the done thing to do. She assumed she would receive something, and I didn't want to disappoint her. Ha! So much for that. (My sister rarely, if ever, sent anything. My sister doesn't "do" birthdays, Christmas or any 'special occasion', although hopefully that will change now she has her own child.)
Anyway, finding the 'right' Mother's Day card was always a struggle - they all seemed so twee and schmaltzy, shouting out hackneyed superlatives like "Best Mum Ever" and "I love you to the moon and back". Sometimes I'd just end up fleeing the card shop in tears, knowing I was deluding myself (and encouraging her own delusion) by even acknowledging her as 'mum'. One Mother's Day (or it might have been on her birthday) I sent her this card:
She loved it so much that she laminated it and stuck it on her fridge. To her, the craziness she possesses is a thing of wonder, to be admired. She doesn't deny being crazy, she sees it as a virtue. Ergo, those of us who are NOT crazy (i.e. anyone who dares oppose her) are lacking in virtue.
If you have (or had) a good mother, being respectful of her is a given, no matter how much you might get on each other's nerves or have incompatible views or clashing personalities. If someone treats us with kindness and consideration, regardless of whether or not we are related to them, that basic consideration is (or should be) readily reciprocated. Respect is always a two-way street. It is absolutely fundamental to a healthy relationship. It's usually very easy to respect someone who respects us, even if they are of a different generation and/or a different culture, with a different set of beliefs and opinions.
My mother's demand for respect has always been voracious; insatiable. Her expectation of it, from everyone, is equally formidable. She truly believes it is OWED to her, especially from her daughters - after all, she did give birth to us. We owe her our lives, right? We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her and her fruitful womb. So a little bit of respect surely goes without saying. No, make that A LOT of respect. All the time. Do not question her. Do not disobey her. Do not presume you are even worthy of breathing the same air.
She does do and say lots of ostensibly mindful and benevolent things to make her friends believe she is a stunningly virtuous person - and so all of them have never found it difficult to respect her. (Hence their position within my mother's 'trusted circle'.) That is, to respect the persona; the person my mother pretends to be. (You will notice I am writing about my mother in the present tense, because she is still alive, as far as I know. I also know that, even having not clapped eyes on her for almost three years and not exchanged a word with her by phone, letter or email for an entire year, she will still be the same infuriating, ice-cold narcissist and outrageous hypocrite she has always been.... except older now, frailer, inevitably more recalcitrant and cantankerous than ever and probably even more hateful - especially now I have so unequivocally offered myself as the 'sacrificial lamb' of a target for that hatred.)
As Darlene Ouimet writes on her 'Emerging from Broken' site (see Resources below): "We are told from a young age that our parents know best. We are told and convinced that they love us and... that they always do what is best for us. We are taught that they are right. The problem is that when we are dismissed, devalued or discounted by these same parents we don’t know how to reconcile those two polar opposite teachings. On the one hand, we have been brainwashed (convinced) to believe that that there is nothing as beautiful as a mothers love. On the other hand we are hurt by the dismissal of our mothers. Our pain has been minimized; we have been told that we exaggerate, that we outright lie, that we are too sensitive, that we are crazy, that we are don’t remember what 'really happened'."
When did I lose all respect for my mother? It is hard to know exactly when it happened. It was a gradual process, starting in my teens after I had been on the receiving end of her insane, mind-fucking nonsense and violence more times than I cared to recall. While my need to be loved and accepted by her never diminished, it took a long time before I learned that fearing someone is not the same as respecting them. There was a definitive 'lightning bolt' moment, shortly after I had become a mother myself, when I finally realised that I had in fact been trying to forge a relationship with a malignant narcissist, someone inherently and incurably incapable of a single positive human emotion, and so the fault had never been with me.
I do respect the fact she gave birth to me. I thank her for that. I respect the fact she is an extremely sick and sorrowful woman, and that that is why she is the way she is, even though it will never excuse or justify it. But as my mother, it is impossible for me to respect her, as I explained in my blog post Responses and rebuttals to the flying monkeys. A basic indication of whether you have respect for someone or not is whether you are prepared to talk about them (invariably disparagingly) behind their back. Generally, I try to avoid doing this as it's a really shitty thing to do to anyone. But we do all do it, from time to time. Or in my mother's case, habitually. My mother is in her element when she is playing the victim/martyr or slagging me (or any adversary) to anyone who'll listen. (Typically the two predilections go hand-in-hand: "Poor me! My daughter is so cruel!" and "I tried so hard to be a good mother! Look how she repays me!") She's pitiful and pitiless, but not pitiable. There's a difference.
My dad was always the primary target of her spitting vitriol, generic insults and snide complaints, and after he died, somebody else had to be appointed in his "Chief Shit-Taker" role. Of course, with my years of experience and resigned stoicism, I was more than qualified.
Yesterday, I was trawling through some historic emails, with a mixture of fascination and dread. An email I sent my dad back in March 2007, just eight months before his unexpected death, particularly caught my eye. This was a couple of years before I found out about NPD, when everything suddenly fell into place with blinding, gut-punching clarity.
My dad and I often had exchanges about the 'mother issue'. In spite of how horrifically she treated him (barely respecting him as a human being, much less as the father of her children and a man she once supposedly loved), he never said a word against her. He never stopped loving her, and never stopped regretting the end of their marriage, and the mistakes he made that ultimately caused it. But he did often express his frustration and dismay (however impotent) over the erratic, embarrassingly childish and spiteful way she behaved, especially towards me and my sister. I had been looking for possible explanations for my mother's behaviour and attitude for many years - perhaps it was my main motivation for studying psychology.
(private details obviously changed)
Resources:
Honor Thy Narcissistic Mother?
Mother's day is Hard When the Mother Shows No Love:
http://emergingfrombroken.com/mothers-day-is-hard-when-the-mother-shows-no-love/
Am I a disrespectful daughter because I finally stood up for me and said no to being discounted? I don’t think so. Am I an ungrateful daughter because I don’t worship the person that birthed me? Am I a bad daughter because I don’t want to accept all that disrespect and blame anymore? I don’t think so.
Anyway, finding the 'right' Mother's Day card was always a struggle - they all seemed so twee and schmaltzy, shouting out hackneyed superlatives like "Best Mum Ever" and "I love you to the moon and back". Sometimes I'd just end up fleeing the card shop in tears, knowing I was deluding myself (and encouraging her own delusion) by even acknowledging her as 'mum'. One Mother's Day (or it might have been on her birthday) I sent her this card:
She loved it so much that she laminated it and stuck it on her fridge. To her, the craziness she possesses is a thing of wonder, to be admired. She doesn't deny being crazy, she sees it as a virtue. Ergo, those of us who are NOT crazy (i.e. anyone who dares oppose her) are lacking in virtue.
If you have (or had) a good mother, being respectful of her is a given, no matter how much you might get on each other's nerves or have incompatible views or clashing personalities. If someone treats us with kindness and consideration, regardless of whether or not we are related to them, that basic consideration is (or should be) readily reciprocated. Respect is always a two-way street. It is absolutely fundamental to a healthy relationship. It's usually very easy to respect someone who respects us, even if they are of a different generation and/or a different culture, with a different set of beliefs and opinions.
My mother's demand for respect has always been voracious; insatiable. Her expectation of it, from everyone, is equally formidable. She truly believes it is OWED to her, especially from her daughters - after all, she did give birth to us. We owe her our lives, right? We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her and her fruitful womb. So a little bit of respect surely goes without saying. No, make that A LOT of respect. All the time. Do not question her. Do not disobey her. Do not presume you are even worthy of breathing the same air.
She does do and say lots of ostensibly mindful and benevolent things to make her friends believe she is a stunningly virtuous person - and so all of them have never found it difficult to respect her. (Hence their position within my mother's 'trusted circle'.) That is, to respect the persona; the person my mother pretends to be. (You will notice I am writing about my mother in the present tense, because she is still alive, as far as I know. I also know that, even having not clapped eyes on her for almost three years and not exchanged a word with her by phone, letter or email for an entire year, she will still be the same infuriating, ice-cold narcissist and outrageous hypocrite she has always been.... except older now, frailer, inevitably more recalcitrant and cantankerous than ever and probably even more hateful - especially now I have so unequivocally offered myself as the 'sacrificial lamb' of a target for that hatred.)
As Darlene Ouimet writes on her 'Emerging from Broken' site (see Resources below): "We are told from a young age that our parents know best. We are told and convinced that they love us and... that they always do what is best for us. We are taught that they are right. The problem is that when we are dismissed, devalued or discounted by these same parents we don’t know how to reconcile those two polar opposite teachings. On the one hand, we have been brainwashed (convinced) to believe that that there is nothing as beautiful as a mothers love. On the other hand we are hurt by the dismissal of our mothers. Our pain has been minimized; we have been told that we exaggerate, that we outright lie, that we are too sensitive, that we are crazy, that we are don’t remember what 'really happened'."
When did I lose all respect for my mother? It is hard to know exactly when it happened. It was a gradual process, starting in my teens after I had been on the receiving end of her insane, mind-fucking nonsense and violence more times than I cared to recall. While my need to be loved and accepted by her never diminished, it took a long time before I learned that fearing someone is not the same as respecting them. There was a definitive 'lightning bolt' moment, shortly after I had become a mother myself, when I finally realised that I had in fact been trying to forge a relationship with a malignant narcissist, someone inherently and incurably incapable of a single positive human emotion, and so the fault had never been with me.
I do respect the fact she gave birth to me. I thank her for that. I respect the fact she is an extremely sick and sorrowful woman, and that that is why she is the way she is, even though it will never excuse or justify it. But as my mother, it is impossible for me to respect her, as I explained in my blog post Responses and rebuttals to the flying monkeys. A basic indication of whether you have respect for someone or not is whether you are prepared to talk about them (invariably disparagingly) behind their back. Generally, I try to avoid doing this as it's a really shitty thing to do to anyone. But we do all do it, from time to time. Or in my mother's case, habitually. My mother is in her element when she is playing the victim/martyr or slagging me (or any adversary) to anyone who'll listen. (Typically the two predilections go hand-in-hand: "Poor me! My daughter is so cruel!" and "I tried so hard to be a good mother! Look how she repays me!") She's pitiful and pitiless, but not pitiable. There's a difference.
My dad was always the primary target of her spitting vitriol, generic insults and snide complaints, and after he died, somebody else had to be appointed in his "Chief Shit-Taker" role. Of course, with my years of experience and resigned stoicism, I was more than qualified.
Yesterday, I was trawling through some historic emails, with a mixture of fascination and dread. An email I sent my dad back in March 2007, just eight months before his unexpected death, particularly caught my eye. This was a couple of years before I found out about NPD, when everything suddenly fell into place with blinding, gut-punching clarity.
My dad and I often had exchanges about the 'mother issue'. In spite of how horrifically she treated him (barely respecting him as a human being, much less as the father of her children and a man she once supposedly loved), he never said a word against her. He never stopped loving her, and never stopped regretting the end of their marriage, and the mistakes he made that ultimately caused it. But he did often express his frustration and dismay (however impotent) over the erratic, embarrassingly childish and spiteful way she behaved, especially towards me and my sister. I had been looking for possible explanations for my mother's behaviour and attitude for many years - perhaps it was my main motivation for studying psychology.
(private details obviously changed)
Begin forwarded message:
From: "ACoN" <acon@mumsalunatic.com>Subject: Bipolar disorder/manic depression - THIS IS IMPORTANTDate: 14 March 2007 at 1:33:05 AM AWDTTo: pops@pops.com
Hi DadApologies for the less-than-cheery subject header, but I have long suspected that Mum has a serious mental illness, and manic depression seems pretty close to the mark, although I guess 'schizophrenia' could also apply. Whatever the hell it is, it is something that cannot be ignored any longer, and frankly it's pretty astonishing that it's taken this long, and this much endless fucking shit, for us to get jolted in to action.Her sanity has always hung by a thread, and she passes it off proudly as eccentricity. Well it's not eccentric, and it's not 'wacky' or endearing, it's downright horrible and borderline psychotic. Dad, read the link below, ESPECIALLY under the 'mania' bit:Also read the attached pdf document.I also started reading a brilliant book called 'The Noonday Demon', which my friend James gave me a few years ago. It's about the devastating personal symptoms, effects and repercussions of depression, and a lot of it rings eerily true and I think it explains some (although by no means all) of mum's behaviour over the last 15-20 years, and possibly longer. Amazon has a lot of books on the subject, as you'd expect, including:I know Mum was 'put away' due to some kind of mental breakdown in her mid-20s shortly after her marriage to ******* broke up, and I think it is fair to say her mood in general can be described as unpredictable, at best. Quite possibly she has always been like this - you'd know more about that than I do, I guess. She has no insight in to her own shortcomings and is utterly blind to her mistakes; I have never - NOT ONCE - heard her apologise for anything. None of this is 'normal' - none of it.The only hope we have of coming through this without breaking the family up completely (i.e., literally and totally removing mother from our lives, for the sake of our own sanity) is if we present her with these facts and get her to admit that she does have a problem - and she must get help for it. This is a huge challenge but I am prepared to give it a go, obviously I don't want to lose my mum completely and forever. Whatever she has done and said in the past, I have forgiven, and will continue to forgive anything else she cares to throw at me - but forgiveness can only go so far. It does get hard to forgive when she has never even admitted that she has done or said anything wrong or hurtful. I just have to ask myself: is it better to have a mother who is relentlessly scornful, tactless, resentful, cold, and impervious to reason, or no mother at all? Sadly, the latter is becoming increasingly the less frightening of two deeply unappealing options.Please let me know what you think - this is really deeply troubling me at the moment and I can't really think about anything else. We will have to have a very candid, honest and open discussion - all of us together, on neutral ground - but realistically I cannot see mother ever admitting that she is anything less than perfect. It's a shame, because the only way out of this mess is to admit that it IS a mess, and to try to work together to clean it up. You, me and *** cannot take all the 'blame' (for want of a much more constructive word) for the shambolic state this family is in - being a family is about teamwork, but Christ knows it shouldn't take this much heartache and effort. In her desperate attempts to get you and *** to admit that you have drink problems ("yep, only when we can't get our hands on any"), we are all being somewhat diverted from the REAL problem, one that has been staring us in the face for decades and shouting us down. If *** really is an alcoholic, Jesus H Christ is it really any wonder???????????? Let's take a more considered look at cause and effect here.***** xxx
Resources:
Honor Thy Narcissistic Mother?
Mother's day is Hard When the Mother Shows No Love:
http://emergingfrombroken.com/mothers-day-is-hard-when-the-mother-shows-no-love/
Am I a disrespectful daughter because I finally stood up for me and said no to being discounted? I don’t think so. Am I an ungrateful daughter because I don’t worship the person that birthed me? Am I a bad daughter because I don’t want to accept all that disrespect and blame anymore? I don’t think so.
Saturday, 7 May 2016
Why do narcissists have children?
So, if the essence of narcissism is pathological selfishness, why on earth would a narcissist CHOOSE to have a child? After all, having a child means that your wants and needs MUST take a back seat. It means you CANNOT be selfish any more. EVER AGAIN, in fact. It means prioritizing your child above EVERYTHING and EVERYONE else.
Yes, OF COURSE that's what it means if you're a normal, sane human being.
If you're a narcissist, however, it means you get a readily available, pliant source of reliable supply - an impressionable little person who will do ANYTHING FOR YOUR LOVE! (The pathetic brat will even settle for just the crumbs of your attention and approval.) Bringing a child into this world means having to deal with nappies and mess and noise and upheaval and career sabotage and the grating annoyances of their incessant, high-pitched demands, but all that shitty sufferance is worth it for the Ultimate Prize that parenthood bestows on the narcissist: a 'mini-me' they can mould, dominate and intimidate, and/or a domestic slave and emotional (often literal) punching-bag. If you're a narcissist, being a parent doesn't mean giving your precious babies all the limitless, unconditional love they NEED, no way, fuck that, it means wielding ultimate power and control over them, which is done by WITHHOLDING that crucial, yearned-for unconditional love. This can be effectively achieved in any number of cruel, neglectful and manipulative ways.
My mother, like all narcissistic mothers, was a pass master at just about every single one of those methods. On a daily basis, I was gaslighted or ignored, usually both. She did not once tell me that she loved me, not ONCE, and that in itself wouldn't have been so bad if she had showed me that she loved me. But every word, every action (and inaction) told me the opposite: she most definitely did NOT love me. The reason? It wasn't a problem with her, no of course it wasn't, it was a problem with me. Every day, that belief was reinforced in some subtle (or sometimes decidedly unsubtle) way. My unlovability became an integral part of my identity, of Who I Was. Thus my mother's precarious and perverted Power over me was established, with its non-negotiable underlying message: I'm right and you're wrong. I gave birth to you, therefore do not defy me, DEIFY ME!
Because if a child feels unattractive, unwanted, defective, unloved and unlovable, they are much, MUCH easier to control, and to maintain control over. If a girl cannot get recognition or validation from HER OWN MOTHER, who the hell else will give her any? From the age of nine, I was brainwashed. By the time I left home, 10 years later, I had been effectively part-lobotomised by the manipulative machinations of my malignant narcissist mother. She had taught me nothing about self-care, personal safety, self-respect, social skills, relationships and Real Life. She'd filled my heart, head and soul with poison, misdirection and lies. What she HAD taught me was this: I'm irrelevant. I shouldn't really be here. Nobody will want me. I'm not really very bright or capable. My looks are so-so, nothing special. At best, I'm mediocre. My thoughts, opinions and feelings are inconsequential. Nobody's interested so it's best if I just shut up. I will never amount to anything. Even if a miracle happens and I achieve something amazing, my own mother will show little to no interest. Why should she be expected to? It's not like I'm important, or that I ever will be.
Emotionally, I was barely pubescent and in fact I haven't actually felt like an 'Adult Proper' - whatever the hell that means - until very recently (late thirties!). When I first left home, with great zest and alacrity but natural trepidation, I had no clue, not a fucking clue, what to do out there in the big, wide world. Like most teenagers desperate to flee the family home (or in my case, matriarchal torture chamber), I just had to wing it and work it out for myself as I went along. All I knew for sure is that I wanted to be NOTHING LIKE MY MOTHER.
As Alex Myles' article in the Elephant Journal so eloquently states, "A narcissist needs an energy feed, and if they have a child who is sensitive, it is highly likely that child will become the one who suffers the most. The narcissist will draw energy from the drama and the suffering they cause, and the easier a person is to hurt, the more likely a narcissist is to keep the dynamic going. The dance between the narcissist and child only ends when the child removes their emotional reactions completely and refuses to continue being the victim of their abuser. This is extremely difficult for the child, because of all the people we are connected to, the most difficult one to break free from is a parent..."
Further reading:
Narcissistic Parents' Psychological Effect on Their Children: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-is-2020/201405/narcissistic-parents-psychological-effect-their-children
Elephant Journal: When the Narcissist is the Parent
"You see, a narcissist does not have children because they want to love and nurture little humans so they can grow into healthy individuals and be successful on their terms. Rather, a narcissist has children because they need reassurance in their own self, they need to feed their ego, and because they want someone to unquestionably do their bidding..."
http://flyingmonkeysdenied.com/2016/05/21/help-my-mommy-is-a-psychopath/
"Their desire to have children never comes from a place of love or affection. Love doesn’t hurt or compete; love nurtures for the positive good and fosters empathy both for self and others."
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