"It's such a shame your mother is so useless"

I want to add a quick post about some of the (well-intentioned, sympathetic) comments I have had from friends over the years, who struggle to understand the situation. The remark that stands out for me is: "It's such a shame your mother is so useless."

I have already stated that it is unreasonable of me to expect anyone to know what it is like to have a narcissistic parent, unless they themselves have one. I will now illustrate what I think a "useless" mother might be like:

Imagine you have recently given birth to your first baby, and your mother offers to stay a couple of nights at your house to "give you a hand/a break". You are unsure because you have never really got on with each other, and your breastfeeding has only just established so you're still feeling 'fragile', but you think: "she's my mother, and my baby's grandmother, I've got to make an effort, so let's see how it goes".

Your mother arrives at your house, fusses over the baby, showers you with gifts, but doesn't help out with the cooking or housework and just makes successive cups of tea and watches daytime television. But she gives many cuddles and plenty of moral support and advice, and in spite of being a rather idle and irritating house guest, she does at least allow you some much-needed rest by taking the baby out for walks and playing the 'proud granny'. You disagree on many topics of conversation and her company often leaves you feeling extremely stressed and drained, but ultimately you feel glad and grateful that she came to stay, even if you do ultimately feel even gladder and more grateful when she leaves.

While I think we can all agree that the mother here in this hypothetical scenario is undoubtedly pretty "useless", she has no malice in her heart. As the truism goes, she really does "mean well".

My mother also offered to "help out" when my first baby was a few weeks old. I accepted the offer. I really, really wish I hadn't. Within hours of her arrival, my milk dried up. ("I don't know why you're bothering with breastfeeding anyway," she smirked, sneering as she watched me trying desperately to get some milk to flow from my sore nipples while my baby cried, "I didn't bother breastfeeding you or your sister, I mean, what's the point?'") The visit went downhill from there. (Miraculously, my milk flowed freely once again as soon as she left.)

My decision to breastfeed was not the only one my mother had an opposing opinion about. Of course it wasn't! Apparently, my choice to vaccinate my child was also 'wrong'. (Let's ignore the fact she vaccinated her own children; my mother's staggeringly audacious hypocrisy is, after all, such a steadfast, leviathan and intrinsic aspect of her character that it often just goes entirely unnoticed.)

Knowing that I had decided to vaccinate my baby (and that I'd done extensive research on this topic, like most new parents), she would nevertheless copy me in on emails she sent to her 'crunchy, hippy, alternative-medicine-endorsing' friends with links to 'evidence' that the MMR vaccine causes autism, for example. The obvious implication being: you're such a terrible mother! You are filling your helpless baby with toxins! (No, the irony wasn't lost on me.)

It turned out, unsurprisingly perhaps, that my mother was dismissive or unsupportive of seemingly every decision I made as a new mum. She even sent me a newspaper clipping when I was four months' pregnant (just after my second scan), about a baby who had died a few days after he was born due to a rare disease that can't be picked up by antenatal scans. Tell me, honestly, can you think of anything more unspeakably cruel? Seriously, I wouldn't expect shit like that from my worst fucking enemy.

So, at a time in my life when I most needed my mother to say "You're doing fine, don't worry," she instead ensured that my mind, at its most emotionally chaotic and vulnerable, was plagued with even more guilt, fear and uncertainty. For that alone, I am not sure I can ever forgive her.

So please do not try to tell me my mother was merely 'useless', and certainly not that she ever 'meant well'. I would have done ANYTHING for a 'useless' mother. A 'useless' mother would have felt like an absolute godsend.

Further reading:

The narcissistic mother's game - "In a way, mother is like a black-hole, empty as eternity. She is also a vacuum (yes, nature abhors a vacuum and mother’s constantly trying to be filled).  But I also pity her—more than that, actually. I feel such sorrow for her suffering, because I believe she must be suffering. And I see glimmers of hope. Sometimes, I sense a pause in her emptiness as if her soul is trying to infiltrate the emptiness. Sometimes I sense genuineness. These moments are precious to me and I try to encourage them now that I am strong enough to not feel the arrows she slings at me."

Narcissistic Mothers get away with their secret cruelties - "Narcissistic mothers are exceedingly critical, at times physically violent and psychologically horrifying with their children."

Daughters of narcissistic mothers

How do I know my mother has Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Even though I have studied psychology (with a particular interest in developmental psychology and psychopathology) since I was a teenager, until the ‘epiphany’ of my 30s, I always assumed the term ‘narcissistic’ was applied to arrogant egoists. I didn’t know that there was an actual recognised personality disorder.

Of course, I've known for many years - basically as long as I can remember - that my mother "isn't quite right" and is certainly far from "normal". But each of us is raised with different parameters within which to assess something (or someone) as "right" or "normal". My mother actually seemed to derive great delight in describing and portraying herself as "unconventional" and "eccentric" (..."Who wants to be normal? Normal is so boring," she would regularly assert, with the rigorously self-righteous chutzpah of the mentally unhinged). She believed, and still does, that this manufactured "unconventionality" that she presented to the world is delightful and endearing; it helps her to "weed out the narrow-minded" (i.e. the people who see through her lies) and so to ensure her trusted circle consists only of enraptured, credulous "kindred spirits". Suffice to say, I was never going to be counted among these kindred spirits. I'm not narrow-minded, and I'm certainly not feeble-minded, but even when I was at my most desperate to ingratiate myself into my mother's "trusted circle", I could never be her "friend" because I KNEW WHAT LURKED BENEATH THE MASK. And I knew that thing was not just "unconventional", it was monstrous, it was as far removed from her sickening 'devoted mother' persona as it is possible to be. And, crucially, she knew that I knew.

In the early 1970s, before I was even a glint in my father's eye, both my parents dabbled in The Kabbalah and, more disturbingly, in The Occult. Both of them were 'into' the paranormal, although my mother has slightly restrained her rampantly 'alternative' proclivities in her dotage and is now merely a self-proclaimed 'psychic' and 'interfaith minister'. (I suggest she claims to talk to the dead because she has absolutely no meaningful connection with the living.) In fact I do not doubt my parents 'dabbled' in many things during their twenties and thirties, both separately and as a couple, some of them decidedly unsavoury or plain freakish. As my old man used to say, it's probably best to "draw a veil" over these things, and to not even speculate. It's neither my business nor my concern, and doesn't interest me in the slightest. We all have histories.

My mother regularly goes to church, and has done since I was very small; specifically, her local Methodist, as her friends there are more "open-minded" than most devout Christians. Oh, how my mother despises closed minds! Or minds that dare question anything. I know, it's ironic, isn't it? - she claims to hate closed minds and yet her mind has been sealed shut by pathological denial and delusion, by her own blinkered, mental 'self-fulfilling prophecy'; and the ghoulish entities locked therein are either absolutely ridiculous or absolutely horrific. Incidentally, she has always claimed to abhor liars and hypocrites as well. Narcissists clearly don't do irony.

While he was working away in Moscow in 2009 on a particularly tricky assignment, my husband encountered a brittle and frosty colleague who made it uncomfortably clear that she had nothing but contempt for him. She didn’t even attempt to pretend to respect his knowledge and experience, and was instead dismissive and brusque, often in front of other co-workers. This was not just workplace xenophobia; as my husband explained to me during one telephone conversation: “This woman is a narcissist. And by the way, I think your mum is, too.”

I agreed with him, thinking it was merely a fitting reference to my mother's wearisome propensity to ‘act out’ in company and to belittle or undermine me (and certain others) in order to elevate herself, but he insisted: “Read up about it. She's got Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”

And so I did. The first link I visited over the next tumultuous weeks of Google searches rendered me speechless. I sobbed for hours. I read it over and over again. I sobbed some more. The link (below) lists "24 Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers” and every one, EVERY SINGLE ONE, could be about my own mother. Finally, after 33 years of living in my mother’s oppressive shadow, I was on the path to uncovering some Truths. (‘Truth’ and‘Reality’ are anathema to the narcissist, and he or she goes to great pains to avoid them, as I have discovered to my great cost.)

24 Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers

So, there is no doubt in my mind, NONE WHATSOEVER, that my mother has full-blown NPD. It certainly isn't her only problem (I believe she has undiagnosed borderline schizophrenia and/or bipolar, too - and many, many unresolved grief issues, mainly around the life and death of her schizophrenic first daughter, my older half-sister), but NPD is the main one. Finding out about NPD has certainly helped explain so much of what has happened in the past, but in reality, it's just been the beginning of what has proved to be the toughest journey of my life.

The thing is, it wasn't as if I could call her up and say "Hey mum, I think you have this thing called Narcissistic Personality Disorder, so maybe we can go to counselling together and sort out our relationship...?" The very essence of NPD is that there is ALWAYS someone else to blame. It is underpinned by a total abdication of responsibility, which renders acceptance and resolution an impossibility. So it can rarely (if ever) be diagnosed in the 'official' way, i.e. by going to a therapist or psychiatrist and asking "what's wrong with me?", because in their mind, NOTHING IS WRONG WITH THEM. They will look to anyone and everyone else before looking to themselves for an answer.

Believe me, I am not the type to 'write off' anyone, and definitely not my own mother - I typically see the good in all people. At least I try to. But I finally realised that the stark choice I had been struggling with since my teenage years was to either accept a shitty, toxic relationship based on jealousy, suspicion, spite and lies (all the while tacitly agreeing that I was solely responsible for the toxicity), or to cut my losses and start a new, healthier life well away from that shit.

At the end of the day, it's a no-brainer.

See my post about the 'Cluster B' personality disorders, of which NPD is one of four as recognised by DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

Also take a look at this short informative video about NPD: The Psychology of Narcissism