So Much More Than A Mom » Narcissistic Mothers

A Disturbing Trend

Cyndi — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:08:53 +0000

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it. Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” - T. S. Eliot

I’m happy the holidays are over. Don’t get me wrong, we had a nice Christmas. I do love seeing the kids’ faces light up when they open a particularly desired present. Their Grandma got them the cell phones they’ve been bugging us for forever (god help us) but they were just as excited over some Legos.

I love spending time together and playing with all our new toys. I especially love my niece’s new Barbie Dream Townhouse. I always wanted one when I was a kid and now I finally get to play with it pretty much whenever I want. And yes, it is just as fabulous as I imagined. But it’s also nice to get back to normal life and put all the clutter lovely decorations away.

Due to said holidays, I haven’t written a new blog post since December 17th. Normally when I go that long between posts, traffic to my blog significantly decreases. This was not so during the holidays. Traffic actually increased by quite a bit.

My posts about narcissists and particularly the one about narcissistic mothers have always been the most popular posts on my blog. That in itself is disturbing. Well, it’s comforting in a way because it tells me that I am not completely paranoid when I say that they are everywhere and when I see red flags in people all around me every day. Apparently other people see them too. But the fact that there may actually be as many (or more!) of these people walking around as I suspect is also upsetting.

During the holidays this year these posts were on fire. They were viewed by hundreds of people every day. People found them by doing google searches for such terms as, “narcissistic mother”, “children of narcissistic mothers”, “stop being a narcissistic enabler” and “dealing with narcissists“. The list goes on and on but you get the idea. The biggest day for hits to these posts using these search terms? You got it. December 23rd. The day before we all had to attend our respective Christmas Eve parties with our families.

Yikes.

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Tell Me Lies

Cyndi — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:37:58 +0000

“To say it in one sentence: For the narcissist lying is fun and a tool, and anybody who doesn’t lie is a fool in the eyes of the narcissist. Trying to communicate with a narcissist is therefore pointless.” – Dr. Ludger Hofmann-Engl

I jumped online tonight to visit all my usual spots for information on narcissists. Instead I decided to just do a google search for “narcissist lies” and landed on Dr. Ludger Hofmann-Engl’s site. He wrote exactly what I was looking for in the last sentence of this page (italics are mine):

Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Lies

When dealing with a narcissist (or a person with borderline), we face one major problem, and this is the narcissist’s attitude towards lying.

While the majority of people will have learned that not only that lying brings about devastation and destruction, it ultimately leads to total isolation and loneliness. This is, it hinders any sincere communication and hence the narcissist will find her/himself increasingly on the outside and excluded.

However, as much as the narcissist notices this isolation and reacts with increasing panic, it does not bring about a modification of the narcissist’s coping strategy.

The attitude of the narcissist towards lying is very childish and simple: If the narcissist lies and gets away with it, (s)he interprets this as being clever and superior to others. In this sense, while common sense clearly sees lying as a social ill, the narcissist views lying as an excellent tool to obtain what (s)he wants and as a means to demonstrate how stupid others are.

A person now, who wishes to engage in real communication and shows openness will be viewed by the narcissist as an utter fool who deserves to be exploited. Willingness to communicate and to show openness will be seen be the narcissist as weakness and stupidity.

When dealing with a narcissist, extreme care must be taken and events need to be recorded. It also is important to communicate with others who have to deal with the narcissist in order to counter-act splitting. This is, the narcissist uses lies in order to set up people against each other. In general, this is quite simple: The narcissist tells a person A that person B doesn’t like person A and the same the other way round. This then prevents A from talking to B and hence both parties can be manipulated through the narcissist’s lies.

While a normal person will be embarrassed when found out lying, not so the narcissist. The narcissist will see this as a threat to her/his superiority and will straight away think of ways of how to overcome this threat and this is by forming new lies.

To say it in one sentence: For the narcissist lying is fun and a tool, and anybody who doesn’t lie is a fool in the eyes of the narcissist. Trying to communicate with a narcissist is therefore pointless.

- Dr. Ludger Hofmann-Engl

I had actually started to believe that possibly my mother was no longer a narcissist. This happens to everyone involved with one of these individuals. Over. And over. And over. This is why most experts and anyone who has escaped from a relationship with one of them usually strongly advise that once you determine that someone is a narcissist, you have no further contact.

I have confirmation. She has not been magically cured. It’s been so long since I’ve had any issues with her that I believed she had changed. It is me that has changed. There I go again handing all my power right back to her.

She’s a fanatic about safety. Seriously obsessive. My son’s bus stop is two houses away from ours. She stands out in the driveway just watching him until the bus comes each morning. It’s creepy. My son has told me it creeps him out. Early last week I asked her to stop because it’s embarrassing.

Today she told me that she asked him if it bothered him to have her stand in the driveway and that he said no. She also mentioned that she had asked him if it was embarrassing to him for her to wave at him while he was at the bus stop and he said no. I thought nothing of this except that I must have misunderstood my son when he and I had talked about it, shrugged my shoulders and said, “ok”. I thought it was sort of odd that she felt the need to tell me such mundane details but I got busy making dinner and forgot all about this conversation.

At dinner, my sons were both telling me about their day and told me a funny story about their grandmother trying to figure out the remote. Since she was now the topic of conversation, my 11 year old remembered overhearing the conversation between my mother and I from earlier. He said that she never asked him if standing in the driveway was embarrassing, only if waving to him was embarrassing.

I immediately jumped to the conclusion that she just forgot their conversation. She is getting older. This is a perfectly logical conclusion when dealing with a normal person. My son wanted to know why she would say that she had asked him something that she hadn’t. That’s when it hit me. The lies. Narcissists lie for sport, for no apparent reason at all. They also lie to protect their precious images and to get what they want. She lied because she didn’t want me to think she was embarrassing my son and she wants to continue to stand in the driveway to watch him without me insisting that she stop.

I realize that this sounds like a petty, minor detail that can easily truly be a misunderstanding. I know better when dealing with a narcissist. It’s not petty or minor at all. I’ve lived within a web of these types of petty, minor lies and great big lies my whole life. They all eventually add up to low self-worth, confusion and therapy. I told my son the truth.

I was searching online to try and figure out if I should even bother confronting her about this. I knew before I found my answer that she would just claim ignorance, say that I must have misunderstood her or that she must have misunderstood him, and turn it around by asking me why I’m overreacting and making a big deal over nothing. Typical manipulative behavior. “Trying to communicate with a narcissist is therefore pointless.”. Thank you for the reminder Doctor.

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Narcissistic Mothers

Cyndi — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:37:22 +0000

“I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.” – Sylvia Plath

There is a special place in hell for narcissistic mothers. Ms. Plath herself indulged in the ultimate narcissistic act when she committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven while her two young children were asleep in the same apartment. How thoughtful of her to have sealed off their rooms with towels so that the fumes wouldn’t consume them too. She needed someone to live on to remember her and care that she was gone.

Narcisstic mothers do not have children for the same reasons the rest of us do. They do not look forward to the birth of their child because they can’t wait to see what they look like or what type of personality they will have or who they will become. No, they have children for one reason only. More mirrors. They have children so that the children will love them unconditionally, not the other way around. They have children to do things for them. They have children to reflect their false images. They have children to use, abuse and control them.

They don’t see their role as a mother as life’s biggest gift. It’s a burden they didn’t expect. They thought they were creating little “mini-me’s”. They didn’t take into account the fact that somewhere around age 2, these spiteful, ungrateful (in their minds) little creatures start to develop their own individual personalities and wills of their own. For the rest of us, that’s the best part of being a mom…watching our children grow into increasingly independent, confident, free-thinking individuals. For the narcissistic mother, each step away from her is an absolute act of betrayal.

Children have emotions that they express quite freely. This annoying practice is squashed as early as possible since narcissists cannot handle emotions. “What is wrong with you?” and “You’re so over-sensitive.” and “You’re overreacting.” are common phrases uttered to children of narcissists.

These mothers end up resenting all the work that goes into raising a child, having no use for them unless they are achieving, doing something or otherwise reflecting their false image onto them. Children are a nuisance to them, taking precious time away from their own agendas. They don’t like to have to shop for clothes for their children, prepare meals for them, do their laundry, pay for daycare, enroll them in activities, drive them to friends’ houses, throw birthday parties, pay for their college educations or protect them from abuse.

They will smother and over-protect their children under the guise that they are taking care of them. They will fail to provide age-appropriate information on such things as menstruation, personal grooming (make-up, hairstyles, shaving, etc.), budgeting money and dating. This all serves to keep them under her control as long as possible. If they are ill-informed and over-protected, they will not feel confident to grow or move further away from her.

They will use their children as slaves. They will delegate all household chores to the children as early as possible. They will insist that they pay for their own personal items and clothing as early as possible. Older children will become responsible for younger children. No matter how many of her responsibilites her children take on, it will never be enough or be done well enough. They expect perfection and constantly remind their children that they fail to meet this expectation.

Of course, they train their children to believe that they are the ideal mother. Any evidence to the contrary is to be kept secret at all costs. They will behave much differently towards their children in public than they do at home. They will vehemently deny any wrong-doing on their part and most likely blame their children, completely re-writing history.

Narcissistic mothers don’t stop being narcissists when their children become adults. They will play siblings against each other. They will compare siblings. They will talk to siblings about each other. When they have a problem with one , they will talk to another about it.

They are jealous of their childrens’ successes, even though they brag to others about them (‘see how great MY kids turned out”). They will make snide comments if they think one of their adult children has a better marriage, house, job, etc. than they do. They are thrilled when they perceive that one of their adult children has failed in some way (although they never tell others about these “failures”, it reflects poorly on them). They are more than happy to assist when necessary because that makes them look good, plus, there is an added bonus of having favors to collect on. Asking a narcissistic mother for a favor feels like selling your soul to the devil. It’s emotional extortion.

These mothers steal their kids’ childhoods, identities and future healthy relationships. They will keep on taking and sucking the life out of their children for as long as they live, if their children allow it. It is incredibly difficult and painful to acknowledge that your mother never loved you without blaming yourself. She raised you to blame yourself for everything. It is, however, necessary to do so in order to insure that this insidious disorder isn’t perpetuated generation after generation.

Also published at Psych Central

Interesting related link regarding Suicide and Sylvia Plath: Ecstatic Suicide

Some online resources:

Daughters Of Narcissistic Mothers

Sanctuary for the Abused