Self absorbed mum

This is exactly my mum. When I call (she doesn’t ever call me) the only words I need to say are hello mum - then I just listen - she is negative, unhappy and plain nasty about most things. I have given up expecting any change

My dm had always done this. Nothing to do with age. No interest whatsoever. You could spend a week with her and she’d not ask you one question. Never asks how you are. Just prattles on about a couple of people she has a bizarre fixation on. No interest in her dc or all but one of the gc. Narcissist in my view.

Not my mother (I'm nc with her) but a friend of mine
No matter the topic,she will always twist it back to herself
Me-oh dp lost his job'
Her-i lost my job a few years ago,have I told you about my new man?'
Me-im going to be a granny!'
Her-ill never have grandkids...'
It's got to the point,I'll only chat online with her and keep it simple
It's really annoying-i don't want to fall out with her but she's very self absorbed

This is quite heartbreaking. Your poor kids . I wouldn’t bother trying to maintain a relationship if my mum did this to my kids. Cutting them off to sing praises about their cousin? I’d be fuming and probably interrupt with ‘enough about Laura now - we’ve all heard it’.

No but my sister is

Hearing loss is definitely a factor too

At the risk of bring shot down as ageist, I would say this is prob just an age thing.

My parents and many of my friends parents (60's - 70's mostly) have gotten like this. Its likely a combination of retiring, narrowing social circles and sometimes just a natural part of life as you age.

They're not all raging narcissists (although some poss are) or all ND (although again some may be) And its def not all older people obvs.

However anecdotally, its common enough among my peers to be noticeable If you know they're not being malicious, you kind of just have to accept it and adjust your expectations accordingly. Obviously anything that affects the feelings of grandchildren in the family needs to be managed more directly.

Yup. She never used to be like this, the opposite actually. Spent her entire adulthood giving to others. But as she’s got older her world has shrunk (covid accelerated this) and now she can only cope with herself, dad (barely) and her house. She talks a good talk but honestly, she doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself now. She’s had enough. Her health anxiety is beyond ridiculous, and she seeks attention by any means including brazenly lying and making shit up.

It is what it is. Maybe I’ll be the same when I’m her age. She was the best possible mother to us for decades, and put up with a lot from her husband and siblings for decades. Happy to let her have what she needs at this time of her life.

I get this so much. I realised that growing up, I formed a view of myself as quite a boring person because my mum would just interrupt me mid sentence and change the subject. She has got even worse with age like many of the mums others here have talked about. It's banging on at great length about boring neighbours I don't know but her specialist subject is the minutiae of my 12 year old niece she looks after.

"And then I gave Laura a biscuit, a custard cream or was it a bourbon... No that was on Thursday it was last Monday she had a custard cream"

But now I've noticed she does it to my younger kids. We only see her a few times a year, not a few times a week like her other grandchildren so you'd think she would make more effort to listen to them.
One of my kids will try and tell her something about themselves, like my 7 year old daughter was in a professional production with one of the big ballet companies. I'd said nana might like to hear about it and she just interrupted about ten words in:
"Well Laura does ballet and you want to have seen her show, it was amazing, and her costume was pink and her shoes were pink" etc etc.
I worry now it's going to impact my children the way it did me. Strangely she was a nurse before retirement and I'd have thought listening was a key skill. She was a great nurse by all accounts. I know she does really love us too and it's not done with malice. Still hurts though.

Yes? She was absolutely vile to me for most of my life. I don't want to go into what she did to me over the course of some of those years. I finally went NC after she threatened to turn up and totally ruin my wedding in 1995. Suffice to say, she was one twisted narcissist.

I'm the same. I don't have a diagnosis of NPD.

This is my mum, she’s recently paid for a private diagnosis. I’m not saying there aren’t other factors at play but this example really resonates. It’s the same as how she thinks endless gossip about friends and neighbours who I’ve never or barely met is interesting to me. In her mind, if we’ve met up and all she’s talked about is a friend’s poor daughter going through IVF, it’s a successful meet up as she was making conversation throughout. Attempting to say anything about myself, or topics that interest me, will just cause her eyes to glaze over and answer in ‘mmm’ responses. But the other day I commented I was finding my three year old’s outbursts tricky to navigate and she talked for an hour non stop about how SHE would manage mine and my siblings behaviour all the way through childhood. Again, in her mind she was pleased to share her experiences even though I wasn’t really looking for advice, just empathy. She gets hyper fixated on things too like the lady who doesn’t clean the loo properly at her work and will no word of a lie talk and talk of it even though it would be obvious to anyone that we are dying of boredom and don’t care.

I do try to understand as I suspect I’m on the autism spectrum myself but it’s incredibly difficult when I don’t feel like I’m getting any understanding from her about the things that wind her up about me (sticking to a schedule, planning things meticulously, feeling uncomfortable when plans change etc etc that have caused arguments in the past where she’s been massively unaccepting of those aspects of my personality)

My mum is like this 😅 You'd call her to tell her something or ask something but she'd speak the whole time, without asking how you are or why you're calling, and before you have the time to even start talking, she's like "Oh, I got to go, bye!" 😆😆🙄🙄

@lemonfizzysweets I wrote my 22 year old sons eulogy in 2022 and it took me a good week and a half and there was about 25 pages before I realised I'm not writing a book and I needed to cut it down by a lot haha I'm also the opposite of your mum and I absolutely hated the idea of any sympathy or attention whatsoever and made it clear I did not want sympathy cards or flowers.
I wonder why some people can only function when everything is about them though, my mum isn't quite as bad as you describe yours well not to us kids anyway but I do know she will use any emergency/disaster to ring in sick as if she is the one sorting everything out

My mum does this but when I realised she probably has ADHD (loads of other symptoms not just this) it made more sense and I became less annoyed.

One of the markers of ADHD is turning the story onto yourself as a way to show you have understood what the person is saying, so if you say ‘my cat died’ and they are like ‘I lost a cat once and was sad’ it’s not them trying to make it about them but it’s them showing they empathise with you.

Obviously this won’t be the case for everyone’s mum but there must be thousands of undiagnosed women in their 60s and 70s who have ADHD and people just think they are rude or socially inept.

My mums stock answer to everything from spilt milk to terminal illness these days is “hey ho, never mind!” 🙄
My dad is the one on transmit and doesn’t give a shit what you’re talking about and just wants to talk about him/his views/what he’s watched on TV…it is so rude, which is ironic considering we had manners drummed into us as kids!

Yes! I don't talk to her about anything serious as there's no point, still manages to make it about herself

If I was killed/died and my mother needed to provide a eulogy she would be stumped. She doesn't have a clue about my interests, my job or what I had going on in my life.

(she would love the sympathy or drama of it all and would dine on it for ages - she would secretly be giddy with delight if it involved standing in front of the press, tearful, in great lighting, framed in front of court doors in her tasteful but suitably stylish suit that she would have obsessed over wearing for several days)

If she asks 'How are you?' I know she immediately stops listening and is waiting till a breath is taken to jump in and regale me with how Brenda over the road looked at her funny again.

It is even worse these days because her social bubble has reduced drastically (a few years ago her quintet of BFFs decided she was a CF after a drama of her own making and ghosted her). Now, because she doesn't go anywhere or meet anyone, I have endless opinions of the sensationalist news, trump and her slow-growing 'us and them' mindset to anyone who doesn't think, look or think like her.

Hahaha

Mine is like this. She stayed a few days for Xmas (never again) and my DH was like 'wow that woman can monologue' lol

I think he might like that one, and it would be woefully inaccurate.

My mum is somewhat like this.

Gone through a very hard time lately with deaths & illnesses "so & so husband died so
It's not just you going through a hard time everyone is."
Always makes it about herself, find it very annoying, nowadays I just don't reply if she does it.

Mine definitely does this. And also turns anything positive into a negative. And anything unrelated to her becomes about her. And even if we experience things that she hasn't in her life (like miscarriage for example, my sibling and I both experienced it multiple times, mum never did) then the conversation is suddenly slapped on its head and turned about her. She never used to be like this only in last 10y or so, even my DH of 18y agrees! She's become very bitter.

I don't think it's necessarily that they are a narcissist, though they may have some tendencies. It could be just poor social skills.

I sometimes do this and interrupt out of enthusiasm for the topic or wanting to empathise rather than make it about me, but then apologise and invite the person to continue.

Granddick?