speakout Thu 21-Jun-18 17:40:21
..."why would they all obey her?"
This is what I don't understand
From www.narcissisticmother.com/narcissistic-mother-enmeshment-2 -
"When you’re a baby, you begin to form boundaries with your family members, dictated by your parents of course, but that is how you learn them. When you are old enough to communicate your boundaries to others, you do so. However, people who grew up in a family with a narcissistic parent or a narcissistic mother boundary problems develop and all those involved become emotionally less functional. Children become victims of her enmeshment and lack of proper boundaries.
She is the one who created you, why shouldn’t she get to have complete control over what you do and how you live?
From her limited point of view, she believes since she took care of you when you weren’t old enough to care for yourself, you owe it to her to never keep a secret from her or have your own space.
You are an extension of her, a product, an object, a mirror. You are a part of her and she gets to treat you as such.
This is the mentality of an enmeshed narcissistic mother.
Narcissistic mothers know how to overtly and covertly control their family, using tactics that may be unbeknownst to others. She may make you feel guilty if you are not attending to her every need. When you are always on pins and needles around her, it may cause you to grow up to be hypersensitive, especially when it comes to rejection.
To the outside world, this enmeshment may come across as intimacy or your narcissistic mother really cherishes you. But in reality, you were never allowed to develop your own identity separate from her. She was always trying to make you take on her identity, whether she was aware of it or not. She may have also tried to live vicariously through you once you were old enough for her to be jealous or want to be more like you, becoming overly involved in your social life, school, sports, etc.
If you are not careful, this enmeshment from your narcissistic mother can persist an entire lifetime. Your own boundaries may be poorly developed as an adult with inadequate self-protection against others and their manipulations. When you have a narcissistic mother, it is hard to tell where your feelings start and hers end. Her feelings take over you and these feelings can generalize into other relationships you may form in your lifetime."