Why does my mother do this?

[elfin07]

Whenever I get upset about something or have a problem, my mother also gets upset and then my father asks me to apologise to her. Therefore ignoring my feelings completely.

Eg I broke up with my boyfriend. I was upset so my Mother cried and my dad made me say sorry because I was upsetting her.

My car broken down and I was on my way to visit my parents. When I eventually arrived my mother cried because I had ruined her evening. My dad made me apologise for upsetting her.

I don't tell them much for this reason but sometimes it's unavoidable eg a break up.

Why can't she separate my feelings from her own? And why am I not allowed to have feelings of my own? It's exhausting. Does anyone else's parents do this and is there a name for it?

She is a drama lama x The next time say to your Dad, You are not responsible for her emotions, tell her to get a grip.

Or when she tells you any of her news start crying hysterically she might get the hint.

The way narcissism gets bandied about on these boards is spectacular.

I wish people would stop chucking that diagnosis about like it's not an incredibly rare disorder – there isn't even CLOSE to enough information in the OP to indicate NPD.

She does sound at the very least like a royal pain in the arse, though, and your dad isn't helping. I'm seconding Sallycinammonbangsthedruminthe's recommendation of looking up Grey Rock – it saved my sanity until I went NC....

Sending hugs, OP.

This is ridiculous. Why are you apologising? WHY are you apologising?

You can have narcissistic traits without NPD.

Absolutely, Kewcumber – everyone on the planet has narcissistic traits - it's part of being human. Some have them more than others.

But sometimes the labels come rocketing out on these boards like this is a multimillion rollover game of Pin The Disorder On The Stranger and it gets my back right up. And because narcissism is one that cuts close for me personally, when I see that everyone and their brother's irritating mother is "A Narcissist", it gets me particularly spiky.

Don't want to derail the thread, though – I just couldn't hold back the grizzle for a second.

I can;t comment on a psychiatric disorder but I do sympathise with the OP.
When my husband died my mother went to pieces..
She had no great relationship with my OH, in fact despised him.
But she was so "distraught" that she invited a stream of mourners and friends around to her home and expected me to lay on the tea and cakes.

Many years later I met a lovely man .
We set up a happy family.
When our second child was born my mother kindly looked after our two year old son for a few hours .
It was a very quick and easy birth, born at 11.30 am, and late afternoon OH and I arrived back at my mother's house to pick up our two year old son.
I wanted to stay for a while with my mother ( also her friend who had been staying all day with her) but given that it was close to dinner time OH decided to go to pick up a chinese takeaway meal with our son, so we could all go back home.

My mother had new baby in arms, cooing and loving, and started barking at me to lift the table and 4 chairs from the shed into the garden, and bring everyone tea.

It was 4 hours since I had given birth - and my mother wanted me to lug garden furniture and make tea because she was too busy.

Wow. Mother is that you? Sorry OP I have exactly the same with my mother. Except I would have if we hadn't been NC for the last 10 years and it's been frankly, wonderful without her narcissistic bullshit.

I don't think Narcissism is as rare as people believe, I'm certainly aware of a fair few with these behaviours but they're just dismissed because, you know mothers (and fathers) can be annoying sometimes.

Mine used to say things like 'if you've got a problem I don't want to know it will just stress me out' or if I called would talk about herself or my cousin etc for 15 minutes then say 'im hanging up now, I've nothing else to say,' without once asking me how I was!

My father the same, always telling me to apologise when he knew I'd done nothing wrong just to 'keep the peace' the enabler.

I'd suggest you go NC, it'll likely get that way and save yourself a LOT of heartache in the meantime.