My mother is very narcissistic. She always has been and always will be. As a child everything revolved around her. She is abusive to my Dad and overbearing to people around her. The older I’ve got, the more I realise she is a product of a) her traumatic past (which she recreated for my sibling and I) and b) she’s likely neurodiverse and doesn’t get social cues. I struggle to understand her lack of awareness on certain things as she is extremely intelligent and often she seems to consciously know what she’s doing and gets a kick out of people’s reactions. She
loves being controversial.
She moved to a rural village several years ago and made a great social scene. This involved her suddenly placing this social scene above all else. An example of this being when she went to drinks with friends on Christmas Eve, despite having invited my siblings up for Xmas who arrived after a 4 hour journey to an empty house in chaos with a 3 month old baby.
Mum has a way of socially isolating herself by coming across as if she is the “great oracle” and expert at everything.
most conversations she has with other people are broadcasts. I have tried to subtly teach her some social skills but she genuinely thinks she is superior to people and will criticise everyone mercilessly as they don’t meet her high standards.
Before Covid hit, she discovered Facebook and became a key board warrior and would give into arguments online here there and everywhere. It was embarrassing as you’d see it come up on my feed and she insisted on befriending lots of my friends, so they’d often tell me about it. I tried teaching her etiquette but again it fell on deaf ears. She is such an “oracle” she’d often repost my posts and then Say that she posted it first and therefore was far more of a trendsetter than I was (thinking this was something I aspired to be?!). During the year before covid she essentially lost a ton of friends by calling them out on Facebook as racists. She likes to think she’s done this subtlety because she’s use articulate wording but it’s very transparent. She started an unholy war against a family in the village because “the village”wanted social venues and this family were converting them venue into a house: living accommodation. She claimed to be great friend with the family but was fuelling all sorts against them online. The family now don’t talk to anyone in the village. She was instrumental in this online bullying. She has now turned everything she did into “mediating”, as she puts it.
During covid she became a bit depressed as people didn’t ring or call her and she became socially isolated (we of course called regularly and FaceTimed and sent photos and messages). As I was a key worker, she actually got to see more of the kids than others did as she & Dad became part of our bubble. She’s didn’t seem to grasp that people not contacting her was possibly down to her actions.
My Dad has retired now and has become a bit of a social butterfly as her runs various events for a few of the clubs he belongs to. He’s loving it and uses it as an opportunity to be away from my Mums verbal and emotional abuse of him. (We have tried to get him help but he doesn’t identify as needing it- we’ll keep offering it though).
mum befriends vulnerable people. Probably because they are easy to befriend as they themselves are lonely. For example people with terminal illness or frail or those who are more nervous. She always goes in a crusade to try to “better them” whether they like it or not. It’s way overstepping boundaries.
I need to point out that DP live in a small rural village. Mum keeps saying she’s been helping people “even when they don’t want it, but I know they need it” giving them financial advice (which she reads off money saving forums). She’s fallen out with several people over this and when we try to say that she needs to stop she ways she sees it as her duty to help people. Reader she is not helping people, she is making them angry and embarrassed.
she had recently started this manipulative cycle of moaning to my sibling and I, that the village are ostracising her and that “all she has ever done is support people and help”. She did this before when we lived in a city and at the time, being young I didn’t realise what she was doing to cause it. Being in a city, she could move from social group to social group making the same
mistakes.
she’s really down about it and now trying to coerce my dad into giving up what he loves doing. She says she went to community event the other day and tried to sit at several tables with people but they kept telling her seats were taken. She said she sat on her own and then left. My Dad was working behind the scenes, so he didn’t know. My sibling told me that they noticed people laughing at her behind her back, when they went to a community event together. My sibling said they were rolling their eyes about her when she wasn’t looking. That seems quite mean but I can’t help but feel she’s been really openly critical to people and now it’s payback eg “you’re all so boring and old” or “this place is so primitive” or “you don’t know what xyz is? Culturally ignorant the lot of you” or the time she strongholds a 80 year old man into opening a bank account he didn’t want because she “can’t stand to see him make no interest on his savings” and then not understand why he got mad! She didn’t even see how this was dodgy grounds!!!
How do I help her help herself and stop making these monumental Mistakes or AIBU and she’s the innocent party? I’ve tried subtly and not so subtly explaining what she’s doing or done and what is and isn’t ok. I don’t know what to do next. Is it a lost cause?
if you read this far, then go you and thank you