Self absorbed mum

[Fatcrab]

Anyone elses mum self absorbed? Whenever I or my brother speak about something, mum somehow makes it about herself....I could be talking about anything and she becomes the centre of it.

However, If we are speaking about a subject she has no knowledge on, she wont ask questions or show any interest in anyway, shel just wander off and potter around the house. As soon as she can speak about herself she will change the conversation and speak....then go on repeat.🤣

Every christmas & bday mum always says "I dont really know what to get you" and I think, yes probably because you never actually ask or show any interest in my life....its always a one way street...she talks at me and I listen.

I'd never really noticed this until just a few years back, but its actually very obvious and its just who she is 🤷🏻‍♀️.im not angry, I just wondered if other mums are like this?.

Yep I have the same. Asks a question and then you get half way through a sentence and she just carries on talking. Or it feels like an interrogation just mining for information. Last time we all saw her, she was talking about something very ordinary she had done a a kid and said to my child "grandma has always been in the limelight" I had to dig deep on hearing that particular gem.

It is quite sad wen your mum isn't interested in you, it's not just me though she does it to.

My mother is somewhat like that too. I have just sort of learnt to live with it over the years. I don't know if I accept it or it's just something I've gotten used to.

My maternal grandbitch was like this! If you started talking about anything, she'd develop a simpering sickly smile and just stare at you until you'd finished. Then she'd start a conversation about herself. My mum even said in front of her a few times "I may as well talk to myself" and all she got was a stupid giggle and then continuation!
It's pig bloody ignorant if you ask me and a trait of the narcissist, which my mums mother definitely was!

Its called narcissism.

Grandbitch?

Yes. She'd also tell me details of a neighbour's great niece's wedding too and their cat. It was all transmit mode. Honestly though, I'd give so much to hear it now.

I love the term grandbitch. So, for the male, is it grandbastard?

Do the same to her.

Granddick?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Hahaha

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.

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

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!

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.

@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 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!" 😆😆🙄🙄

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)

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

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 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.