Quotes from Narcissistic Mothers (& support for their victims) Thread 2

[01Name]

Following on from this thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4610023-to-ask-for-your-quotes-from-narcissistic-mothers?page=39&reply=120137262, started by @itsgoodtobehome as a tongue-in-cheek repository for anecdotes of appalling remarks/deeds from parents/siblings with rampant NPD. It morphed into a place where those of us suffering the effects of such behaviour could share experiences, solidarity, advice and support. I hope this thread can continue the good work of the original. Your voice will be heard; your opinion and thoughts matter. You are welcome and valued here.

My mother started causing scenes at my daughters events. That was the final straw for me. It wasn’t anything major just arguing with other people or throwing in little huffs but it was the final straw. Mamma bear kicked in and i did for my daughters what i couldn’t ever do for myself - demand some respect xx

Yep, mines really judgemental towards other women, with constant "doesn't she have a mirror" type of comments. men meanwhile are beyond reproach, anything they do wrong is always a woman's fault.

She definitely only values women on their thinness and beauty and if someone young dies who is attractive she will bang on about how it's so tragic that she was so beautiful, she could have married anyone. It's bizarre.

I am a disappointment to her because I live in jeans and hoodies and don't wear makeup and couldn't give a shiny shit about clothes/shoes etc.

Oh God yes. My mothers speciality is making a big thing of ‘I’ve got you a present’. She then gives her GD a fugly ankle length skirt as she thinks it will make her dress more ‘modestly’.

Does anyone have long standing anxiety issues from their relationship with a narc mother. I’ve experienced on and off an irrational fear of physically choking in a social situation which takes the enjoyment away from going out for a meal with friends. My DD suggested there might be a connection, which I hadn’t really thought about.

I know there could be other factors at work and it’s a mistake to self diagnose but I’d be interested to know how many of us are potentially carrying an additional burden from a toxic mother relationship and if so, how did you overcome/cope with it?

I think many of us do unfortunatly JohnPrescottsPyjamas.

I am an older adult and have struggled with anxiety and codependancy in my adult years, having been parentified as a child. These coping mechanisms are necessary for a child growing up with a narc parent, but when we try to apply them to adult life they fall down badly.
My mother traumatised me in many ways as a child.
One was making me eat every morsel on my plate of her ( very disgusting) food.
For years as a child I would dread mealtimes because I knew there would be pressure and a scolding. When I was 8 or nine I discovered I could gobble down the food then bring it up again in the toilet. This continued until well into my teenage years.
Left me with an anxiety surrounding food, especially if I was in a situation where people were eating together.When I started dating at 18/19 years old I would go out for meals with a boyfriend, but it was a real struggle to eat the food, and I would always take myself to the toilet after a main course.
This continued until my late 20s, with the help of friends and partners I did overcome the connection between eating and anxiety.

I also struggle with codependancy as a result of having to caretake both my parents when I was a child ( narc mother and terminally ill father)
I know I have a tendancy to want to fix my loved ones when they struggle- to the extent that it becomes all consuming and really hard if I can't see a way to solve their problems.
I will support my loved ones of course, but I become too enmeshed in their problems and causes me pain and anxiety if I can't make things better.
I have had quite a bit of talking therapy last year, allowing me to explore my maladaptive strategies and that has allowed me to have clearer boudaries and not be so dependant on the happiness of others to feel happy myself.

I agree with speakout and suspect many adult children of narc mothers carry some kind of trauma with them. Years of walking on eggshells in a (mostly doomed) attempt not to provoke her rages certainly shaped me.

Gosh yes. I’m anxious about all kinds of things. Meeting my DH was a real revelation. He has such a calming influence on me

My mum was very volatile when we were younger, always right (according to her) one minute happy then something minor would trigger an absolute tirade of shouting and screaming and blaming us for all her issues.
You could never please her, so if she said: "I,m going out, make sure you do the dishes and clean the bathroom". If you did that she would come home and there would be no acknowledgment of what you had done, but she would find something else you should have done as well, like "well you could have at least put a wash on". If she dropped a cup etc, it was never her fault, it was our behaviour that made it happen and it wouldn't have happened if we had eaten our dinner/played quieter/done the dishes, or anything really she could blame us for.
I was an anxious on edge child that was desperate to be nice to people and not upset them so they wouldn't get angry.

It left me diminishing myself and almost apologising for my existence as a child., also the need to solve people's problems and try not to upset people, which meant I had real difficulty standing up for myself and not complaining about unfair or ill-treatment. Took me until my 30s to deal with that one, still hate confrontation but just grit my teeth and get on with it now.

During childhood my life was about walking on eggshells, trying to be liked and trying to figure out why my mother would be one minute happy the next really angry or sad. In my teenage years she was very sarcastic and critical. She is still the same and coping with her presence is hard.

As a result I have serious difficulties to stand up for myself. I am anxious when someone disagrees with me, and regret my comments instantly, always feeling guilty for everything. And I feel really uncomfortable when I am praised. This happens in work a lot. I have a fullfilling job in a great organisation and get very good feedback. I assume people feel great when their work is recognised, I don't.
I just feel really uncomfortable I can't even describe the feeling...does anyone else have this?

@girlswillbegirls @reesewithoutaspoon @ItsRainingPens @WaggledMyAerialAndWolfedMyCustardCreams @speakout

Thank you all for your replies and open honesty.

I don’t want to blame my mother for all my anxieties but reading your experiences helps me relate to where so many of mine stem from.

My DD works in education and has said to me if a pupil of hers related incidents that I have, it would set every alarm bell ringing about child protection and yet, when you grow up with a parent like this, you assume it’s ‘normal’ because you have no yardstick to compare it with.

My social anxiety seems to have manifested itself more since my mother’s death in 2020. I think possibly because whilst she was alive I had something to rage against. As @speakout said, food was always a trigger point growing up in my home too. If I didn’t finish everything, my mother would cry and tell me how ungrateful and wasteful I was after the effort she had made preparing it, so being unable to finish a plate has always been a source of guilt. I now struggle to eat in public and feel like I’m forcing it down and then get the panicky choking sensation. My GP has recommended beta blockers for the short term so fingers crossed they help overcome these feelings. My DD was concerned it was an ED but there is nothing I would like more than to be able to sit down and put away a meal without fear.

I can relate so much to wanting to fix everyone else too. Possibly because I learnt as a child to become highly tuned to reading emotions in order anticipate, preempt and thus avoid confrontations. Unfortunately, whilst having empathy should be a positive trait, it leaves me very open to overthinking situations or throw away comments by others.

Thank you again for your replies. It just gives me more mental strength that I can beat this knowing I am not the only one.

JohnPrescottsPyjamas I can relate to having highly atuned sensitivities to other people and their feelings.
I used to think it was a skill and while it is still useful at times therapy has shown me that this hypervigilance is down to childhood trauma, and walking on eggshells trying to keep alert to my mother's moods.

I now see my ability to read other people as pathological empathy!

I really do believe that we can at least lessen our maladaptive thinking and find a better way of living.
This year has been a turnaround for me, thanks mostly to therapy, but also the tools I have learned- reparenting myself, supporting my inner child, shadow work.
I drove from home to my gym a few days ago and couldn't find my bag in the car- it had money, credit cards inside, so something I didn't want to lose.
In the past my anxiety would have jumped from 1 to 100 in seconds," what if I dropped it in the street- someone will find it and take all my savings, we won't be able to pay our bills, have to sell the house".
I was surprised to feel so cool about the situation, my higher grown up self took charge and correctly guessed I had left my bag at home.
In the past I would have turned around and headed home immediately without attending my class, because I would stress and worry for the hour.
But I did my class and hardly thought about my bag, calmly returned home to find my bag on the sofa.
Just a small example, but this keeping cool under stress happens a lot now- and it is a relaxed place to be.

My therapist thinks I did have an ED- I thought that term didn't apply to me as I was never trying to lose weight, depsite the eating and purging- I saw a real version of myself. In fact as a teenager I was lanky and would have liked to be a few pounds heavier.
Apparently EDs come in many forms, not just the ones that are publicised.

I overcame the eating anxiety thanks to friends and boyfriends.
If going out we would go to a restaurant like a tapas bar, or order a sharing platter, so I could quietly take small portions of food and eat at a pace that worked for me, without having the pressure of a huge plateful and people noticing what I did or didn't eat. I would explain the situation to my friends too- that also took a lot of pressure off me.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas I am very sorry about your food issue.
My mother also was very fixated with food and forcing us to eat everything on the plate which was always way too much food. This was while normally you would have to hear her monologues, either a glorification about herself or a vicious rant about anything you did/ you said/ how you look. She hasn't changed one bit.

I never felt that choking feeling, my mind used to wonder at mealtimes and I got used to zone out and stopped enjoying food. To this day I eat small portions and frequently and I do not want to see a big plate of food in front of me. I let my kids serve themselves whatever they thing they are going to eat.
Best of luck, I would say therapy will help you, hoping you will feel better about food soon xx

This is fascinating. Mine too was very controlling about food.

Mine too. My mother barely ate anything. Remained a steady 6/7 stone all her life.
She put all "junk" food in a drawer and my father fitted a lock to it. My mother would wear the key around her neck. Rarely allowed me to have anything out of it.
We were given breakfast, lunch and dinner. Small portions, nothing in between. I was always hungry.
I am overweight and have been since I left home. I realise now why, I get anxiety around hunger. And eat too much, because I was always restricted.
She and my father hate the way I look and told me all the time.
What arseholes.

Mine ate in normal quantities but from a very restricted range, so all meals were similarly restricted. I wasn’t hungry but did yearn for something different.

This thread is a bit of an eye opener for me regarding hyper vigilance and also needing.
my mother couldn’t cook so everything hung she made was disgusting. At the same
time she was obsessed with her weight and if she ate a pudding out ( we never had them at home), she wouldn’t eat the main course.

I was forced to eat everything at home, and remember sitting all afternoon over some inedible meal , outside in an outhouse.
At school I was also forced to finish everything. I remember throwing up one day after being made to eat rice pudding.

I can so relate to what you say @speakout about the hyper vigilance and catastrophising. I am also very sensitive to moods, atmospheres and what people say. I grew up in a very unhappy household where reading the atmosphere was crucial.

Needing to finish everything.

About hyper vigilance. Until I read your posts I also thought I had the usual skill of reading others well but I never related to my childhood.

I can have a meeting in work with someone I barely know and by the way the enter the room, sit down and start taking, I already know if it is a good day or not to ask for certain information. I adapt what is I'm the agenda to how I see the person behaving and responding.
It seems many people can't do it. My own manager noticed this and comment positively on it, its very useful in the work environment. It's making me now very sad to realise this is related to watching my mum's changing moods and adapt to them all my life. For survival basically.
This group is my own therapy, I actually feel really embarrassed with the idea of talking about this in counselling, so unfortunately never took that step.

Thanks so much to you all, will keep reading you all. x

Apologies for all the grammatical errors.

Yes, hypervigilance can be a useful attribute but it’s sad to think about how it came about. I’ve had some counselling but that was mostly focused on the here and now. I’m still pondering whether to make the step into therapy. For the moment, I’m reading more about narcissism, but even that can be uncomfortable (for me) because it rings so many bells.

WaggledMyAerialAndWolfedMyCustardCreams I think knowledge is very helpful as a move towards understanding how narcs operate, the influence on children and possible impact on ourselves.
Learning a little about the limbic system, deep memory, and the connection between the inner child and the adult self enables us to recognise and understand our feelings to a greater extent.
I think youtube is a great resource, and can help enormously.
Therapy can be deeply healing, but I understand your reluctance.
There are different types of therapy of course, and some are "easier" than others.
I had therapy last year and it was very hard work, led me to confronting a lot of uncomfortable stuff, and I was often in tears during the session.
Part of the discomfort was rhe type of therapy I should stress though- this therapy wanted me to sit with the pain, feel the discomfort in "real time" rather than talking of the pain.
However the results were incredible, allowed me deep understanding of myself, gave me signposts in my inner world and tools to continue my healing.
I am in a much better place as a result.
The idea of therapy is daunting though.
I have been offered another course of counselling and I do have some trepidation, have put off making that phone call since last week.
Part of me feels I am so much better maybe I should leave it there, I don't want to face those sad and scary places again but part of me wants to continue the process.
I may not be offered the same therapist ( it is free via a charity), so I have to consider that too.
If you think therapy may help there is no harm in having an initial consultation to find if you "gel" with the therapist ( essential), and to talk about the process, how it may effect you, and whether it is the right time,

I'm hyper vigilant, too. As others have said it has its uses but mostly means I'm never fully present in any situation as I am constantly scanning the people I am with plus anyone in the vicinity for danger. I can listen to several conversations at once while giving the impression of partaking fully in the one I am supposed to be in. Perhaps I should have been a spy!

I started therapy a few months ago and it is tough. I am finding it helpful, though. My therapist is prepared to do some email work as well as face to face (zoom) so I can explore some subjects with her in writing before facing up to them in person. That's an approach that helps me. I am quite often taken by surprise by how I react in therapy. Some topics I expect to have me in tears or get me angry and they they don't, while other times I start discussing something I think is fairly minor and dissolve into a puddle within 2 minutes.

There's a lot of good stuff on YouTube but also a lot of things I don't gel with. It's worth exploring. I find Dr Ramani particularly helpful and I have just discovered Patrick Teahan who has some very useful stuff on his channel.

such an interesting thread.

Cranarc yes I listen to Dr Ramani and Patrick Teahan too- excellent resources.
I also find channels about the Mother Wound interesting too- looking at the generational aspects of narcissism- Bethany Webster has lots of wisdom and ideas.
Learning more about narcissism has reallt helped me to untangle my feelings and thoughts.
I spent many years - well into late adulthood thinking that I was the problem, I felt ashamed that I couldn't put my mother on a pedestal, and actually didn't even like.
When others around my mother fawn over her and tell me what a dear sweet woman she is- I thought I must be lacking in some way to feel so negatively towards her.
But since learning more I have come to understand the way she operates.
She plays the victim- it is so cringeworthy to be subjected to.