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.

Wow I feel like this is the post I've always been looking for, growing up with a narcissistic parent is horrendous. Mine was awful to us but I'll say me as I can't speak for my sisters. She would basically use me as a skivvy. Taking her boots/ shoes off for her when she got home. Doing all the housework from 7 upwards. She would throw anything she could get her hands on at me, scream shout, beat us and then try and get our sympathy because her hand hurt from continuously slapping me. She would pull my hair to the floor. We were all dancers and she would act like mum of the year at lessons and competitions but if we didn't do well or stopped while on stage for whatever reasons we were in for it when we got home. I once said I wanted to quit dance when I 15 and she slapped me and left me in the rain in the dance hall car park. I was a very depressed child and tried to stab myself in the stomach with a kitchen knife when I was around 10. I'm almost 30 but my youngest sister is 17 and she's not quite as bad now possibly because she's the baby. but she's still crazy.

I rarely spend time with her now, she incapable of listening to anything anyone says and only wants to talk about herself. after my recent c-section 4 months ago she asked me how I was healing and I said "hmm not great I'm in a lot of pain" before I could finish that sentence she cut me off with "I'm so nervous for my job interview Friday"

thanks mum, didn't just get cut open or anything, but no let's worry about your job interview. Why do I bother 🥲

Is this just something narcissistic women do? My mum is a clear size 10/12 she's not a big women by any stretch but she insists she a size 6 I've even seen her buy a size 4 before. These clothes look ridiculous on her because she not a size 4/6 she's just not. But she insists on it. She always tell me I look goood when I'm bigger too, and tells me I'm getting too thin when I'm smaller, her way of keeping me bigger than her I suppose so she can feel good about herself. Very backwards way of thinking

the insults and then the ‘you’re just never able to laugh at yourself’

So many bells ringing here…

OMG this. I grew up being teased mercilessly by my (loving but a bit socially inept) dad and then having to hear 'learn to laugh at yourself' from my mum because I didn't like it.

Yes, another deeply unpleasant trait.

I was teased mercilessly as a child about some horrific things. This wasn’t
gentle leg pulling and banter, this was nasty and scary stuff. And likewise, when I challenged her about it when I was an adult, she either laughed it off or told me I imagined it.

I was, not surprisingly, a very anxious child who overthought a lot of things. We had a neighbour who had an elderly tenant in one of the rooms in her house. One day, I realised she was no longer there, so I asked mother where she had gone. She told me the neighbour got fed up with her and bricked her up alive in the wall. I guess it sounds pathetic now but it really, really distressed me at the time - I think I was about 6/7 and I’ve never forgotten the terror at the thought. She thought my reaction was hilarious and then subsequently told me I was stupid to even believe it!

@LittlemissMama67 I can empathise so much with you. I am left handed and struggled to use a fountain pen. My grip meant I inevitably smudged what I had written. When doing homework, she would stand over me and scream at me because I either made a mess or a mistake. If I did either, she would rip the page out of my exercise book and make me restart again. Of course, if someone puts you under huge amounts of pressure, you’re bound to make more errors! She would then tell me how much distress I was causing her and how ill I made her feel with my incompetence.

I then had to explain at school why my books were always missing so many pages.

Yes to this. Except my father was a bully and a sadist.

JohnPrescottsPyjamas I am so sorry you have gone through this,
Being teased, shamed ridiculed is just awful.
And having our feelings dismissed and trivialised even later in life is the cruelest blow.
Like many of us I can relate to what you are describing.
So many scary scenarios, gaslighting, then minimising - even finding humour is horrific.
As a small child I was mesmerised by my father's daily shaving ritual, which he did downstairs every morning in the kitchen.
An old fashioned soap bowl, a shaving brush, I love the scent of the soap, the way it would lather on his face. He always kept his razor on a very high shelf in a cupboard ( I was around 3-4 years old), but the soap and brush were within my reach.
I remember taking the bowl and brush and lathering my face one day.
My mother came in screaming to the kitchen, telling me that by soaping up my face I would get "male hormones on my skin" and would grow a beard.
I was horrified.
My mother made me scrub my face with hot soapy water and a Brillo ( wire wool) pad as I sobbed.
It was painful, and my face bled afterwards.
Just one of the many awful aspects of my childhood.

Just to add my mother remembers the shaving incident, but brushes it off with a laugh- " you were so silly to believe that".

My mum threw the house phone at my face because she enraged that my friend kept calling the night before picture day, it burst my lip and she got angry at me weeks later when my photos proofs came home and I looked disfigured, she screamed at me saying why the f have you made that stupid ugly face?? Erm because you bust my lip 🤔

she would brush our hair so voilently then crack us over the head with the brush if we made a peep.

if I ever mention a memory from my childhood that makes her look bad she denies it ever happened and says I'm embellishing things to make her look bad

It’s amazing how so much of what we have all gone through is so similar. I’m finding this thread so useful just in that there are others who can “get” what life was like growing up.

I think it’s so alien to people growing up in non-abusive homes, that they have trouble understanding how bad it can be

Yes, it’s comforting (in a way) to know that this isn’t a figment of my imagination. There are women like this and some of them become mothers.

We’ve previously discussed counselling and therapy. I was wondering whether anyone had tried writing it all down. I’m thinking that writing might help me sort out my thoughts about it, but would it be traumatising? I can’t decide.

I agree.
Others just don't get it.
Well meaning people saying " But she's your Mum", I see the relationships of other people who look to their mothers for support, guidance, wisdom,affirmation- I had none of these things from my mother,in fact she tears me down, undermines me, fuels my self doubt, citicises, disrepects, mocks and shames.
One of the few good things that has come from her is an example of how not to parent, how to foster a relationship of mutual respect and deep supportive love with my own ( adult) children.
They seek out my company, ask to come on holiday with me, accept my guideance ( with a light tiller- their independence is important).

That good mother daughter relationship didn't happen with me and my mother, but it has happened with me and my children. Which is deeply validating and healing.

Can relate to so much of this. Vicious hair combing especially. Mine stabbed me in really hard in the head with the metal comb of my wedding veil when I asked her to help with my hair on my wedding day (aged 27 still abusing me still full of vile rage…even on my wedding day) I said owwww it hurt so much, she denied doing it. She managed to make me cry briefly. It was a single act of nasty jealously she just couldn’t help herself - what a bitch.

Again, speakout, that is uncannily like my own experience. Mine once said mournfully “you never confide in me”. Of course I didn’t, because when I did she shared it very inappropriately. I cannot think of any occasion when she has offered support or affirmation. I have tried very hard to create a different sort of relationship with my own children.

I missed your post, Nicola. Mine tried hard to wreck my wedding day (and I was older than you). I’m sorry you had a similar experience.

At around 14 when I was a size 8 at most one of her friends (inappropriately) commented on how large my boobs were. She took the opportunity to scoff and say "ha they're fat boobs" as in I only had boobs because I was fat. She was always very critical of me at every chance she got

Instead of being a mother and shutting down the inappropriate commentation on her teenage daughters body she decided it was better to insult me In front of me. She always enjoyed discussing infront of me too to friends and neighbours how I hadn't got my period yet at 14 and there must be something wrong with me, no real concern though she was giggling with her pals as if my period Is Anyones business and as is if there was a problem that was funny.

There was certainly an inappropriate interest in my physical development too - and that of my DD. She insisted on inspecting me and then telling others. I remember the school playground bitch coming up to me with her cronies and announcing, “JohnPrescottsPyjamas has got hair down there!” and them all laughing. When I went home and challenged her over her telling the bitch’s mother, she pretended to be outraged that I’d ‘accused’ her of such ‘lies’! Clearly, there was only one source of the info.

She pestered for years about whether DD had started her periods but I grey rocked and said I had no idea and took great delight in commenting on DD’s teenage skin saying she’d never had spots etc.

@speakout With you on this. I do take a huge amount of comfort that my adult DCs genuinely want to confide in and visit me without the sense of duty and guilt I always had with my mother. I sincerely hope that by breaking the cycle, I’ve at least achieved a far more rewarding family relationship and positive dynamic than she ever did. Looking back, she must have spent every waking hour consumed by jealousy, spite, resentment and misdirected anger.
DD and I suspect she was certainly a victim of abuse herself for her to have so many issues and bizarre hang ups and very sad that she never recognised this and chose to perpetuate the pattern.

Sorry! Rereading my post - it wasn’t ME that took pleasure in DD’s teenage spots - it was her! Doh!

It's such strange behaviour. When I was 20 I had my first baby. I was in a DV relationship at the time and had him and mum present at the birth. They're both narcissists so not exactly the support you'd hope for in such a situation. My mum kept telling me off for screaming. Made me apologise to the nurse for swearing. More concerned for the nurse than her daughter writhing around in pain. And I was in no way swearing at the midwife. Just swearing because I was in agony.

she told me to shut up when I told the midwife my waters had gone, which they and I had meconium. The buzzer was pressed and both of them were told to sit on the chairs, not move and not say a word.

she made fun of my sons name, and screamed at me for being less than inviting when she showed up unannounced at my house hours after I was discharged and just wanted to lay down and look at my baby. I had to let her in because she was causing a scene outside. A few years later when I had my second she assumed she was going to be a birth partner again. She didn't like it when I said I only wanted my partner. Luckily covid saw to that anyway

My mother came down to help when I had my third child. Only because I asked because she wouldn’t have offered. She complained about being bored looking after a three year old for a few days. When she visited me in hospital she sulked because I wasn’t giving her enough attention. I was on morphine and concentrating on my husband and other child more than I should have been apparently. When I came out of hospital she sulked and bitched about me to just husband. When she left we didn’t speak for months.

Can anyone come up with an explanation for why these women behave as they do? I really don’t get it.

When I went to have my second I was induced it took 5 days. My partner had my son for the 5 days on the final day of asked me mum to be ready to take my son from my partner as I was having a c section and he couldn't be late. It was the height of the pandemic and I asked 2 things of her.

1. to be home when I called to say my partner would be dropping my son off (shouldn't have been hard there was nowhere to go at the time)
2. Not to take him into any shops I was terrified of him or my newborn catching covid.

i called 3 hours in advance and said my partner would be dropping my son off at 10 and could she make sure she was there she said yes of course. My partner arrived at 10 and she wasn't in. I called her and she said she'd gone for a walk... are you kidding me?

a few weeks after I had my baby my son was on my mums phone and showed me a picture of him in the car and said this was when I stayed at granny's. I looked at the time stamp and it was during the 1 day she had him and I asked her to take him nowhere. I said why was he in the car and she said I took him to Morrisons. I could have screamed. It dosnt seem like a big deal, but it's the complete disregard of anything I say that gets my back up

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas yet more similarities between these people. The mind boggles! Mine also took a very close interest in when I grew pubic hair. She would have a look to check. She took oddly little interest in the start of periods (thank God) but is desperately curious about my menopause status. Doesn't dare to ask so asks instead what I know about my sisters' and I just say we don't discuss.

@WaggledMyAerialAndWolfedMyCustardCreams my therapist advised me to journal things - both historical and current problems. But of course the difference there is that I have my therapist to bounce things off so am in less danger of opening some horrible Pandora's box by accident. I think you might be able to get some good insights by writing things down but I would suggest you tackle it carefully. My therapist advises me to note what I am feeling as I journal stuff, and journal the feelings as well. Then try to work out where the feelings are coming from. For example if I am writing about a rage reaction because my husband did something mildly annoying she encourages me to consider why my reaction is so over the top. Is he, for instance, unwittingly doing something in a similar way to my mother? Or whatever. I think just spilling out the horrible memories in a big session could be problematic. In the past I've had advice along the lines of writing a letter to my mother raising my complaints and then writing one back as if from her addressing my complaints and then considering how I feel about that. It was quite illuminating, actually. The letter I wrote to myself from my mother was all the tripe and self-justification she would write. I did not find myself wishing she would apologise and writing an apology as if from her, for example. It freed me from the desire to have a nice mother (unattainable) and that was actually quite helpful.