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.

You’re definitely not alone about Mother’s Day. Every year, I read with incredulity the threads on MN where women say that, when they had their children, their mothers said “Mother’s Day is about you now, spend it how you wish”. That is a million miles from my experience.

@Yeiscray - you are definately not alone!

I've had so many people over the years trying to tell me that my DM loves me and I should try to get on with her, you only get one mother. But I never had a "mother". When I lost my DF so many people said I needed to make more of an effort with my DM. Why would I do that when I had lost the only parent I had had?

People need to deal with them to find out how awful they are before they make these judgements.

My mother would randomly scream right in my ear about nothing. She would also scream if she didn't get her own way. My regret is I never told her to just fuck off with it.

And as for parties good god no! The one time my DM went to a child's party (my DS was invited and my DF took him) she sat there with a face like a smacked arse and complained about the noise. Don't go then!

If they want parties for themselves they can pay and arrange them.

@speakout - I hope your counselling continues to go well. You are a saint amongst women.

Yes, you’re right, if she wanted to she could put on a little party or take the dc to a park or something, that will never happen though, it would take her away from the pub and her beloved arsehole alcoholic boyfriend. It’s just the constant guilt that’s so hard, my DB is also NC with her, he finds it easier because he’s autistic so is very black and white with it (she did wrong, I don’t want her in my life).. whereas I see it in colours and it kills me. I just wish I had a ‘nice’ and ‘caring’ mum. I have grieved and come to terms with it but it doesn’t mean I can move on easily because everyone else has a problem with it.. flying monkeys I think they call them.

I think I’ll just do a small party and invite his favourite little people over.

I think I’ll just do a small party and invite his favourite little people over.

I think that sounds perfect.

I had several small parties when my kids were young ( we were very skint) some of them just based around a picnic in the garden, trampoline, bubble machine, or some indoor activity.
Young children can be pleased easily.

I agree it's the guilt that is hard.
Our mothers are under our skin for better or worse, and their influence pervades our emotional lanndscape with long greasy fingers.

Re. Parties: It's as simple of not organising or participating in things you don't want.
Some people will judge not matter what. Life is way too short to spoil any possibility of happiness. Just do what makes you happy.
On my birthday sometimes I switch off my phone. I want to feel I am alive, one more year and reflect on whatever good things life offered these years, specially my own children. I spend it with my DH and DC and sometimes close friends.
I don't spend the time talking mindlessly on the phone to relatives I don't know much about. Or inviting my own mother. I don't do it. She always always spoils everything and makes a drama of anything. Life it's too short for that.

In relation to therapy not ready for therapy either, I am not brave enough x

“Once I found my voice as an adult, like so many bullies she reverted to victim mode “I just want to feel loved by you” was one of her often repeated phrases along with the miraculous on/off tears she could produce at will.”

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas this has been playing on my mind a lot since reading it here, because it’s such a familiar line, my mum has been very very similar. I think it stings so much because isn’t that all any of us wanted, to be and feel properly loved by our mothers? They weren’t capable of that but they feel entitled to what they see as ‘closeness’ (or control or kowtowing to them and massaging their egos, whatever it is), and it’s our fault as daughters that we don’t have that.

Solidarity to you all 🌸

Re. therapy, huge admiration for those of you who are doing it or considering it or building up to it.

I was attending counselling for about three years until recently, when I felt I’d plateau-ed a bit and could manage on my own. I’ll go back at some stage, probably if/when I have DC or in preparation for them, because there’s lots more to unpack, I think.

An unexpected consequence of counselling is that for the first time, I feel angry - I feel anger that we were treated like this, that it’s had such a profound effect on our development, that we have to cope with the effects of it (or try to manage them) every day forever, and yet our parents expect to stay in our lives, constantly making comments or digs and prolong the damage.

Putting it like that, maybe I should look at booking in again sooner than I was planning 😄

The problem is that it’s not ‘bad enough’ for NC or even really LC - it’s just ‘how they are’. And we’re expected to put up with it because they’re family.

I was talking to a friend about my parents once and she said that she’d noticed I didn’t really seem to have that familial ‘support network’. My sister and I think that our parents just went on to have children because it was ‘the done thing’ and had no concept of how to cope or raise us, emotionally-speaking. I feel that they’re both emotionally damaged people, although I’m not sure to what extent DM’s behaviour is due to intergenerational trauma because we know so little about her upbringing.

Sorry for the monologue. It’s tricky, isn’t it?

💐

I guess it’s classic narcissistic gaslighting , isn’t it?

Despite all their behaviour, we are made to feel that somehow it’s something we’ve done and that we are the ones being unreasonable and unkind by ‘withholding’ our love. I honestly think my NM thought that if she heard me tell her I loved her (on a loop, which is how she wanted me to) and showed affection, it somehow absolved her of any guilt or responsibility and almost endorsed/justified her treatment of me.

I even tried to explain to her that my DH and DCs don’t go around all the time telling each other how much we love each other. We all know we are loved and feel loved because of the way we treat each other, the unconditional kindness we show each other and the mutual respect we have for each others views - even if we don’t always agree.

She just couldn’t get it though, all she wanted was robotic and unquestioned adulation.

@RenewableNewt You're absolutely right. It’s the family guilt thing.

So many times I have said to DH, if she wasn’t my mother, I would absolutely nothing to do with her, but there is this societal expectation that we should have this pink fluffy mother daughter connection and care for her when she gets older. I have so much admiration for those who chose of you who chose to go LC and especially NC. It’s not easy at all but with hindsight, I think my MH and anxiety would have been so much better if I had taken that step too.

Totally agree with the having children because it was the done thing too. My NM didn’t even like children! It was eye opening to see her behaviour with my DCs. She was ok with them as babies because their needs were fairly simple, but once they developed individual personalities, she struggled and tried to control everything they did and said. If we were in public, she wanted them to behave a certain way to impress others, not because they were doing anything wrong. It gave me great insight into my own upbringing and how it was all about maintaining the fictions illusion and others perceptions.

I’m popping back to say there was an interesting discussion of NMs on Woman’s Hour today. I didn’t catch all of it so will be listening on catch-up.

I really relate to this. My mother was very much like this too. I’m not even sure she was any good at attending to us as babies.

Just catching up with this after a while.

I just remembered another one, linked to the deference to men.

At a rare family gathering my parents were staying on a farm, the farmer had recently had a stent so she told me what it was.

I disagreed and said nope it's not solid metal, it looks more like a spring.

"No, he has had it done so HE knows"

At the time I was a clinical physiologist working in cardiology and regularly being responsible for monitoring the patient's ECG during stenting. I'd trained for 4 years.

But obviously a farmer knew more than me because he was a man.

I had a text from my ‘DM’ recently saying she is getting married soon and wants me and my DB to be happy for her. That was a stinger can’t even lie, by text, to not be invited, not even my children (her GC) included. Saying that, this is the man who is financially abusing her, made her a shadow of herself and who she signed over my inheritance to “because he only thought it fair” so I doubt I’d want to go anyway and her behaviour has been disgusting in all honesty.
Still, it’s a killer as I look at my DC and think how could anyone treat their children like this no matter their age.

@sashh I really feel your pain. Its the same here. Won't tell my area of expertise as would be very outing but I have science background. When there is any discussion related to it my NM knows it all ans tells me I'm wrong because she heard it from a "neighbour, the radio" etc. It doesn't matter its my field of work and it drives me crazy. When i tell her that's part of what I'm doing she looks at me with crazy eyes on her (disbelief) and a smirk in her face.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas I'm with you a 100 per cent too. My mother only cares about good behaviour while other people are watching, she looks tense and expects obedience and "affection" from me and my DC while in others company. Appearance is so important too. I't brings me really bad memories of my childhood saying very little in front of others for fear to say the "wrong thing".

She came to visit and now she is back home, I'm recovering from her visit. Won't need to see her until Christmas. Its such a relief.

I used to sell a very niche product for a living, I was fully product trained and had a lot of happy customers. It was expensive as heck. I got the opportunity to give one free to my parents as a sales bonus, they didn't want it as "your Auntie says it's xxx and overpriced rubbish"
My Auntie had never even seen the product in real life.

Again, this is so familiar. I would never have dreamt of asking what my father earned - such information was very much private - but mine is always angling to find out what OH and I earn. She once told me OH’s salary, except she was off by about 50%. When I told her OH earned nowhere near, she was adamant that he did because my aunt had told her.

@girlswillbegirls yes, it's like they cannot compute that their offspring might know more than them even if only in one subject.

I am more qualified then mine (have a Masters) they hate it, tried to sabotage my education a few times and now don’t miss an opportunity for a dig at me

I can totally relate to this too. I studied a bit of Russian at uni (only for a year) and my dad asked me what ‘sputnik’ meant. I wasn’t sure, and as I was saying as much, and that I’d look it up, DM raced to google it before me. It was really obvious and quite weird.

If my dad and I are ever talking about anything she’s not interested in or doesn’t understand, she’ll also try and interrupt and change the subject for us.

She’s also never been able to say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I didn’t know that’. When we were growing up, if she said something and someone else would reply along the lines of ‘actually, not quite, it’s XYZ’, she’d say ‘yes I know’, or ‘yes that’s what I said’, even when she plainly hadn’t. I think it comes from a place of deep insecurity. It’s made me try really hard to get to a place where personally I’m OK with not knowing and saying ‘I don’t know’ and being open to learning.

I agree mine are never wrong (especially when they actually are 😀) my dad once helped me with some homework and disagreed with me he ended up telling me that my history teacher and all my text books were wrong. This was because he couldn’t handle the fact that he was wrong and I was right

Same here. She hates not knowing something or not being able to participate in conversations. She interrupts too and change the subject.
She actually was made to leave school early to work and she hates that. I went to uni and have a Ms too.
Since I was a child I always try to encourage her to study part time and always from a place of respect as I know I was luckier. Even I tried again last year. But she doesn't do it, she finds a million excuses, she is "very busy" (with the house, she retired 15 years ago).
She is not interested in current affairs but also cannot bear people understanding the world and talking about it. It's weird, it really is. Instead of learning and forming her own opinions she puts people's down in conversations.

Yep.

My mother went to grammar school, she left at 15 with no qualifications but was totally convinced she'd had a superior education.

She hates not knowing something or not being able to participate in conversations. She interrupts too and change the subject.

Yep. This as well. After her funeral my dad, my brother, his wife and kids went out for a meal.

My nephew was studying physics at uni and we had a really geeky conversation (if anyone is interested about the square root of negative numbers) and my dad enjoyed us just having a conversation he knew nothing about.

As I said before I worked in cardiology, my brother was a nurse who went in to the police, my SIL is a nurse, cousin was in the police so at family gathering some conversations would involve acronyms and jargon - she hated it, would always tell us to speak English.

I got told I wasn’t going to university as it was a stupid idea and if I went and studied in a different town I could never come back home ( and my dad let her say this and didn’t think there was anything wrong with it as he was controlled and scared of her)

Thank you for pointing this out.

I thought it might be of interest, even though the thread’s been quiet for months.