Advice please my mother is driving me insane

[enlightened24]

My mum and I have always been very close on the surface but I have had years and years of pent up and repressed emotions largely stemming from her being highly strung, unable to take any criticism (like, none at all) and having to tow the line constantly to keep her happy. She has behaved pretty shit in the past but it never gets discussed and instead she likes to try and hijack your memories and create this illusion that all was well. She is very very very hypocritical and over the last few years I feel like the mask has slipped and I am seething with anger and resentment at her. She is constantly triggering me even though I have cut contact right back.
Examples:

1. My son had seizures when he was 2 and my mum helped support us through what was an awful time. About 4 years later she casually mentioned in the car, whilst avoiding eye contact, that the whole thing made her so stressed she believes that caused her to get breast cancer.
2. She had an awful boyfriend when I was about 15 and we lived in a shitty rented house that had no heating or double glazing and it was freezing, it smelled bad and her boyfriend was a psycho. Luckily it only lasted a few years but it was an awful time during what is a pretty tender stage of life. Whenever this has been brought up in the past it was "never that bad" and "we got through it together". Never any accountability at all yet she will come down on me for the most trivial of matters, like my child's school jumper being slightly too small and subtly make digs at me if he is over due a hair cut.
3. She didn't want us to get a dog as she wanted us to help with hers. We got our own and he is a handful. She is gleeful and doing her absolute best to get me to admit I regret getting him. When she doesn't get the reaction I think she wants, she does something else. I go to the park with my dog in a morning and she randomly "turned up" then pretended to be shocked to see me. Our dogs don't get on, so she let hers off the lead, who went straight over to mine, they started fighting etc etc. I am 6 months pregnant and trying to separate them, while hot footing it back to the car because I had a meeting to get to for work. She then sends me a message asking me whats going on as I seem tense.
4. If I ever did open up to her and tell her how I was feeling she would absolutely over rule the conversation and make it about herself.
5. She plays the victim constantly. She competes with everything you say and turns every conversation back to herself.
6. As a teenager, she was a bully when it came to diets / weight / appearance and that has had lasting damage. She offered me money to lose weight when I was 15 and weighed about 9 stone. Regularly shamed me for things, right into my early 30s this went on until I wised up she was the one with the problem, not me. She once came to see me when I lived with a friend and looked through the dustbin to see what I'd eaten. Regularly humiliated me for laughs from her friends.

If you've got this far, thanks. I am at my wits end with her. A few years ago I told her how she was making me feel and she exploded with rage, screamed at me repeatedly to fuck off and leave her alone, and it never got mentioned again.

I am so aware now of how manipulative and controlling she is and how it's all for her own gain. She looks like this perfect mum to the outside but inside it's toxic to the core. She isn't so obvious with her behaviour anymore, but it's still there. Despite all this, I feel insanely guilty because she is my mum and I feel like I disloyal and unappreciative of what she has done for me and going a little bit mad.

Please can anyone advise if they've been in a similar situation.

Thank you.

Hello.
This sounds hugely stressful and very similar to the narcissist in my life (not my Mum, but a sibling, possibly 2.
Maybe visit the stately homes thread if you don't get much response here.
It's an ongoing thread for those of us with narcissists in our lives and, in my layman's opinion, sounds like what's happening to you.

There are some incredibly similar life stories on there and they're amazing at giving advice and support.
Don't feel guilty about being fed up with the way you're being treated. You're perfectly justified in having had enough! Time to be kind to yourself xxxx
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/4991681-january-2024-well-we-took-you-to-stately-homes

The stately homes thread will be a great help to you

theyll explain the Fear, Obligation and Guilt dynamic you’re stuck in

ultimately you need to go VLC and ideally move house. Get to a place psychologically and physically distant to her.

shell only get worse when your dc come along, and you think you have the rage now? It’ll pale into insignificance once you realise just what an awful time you had and how badly she treated you.

we’re here for you.

Lots of people have been in your situation I’m afraid. And many of us have come to accept that we can’t change someone else.

You are the only one who can change things here.

Either you go on seeing her and get driven crazy, feel disloyal and unappreciative. If it’s hard now, wait til you see what’s it’s like with a newborn. And of course you know that her toxic behaviour will damage your child, don’t you?

Or you see less ( or nothing at all of her ) and feel disloyal and unappreciative. What’s often called FOG - fear, obligation and guilt.

Everyone wants to believe that there is a third easier choice , where you can somehow say the magic words and she will have a personality transplant. No doubt they will be along soon to say variations on the theme of

“ Have you told her how you feel? “

sadly life isn’t like the movies .

I'm in a similar situation. Taken me many years to discover family member is very likely a covert narcissist. It really is death by a thousand cuts.Sounds like you have found out early, before kids arrive which is good news. Boundaries, VLC and have compassion for yourself.

You need to go minimal or no contact. My father is a narcissist and I am so much happier since I cut all contact.

It's amazing how conditioned we are to accept the way they treat us.
I'm 50 and only just realised this year, during yet another hideous family drama, that the entire dynamic has always been toxic and the toxicity has always been coming from the same people. 'Death by a thousand cuts' is spot on.
Made the decision to go VLC with one and NC with another, and I feel so much stronger just having a bit of awareness and some boundaries, for the first time ever!
The Stately Homes thread has been a revelation - have been lurking and learning so much. Just reading the experiences of all the knowledgeable posters makes me realise I'm not alone. Had always felt that I was.
OP, you're not alone either! x

Good advice above.
Fundamentally you have to accept this is how she is. You have not got a Mum like many of your friends have and few people will know her as you do.
There probably isn't a magic conversation you can have that will fix anything. But you can control what you do and how you think.
I am very low contact with my Dad and it's taken me a long long time to get my head around him and his behaviour.
The best piece of advice I heard was with people like him you have a choice - you can be right (which always causes arguments and drama) or you can be happy. So my ongoing challenge is to be happy and not engage with any of the drama or traps he sets to try and draw me back in.

I have never heard that before, but how incredibly powerful. You can be right or you can be happy. I love this. I need to learn how to keep focused on that and stop trying to seek validation for how I feel - which I recognise I do - but it's such a complex, murky things isn't it and I definitely question my own sanity sometimes and feel this real compulsion to prove justify myself all the time.

I'm glad you found it helpful. It was a real eye opener for me too.
I have wasted a lot of time and mental gymnastics trying to justify my thoughts and feelings - now I just sit back and grey rock. Am polite but disengaged. Latest tactic is triangulation (bringing in another family member) but I'm not falling for it. It's been liberating.

I read a brilliant book called The Narcissist in Your Life by Julie L Hall.
Between this, lots of online research about narcissists, and the flipping marvelous Stately Homes thread, I could build a context around every dysfunctional interaction I've had with my family members.
Their expectation of you continuing to perform the same role for them and the sense of obligation destroys you. It's exhausting and it'll never, ever be enough for them.
As OP's have said, it's so liberating when you realise the dysfunction is all theirs. That guilt you feel is keeping you stuck in place, which is what they need.

For me, it's eyes wide open now and I give absolutely nothing of myself emotionally to them any more - absolute grey rock.
Every single time I do it (and I'm still new to it!) I feel stronger and better able to keep them at arms length.
Since I accepted that I'll never have/have never had a proper reciprocal relationship with these people, I can put my energy into relationships that are worthwhile. It's so important to realise that, away from them, you can be ok.

Looking after yourself is key OP. There may be a fair bit of recovery in there for you.
Realising what's been happening is so painful but preferable to never understanding why you are made to feel so inadequate, insignificant, drained, abused, manipulated and generally broken.
You can't fix them but you can protect yourself and start to heal.
I sort of feel safer when it's all in a framework, I can see that it's real and not in my head. They really have been covertly manipulating me all these years, and the explanations of narcissism explain it completely. Sometimes I felt I was going mad or being oversensitive, paranoid etc. Sounds as though you may have some of those same feelings OP.

And PP is so very spot on with either being 'right or happy' and I no longer give a shiny shit about being right!
Sorry this is long - I'm sort of at the beginning of my journey with all this, but honestly I am starting to feel lighter and better all the time.
Wishing you well & I'd say carry on seeking support and speaking about how you feel, guilt free, out loud! xxx

When I went grey rock with my manipulative abusive mother, she went crazy trying to threaten me back into where she wanted me. In the end she painted herself into a corner , by saying

“ If you don’t do this [ thing that she wanted ] you are saying that you are no longer our daughter and we will have nothing more to do with you “.

So I was able to say “ As I explained I can’t do that because of Good Reason . But of course you have to do what you feel is right for you “.

Then I sat tight and did nothing. Of course she told everyone that I had told her
“ I no longer consider you to be my parents and I will have nothing more to do with you “.

But I resisted the urge to tell my side of events.
I resisted the flying moneys .
And true to her word, she never contacted me again.

Once I dealt with the FOG my life was LOTS better. And my children were safe from her. Nothing feels better than knowing that I protected my children.