Regale me with hilarious/ridiculous things that a narcissist or enabler has said to you....

[Herrena]

I'll go first.

My DF acts as enabler for my narcissist M, although I doubt he's fully aware of this. We were discussing her and my god-awful childhood yesterday over skype when he dropped in this little gem:

'Well, you were so quiet. You didn't really defend yourself properly.'

What the actual fuck?!

I didn't really process the remark at the time but now I'm bloody fuming.

Go on, tell me yours. Let's laugh at the bastards and then maybe I won't spend the next week dwelling on my wrath

I've just started uni in my 40's. My dad once told my mum that I'd never amount to anything (thanks for telling me ma - great idea!) and I believed that for a long time too.

I did well in my GCSE's despite my parents, not because of them. When I remember that, I am proud of myself.

Not a funny story at all I'm afraid and not about me, but when my BF was a teenager (before I knew him) he confessed to his drug-addicted mother after years of hiding it that he thought he might be depressed and was feeling suicidal. She responded by bringing him a razor blade and telling him to 'get on with it then'... He did go on to attempt suicide not long after, resulting in almost a month in ICU and permanent brain damage, which she persists in referring to as 'his little accident'!!! Thankfully we now live hundreds of miles from his hometown and he has managed to cut contact with his family, but it still breaks my heart every time I think about it. He's one of the most brave and wonderful people I've ever met and the thought of anyone being subject to that kind of cruelty so young and alone just tears me up

Not surprisingly there have been many other incidents (the time she rang his brother to tell him she was about to die - not true - and that he'd destroyed what was left of her life by choosing to live with his father was pretty memorable too ) but that's the one that stands out.

I really thought I'd heard it all after that but I've read the whole thread in one sitting and I'm sad to see that so many people have similar experiences And I expect there's a lot more people reading who don't feel ready to share their stories. I really, really hope that everyone who isn't there yet will realise soon that they are worth so much more and that it's not their fault if some of the people around them are shit!

What a sad stories. Some are really hart braking.

I've got one too and this one came from my mother.
I was pregnant with my first child. The pregnancy wasn't easy and my midwife said I should stop working. Stay at home and rest as much as possible.

My mum to my husband:
You should force her to do more in the house and work.
I know she's just pretending. She can do much more. You need to be firm with her.

My husband angry to her:
I'm her husband and I live with her. I know she isn't pretending and it's the midwife that told her to stop working and rest as much as possible.
The midwife knows what she's doing and if she needs to rest as much as possible then that's what she needs to do. For herself and the baby.

Oh my I could write all day about my DM!

After sending her a pic of my newborn DS ( who is mixed race) her text back was " my beautiful Grandson.......I love him what ever colour he is!!" Errrrm WTF!

After an argument with her " pls pls let me call (insert my dp's name here) and get him to talk to you, he's such a decent guy he will make you see sense!" sense meaning agreeing with her, because being a N she is never wrong! X

alWaqi

alwaqi- thats just awful. I used to say 'I can't believe people can be so cruel', but I don't say it anymore. Your bf sounds amazing, by the way

I also feel there are many people reading the posts who are not ready to share their experiences, and like you say, are worth so much more. I hope they feel they can share at some stage if only to get it off their chest, or at least take comfort they are not alone

Crushed - I only discovered what narcissism really is due to mn. Hopefully if people recognise these crappy behaviours then they can make a concious decision on how to deal with them. Although we are currently no contact - I am sure they will be occassions in the future when we have to see them. Hopefully threads like this will help give people the confidence and ideas of how to deal with them.

Not at all in the same league as some of these and you have my deepest sympathies. Some people should not inflict themselves on others but there are some corkers from my own parents, who seemed to think that I would inevitably fail at everything.

When I moved out, all they had to say was "there's no shame in failure, don't be afraid to come back" subtext - you won't manage. you will fail. (I didn't. I never moved back in)

when I wanted to learn to drive "some people just aren't meant to drive. Not cut out for it. You're not the right sort of person to drive" and jokes from my dad about how if I go on the road, he's coming off it. (I believed that for YEARS. It took my husband the best part of 6 years to undo the damage they had done and give me the confidence to try. I got my licence about 4 years ago and nowadays they enthuse about what a good driver I am, how I am a better driver than my dad. They don't appear to remember all the 'jokes')

They made constant 'jokes' about how crap I was at everything. Cooking, etc. All variations on a theme - oh haha, Hecate is just so silly and useless, isn't that funny.

When talking about my feelings, and saying how I felt suicidal - my dad said "put up or shut up"

This to someone who was in and out of MHU, who had been on anti psychotics and had made a previous suicide attempt.

(I put up, btw. ended up back in there.)

Then there was the inappropriate stuff from my dad, like telling me my knickers needed changing (when the muck spreaders were in the fields at the bottom of the estate) and making fish jokes about me. And screaming BITCH at me when I didn't want to kiss him goodbye after he'd walked me to school. And many more things I won't go into here. But I pretended I had pogonophobia so I had an excuse to not go near him.

My dad's mum, when I was 16 and after one of these stays in the MHU, tried to make me go and stay with them. When I didn't want to, she screamed at my dad's dad, who was on the phone to me, "Don't go getting clucky, X, we want nothing more to do with her"

So I gave them what they wanted and cut them out of my life. The whole of that side of the family sided with them, so they went too. Screw 'em.

And the pièce de résistance - my mother tried to block me from taking my (autistic) children to see my grandad. She said, when I challenged her, that she was "only trying to protect him". I went bonkers. Told them they were shit, were shit grandparents and they had to choose whether they wanted to be decent people or fuck off out of my life and that I didn't care one bit which they chose.

Their drip drip drip as I grew up made me feel like I was incapable of doing anything, incapable of succeeding at anything. That I was useless and stupid and a joke.

Nowadays I wouldn't stand for any of their crap and they know it. They've turned inwards and on each other and are on total self destruct.

Imtoohecsy, drip drip drip, yes, little things over a long period of time, chipping away at you, designed to make you feel stupid. I know where you're coming from. Apparently, I 'don't know my own mind'. Thanks for that, Mum. I see you are talking about yourself there :).

yellowhouse. You have summed things up in words. One word makes all the difference doesn't it, in terms of good parenting/bad parenting? The word 'No'.
No home support
No structure
No obvious next step
No help to manage socially
No careers advise/encouragement.
Take away the 'No' in front of those words and we would have had normal/supportive parents. sadly no. I hope you get back on your feet soonxx

OH. My. God. Is the no structure and no next step stuff a proper 'thing'? I really thought it was just me being shit - as a result of poor parenting - to struggle with those! I felt like screaming in shock when I just read Yellow and Crushed's posts! So that is common with the children of narcs? I'm starting to cry... a good sort of crying, because I've always believed that yes, I know there were a lot of ways I was parented badly which have affected how I've behaved and coped as an adult, but I've also told myself (and also been told by others who have got frustrated by some of my behaviour/beliefs about myself or life) that there's only so much you can blame on your folks and then the rest of your crap is your fault for not sorting yourself out now you're an adult.

The next step thing - yes, yes, yes! I just don't know how people 'do' stuff. How they make things happen for themselves. How they feel like they are 'allowed' to believe in themselves, have goals, motivate, attain the goals, have a social life, even structure their day healthily and positively. And when I do achieve the first step of a goal, with great difficulty and conflict, be it losing weight or working towards a career, it all goes to shit because I literally cannot understand, see, feel, whatever, what I should do next or how I can do things to either maintain the new, good changes or to keep progressing onto the goal. It has lost me friends, too, as they get frustrated with me and think I am just lazy, miserable, etc., and just prefer to daydream or moan instead of just cracking on with stuff. They can't see that I want to but don't know how to. I always get left behind as people move on to the next stages of their life and career and I can't.

BTW, I feel a bit guilty, because I was actually more of a Golden Child than anything else. At least this might make some of you feel better to see that we get a shit deal too.

my sil caused à tuft between shop and o which almost led to us splitsing ander à very rocky fee tests. Her apology consisted of the line "i thought i was doing the right thing".

silly phone!
Sil caused à rift between dh and i which resulted in a few rocky years and nearly à divorce. She said she thought she was doing the right thing.

I can remember working for a company that sent everyone on a course called 'self-management' ie assertiveness. The first exercise you had to do was to take a sheet of blank A4 paper, draw a line to represent your life, and then put a cross on the paper to show where you were at that point. My cross was about 1/4 inch from the right-hand edge showing that I felt I had no future.

In the group sessions, we had to say what we felt we lost by not being assertive and what we hoped to gain from it. I said that I wanted to be able to say 'no' to my dm. Later we were divided into pairs and had to ask the other person questions using open rather than closed questions. I couldn't think of a topic, so the course leader very kindly thought of one for me - why I couldn't say 'no' to dm. I nearly ended up in tears, so thankfully the course leader closed the session early before lunch. I can remember the feeling of humiliation at nearly ending up in tears before a group of people who had all worked for the company longer than I had. Many of them were younger, too.

I had a narc boss (at least 1) who was really angry with me because I didn't go around telling all the world how great I was. He'd recruited me because he wanted to bask in the reflected glory, and felt let down. He harangued me once as he told me that at any meeting I would be among the most intelligent if not the most intelligent person in the room, and didn't seem to realise it. The same person made me sign an appraisal saying I was emotionally unbalanced (in his opinion) because I been tricked into revealing I'd been sexually abused and was having counselling for it. Bastard. If he'd had a chip on each shoulder he'd have been well-balanced.

I feel like crying after reqding these past few posts - pretty much sums my life up.

God, there are some shit parents out there and seemjngly little to no sopport in sorting oit where the fuck it all went wrong and how to turn it all around.

There are times I want to turn aroubd and shout, "Id live to fuckibg well believe in mysekf and be a bloody ray of subshine who can do anything she sets herjnd to...the probkem is I dont know how to do it...or keep up momentum. I KNOW its all about bloody attitude, wgst ai dont know is how to DEVELOP that attitude!!!!!"

Sorry...rant over.

I feel like crying after reqding these past few posts - pretty much sums my life up.

God, there are some shit parents out there and seemjngly little to no sopport in sorting oit where the fuck it all went wrong and how to turn it all around.

There are times I want to turn aroubd and shout, "Id live to fuckibg well believe in mysekf and be a bloody ray of subshine who can do anything she sets herjnd to...the probkem is I dont know how to do it...or keep up momentum. I KNOW its all about bloody attitude, wgst ai dont know is how to DEVELOP that attitude!!!!!"

Sorry...rant over.

Some of these last posts have really chimed with me.

I seem to have to spend an inordinate amount of time in aping normal human behaviour. I sometimes feel like I am an alien trying to assimilate.

My mum was so controlling that I was never allowed out to play (until I left home at 18!); I never once had a birthday party, friend over to play, never allowed to host or attend sleepovers. My mum never had friends either and wanted us to be just like her.

I have spent the last 22 yrs since I left home in learning basic human social skills. Things like offering to wash the dishes (the host always say no), to push in a chair when you leave the table, to bring a bottle of wine if invited over for dinner. The list is endless and it is exhausting trying to fit in.

I also had the same "ha, ha isn't TheCrackFox useless" my entire childhood. It is only in the past couple of years that I have seen through the brain washing to realise that I am in fact a capable person.

I have never once had an unqualified compliment from my mum

Thank god I had children as it has helped to see just how fucked up my child hood was. I shower my children with compliments and want them to be socially successful.

My (alcoholic, serial cheating, perpetual 'victim' of my lovely dad) mother had a couple of miscarriages (which I now suspect were caused by her heavy drinking) and I am an only child. When I was pg she was constantly 'worried' I too would mc and brought it up all the time how stressed she was by whole thing. I was blessed with a very easy time although I didn't admit she made me terrified I would lose my baby.
Unfortunately when dd did arrive we both barely survived. When DH finally made the phone call that dd was born he was berated for not calling sooner. (It began at 2am, c-section by 6am he called at 8). He then told her she couldn't visit as dd in Special Care, me in ICU, she asked him who he thought he was to tell her she couldn't visit her own daughter. Oh only a wonderful loving man who could only watch and hold his terrified wife's hand as he thought she was dying. What a selfish prick eh? So her reaction was we'll come anyway you can't stop us. He said no but hospital security will.
He has no living parent, sis in another country. No one to lean on. Had to deal with it all and fight my mother at the same time.
Of all the years of her bullshit, the birth of my perfect angel dd was what made me hate my toxic mother.

I didn't have narc parents, I had an absent father, off earnings loads of money and having endless affairs with beautiful married women.....and his children all lived with our abusive mum.

So some of those stories.....

She wouldn't let us bath ourselves for many years. When she would bath me, she would scrub me viciously and hold me under the water to rinse my hair, whole head under the water. She would drag me up periodically for a breath and I learnt how to time the breaths. She would do this maybe seven or eight times and by about number six, I would have lost it and started struggling for a breath.

On top of that loads of physical abuse, hitting round face, belting, kicking, pulling hair, biting me, twisting arms and pushing to floor, kicking while on floor, pinching, scratching.

She used to scream that she hated me and wished I had never been born, why didnt I fuck off etc. lectures all day long on how I was lying, conceited, she couldn't stand the sight of me.

A. Bit of sexual abuse too.

One of the worst things she did was back me right down the hall until my back hit the door and then go 'I know!!! I know - this is how I feel about you....' And then hock up and spit right in my face and not let me rub it off and her warm spit slid down my face.

She used to make me and my sister run up and down the stairs in our pants becaus we were fat allegedly. Holding our jiggling boobs, my brother lying on the sofa going 'shut up!!! I can't hear the tv!!!!'

I left at 15. I do suffer a bit with low self esteem but essentially I am successful and well liked. I have trouble with intimacy and my relationships have generally been a reflection of the worth I attached to myself and now I am happy to say I have no codependent relationships at all.

I have a degree and bought my own place.

I fucked them all off years ago and work helping others escape abusive situations and I know exactly wha it feels like and how to build a life up.

When I escaped them all I was very upset and it was quite a dark time, but equally I got this amazing feeling of 'well now that I don't have to try to please them, what WOULD I like to do with my life????' Cue resultant happiness.

Love and hugs to all. X

DogEgg yy me to, when I pointed out to her the calcium I had 'stolen' would have been replaced within a year as stated in my biol text book, she said I'd taken to much and it couldn't be replaced

minouminou yy, bloody eye colour. My eyes are green more than anything and a pretty much mix of colours but the egg donor (mother) would tell me they were brown. Gaslighting about something you can check out in the mirror ffs.

zero encouragement to do anything from them. The sperm donor, because it would upset the egg donor and the egg donor because she was jealouse. I spent years doing a martial art they could never be bothered to remember the name of.If I got anything/did anything the egg donor had to do/have it better than I did, because she had such a hard childhood. Fuck alone knows what sort of childhood I was entitled to. Although, if I had any success it was down to her - go figure.

Everything I ever tried to do was greeted with 'if it was that easy everyone would do it' which was why it took years for me to try to do anything worthwhile.

Every thing the bullies use to say to me was repeated as a joke and apparently I didn't have a sense of humour.

Every single boyfriend I ever had was the gods gift to the world and they had no idea why they were with me. The flirting with them was embaressing to say the least.

From the age of 10 any time I said I've got good news they said 'oh, are you moving out' until I just didn't mention good news anymore.

And the guilt, could she pile on the guilt - I'd scrub floors to give you the things I never had! Erm, no you didn't you worked to fund your alcoholism and addiction to cigarettes, on the list of priorities I came after the tent.

I'm glad she died before The Cub was born because at least I don't have to put up with that. Although, I think I'd have had more backbone to protect my child from her than I would for me iyswim.

The sperm donor enabled all of this and refused to believe anything I said, he also tried to tell Mr Tigga the truth about me when we moved in with each other. In fact, I'd already told him everything how it actually happened not the spin he decided to put on it. And he thinks I had some sort of Enid Blyton childhood. Goddess forfend I should point out any of the actual shit that happened.

Still, 5 years of therapy and a good hard look at my own soul stopped me from following in her footsteps although every day is a walk in toxicity. It's a bit like being an addict really, you don't lose it but you do know your triggers and what it looks like.

And now I say:

FUCK THEM, THEY HAVE NO CONTROL. FUCK THEM ALL BWAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAAA!!!!!!!

GottaLarfAintchaTiggaxx

The eye colour thing is bonkers, innit?

The nasal voice thing really pissed me off, as well, because ex-frenemy always related it to my northern accent. Apparently, all northerners have a whiny nasal voice....they can't help it.
Her mum and dad moved to this city from Cumbria....I'm from in between Manchester and Huddersfield....which is further to the south.
So.....when she'd gone though the initial part of her little routine about the nasal voice, she's finish it off with:

"But I can say that, because I'm more northern than you...ah ha ha ha ha..." tinkly Margot-from-The-Good-Life style laugh.

I kid you not, towards the end of our friendship I got this EVERY FUCKING TIME I SAW HER.
Until the day when I cut her off just as she was getting to her "But I can say that...." bit and walked off.

She didn't do it again, and I started scaling down contact.
However, it turns out she was waddling around everywhere telling anyone who'd listen that DP and I were atrocious parents, and listing the shortcomings of DS' diet and all sorts.

Which is odd, as he ate his own body weight in things like humous and so on. Apparently, we weren't feeding him properly, and even gave him Organix jarred food on occasions...quelle horreur! This apparently, was the reason that he got a worrying number of coughs and colds.....which again is odd, because he got a very low number of colds indeed - still hardly gets them.

Again, she had a huge thing about his not having cow milk as a baby and toddler. ALWAYS going on about it - I suspect she went around telling people something like "Oh, poor (DS' name)....they aren't letting him have milk, you know....(insert misinformed rubbish of choice about it being essential)......"

What she would fail to mention is that he was breastfed until 2.5 years, and was having goats milk as well from 1 year. Real food issues.....from a compulsive eater. One day she landed on our doorstep to talk about a problem she was having with her father. She turned up with (I shit ye not) TWO gurt massive cakes and a fucking kilo bag of sugar, because we rarely have sugar to hand and DP occasionally likes it in coffee. All this for a short visit.
She also managed to get in the "Poor (DS) he can't have any of this, can he, because he can't have milk....."
DS was about 18 months or so at the time and didn't give a toss.

God this is cathartic.

I'm so, so amazed by the courage some people on here have shown in overcoming their extraordinarily bad parents! Brilliant strength shown by all of you.

On a somewhat less serious scale, every so often I will think about the fact that I will probably discuss university choices quite a lot with my children, and I suddenly realise how little guidance I had.

And I always end up thinking I must have been an arrogant little shit who just wouldn't listen to any advice or refused to take instruction.

Then I realise I really can't remember ever getting advice, really. And I'm always reading books for guidance because I never had that.

And that I will talk with my kids about this stuff and teach them how to cook, budget, whatever, even if they don't want to, are awful brats about it, or whatever, BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT GOOD PARENTS DO.

Although I do have yet to hit the teenage years, so let's see how it all goes later, shall we?

.

I got no guidance about university choices either.

Everybody else I know was also driven to university and picked up again at the end of term. Me? I had to do it all myself. She still likes to crow that it gave me independence. I went from not being able to leave the house on my own in a small rural town to living in a large city. Unsurprisingly I went a bit wild with the freedom.

My Parents never once visited me when I was at university. All of my friends had parents who actually seemed interested and I started to realise that I had a hugely bizarre childhood.

CrackFox yeah, cause not letting you out for 18 years was ALL about the independence

Honestly, the levels of self delusion these people employ is superhuman. In that regard they really are special.

My mother had a single female friend back for something to eat after work one day, before heading back to an evening function. I was chatting away to them as they ate (about 13/14 at the time?) about something that had happened that day. The friend turned to my mum, in my full hearing, and said "how do you cope with this after a day's work?"
My mum replied, "I don't. I just switch off."

Thanks Mum.