Tell me your narc dm's most outrageous stunts.

[oooz]

I'm in therapy decades after an abusive upbringing and the penny's only just dropped that my dm was a narc! Watching videos on narcissism I'm going 'Yes, yes, yes!' - it's all my experience. Playing the guilt card. Taking your successes for their own. Gaslighting. The control. It's SO refreshing finally learning my own truth. Now I've found this I want to learn as much as possible. Please share your experiences.

My own mother as one of my friends says about her - she is a fucking discrace. She is mean, selfish, a professional lier and is a bit of a hycient bucket at times ie only wants people to know about all the good things in her or her family's lives.

Among the things she has done
A) Promised me a lump sum of money but then had amensia when I mentioned this to her at a later date

B) Got me to move within a few miles of where she lives by offering me a property she owns rent free. PS I paid about £3000 then to paint, fix, repair and replace things here after I moved in. I have paid all the bills since I moved in also. The reason she did this was so she was going to have someone to mind her in her old age.

C) Sorted out money, land and legal matters so that 3 of her adult children are going to be in good financial positions long term. Meanwhile her other children who could do with a few thousand in cash are just ignored.

D) Realized that I could possibly move out of the property I am not paying rent on as I could be eligible for state help with rent elsewhere.
Her plan was that I would move out and give her the property back. She could rent it out for £800 pm and I quote - your siblings could do with the money as their kids will be going to college in the next few years.

The best of this was that I was not offered as much as £5 to move out. I was giving up the only security I have at the moment for nothing. I was going to down money each week on a limited budget. Along with this I could have been left at retirement age still renting or having to use a possible inheritance to buy a place to live in. No one can say what a house/apartment will cost in 10 or 15 years time.

G). When I mentioned recently I had to renew a policy costing a few hundred pounds she brushed me off. I mentioned it to her a few weeks hear about all the bills she has to pay.
I know she is unhappy about the fact that I would not move out of the property I now live in.
The best of all the above is that the 3 siblings she sorted out things for are all going to be to busy working and with their families over the next few years. Even at this stage I can see that she is getting older and is slowing down.

@TrippingTheVelvet

That is my mother

She never takes responsibility, she never apologies, she blames every else for what goes on in her life. She is proud to say that the Brexit result put her in hospital through stress.

She replaces all her friends every 10 years - but if course, the people she meets on a day to day basis are her own friends.

She is obsessed with physical appearance and only respects thin beautiful people. I'm sure she only likes my children because they are thin. They are both very accomplished (not a stealth boast and also nothing to do with me - I didn't write those exam papers) but all her cards to them say "You have made your Grandmother very proud" - wtf? Who cares if she's proud or not and what's that got to do with it anyway? MIL writes "Well done, I knew you could do it!" which is a completely different focus and is much more supportive to the kids.

My DM is full of aggrandisement. Her new friends think she was a professional actress as DM says "when I worked in the theatre...."

It was Am Dram. It was a bloody amateur dramatics group.

There's so much more. I've tried going LC and my family think I'm an awful person for abandoning her, but I can't cope with how she treats my kids. She idolises my DD but bullies my son. I'm not having this any more

Sorry, just read that through... i meant to say that the people she meets on a day to day basis are her new best friends.

My dad called my mum "street angel, house devil".

I'm not even kidding. I didn't understand the saying when I was young, I sure do now.

Mine hasn’t really done anything big, she’s a victim narcissist, so e dress dramas are created to maintain the victimhood. I tried to protect her my whole life, from toddlerhood onwards, yet i regularly get told, hysterically, that I ‘don’t care’. She’s right, I now don’t care, she can fuck off.
Planning my wedding was a fucking horror show, she tells me how awful she looks, how disgusting looking random people in the street are, gaslights me all the time, goes on for hours about how her husband or some member of the public wras SO nasty to her but refuses all offers of help, pretended to be dead when I was a kid as a ‘joke’ when I was trying to wake her up (I thought this was all normal until recently), told me in graphic detail about her sexual abuse when I was 7 years old.
Daughters Of Narcissists

Rachel, thanks for the link.

This page will help some of us. It distinguishes between malignant narcissist who go out of their way to hurt you, and those like my NM who are manageable as long as you give them what they want.

www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/narcissism-spectrum/

Once received in the post of list of things that DM doesn’t like about me.

My wake up call has been with DD2 who is nearly a teen and being told "you're just like your mum", "you're lazy", "you're expecting too much", "you can't do that", "oh, I should really spend some time with you sometime". I'm not the perfect parent but I'm not going to raise another generation feeling like that.

Just managed to fend off a narcissistic rage attack. She's desperate to pick a fight, but I'm not reacting. What do you do apart from work and Church? If anyone actually cared about me... It's supposed to be a treat for me... no one wants me unless I am doing something for them...

I replied in a really slow, laid back and vague way as she prodded and jabbed.
I've spent the last few days being prodded by DB, DSis and NM, none of whom can communicate without an intermediary- me. I'm sick of them all.

My DM disowned me when I finally left my physically abusive H, saying as far as she was concerned she no longer had a daughter. She was told about his violence and saw my bruises but flatly denies it to this day. How I escaped with my life I'll never know but she still chats to him on the phone, he visits her and she updates me on his life despite me repeatedly telling me I have no interest. We've been divorced for 27 years.

Oh I’ve been disowned.

I’ve had an official solicitors letter to proclaim the fact.

Following

I've been disowned a few times. It's always when I do something nice that she doesn't want me to do (get married, move house, get pregnant). Longest was a year, and then one day she phoned me and acted like it never happened.

It's interesting about the cancer thing as well. She's a hypochondriac, but anytime she's actually ill, she's convinced it's cancer, and honestly, it gives her such a spring in her step ! She suddenly gets this sunny disposition, until she finds out she's just got a boring old non-fatal short lived virus or something, and she's miserable as sin again.

My mother still tries to impress upon me how hard she's trying with my eldest brother, and how much he's improving. He's fifty tucking nine, and sexually abused me and one of my other brothers when we were children. She and I were no contact for 3 years and have only recently had limited contact again - on the strict proviso that there was to be NO mention of my abuser, amongst other things.

Quite simply, she refuses to believe that ANYONE'S feelings are as important as hers, even in serious circumstances such as these.

However, although I know it shouldnt, and it wasn't I who witnessed it, but my sister, there is one story that is now legend within the family that never fails to make me snigger:..

Many years ago, when my mother was trying to get money she felt she was ' owed 'by my dad, from whom she was divorced, she paid a visit to the cab taking my sister with her (for effect, you know ), to tell them how hard - done - by she was. When they didn't appear to be doing what she wanted, she flung herself to the floor, and beat her hands and feet in the floor, screaming about how unfair it was, and threatening all sorts...

Imagine. A grown woman, acting like the worst kind of toddler, simply because someone didn't do what she demanded.

User1011

Once received in the post of list of things that DM doesn’t like about me.

Ooh me too! I recieved it in email and paper mail, dot points of everything I'd done wrong since I was 16. She'd made my little sister read it too.

DH’s mum.

Never apologies or even acknowledges wrongdoing ever.

Has talked to me in a very resentful way about her granddaughters, especially eldest as SIL gave them the normal attention a mum gives her baby and MIL was clearly jealous.

Just very immature and expects her adult children to constantly manage her feelings, very co-dependent and over involved.

Actually seems to get excited and thrilled at bad news and sad events as she likes to feed off them.

I havd seen her rage at family members and when it’s over the whole family pretends it never happened and noone even acknowledges it.

Expects other people to read her mind at what she wants and gets very offended when people had no idea that she is always supposed to be the center of attention. It is an unwritten rule that cannot go unpunished.

Regularly guilt trips adult children and also acts the martyr while seething at the same time.

Completely ignores careful planning and does exactly what she wants, no matter who is inconvenienced.

@Movablefeast are you my SIL This is my DM to a t.

Moveablefeast yes! Absolutely everything you said.

I am staying with her, we can't organise any visits to anyone because she doesn't know if she'll feel like it when the time comes. Anything we do plan gets changed at the drop of a hat.

Can't meet up with DB because she resents that plans have to be made around the needs of two preschoolers.

she resents that plans have to be made around the needs of two preschoolers

Once (not long before NC) my mother took a three day huff at us because when we were in a cafe and she took 3yo DD's sachet of tomato ketchup DH said to her "that one was for DD, could you go and get some more if you want it?" Three days. There comes a point where, even if you have sympathy about the ill treatment that must have led to someone having that big and that fragile and ego, it's just too scary to have them around. Imagine the rage that burns Inna heart like that if you ever disagree about anything of any substance.

Reading some of these is so upsetting and even more so to think that there are some children of narcissistic parents, who don’t know yet.

I think my DM has narc traits but she’s no where near as bad as some of these. I wouldn’t describe her as abusive. If I give some examples can you tell me what you think?

1.	Left my school graduation ceremony because she had no one to sit with. It meant no one saw me graduate.
2.	Complains that my wedding was really unpleasantly stressful for her. For context, anything she did for my wedding was a job she had created for herself for example insisting on making the cake even though I said I didn’t need one.
3.	Told me I used my pregnancy to get out of family therapy. Said ‘next time use contraception’.
4.	Called me schizophrenic, denied it immediately after and then acquiesced but claimed she said ‘I find you schizophrenic’. 
5.	Gives gifts for birthdays/Christmas that are never anything I would choose myself (feels horrid saying that but I’ve read that this is a trait?)
6.	Says things like ‘if you loved me you’d...’
7.	When I was 15/16 she told me that she hates me and my siblings sometimes. 
8.	I’ve stopped telling her about personal issues because she inevitably uses info about me against me in arguments.
9.	Have grown up feeling responsible for her happiness and therefore enormously guilty about her depression. I’ve told her this and she says it’s not her fault, that it’s in my head if that’s how I feel.
10.	She’s always a victim. She’s always worse off than someone else and always in competition to be the most hard done by.
11.	I was going to stop at #10 but remembered two more that are important! She creates so much drama in her life and so is always stressed and under pressure. It then falls to me and my siblings to help her back together again. Endless cycles of this. And finally 12. She is so bitchy and gossipy. It makes me really uncomfortable. She gets angry with me because I don’t join in and call her out on it.

Oddly, I don’t think she was like this until I was a teenager - not towards me anyway. It was around the time she and my dad divorced. Could narcissism develop over time or is it always there? Could a difficult marriage and divorce be a trigger?

This post is so long! Thank you if you made it to the end. Just found this thread really got me thinking about her and our relationship and welcome any insight!

Cheeseandapple it might be that with your dad not available to manage her emotions, she's now turning to you?

She does sound enormously self centred and some of those things were really horrible - the schizophrenia thing, the pregnancy thing, telling you she hated you. I mean, that is bad. Have you thought about going to counselling? It can really help to talk about this stuff in some detail - what I found when I was talking to my therapist was that she could pick up dynamics and details in some of what I was telling her that were so normal to me I didn't even notice how messed up they were. You might also be interested in reading about histrionic personality disorder, as Trippingthevelvet mentioned upthread, and about covert narcissism. You're probably never going to get the reassurance of a diagnosis, as these sorts of people only ever go to therapy to confirm to themselves that everyone else is responsible for their unhappiness, but it is useful to understand what to expect from her. There's a spectrum as well I think, from narcissistic traits to people who can barely interact with reality without coming back in a narcissistic rage - the relationship between how far gone they are and how abusive they are is also complicated.

If she's not causing really big problems in your life right now I wonder whether the grey rock technique would work for you? To stop them finding things to wind you up about, you just keep conversations with them really bland and pleasant. Isn't the weather nice, did you see that thing on the telly. Nothing personal, particularly nothing bad. I used to do it with my mother and keeps things civil for the length of a cup of tea or a phone call, at least.

Its amazing how they all follow the same pattern to a tee!

HotHandle and Picklemepopcorn I would not say MIL is exactly malicious but because of her emotional immaturity sometimes her behaviour has negative consequences for others. I find her lack of boundaries overwhelming at times because she just doesn't see where a natural interpersonal boundary should be (her inability to give anyone privacy for example).

My DH and SIL were raised therefore to be people pleasers and struggle to even know their own emotions, let alone acknowledge them. Instead they feel guilt when MILs behavior makes them uncomfortable because anyone who does not put MIL first is "selfish".

MIL has financially abused pretty much anyone she can, but especially her children. She has taken out loans and credit cards using their identities, she is constantly bullying or guilt tripping her kids into giving her money. She definitely expected DH to financially support her for example.

What I find hard to handle and be witness to is when she caused a big drama or problem that has really upset or inconvenienced someone and she totally minimizes it and is scornful at other people's devastated emotions.

An example is when she accused BIL of sexually abusing his dd (with no evidence whatsoever). He was of course devastated and couldn't be around her for months. Her sarcastic and dismissive response was to say he should "Get over it".

Movablefeast I would say that all adds up to being malicious!

Birthdaygirls I know it seems that way but in all honesty it is like dealing with a toddler. She does not have the self-awareness of a malicious narcissist. With BIL I think she convinced herself it was true as she is very delusional. BIL, myself and her own BIL she sees as threats because we are all partners and bonded with people she wants to be co-dependent with. I think the stress in her brain of the fear of losing the co-dependent relationship makes her delusional. She sincerely believes nonsense so it's hard to see her as culpable in the same way.