Histrionic and Covert Narcissistic Personality Traits (Cluster B) HELP

[OneBigDisappointment]

• Cluster B Personality Disorder
• Histrionic Personality Disorder
• Covert Narcissistic
• Communal Narcissism

I am looking for experiences of those who have a parent with the personality traits above. I am considering NC with dm after years of trying.
I realise now that I can never be the daughter she wanted, and she doesn't feel love the way others do. I feel I have wasted years trying to be "good enough", and after a hurtful character assassination dressed up in fluff and sugar, how can I continue? How did you deal with a parent like that?

How did you deal with a parent like that?

I'm afraid you don't

I hope I am not asking anything too personal, but briefly what happened in your case, was it difficult to get your parent to accept things without contact?
I have currently locked dm's whatsapp chat so that it completely hides her message chain. I asked her for space, and she sent two messages after that. Her last message said that she will wait for me to get in touch to sort this out, but she is not taking no for an answer. This was after she said she was really sorry that I am driving everybody away.

This was after she said she was really sorry that I am driving everybody away.

What a bitch. Very passive aggressive. I have experience of this but not with a parent. I believe the usual advice is to set strong boundaries if you feel the need to maintain a relationship at all. Some suggest "low contact".

But don't feel guilty if you want to go no contact - even if it's just temporary - to protect your own mental health.

You can't argue with someone like that. You can't persuade, you can't discuss, you can't reconcile, you can never get anywhere with someone with those traits. They will never be able to see anyone's point of view other than their own entrenched position.

You are an adult and the nice thing about being an adult is that you can decide who you have a relationship with. The crap you get from others for going NC is much more manageable than having a relationship with a dysfunctional parent of any variety.

This. My narcissistic MIL has had a big falling out with my narcissistic SIL and neither of them have the first clue why it happened or that they might have done anything wrong. They will never be able to work through it or gain any understanding because they both can only see things from their own POV.

I hate my MIL for how much of a narcissist she is and none of her 3 children like her let alone love her. But I do sometimes reflect that she really can't help it so what's the point getting angry and upset (of course that doesn't stop us all from getting angry and upset with her regularly).

Thank you, it has screwed with my head to the point I think that she is okay now, and then a comment will be made and I am right back to square one. My df who I was very close to died a couple of years ago (they had been divorced for 20 years and he never got over how she treated him).
In one of the messages she brought df into, she said he didn't do enough to help her. It is the anniversary of his death soon.
She has made me feel like I am going crazy. Dm said to me, "I always knew there was something wrong with you as a child, we were just having fun, and you took everything wrong." She proceeded to tell me that I was just so shy and she was frightened of me, so couldn't take me to the doctors because "you would have been too upset." I was a quiet timid little girl thay brought dm a cup of tea in bed every morning before going to school. She will move the goal posts and has said how sweet I was, and it was when I got to puberty I apparently changed. Then other times there was something wrong with me as a child too.

DM then diagnosed me with an illness and ssid she understands my illness better now. I still feel nauseous and a deep pang in the bottom of my stomach.

I'm so sorry to hear that.

She is verbally and emotionally abusive to you.

My MIL plays the same trick of criticising her husband for not doing enough for her. He is still alive and a sweet man who does everything for her to the extent that she would be in a care home were it not for him. Unlike her, the family do love him. So her bitching never gets much response but still she attacks him verbally quite viciously sometimes. And always wants to put him down by telling us private stuff that is humiliating for him.

Thank you. I am now 40 with children of my own. It is wearing me down, and I dread her visits, because I know how they leave me feeling afterwards. It is as though I mask when I am around her, as any sign of weakness will feed into her narrative. She will say I have a lot to deal with young, and that I am strong, and then in the next breath call me vulnerable. It is exhausting.

Normal childhood emotions were met with hostility. It felt very much that dm and my sibling (golden child) were the only people allowed to feel in the household , and I had to get back into my little box. I took on a caretaker role and tried to please dm, buy her love as it was very transactional if that makes sense.
The very first gift I bought her as a little girl was put behind sliding wardrobe doors on top of a box TV for safe keeping. I was so excited to give her this ornament I bought it out of my pocket money; her face said it all and I immediately started apologising on wanting it in a different colour but they didn't have it, and then the ornament inevitably was knocked off and broken. Meanwhile my friend who lived next doors Mum displayed hers on the front room windowsill. Anything my dcs do I treasure, and I cannot imagine being so cold.

You don’t deal with a parent like that. You get out and stay out. If they’re too toxic for you to deal with it’s the same deal for the child too.

It is not possible to have a relationship with someone that disordered of thinking.

Read Children of the self absorbed by Nina. W Brown and consider posting/reading the current Well we took
you to Stately Homes thread on these Relationships pages.

I have been NC with my mother since November 2014. I had a long running thread here about her (my mother hates my husband) and I strongly believe she has covert narc traits and possibly histrionic personality.
Ultimately, the only choice for me in the end was total NC. I have a brother who feels the same about her but has managed to be very very LC. Basically the occasional email and one 24-hour visit once a year or so. He has a long term partner she doesn´t even know about, for instance.
My life (and my relationship with my children who were 6 and 3 at the time of NC) is immeasurably better without her in it, in every single way.
I had a bit of therapy too, which helped.
No regrets.

Save your energy for therapy and your own recovery ❤️‍🩹

Read about fear, obligation and guilt because she installed those buttons in you. The website Out of the fog may be helpful to you.

You will need to grieve for the relationship you should have had rather than the one you actually got. Have no compunction about deciding to now adopt a no contact position. You do not need her permission not that she would ever give you this.

Would you have tolerated this from a friend, unlikely and your mother is no different. Ignore any and all flying monkeys that may tell you stuff like you only have one mother etc. Do not listen to their bs as they have their own agenda and not your interest at heart.

It’s not your fault your mother is like this and you did not make her that way. Her own parents did that to her.

It’s impossible to deal with people with those conditions. I have cut three out.

Life is calm, should have done it years ago. They are still the same.

Thank you all. To give a bit more context, I am completely estranged from my sibling, who was very much the golden child and displays the exact same traits as DM.
DM is firmly entrenched in his corner regardless of how he treats people. He has a long history of volatile and entitled behaviour, reducing work colleagues to tears, upsetting my late DF when he was ill, and cutting me off over an imagined slight (claiming he wasn't invited to an imaginary 2nd birthday party for my first child that never even happened). When my second baby was born and critically ill in SCBU I reached out, he didn't even bother to get in touch to ask how anybody was.
DM excuses all of this, enables him, and turns the blame onto me instead. They operate as a unit, and it's clear the dynamic will never change. There is so much more, but I would exhaust the thread. Thank you for taking the time to read any of it.

I think you have an awful lot to process with years of hurt from your mother and brother. Have you ever thought about counselling as a way to talk it all through? If that appeals to you at all.

@OneBigDisaapointment You said this in your OP "I realise now that I can never be the daughter she wanted".

Please turn that round the other way, because actually she never was (and never will become) the loving parent that you wanted (and not just you, but all abused children) and should have had. All that time you spent trying to earn her approval and wanting to be 'good enough' was never in a million years going to work with her. And absolutely NONE of it was your fault.

Someone with her sort of personality disorder cannot have a normal relationship with anyone. She is incapable of it. Even her relationship with your 'golden' sibling is a long way from being normal.

Sadly, I know of a situation a bit like this, with the generations reversed, and it is absolutely tragic for all concerned.

I am considering it, thank you. The grief over losing my DF was so consuming that I had to focus on surviving and healing from that first. He was my favourite person in the world outside of my immediate family.

I am naturally a glass half full person who hates conflict, so for a long time I’ve tried to just accept DM for who she is and see the best in her, please her etc. But the emotional and physical toll on me has become progressively unsustainable, I can only describe it as glass shattering piece by piece as opposed to say a huge event. It is like she has just chipped away at me over time.
and my priority has to be what is healthy for my DCs. I am scared because dm is their only relative left. Dh's parents are dead.

Dcs don’t have much of a bond with her as it is, and DH pointed out that they honestly won't even barely notice or ask, as they never mention her now anyway. My lingering fear has just been the guilt of whether going fully NC affects them in any way, but deep down I know having an exhausted, anxious mum walking on eggshells affects them far
more. At the same time I dont want my relationship to affect any semblance of theirs as I know they are separate.

She may be your dc's only remaining grandparent, but no contact at all is far better than having any kind of a relationship with someone so irretrievably toxic.

I think your husband is right in what he is saying. Maybe they will ask questions once older, but when they are mature enough to understand you can explain that your mother was not a nice person.

It does feel a bit sad to have a small family, I have one too so I know. But at the same time, a small but happy family is better than a larger, toxic one.

Thank you so much for your compassion and understanding. I realise now that dm can not know what love is. I don't know if it is conscious but she is manipulative , for example when she knows we are going on holiday she will say, "Oh I wish Grandma could come", dcs don't react. She was angry one of my dc wouldn't give her a hug, but dont believe in forced affection for example. There are many other occasions like this, a lot worse.
I am really sorry for the people in the situation you know too, 💐

💐 I am so sorry you had to go through that, but I'm really pleased to hear your life is so much better for it now.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did the actual fallout look when you cut contact? Did you have issues with people turning up on your doorstep or with others getting in touch on their behalf?
That’s the part I’m dreading most right now, especially with young kids in the house.

I forgot to add, I am not perfect, nobody is. If anybody has an alternative perspective I would gladly take it on board. I keep doubting myself, and analysing it all.

Of course you aren't but that's ok.

I expect your children aren't perfect either but you would never make them feel there's something wrong with them or that they couldn't please you however hard they tried.

Her brother (my uncle) was recruited as a flying monkey and basically tried to get me to smoothe things over and then made it clear he thought I was being cruel. So I basically lost touch with him. My brother was a great support. Other family members just very studiously refused "to take sides".

My mother tried everything at the point of NC, threatened suicide, cut me out of inheritance (but also made me an executor so I wil have to administer a will that I am cut out of hahahaha, I am sure she was super pleased with herself there) and she also told the people she sold her house to (we lived in the same village and the buyers had kids the same age as mine) several awful lies including that she had cancer and was going to die, that I had stolen all her money and tried to cheat my brother out of money and I don´t even know what else. They then blanked me for years around town and gossiped about it all for several years. The woman was later my son´s English teacher so that was really horrible and awkward and traumatising for YEARS.
She really went scorched earth, poisoned the well and everything.
NC was still worth it though x 100000000000000