For those with narcissistic parents - care to join me?

[roseability]

How have you come to peace with this situation, knowing they will never be able to give you normal family love?

How do you keep an emotional distance and protect yourself?

Should they be allowed access to your own children?

Are they abusers?

Drlove - We seem to frequent so many of the same threads, are we living paralell lives?

I know I shouldn't read the cards, it's so hard not to! I know for a fact that when I read them they'll upset me and play on my mind but I also have to know what level she's stooped to this time iyswim? I feel that reading them and reminding myself of how awful she can be helps me feel better about not being in contact. But then on the other side of the coin I get 'new guilt' from what i've read in the card

I used to get my dh to read them and kind of censor them for me. I think i'll either have to go back to that or get the strength from somewhere to throw them away as you say.

The 'presents' are difficult, I feel like to get rid of them would be to throw away my ds's possetions as they were gifts meant for him. Oh, I don't know, if they send toys I can see that he'll really enjoy playing with them so I feel the need to pass them on to him BUT then everytime he gets them out to play with them i'm reminded of my awful parents

Having said all that, the guilt I feel for breaking contact is NOTHING compared to the stress of being in contact with them, it is seriously bad for my mental health. Being in contact also affects my relationship with my dh as she constantly puts subtle pressures on our relationship and tries to come between us.

@ parallel lives !
Thats the thing i cant handle myself- the guilt. But its nothing compared to the guilt i would have IF i allowed mum into our lives.
That guilt would be because id be in such a state with her shenanigans i couldnt be a fit mother and my kids would suffer as a result.
Its also true what you say about it putting a presure on your relationship with your dh...you cant let that happen, he's a good support to you and of course she would try come between you , as he gives you strength to stand up to her/walk away.
its a wonder any of us are still sane with whats happened .

It is a wonder indeed. They always go on the attack at my dh whenever I stand up to them, say he's brainwashing me and controlling me, even tried to make out he was some sort of psycho just for sticking up for me

They did exactly the same to my 2 bros and their partners too, all 3 of us have gone 'no contact'. It's good as we can support each other and don't feel so alone.

It makes me so angry thinking of all the things she's said and done then totally denied

I know for a fact i'm much much happier with her out of my life than I could ever be with her in it. When we are in contact my life isn't just 'ok' it is severely stressfull and unhappy. She is a total emotional vamipre and tries to suck me dry of energy and make me 'serve' her needs in any way she can.

I will never ever treat my children the way she has treated us.

Just reading what you've all been saying over the last few days. It's so good to know other people understand as I find all of these issues very lonely. It's like having a big bunch of sisters to talk to!

I went NC with my mother earlier this year but actually haven't seen her since last xmas.

I have a younger sister who still lives at home. She's much younger than me (14 years younger) and we have different dads. When her parents split up, my mother literally cut her father out of all of her baby photographs with a pair of scissors. She really poisoned her against her dad, citing the fact her father had had an affair (to be fair, if I'd been married to her, I'd have been looking for comfort elsewhere too).

To this day she has no contact with her dad and says hes a "bastard" for leaving her mum (my mother's words).

After they split up, my mother went on to have her own affair with a married man she met at a NYE party. He left his wife and two small kids and moved in with her, though it only lasted a month or so and he went back to his wife.

My sister has been in a relationship with a bloke for the last three years. This bloke lives with another girl and they have a child (who my sister refers to as "the kid") but his fiancee knows nothing about my sister.

Of course, neither of them see the irony in any of this.

Since I went NC with my mother, the rest of the family don't speak to me. My mother has recently sent me a birthday card and hs sent cards and presents for my children for xmas. My sister has sent a card for the children but has ignored my birthday.

I guess they aren't worth bothering with anyway, huh?

Hi, this is gonna be abit complicated. My mum is one of four girls, the youngest girl has a different father to the older three girls.My mum is the second child.

Ok, for a few years my nan fell out with her oldest daughter, my mum tried supporting them both, however due to my nan not talking to her eldest daughter, daughters number 3 and 4 refused to have a relationship with her.

Eldest daughters son, got arrested my daughter was also born, 2 days after my nan and sisters 3 and 4 were at oldest daughters house, everything was forgiven. Me and my mum have gradually been pushed out by nan and daughters 1,2 and 4. They have no relationship with us, we have tried I've have taken my daughter to see them yet they dont reciprocate anything.I havent seen them since xmas last year. This year my nan came to my mums house will she was at work stepdad was there, daughter 3 brought her, she brought my mums birthday present and also all our xmas presents of her and daughter 4, she couldnt stay she was to busy. I live closer to my nan than my mum and yet she didnt bring out presents to my house, I dont work in the week and she knows this.

My problem is do I take the presents back to them, my daughter has no idea who they are and she is only 3 so she wont understand either.

All of them are narcississtic, and because me and my mum wont pander to them we are no good for them anymore, I'm glad the relationship is minimal, but the nan I got now isnt the nan I had.

I found your message quite confusing to read!

However - I would give them the presents but change the tag and say they are from Santa.

Or send them to a charity shop.

If you send them back, it's just more for them to accuse you of.

Straight to the charity shop - don't get involved in their games, you can never win. Sounds just like my Mum, she has just reappeared on the scene after five years. The fact that I split up with my partner of seven years recently must be a coincidence. They can smell the vulnerability.

. thats true queenofdenial2009 .they must have radar for it or something.

Hello, I was on the thread earlier.

I'm struggling at the moment with the whole Christmas thing. It is my birthday in December too and I find the whole month difficult - I always 'mourn' the loss of my ideal family. Will never have parents who are unconditionally loving and always feel sad that I never had that as a kid at this time of year.

But I also realised with a shock yesterday that I have some bad memories of Christmas because of my parents. My father had some of his awful temper tantrums on at least two Christmas Days when I was growing up. One resulted in both my brother and I going to our rooms and my father not speaking to me for nearly four months afterwards. All because he said I couldn't use the mini tramploine my mother had got me as a Xmas present, as according to him I was more than two stone overweight. (I wasn't, I was near the bottom end of the acceptable weight range for my height (I checked with my GP). The other event was when I was younger and my mother bought the 'wrong' thing. My father insisted she go out to buy the right thing (we lived overseas in a non-Christian country, so conceivable that some shops would be open). There may well have been othe times.
He was very cruel sometimes.

And it feels like a big excuse, which I hate making as I am a grown-up, but maybe these associations are part of the reason I always feel very childlike, anxious and needy at Christmas time.

Just needed to get that out

Ding Dong

I understand why you feel that way. My mother also had tantrums at Christmas, sometimes because my stepdad hadn't bought her a "good enough" present.

My stepfather had been married previously and had three sons from that marriage. The elest and youngest never used to visit but the middle child was really close to his dad and my mum was quite jealous of this.

One Christmas (when I was about 14 and this son of his was 12), my stepfather drove to collect his son for Christmas day, as arranged.

My mother was so jealous that she insisted that this boy wasn't allowed into the house. A row ensued, my stepfather insisting that the boy be allowed inside because it was so cold in the garden. My mother refused to give in and refused to allow him to eat Christmas dinner with us so my stepfather made him a turkey sandwich and took it out to the garage and the poor boy sat there to eat his "Christmas dinner".

My mother and stepfather later divorced and my mother now lives with the daughter they had together (who's 22). I have memories of some awful Christmases; sulking, shouting etc. As a result, I have never wanted to spend Christmas with my mother (and have by default never spent it with my sister).

Last year (shortly before I went no contact), she heard we were spending the day with our friends. She phoned me up at the last minute "offering" to come and spend Christmas with us and the children, saying "If I'd known you were going over to your friends' house, I'd have offered to come and have lunch with you".

She really doesn't get that (a) I hate spending time with her, esp at Christmas and that (b) spending the day with our friends was enjoyable. Given that she has no empathy, she also thought her last minute phone call would make me cancel the arrangements we had already made - clearly she had no regard for the fact that our friends were expecting us.

Bella, thanks so much for responding.

How absolutely AWFUL for your stepbrother. I can't believe that your stepfather didn't insist he eat with you or instead, eat with his son. But like my mother, maybe he was enabling of these tantrums and rather weak.

I've remembered one or two other lesser times. I will be seeing my parents this Christmas period, although on boxing day at my brother's. I am in contact with them for various reasons, including it being best for my brother and DCs, but the main reason is that my mother (who was abusive) agreed to hear me out a few years ago. I said all I wanted to say, didn't expect an apology, got half of one, but my feelings were (finally!) acknowledged and I set down some ground rules. My father is still playing games though and I have no contact with him unless at my brother's, where we are civil and even friendly. I don't engage in his shit anymore, in fact it has become amusing. He is just a scared little boy at heart. But there are still things I'll never forgive both my parents for.

Often read the posts on here and the other NPD threads, read through the daughtersofnarcissticmothers and cried there were so many traits of my mother in there. I have had no contact with her since last Xmas, she did send me a birthday card asking me to phone her as she didn't know why I was holding a grudge against her, I wasn't, I decided after Xmas last year I would make as much effort with her as she does with me i.e. none after my usual phonecall with her. She didn't phone to wish DD2 a Happy Birthday in January and after that I decided to have no contact (this was the last straw).

I did write her a letter about why I was having no contact with her and the letter I got back said it all really. Everything was my fault, that even as a little girl I made her feel she was beneath me, basically as I was a typical know it all intelligent little girl who didn't always agree with her she treated me like dirt but my brother was and is the golden child. But of course to everyone else she is so proud of me that I went to uni and have DCs now, she only wants pictures of the DCs to boast about them.

Her phonecalls were always about her, her latest illness, she even told me she was having a cancer scare as she had read about it on google, everything she says is to make me feel sorry for her or bad about myself.

Anyway could be here all night as I am sure a lot of you on this thread could be, here is my Xmas dilemma, my brother is coming up with Xmas presents on Boxing Day that I know will include cards with money in them for the DC for her. Do I accept them? I don't want to, we don't need the money, I don't want anything from her (she said in her letter that she never felt welcome but her money and presents were!) mmm not the case. I want to send the money back and tell her if she wants to she can open a bank account for each of them and give it to them when they are 18, if I were to accept the money for them I would put it straight in the bank anyway. It will be money as she has never been bothered buying anything as that would require effort much easier to put cash in a card. And all the time telling me how poor she is.

So I don't know what to do, DP wants me to send the money back and part of me does to, I don't want her telling everyone else in the family that she sent up money and I took it but won't let her see her grandchildren or didn't thank her for it but at the same time it's not my money but the DCs IYSWIM.

Last year she told me she couldn't afford the train fare to come up and see them, I offered her the money to come up and she refused, then I said to her to keep some of the Christmas money and come up and see then, she said no to this too, then gave them £150 between 3 of them but told me she had no money.

sorry that was so long

Kitty

I've had similar problems with presents from my mother to my children since I went NC last xmas (funny that we both did it then).

DD1 is 4.5 years so she tends not to intercept mail. On her birthday I gave her the card and present because I knew it wold be lost amongst other presents and she wouldn't suddenly start asking questions about my mother.

I think in your cae it depends how old your children are. If they are young enough, you can simply change the gift tag to one that reads "from Santa xx", which is what I did this year.

If it's money. it's easier to refuse because you can refuse it on the grounds that she is apparently skint. If she refuses to take it back, I'd try to pay it into her bank account or get her some supermarket vouchers. I don't think this looks too bad on your part.

When I get presents fr the DCs, I want to send them back but I think that's a pretty hurtful thing to do. When I was 18 I received a card from my grandmother and (without my knowledge) my mother ripped it into pieces and sent it back in the envelope it arrived in.

I don't want to be like her.

gosh
a lot of this rings very very true
barely spoken to my (absent) mother since 15
father 32?
now aged 42 i am nodding and nodding at this thread

dittany re the dollshouse if it cheers you up any (!) this and this alone was my 13th birthday present!

lucky me eh

she'd had it in her cupboard for years although it was new!

Bristol - the DC are 5, 4 and 1, it will be a card each for them.

Part of me thinks I should be the bigger person let them open the card, let them see the money then put it straight into their bank account whilst telling my brother what I have done.

The other part wants to post the cards back to her and tell her to put the money away for them herself.

Personally I'd bank the money for them and put the cards up unless your 5 year old will ask questions.

My 4 year old used to see my mother and I think she's only just beginning to forget about her so I don't want her to be reminded by reading a card, IYSWIM

The only way for me to gain sanity was to distance myself from my mother by moving to another country. She visited recently and made it 'all about her' at my daughters six year old birthday party!!! Distance is crucial with narcissistic parents. It is like they have never grown up and never listen to a word you say. They can relate to you only as a child and that is pointless. Cutting yourself off at least for an extended period is the only option.

Totally agree Emmak . Moving to another country really helps your sanity. So glad I dont have to live near her. Think Im going to find the Daughters of Narcissist Motheers site useful -hope itcan help me do a bit of healing!

This thread is wonderful. My entire family are Ns as are all my previous partners (very well trained by my parents!).

I do see my mother who is very elderly now, and my N sister. But on my terms only. I did actually throw them out of my house a couple of years ago as my NS started raging at my daughter. This is the first time I have ever stood up to them and it did work!

They have just been for Christmas and they did behave themselves.

I just say it like it is nowadays, and if they don't like it, well tough. I have taken so much shit from them all my life.

My big worry now is my son who sees his NF, my exH, and thinks the sun shines out of him. My son is the golden child, my daughter the scapegoat for my exHs disordered family.

When you look into your parents backgrounds you can see why they ended up so disordered usually. Both my parents had difficult childhoods, my NF in particular, and the development of NPD is a form of protection for the child. However, I also had a difficult childhood and am NOT an N, (I hope), perhaps I am just lucky that my brain survived intact.

The brains of PDs are physically different to those of normal people, so they really can't help it. And they cannot change.

I hope all the posters who ridiculed the use of the NPD 'label' keep away from this thread. If the use of the 'label' helps one person / victim to find some peace in their soul after reading threads like this then bring 'em on!

Frankie, interesting to see someone else who, like me, does still see their family but on your terms only and with strict boundaries. As I said earlier, a big development for me has been standing up to my parents and dicating boundaries. My mother - who isn't as narcisstic as my father - wants a relationship with her gc (and me) and 'behaves' herself. My father I don't really have a relationship with, only see him if my brother has us all round, which hasn't happened for a year.

Well it was absolutely impossible to have any kind of relationship with my NF. He has been dead for 15 years now, thank god.

You just couldn't even talk to him. All he ever did was rant. I have not had one conversation with him my whole life. He was violent, totally over-reacting to the slightest misdemeanor from us kids. He once beat me with a plastic washing line because I forgot to put my bike away. I was about 10.

My N-Mother once said to me after one of these episodes...'well if you had been boys he would have killed you by now'. Nice.

He came from Eastern Europe and his family were displaced in WWII. The whole family of six brothers are the same. I have cousins who are drug addicts and psychopaths. And Ns.

And so it goes on down the generations.

It has got to stop, but the tragedy is that it has to be stopped when the victim is a child. Children have no power of course and their parents are their reference point for the world. And a child with N parents feels particularly unable to stop it as of course they are nothing and nobody, by definition. They don't count.

I am now 50 and only now do I know that actually I count as much as the next person.

Tragic really.

My friend's exdh has NPD and has almost ruined her and the childrens lives.

Her dd is 12 and won't see him now but did until recently. Last straw was her being taken from him by the police at a train station because he was inebriated.

The eldest son has cut ties with all of them and is married to a terrible woman who swears at strangers openly and he's turning like her. She is probably quite mad and I'm being unkind but I've witnessed her abusing a man in a store for not holding the door and her husband joined in with the foulest language. They have a young baby

The other son is great and in the RAF. He's very level headed.

My friend is probably quite narcisstic herself as she will put a man before her children. She is caring though but has some strange ways.

I'd like to get a book or show my friend's dd a site to help her to realise her dad has NPD. I'm hoping she'll be ok as she gets older but the terrible life she's had so far must scar?

Curiousmamma

This is quite a good site to start with...

www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html

xxx

thanks a lot