Article: When your mother's a narcissist

[eyes_up]

"honestly, I think they are so self-focused that see us as nothing much more than a sofa..a sofa that walks and talks. " ~ Legs

Honestly Legs, YOU are right. Targets  are a much more complex couch that has many  more uses.


The BIG POINT is... WHO CARES what a narcissist thinks or how one thinks ... who cares if they are seeing an object in stead of a whole human being. The only two times this is important is when dealing with one and ya have to talk to some one who isn't able to get the whole picture so one has to skirt around their elephant to get anything done. Number two is when one finally realizes this is the operation so it is time to change course ... set sail.

After that my self esteem is rebuilt and the object a narcissists experiences is just that and not a self or another person.

Maybe it is mind blowing to meet a disorder or to figure it into the picture but more time should be spent getting ones bearings back and the oddity of Narcissism in extreme shouldn't at some point be that mind blowing. That is why it was originally called a disorder. It is severe and it is lack of mental/emotional health.

So if the narc is seeing a couch instead of a fellow human being... well, OK  got that down. There are things to do and a life to live. Good by head tripper and hello REAL LIFE and not seeking connection, validation, identity via a narc head!

eyes

[Litha]

What answer did you come up with Litha?

My sister's choice to put me in charge of things instead of NM inflicted a narcissistic injury on my NM. NM responded by ragiNg. My sister was completely physically and emotionally vulnerable because of the terminal cancer, so she could not defend herself against the Nrage. With no internal force to control herself, and no external force to stop her, Nm's rage went out of control.

I saw her with adult eyes during this time. The face of the Momster was revealed in all its blatant horror, but I still can barely believe it. And I don't think I can ever forgive myself for not being strong enough to protect my sister. I wish I had had WoN back then, or at least my wonderful therapist.

CZ, you asked once why we need labels. This is one example of what happens when you don't have a label for the unbelievable insanity that is unfolding before you. Without the label and the knowledge of narcissism, I had no weapons with which to defend my sister. I had no pole star to point me out of the chaos.

Do you believe her? Do you know why she did that horrible those horrible things to your Sis

I absolutely believe her. I think she told me because she wanted me to know how far she would go to punish a child who defies her. It was a warning.

She purposely choose the most Evil Choices. Why?

Because in her twisted world view, we had done unspeakable evil to her. She felt justified perpetrating every evil onto us.

[LettingGo]

 And I don't think I can ever forgive myself for not being strong enough to protect my sister.
The face of the Momster was revealed in all its blatant horror, but I still can barely believe it.~Litha

It is one thing to be attacked by an enemy that is not related to you, it is a terrifying moment to realize your Mother is an evil Monster who actually finds pleasure in your suffering and pain. To identify one's own Mother as evil goes against nature. Parents naturally protect their children not attack them and cause them hurt. Unexpected, unbelievable evil has a way of freezing in your tracks. Your body and soul has trouble processing this conflicting info., so instead of being reactive or proactive we become immobile (wish I could think of another word). I have been there more times than I would like to remember.

You did the best you knew how, now you know better, so now you will do better, and if we had a Time Machine to go back to that situation, knowing what you know now you would have done different. Wouldn't you? It was hard to face then that your own Mother was/is truly evil, but I believe you are being to see that now. Now you have knew info., now you have the power & freedom to make different choices in regards to the Momster. This is huge stuff. Take time to process. Given what is painfully true, ask your Self, What do I want? This is a question that is forbidden in the KON, but great news we are no longer in the KON so we have the clarity and freedom and power to ask ourselves this very important question.

Litha did you read my previous post w/CZ quotes? Her statements are fantastic! Did you come up w/any answer/s from that post?

[eyes_up]

"
"It is one thing to be attacked by an enemy that is not related to you, it is a terrifying moment to realize your Mother is an evil Monster who actually finds pleasure in your suffering and pain." ~ Letting Go

This is sooooo true and it doesn't exactly go away either. I still get tripped up between my mother wanting me to suffer and then turn around and want me to be the big star. This extremes of both sides goes underground and then comes out when unexpected. REally REALLY SUPER WEIRD. GULP here.

eyes

[LettingGo]

There are no right or wrong answers to the questions I ask. Just curious how others perceive things and what is true for them. Legs, the first two things on your list is the first two things on my list too. The role we play w/the N is like Litha's video about the caterpillar who is invaded by the parasite.

honestly, I think they are so self-focused that see us as nothing much more than a sofa..a sofa that walks and talks.~Leggs

If only I was a sofa, to the Momster I was a walking & talking toilet that who's lid was slammed shut. She dumped all over me, until I learned to flush her out and now she can go to waste. I am nobody's toilet anymore!

I agree w/you Leggs it doesn't really matter if they are evil due to Nurture or Nature or a combo of both, what matters is that they are evil and there is no cure.

[LettingGo]

I still get tripped up between my mother wanting me to suffer and then turn around and want me to be the big star.~Eyes

It is that evil cat and mouse game isn't Eyes? Just when you think you are strong enough to escape, the claws come back to attack. Oh how I know this trick so well. The Momster never considered me an "expert in my field" UNTIL she needed a Scapegoat just in case her plans to take my Nsibs kids away failed. If she succeeded in her plans of taking my Nsibs kids away and the N-chantment Spell would finally be broken w/the Sis then my Sis could finally see the Momster for the evil Troll she truly is, BUT the Momster had a back-up plan. She was only doing what the "expert" recommended, she didn't know any better, just a poor concerned Granny who after all is not the "expert" in the family. Thank God I listened to my intuition/instinct and asked some questions and did not fall into her manipulation of playing one family member against the other. The pain I would have been suffering today if I had played a part in the removal of my Sib's kids.

[Jacintae]

Hi

Thank you all so very much for this thread. I find myself going back over the whole thread again and again.

Piaget ( a specialist in child development) had a theory on how we 'learn new things'. Here is a really simple explanation of this:

http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/assimacc.htm#What%27s

Well with me this thread is big time 'accommodation'. I have to go back to 'square one' on my understanding of Nism.

Once again - I am so very grateful to WoN. In the beginning this forum helped me make it through the initial pain of the feelings of rejection, hurt, depair and self-blame over my disasterous affair with an N. When things got really bad and I could barely face day to day life, or I was obsessing over the N, I found such relief, understanding and healing here. I was mostly focused on posting and getting 'things out'. Now, I am finding that things are changing - after a period of never wanting to ever hear anything more about Nism, I find myself desperate to really understand what my life is completely emeshed in. And here it all is - I need to go slowly through it all.

Thanks again - 'when the student is ready, the teacher really does appear'. 

Lots of love

Jacxx

[eyes_up]

"It is that evil cat and mouse game isn't Eyes? Just when you think you are strong enough to escape, the claws come back to attack. Oh how I know this trick so well."  Letting go

Letting Go, you are partially right here. Let me explain. Any narcissist actions are counter productive to the whole. They waste a lot of time really. They even waste the narcissist time because they do not go any where ... things do not grow. Nothing changes and things are held in a cycle a limbo that doesn't DO anything healthy and ultimately towards spiritual growth ... I value spiritual growth a whole bunch as well as psychological growth. I also value connection and narc behaviors don't exactly go there either ... it is a very limited and narrow on the level of human intelligence in the big picture sort of way.

Now days I get caught in the cat and mouse game not to often. When I get snagged... I am able to see into how I am snagged. This is entirely important... for me that is. I want to know the buttons that still exist. But on another level it is  sad to see a person ... a parent have to stoop so low as to work dirty like this. I mean what really gets to me is the fact that this person... a mother or any one ... has to work things in such a fashion so they come out on top.

Too bad that a person has to do all this yucky stuff to maintain the idea of feeling good about them self. I figure it is way better to feel good about self and produce roses rather than vile.

If I am caught in the vile ... well it stings . It is poison. I am just real glad it isn't me. If I identify with the head space, meaning if I am caught thinking she is speaking to me and talking about me then I am not just stinging I have been tricked into believing the illusions of what I am not or who I am which of course I see as lies first to the narcissist and secondly to me. Just lies. So believing the lie makes it evil. It is evil when I don't know any better then the cycle of abuse, when i am still the unknowing and hurt victim.

So, actually now days I am strong enough and have been for some time now... to escape. I did finally escape but it had nothing to do with removing her , my mother, from my life. It happens in the head,  when I removed myself from the identification , the label and grew out side of the unhealthy relationship of perpetrator and victim, narcissist and target and all the meanings those behaviors and dialogs employ.  

Hoping I am making sense here.

When i get caught in the cat and mouse some times I don't even care. It just means that i am not really paying attention to the fact that the person I am speaking to is a narcissist. Have to pay attention. Have to know the territory but not take it personally. what is happening is really not abut a me or a self... my true identity or being. It is about the sickness . It is about an alien being an alien and me trying to expect that an alien will stop being an alien and or me trying to change the program of the alien because what the alien has to say is that I am of no value. That is the prime operation of the alien. To first, as a child , teach me that I am powerless and inferior. do I believe the alien? WEll, I did for a long time. Not any more and that changes every thing.

Now I do get triggered once in a while. Usually once every other visit. The old messages link up to the old sense of self since historically I store all old experiences the illusionary self... the self that could never be quite good enough , the self that was of lesser value and defective. but those were all lies and I know it stronger then I took to the lies. so what ever my mother dishes up never gets to my primary source. It doesn't take me down. It momentarily gets caught in the machine until I work through it and come out even stronger.

I feel pretty heroic when I can get snagged and then pop back up even stronger. When I bought into the illusion of the superiority of the narcissist I also bought into the inferior of my self. The whole coin here is a whole illusion... both sides of the coin at play. Once this is unplugged from the picture ... N mom just looks like she is insane... waving her arms around talking to garbage cans... the grand illusion. She is talking to a garbage can and I used to identify with the garbage can.

When I find myself caught in the act of feeling like a garbage can I know I have done myself wrong first. The narcissist is just counting on me identifying with a garbage can.

I do have back up for this theory. When I do not get snagged by a comment n-mom tries another line and then another and another. I dodge the illusion since I know it is just that. She speaks not the truth. She speaks in with in the value system of a narcissist which is to say... the narcissist needs to be better. The program doesn't ever stop. it can be a distraction and it play on ego identifications ... it plays on an unhealthy egos need to prove and separate me from others there by being superior. You know this... I am not talking news or anything. But to not get caught up in the drama, the false account of human existence... that is me buying into the illusion which is the way the narcissist exists and survives.

So, yeah I could look at it like an over all evil. Any one inside of the illusion be it on the side that looks like it is winning is actually just flapping their wax paper wings and really never getting off the ground. I now can see that ... but what I saw before , inside of the lie was a wonderful bird getting more and better power then myself. That is precisely what the illusion is built for and it does work until it is uncovered.

Now I can uncover the lies and the illusion but the real work is stepping out of the identification with the illusion. That is what I have to do... that is the way I have to grow.

I am sad because here is a person, my mother, that will never make contact with her daughter. She will never have that intimate connection with her fellow being. It will always be about being superior. NOW HOW BORING and UNPRODUCTIVE (evolve) DOES IT GET? Emotional retardation is difficult to grasp in terms of a parent. Yet when I become an adult... I can understand it and even reparent myself.

I have grieved my losses and still some times I do grieve that loss but I sure as heck do not hang out hoping and waiting for change. I see the alien and not a person who is unable to progress and grow into an adult. Thanking my lucky stars that I am able to after living it out with an unhealthy parent(s).

eyes_up

[CZBZ]

That was beautifully poignant, Eyes_Up. I enjoyed reading the whole post twice. You have made it out of the craziness with your 'self' in tact and we all know it hasn't been easy.

Narcissistic relationships are also on a continuum just like narcissists themselves. Some kids are less resilient than others. That's the sad but honest truth. There is no Universal Law about what anyone has to do if their parents are narcissistic. It all depends on the relationship, the malignancy you're dealing with, and your emotional resiliency (ability to sustain the inevitable insults to your self-esteem and self-worth). This isn't to say anyone is stronger or better than anyone else if they choose to END or MAINTAIN contact with a narcissistic parent. I want to make that very very clear. Even though there are similar dynamics, each relationship is unique and very complex! So what one person might need to do is not a prescription for anyone else. How we benefit on a message board is having a variety of options when each person decides what he or she must do to take exquisite care of themselves.

I recognize the extreme importance of the Law of No Contact but I also want everyone to know that it is NOT a commandment.   If you are an adult who is being physically or sexually abused by a narcissistic parent, you may need to enforce No Contact and seek therapeutic intervention to help you work through your 'guilt' and 'self-blame'.  

There's a broad continuum of dysfunction we write about on WoN. For some of us, we are able to work on ourselves, learn about narcissistic families, and never severe contact with the N-pareNt. That's what I had assumed anyone could do since it's how I've managed my own family-of-origin. Then I had a huge learning curve about familial dysfunction and just how ruinous some narcissistic parents can be. It's as though a person takes two steps forward towards loving themselves and the narcissistic parents has to knock 'em back ten steps or more. Eventually, despite the desire and determination, a child (adult child) begins feeling helpless, hopeless, and inert. They give up on themselves rather than giving up on the N-pareNt. so I have learned overtime on WoN to not make judgments about anyone's N-parent and to avoid projecting 'my situation' onto others or assume that the way I've managed my FOO issues is a template for everyone else! Sadly, there are situations which require No Contact and people will feel divided within themselves for taking such extreme action. The narcissist will intensify the guilt trips, playing on a child's emotions if they sense that their handy scapegoat is getting away.

Your separation from the enmeshing pareNt is viewed as a threat, a rejection, that you are betraying the family's code of silence. This can be extremely difficult to tolerate. You will need support to get OUT of the relationship and save yourself from what might be ultimately self-destructive. 

Hugs,
CZ

[LettingGo]

Now I can uncover the lies and the illusion but the real work is stepping out of the identification with the illusion. That is what I have to do... that is the way I have to grow.~Eyes

Healing is knowing & accepting that the projections are evil lies and when the attack comes it does not penetrate the core self, because you no longer identify w/the lies. However, the claws do scratch and sting the surface due to the biological relationship between Nparent and child that is unavoidable, thus the unavoidable, inescapable, unpreventable, fated, sure, certain, inevitable sting. Does it wound like it did before, no, but it still stings. And as Eyes has said, something we must rise above.

It momentarily gets caught in the machine until I work through it and come out even stronger.

If I am caught in the vile ... well it stings . It is poison. I am just real glad it isn't me. If I identify with the head space, meaning if I am caught thinking she is speaking to me and talking about me then I am not just stinging I have been tricked into believing the illusions of what I am not or who I am which of course I see as lies first to the narcissist and secondly to me. Just lies. So believing the lie makes it evil. It is evil when I don't know any better then the cycle of abuse, when i am still the unknowing and hurt victim.~Eyes

Eyes, I will have to respectively disagree w/the bold print. A lie is evil just because it is a lie. The lie is evil in of itself regardless if we give it power or not. The evil lie becomes powerful when we give it any sort of validity, and the deeper the "perceived" validity the deeper the pain. However, even though we know that it has absolutely zero validity and it can not attach itself to our core self and we can have the lie bounce off our chest like the bullets off of Superman, still the fact remains that our own Mom pulled the trigger! Sure the lies fall at our feet, but the truth remains the Momster's act, the lies themselves are evil.

After you have healed from the N-experience and the projected lies can not contaminate your core Self, I guess the difference between LC and NC (and I have done both) is whether or not you want to be Superman or Superwoman and don't mind the sting of the bullets of lies being fired at you by a Nparent. I turned in my cape last year and I don't believe I will put it back on, like I have done so in the past. What is the purpose in that? Honor the unhonorable? Honor a Momster? That is not what we are called to do, and here is why
http://dealingwithtoxicpeople.blogspot.com/2010/02/honoring-abusive-evil-toxic-reprobate.html

I enjoy our conversations here at WoN and what works for one person may not work for someone else. I have a low level Nsib who is trying to convince me to put back on the Superwoman cape like she does and like I have done in the past, because "our Mom[ster] may not have too many years left and you will regret your decision of NC because your D did not get to know her grandmother". I guess Misery wants Company and the Momster is due for a visit and Sis wants me to share in the misery of having the Momster stay with us, so she wont have to stay w/Sis the entire time that the Momster is out visiting. I guess I need to tell her that I am forever resigning my role as Superwoman and if she wants to think less of me for doing so then that is her problem not mine. I guess she did not receive the memo that, the role of Superwoman will no longer be played by LettingGo -- I am letting go of that role!

[Legs]

<<After you have healed from the N-experience and the projected lies can not contaminate your core Self>>

Are you actually suggesting that there is a chance you can heal completely from the N-experience? All I was hoping for was to be able to limp away and curl up like a hurt dog licking his wounds. But they do say the dog's saliva has healing magic in it.

If I thought for one second I could ever get past this, I think that would be so .....so, I don't even have the word to go her.
I just never dreamed that anyone gets out and ever becomes a whole person. I feel like my brain and heart were ripped out and I watched them get thrown into the garbage disposal and they were ground up and washed away.

I HATE this feeling that keeps creeping back..I feel stronger and then I realize either he ruined me or I let him ruin me. I'm not sure who did what sometimes. I hope sometime to look back on this entire relationship and congratulate myself on getting out and having some kind of decent life, but I never once thought I'd ever really be whole again.

Legs, feeling all whiny and awful without her usual jovial vulgarity

[May]

  I`m not 100% on this healing thing. I think it`s like anything else in life, we just learn how to deal with things  better so that what has happened in our lives don`t control us anymore, and we are able to move on to some degree.

[LettingGo]

Are you actually suggesting that there is a chance you can heal completely from the N-experience? ~Leggs

Most definitely yes! Eyes, can explain it much better than I. When you get to that place in your healing journey that you realize that the horrible N-experience is something that happened to you, but it no longer defines you.

All I was hoping for was to be able to limp away and curl up like a hurt dog licking his wounds. But they do say the dog's saliva has healing magic in it.~LEggs

You are on to something Leggs! The Healing Journey for me is about Self discovery.
 

[Legs]

Thanks! Is there a way here that we could, for example, click on Eye's user name and then it would take me to a place where I could see all of her posts listed?


Am still not quite sure how it all works here..it's so much FANCIER than any forum I've ever been a part of.

Legs, whose mother wasn't the N...mother was a bi-polar perfectionist married to the charismatic, sadistic Super N father

[LettingGo]

 

Thanks! Is there a way here that we could, for example, click on Eye's user name and then it would take me to a place where I could see all of her posts listed?~Leggs

Fantastic idea Leggs!

[Litha]

If you click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of WoN (it's in front of a spider web) it takes you to a search page. From there, click on "Advanced Search" and you can search posts by user. You have to put a word in the search too, but I usually just type in "the" because that is in every post.

So go to the Advanced Search page, click in "the" for the search word and "eyes up" for the user. You will see all of her posts. 

I used this more often when I first started here so I could get to know people, but I still do occasionally when a new person starts posting and I want to see all their posts together.

 
Litha

[LettingGo]

  Thanks Litha

[Legs]

<<If you click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of WoN (it's in front of a spider web) it takes you to a search page. From there, click on "Advanced Search" and you can search posts by user. You have to put a word in the search too, but I usually just type in "the" because that is in every post.

So go to the Advanced Search page, click in "the" for the search word and "eyes up" for the user. You will see all of her posts. >>

Thanks, Litha! I am so curious about your name...I have never seen it before, and is it pronounced with a short 'i' sound or a long 'e' sound on the first syllable?

I am off to go find those posts.

legs

[LoisLane]

I just want to say what a wonderful post this was.  This is my mother.  I had no idea.  I wonder what my life would have been life had I known I was not alone in this world.  Explaining her was and still is too hard for me.  It always appears as if I am insane.  The queen of gaslighting, she is. 

Anyway, this article was so helpful to me I think it should be in some sort of 911 folder.  Easy to read, explains it all and reaffirms we are not insane.

Thank You!

LL