Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers
1. Everything she does is deniable. There is always a facile excuse or an explanation. Cruelties are couched in loving terms. Aggressive and hostile acts are paraded as thoughtfulness. Selfish manipulations are presented as gifts. Criticism and slander is slyly disguised as concern. She only wants what is best for you. She only wants to help you.
“Mother, you forced me to get married against my will. I didn’t want to, I told you that I wasn’t ready to get married but you made me anyway. And I was really, really unhappy.”
“No, of course, I didn’t force you. You wanted to get married.”
“No, I didn’t. I told you then and I’m telling you now. I didn’t want to get married.”
“You are inventing all this. Of course, you did. And in any case, this was all for the best. I only acted in your best interest.”
Many of her putdowns are simply by comparison. She’ll talk about how wonderful someone else is or what a wonderful job they did on something you’ve also done or how highly she thinks of them. The contrast is left up to you. She has let you know that you’re no good without saying a word.
Smiling girls. Throughout my entire life, I’ve been persecuted by the image of these smiling girls. Whenever I would make a friend, both of my parents would tell me, “Masha (Lena, Marina, Katia, etc.) is such a wonderful little girl. She always smiles and always looks so cheerful. Why can’t you be more like her? Ah, how much I wish I had a daughter like Masha (Lena, Marina, Katia, etc.). And instead I have you, a girl who never smiles and is always sad and broody.”
Obviously, I would begin to hate Masha (Lena, Marina, Katia, etc.) and never wanted to see them again.
“Why can’t you even keep a friend?” my parents would ask. “Masha (Lena, Marina, Katia, etc.) is such a great girl. I was hoping she could teach you to be more like her. But now you don’t even want to spend time with her any longer. Why don’t you have any friends?”
“Clarissa doesn’t want any friends,” they’d tell everybody. “She is unsociable by nature.”
In adulthood, smiling girls would turn into smiling women.
“Ah, why have I been cursed with a child like you,” my mother would sigh on a regular basis. “Look at Tamara. Her only goal in life is to please her mother. All of her money goes to making her mother happy. She comes from work and doesn’t go out with friends or boyfriends. She goes straight home to be with her mother. And she is always so smiley and cheerful about it!”
Clarissa's Blog 
I was going to ask you about that list someday, and here it happens unbidden. It’s bitter, but it’s a pleasure.
Here’s a question – anything on that list that entirely does not apply?
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It’s scary but no, there is nothing. It was quite a shock to realize that my mother was not inventing anything. She is just following the narcissist’s handbook very diligently. Reading this article was very scary but it was also a relief to realize that there is at least one person on the planet (aside from my sister) who understands what this feels like.
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Good for you.
Me and my sister have gone closer as a result of coming to the same realizations with the help of that very same article. It was quite fun, for example, exchanging the “You are not as X as your sibling!” comments between us, felt like some circuitous but well-deserved compliments.
Anyway. In the same vein, have you seen the movie Spider? I can’t promise it’s good overall, but there is a single moment in there that it’s worth to watch the whole movie for, which is a good return as far as movies go.
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I don’t even know what chance poor sods who are the only children have to get from under this.
No, I don’t think I’ve seen the movie.
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Reading about your mother’s movie suggestion again reminded me that I should qualify my own movie suggestion. Spider is depressing. I’d rather not discuss the details of the movie itself, but after watching, I cried and sobbed through the night until I decided the best option available would be to push the whole inchoate sensation somewhere deep into the back my head until ‘better days’ come. It is interesting, I guess, that one can become almost entirely numb on demand. The opposite is not true, to the best of my experience.
The good thing from that movie was putting a crack in the idea that mothers love their children. You’re well beyond that now, I believe, so watching it, if you had considered doing so, might not be worth the possible pain. Or, if you do watch it, perhaps schedule some recoup afterwards.
Might not have that kind of effect on you, of course, but due warning on the off chance it does.
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Oh my G-d… I just realized something.
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This is all too familiar. 😦
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After seeing others’ responses… Which % of mothers can be defined as Narcissistic, in your eyes? They seem to be frighteningly common. I suppose, the same % of fathers is Narcissistic too.
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How could this statistic be arrived at, exactly? 🙂 🙂
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\\ Her only goal in life is to please her mother. All of her money goes to making her mother happy. … She goes straight home to be with her mother.
One can question parents, who say such, whether they have themselves behaved so. If not, you just followed the “bad” example of your own mother, so she had no right to complain.
The same about being cheerful and so on. “I can’t XYZ since I have different genetics.”
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The answer is, “No, I haven’t and now I’m wracked with permanent guilt, so I’m trying to help you about these guilty feelings by teaching you what’s right.”
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From the link: “She walked over to where I was sitting and bent over me with her hands on the back of the couch so I was trapped under her. She said: “Sometimes I do small things.” and then she turned and walked away.”
The author says this is “an acknowledgement that she had purposefully hurt her daughter”
Am I the only one who interprets this as a threat? It seems to imply “and sometimes I do _big_ things and if you push this, you’re gonna find out what they are”
All (but possibly one) example of the victims in the link are daughters and I’m wondering if that’s significant (does same and opposite sex parental abuse differ systematically?)
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It’s exactly the same when fathers do it, in my experience. From what I’ve seen, narcissism knows no gender.
There are always threats but they are so veiled that it’s hard to put your finger on them. I have, however, examples of real, direct threats and I will tell about them in future posts.
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I’ve been reading this blog for years and never commented.
But this hit the nerve:
“I don’t even know what chance poor sods who are the only children have to get from under this.”
I am an only child and it is so hard. I grew up knowing that my father hates me, disdains me and is hugely ashamed of me. He often called me brainless animal, roadkill and made threats to punch me in the face. (Безмозглая скотина, сдохлятина, я тебе рожу разобъю.).
you went through a lot, to say the least, but you’re so lucky to have your sister and your dad.
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This is so horrible autumn, I’m so so sorry.
“I was afraid most of the time when living under my parents’ roof. I just had my books and thoughts to hide in.”
– My main childhood emotion was fear, too. And I hid in books and fantasies, as well. There was never any physical violence in my family. But there was a constant fear that, at any moment, you could be humiliated, exposed, barked at, wounded, hurt, etc. The hardest part was that you could never find any measure of control over this. The abuse never depended on what you did. It just happened, like a natural catastrophe.
Autumn, you were an only child, but now you are not alone. See how many of us there are here? We understand and share you experiences and your pain.
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“there was a constant fear that, at any moment, you could be humiliated, exposed, barked at, wounded, hurt, etc. The hardest part was that you could never find any measure of control over this. The abuse never depended on what you did. It just happened, like a natural catastrophe.”
– Yes, exactly. It was like a tornado coming from nowhere, with no time or means to escape. All I had to do is to look at him the wrong way. I was used as a scapegoat. In a matter of seconds his face would turn into this crazy mask, and he would grab me and shake me. My mom always fought him off, but never say a word.
– My grandmother, his mom has passed away many years ago. All my childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood she has always blamed me for hating my father. She held me 100% responsible for my relationship with my dad and kept saying that any other father would beat me and then I would know. Just several years before her death she completely changed her mind on that. I feel awful now, as if she is going to come from the dead and confront me for betraying her and her family again.
“Autumn, you were an only child, but now you are not alone. See how many of us there are here? We understand and share you experiences and your pain.”
– Thank you so much for your kind words and writing this series of posts, Clarissa.
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“In a matter of seconds his face would turn into this crazy mask, and he would grab me and shake me. My mom always fought him off, but never say a word.”
– At least, your mother fought him off. That’s not nearly enough, but it’s something. Our father never interceded for us. As the years went by, he participated more and more in his wife’s bullying of his children. 😦
“I feel awful now, as if she is going to come from the dead and confront me for betraying her and her family again.”
– Here is a good article on introjection (i.e. incorporating other people into our identities and our view of the self): http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/traversing-the-inner-terrain/201306/identity-and-introjection
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