She’ll spoil your pleasure in something by simply congratulating you for it in an angry, envious voice that conveys how unhappy she is, again, completely deniably. It is impossible to confront someone over their tone of voice, their demeanor or they way they look at you, but once your narcissistic mother has you trained, she can promise terrible punishment without a word. As a result, you’re always afraid, always in the wrong, and can never exactly put your finger on why.
“Mother, good news! I’ve had an article accepted for publication.”
“Ah, well. Congratulations, I guess,” she answers with a deep sigh. Her voice is so tragic that you’d think she was told I’m suffering of a terminal disease. “Of course, I’d been hoping that. . . well, never mind. I know my opinion is not welcome. But congratulations. I guess, if you think this is what you should be wasting your life on at your age, then. . . it’s OK, I guess. You know how proud I am of you.”
Because her abusiveness is part of a lifelong campaign of control and because she is careful to rationalize her abuse, it is extremely difficult to explain to other people what is so bad about her.
None of these anecdotes I’m sharing here are a big deal per se. They are only a problem because they are part of a life-long, relentless, constant campaign of creating an intolerable environment. Everybody says something wrong, stupid or hurtful every once in a while. Narcissists, however, infuse the air around you with cruelty, hatred, and fear.
Clarissa's Blog 
Here is a thing I learned playing online collectible card games, of all things – things don’t need to actually happen to have an effect, they merely need to be known to be possible.
When the inevitable shrieking, shredding terror happens, you do not do the things they want, which is to nod and say, of course, you are right, I love you, and I am sorry for making you behave this way. You respond in kind, you shriek and you shred, or you flee, most often to some place inside you.
But when the terror remains a mere possibility, and as a price for it remaining a mere possibility, you provide concessions – yes, okay, you are right this time; do I love you? Yes, I love you; why are you behaving this way? I am sorry for making you behave this way. And then, sooner or later, when faced with a ‘no’, or even a ‘yes, but’, these earlier concessions get turned against you – ‘you say this now, but don’t you remember what you said earlier? What worth are you and your words, when you flip flop so much and are so unreliable?”
I feel like it’s not a singular event, nor an atmosphere, nor even a personality, but rather a strategy to extract behaviours, a successful (it works for years, on a great number of people) and a robust (it can use a great deal it’s own minor failures to it’s eventual advantage) one.
A question I haven’t yet solved is how to beat it without adopting it, especially as adopting it when talking to her (expecting nothing good and saying so, being ready to explode at any point, carrying a bandolier of past wrongs with you at all times) does work in providing some respite.
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Brilliant insights, brilliant. Thank you! It’s a strategy to extract behaviors, exactly.
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Mais oui… sigh….
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“but once your narcissistic mother has you trained, she can promise terrible punishment without a word. As a result, you’re always afraid, always in the wrong, and can never exactly put your finger on why”
This basically explains every second of my childhood past about age 3. I was always terrified of doing anything wrong, no matter what it was, because the punishment would be so terrifying I didn’t want to find out what it was…
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There are so many of us. That is, of course, horrible but I’m glad we are getting together in this space and supporting each other. The most difficult thing for a victim of narcissists is to find support and feel really heard. And that is the only road to healing the damage.
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I was afraid most of the time when living under my parents’ roof. I just had my books and thoughts to hide in.
It never crossed my mind that my father just hated himself and used projection as defensive mechanism.
I think your mother never dared to speak up to her own mother and somehow in her mind you became her mother. That was the case with my father. He never spoke back to his mom, I’m sure he never even dared to judge her in his thoughts.
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