It has been said that being raised by a Narcissistic mother is one of the most difficult experiences to overcome. The negative effects of emotional abuse are so severe that a person often struggles with extremely low opinion of themselves, unsatisfying relationship and rocky, difficult romantic partnerships for their entire lives. Worst yet, realization that your mother did not really care or loved you at all is such a difficult one, that many people spend most of their energy trying to run away from that notion, blocking the very path that could bring some relief and begin the process of recovery.
I know from my own first-hand experience just how harmful being brought up by a Narcissistic mother can be. To make matters worse, ours was a one-parent household and my mother didn't bother to keep good relationship with most of her own family, and so we did not have a benefit of a presence of another, more level-headed and caring adult. Taxing and abusive as she was, our mother was all we had, and, being small kids, we loved her dearly, so we never could imagine that she was at fault. It is only after I have lived on another continent for many years, and had a chance to observe all the supportive, caring relationship other families had, that I began to realize just what was missing from my childhood experience.
Gradually I started to understand why it was so difficult for me to feel like I belong, have value and can contribute something positive to the world. For the longest time I have been treated as unfortunate nuisance, something to be barely tolerated, and constantly reminded of what great sacrifice it was having to raise me. Of course, all of that was done underhandedly, in a way that made sure the message came through loud and clear, yet others could not easily detect it.
It makes me furious even now to remember all the times my mother would completely destroy me emotionally in private, than come out smiling, good-humored, if a little patronizing toward me, and start telling all present about my latest achievements in school so that everyone would realize what an exceptional mother she was. Honestly, at the time I was so confused and so reliant on other people's opinions that I took everyone else's world for it and believed that I should be grateful for a mother like her. Only after years and years of working through severe depression, hurt and deep sense of inadequacy I started to realize that I actually can not even remember experiencing anything other than a sense of shame, guilt, discomfort, and even some kind of repulsion toward my mother, along with an intense urge to move away from her physically.
Never once I remember being lovingly looked at or embraced by my mother - not once in my entire childhood! Imagine my bewilderment, then when she acted completely betrayed and devastated when I took the first chance I had to moved out from her house at 16. Here was the same woman who made an awful scene almost everyday, crying and wailing about how ungrateful, useless and callous I am, how she should have had an abortion and never have bothered bringing me into this world, and how she would be better off dead, and perhaps she will still consider hanging herself and she wished an alcoholic mother on both of me and my brother so that we would learn to appreciate what she had to give and on and on. She routinely cursed and shamed me, calling me every disgusting word in the book without any proportion to a supposed "offence" I was guilty of - like not saying a "thank you" quick enough after a meal or something. When I was smaller 6 or 7, I rushed to her, cried with her and swore that I cared and I loved her and I would do anything she wanted just for her to stop crying, and made profuse apologies and amends for whatever set her off at the time.
Then, when I reached my teenage years, I started questioning what have I done to deserve such a severe response and even tell her that I do not remember asking her to bring me into this world, and therefore can not be held responsible, and that, come to think about it, I would rather her not given me birth at all than having to live this way. All of the surface bolstering and teenage rebelling aside, I nevertheless suffered terrible shame and guilt every time I saw my mother upset, as well as felt deeply inadequate because I couldn't help her and make her happy. While wisecracking on the surface, I was very disturbed and, of course, nowhere near discovering the true reason behind those scenes - a power trip, plain old desire to emotionally destroy and control. Only much later I started to realize that regardless of what she said and how hard she tried to portray herself as caring and self-sacrificing, my mother routinely made many decisions and acted in a way that betrayed her lack of concern for her kid's well-being. Though I was completely blind to that hurtful truth as a child, I now can clearly see it. Perhaps one of most telling of such decisions was her constant moving herself and her two small children to city after city, across the whole country, uprooting us from our schools, our friends, familiar environments time and time again just to have the last word in her numerous romantic relationships. My mother literally could not stand any length of time without being romantically involved with somebody, anybody - no matter how unsuitable to her life situation the person might be.
She has found herself in all kinds of trouble time and again, and the fact that she had two small children never stopped her from" "asserting herself" through fighting, ignoring or leaving her partner, which meant loosing our fathers for both me and my brother (we each had a different one), and it also meant less and less financial and physical security with every such episode. Even so, I have never questioned my mothers judgement while living through this. Ironically, is when I was once trying to re-establish our connection as an adult that she volunteered a reason for one particularly traumatic move, where I was robbed of any contact with my loving farther by virtue of us moving across the country, and where I forever lost any chance to go to a decent school and have a musical and performance art education for which I showed a lot of promise.
At age of 7 I had a good school, a lot of caring teachers around me and contact with my estranged farther and his family. Suddenly we had moved to a some god-forsaken town where I spend next 8 years weeding plants and feeding animals (not that there is anything wrong with that), loosing any chance at a decent education and professional career. And, of course, I, in effect lost my farther once more, since I was not able to have any contact with him. I had always assumed there was a very good reason for us suddenly uprooting and moving like that. Imagine my surprise, when in our adult conversation my mother confided that her then-lover got cold feet being involved with a woman older than him who had already had two kids of her own (that's my mother), and left for about a year to make up his mind, leaving her suddenly, without a chance to make her case and assuming she will be there when he gets back. Wrong move! To spite him and assert her independence, my mother yanked me and my brother out of school and from the place we knew, and moved from a big city to an agricultural heartland since that's where she could easily find a place to live.
At age of 7 I had a good school, a lot of caring teachers around me and contact with my estranged farther and his family. Suddenly we had moved to a some god-forsaken town where I spend next 8 years weeding plants and feeding animals (not that there is anything wrong with that), loosing any chance at a decent education and professional career. And, of course, I, in effect lost my farther once more, since I was not able to have any contact with him. I had always assumed there was a very good reason for us suddenly uprooting and moving like that. Imagine my surprise, when in our adult conversation my mother confided that her then-lover got cold feet being involved with a woman older than him who had already had two kids of her own (that's my mother), and left for about a year to make up his mind, leaving her suddenly, without a chance to make her case and assuming she will be there when he gets back. Wrong move! To spite him and assert her independence, my mother yanked me and my brother out of school and from the place we knew, and moved from a big city to an agricultural heartland since that's where she could easily find a place to live.
And the kicker is, that I don't think my mother realized, not then, not now, not as she was telling me the story, that she has dramatically affected both of our worlds, and forever changed her kids life without giving it any consideration whatsoever. Just to prove a point!
Neither did she worry about her then lover's true feelings, which she demonstrated when the poor fellow showed at our new location just to find her married again, or her previous husbands for that matter, whom she also deemed "defective" and discarded with no second thought.
While we were too young to understand, subconsciously my mother must have realize something was amiss with her parenting style, and would have most definitely received those signals form other people, so she worked extra hard to keep our view on her and on life in general under very tight control. She had to make sure there is no way we would be able to realize that the mental and emotional abuse we were experiencing wasn't normal, that were other happy, healthy families around us. She kept talking to us about how so and so was inferior intellectually, or morally, how their joyful disposition was only a pretense and how that parent was drinking, and another too pushy and so on.
She continuously made fun of her sister's parenting skills, even though her sister was the only one trying to help her at the time. My mother was always quick to point out everyone else's weaknesses, which, she thought, made her look even more infallible Of course, when she played with our impressionable children's minds we believed her - it is only natural for a little girl or a boy to look up to their mother. She was so successful with this "mind control" game that I did not even begin to realize what really has happened to me until I was well into my adulthood. And even then that was just the very beginning of the recovery.
She continuously made fun of her sister's parenting skills, even though her sister was the only one trying to help her at the time. My mother was always quick to point out everyone else's weaknesses, which, she thought, made her look even more infallible Of course, when she played with our impressionable children's minds we believed her - it is only natural for a little girl or a boy to look up to their mother. She was so successful with this "mind control" game that I did not even begin to realize what really has happened to me until I was well into my adulthood. And even then that was just the very beginning of the recovery.
This video recaps the same info that you have read in this post, but I thought I'd still share it so you can have an access to many kind and insightful comments it received, as well as other people's personal accounts of being raised by Narcissistic parents.
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