Today, at last, we are going to continue discussion on Narcissistic mothers, thanks to one viewer's persistent reminders. I could no longer find the comment and the name, but you know who you are - thank for your request, and thanks to all my viewers as well.
Now, to the main topic of this post: Narcissistic Mother's propensity to manipulate and control her own children.
First, let us take a look at how precisely does this manipulation occurs, and why. Let us remember a few predominant characteristics of a person with NPD. They are focused on their own view on their personality and desire to uphold that view, as well as get as much attention and praise for it as possible. Now, compare that with the normal function of a Mother: mothers are the most selfless, caring and loving human beings, because, if normal, once they have a baby, they answer the call of nature to relinquish their focus on themselves, and concentrate on doing everything possible to assure their baby's survival and well-being.
This fundamental traits of a mother are not really compatible with the NPD-affected person't view of the world. Narcissists have never had a chance to experience nurturing and love in their own childhoods, and so they are not developed enough to be able to provide it for anyone, even their children. What they do instead is try and use their own children as sources of care and attention, as well as using them as props for getting more praise and feeling proud when interacting with other adults. So, if you unfortunate enough to be a biological child of a Narcissist, you are deprived of opportunity to experience the loving, nurturing attention we all need in order to grow and develop into functional, well-adjusted, confident and happy adults - instead you are, in turn, are a prime candidate for being yourself affected with NPD or swinging to another extreme and becoming co-dependent, and most likely entangled with another Narcissist in your adult relationships.
Not a very happy picture, huh? Well, the good news is that you are listening to this, which means you took the time to look for solutions to the conflicts you are experiencing withing yourself, and with the right attitude and persistence there is a good chance that you will find your way to a better place in your life. Now, back to the main topic: knowing about Narcissistic mother's (or father's) inability to give love and nurturing, and their tendency to instead expect and demand it from their children, we now can take a look at a few real-life scenarios that are all too familiar to the ones who had to deal with this problem in their own childhood.
First: golden child, naughty child scenario. It is not unusual for a Narcissistic parent to pick one child as their favorite, and concentrate all their energy on defending that choice through slandering and alienating the other "naughty child" and ostracizing them from the entire family. Now, the initial reasons for this could be very simple: chances are, the "golden" child had inadvertently provided more adoration, praise and proved their willingness to do whatever the Narcissistic parent wanted them to do. For the Narcissist, that is the dream come true, and, of course, with their inherent tendency to only focus on their own benefit, they have no qualms about openly favoring the "well behaved" child among the others. Another reason for picking the favorite could be that the child is a source of pride and added prestige to the Narcissist as a parent.
For example, in my own family, I was always doing really well in school, while my brother was a constant source of trouble and shaming for my mother from school administrators, teachers etc. Uncomfortable as it was for me, I was always sighted as the "proper" student, while my brother was cast off as something of a troublemaker. The truth was that he has had an incredibly hard time growing up without his biological father and having to put up with constant abuse of both his step father (who was my biological father) and my mother, while both of them concentrated their attention on me as a baby and have completely fail to even try to understand how hard all of this was on my brother. Is it any wonder he has faltered in school? Of course, he has got zero compassion or understanding from my mother, while he has been berated and shamed almost daily.
Now, as we try to understand what looks like extreme lack of compassion, as well as inability to accept real responsibility (it was, after all, my mother who was largely, though not solely, responsible for the turmoil our family was in), let us try and take a closer look at the Narcissist's way of thinking: in their world, they are already entitled to all of good things happening to them ALL the time, while any deviation from that script perceived as a glaring injustice and the Narcissist sees themselves as a center-most victim of this unfair persecution. Now, this is the particular point I would like to highlight, though I do not expect everyone to agree with me, I do believe that would be the correct way of looking on this particular disorder.
The Narcissist's dismissal of everyone else's interest, feelings or circumstances in relation to their, Narcissist's, actions are not fully intentional. Now, most of the people who love to hate those Narcissistic quote unquote "monsters" are probably not going to like this assertion, as much as they prefer to believe that Narcissists "know exactly what they're doing" etc. etc. Well, the cold hard truth is that they are not likely to know what they are doing to you simply because they do not know how to consider the situation from your angle, so you may say they do not even begin to know how would you feel simply because it never occurs to them to consider that part. Now, you would say how disgusting and monstrous etc. Yes, from the perspective of a healthy individual it is, however, consider this situation: would you hold a person who have never been exposed to Western civilization, say, a native in Papua New Guinea, to the same standard of table side etiquette as you would everyone else you know from your own upbringing?
Truth is, the Narcissist never learned how to be compassionate simply because they have never reached that level of personal development, so as sad as it is, expecting them to perform as a full-functioning adult is as futile of a pursuit as to expect the member of Toulambi tribe to know how to use knife and fork. The Narcissists who are truly affected by NPD are simply incapable of conceptualizing any real emotions or feelings outside of themselves.
Remember yourself last time you were really angry, practically livid at someone. Remember how that made you feel about other person's emotions, perspectives or what they they had to say at that moment. If you were worked up enough, chances are you couldn't care less about how they felt and what they said. Now transfer that temporary loss of ability for compassion to Narcissist's entire psyche - because while normal people revert to a lower stage in development in extreme, what their self perceives as life-threatening situations, where your own survival is of foremost importance, the Narcissist live in the world that everything is threatening and their focus is on their own self, because they can not trust the "outer" world and can not connect to it in any other way.
So, it is not like they premeditate and revel in your agony, it is just that they are incapable of perceiving it as real. Now, back to the same topic - as horrifying as it is, the same goes for Narcissist's own children - they are also perceived as a part of "other", dangerous world that needs to be arranged and controlled, in order for the ego to survive. So if the quest calls for pitting one of the children against the other, or telling lies in order to get a certain outcome or behavior - that is all acceptable, because the outcome is always what matters most. In my case, my mother told me the most horrifying stories about how my father abused her - kicked her in the belly when she was pregnant with me, once he knew she could not abort, how he beat and abused my older brother, while always dotting on me - I am sorry if this makes you feel bad now, and remember - she was not sorry when she was saying it to a 7 year old - me - when I was still missing my father terribly. She instilled in me that I should be eternally grateful to my brother for not abusing me in turn, especially when she finally left my father 7 years later. Now, what was I supposed to do with all of this when I was that young? She was hoping that I would start hating my father and cut him off, which I did - only now realizing she just did it to spite and punish my father, and the way I felt (I still find that traumatic to think about those things even now) - that didn't matter at all... She has achieved her goal and that what was truly important.
Now, if she really appreciated the impact that it has on me, she would also try and brainwash me into believing that was the best thing to do somehow, and she was right to bring it all up to me, but she never did such a thing, simply because she did not know and never considered the impact, and she never does even now, when she is over 60 years old.
The main point I want to make in the video, then, while is that the outcomes of such awful behavior can scar a person for life, they were probably not intentional in a sense that a Narcissistic parent would simply dismiss the emotional impact as non-existent, rather than knowingly causing it to you. While Narcissists are really shrewd at planning their mental and verbal strategies, they are not as good in appreciating the extend of the damage their actions wreck on the feelings of their nearest and dearest.
Here is the corresponding video for this post, that goes over the same material we have discussed here:
Thank you for visiting and I will see you in the next post!
