Children of narcissistic parents rarely survive psychologically intact.
Your world view is so psychotically manipulated that what makes sense to you isn’t what makes sense to others. You may develop eating disorders and addictions, determined to take your life apart at the very core in an attempt to make sense of the insanity, or you become an overachiever in an attempt to establish control over any corner of your life. You are trapped in a cycle of reacting, instead of acting, to the circumstances you were born into. Whether you live your life as a shining example, or as a terrible warning, you carry the terrible burden of knowing you’re mother is incapable of loving you. The horror of this is you believe you are unlovable.
Boy, or girl, your narcissistic mother is fused with you. Her coldness and lack of empathy affect you from the start. She experiences you as an extension of herself, never as an individual. You are hers to dress up or destroy. She will use your tragedies, your challenges, and your successes as a means to further her own image. She is psychologically merged with you and it’s incomprehensible to her that there could be anything wrong with this. When she says “this is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you”, it’s true. She can’t feel anyone’s pain but her own.
The narcissistic mother says things to you that cause you to shake your head in disbelief, but also in confusion. When she says you’re jealous of her, you know you’re not, but then wonder if there might be truth to what she says? Self-reflection is how a normal person responds to what others say. You can’t allow yourself this luxury when you’re in a relationship with narcissism. You’re not in a relationship with another person; you’re in a relationship with a twisted perception and your ability to self-reflect is what will be used against you.
What they accuse you of doing is the very thing they are doing to you. When they accuse you of being jealous, it’s because of their own envy. When they accuse you of lying, it’s because they know how easily the lies pass their own lips. When they say they fear your anger, it’s their own seething rage that concerns them. Their every move is focused on undermining you, shaking your confidence so deeply that you will never be free, and they will never be alone. Their hold is so strong and pathological that you won’t know what you’re thinking.
Another aspect of the power the narcissistic mother uses is to cause powerful, damaging psychological rifts between you and your siblings and extended family. You are pitted against each other by conspiratorial secrets, which are usually lies, but she’s so skilled at manipulating emotions that even when the lies are uncovered and seen for what they are, pity for her will keep her safe from recrimination.
If you have siblings, she will choose one child as the special “Golden” one to be focused upon. If you’re the Golden Child, you can do no wrong. You’re dressed as the perfect incarnation of the mother. You are invited to participate in the mother’s activities, to be the perfect little “mini me”. The narcissistic mother chooses another child as the "Scapegoat". If you are this child, you are the target and reservoir for the narcissistic mother's expression of her unconscious feelings of self hatred and worthlessness. This child is a living disposal for the narcissistic mother's toxic venom. She will often be offered up as the sacrificial lamb to cover for her if someone notices that something in the home might be amiss.
When you begin to break free of her hypnotic grasp, the narcissistic mother can be relentlessly cruel and critical. They will discover flaws in you if you are the “golden” child, and if you are the “scapegoat” child, you will be blamed for the golden child’s exodus. This will always be true since the narcissistic mother suffers from a severe personality disorder. These individuals are completely self absorbed, cold, manipulative, deceitful, exploitative, and lacking in human empathy.
If you are the adult child of a narcissistic mother, you can heal. One of the first steps is acknowledging and grieving over the fact that you never had a real mother, someone who loved you or cared about you as a separate, valuable human being. You have to learn that you are not your mother, or any of the things she says you are. One of the biggest challenges is to untangle yourself from the pity and compassion you have for her. If you don’t take these steps, you’ll continue to repeat relationship patterns of childhood rather than work through the pain to transform it.
When you begin the work of separating who you are, from who you’ve been told you are, you will vacillate. You will walk away, and you will return. You’ll do this until you can finally accept that no matter what you do, you will never be seen as an individual, and you’ll never be forgiven for abandoning your role. The narcissist will up the ante, they will involve other family members, and they will do almost anything to bring you back into the fold. Rarely will you have the support of someone who’s still inside the dynamic because they are still mesmerized. They can sometimes see what the narcissist is doing, but they will find excuses for it, just as you’ve done all your life.
You must be brave in order to risk the possibility of a happy, joyous, and free future.
