My childhood and teenage years weren’t exactly easy and I know that what I went through over this time significantly contributed to my low self esteem as well as the development of my anorexia. At the time I had no idea why my mum was treating me the way she was but now I know that she was treating me differently from my siblings because she was in capable of feeling maternal love towards me. I remember balling my eyes out and asking her why she hated me so much and eventually she stopped denying that she hated me and just admitted that she didnt know why she couldnt love me like she did my siblings. Accepting this was hard and to begin with I tortured myself for year’s trying to win her love. All I got from her however was more emotional abuse and neglect.
In the early stages of my eating disorder when I had just started making myself vomit after eating sometimes I remember breaking down and telling my mum what I had been doing. I expected her to take me to the doctor or atleast try to help me through it. All she did however was tell me that “you should stop that”andInever heard another word about it again until I was hospitalised about 4 months later. She hever once asked me if I was ok or if I was still practicing that dangerous behaviour. I asked her later about why she didnt do anything when I told her what I had been doing and she told me she was too busy dealing with my little sister to worry about me too. Also, when I was first hospitalised I remember laying in my hospital bed hooked up to heart monitors and unable to even walk to the toilet and having my mum call me and growl at me for not taking my text books to hospital with me as I would miss out on studying. She wasnt concerned about the fact that my heart was failing or that I was very sick, all she cared bout was me missing out on school.
These are just a few of the signs that my mum didnt have normal maternal feelings towards me. She was also very jealous of the relationship I had with my dad and she felt incredibly threatened if ever my younger sister looked up to me as a mother figure also. Mum was an alcoholic so whenever she got drunk, her true loathing for me really came out. Atleast while she was sober she could try and hide the fact that she didnt care about me the way she did about my 2 brothers and sister.
The reason I am writing this post today is to reach out to anyone else who my have a narcissistic parent. In order for me to recover, I had to cut myself off from my mother all together and had to stop trying to get her to love me the way I always wanted her too. I highly recommend you try to cut your parent off too, if they are a narcissist, or atleast stop trying to win their love. The truth is, your narcissistic parent can not love you unless you are their ‘golden child’ and as long as you try to get them to, you are only torturing yourself. I have accepted I will never have a mum and that is completely ok. I have so many other wonderful people in my life so I really dont need her, one little bit! And oneday I hope to have a daughter so I can have the mother daughter relationship with her that I never got to have with my own mum.
21 Signs of a Narcissistic Mother (Be Concerned if She Has Many of Them)
1. She has to be the center of attention all the time. This is a defining feature of narcissism. She will steal the spotlight or spoil any occasion if someone else is the center of attention.
2. She demeans, criticizes and makes derogatory remarks to you. She always lets you know that she thinks less of you than your siblings or other people.
3. She violates your boundaries. You feel like an extension of her. There is no privacy in your bathroom or bedroom; she regularly goes through your things to find information she then uses against you.
4. She ‘favoritizes’. Narcissistic mothers often have one child who is “the golden child” and another who is the scapegoat.
5. She undermines She will pick a fight with you or be especially critical and unpleasant just before you have to make a major effort.
6. Everything she does is ‘deniable’. Cruelties are couched in loving terms; aggressive acts are paraded as thoughtfulness.
7. She makes YOU look crazy. When you confront her with something she’s done, she’ll tell you that you have “a very vivid imagination” (common phrase that abusers use to invalidate your experience of their abuse) or that she has “no idea what you are talking about”.
8. She’s jealous. If you get something nice, she’ll take it from you, spoil it for you or get something the same or better for herself.
9. She’s a continuous liar. To you, she lies blatantly. To outsiders, she lies thoughtfully and in ways that can always be covered up.
10. She manipulates your emotions in order to “feed on your pain”. This behavior is so common among narcissistic mothers that they are often referred to as “emotional vampires”.
11. She is selfish and willful. She makes sure SHE has the best of everything and always has to have her way.
12. She is self-absorbed. Her feelings, needs and wants are Very Important and yours are irrelevant or insignificant.
13. She is almost absurdly defensive and extremely sensitive to criticism.
14. She terrorized you. Narcissists teach you to beware of their wrath. If you give her everything she wants, you might be spared; but if you don’t-the punishments WILL come.
15. She’s childish and petty; “getting even” with you is important to her.
16. She is aggressive and shameless. She doesn’t ask, she demands. She won’t take no for an answer-she will push, arm-twist, or otherwise manipulate or abuse you until you give in.
17. She “parentifies”. She sheds her parental responsibilities to the child as soon as she is able.
18. She is exploitive. She will go to any length to get things from others for nothing (work, money, objects)- including taking money out of her children’s account or even stealing their identities.
19. She projects. She will put her own poor behavior or character onto you so she can punish you. For example, you refuse an especially outlandish request of hers, she becomes enraged and furious at your refusal, then screams at you, “we’ll talk about it after you’ve calmed down and aren’t hysterical”.
20. She is never wrong about anything. She will never, ever genuinely apologize for anything she has done or said.
21. She is not aware that other people have feelings. She will occasionally slip up in public, and because of her lack of sympathy, will say something so callous it causes disbelief in people. The absence of empathy is another defining trait of narcissism and underlies most of the other signs that are on this list.
