Narcissistic Mother's Daughter-Tragic Story
As I write about the many faces and facets of the narcissistic personality I am reminded of the profound effect that narcissistic mothers have on their daughters. I want to relate a true story that occurred long ago when I was in grammar school. I lived in two worlds. The one was inhabited by strict nuns and disciplined study at a school located in an affluent neighborhood. The other was my home environment--a working class neighborhood of people who lived in very modest homes, took lunch pails to work, played opera on Sunday afternoons, ate a lot of hamburger meat, where children wore hand me downs and polished their thin, well worn shoes. Summer fun was playing in the sprinklers, making shallow miniature swimming pools out of a coiled hose, games of hide and seek, cowboys and Indians and mother may I.
One day I arrived at a strict parochial school and was introduced to a couple of students. A girl named Melanie was formal, polite but distant. I'll always remember her perfectly flipped up sandy blond hair, Aegean blue eyes and her rosy round cheeks---sun kissed. Melanie came from a prominent family. Her father was a judge and her mother was a socialite. I visited her home on several occasions. I remember walls of books displayed on gleaming solid pecan bookshelves from ceiling to floor. The home was filled with gorgeous asian rugs, classic statuary and fine furniture. I'll always remember meeting Melanie's mother. She stared down at me with unblinking eyes, making a meticulous appraisal of my outward appearance and pedigree. I was gripped by fear and a hint of shame. I put on my game face and steadily met Mrs. Strand's cold, inexpressive gaze. I didn't know if I had passed her stringent test or not. Mrs. S was curious about my ethnic background. I told her that I was Spanish and French. I did not reveal that I was part Mexican since I knew that would be a deal breaker.
Mrs. Strand frequently screamed at her daughter that she was fat and had to lose weight.so she could be attractive and slim like mom. I thought Melanie looked lovely, just right. She said that her mother constantly picked on her about her school performance, social skills and whatever else came to her mind. Mrs. S continually compared Melanie to her beautiful older sister, Eleanor, who was the queen of the family and about to be formally introduced to society. Melanie told me that her mother withheld food from her regularly. She gave her tiny servings, counting each item in a dish. Melanie confided many of her mother's cruelties during the years that we attended the same school. After grammar school, I lost contact with Melanie. Decades later, a friend called to tell me that Melanie had died of anorexia. She was in her early thirties and had been battling this grave illness for many years. I was deeply saddened and sickened by this news. I remembered Melanie's struggle with her mother to be a perfect daughter. I felt again her mother's coldness, rejection, delusional demands and blatant cruelties. Mrs. S, with her unyielding narcissistic personality, contributed to her daughter's intractable anorexia and final tragedy.
The narcissistic mother psychologically assaults and smothers the individuality out of her daughter. Some daughters survive their narcissistic mothers and live to become strong resilient women. Others like Melanie cannot bear the intolerable psychological pain of not having a real mother who valued, nurtured and cherished their unique being. Visit my website:www.thenarcissistinyourlife.com
Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D.
Telephone Consultation
Email:lmlphd@thenarcissistinyourlife.com
One day I arrived at a strict parochial school and was introduced to a couple of students. A girl named Melanie was formal, polite but distant. I'll always remember her perfectly flipped up sandy blond hair, Aegean blue eyes and her rosy round cheeks---sun kissed. Melanie came from a prominent family. Her father was a judge and her mother was a socialite. I visited her home on several occasions. I remember walls of books displayed on gleaming solid pecan bookshelves from ceiling to floor. The home was filled with gorgeous asian rugs, classic statuary and fine furniture. I'll always remember meeting Melanie's mother. She stared down at me with unblinking eyes, making a meticulous appraisal of my outward appearance and pedigree. I was gripped by fear and a hint of shame. I put on my game face and steadily met Mrs. Strand's cold, inexpressive gaze. I didn't know if I had passed her stringent test or not. Mrs. S was curious about my ethnic background. I told her that I was Spanish and French. I did not reveal that I was part Mexican since I knew that would be a deal breaker.
Mrs. Strand frequently screamed at her daughter that she was fat and had to lose weight.so she could be attractive and slim like mom. I thought Melanie looked lovely, just right. She said that her mother constantly picked on her about her school performance, social skills and whatever else came to her mind. Mrs. S continually compared Melanie to her beautiful older sister, Eleanor, who was the queen of the family and about to be formally introduced to society. Melanie told me that her mother withheld food from her regularly. She gave her tiny servings, counting each item in a dish. Melanie confided many of her mother's cruelties during the years that we attended the same school. After grammar school, I lost contact with Melanie. Decades later, a friend called to tell me that Melanie had died of anorexia. She was in her early thirties and had been battling this grave illness for many years. I was deeply saddened and sickened by this news. I remembered Melanie's struggle with her mother to be a perfect daughter. I felt again her mother's coldness, rejection, delusional demands and blatant cruelties. Mrs. S, with her unyielding narcissistic personality, contributed to her daughter's intractable anorexia and final tragedy.
The narcissistic mother psychologically assaults and smothers the individuality out of her daughter. Some daughters survive their narcissistic mothers and live to become strong resilient women. Others like Melanie cannot bear the intolerable psychological pain of not having a real mother who valued, nurtured and cherished their unique being. Visit my website:www.thenarcissistinyourlife.com
Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D.
Telephone Consultation
Email:lmlphd@thenarcissistinyourlife.com
Posted by LindaMartinezLewi at 8/3/2009 2:15 PM 
Categories: self help, narcissism, narcissistic mother, narcissist
Tags: cruelties mother's coldness narcissistic mother anorexia
Categories: self help, narcissism, narcissistic mother, narcissist
Tags: cruelties mother's coldness narcissistic mother anorexia
I am a survivor! I turned out to be such a caring and sensitive woman despite what I went through. I can see how it can break a person. I consider myself lucky. Twenty-five years ago I married a wonderful caring person. I remember thinking when I was young, I didn't want to be like my mom and I didn't want a relationship like her and dad had. There is nothing more important to my husband than my happiness and I feel the same way about him. I tell him, he has made up for all the saddness she has caused me.
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. My mother proved everyday her resentment of me, especially as I got older and attractive. She was a woman that should have never had children. She lived the life of a single woman while dragging three kids around, always reminding us what a burden we were. She made it very clear that her life was far more important than we were.
Treated like her personal slave I never knew respect or love. I was forced to babysit for free every Wednesday – Saturday night for her girl friends so they could go bar hopping together. By the age of nine I had memorized the phone numbers of all her favorite bars. Every Sunday morning I was dropped off at the laundry-mate to do the family wash, she wouldn’t pick me up until late in the day, one time she dropped me off at a laundry on the other side of our city, I had no idea where I was, she didn’t show up until 11: pm
We moved every year or six months, always a new school, consequently I never had any friends and struggled in school. She never read one book to us and never came to one school function, never made cookies for us, never played a game with us, never asked me how I was doing , her Narcissistic Personality wouldn’t make room for us. She did her best to disassociate me from my brothers and foster jealousies. Her favorite discipline was to slap me in the mouth for the slightest infraction. Then follow it up with the statement that she was going to slap that smile right off my face. Not one school picture am I smiling, I don’t know how. Several times I was knocked out from blows to the head and the good country doctor was called. Most of her anger was focused on me, when the three of us was to get a whooping, I always got the worst of it. Her commit “you can handle it, your stuffer”.
Because of her and my deadbeat dad (divorced) I am unable to trust anyone and have never known security.
She has an insatiable appetite for male attention always trying to be the center of attention with her sweet charming way when others were around and when alone with us a complete bitch, even her voice would change, it was like living with two different people. Not only was she unable to tell the truth about anything she would get us involved by making us swear to her countless endless lies. When a man was in her life, which was all the time we just didn’t exist. She flirted with and put the move on all my boyfriends and would make up and tell the most ridiculous and absurd stories to my friends, I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was of her.
If anyone crossed her she would crucify them with vicious slanderous lies, so believable was she that Jesus himself would be taken in.
While I tried to find love in all the wrong places, I fell victim to men’s abuse because I had no concept of self respect. Then finally I noticed how different I was from her and the one brother, how they always made excuses for themselves and never took responsibility for anything, the lies, deceptions and manipulation of people was disg
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Continued: I had to teach myself that I too had a right to happiness and an individual life. Something that one brother has never managed. She has complete control of his life and his children’s lives. She wouldn’t even allow this brother to attend his daughter’s wedding. He now sleeps on his daughter’s couch so he can support his single mother in her four bedroom home.
It wasn't until I married and had my own child that I realized the abuse I suffered. I remember how difficult it was for me to realize that it was in fact abuse and not just neglect, my mind didn't want to label it, I didn't want to think badly of her. I was in my 40’s when I could finally face the truth. I always enabled her behavior for fear of her wrath and never told anyone the truth not even my husband.
She had some kind of power over us, I think with- holding love is a tool to control others deprived of love whom will do anything and endure anything to get it.
I love my child more than anything, more than my own life. I realized how easy and natural it is to provide, protect and give your child security, structure and love. I began to compare, and I could see that my mother had made different choices, selfish choices. At this point I still loved my mother and lived in an illusion of denied facts. It wasn't until she started treating my daughter like she treated me that I snapped out of it. Then I heard that she had been spreading disgusting lies about me to the family and extended family and friends and it had been going on for many years. All the while I was subsidizing her monthly bills and paying her property taxes. I called an aunt to confirm the rumors and she did, I called my brothers, they confirmed it. These were vicious, perverted, slanderous lies unbelievably cruel, heartless and mean. It reality hit me in the face, I could no longer take her abuse and wouldn't allow my daughter to be influence by her any longer.
The interesting thing is that after some time passed I figured out that most of the disgusting lies she told about me were in fact things she did.
I cut her out of my life ten years ago. One of my brothers, the one most like her and completely controlled by her choose to draw a line between me and him because of it. It is not an easy decision to divorce your mother and even harder to keep that resolve. At 76 she still continues her destructive behavior and I finally gave up on her. Once I made that decision that interior tension and stress, the nightmares, the grinding of the teeth, hormone imbalance all disappeared.
I feel badly for my daughter that she doesn't have a normal grandmother in her life but my mother is not grandmother material. I will never forgive her for refusing to be a decent grandmother. I have to continually remind myself that she is toxic and destructive and would have by now caused much more pain than we feel now. It’s a content struggle with myself to not weaken and call her. It's been ten years since I've spoken to
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Continued 2; and she is still spreading lies about me and trying to destroy my relationship with my last brother. She is pure evil.
Only the strong can stand up to these unnatural mothers, these abominations of nature. I feel proud of myself for being a better mother, a real mother. It hasn't been easy for me or my daughter, I don't know why this happens to some of us, I just know I had to do the right thing and protect my daughter and myself.
The best revenge is that I have made a success of my life. I’m a good, caring, giving person, I have wonderful friends, I have a very loving and strong relationship with my daughter. I’ve accumulated properties and they offer me that security I needed. I did of course marry a narcissistic mama’s boy man
much like my mother and father but I no longer take his shit. He’s seen my resolve to clear out the toxic people from my life and he has made the choice to change and if he doesn’t he’s history too.
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Bravo Beth, you sharing this has strengthened my own resolve to remove myself from my awful family. I wish you and your daughter the best of everything and stay strong for you and all of us too. Thank you so much.
Your Sister in recovery from Devil Mothers!
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