Narcissistic Mothers Endanger And Abandon Their Daughters
The narcissistic mother is a mother in name only. I have heard heartbreaking childhood and adult autobiographies of the traumas, struggles and despair that these daughters have endured. Imprinted in their memories, deep in their cells is the knowing that they were never loved.
Narcissistic mothers have always been with us. Different words have been used to describe them, but these non-mothers have been endangering and destroying their daughters for millennia.
The narcissistic mother is predictably unpredictable. She has neither insight nor compassion. She focuses solely on her needs, drives and desires. Her little daughter makes too many irritating demands. The narcissistic mother doesn’t want to be bothered with a child. Children are frustrating and require special attention. These mothers are focused completely on themselves. Their daughters are psychological irritants, time wasters that drag her down.
There are different types of narcissistic mothers. Some are so fused with their daughters that they are suffocating and overprotective. They keep their daughters on short tethers, not allowing them to take a step without direct orders.
In this blog post I am talking about narcissistic mothers who are careless and recklessly unprotective of their daughters. From birth this daughter is abandoned by her mother. As a young infant she doesn’t receive the essential warmth and attachment to mother that she needs. Mother’s touch is cold and mechanical. Some narcissistic mothers hate their daughters and experience them as equal rivals. A baby is greeted with attention and joy in a healthy family. The narcissistic mother is often jealous of this tiny upstart who is getting all the attention from other family members. As soon as possible, this mother hands her daughter off to caregivers. She is not concerned about the quality of her child’s care as long as this daughter is taken off her hands. Narcissistic mothers know how to put on a clever act when necessary to convince people they are excellent mothers. When the curtain comes down and the spotlight dims, mother quickly re-hardens, returning to her self-absorbed coldness.
Many young adolescent girls are left to fend for themselves while the narcissistic mother leads a free and easy social, personal and sexual life. Daughters of narcissistic mothers are exposed to adult behaviors that are traumatic and inappropriate. There are narcissistic mothers who have a series of boyfriends moving in and out of the house. Many of these daughters have regularly witnessed their mothers in intimate sexual contact with boyfriends. This kind of psychological exposure is overwhelming to the young daughter and can cause serious psychological trauma.
These daughters are endangered by their narcissistic mother’s profligate, reckless lifestyle. It is not surprising that some of these young women are the victims of sexual abuse, including rape. Others become premature adults and if the narcissistic mother is an alcoholic or drug abuser, the daughter can be drawn into the use of these substances early in her life. In some instances daughters of narcissistic mothers are sexually abused or raped by one of the mother’s lovers. Narcissistic mothers are exceedingly jealous of their young attractive daughters and become rivals for male attention. In some instances the narcissistic mother encourages her daughter to become intimate with men who are much older than she. The narcissistic mother here is using her daughter as a sexual narcissistic supply to men who are attracted to women less than half their age. This is serious abuse and criminal. Narcissistic mothers always give themselves priority in all life decisions. I know of instances where these non-mothers left the country, leaving their daughters with distant relatives for years at a time without maintaining any form of contact. Suddenly, mother reappears with a new boyfriend, expecting to be greeted warmly as if nothing had ever happened. This is heartbreaking and confusing to children regardless of their age.
Daughters of narcissistic mothers handle this tragic life history in a variety of ways. Some leave home early and try to survive on their own. A few of them succeed in raising themselves although the psychological wound to their heart remains. Other daughters numb their pain by acting out---chronic drug and alcohol abuse, risky sexual activities, habitual shop lifting, eating disorders. There are daughters of narcissistic mothers who marry narcissistic men and who perpetrate a different version of the cycle of abuse they experienced as children.
Daughters of narcissistic mothers have lead difficult lives, especially when they were young and at the mercy of a mother who was incapable of love or protection. Many of these daughters were able to find other individuals in their home environment---relatives, family friends, teachers—who sustained them with affection and caring during the rough years of growing up.
I have been in contact with daughters of narcissistic mothers who are psychologically resilient. They became participants in their emotional and psychological healing often through high quality psychotherapy and various healing modalities including yoga, meditation, journaling, support groups. These women are an inspiration to others who are still dealing with the early wounds of being the daughter of a narcissistic mother. I have immense respect for their perseverance, strength and faith in themselves. Visit my website:www.thenarcissistinyourlife.com
Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D.
Telephone Consultation
Email: lmlphd@thenarcissistinyourlife.com
Categories: self help,narcissism,mental health,narcissist,narcissistic mothers
Tags: meditation sexual abuse cold mothers yoga rape reckless mothers psychotherapy narcissistic mothers substance abuse alcoholic
This is so right on to my upbringing it is scary. I have been in therapy for years and currently divorcing a NPDH. And I have never been able to express completely what it has been like for me, but you did it in a few paragraphs. When reading this, I cried not for my passed or my current situation, but because someone actually fully understands and can put it into words what the experience is like.
My "mother" flipped back and forth from over protective to "your on your own" to meet her needs, it was so confusing.
I was molested several times by her boyfriends as were my 5 other sisters. To this day I have never told her. There was never any point, because she would have never believed me or it would have been my fault in someway. I have compartmentalize many parts of my life and when I think about them it is as if it happened to someone else. It is amazing to me how our mind protects us. I thank God for that.
I married late in life, thinking perhaps I may never marry, but my NPDH swept me off my feet...as they normally do. OH you gotta love hindsight. After our son was born, 1 year after marrying, he really changed. It is the classic marriage to a NPDH. I wanted to leave so many times, but didn't. I Dealt Verbal, physical, financial and emotional abuse for 13 years. All brought on by me of course. Well, I started to live my own life, and that escalated everything, he stopped coming home, but I didn't care he thought that would get to me, but I went on. So, other tactics started withholding access to money, but didn't break me. So, 2 days after I broke my foot(which I drove myself to the hospital and I had to have a friend pick up and care for our son) He told me he wanted a divorce, but he would change his mind if I did...etc. I said no I rather you leave. It took him a month to finally get out of the house. See his manipulation backfired and he actually had to leave. He thought I would crack, he continued to come to the house and just walk in after about 2 weeks of asking him nicely to stop. I changed the locks. Well, he waited for me one night and he jumped out of the dark and beat me. I called 911 and he now does not have any contact with me or his son. After that he got a DUI, jail time, lost his , but ask anyone who knows him and it all of his troubles are my fault.
Guess what, I again have reinvented myself and my son and I are safe and happy. If I can make it through my childhood craziness I can make through this. I know the red flags now and I like who I am, so I know in the future I will be that much more wiser.
Thank you for listening and having your wonderful insight.
Reply to this
I love this article, I went from being neglected,raped abandon thrown to the streets at 16. To now I am the highlight topic to her co-workers of a beautiful.I havent lived with my mother since I have been 16. I am 40, she have never given me a birthday card nor a pamper for my sons, she visited me two days ago because I live in another state. She is still empty and she even tried to seduce my husband. My mom treated horrible for no reason and now she even want to steal my joy.
Reply to this
I'm sorry for the pain you have had in your life because of your "mother". You deserve to be treated with love, respect, and kindness therefore, I severed my relationship long ago with my "mother" and I waste no time with anyone who will not treat me the way I deserve to be treated! Consider the last visit from your "mother" as her last chance and cut her off. She doesn't have the mental equipment to ever be any different towards you. I certainly hope she was not successful in seducing your husband. Don't let her steal your happiness that you deserve.
It's never to late for PEACE!!!
Reply to this
I have only recently discovered at the age of 48 that my Mother has Narcissistic Personality Disorder...You have pretty much described parts of my life and the lifves my siblings lived while growing up under the Rule of Narcissism. It is so very sad! I have allowed my Mother to steal so many moments and entire years from my life and refuse to allow her this power over me any longer...enough is enough already! I thought this article was extremely accurate, educational and right on spot when describing the personality of a narcissistic Mother.
Thanks for putting the information out there for us all.
Reply to this
I had researched NPD a few years ago now. It helps to understand the disorder and why these people can be so evil and why we feel so much pain and anger at times, it can also feel very lonely. It doesn't help being in contact with them either, they just keep on trying to wrecking your life. My mother sure is Satan and I lived with my father also since I was 14 years old. I keep away from her as much as I can, and I will move state as soon as my son finishes Uni and heads off overseas for work in another year or so. She trys to pull him into her web of destruction at times and I've had to work hard at pulling him back in. She has destroyed the whole family with her lies, her sleezy husband, and hides our childhood photos. I went through a custody battle with my sons father, to that she wrote my child off me and said that "I ruiened her life and she was going to ruin mine". I hate the woman and I'll only ever really be free and at peace is when she finally dies.
Reply to this
Just reading these entries knowing I am not alone helps - mine has another spin - she has been this way all my life - always there with her verbal abuse. Now she is 92 and I am the only one to help take care of many of her life needs. I try to have as minimal contact as possible - she is the most toxic, mean nasty person, the more I do for her the worse she treats me. I tell myself she is such a pathetic excuse for a human being she should not get to me. She sends my blood sugars off the scale, disrupts my mind flow, interrupts my enjoyment of other friends and family members, days after I have not been around her. I am really so mad at myself that I allow this idiot to still have this effect on me. No answers here.
Gin
Reply to this
Gin, I do understand as I had identical reactions and symptoms when I had to deal with my mother.It was more pronounced in her latter aging years, as they remain the same and even display more openly what they realy were about being less switched on themselves, spouse dead & living situation changing adding up to less restraint and hiding mechanisms. It becomes an even a more ugly truth that confronts us in how they even were trying to damage and limit us. And we feel awful and weak for not managing to cope with any even minimal contact as others say she is now just a pathetic weak woman so just get a grip on yourself Ironicaly in reacting to ma like that, we ARE getting a grip on oour selves as a normal human response ought to be such up close to a narcissistic mother. We are actualy confirmed in our healthier normality( despite these mothers best efforts) when we are facing something evil/hidious and ought to be repelled.
I never forget the words of Conrads novel "Heart of Darkness" when fully seeing the evil with total realization of what it is before him, a main character cries out "the Horror, the Horror".Just like in the novel was how I felt. It's when these words came back to me as their context. And what I saw was just as awful. It applied to first the NPD boyfriend and sometime after to mother. Boyfriend was a truly psychopathic narcissist ( medically diagnosed later as having severe form of NPD) that I had a relationship with at the same time. I'd got caught up accomodating him due to mother's training of making excuses for her etc.
fitting right in doing it for him They were extremely alike and eventualy in tandem they opened my eyes fully to what they were, what they do and why. It was and still is if I let myself remember too much, "the Horror, the Horror". And while reasonable, it still is an awful feeling to be feeling so negative about ones now dead mother- 6 mths ago- plus when she was dying wishing she'd hurry up and die, but not suffer. I did have shared minimal duty with my brother to carry out on occasions. Be consoled that she won't be alive and around much longer. Unfortunately we didn't think of cutting off all ties with them 30 years earlier as we often knew they were problematic, but not the full picture. Plus they are cunning enough to behave a fraction better when we had young families, jobs, at our personal peak and realise if they pushed to far then they could have got good bye, They just waited awhile until getting us with more force when we are more pressured and vulnrable . The stage we're dealing with more complexities , losses and age transitions.
So just hold on, feel normal about how she makes you feel and start to admit as fully to yourself the full extent of negative feelings towards her and it being utterly fair, and distance yourself mentaly , emotionaly from her as much as you can knowing this final departure is very near.
Reply to this
oooh, I could be writing the same exact lines. My entire life, my "mother" rejected me for what who I was, a beautiful, active, bright, happy person. In comparion to her which was the exact opposite, since I was a little girl I somehow sensed her jealously of me. and I never really bonded to her as my mother, you see I lived with my patneral grandmother until I was 4.5.
anyways recently on easter sunday weekend my mother let me know that she favors my younger brother over all of the rest of the kids, there are nine.
It s a long story but the pain still cut deeply into my heart as I could not believe how she could be so cold and mean. But being a complete narissist she has no clue about her impact on the lives of others,
she is the complete toxic mom
Reply to this
Appreciate your response Barb.It really sounds like your mother was the same type as mine. You were lucky to at least have an earlier awareness of the mothers jelousy of you. While being with your grandmother may not have been ideal it would have given a dot more option of accurate awareness in that. I only recognised she had been jealous of me always once in my late 40's when she was less gaurded in her remarks. Narcissist mothers are always jealous of their daughters seeing them as competition & for their comparative youth, right from our arrival. That line of thought to me was missed as incomprehensible to have to ones own child or any female of the next generation( logicaly I had my turn at youth & what goes with it hoping they did the best with it while they had it) or ever felt competative with other females as their qualities- lesser or greater- changed nothing of mine. Narcissist mothers always prefer sons. It didn't bother me her preferance for my brother. Naively was assuming one couldn't help liking certain types more & pressuming I was still loved. It did bother me when I realised more & more that she was actively rejecting of me as a person & had no love for me plus demanding that I loved her, this supposedly all sacrificing loving mother she made continual claims to being. I was meant to be available to her when she'd keep saying nasty things to me between other bits of civility on visits. Later she'd create situations to set me up to fail in interactions with my father and other relatives. Her set ups were clever, if I did do her request to the level I could fit it in with other competing demands she'd have assured me was still helpful and then make sure I was made look as deficient to others who then became
annoyed with me or was dammned for not doing it at all by her.
You are right that such Narcissists don't realy understand what they are doing in such remarks as you got at Easter. While saying this type of preference, they are expecting to achieve the aim of diminishing and belittlng you, as it would even them from a Narcissist's needs. They do not grasp the pain it emotionaly causes and the consequences, especialy the risks in future for them. We as recipients can be initialy overwhelmed, but we also can become more effectively alienated from them too. That was a good point you made in their not understanding by lacking the emotional grid. It has made sense of the times the Narcissist has done this form of overkill in continued scatterings of serious cruelty on areas that are potentialy more painful than just upsetting or moderately hurtful. Plus their surprise why we changed from a cowering animal to a cornered rat realising we must fight for our life. Which is a personal awereness of them, some public hints & nolonger engaging much more than the utter minimum, if at all. I've no doubt my mother would have farmed me out for periods of time to relatives, except they were all overseas.
Reply to this
Great info. I like all your post. I will keep visiting this blog very often. It is good to see you verbalize from the heart and your clarity on this important subject can be easily observed..
Reply to this
OMG, I googled why does my Mum keep hating me, I found this and it describes everything absolutely. So I was abandoned, taken back and again abandoned etc. By 16 I was in a strange country and again abandoned. I ended up on drugs and working the streets for 12 years. Now in my mid forties mother to 4 sons who know nothing about my past, she waltzed back into my life! I was too nice and again she did her thing. This time though I dont even hurt I just figured it is not me, it is her problem. And you know what at 60 odd she is looking down the barrel of an empty lonely old age. But what makes a narcisstic mum, was it tv, was it their beauty (my mum is beautiful), Are these Mums all from the same generation or has it been going on for centuries?
Reply to this
I severed all ties with my mother 5 yrs ago. I'm 47. In my mind I had written her off many years before. However,in the back of your mind you still hold out hope...she'll somehow change. Cutting all contact...oh my...what a massive release that was!! It was the beginning of my life.
Reply to this
To freemind. You have done brilliantly in getting through such cruelty and wisely shut that door. As narcissistic disordered women are not that many, our social values encourage mercy to our flawed human mothers.This not allowing for the extremely twisted harmful parent means it talkes into middle ages to to act on them. Your only error is making the mistake that your looking like your father who was gone and she resented was hard on her. Rubbish, she just projects blame. Plus people like her have no real feelings to empathise or hurt with so your father annoyed her for getting away, As you were not a lab clone of her, but the child of her and the man she had sex with, you obviously had to get half his DNA. She chose the relationship with him and all normal adults expect to see that other party in that child without resenting the child. Nor would any mature adult make the child pay for being extra effort as the fourth when fed up with motherhood. Everything she resented you for wasn't of your making, but choices she made in life.. There is nothing to excuse or understand with your mother except understanding she was perversly twisted with no conscience.
Reply to this